Oracle stock traded flat on Wednesday as the multinational tech conglomerate looked to cut thousands of jobs to free up cash to build artificial intelligence data center infrastructure.

The software giant has started telling its 162,000-strong workforce that thousands of people will be affected in a new round of layoffs, two people familiar with the matter told CNBC on Tuesday.

Oracle declined to comment.

Investors remain uneasy about the company’s hefty capital expenditure on data centers that can handle AI workloads. While shares closed up nearly 6% Tuesday, Oracle’s stock is down roughly 25% so far this year.

The company announced plans in early February to fundraise up to $50 billion during the 2025 calendar year through a mixture of debt and equity, to expand capacity for contracted cloud demand from customers, including Nvidia, Meta, OpenAI, Advanced Micro Devices and xAI.

Major AI hyperscalers Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Amazon have also committed to capital expenditure of nearly $700 billion to fund their AI buildouts this year, which has alarmed investors as it will reduce the companies’ free cash flow without a clear promise on near-term returns.

Job cuts at Oracle will help free up cash flow, Barclays analysts said in a note Tuesday. The investment bank said it is its overweight rating of the stock.

“Given ORCL’s existing FY26 Restructuring Plan and prior reports, we do not see today’s layoffs as being a surprise to the market, which seemed to have appreciated the cost savings potential from ORCL’s actions amidst the company’s rapid build-out of AI infrastructure capacity,” the analysts said.

Barclays also highlighted that Oracle generates less profit per employee than its competitors, with workers less productive compared to the average.

The analysts expect that Oracle will triple its revenue over the next few years due to minimal headcount growth and low operating costs.

CORRECTION: This story has been updated to correct the day that the Barclays analyst note was released.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog told a group of U.S. business leaders at the Yale CEO caucus meeting on Tuesday that he understands their concerns about the costs of the war against Iran, but argued it is a necessary price for a “better horizon for the Middle East.”

Herzog called the war, which the United States and Israel launched on Feb. 28, “a big moment for the region,” which has effectively united against Iran and its policy of terror.

“You want a different future for the Middle East,” Herzog said at the event in Washington, speaking remotely by video. “For the first time, we’re operating together … a NATO-like structure, because we are all bombarded by Iran, and we’re all fighting against Iran.

“I know it’s not easy for you guys in the business world,” the Israeli president said. “Everybody’s looking at the data and the cost. We understand.”

“But all of us understand that sometimes you need to take hard steps to get to the goal of a reasonable horizon for the Middle East and an even better horizon for the Middle East,” Herzog said. “Undermining Iran’s capability is [the] No. 1 rule.”

Business leaders in the room at the invite-only event included: Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla, AOL co-founder Steve Case, Washington Commanders partner Mark Ein, Booking Holdings CEO Glenn Fogel and Lazard CEO Peter Orszag.

Asked if U.S. and Israeli leaders have a long-term plan for Iran, Herzog said, “I am quite impressed by many levels of very intimate cooperation and analysis together.”

The Trump administration is facing questions about the length of the war. Trump has criticized his presidential predecessors for dragging out other conflicts in the Middle East.

Herzog, meanwhile, lauded the U.S. and Israel cooperation.

“The incredible cooperation that we have between our militaries is unprecedented. We had people who compared it even to some of the alignment of the allies in World War II, meaning that we share in on so many levels, so many things in this world, that it is quite unbelievable,” Herzog said.

Herzog also said the war, by “substantially” hurting Iran’s military, government and infrastructure, is enabling “the people to rise up” there.

“We don’t know if they will,” he added. “Two months ago, [Iran’s regime] butchered 50,000 of the people, which is so brutal and so horrendous that we understand that we are dealing with the real ‘Empire of Evil’ in the world.

“So the grand plan is first and foremost to weaken them substantially, and that is what is being done,” Herzog said.

Apple opened its week of product launches on Monday morning with a refreshed low-cost iPhone and a faster iPad Air, as it begins what looks to be a broader multi-day hardware push.

The headline device is the new iPhone 17e, a budget model in the iPhone 17 lineup that starts at $599 and comes in below the $799 standard iPhone 17.

That makes it an important product for Apple in the mid-tier smartphone market, where it competes more directly with lower-priced devices from Samsung, Google, and Chinese phone makers, particularly in more price-sensitive markets.

The 17e keeps the same 6.1-inch size, but adds tougher glass, Apple’s A19 chip, the newer C1X modem, MagSafe charging, and 256GB of starting storage — twice the base capacity of last year’s model. It also adds Apple Intelligence support, giving the lower-cost model more feature parity with the rest of the lineup.

The unchanged $599 starting price, even with more storage and added features, suggests Apple is trying to make the entry-level iPhone more compelling without cutting into the pricing of its flagship lineup.

