The office of U.S. tech giant Oracle in Dubai was damaged by falling debris, the city’s media office said on Sunday, as Iran continued to fire projectiles at targets around the Middle East in retaliation against U.S. and Israeli strikes.

“Authorities confirm that they responded to a minor incident caused by debris from an aerial interception that fell on the facade of the Oracle building in Dubai Internet City,” the Dubai Media Office said in a post on X. No one was injured in the incident, the media office said.

Oracle didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment emailed by CNBC.

A CNBC journalist in Dubai reported hearing multiple interceptions overnight.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard has threatened attacks on a swath of U.S. tech companies with operations in the Middle East, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google.

The Guard warned on Tuesday that 18 tech companies would be considered as “legitimate targets” in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

“From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed,” they said in an Guard-affiliated Telegram channel.

The list of companies also included Cisco, HP, Intel, IBM, Dell, Palantir, JPMorgan, Tesla, GE, Spire Solutions, Boeing and UAE-based artificial intelligence company G42.

James Henderson, CEO of risk management firm Healix, said the rise in threats against tech companies is not a flash in the pan, but is a sustained pattern.

“Tech assets are now treated as part of the conflict, not peripheral to it,” Henderson told CNBC.

“It also signals that future crises may target data centers and cloud platforms as much as traditional strategic sites,” he added.

Iran struck Amazon Web Services data centers in the Middle East in early March, causing outages in a number of apps and digital services in the United Arab Emirates.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has threatened attacks on a swath of U.S. tech companies with operations in the Middle East, including Nvidia, Apple, Microsoft and Google.

The IRGC warned on Tuesday that 18 tech companies would be considered as “legitimate targets” in retaliation for U.S. and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Attacks on those companies would begin from 8 p.m. on Wednesday, April 1, Tehran time (10:30 am ET), the IRGC said in a post on Telegram translated by Google, warning employees at those companies to leave workplaces immediately to protect their lives.

“From now on, for every assassination, an American company will be destroyed,” they said in an IRGC-affiliated Telegram channel.

The list of companies also featured Cisco, HP, Intel, Oracle, IBM, Dell, Palantir, JP Morgan, Tesla, GE, Spire Solutions, Boeing and UAE-based AI company G42.

It follows Iranian strikes on AWS data centers in the Middle East earlier this month, which caused outages in a number of apps and digital services in the United Arab Emirates.

U.S. tech firms have been funnelling resources into the Middle East in recent years, specifically around the AI infrastructure buildout, with the region offering cheap energy and access to land.

“The safety and wellbeing of our team is our number one priority,” an Intel spokesperson said in a statement to CNBC. “We are taking steps to safeguard and support our workers and facilities in the Middle East and are actively monitoring the situation.”

All the companies listed in the Telegram post have been approached for comment. Google and JP Morgan declined to comment.

— CNBC’s Holly Ellyatt and Emma Graham contributed to this report.

Crude prices extended gains during Asia trading as escalating attacks in the Persian Gulf and U.S. President Donald Trump‘s signals on exiting the Iran conflict even as the Strait of Hormuz remains largely closed keep markets on edge.

Brent contract for June delivery was up 1.5% at $105.56 a barrel as of 9:50 ET — prices surged more than 60% in March, in their strongest ever monthly rally dating back to 1988, with the May contract settling about 5% higher on Tuesday at $118.35 per barrel.

U.S. crude oil for May was up 1.5% at $102.92 a barrel, with prices soaring about 51% in March to clock West Texas Intermediate’s best month since May 2020.

Iranian drones targeted fuel tanks at Kuwait International Airport on Wednesday, causing a massive fire and damage to the tanks, Kuwaiti local media reported, citing the civil aviation authority.

The U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran has triggered a severe energy supply disruption since the war began on Feb. 28, stoking fears across the global economy that relies heavily on Middle Eastern oil.

Iran has effectively halted shipments through the Strait of Hormuz, a critical waterway connecting the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman that typically saw 20% of global oil flows before the war broke out.

Trump said Tuesday evening stateside that he expected the U.S. military forces to leave Iran in “two or three weeks” and appeared to be declaring victory.

