Weekend Update #287
Thank you for your continued support and engagement. Each week, we're sharing what companies we're researching and the what, the who and the how that we think makes the companies interesting and unique. This roundup is brought to you weekly by a group of interns, creative minds, artists and investors who believe that through best in class investing along with the democratization of financial education we can do great things together. Enjoy, Explore and Share.
The S&P 500 posted the biggest weekly gain since April as investors digested earnings results, hopes grew around the U.S. and Iran reaching a deal to open the Strait of Hormuz, and a weaker-than-expected jobs report for July lowered the probability of a September rate hike by the Federal Reserve. President Trump said talks with Iran were “moving along very nicely” on Tuesday, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent signaled a deal could come within days. However, later in the week, it was reported that Iran was exploring a framework for reopening the Strait that includes a ban on U.S. and Israeli ships, leading to a weekly close on Brent crude back above $80 per barrel. The rebound in equites was led by semiconductors with the Philadelphia Stock Exchange Semiconductor Index posting a 9.2% weekly gain.
The July Nonfarm Payrolls report was the key economic release of the week, showing a surprise job loss of 23,000 in the month, below economists’ estimate of an 80,000 gain. The net 2-month revision fell to -103,000, a low since July 2025 and signaling a weakening labor market. The Labor Force Participation rate fell to 61.4%, a new low since February 2021, but the shrinking labor force helped drive the U-3 unemployment rate down to 4.1% in July. The balance led market implied interest rates lower, with investors believing the FOMC will have to be more mindful of a weakening labor market. In other economic news, the ISM Manufacturing report for July showed better-than-expected economic activity and employment. The ISM Services report showed lower activity and employment than expected while prices paid were higher than expected. The JOLTS report showed job openings shrunk to 7.359 million in June, below the 7.454 million estimate, and resulting in 1.04 job openings per unemployed worker. Initial Jobless Claims for the week ended August 1 were 199,000, below the 205,000 economist estimate.
In company specific news, blowout earnings from Palantir sent PLTR shares up 39.8% this week. Palantir beat on sales expectations, reporting U.S. commercial sales growth of 149% year-over-year, and provided guidance above consensus expectations. SpaceX reported its first quarterly earnings since the company’s IPO, where the company beat earnings expectations but caused some concern over the pace of CapEx spending. Following the lockup expiration on SPCX stock, however, shares posted a 15.8% daily gain on Friday. AMD also reported quarterly earnings that surpassed consensus estimates, with Data Center sales rising 107% year-over-year. However, shares still came under pressure with some investors expecting stronger growth. Next week, investors will look forward to more earnings reports as well as key CPI and PPI reports.
Friday’s Close (Weekly Performance)
S&P 500 7,757.64 (+3.58%)
Nasdaq 26,690.62 (+5.19%)
Dow Jones 54,036.93 (+2.96%)
Thank you Blue Room Senior Analyst JARED FENLEY.
PBGENE-HBV (Hepatitis B Viral Elimination Program):
PBGENE-HBV is Precision’s wholly owned in vivo gene editing program being evaluated in ELIMINATE-B, a global clinical trial, as a potential curative treatment for chronic hepatitis B. PBGENE-HBV is the only clinical stage program that targets and eliminates cccDNA, the sole source of viral replication, leading to sustained loss of pgRNA, the precursor for HBV DNA. PBGENE-HBV is the first and only in vivo gene elimination approach to prospectively employ repeat administrations of lipid nanoparticle (LNP) in chronic hepatitis B with the goal of complete viral cure.
On May 27, 2026, Precision presented new and late-breaking clinical data from the ongoing ELIMINATE-B study at the European Association for the Study of the Liver (EASL) Congress 2026 in Barcelona, Spain. The data cut on May 4, 2026, was based on 38 doses administered across 16 patients in 5 cohorts.
Key Findings:
Liver biopsy data demonstrated a 1-log (10-fold) reduction in cccDNA-derived transcripts in one patient after only two administrations of PBGENE-HBV at 0.4 mg/kg, with less than 1% of cccDNA remaining post-treatment. Further biopsy analysis of a second patient, who received three doses at the same dose level and schedule, demonstrated that repeat administrations of PBGENE-HBV cumulatively increase the anti-cccDNA effect in the liver. Together, the biopsy data delivered the first-ever clinical proof that a gene editor can directly target and eliminate cccDNA in chronic hepatitis B patients.