That stands out at a time when rising memory costs are squeezing the broader smartphone market, making the 17e a more aggressive value play for Apple as it looks to attract price-conscious buyers.

The new handset comes in pink, black, and white, with preorders starting March 4 and in-store availability beginning on March 11.

Apple also updated the iPad Air, which keeps the same design and price but moves from its M3 to M4 chip.

The 11-inch model still starts at $599, while the 13-inch version remains $799. Apple said in the release that the new processor is up to 30% faster than the prior generation. Apple said the new iPad Air gets faster wireless performance and improved cellular connectivity on models with mobile data.

The iPad refresh helps Apple build on momentum in a category that outperformed in the holiday quarter, as the company looks to keep tablet demand going with faster chips rather than a major redesign.

That could matter especially if Apple continues to see strong first-time buyer demand in the category: in its most recent holiday quarter, the company said roughly half of iPad buyers were new to the product.

The company has planned product announcements over the next few days. Apple has told stores to brace for a big rush, Bloomberg reported.

That level of retail preparation suggests Apple expects at least one of this week’s launches to have broader mainstream appeal, not just incremental interest from existing users.

There’s a line item in homebuyers’ closing costs that’s causing a clash in the mortgage industry: the fee for lenders to check borrowers’ credit.

While the charges — typically in the tens or hundreds of dollars — represent a tiny slice of the amount that buyers pay when a home purchase is finalized, the cost has risen sharply in recent years. Costs in 2026 could rise an average 40% to 50%, according to a Dec. 12 letter from the Mortgage Bankers Association to Federal Housing Finance Authority Director Bill Pulte.

The trade association asked the FHFA to give mortgage lenders the option of relying on a single credit report instead of three — known as a “tri-merge” report — for borrowers with a credit score of 700 or higher.

Although lenders generally have required a minimum credit score of 620 (on a typical scale of 300 to 850), Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored enterprise and buyer of mortgages, said in November that applications processed through its automated underwriting system would no longer require a minimum score.

Nevertheless, most homebuyers have higher credit scores, and so stand to benefit from such a change. In 2024, the average credit score for a first-time homebuyer was 734, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. For repeat buyers, the average score was 775.

The FHFA oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which are the largest purchasers of mortgages on the secondary market. Currently, lenders that want to sell mortgages to Fannie and Freddie — most do, because those transactions provide them with capital to make more…

Chinese tech giant Xiaomi saw its shares pop over 2% in trading on Friday after it announced a stock buyback program worth up to HK$2.5 billion ($321 million). 

The repurchase plan comes as the electric vehicle and smartphone maker looks to reassure investors amid intensifying competition, rising component costs and recent product safety concerns. 

Despite Friday’s gains, Xiaomi’s shares are down over 8% so far this year, reflecting sustained pressure on its valuation.

The company has regularly repurchased shares in recent years, including 4 million shares for HK$152 million on Jan. 13.

Critics of stock buybacks argue that the practice can boost share prices without improving a company’s underlying business. They say buybacks divert cash from other investments, such as employee pay, factory expansion, job creation and innovation.

Xiaomi’s latest buyback begins Jan. 23 and will be executed on the open market, subject to market conditions and regulatory approvals, according to a filing with the Hong Kong Stock Exchange late Thursday. 

The Beijing-based firm is one of China’s largest consumer technology companies, with businesses in smartphones, electric vehicles and smart home devices. 

Analysts say the stock has faced pressure recently as a looming memory chip shortage threatens to push up component costs for its consumer devices, particularly smartphones.

“[The shortage] has caused margin compression for smartphone manufacturers and a number of independent industry forecasters have lowered their outlook for smartphones,” said Dan Baker, senior equity analyst at Morningstar.

The memory shortage is only expected to worsen this year, as manufacturers continue to focus on the growing memory demands of the AI industry, diverting capacity from electronics manufacturers.

“2026 is going to be challenging not just for Xiaomi but for many Chinese [Original Equipment Manufacturers] as domestic Android players remain most vulnerable to chip shortages,” said Ivan Lam, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research.

Last year, Xiaomi’s shares had also faced pressure following reports of accidents involving its vehicles that went viral on social media. More broadly, the company has been affected by an ongoing price war in China’s EV market, which has weighed on margins across the sector.

Regarding its EV business, Kyna Wong, a China technology analyst at Citi Research, said that investors had also been disappointed by Xiaomi’s modest 550,000-unit vehicle delivery target for 2026. 

She added that margins on the company’s vehicle sales are likely to trend down due to changes to Beijing’s EV subsidy policies in 2026.

Meanwhile, Xiaomi has been investing heavily in longer-term initiatives, including an internal semiconductor division. Last year, the company committed at least 50 billion yuan over the next 10…