“We leave because there’s no reason for us to do this,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “We’ll be leaving very soon.”

Trump has also dismissed the idea of having to reach a negotiated deal to end the war, saying that “Iran doesn’t have to make a deal … it’s a new regime. They are much more accessible.” He also asserted that he had stopped Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon.

Later in the day, White House spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a post on X that Trump will deliver a national address to provide an “important update” on Iran at 9 p.m. ET Wednesday.

The military hostilities continued: Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said it would start attacking U.S. companies in the region from Wednesday, listing 18 companies including Google, Microsoft, Apple, Intel, IBM, Tesla and Boeing.

“Trump remains stuck. Leaving now would admit defeat,” said Michael Feller, co-founder of think-tank Geopolitical Strategy, adding that destroying civilian infrastructure, as Trump threatened earlier this week, would “make no difference other than to further drive up oil prices.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi ​​told Al Jazeera on Tuesday that messages had been exchanged with the U.S., directly or through countries in the region, but they do not constitute “negotiations.”

“I receive messages from [US special envoy] Witkoff directly, as before, and this does not mean that we are in…

Quantum computing firms are defying turbulent markets to go public this year, as companies seek to raise funds to capitalize on recent scientific breakthroughs and push the experimental technology closer to commercialization.

One such firm, Xanadu Quantum, which builds quantum computing hardware and software, began trading on the Nasdaq and Toronto Stock Exchange on Friday, rallying 15% in the U.S. after a rocky start in public markets. 

Xanadu Quantum — a quantum partner of chip giant Nvidia — debuted after merging with Crane Harbor Acquisition, a Special Purpose Acquisition Company (SPAC), also known as a ‘blank-check firm.’

A SPAC is a shell company created specifically to raise capital through an initial public offering, and they have become a common route for quantum startups to list. 

Xanadu’s listing came a week after Singapore-based quantum software company Horizon Quantum began trading following its merger with blank-check company dMY Squared Technology Group. 

dMY Technology Group took IonQ public in 2021 through a merger with one of its shell companies, making it the first publicly traded, pure-play quantum computing company.

Since then, SPACs, which offer a quicker path to listing with less regulatory scrutiny, have become a popular path for quantum companies to raise capital. 

Quantum computing uses the principles of quantum mechanics to process information in ways classical computers cannot, with potential applications spanning across drug discovery, materials science, cryptography and more. While technology remains experimental, it is widely seen as potentially transformative.

The recent wave of quantum listings comes at a tumultuous time for global markets, as conflict in the Middle East roils investor confidence, especially in risky, speculative assets like quantum companies. 

Despite ending its first day higher, the Nasdaq-listed shares of Xanadu fell over 10% in after-hours trading. Horizon Quantum, meanwhile, has dropped around 18% since its debut, while Infleqtion, which debuted on the New York Stock Exchange in February through a blank-check deal on Feb. 17, has seen its stock plunge by more than 30%.

Still, companies appear willing to brave these volatile markets to capitalize on recent industry breakthroughs. 

“It’s an interesting time to be entering the public markets, of course, with everything happening in the world … But for quantum computing, it’s actually a very ideal time to be coming out,” Dr. Joe Fitzsimons, the founder and CEO of Horizon Quantum, told CNBC. 

“We’re really starting to hit something of an inflection point,” he said, adding that there has been a significant number of breakthroughs that have occurred over the past 18…

Fannie Mae will now accept crypto-backed mortgages via a new product by mortgage company Better Home and Finance and Coinbase.

It’s not the first crypto backed mortgage, but it is the first accepted by Fannie Mae, which is under government conservatorship. The offering allows homebuyers to use their crypto assets as collateral. Fannie Mae will purchase those loans just like any other conforming mortgage.

“We have now finally created the infrastructure rails to enable any tokenized asset in America to be able to be pledged to help someone afford to buy a home,” Vishal Garg, CEO of Better, told CNBC in an interview. “It starts with bitcoin, starts with [USD Coin], but going forward, it can be Apple stock or Amazon stock, or any publicly traded mutual fund, bond fund, something that you might hold in your IRA, you’re going to be able to pledge that to buy a home.”

