Market snapshot · Aug. 12, 2026 close
The American FilingSection
Deals, IPOs and the corner office
The largest private funding round ever raised valued the company at $852 billion in late March, as annualized revenue doubled to roughly $40 billion and enterprise sales approached parity with consumer.
The board declared the revised $31-a-share bid superior to a December agreement with Netflix, which declined to raise and withdrew, ending one of the most consequential bidding contests in media history.
John Furner took over on February 1 with the retailer gaining share across income brackets, as households squeezed by energy costs and flat real wages consolidate spending at the low-price end.
An unusually dense run of chief executive transitions at America's largest consumer companies concentrated in the first quarter, as boards responded to automation, weak discretionary demand and a decade of slow growth.
The company paused a planned split into two public companies and committed roughly $600 million to rebuilding growth instead, after its largest long-term shareholder argued a separation would create nothing.
The consolidation into fewer, highly automated hubs follows roughly 48,000 positions eliminated last year, making logistics one of the most visibly restructured industries in the economy.
The all-stock merger of Elon Musk's rocket company and his artificial intelligence startup created the most valuable private company ever assembled, with a stated ambition of building data centers in space.
The company framed the reductions as a restructuring around automation and artificial intelligence, in the largest white-collar retrenchment of a year defined by hiring freezes rather than mass layoffs.