The Rundown - Dell Stock Jumps on AI Server Boom, Data Center Company Buys GoPro

Episode Date: September 2, 2026

Market update for September 2, 2026Check out the Public app for incredible investing tools and to support the show (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode, Zaid covers:Why bond yields are surging around the worldDell’s monster earnings, including its booming AI server business and record backlogGoPro’s surprise sale just one day after YouTuber Markiplier disclosed a huge stake in the companyUber’s 3,300 job cuts as it flattens management and ramps up investment in robotaxisWhy MongoDB stock is getting crushed despite beating earnings expectationsStan Kroenke’s deal to buy the Los Angeles Angels and add yet another team to his massive sports empire

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Wednesday, September 2nd. In today's episode, we'll recap Dell's monster earnings and explain why the AI infrastructure boom is getting even bigger. We'll also tell you why a data center company is buying GoPro. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the latest team to be added to Stan Cronkey's sports portfolio. We got a great show for you today.

Let's go. September is off to a rough start. The S&P 500 dropped 0.7% on Tuesday, and the NASDAG dropped 1%. Stocks have now dropped for three straight sessions with each subsequent day being worse than the last. And the main story here continues to be the bond market. Bonds are selling off all over the world, causing yields to spike. The U.S. 10-year treasury yield climbed above 4.8%, which is its high. level in nearly three years. Japan's 10-year yield hit 3% for the first time in about 30 years,

while yields in the UK, Germany, and France have all jumped to multi-year highs. You know, historically, we don't really spend much time talking about the bond market on this show because honestly talking about government debt is pretty boring and usually there's not that much action happening in the bond market, but that hasn't been the case for the last two to three weeks. And the story has been the same year. Bon yields are rising because of two main reasons. inflation and government deficits. Oil prices are rising again because of the Iran War, which is bringing inflation concerns back up.

Brent crude has climbed roughly 13% over the past month and is back above $94 a barrel. And higher inflation means investors demand higher yield to lend money. And the second more important reason for the spiking yield is that governments around the world have borrowed a ton of money. In fact, the U.S. government debt recently crossed $40 trillion.

So investors are starting to demand more yield for financing all that borrowing. There's also an AI element at play here. We actually broke all this down in a deep dive a couple weeks ago. So go check out that deep dive if you want to learn more about why bond yields are spiking. We'll put a link in the description. Now, funny enough, the people who could do something about this were all in a room this week. The world finance leaders met at the G20 summit in Asheville, North Carolina this week.

And Treasury Secretary was asked about the surging debt, and he claimed the solution is simply to grow our way out of this through tech and AI. For now, though, bond market investors aren't buying it. So the bond market could be the main character of the finance world in the second half of the year. And it could be a headwin for the stock market and the economy because higher yield results and higher borrowing costs. So we'll continue to stay on top of everything happening in the bond market along with

everything else. So definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Dell. earnings last night and they crushed it across the board. You know, most people might still see Dell as a company that sells computers, but they've basically become an AI infrastructure company and business is booming right now. Revenues jumped 58% year over year in Q2 to nearly $47 billion. And adjusted earnings came in at $7.4.4 per share, both those numbers blowing

estimates out of the water. In fact, the company's earnings per share was up 3x from Q2 of last year, which is absolutely insane. Obviously, the AI server business is the growth engine here. Dell generated $16.4 billion in AI server revenue last quarter, double what it did a year ago, and the company says they have a $95 billion backlog of AI server orders waiting to be filled. These servers are basically computers packed with Nvidia chips that companies load into data centers to train and run AI models. But what I found to be most interesting from this report is that Dell is also selling a ton of traditional servers packed with CPUs. Dell's traditional server networking segment revenues jumped 122%,

which is a faster growth rate than the AI server business. But this is also AI-related because AI agent workloads need CPUs rather than GPUs, so CPU servers are also in high demand these days. And Dell isn't expecting things to slow down anytime soon. The company raised their revenue forecast for 2026 from 160. billion up to $192 billion. So that's a $25 billion rise in their sales forecast, and their earnings guidance went from $17.90 a share up to $25.50 a share.