The idea is to serve Americans who have enough crypto assets to fund a mortgage down payment but do not want to sell those assets, which would both incur taxes and forfeit any future appreciation.

The new mortgage product allows them to keep the cryptocurrency and still secure home financing.

“Token-backed mortgages are a major first step to unlocking homeownership for the younger generations that have struggled with barriers to saving for a traditional down payment,” said Max Branzburg, head of consumer and business products at Coinbase, in a release.

To use the product, a borrower must have a Coinbase account and would take out a regular mortgage with Better as well as a second loan, backed by either bitcoin or USD Coin. The second loan would fund the down payment on the first loan.

Both loans are held by Better, and the crypto assets, once pledged, cannot be traded. Even if the value of the crypto falls, nothing changes on the loans, as long as the borrower keeps making the monthly payments.

As an example, on a $500,000 home, a borrower can pledge $250,000 in bitcoin and get a $100,000 loan to cover the cash down payment. The crypto stays in custody in Better’s Coinbase Prime account for the life of the loan and is returned once the loan is repaid. 

The downside is that the borrower is then paying interest on two loans, which makes it more expensive, but Garg said Better offers lower rates than most competitors, and the rates on the loans and the terms on the loan are the same.

“You’re keeping the appreciation on your asset in the instance of USDC, the holdings that you hold in USDC and…

Nvidia dominated the first era of AI — CEO Jensen Huang is making sure it owns the next one. He’s turning Nvidia from a chipmaker that’s helping to drive a market cycle into the operating system for the future of artificial intelligence.

The shift has mostly gone unnoticed and hasn’t yet been priced in by investors. But the clearest signal to date came this week.

At Nvidia’s annual developer conference, GTC, Huang launched NemoClaw, an open-source, chip-agnostic platform for building and deploying AI agents – autonomous software programs at the center of the latest advancements in the industry.

“Every company in the world should have an agentic system strategy,” Huang said. “This is the new computer now.”

New chip announcements got most of the attention at GTC, but the NemoClaw launch is the more important strategic shift and shows what Nvidia is actually becoming.

Nvidia won the AI training era by locking in users. Its chips and software ecosystem became so deeply embedded in how AI models are built that switching to a competitor was nearly impossible.

But the industry is shifting from building and training models to running them, and the inference workload doesn’t require the same lock-in. Google, Amazon and Broadcom are all building their own inference-tailored chips. The moat that made Nvidia the most valuable company in the world is thinning.

Selling chips, even the best chips, eventually means selling into a cycle. Owning the platform where those chips run is a more durable business. It’s stickier, higher-margin, and harder to displace. That’s where Huang is going on the offense with NemoClaw.

NemoClaw is built on OpenClaw, an open-source agent created by a solo developer that went viral earlier this year, becoming the fastest-growing open-source project in history. Open source means that anyone can download, modify and run the software locally on their own servers. That’s what makes it powerful, but also risky, because there’s no company controlling what the agent can access on your machine.

Enterprises banned OpenClaw as security risks mounted. Nvidia’s version adds guardrails – security tools, privacy routing, data controls.

“Open” sounds generous, but for Nvidia it’s strategic. Nvidia gives away the layer that drives adoption and monetizes what sits beneath it — the chips and computing power that every AI agent needs to actually run. Microsoft didn’t charge for Internet Explorer and Google didn’t charge for Android, but they unlocked adoption where they could monetize it: Windows and search.

Huang is following that playbook — he isn’t charging for NemoClaw. The product is the platform. Mark Zuckerberg spent years and tens of billions of dollars on the metaverse, trying to escape his dependence on platforms owned by Apple and Google. Huang is making sure Nvidia never ends up in that position.

At least 11 countries have come under attack from Iran in retaliation for ongoing U.S. and Israeli strikes, but no country, other than Israel, has been hit harder than the Emirates.

The UAE says it has intercepted over 90% of incoming missile and drone threats from Iran. As of March 12, the 13th day of the war, official tallies from the UAE’s Ministry of Defense show air defenses intercepted 268 ballistic missiles, 15 cruise missiles and 1,514 drones, with six fatalities and 131 injuries reported.

