Market Beats |First Brands Lenders Accuse Company of ‘Widespread Fraud’; JPMorgan Leads $90 Million Funding Round for Texas Stock Exchange; Amazon’s Cloud Growth Reassures Investors on AI Spending; KPMG to Include AI Use in Employee Performance Reviews; BYD Faces a Reality Check After Global Expansion; Intel in Talks to Acquire AI Chip Startup SambaNova

—— First Brands Lenders Accuse Company of ‘Widespread Fraud’; JPMorgan Leads $90 Million Funding Round for Texas Stock Exchange; Amazon’s Cloud Growth Reassures Investors on AI Spending; KPMG to Include AI Use in Employee Performance Reviews; BYD Faces a Reality Check After Global Expansion; Intel in Talks to Acquire AI Chip Startup SambaNova

1. First Brands Lenders Accuse Company of ‘Widespread Fraud’

A group of lenders to First Brands Group has accused the auto parts supplier of “widespread fraud” and is seeking to remove part of the company’s bankruptcy case.

In a court filing Thursday, lenders to certain First Brands-related special purpose vehicles (SPVs) said new information suggests the company “made misrepresentations in numerous financial statements, credit agreements, and borrowing base certificates,” in addition to existing allegations that it double-pledged assets.

The lenders are asking a Texas bankruptcy judge to dismiss the SPVs from the Chapter 11 case and have joined other creditors in calling for the appointment of an independent examiner after claims that billions of dollars went missing. The SPVs, which held inventory such as windshield wipers, filters, and brakes, were supposed to always have cash in their accounts. But shortly before the bankruptcy filing, First Brands told lenders “those bank accounts had no cash in them, and the debtors’ advisers did not know where the cash that was previously in the accounts had gone,” according to the filing.

The hearing on the lenders’ request is scheduled for November 17.

The new claims add to a growing list of allegations of misconduct before First Brands filed for bankruptcy. Funds managed by Evolution Credit Partners said in a separate filing that the company “fraudulently siphoned assets away” from its SPVs, also calling for the appointment of an independent trustee.

First Brands founder Patrick James resigned as chief executive officer earlier this month. Federal prosecutors are investigating the company’s collapse, Bloomberg News has reported. A lawyer for First Brands’ directors and officers has denied wrongdoing.

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2. JPMorgan Leads $90 Million Funding Round for Texas Stock Exchange

JPMorgan Chase & Co. is leading a group of investors putting about $90 million into a second funding round for the Texas Stock Exchange (TXSE), bolstering the Dallas-based upstart as it looks to carve out a share of a market long dominated by Nasdaq and the New York Stock Exchange.

The deal brings total capital raised for TXSE to more than $250 million, parent company TXSE Group said Friday. JPMorgan will also join the company’s board of directors as an observer.

“Our strong capital position validates our mission to bring increased competition to the US capital markets,” TXSE founder James Lee said. “The exchange’s focus on alignment and transparency for issuers will alter the trajectory of public markets and help establish Texas as a new global leader in capital markets.”

The SEC-approved exchange plans to launch in 2026 and hopes to attract companies seeking lighter regulatory burdens. TXSE’s initial $161 million raise earlier this year included backing from BlackRock Inc., Citadel Securities, Charles Schwab Corp., and Texas energy billionaire Kelcy Warren.

Still, TXSE faces a steep climb against the entrenched Nasdaq–NYSE duopoly. Both incumbents are expanding in Texas: NYSE moved its Chicago operations to Dallas under the name NYSE Texas, which signed up at least 25 companies for dual listings in August alone.

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3. Amazon’s Cloud Growth Reassures Investors on AI Spending

Amazon.com Inc. posted robust cloud growth that reassured investors the company’s massive investments in artificial intelligence will pay off.

Amazon Web Services generated $33 billion in third-quarter revenue, up 20% from a year earlier, the company said Thursday. The gain exceeded analyst estimates of 18% growth and marked the strongest year-over-year increase since OpenAI’s ChatGPT debut in late 2022. The results reinforce the rationale behind Big Tech’s record data center spending spree — that global computing capacity can’t keep up with AI demand.

The results followed a sharp selloff in Meta Platforms Inc. shares after the company forecast even heavier AI-related spending in 2026. Unlike Microsoft Corp. and Alphabet Inc.’s Google, Meta lacks a major external cloud business, making its investments riskier.

Amazon shares jumped 12% to $249.42 in early New York trading Friday, the biggest intraday gain since April. The stock had trailed peers this year amid concerns that Amazon hadn’t yet shown sufficient payoff from AI. In its most recent quarter, Microsoft’s Azure cloud grew nearly twice as fast as AWS, while Google Cloud climbed 33.5%.

“Clearly AWS continues to drive the bus here,” analysts at William Blair said in a note after the earnings release. “The acceleration helps ease some of the narrative around the company’s lack of strategic vision or advantage in the emerging AI landscape.”

Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy boosted capital expenditures to a record high in the quarter to keep pace with the AI infrastructure race against Microsoft and Google.

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4. KPMG to Include AI Use in Employee Performance Reviews

KPMG LLP will begin evaluating how staff use artificial intelligence tools as part of their annual performance reviews, underscoring how rapidly AI is transforming the consulting industry.