So Dell is crushing it right now, and that's why the stock has gone up over 230% this year heading into the earnings report, and it's up another 9% this morning in reaction to the earnings. And you know, if you look at Dell stock, it was trading at 11 times 4%. earnings for five years, but now the stock is trading closer to 20 times forward earnings. So the market has finally stopped pricing Dell like a PC company and started treating it like an AI company. In fact, at this point, I wonder if Dell will just stop making computers or maybe spin off

that business into a separate company, kind of like what HP did. Let's shift gears and talk about GoPro because we have a follow-up from yesterday's show. In case you missed it, yesterday we talked about how YouTube or Markiplier bought a an 8.5% stake in GoPro, which caused the stock to spike. Well, less than 24 hours after that news, GoPro announced that they were basically being sold. A company called Starman Optical is paying $285 million in cash for a 90% stake in GoPro. So existing GoPro shareholders will get $1.14 a share, and they'll get to keep the other 10% of the company, and GoPro will stay a publicly traded company. So yeah, it continues to be a very interesting week for GoPro. I mean, the stock was

trading around 60 cents on Monday, and now the stock has doubled to a dollar and 20 cents a share. So shout out to MarketPlyer for some unbelievable timing on the GoPro investment. I mean, just doing some back of the napkin math here, his stake was worth about $10 million when he invested, and now it's worth around $17 million. By the way, the company that bought GoPro, Starman Optical, they are a privately held company that makes optical transceiver. These transceivers allow data center networking gear to use light to talk to each other instead of electricity. And the reason that they're buying GoPro is because GoPro has 2,500 U.S. patents in optics and imaging. And Starman wants to use those patents to make better data center equipment, I guess.

So yeah, GoPro is kind of becoming a data center company at this point. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Uber stock is moving higher this morning after the country. company announced that they were cutting about 3,300 jobs, which is roughly 10% of their global workforce. Now, this isn't one of those business-as-bad type of layoffs. In fact, CEO Dara Koshar Shahi literally said their business is performing well. The company is making these cuts in middle management roles to be more nimble and flat so they can be more aggressive when it comes to pursuing opportunities like robotaxies. Wall Street seems to like this move. Uber stock jumped

2% initially on this news, but it has given back some of those gains. Now, on the flip side, shares of MongoDB are down despite the company beating earnings expectations and raising their full year guidance. MongoDB makes database software, which is used by thousands of companies, and the reported revenue growth of 30% to $772 million. And adjusted earnings per share came in at $1.90. Both those metrics beat Wall Street estimates. But the reason the stock is falling is likely because investors wanted to see faster growth from their Atlas business.

Atlas is MongoDB's biggest product that can run. run across Amazon, Microsoft, and Google's cloud platforms. It grew 29% in Q2, which sounds great, but that growth rate has now been stuck at roughly the same level for three straight quarters. Some on Wall Street were reportedly expecting growth of above 30% for Atlas. Mongo didn't deliver, and that's why shares of the company are down about 12% this morning in reaction to the report. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact.

Stan Cronky is buying the Los Angeles Angel. baseball team for $4 billion, making that the most anyone has ever paid for a baseball team. And with this purchase, Stan Cronky will become the first person to own a team in all four major U.S. men's sports leagues. In fact, his entire sports portfolio is pretty impressive. Stan Cronky owns the L.A. Rams in the NFL. He owns the Denver Nuggets in the NBA. He owns the Colorado Avalanche in the NHL.

He owns the Colorado Rapids in the MLS. He also owns a pro lacrosse team. Oh, and he also owns Arsenal in the English Premier League. And I got to say, overall, Stan Cronky has been a pretty great sports owner. The Rams, the Nuggets, the Avalanche, and Arsenal have all won a championship under his ownership. So I got to imagine L.A. Angels fans must be so hype right now to hear about this sale. I mean, this team has had very little success lately. They've had 10 straight losing seasons.

They haven't been to the playoffs since 2014, and they haven't won a playoff game since 2009. And this is all despite having some of the game. top players. Mike Trout has played his entire career on the Angels. He's one of the best players ever. And then Shohay Otani played for the Angels for six seasons who might be the greatest player of all time. So maybe the Angels will finally turn things around, understand Cronky. You know, as a sports fan, it really sucks when your favorite team is owned by a bad sports owner who refuses to spend money on the team. I kind of wish every league in America had a rule that if you don't make the playoffs in 10 years, you're forced to sell the team.

You know, American sports don't have relegation like European leagues do, so some of these U.S. owners just don't even try. If you're a billionaire and you're going to own a sports team, don't be cheap about it, okay? Either try to make the team better or just sell the team to someone that will make it better. That's my mini-ran on cheap sports owners. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike and V for all the work behind the scenes.

And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. Don't you wish you could just hit skip on the worst parts of your life? You know the same way you can skip an ad? I get it. I'm Siyaya and I live in Ice Cove. I've made some questionable decisions that didn't end up the way I planned. And today I'm still figuring it out. Somehow things usually get worse before they get better.

Apparently, that's how I roll. So bundle up and come along for the bumpy ride. Stream a new episode of North of North Tuesdays on CBC Gem.