The amount of firepower being sent to the Emirates is significantly higher than that of its Gulf neighbors and almost as much as Israel, which has faced more than 1,000 missiles and drones in the last two weeks from Iran. Strikes on neighboring Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Bahrain all remain in the hundreds.

Despite the interceptions, Iran’s strikes have significantly impacted life across the Emirates. Residents in Dubai and Abu Dhabi frequently hear loud explosions overhead due to daily interceptions, and missile alarms ring out on phones at all hours.

Airports in both Dubai and Abu Dhabi, residential buildings, hotels in both Emirates, Dubai’s International Financial Center, Jebel Ali Port and the U.S. consulate in Dubai have all been targeted, despite the Iranian government telling CNBC its attacks on Gulf neighbors are limited to U.S. bases in the region.

For Iran, the UAE is a prime location where strikes can simultaneously pressure Washington, disrupt global energy flows, unsettle international finance and corporates, and generate worldwide attention.

Iran can inflict maximum regional and global pain, testing a state that has positioned itself as the Gulf’s safest bridge between East and West, and the future of the region for finance, logistics, aviation and technology.

The UAE was one of the first places U.S. President Donald Trump visited in his second term last May during a trip to the Gulf states.

The U.S. had already designated the country as a major defense partner in 2024, deepening coordination on not only defense but also artificial intelligence technology and investment. The partnership leaves little doubt about where the UAE stands when it comes to regional security.

On March 7, the Al Dhafra Air Base was targeted by Iranian drone and missile strikes.

The base, located around 32 km (20 miles) south of the UAE capital of Abu Dhabi, hosts America’s 380th Air Expeditionary Wing alongside French forces. It serves as a key regional hub for air operations and intelligence gathering, and is home to some 3,500 U.S. troops.

“There is no good answer as (to) why the UAE had been targeted more heavily than any other country in the neighborhood,” Abdulkhaleq Abdulla, an Emirati academic and political scientist, told CNBC on Sunday.

The real story, he added, is “how…

Salesforce shares were down close to 4% in pre-market trading on Thursday, after the customer service software maker reported healthy results, although its fiscal 2027 revenue view trailed Wall Street projections.

The downward moves on Thursday morning extended losses seen in extended trading Wednesday, after it published results for its fiscal fourth quarter, which ended on Jan. 31.

Here’s how the company did in comparison with LSEG consensus:

• Earnings per share: $3.81 adjusted vs. $3.04 expected
• Revenue: $11.20 billion vs. $11.18 billion expected

Salesforce’s revenue grew 12% year over year in its fourth quarter, according to a statement. It’s the company’s fastest growth rate in two years.

The company has allocated $50 billion for new share buybacks, “because these are some low prices,” CEO Marc Benioff said on a conference call with analysts. As of Wednesday’s close, Salesforce shares had fallen about 28% so far in 2026, while the S&P 500 index had gained 1%.

Net income of $1.94 billion, or $2.07 per share, increased from $1.71 billion, or $1.75 per share. Adjusted earnings per share excludes stock-based compensation expense, amortization of purchased intangible assets and restructuring costs.

Current remaining performance obligation, a sum of contracted but unrecognized revenue and unbilled amounts that will be recognized as revenue over the next year, came in at $35.1 billion. The figure was higher than StreetAccount’s $34.53 billion consensus.

Guidance for the fiscal first quarter included $3.11 to $3.13 in adjusted earnings per share on $11.03 billion to $11.08 billion in revenue. Analysts surveyed by LSEG were looking for $3.00 per share and $10.99 billion in revenue.

For the 2027 fiscal year, Salesforce called for $13.11 to $13.19 in adjusted earnings per share on $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion in revenue, which implies 10% to 11% growth. The LSEG consensus had $13.12 per share on $46.06 billion in revenue.

In recent weeks, investors have become increasingly worried that generative artificial intelligence models might dampen major software companies’ growth opportunities.

On Monday, IBM stock dropped 13% in its worst daily performance since 2000 after Anthropic published a blog post saying its Claude Code AI tool for developers can assist with modernizing code written in the Cobol programming language.

