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Shopping for a used car? Hertz is making it easier than ever to buy a car from its fleet: You can now browse, finance, and purchase vehicles entirely online, the company announced Tuesday. The car rental giant has revamped its website, HertzCarSales.com, allowing customers to now browse thousands of vehicles, get a trade-in offer, get pre-qualified, and secure financing so they complete the purchase entirely online. These changes mean that car buyers no longer need to visit one of Hertzs 45 retail locations to complete the purchase. Our new e-commerce platform marks a major step forward in modernizing how we serve our customers with a seamless journey from browsing to ownership, Gil West, CEO of Hertz, said in the statement. By enhancing our digital capabilities, were meeting customers where they are and giving them greater visibility into our inventory, easier purchasing processes, and broader access to quality Hertz vehicles. TURNAROUND PLAN This move also marks a critical milestone in making retail the companys primary car selling channel, West said. The company has been trying to right its business after filing for bankruptcy in May 2020 amid the height of the Covid-19 pandemic. Last year, it announced a Back-to-Basics Roadmap for a turnaround plan focused in part on fleet management. The company has more than 560,000 vehicles in its fleet, of which it sells approximately halfor about 280,000 vehicleseach year, according to reporting by CNBC. By comparison, Carvana sold more than 416,000 vehicles in 2024, according to its 2024 financial results. By shifting from what was an online catalog to a full-service e-commerce platform, Hertz is likely hoping to speed up how quickly it turns over its fleet of used vehicles and also maximize resale price, Deutsche Bank analyst Chris Woronka told CNBC. AN ASSIST FROM TOM BRADY And Estero, Florida-based Hertz is hoping for an assist from Tom Brady, the NFL hall of fame quarterback who has previously served as a company spokesman. Beginning on Wednesday, Hertz will roll out a new ad campaign for HertzCarSales.com in which Brady touts the ease of buying online and pokes fun at the inflatable air figurines seen at many used car lots. Its not a terribly difficult pitch to make at this point: Carvana has changed how many Americans shop for used vehicles in the 12 years since its founding. The Phoenix-based company announced record results for its second quarter, with a 41% surge in vehicle sales during the three months ended June 30. Shares of both Hertz and Carvana fell in mid-day trading Tuesday, but their stock prices are both up more than 81% year-to-date.
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E-Commerce
When it comes to artificial intelligence, a handful of publicly traded companies tend to dominate the discussion. Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta Platforms, Microsoft, Nvidia, and Tesla get the lion’s share of the attention and deservedly so. But dig a little deeper and youll find a host of other companies laying the groundwork for the next layer of AI disruption. Futurum Equities, a new division of the tech research company Futurum Group, has compiled a list of disruptors, who despite not being among Wall Streets vaunted Magnificent 7, are making waves in the AI world. Rankings were derived using a proprietary algorithm that examines both the company’s current state and its expected future trajectory. All of Futurum’s picks — an evolving list, the company notes — are publicly traded. (Qualcomm, Dell and Cisco appeared on prior, unreleased versions.) Here’s a look at the companies Futurum says are worth watching. 1) Broadcom Futurum gave the semiconductor developer and manufacturer, which it dubs “the glue holding the AI infrastructure together,” top marks, citing a recent $10 billion deal, widely believed to be with OpenAI to provide custom AI chips or XPUs. “Broadcom isnt just supplying parts but is becoming the toll collector across silicon, networking, and software,,” researchers wrote. 2) Taiwan Semiconductor TSMC might be Nvidia’s foundry partner, but it could be in a better position than the Mag 7 giant to capitalize on the AI boom: Sales were up 34% year over year in August and the percentage of revenue from AI continues to grow. “If Nvidia is the brain of AI, TSMC is the beating heart, pumping advanced silicon into every corner of the digital economy, making it indispensable long term,” wrote Futurum. 3) Palantir The AI-driven data mining company has seen revenues top $1 billion this quarter, making it indispensable to governments around the world. While other companies make promises, Futurum wrote, Palantir is “building the control layer for how AI actually runs in the real world.” 4) ASML Declared “the kingmaker behind the new digital economy,” ASML is the single point of control for advanced compute, the hardware and infrastructure required to train AI models, researchers wrote. Nvidia and Intel’s recently announced deal to co-develop CPU chips will only deepen the industry’s reliance on ASML, they added. 5) Oracle The epicenter of cloud storage for AI companies, Oracle has established itself as a foundation of the AI business, boasting a long list of top-tier clients. “Oracle has the contracts, infrastructure, and data moat to be one of the defining winners of the AI economy,” the report reads. 6) Astera Labs As something of a tollbooth between accelerators, memory, and storage, Astera Labs has seen its revenues climb as it relieves bottlenecks in the AI world. “Compute may be the engine, but connectivity is the oil and Astera is selling the refineries, pipelines, and control valves, shaping the AI cycle rather than just riding it,” wrote Futurum. 7) AMD While Nvidia remains the undisputed king of AI chips, there’s plenty of room for challengers to the throne. AMD still provides a key part of the AI infrastructure and its partnership with TSMC gives it a boost, too. 8) Cloudflare Calling Cloudflare “the gatekeeper of the modern internet,” Futurum notes that the company carries nearly 20% of global online traffic. And its growing, cutting latency and making AI agents more responsive. 9) Crowdstrike If Cloudflare is the gatekeeper, Crowdstrike is the shield for enterprise users. Once focused on endpoint protection, Crowdstrike is evolving, Futurum says, adding an autonomous security layer for AI infrastructure — a layer that will become increasingly necessary, researchers said 10) Palo Alto Networks Palo Alto has moved beyond firewalls to build platform-led AI security that can scale with enterprise customers. Futurum’s score difference between Palo Alto and Crowdstrike was one-tenth of a point, a virtual tie. And researchers wrote the company was “building one of the most efficient scaled enterprise software models in the market.”
