The Rundown - Google Makes $32 Billion Acquisition, Tesla's Competitors Reveal New EV Innovations

Episode Date: March 18, 2025

Stock market update for March 18, 2025.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in five minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Tuesday, March 18th. In today's episode, we preview Nvidia's AI conference, and if Jensen is the best tech presenter since Steve Jobs. We also tell you about Google's massive acquisition of a cybersecurity company and why Tesla continues to face big challenges in China. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out the little.

latest sports franchise to sell a piece to private equity. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks got off to a nice start this week. Despite a somewhat concerning retail sales report on Monday, markets were in the green across the board with the S&P 500 up 0.6%, and the NASDAQ was up 0.3%. You know, it's great to see the market build some momentum from Friday. I think it's been a month since the market has had a back-to-back positive day. It probably helps that we haven't had any new tariff-related drama coming out of the White House for a few days. So I'll take it. Now, what's interesting is that this mini-market rally isn't being carried by big tech or the

magnificent seven stocks like we saw in 2024. In fact, five of the seven mag-seven stocks were in the red on Monday with Tesla being one of the worst performing stocks losing more than 4%. So the struggles at Tesla continue. We're going to talk a little bit more about them in a bit. Now, the other Mac 7 stock to keep an eye on today is Nvidia, because they kicked off the GTC AI Developer Conference on Monday. The New York Times is calling this conference the Super Bowl of AI. It has a lot of hype right now.

It's all going down in San Jose. There are some big names attending. And most importantly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is expected to give a speech today. I need to go on a bit of a tangent here. I feel like Jensen is the best onstage performer in tech right now.

And it might not even be close. Like his aura is unmatched. It might be the best since, what, Steve Jobs? Maybe it's the leather jacket. Let me know in the comments if you agree. Now, going back to his actual speech, he's expected to give an update on the Blackwell AI chips. He might even mention quantum computing.

And who knows, maybe he'll have a surprise here or there. My gut says he's going to talk about robots. So I'll be tuning into Jensen's speech and we're going to recap all the best stuff in tomorrow's show. And maybe this speech and this conference overall will bring some hype back into NVIDIA stock. Invidia stock is down like 20% from its all-time highs that it's set back in January. But let's see if Jensen can work some magic on stage and bring some of that hype back. We'll let you know how it all goes down in tomorrow's episode.

And make sure you guys are subscribed to the podcast to Stand the Loop. Let's run through some headlines. And we have to start with Google. They are buying the cybersecurity company, Wiz, for $32 billion. And no, you are not experiencing deja vu right now because this is the second time that Google has agreed to buy Wiz. The first time this deal was announced was back in the summer of last year, but Wiz walked away from that deal because they were worried it would face antitrust roadblocks with Lena Khan leading the FDC at the time under the Biden administration.

Lena Khan famously not a big fan of big tech. Well, there's a new administration now, so Google and Wiz are hoping they won't face any antitrust issues. Google is also upping the price. The deal in the summer of last year was for $23 billion to buy Wiz. Well, now they're upping it to $32 billion. But it looks like Google really wants to make this happen. They think that incorporating Wiz's cloud cybersecurity products into Google Cloud will help them better compete with the other cloud giants like Microsoft and Amazon.

But, you know, they might still face some antitrust roadblocks. The new FTC chair is Andrew Ferguson, and he's kept some of the guidelines used by Lena Khan. So we'll see if this deal actually ends up going through. According to the Financial Times, if this deal does get blocked, Google would have to pay Wiz a breakup fee. So we'll see what happens. But yeah, this is likely going to be the biggest tech deal of the year.

You know, fun fact about Wiz, they started back in 2020. So that's pretty impressive to see a company go from creation to a potential $32 billion acquisition in five years. Let's talk about Tesla and their biggest competition in China, BYD. BYD shares hit a record high after the company said it developed a new battery system that could charge an electric vehicle in five. minutes while delivering a range of 250 miles. That's 400 kilometers for the metric people out there. This would make charging electric vehicles on par with how long it takes to fill up a gas tank,

and it would be the fastest system of its type for a mass-produce electric car. Just for comparison here, Tesla's superchargers can do about 170 miles or 275 kilometers in about 15 minutes. So BID's charging system is able to do more miles with less charging time. That's incredible. And this tech is rolling out very soon. BYD plans to initially roll out 4,000 charging stations to support the new technology, and they said its two new SUVs will be compatible with the new charging system starting in April. This is happening next month. Too bad we're never going to get BYD cars in the U.S. Now, if that wasn't enough pressure for Tesla, they're also dealing with advancements made by another Chinese EV rival, Zeker. Zeker just announced today it's going to be rolling out

advance driver assist programs in China for free. Right now, they're in a lot. Right now, they're a period of development, but the company says it will introduce it to the public in April. So April is going to be a big month for China when it comes to EV. Tesla has been making their own push in China to leverage its full self-driving tech to attract new buyers, and they're aiming for a full rollout this year. I mean, just yesterday, Tesla launched a free trial in China for its FSD program. But again, Zika is offering it for free. So, yeah, Tesla continues to face major competition.

It's one of its biggest markets, most important markets. And that's putting a lot of pressure on the stock price, which is down 40% this year. You know who's loving this right now, though, is Tesla short sellers. They've made about $16 billion from Tesla's plunge over the past three months. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of the Chinese tech giant Baidu are up this morning after the company showed off two new AI models over the weekend. Baidu launched its new model called Ernie and also a new reasoning model that it says can compete. against deep seeks R1 model, and it's at half the price as well. So China continues to innovate

in AI and shares of Bidura up more than 2% this morning. On the flip side, shares of Serepta therapeutics are plunging after a patient using the company's Dushin muscular dystrophy drug called Levitis died. The patient had acute liver failure, which Sarepta announced was one of the side effects of the drug, specifically acute liver injury. Shares of Serepta are down more than 23% on this news. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. The San Francisco Giants baseball team is selling a 10% stake to the private equity company 6th Street, according to the New York Times.

Now, everyone makes the joke that nobody watches baseball, but these baseball teams are still worth a ton of money. The San Francisco Giants' last valuation was around $3.8 billion, so Sixth Street had to put up a good chunk of change for this purchase. I mean, private equity has been trying to sink their teeth into sports teams for a while now. The MLB was the first league to allow private equity in, and now more than half of the franchises in the MLB are involved with private equity firms. The NFL recently just made a move to welcome private equity investments,

and the Buffalo Bills and the Miami Dolphins have already accepted private equity investments this past season. So I don't know what impact private equity will have on sports long term. Right now, private equity firms can't take a majority ownership in these teams. So the day-to-day decision-making is still in. the hands of one owner. But maybe one day private equity firms will take over franchises completely and then we can get mad at them for trading away our favorite player or raising the price of concessions. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like nine extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple or

Spotify. And if you're listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does. help us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the help behind the scenes and we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. This is the rundown, your real-time resource for news events and trends in the markets. All views presented in the show reflect the opinions of the guests. You should not take any mention of a publicly traded security as recommendation to buy, sell or hold that security. Rendown guests are not financial advisors and are not affiliated with public holdings

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