While molecular biopsies provide clear evidence of cccDNA editing, HBV pre-genomic RNA (pgRNA) is the best blood biomarker for cccDNA elimination. pgRNA is exclusively produced from cccDNA and is the only source of new infectious virions, measured in the blood as HBV DNA. Following treatment with PBGENE-HBV, pgRNA became durably undetectable in 100% of patients who had detectable pgRNA prior to treatment. Importantly, the loss of pgRNA was ongoing for up to six months as of the data cut-off. This sustained loss of pgRNA demonstrates the durability of PBGENE-HBV’s elimination mechanism designed to directly target and eradicate cccDNA.
Earnings Summary
Palantir delivered another beat-and-raise quarter, with growth accelerating and a full-year revision large enough to force estimates materially higher. Revenue grew 93% Y/Y to $1.935 billion, roughly 7% above the $1.81 billion consensus and $134 million above the high end of management's own guide — accelerating from 85% in Q1. Adjusted EPS of $0.41 topped the $0.35 Street estimate, and GAAP net income of $1.062 billion carried a 55% margin against $329 million a year ago. US commercial revenue rose 149% Y/Y to $764 million on $2.132 billion of TCV bookings, up 153% Y/Y and 81% sequentially. Adjusted operating margin held at 62% and adjusted free cash flow hit $1.22 billion at a 63% margin, pushing the Rule of 40 to 155% — a twelfth consecutive quarter of expansion. Management raised full-year revenue guidance to $8.15–$8.158 billion, an 11-point increase to implied growth and the largest raise in company history.
Valuation
2026 Adj. EPS: 106x $1.62 consensus (vs. Blue Room est: $1.83)
2027 Adj. EPS: 74x $2.32 consensus (vs. Blue Room est: $3.12)
2026 Adj. Operating Income: 83x $5.0 billion consensus (vs. Blue Room est: $6.0 billion)
2027 Adj. Operating Income: 55x $7.5 billion consensus (vs. Blue Room est: $12.7 billion)
Details
The magnitude of the guidance increase reinforces that management continues to see demand materially outpacing expectations. Full-year 2026 revenue guidance increased to $8.150–$8.158 billion (82% Y/Y), an 11-point acceleration versus the prior outlook's implied ~71% growth and well above the $7.73 billion consensus. U.S. commercial guidance was raised to more than $3.424 billion (at least 134% growth), alongside increases to adjusted operating income ($4.889–$4.897 billion) and adjusted free cash flow ($4.5–$4.7 billion). Q3 revenue guidance of $2.160–$2.164 billion implies ~83% Y/Y growth. While this represents a modest deceleration from Q2's 93%, the slowdown is largely optical given a substantially tougher prior-year comparison (Q3 2025 grew 63% versus 48% in Q2 2025), and Palantir has exceeded its own revenue guidance for nine consecutive quarters.
Michael Weiss
Chairman, President, & Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Jenna, and good morning, everyone. We appreciate you joining us. The second quarter of 2026 was another quarter of strong execution. More importantly, it marked an important evolution for TG Therapeutics. For the last several years, we've been singularly focused on one objective, establishing BRIUMVI as a leading therapy and relapsing multiple sclerosis. That remains our highest priority today and will remain so for years to come.
But increasingly, BRIUMVI is enabling us to build something much bigger. It really represents the starting line for TG, the starting line for continued innovation, from new formulations and new indications to novel therapeutic approaches to thoughtful business development. And ultimately, for building an organization capable of repeatedly creating value for patients and shareholders. The second quarter provided a window into where we're headed.
From a commercial perspective, we delivered another excellent quarter, once again exceeding our guidance. New patient starts continue to grow, physician adoption expanded, and our commercial organization continued to execute at an exceptionally high level. As we approach $1 billion annualized run rate, we continue to believe we're still early in the life cycle of the BRIUMVI franchise.
