Cerebras Systems‘ raucous IPO this week gave investors a taste of what’s to come in artificial intelligence. But it also served as a reminder of how hard it is for non-AI companies to capture Wall Street’s attention.

Shares of the AI chipmaker popped almost 70% in their market debut on Thursday, lifting the company’s market cap to about $95 billion. Only two tech companies have ever closed their first day of trading in the U.S. with valuations of $100 billion or more: Alibaba and Facebook.

Cerebras also holds the distinction of largest IPO of the year and the biggest offering for a U.S. tech company since Uber hit the market in 2019.

While the excitement around Cerebras would seem to bode well for a tech IPO market that’s been largely dormant for the past four-plus years, the problem for just about every company in the pipeline is that they’re not named SpaceX, OpenAI or Anthropic.

Those three companies — each valued near or above $1 trillion — are in some stage of IPO prep, with SpaceX expected to file its public prospectus as soon as next week and the other two eyeing debuts later this year. Their offerings will dwarf anything that’s come before them and serve to further illustrate how small all the other multibillion-dollar pre-IPO companies are by comparison.

“It’s very hard to care about anything other than the $3 trillion potential IPOs that, in theory, are going to happen in the next year,” Sam Lessin, a partner at Slow Ventures, told CNBC’s “The Exchange” on Thursday.

The market has been a challenge for emerging tech companies since early 2022, when soaring inflation and rising interest rates pushed investors out of risk. There have been occasional pockets of activity since then, but U.S. venture-backed exit value last year was less than one-third the peak in 2021, according to the National Venture Capital Association’s annual yearbook, and tech IPOs this year have been almost nonexistent.

Cerebras presented investors with one of their first opportunities to get in on the AI boom with a pure-play tech stock, as all the action to date has been in the private market. The biggest prior offering in the space was AI infrastructure provider CoreWeave, which went public in March of last year and is now valued at over $58 billion.

Lise Buyer, founder of IPO advisory firm Class V group, said late-stage startups are in a period of “pragmatic preparation,” looking for potential signs of receptivity. But, she said, the market needs more data points before it can be declared open.

Tubi hit profitability this year doing what other streaming services are trying to: attract younger audiences who are willing to sit through ads.

The Fox Corp.-owned free streaming platform has long been among a sort of second tier of streaming services alongside lower-budget and less popular offerings like Pluto and The Roku Channel. But the free service is gaining traction and finding its footing in conversations with the big players.

In November, Tubi made up 2.1% of total streaming minutes on The Gauge, Nielsen’s monthly analysis of viewing trends, ahead of NBCUniversal’s Peacock and Warner Bros. Discovery’s HBO Max. Google’s YouTube holds the top spot in the viewership tracker.

“Our fans come in, and they behave like [subscription streaming] viewers. The only difference is they don’t pay for it,” said Tubi’s chief marketing officer, Nicole Parlapiano, in an interview.

Netflix’s dominance in streaming has led many media companies to chase the same success, spending billions of dollars on original content to attract subscribers and strive for profitability.

In response, the cost of streaming has risen, with nearly every subscription platform instituting multiple price hikes in recent years and pushing consumers toward cheaper, ad-supported options. A crackdown on password sharing by some of the biggest players has also shaken up the space.

“People used to cut the cord, now they’re canceling subscriptions. And is that driving more consumption into free streaming? Absolutely,” Tubi Chief Content Officer Adam Lewinson told CNBC.

Tubi said it has more than 100 million monthly active users and 1 billion hours of streamed content per month. For comparison, Netflix reported more than 300 million subscribers as of late 2024, the last time it reported the metric, while Disney+ reported 131 million subscribers as of the end of September.

Nearly 60% of Tubi’s audience is made up of millennials or members of Generation Z, and nearly half are multicultural, Tubi said, citing an MRI-Simmons Cord Evolution Study of its audience.

