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Top Midday Stories: Meta Forming Cloud Business to Sell Excess AI Compute; Kroger to Buy Giant Eagle for $1.65 Billion

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The Nasdaq Composite was down in late-morning trading Wednesday, while the S&P 500 Index and Dow Jones Industrial Average were up, as chipmaker stocks came under pressure.

In company news, Meta Platforms (META) is building a cloud infrastructure business to sell access to AI computing power and models, setting up a new area of competition with amazon (AMZN) Web Services, Microsoft (MSFT) Azure and Alphabet's (GOOG, GOOGL) Google Cloud, Bloomberg reported Wednesday, citing people familiar with the matter. One possible plan is for Meta to sell access to various AI models that are hosted on its existing AI infrastructure, similar to AWS' Bedrock offering, the people reportedly told Bloomberg. Separately, Meta failed to win a summary judgment on claims brought by a coalition of state attorneys general after a federal judge ruled that factual disputes require a trial on allegations the company misled consumers about the addictiveness and safety of Facebook and Instagram, according to a late Monday court decision. Meta shares were up 10.4% around midday, while shares of Amazon and Microsoft were up 1.4% and 3.6%, respectively. Alphabet Class C and Class A shares were up 1.3% and 1.0%, respectively.

Kroger (KR) said Wednesday that it has agreed to acquire regional supermarket chain Giant Eagle in a $1.65 billion deal, expanding its presence across northern Ohio, western Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. The deal includes $1.25 billion in cash and the assumption of about $400 million in liabilities, Kroger said. Shares of Kroger were down 1.3%.

Klarna Group (KLAR) said a court ruled in favor of its PriceRunner unit, awarding it $1.97 billion in damages in an antitrust lawsuit against Google. Klarna said the award compensates the company for lost revenue due to Google's preference of its own comparison-shopping service over independent services. Klarna shares were up 4.2%.

Nike (NKE) reported fiscal Q4 earnings late Tuesday of $0.72 per diluted share, up from $0.14 a year earlier and above the FactSet consensus of $0.12. Fiscal Q4 revenue was $10.97 billion, down from $11.10 billion a year ago but above the FactSet consensus of $10.85 billion. Nike shares were up 4.3%.

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