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PepsiCo plans to cut prices and eliminate some of its products under a deal with an activist investor announced Monday. The Purchase, New York-based company, which makes Cheetos, Tostitos, and other Frito-Lay products as well as beverages, said it will cut nearly 20% of its product offerings by early next year. PepsiCo said it will use the savings to invest in marketing and improved value for consumers. It didn’t disclose which products or how much it would cut prices. PepsiCo said it also plans to accelerate the introduction of new offerings with simpler and more functional ingredients, including Doritos Protein and Simply NKD Cheetos and Doritos, which contain no artificial flavors or colors. The company also recently introduced a prebiotic version of its signature cola. PepsiCo is making the changes after prodding from Elliott Investment Management, which took a $4 billion stake in the company in September. In a letter to PepsiCos board, Elliott said the company is being hurt by a lack of strategic clarity, decelerating growth, and eroding profitability in its North American food and beverage businesses. In a joint statement with PepsiCo Monday, Elliott Partner Marc Steinberg said the firm is confident that PepsiCo can create value for shareholders as it executes on its new plan. We appreciate our collaborative engagement with PepsiCos management team and the urgency they have demonstrated, Steinberg said. We believe the plan announced today to invest in affordability, accelerate innovation, and aggressively reduce costs will drive greater revenue and profit growth. Elliott said it plans to continue working closely with the company. PepsiCo shares were flat in after-hours trading Monday. PepsiCo said it expects organic revenue to grow between 2% and 4% in 2026. The companys organic revenue rose 1.5%. the first nine months of this year. PepsiCo also said it plans to review its supply chain and continue to make changes to its board, with a focus on global leaders who can help it reach its growth and profitability goals. We feel encouraged about the actions and initiatives we are implementing with urgency to improve both marketplace and financial performance, PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Ramon Laguarta said in a statement. PepsiCo said in February that years of double-digit price increases and changing customer preferences have weakened demand for its drinks and snacks. In July, the company said it was trying to combat perceptions that its products are too expensive by expanding distribution of value brands like Chesters and Santitas. Dee-Ann Durbin, AP business writer
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E-Commerce
President Donald Trump said Monday that he would allow Nvidia to sell an advanced type of computer chip used in the development of artificial intelligence to approved customers in China. There have been concerns about allowing advanced computer chips to be sold to China as it could help the country better compete against the U.S. in building out AI capabilities, but there has also been a desire to develop the AI ecosystem with American companies such as chipmaker Nvidia. The chip, known as the H200, is not Nvidia’s most advanced product. Those chips, called Blackwell and the upcoming Rubin, were not part of what Trump approved. Trump said on social media that he had informed China’s leader Xi Jinping about his decision and President Xi responded positively! This policy will support American Jobs, strengthen U.S. Manufacturing, and benefit American Taxpayers, Trump said in his post. Nvidia said in a statement that it applauded Trump’s decision, saying the choice would support domestic manufacturing and that by allowing the Commerce Department to vet commercial customers, it would strike a thoughtful balance on economic and national security priorities. But a group of Democratic senators objected to the chip sales. Access to these chips would give Chinas military transformational technology to make its weapons more lethal, carry out more effective cyberattacks against American businesses and critical infrastructure, and strengthen their economic and manufacturing sector,” said the statement. The group included Sens. Chris Coons of Delaware, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Brian Schatz of Hawaii, Andy Kim of New Jersey, Michael Bennet of Colorado and Elissa Slotkin of Michigan. The senators noted that Chinese AI company DeepSeek recently said the lack of access to advanced American-designed chips was their biggest challenge in competing with U.S. companies involved in AI, with companies, including OpenAI, Google, Microsoft, Anthropic, Perplexity, and Palantir making major investments in developing the technology. Trump said the Commerce Department was finalizing the details for other chipmakers such as AMD and Intel to sell their technologies abroad. The approval of the licenses to sell Nvidia H200 chips reflects the increasing power and close relationship that the company’s founder and CEO, Jensen Huang, enjoys with the president. But there have been concerns that China will find ways to use the chips to develop its own AI products in ways that could pose national security risks for the U.S., a primary concern of the Biden administration that sought to limit exports. Nvidia has a market cap of $4.5 trillion and Trump’s announcement appeared to drive the stock slightly higher in after hours trading. Josh Boak, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