During the quarter, Salesforce released an AI-enabled Slackbot assistant in its Slack team communication app for paying clients. The company also completed its $8 billion Informatica acquisition and announced plans to buy marketing company Qualified. Informatica, a data management software company, contributed $399 million in revenue during the quarter.

The company now sees $63 billion in fiscal 2030 revenue, up from a target of over $60 billion it presented in October. Analysts polled by LSEG had been…

Software stocks made a comeback on Tuesday after Anthropic hosted its enterprise agents event, where it revealed new partnerships, quelling some investor fears that the sector could be displaced by artificial intelligence.

The AI startup launched new updates to Claude Cowork that allow companies to integrate the productivity tool into a host of enterprise apps, such as Salesforce-owned Slack, Intuit, Docusign, LegalZoom, FactSet and Google‘s Gmail.

Organizations can also deploy customizable plugins across sectors like financial analysis, engineering and human resources, Anthropic said.

Salesforce, Docusign and LegalZoom shares jumped 4% following the Anthropic announcement. Thomson Reuters‘ stock surged more than 11% and FactSet shares rose 6%.

Analysts at Wedbush Securities said in a Tuesday research note that Anthropic’s event showed the competition risk to software from AI is “overblown.”

They argued that models aren’t capable of replacing entire workflows that remain “deeply embedded” in software infrastructure.

“The reality is that these new AI tools will not rip and replace existing software ecosystems and data environments with these AI tools only as useful as the data it can reach,” the analysts wrote.

Anthropic’s recent product rollouts have sent software and cybersecurity stocks tumbling in recent weeks as investors digested the looming threat of AI tools to those business models.

Many of those stocks climbed higher on Tuesday, including CrowdStrike and Okta, which rose about 1%. Zscaler, Tenable and SentinelOne jumped about 4% each, while Cloudflare was up more than 3%.

IBM shares sold off heavily on Monday after Anthropic touted a tool that could automate aspects of a programming language run on IBM’s computers. IBM’s stock rebounded Tuesday, climbing 3%.

— CNBC’s Ashley Capoot and Kate Rooney contributed reporting to this story.

International Business Machines stock is getting slammed Monday, becoming the latest perceived victim of rapidly developing AI technology, after Anthropic said its Claude Code tool could be used to modernize legacy systems that run COBOL.

Shares of IBM closed the day lower by nearly 13.2%, at $223.35 per share, after Anthropic on Monday said Claude Code could be used to automate the exploration and analysis work that drives most of the complexity in COBOL modernization, a key IBM business. IBM has long sold mainframe systems that are optimized for large-scale transaction processing, where COBOL has often been used.

Short for Common Business-Oriented Language, COBOL is a dominant code system developed in the late 1950s often used in business data processing, such as payment processing and retail transaction systems. An estimated 95% of ATM transactions in the U.S. use COBOL, according to Anthropic, making it a prime target for cost-efficient AI disruption.

“Hundreds of billions of lines of COBOL run in production every day, powering critical systems in finance, airlines, and government. Despite that, the number of people who understand it shrinks every year,” Anthropic wrote in a Monday blog post. “AI excels at streamlining the tasks that once made COBOL modernization cost-prohibitive.”

Claude Code can help modernize COBOL codebases by mapping dependencies across thousands of lines of code, documenting workflows and identifying risks that “would take human analysts months to surface,” Anthropic said.

“Legacy code modernization stalled for years because understanding legacy code cost more than rewriting it. AI flips that equation,” the blog post said.

This latest use case builds on Anthropic’s effort to disrupt legacy code systems and companies’ digital transformation efforts, which it says are bogged down, in part, by decreasing developer productivity and “technical debt.” Technical debt refers to the future costs of shortcut solutions in software development that lead to increased maintenance for companies down the line.

IBM is the latest stock to fall on AI fears, which have rattled investors in recent weeks and contributed to a volatile “sell first and ask questions later” trading environment. On Friday, a slew of cybersecurity companies tumbled after Anthropic unveiled a new capability it built into Claude Code, called Claude Code Security, that it said can scan codebases for security vulnerabilities and find software vulnerabilities for humans to review. The sector remained under pressure in Monday’s session.

Monday’s sell-off brought IBM shares down more than 24% year to date.