Tubi bulks up its library by licensing films and TV series — some popular and some niche. The platform does produce original content, albeit at a smaller scale than its competitors. It’s also tapped Fox’s sports arsenal, airing two NFL games this year on Tubi, most notably the Super Bowl in February and a Thanksgiving Day game last month.

In total, Tubi boasts more than 300,000 titles on its platform.

In October, Fox reported that Tubi had reached profitability for the first time for the fiscal quarter ended Sept. 30, with Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch adding that it reached that milestone “earlier than expected.” Tubi reported 27% revenue growth for the quarter, which was driven by an 18% increase in total view time.

Murdoch said at the time the hope was for Tubi to continue on its trajectory so it could become “a meaningful contributor” to earnings in the near term.

The growth is validation for Fox, which took a different tack to the streaming game than its media peers. Its stock is up more than 40% this year, while other media stocks haven’t fared nearly as well amid a sea of uncertainty.

The company offloaded its entertainment assets to Disney in 2019, and its TV business — broadcast network Fox and cable networks like Fox News — consist mostly of news and sports. In 2020, the media company acquired Tubi for $440 million.

Since then, Tubi had been Fox’s main answer to streaming until recently, when the company launched Fox One, a direct-to-consumer streaming service of all Fox content for $19.99 per month. Murdoch has emphasized there are no plans for Fox One to produce original or exclusive content, leaving Tubi to shine with a digital and cost-conscious audience.

In June, Tubi launched Tubi for Creators, part of a broader push from the company into incorporating content creators into Hollywood.

“The idea behind it is to give creators a pathway to Hollywood that really allows them to maintain their authenticity that made them popular in the first place and maintain a lot of creative control,” said Rich Bloom, head of Tubi for Creators. “We launched with six creators and about 500 episodes of content, and we’re now up to well over 100 creators and over 10,000 episodes of content.”

Tubi has signed deals with well-known YouTube entertainers to add their existing episodes to the platform, such as Dan and Riya’s “Beverly Valley High” and FunnyMike’s series “Mr. Creepy Eyes.” It’s also been inking deals with independent filmmakers through Kickstarter-funded projects.

Bloom said Tubi has seen that the category is attracting new, younger audiences, and the “retention rate of those viewers is actually better than our general new viewers.”

Tubi’s Lewinson said the platform has been particularly successful with young adult movies, like “Sidelined” and “Sidelined 2,” starring TikTok star Noah Beck. The franchise has brought in nearly 20 million viewers alone, with the median age of new viewers watching the sequel just 21 years old, Lewinson added.

“We are really proving that we can bring young viewers to a long-form streaming platform,” he said. “There’s a perception that they’re only interested in short-form – completely not accurate. So long as you have relevant content for their fandom, they’ll come to Tubi.”

Gen Z is also leaning into nostalgia, with older shows like “Columbo” and “Murder, She Wrote” popular on Tubi, too.

Tubi executives note its growing Gen Z and millennial audience is another selling point for advertisers.

“My acquisition team can go out and acquire whatever we can possibly find, but we’re finding that as we produce these types of stories, we’re really bringing in those viewers,” Lewinson said. “They’ll come in to watch ‘Sidelined,’ but then we’re following their journey to see what else they’re watching on the platform, and we’re making sure that we have plenty of those types of categories for those viewers to watch.”

Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant.

As more major retailers post earnings, one theme is clear: Value players are winning both the wealthy and the cash-strapped.

Walmart and TJX, T.J. Maxx’s parent company, stood apart from the pack this week by hiking their full-year forecasts and expressing optimism about the start of the holiday season. Both said sales have grown as they win shoppers across the income spectrum, in the same week other major U.S. retailers Home Depot, Lowe’s and Target cut their profit outlooks and said they saw consumer reluctance to make large purchases.

In an interview with CNBC, Walmart CFO John David Rainey said the big-box retailer has seen “value-seeking and choiceful” spending patterns by consumers for the past several quarters. He said “it stands to reason, if there’s a little incremental strain on the consumer, they’re only going to become more so, they’re going to look for more value.”

