Ford Motor (NYSE: F) CEO Jim Farley told analysts during the automaker's earnings call late Wednesday that the company is headed towards a "Model T moment" in regards to its upcoming low-cost electric vehicles set to be unveiled at an event in Kentucky on Aug. 11. This new "breakthrough electric vehicle" is Ford's "chance to bring a new family of vehicles to the world that offer incredible technology, efficiency, space and features," Farley said. The announcement comes as Ford reinstated its full-year guidance following its better-than-expected second-quarter earnings results on Wednesday. That outlook includes a $3 billion revenue hit from President Donald Trump's 25% tariffs on imported vehicles and many auto parts, but Ford expects to offset $1 billion of that total through a series of cost mitigation efforts. Rival General Motors (NYSE: GM) said last week its expects $4 billion to $5 billion in tariff impacts this year.

President Donald Trump on Wednesday signed an executive order ending the "de minimis" tariff exemption for shipments of imported goods into the United States worth $800 or less, effective Aug. 29. International goods shipped to the U.S. will now face one of two tariffs: an "ad valorem duty" equal to the effective tariff rate imposed under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA) of its country of origin, or a "specific duty" of $80 ro $200 depending on the country of origin's tariff rate for six months. After six months, all shipments will be subject to the "ad valorem duty," according to the White House. "Trump is acting more quickly to suspend the de minimis exemption than the [One Big Beautiful Bill Act] requires, to deal with national emergencies and save American lives and businesses now," the White House said in a fact sheet. The suspension was already in place for shipments from China, impacting retailers like Shein and PDD Holdings (NASDAQ: PDD) Temu.

OpenAI announced a new "study mode" for its blockbuster ChatGPT chatbot on Tuesday, designed to help students work through problems instead of just providing an answer to a prompt. "Instead of doing the work for them, study mode encourages students to think critically about their learning," said Robbie Torney, senior directors of AI programs at Common Sense Media, in a statement. "Even in the AI era, the best learning still happens when students are excited about and actively engaging with the lesson material." According to OpenAI, one-third of college-age people use ChatGPT, so study mode was created with that demographic in mind -- providing guiding questions instead of direct answers to homework problems, test prep and new subject material. The company said the new feature was also made in collaboration with teachers, scientists, education experts and students who participated in its ChatGPT Lab.

Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ: WBD) announced the corporate names and leaders its two future businesses on Monday ahead of its planned split in 2026. The entertainment giant's streaming and studios unit will be called "Warner Bros.," housing its movie properties and streaming platform HBO Max, with CEO David Zaslav remaining as its chief executive. Its global networks business will be named "Discovery Global," and will include its networks CNN, TNT Sports, Discovery, the Discovery+ streaming platform and Bleacher Report sports news, and will be lead by CFO Gunnar Wiedenfels. "Over the past several years, we have made important strides across the business, launching and investing in a profitable, global streaming service and reinvigorating our studios to return them again to an industry leading position," Zaslav said in a statement. The split will create two publicly traded businesses.

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) announced Friday it will stop selling and displaying political ads in the European Union from October in response the the European Commission's upcoming law on political advertising. The regulation, called the Transparency and Targeting of Political Advertising (TTPA) requires companies selling ads to label political advertisements and show information about their sponsor, the election or referendum they are targeting, and the ad's cost, among other rules. The TTPA also requires all data collected to serve political ads to only be used if the user givers their consent, and bans the use of certain personal data (race, ethnic origin, political opinions, etc.) for advertisement profiling. In the blog post, Meta said the legislation creates "significant, additional obligations to our processes and systems that create an untenable level of complexity and legal uncertainty for advertiers and platforms operating in the E.U."

Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) Security Response Center said Tuesday they have evidence multiple Chinese hacking groups are using a zero-day bug in Microsoft's SharePoint to gain access to the internal documents of corporate and government organizations. The bug called CVE-2025-53770 was discovered last weekend and was used by at least two China-backed hackers Microsoft called "Linen Typhoon" and "Violet Typhoon" to target internet-facing SharePoint servicers, according to a company blog post. Microsoft also named a third Chinese hacking group it named "Storm-2603" that has been linked to past ransomware attacks. According to Microsoft, the three groups were observed exploiting the vulnerability as far back as July 7. The Washington Post reported on Sunday that the attack targeted both U.S. federal and state agencies, as well as universities, energy companies, and other commercial businesses.

OpenAI's ChatGPT responds to more than 2.5 billion requests per day, according to a report from Axios, with over 330 million of those prompts coming from users in the United States. At those numbers, ChatGPT is expected to answer over 9 billion prompts each year. The platform's rapid growth, with its user base climbing from 300 million reported last December to more than 500 million in March, is expected to impact Alphabet's (NASDAQ: GOOG) (NASDAQ) search engine dominance -- Google estimated back in March that it answers more than 5 trillion annual searches according to its internal analytics. Alphabet, which is slated to report its second-quarter earnings this week, is expected to show "stable" ad spend growth throughout the quarter, according to Bank of America analyst Justin Post in a Friday note, adding that the firm sees the trend as "a positive given fears on growing AI competition."

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ: META) has declined to sign the European Union's artificial intelligence code of practice, Joel Kaplan, the social media giant's head of global affairs, said Friday, responding to the European Commission's final legal framework for general purpose AI models. "Europe is heading down the wrong path on AI," Kaplan wrote in a LinkedIn post on Friday. "This code introduces a number of legal uncertainties for model developers, as well as measures which go far beyond the scope of the AI Act," referring to the regulatory framework passed by European lawmakers last year. Meta's concerns are joined by companies ASML Holdings (NASDAQ: ASML), Airbus SE (OTC: EADSY) and Mistral AI, with Kaplan calling the code an "overreach" that will "throttle the development and deployment of frontier AI models in Europe, and stute European companies looking to build businesses on top of them."