The firm is already monitoring usage data from tools such as Microsoft Corp.’s Copilot, said Niale Cleobury, KPMG’s global AI workforce lead. Starting with the 2026 performance cycle, employees will be assessed on how well they’ve met the firm’s AI objectives.

“We all have a responsibility to bring AI into our work — not just leadership, but everyone down to our juniors,” Cleobury said. “Now we’re taking that a step further by saying everyone’s year-end objectives must include: what will you do to bring AI into your work?”

Major consulting firms such as Accenture Plc and McKinsey & Co. have invested millions of dollars in AI technologies and are increasingly urging staff to use them to improve productivity and profit margins amid a slowdown in demand.

Samantha Gloede, KPMG’s global head of risk services, said the monitoring effort “is not for policing’s sake,” but rather to ensure all employees are using AI tools to work more effectively. “We want to make sure we can measure the value we’re getting from the investment,” she said.

Meanwhile, Accenture said in September that it would begin cutting employees who can’t be retrained for AI-related roles. “We are exiting, on a compressed timeline, people where reskilling is not a viable path,” CEO Julie Sweet told analysts.

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5. BYD Faces a Reality Check After Global Expansion

BYD Co. spent the past five years in overdrive. Backed by government support, aggressive pricing, and rapid overseas expansion, the Chinese carmaker overtook Tesla Inc. in 2024 to become the world’s top seller of electric vehicles.

Now, the company is facing a slowdown. After authorities tightened scrutiny of China’s EV price war earlier this year, BYD’s sales momentum has stalled, turning what was expected to be another record year into its toughest stretch since 2020.

In September, BYD lost its crown as China’s best-selling automaker to state-owned SAIC Motor Corp., and in October it posted a second straight quarterly profit decline.

Outside China, the company’s fortunes look better. BYD’s costly but aggressive global push has won new customers with affordable, high-performing EVs. In the UK, for instance, September sales surged 880% year-on-year, making it BYD’s largest overseas market for the first time.

At home, however, the automaker is struggling to attract fresh buyers. For the three months through September, BYD saw its first year-on-year sales drop since 2020. Seasonal weakness played a role, but competitors such as Geely Automobile Holdings Ltd., Zhejiang Leapmotor Technology Co., and Xiaomi Corp. are also gaining share.

The slowdown has forced BYD to trim its 2025 target from 5.5 million vehicles to 4.6 million, according to executive Li Yunfei.

Higher prices abroad have cushioned — but not eliminated — the strain. In August, BYD reported its first quarterly profit decline in more than three years, with net income falling 30%. In October, it posted another 33% drop, marking a second consecutive quarterly decline.

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6. Intel in Talks to Acquire AI Chip Startup SambaNova

Intel Corp. is in preliminary talks to acquire artificial intelligence chip startup SambaNova Systems Inc., according to people familiar with the matter.

The companies are discussing potential deal terms as SambaNova works with bankers to gauge buyer interest, the people said. Any acquisition would likely value the startup below the $5 billion it fetched in a 2021 SoftBank-led funding round.

The talks are early, and there’s no guarantee they’ll lead to an agreement — another buyer could emerge, the people added. SambaNova said it “regularly evaluates strategic opportunities that support its mission and stakeholders” but declined to comment further. Intel also declined to comment.

Founded in 2017 by Stanford University professors — one of whom was a MacArthur Genius Award recipient — SambaNova designs custom AI chips meant to rival Nvidia Corp.’s products.

For Intel, buying SambaNova would bring in a company its chairman, Lip-Bu Tan, knows intimately. Tan previously served as SambaNova’s executive chairman and, through his venture firm Walden International, led the company’s $56 million Series A round in 2018.

Since the rise of generative AI and ChatGPT, the AI chip market has grown explosively. While Nvidia dominates chips for training AI models, SambaNova has focused on inference — running pre-trained models — and offers both cloud-based and on-premises solutions. In April, the company laid off about 15% of its staff.

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7. Core Scientific Shareholders Reject $9 Billion CoreWeave Merger

Alphabet Inc. reported quarterly revenue that beat analysts’ expectations, powered by strong growth in its cloud business as artificial intelligence startups increasingly rely on Google’s computing infrastructure and expertise.

Shares jumped as much as 7.5% in after-hours trading.

Third-quarter sales, excluding partner payouts, rose to $87.5 billion, the company said Wednesday — topping the $85.1 billion average estimate of analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Net income came in at $2.87 per share, versus Wall Street’s forecast of $2.26.

Alphabet is investing record sums to accelerate progress in artificial intelligence, embedding its large language model, Gemini, into core products such as Search to enhance user assistance and responsiveness. The company raised its full-year capital expenditure forecast to a range of $91 billion to $93 billion, up from an earlier estimate of $85 billion.

Investors are watching closely to see whether Google’s heavy AI spending will translate into business momentum, particularly in its cloud division and search advertising operations. The company says such investments in infrastructure, research, and talent are essential to compete with major cloud rivals like Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.

Alphabet’s shares gained 2.7% to close at $274.57 in regular trading Wednesday and have climbed 45% so far this year.

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