MiniMax revenue grows, Salesforce and Okta beat expectations, US data center boom faces backlash.
— Total operating revenue for H1 FY2026 was $117 million, approx. 785 million RMB, up 283.1% YoY. Net loss attributable to parent was $358 million, narrowing 11% YoY. Sales nearly quadrupled in China's AI race. Management disclosed during the earnings call that M3 Pro parameter scale is expected to increase to approx. 3T, and adaptation for domestic chips for M3 and H3 is underway, with large-scale domestic compute clusters coming online soon. Most domestic LLM companies are still burning cash for market share; MiniMax's revenue slope proves model capability can convert into real money. Market pricing for Chinese AI assets is shifting from comparing parameters to comparing revenue. This growth curve provides a new reference for peers in the primary market and puts the question of 'who can crack commercialization first' on the table.
— Quarterly performance and guidance both exceeded Wall Street expectations; stock price surged up to 14% after hours. AI products like Agentforce drove growth, equity holdings in Anthropic contributed substantial investment income, and the company released Claudeforce, an AI entry point for sales scenarios, directly addressing concerns that SaaS would be replaced by AI. This earnings report shows AI hasn't eaten software but has become a new growth engine. For the software sector, guidance from top companies alleviated the disruption narrative from LLMs, allowing valuation logic to breathe easier. Optimistic expectations for AI monetization are spreading to traditional software assets; Agentforce penetration data will be a validation point for the next earnings report. For investors, the biggest signal from this earnings season is the authenticity of AI budgets, verified for the first time in software financial statements.
— Identity security company Okta beat Q2 expectations and raised full-year guidance; stock rose approx. 15% after hours. Management cited a surge in AI-driven attack methods, with enterprises accelerating identity security system upgrades. The double-edged sword effect of AI manifests in cybersecurity: generative AI lowers the cost of phishing and account attacks, making defensive businesses better off. CrowdStrike previously reported record quarterly numbers, corroborating the prosperity of the security sector in earnings. After AI threats became normalized, the rigidity of identity and endpoint security budgets is being repriced by the market, significantly improving visibility for security companies' performance. The bill for identity security is growing thicker; penetration rates for multi-factor authentication and passwordless login are in rapid ramp-up phases.
— New projects are slowing and being reshaped, with increasing opposition from local governments and communities. Construction cycles and site selection logic are changing. Electricity, water usage, and noise have become core community disputes; some projects are forced to relocate or shrink. Project developers are starting to include community communication in preliminary planning. Compute expansion bottlenecks are shifting from chips to electricity and public opinion. Data center site selection is becoming a social issue, not just a technical one, introducing new variables to the delivery rhythm of the compute supply chain.
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