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E-Commerce
Crypto mining companies are actively negotiating contracts with Brazilian electricity providers, such as Renova Energia, that would benefit from the South American country’s surplus renewable power without burdening the grid during peak times. Following crypto heavyweight Tether, which announced in July an investment in the South American country, there are at least six negotiations for small and medium-sized enterprises, as well as one for a larger project of up to 400 megawatts (MW), people from six different companies told Reuters. Mining machines that solve complex mathematical problems to back crypto transactions have overloaded grids in multiple countries. However, in Brazil, where crypto mining hardly exists today, they could help address a chronic clean electricity oversupply problem, which has cost energy companies almost $1 billion in the last two years, according to wind and solar industry groups ABEEolica and Absolar. Tether, the world’s largest digital assets company, said it is leveraging its recent acquisition of Adecoagro to tap its renewable energy, such as the electricity coming from sugarcane mills, to power a bitcoin mining operation in Brazil. Renewable energy supplier Renova told Reuters it is making one of the first major investments in the crypto sector, a $200 million mining project for an undisclosed client in the state of Bahia in the northeast of Brazil. The 100-MW venture consists of six data centers that will draw power from a wind farm. “We aim to expand the company and enter new markets,” Renova CEO Sergio Brasil said. “We realized that by providing all the infrastructure (for crypto mining), we were one step ahead of our competitors.” Crypto miners can rapidly scale operations up or down based on energy availability, providing a flexible consumer base for excess energy without straining the grid during peak demand periods. Brazils energy oversupply stems from years of government incentives that spurred a boom in wind and solar investments. But the pace of development has outstripped the expansion of transmission infrastructure, and some plants now waste as much as 70% of the power they generate. There’s tons of potential, John Blount, one of the founders of Enegix, a crypto miner based in Kazakhstan, told Reuters. We will try somehow to elaborate mobile data centers, he added, that would be plugged directly into power plants. Enegix is looking into deals in Brazil’s northeast, the region suffering from the biggest energy surplus, including tapping into solar and wind power in the state of Piaui. Penguin, which is based in Paraguay, one of the world’s biggest crypto hubs, said it is negotiating projects too, but declined to share any details. And China’s Bitmain, one of the largest manufacturers of mining equipment, is also exploring opportunities, according to an executive who asked not to be named. Miners seen as ‘diamonds’ Energy providers have also expressed an interest in crypto projects. Casa dos Ventos, which partners with France’s TotalEnergies on wind power, and U.S.-based investment firm Global Infrastructure Partners’ (GIP) Atlas Renewable Energy confirmed their intentions to Reuters. French utility Engie’s subsidiary in Brazil and Auren Energia, the joint venture between Votorantim Energia and CPP Investments, Canada Pension Plan’s global investment arm, are also looking into projects to monetize their unused energy, three sources told Reuters. The companies declined to comment. Providers look at consumers like this as if they were diamonds, said Raphael Gomes, a lawyer who has been working on several crypto projects. Companies are assessing different models, including buying equipment to mine on their own. In Bahia, electricity provider Eletrobras, the biggest in the country, is installing ASIC mining machines, along with a microgrid fed by a wind turbine, solar panels and batteries, for a pilot project. “We want to understand how this industry works,” said Juliano Dantas, Eletrobras’ vice president for innovation. The work could help energy providers prepare to enter the data center industry, which the Brazilian government is trying to attract as a strategy to grow the clean energy economy. There are concerns about the industry’s water use, as some of the regions with the biggest amount of unused energy also suffer from droughts. Brazil also has infrastructure problems and lacks regulations for cryptocurrency mining. “We went after 400 MW it was like a Sisyphean journey, a bit difficult,” said Bruno Vaccotti, an executive at Penguin. “We’re still exploring Brazil, but it’s not that easy.” Leticia Fucuchima, Reuters Additional reporting by Elizabeth Howcroft and Samuel Chen.
Category:
E-Commerce
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