United Airlines (NASDAQ: UAL) updated its 2025 guidance on Wednesday after delivering strong second-quarter earnings as the airline expects travel demand, especially domestic, to increase in the back end of the year. "The world is less uncertain today than it was during the first six months of 2025 and that gives us confidence about a strong finish to the year," CEO Scott Kirby said in a statement. United now expects full-year adjusted earnings of between $9 and $11 per share -- the company had previously issued two scenarios in April: a $11.50 to $13.50 a share range for a stable macroeconomic environment and between $7 and $9 adjusted earnings a share in a "recessionary environment." Rival Delta Air Lines (NYSE: DAL) reinstated its full-year guidance last week on similar expected consumer trends.

San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie announced Monday that the city will make Microsoft's (NASDAQ: MSFT) 365 Copilot Chat, the tech giant's generative artificial intelligence powered by OpenAI's GPT-4o, available to the 30,000 government workers across the city. "San Francisco is the global home of AI, and now, we're putting that innovation to work," Lurie said in a statement. "As our city and the world embrace AI technology, San Francisco is setting the standard for how local government can responsibly do the same." That standard starts with the roll out of Copilot Chat across all city departments in effort to accelerate the administrative work such as drafting reports, analyzing data, and summarizing documents. The San Francisco Department of Technology will also work with Microsoft to launch a five-week Copilot Chat training campaign to help "maximize the benefits," according to a release from the mayor's office.

Online sales in the United States rose nearly 10% year-over-year to $7.9 billion on Tuesday, the start of mega sales events from retail giants Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) and Walmart (NYSE: WMT), according to Adobe Analytics. That one-day sales growth marks the "single biggest e-commerce day so far this year," Adobe said, topping the total online spending during Thanksgiving last year ($6.1 billion). Amazon kicked off its four-day Prime Day sales event on Tuesday, while Walmart also began its six-day deals event. Rivals Target (NYSE: TGT) and Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) also launched large promotion events that started Sunday and Monday, respectively. Adobe expects online sales to climb to $23.8 billion throughout these sales events, being the "equivalent to two Black Fridays." Online shoppers in the U.S. spent $14.2 billion during Prime Day last year, according to Adobe.

Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL) announced Tuesday that Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams will be retiring later this year, capping off his 27th anniversary with the tech giant last month. The crucial leadership role will be taken over by current operations head Sabih Khan later this month, Apple said in a press release. CEO Tim Cook said in a statement that Williams "helped to create one of the most respected global supply chains in the world; launched Apple Watch and overseen its development; architected Apple's health strategy; and led our world class team of designers with great wisdom, heart, and dedication." Williams is departing from the company as its supply chain comes under pressure from President Donald Trump's tariff policies on many of the countries Apple works with to manufacture its products. The Trump administration has called on Apple to move production of it iPhone to the United States.

Tesla (NASDAQ: TSLA) shares fell nearly 7% on Monday after CEO Elon Musk announced plans to form a new political party called the "America Party," causing the electric vehicle maker to lose more than $68 billion in market cap. Musk on Saturday said the party will focus its efforts to win enough Congressional seats "to serve as the deciding vote on contentious laws, ensuring that they serve the true will of the people." Investors have grown concerned that Musk's increased political ambitions have negatively impacted the Tesla brand and, in turn, its sales -- Tesla recently reported a 14% annual decline in car deliveries for its second quarter. "Very simply Musk diving deeper into politics and now trying to take on the Beltway establishment is exactly the opposite direction that Tesla investors/shareholders want him to take during this crucial period," said Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives in a note on Sunday. "While the core Musk supporters will back Musk at every turn no matter what, there is broader sense of exhaustion from many Tesla investors that Musk keeps heading down the political track."

Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN) announced Wednesday it will be sunsetting its stand-alone free TV streaming service Freevee next month in effort to bring its content all under the Prime Video umbrella. The platform, launched in 2019, offered free, ad-support shows and movies -- including original content -- through its own app. Starting in August, users will be able to watch all of Freevee's offerings on Prime Video for free without a subscription, the company said in a notice, adding that "Prime Video is the new exclusive home for Freevee TV shows, movies and Live TV." The entertain arm of the tech juggernaut is notably ending the service after introducing ads on Prime Video at the start of 2024. That service is included in Amazon's $15 per month Prime membership, or accessable on its own for $9 -- users have to pay an additional $2 on top of their subscription to forego ads.

Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell said in commentary on Tuesday that the central bank would have cut interest rates by now if not for President Donald Trump's tariff policies announced in early April. "In effect, we went on hold when we saw the size of the tariffs and essentially all inflation forecasts for the United States went up materially as a consequence of the tariffs," Powell said during a panel at the European Central Bank forum in Sintra, Portugal, adding that policymakers are "going meeting by meeting" and any further decisions are "going to depend on how the data [evolves]." The Fed held its borrowing rate steady at a range of 4.25% and 4.5% at its most recent policy meeting -- maintaining the same range since December. Futures traders are currently pricing in a more than 75% probability the Fed will hold rates again at its July meeting, according to CME Group's FedWatch tool, before beginning to cut rates in September.