And TJX CEO Ernie Herrman said the company, which includes Marshalls and Home Goods, has seen a “strong start” to the holiday quarter and is “convinced that consumers will continue to seek out value.”

Shares of both Walmart and TJX rose on Thursday, even as the three major U.S. stock indexes turned negative.

The performance of the two retailers, which are both strongly associated with compelling deals, jumps out at a moment when investors, industry watchers and economists are trying to predict retail sales during the critical holiday season and the outlook for the U.S. economy next year. Their performance could bode well for other off-price chains, such as Ross and Burlington, and value-focused players, including Dollar General, Dollar Tree, Five Below and Costco, which will report their most recent earnings in the coming weeks.

In recent months, a mix of factors have made it difficult to gauge how retailers and the broader economy will fare in the months ahead. That includes jitters about the job market following major layoffs at companies including Amazon, Verizon, UPS and Target, and concerns that the stock market has been propped up by artificial intelligence companies, contributing to the risk of an bubble. A prolonged government shutdown also muddied the waters by delaying the release of recent jobs and inflation data.

There have also been contradictions between what consumers say and do. Consumer sentiment has tumbled to nearly the lowest level ever, even as retail sales grew stronger in October, according to the CNBC/NRF Retail Monitor.

That’s led to murky holiday expectations. For example, the National Retail Federation predicted that holiday sales will grow by 3.7% to 4.2% year over year and top $1 trillion for the first time, while consulting firm PwC said consumers plan to cut their holiday spending average by 5% compared to the year-ago holiday season.

Home Depot, Lowe’s and Target put their thumbs on the scale this week. All three lowered their full-year profit forecasts and spoke of pressure on their businesses as customers hesitate to take on bigger projects or make pricier purchases.

For Home Depot and Lowe’s, the lack of consumer confidence may prolong a period of conservative spending driven by lower housing turnover. For more than two years, they have seen customers take on smaller home improvement projects rather than splurges like remodels and renovations that cost more or require financing. That pattern has held, even though they cater to U.S. consumers who typically own a home and have benefitted from home equity gains.

Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison said even homeowners are “not immune” to feeling shaken by news headlines about the government shutdown, higher tariffs and other policy changes that could hit their wallets — which could encourage price-sensitivity and procrastination on purchases. He said the home improvement retailer has focused on ways it can move the needle with its own strategies, such as expanding its merchandise assortment and attracting more home professionals as customers.

Target, which has faced some struggles of its own making, expects shoppers will watch prices and make trade-offs during the holiday season, such as spending more on gifts and less in other areas like decor or food, Chief Commercial Officer Rick Gomez said on a call with reporters. The retailer has cut prices on 3,000 food and home essentials and tried to attract shoppers with low opening price points, such as $1 Christmas tree ornaments.

At Walmart, Rainey told CNBC the company has “been gaining [market] share among all income cohorts, but as we noted for several quarters, they’re more pronounced in the upper-income segment.”

For TJX, Herrman said the company’s focus on value is a competitive edge. He said on the company’s earnings call that it’s blend of “brand, fashion, quality and price sets us apart from many other retailers and has served us extremely well through many kinds of retail and economic environments over the course of our nearly 50-year history.”

In a research note, retail analyst and Telsey Advisory Group CEO Dana Telsey said TJX’s repeated earnings beats “highlight the strength of its value-focused proposition, which continues to resonate with consumers amid an increasingly price-sensitive environment.”

Customers of all incomes are coming to TJX’s stores and website, but lower-income shoppers drove sales growth in most of its geographies in its latest quarter, CFO John Klinger said on an earnings call.

While Walmart and TJX have weathered cracks in the economy better than many other retailers, they’re not immune to economic weakness.

Walmart’s Rainey said that despite its strong sales forecast for the year, the retailer has spotted “pockets of moderation” among low-income shoppers as they feel more pinched than other customers. On the company’s earnings call on Thursday, he referred to the sharp disparity in wage growth between high- and low-income U.S. consumers.

