Two chipmakers are the new apples of Apple’s eye.

The $4.1 trillion tech giant has had early-stage discussions about using Intel and Samsung as suppliers for the main processors in its devices, sources told Bloomberg News on Tuesday, in what would be a geopolitical and supply-chain hedge against its lead supplier in Taiwan.

The Intel Inside Track

Apple’s supply chain dependencies have turned problematic in the age of tariffs and friend-shoring. In 2025, the company ramped up iPhone manufacturing in India by more than 50% to 55 million units, or 25% of total output, as it reduced risk from trade fisticuffs between the US and China.

Securing chips in the US from Santa Clara, California-based Intel and South Korea’s Samsung, which is building an advanced chip plant in Texas,would diversify another part of Apple’s supply chain away from geopolitical risk. Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Apple’s longtime chip supplier and partner, is exposed to Beijing’s “one-China principle.” Apple would also have a hedge against production bottlenecks at TSMC, which have been especially onerous amid massive AI demand and highlighted the need for more suppliers. If Samsung and Intel were to become those suppliers, each would score a massive customer, adding to a hot run of deals for Intel:

• Intel, which previously provided chips to Apple for 15 years leading up to 2020, has been mired in manufacturing delays and struggled to grow revenue in recent years as it lost market share to AMD in CPUs and Nvidia in GPUs. But the AI boom has created a wellspring of demand for its CPUs; its 7.2% revenue growth to $13.6 billion in the first quarter blew past Wall Street expectations.
• Intel’s run of success can also be attributed to a little help from friends: The US government took a 10% stake, valued at $8.9 billion, last August, and President Trump recently said he’s “very proud” of the company. Nvidia also made a $5 billion investment in September, and last month, Intel said it was expanding its partnership with Google and joining Elon Musk’s $25 billion AI chip project, Terafab.

Don’t Hold Your Breath: The talks, according to sources who spoke to Bloomberg, are just that. No orders have been placed, considerations are preliminary, and Apple could well call the whole thing off. But, even with Intel’s more than 100% jump last month, the mere news that it was being scouted by Apple drove its shares up 13% to a new record on Tuesday (Samsung also rose 6%).

It doesn’t seem that long ago that we were jostling for Covid-19 vaccines, lining up to get Pfizer’s name (or Moderna’s) scrawled onto cards we kept in our wallets to get into a bar. Times have changed, for both us and the drugmaker.

Post-pandemic, plummeting demand for Pfizer’s vaccine pushed the pharmaceutical giant to make a big pivot: It’s becoming a cancer treatment powerhouse. The company’s first-quarter earnings topped analysts’ expectations, thanks in part to a 39% surge in operational revenue from Padcev, a treatment for bladder and urinary tract cancer. Pfizer reported quarterly sales of $14.5 billion and adjusted earnings per share of 75 cents, topping Wall Street’s estimates of $13.8 billion and 73 cents per share, respectively.

Pfizer’s New Focus

Operational revenue from Pfizer’s Covid vaccine, Comirnaty, and the Paxlovid pill to treat the illness declined by 59% and 63%, respectively. Still, the company offered up first-quarter operational revenue growth excluding Covid-related products of 7%.

Oncology is the company’s “most advanced and concentrated area of research and commercial focus” due to its acquisition of biotech company Seagen in 2023, CEO Albert Bourla said on a post-earnings call.

When it comes to cancer treatment, it’s “all about efficacy,” says Brian Mulberry, chief market strategist at Zacks Investment Management. “The new line in the pipeline achieves far better results with significantly fewer side effects. Better trials and targeted gene-sequencing are helping to dial in therapeutics and drugs that just work better, and that increases the market and margin over time.”

In the company’s statement, Bourla said that in addition to oncology, he’s encouraged by what the company is seeing in its obesity treatments business, where he says Pfizer is positioned to lead:

• The company has focused on obesity research, and it bought weight-loss drug developer Metsera last year in a deal that may be worth more than $10 billion. (But was it worth it? Investors didn’t seem convinced after Pfizer released limited data on its new obesity treatments in February.)
• Its blood thinner Eliquis was another revenue driver in the first quarter, with an 8% jump in operational revenue.

Stock Story: The stock, which ticked up slightly Tuesday (less than 1%), is still down 33% over the past five years. Investors want more. “The company affirmed current full-year guidance, but this is a mild result that is not likely to satisfy skeptics in the market,” Mulberry says.

To tweak a famous proclamation delivered by one Homer J. Simpson: Teetotaling may be the cause of, and solution to, all of AB InBev’s problems.

Shares of the beermaker soared after it reported modest sales growth in its most recent quarter on Tuesday, driven in large part by surging demand for non-alcoholic and non-beer options.

What’s All This Brew-haha About?

When we say modest growth, we mean it. Sales volume increased just 0.8% for the brewing giant behind Budweiser, Michelob, Corona and Stella Artois. But even as small a gain as that trumped analysts’ expectations that a three-year streak of declining sales would continue. The company has been hammered as the world starts to lose its taste for alcohol; just 54% of US adults told Gallup they drink alcohol in a survey published in August, a record low and 13 percentage points below a previous survey published in 2022.

Shares of the company leaped nearly 9% after the Tuesday morning earnings call as investors raised a glass to the good news, though the results didn’t exactly show Americans are loving alcohol again:

• Net revenue for the company’s non-alcoholic beer options soared 27% year-over-year, with its Corona Cero line growing 46% and Michelob Zero growing more than 100%. The company claims those figures best an industry-wide 8% growth rate for non-alcoholic beer.
• Meanwhile, the firm’s “beyond beer” portfolio, which includes very-much alcoholic beverages such as canned cocktail line Cutwater and hard seltzer line NÜTRL, grew 37%. Beer may be on the outs, but alternatives remain in demand.

Goooaaaaal: The good news continued: The company forecast adjusted EBITDA growth of 4% to 8% this year. CEO Michel Doukeris said AB InBev is “well-positioned for 2026,” thanks to a summer season featuring the World Cup, an event sure to deliver plenty of reasons for both celebratory toasts and commiseration drinks.