CoreWeave stock dropped 8% Monday after the AI cloud computing company announced plans to raise another $2 billion, this time through convertible debt, to finance its rapid build-out of new data centers. On Tuesday, the company said it would increase the total offering to $2.25 billion. CoreWeave, which sells access to powerful Nvidia graphics processing units (GPUs) to run AI models, may be a bellwether in an industry placing unprecedented bets on an AI boom some believe is just around the corner. CoreWeave is a pick-and-shovel infrastructure company in AI (like Nvidia) whose fortunes may test the narrative that tech companiesand their stock valuesare riding the long wave of the next technological transformation. CoreWeaves stock may be an especially twitchy meter because investors rosiest expectations for how that narrative will play out appear to be already priced in. An 8% drop suggests that investor skepticism of the reality and sustainability of the AI boom is growing. The new convertible notes are targeted at investors willing to loan CoreWeave money at a relatively low interest rate (1.75%), in exchange for the option of converting the notes to equity shares when they mature in 2031. The company also plans to grant initial purchasers an option to buy an additional $300 million in notes. CoreWeave said it raised $1.75 billion through the sale of similar notes during the third quarter.But the new debt raise comes at a sensitive time. CoreWeave continues to aggressively raise and spend money for its infrastructure expansion, even as its margins fall, making some investors nervous. The company has already raised roughly $14 billion through debt and equity this year alone ($25 billion in total). It reported paying $311 million in interest in Q3 2025triple the amount it paid in the same quarter a year earlier. The company already has 41 data centers in its portfolio, CEO Mike Intrator said. The company also buys data center space from third parties. CoreWeave executives believe the company will spend between $12 billion and $14 billion during 2025, and that that amount will double in 2026. CoreWeave has seen its revenue surge: It rose 134% year over year to $1.36 billion in Q3. But its operating margins have suffered, falling to 4%, compared with 20% in the year-earlier quarter (or 16% from 21% when nonoperational expenses are factored out), as its infrastructure expenses mounted. The company remains unprofitable, posting an adjusted net loss of $41 million in Q3. Meanwhile, demand for AI computing is high, and the company has been struggling to keep enough GPUs humming to fulfill it. Its shares plunged 45% in November after the company gave full-year revenue guidance below analyst expectations. Company executives said CoreWeave has a backlog of contracted but not yet recognized revenue worth $55.6 billion, nearly double the $30.1 billion reported in Q2. The company says it has major contracts with Meta ($14.2 billion), OpenAI ($22.4 billion across multiple agreements), and Nvidia ($6.3 billion). But the backlog may not fully translate into revenue, investors worry, especially given CoreWeaves expansion problems. And yet the company expects capital expenditures to more than double in 2026 compared with 2025, raising questions about how much more debt it will need to take on. Investors reaction to CoreWeaves sour full-year revenue guidance may not have been so dramatic if much of the market wasnt already fearful of a so-called AI bubble, or the idea that AI-heavy companies like CoreWeave are way overvalued and overleveraged. CoreWeaves decision to issue short-term debt reflects managements strong belief that the data center capacity the money will fund will quickly translate into increased revenues. While equity investors reacted negatively to the offer of the convertible notes, the corporate bond market has shown strong demand for them in the past. Initially, the new convertible notes will be offered to institutional investors in private transactions. However, CoreWeaves past debt offerings have seen strong investor demandin part because of bullishness about the companys business prospects and in part because of the relatively high interest rates (9% and 9.25%). In fact, the tech sectors biggest players are now placing unprecedented bets on AI. The market caps of these companies, and by extension the wider stock market, seem to rest on the idea that AI models will soon transform business and bring about untold efficiencies and abundance. The big questions are whether or not said AI transformation will happen fast enough and last long enough to sustain VC-backed AI startups, and the stock prices of larger, publicly traded tech companies. Some longtime investors are reminded of the irrational exuberance that propped up the ill-fated dot-com companies of the late 1990s.
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E-Commerce
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