He also told CNBC that the retailer noticed a pullback by customers who stopped receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP, benefits during the government shutdown. But Rainey said, “that’s starting to rebound now that people are receiving those funds again.”

“We’re seeing the same things that that others are, and we’re keeping a watchful eye on it,” he said on the company’s earnings call. “But again, I think Walmart is better insulated than just about anybody.”

Germany this week played host to one of the world’s biggest auto shows — but in the heartland of Europe’s auto industry, it was buzzy Chinese electric car companies looking to outshine some of the region’s biggest brands on their home turf.

The IAA Mobility conference in Munich was packed full of companies with huge stands showing off their latest cars and technology. Among some of the biggest displays were those from Chinese electric car companies, underscoring their ambitions to expand beyond China.

Europe has become a focal point for the Asian firms. It’s a market where the traditional automakers are seen to be lagging in the development of electric vehicles, even as they ramp up releases of new cars. At the same time, Tesla, which was for so long seen as the electric vehicle market leader, has seen sales decline in the region.

Despite Chinese EV makers facing tariffs from the European Union, players from the world’s second-largest economy have responded to the ramping up of competition by setting aggressive sales and expansion targets.

“The current growth of Xpeng globally is faster than we have expected,” He Xiaopeng, the CEO of Xpeng told CNBC in an interview this week.

There are signs that Chinese players have made early in roads into Europe. The market share of Chinese car brands in Europe nearly doubled in the first half of the year versus the same period in 2024, though it still remains low at just over 5%, according to Jato Dynamics.

“The significant presence of Chinese electric vehicle (EV) makers at the IAA Mobility, signals their growing ambitions and confidence in the European market,” Murtuza Ali, senior analyst at Counterpoint Research, told CNBC.

BMW, like the Chinese players, had a big focus on technology by talking up its so-called “superbrain architecture,” which replaces hardware with a centralized computer system. BMW, which introduced the iX3 at the event, and chipmaker Qualcomm also announced assisted driving software that the two companies co-developed.

Volkswagen and French auto firm Renault also showed off some new electric cars.

Regardless of the product blitz, there are still concerns that European companies are not moving fast enough. BMW’s new iX3 is based on the electric vehicle platform it first debuted two years ago. Meanwhile, Chinese EV makers have been quick in bringing out and launching newer models.

“A commitment to legacy structures and incrementalism has slowed its ability to build and leverage a robust EV ecosystem, leaving it behind fast moving rivals,” Tammy Madsen, professor of management at the Leavey School of Business at Santa Clara University, said of BMW.

While European autos have a strong brand history and their CEOs acknowledged and welcomed the competition this week in interviews with CNBC, the Chinese are not letting up.

“Europe’s automakers still hold significant brand value and legacy. The challenge for them lies in achieving production at scale and adopting new technologies faster,” Counterpoint’s Ali said.

“The Chinese surely are not waiting for anyone to catch-up and are making significant gains.”

The NFL is cracking down on the resale of Super Bowl tickets by players, coaches and club employees.

The league plans to fine more than 100 players and roughly two dozen club employees who were found to be in violation of the NFL’s Ticket Resale policy in connection with Super Bowl 59 tickets, according to an internal memo from the league’s chief compliance officer, Sabrina Perel, that was viewed by CNBC.

An investigation found that those players and personnel were selling these tickets to resale “bundlers” at a profit, according to the memo.

Players will be fined 1.5-times the face value of the tickets they sold, and employees will be fined twice the face value, according to a person familiar with the matter who declined to be named speaking about nonpublic details.

Non-player personnel found in violation of the policy will also lose the ability to purchase future NFL tickets, according to the memo.

The league prohibits employees and players from selling NFL game tickets acquired from their employer for more than the ticket’s face value or more than the employee originally paid — whichever is less.

The league is also taking steps to enhance compliance training ahead of Super Bowl 60 and said it will increase penalties for future offenses.

“No one should profit personally from their NFL affiliation at the expense of our fans,” Perel wrote in the memo.