Our objective is straightforward, to become the number one prescribed anti-CD20 therapy in relapsing MS, based on dynamic market share. And we're making meaningful progress toward that goal, not only by continued commercial execution, but also by ongoing product innovation and a growing body of real-world evidence demonstrating the BRIUMVI value proposition.
During the quarter, we announced positive top-line Phase 3 results from our ENHANCE study, demonstrating that patients can initiate BRIUMVI with a single 600 milligram infusion, replacing the currently approved day one and day 15 initiation schedule. Based on feedback from healthcare providers, the ability to initiate BRIUMVI with a single infusion will be viewed very positively by both patient and infusion centers. Eliminating the need for an additional infusion visit reduces treatment burden and removes one of the barriers to switching from another anti-CD20 therapy to BRIUMVI. If all goes well, this new initiation schedule could be available as early as the middle of next year.
We also reported additional real-world data from our ongoing ENABLE Phase 4 study, demonstrating significant and durable improvements in patient-reported outcomes on BRIUMVI. Importantly, patients transitioning from prior anti-CD20 therapies maintain strong disease control while also reporting meaningful improvements in convenience, tolerability, and overall treatment satisfaction.
Niccolo de Masi — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer
Thank you all for joining us today. I am pleased to report that IonQ delivered second-quarter revenue of $80.1 million, representing 287% year-on-year growth. This means Q2 2026 is the strongest quarter in IonQ's history and our fifth consecutive quarter of record results.
As shown on Slide 4 of this quarter's investor presentation, this performance reflects momentum across our entire quantum platform, spanning quantum computing, quantum networking, quantum security and quantum sensing. Following the successful close of our acquisition of SkyWater, our platform now also includes quantum semiconductor manufacturing. Inder will take you through the financial results and outlook in more detail.
I want to center my remarks today on three key areas defining our progress. First, manufacturing our industry-leading quantum systems on a semiconductor roadmap with SkyWater. Second, expanding our role as a merchant supplier to the U.S. and Allied quantum ecosystem. And third, delivering defense-in-depth via a complete quantum-safe cybersecurity stack as we accelerate the timeline for full fault-tolerant quantum computing.
Beginning now on our quantum computing achievements and the production of quantum systems with semiconductor manufacturing.
One year ago, we announced that IonQ would move our pioneering and commercially successful trapped ion architecture from laser-based control to electronic qubit control. This is a globally unique and powerful control approach, allowing us to rapidly scale our trapped ion systems into the millions of qubits using well-established semiconductor pathways.
For our customers, electronic control facilitates more seamless standard enterprise workflows, while delivering the lowest-cost and lowest energy footprint per logical qubit on the market. IonQ has been consistently executing against this major initiative over the past year. Let me recap that progress because the pace has been extraordinary. For those following along in our investor presentation, please see Slide 5.
Anthony Noto
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, and good morning, everyone. I'm pleased to share that we had nothing short of an exceptional quarter. Q2 was our 19th consecutive quarter, exceeding the Rule of 40, with a score of 70. This included exceptional revenue growth of 40% year-over-year and a 30% EBITDA margin. Our team has continued to execute at a remarkable level and our business mix has proven its durability, driving record growth and profitability in the face of a volatile industry environment. Few businesses have maintained such a strong combination of growth and returns for it has been nearly five years, and it still feels like we're just getting started.
Our success is driven by our focus on building innovative products that are far superior to what is available from traditional banks and fintechs alike. Our members recognize this, and as their needs grow, they take out additional products and become our greatest advocates. This, in turn, fuels our growth and financial performance.
Despite our significant scale, our growth has not slowed. We added a record 1.1 million new members in Q2, increasing total members 35% year-over-year, to a total of 15.8 million members. To put this in context, we had 650,000 total members when I joined in 2018, and we are now adding that amount every seven or eight weeks. We also, for the first time, added twice as many products as members, despite having such rapid growth in members. We added a record 2.2 million new products in Q2, increasing total products by 42% year-over-year to 24.4 million products.
This is a huge milestone for our everything app strategy as more members take out multiple products, driving our competitive advantage and having a superior lifetime value. In fact, we've reached an important inflection point with products per member accelerating over the last two quarters. We are starting to hit escape velocity on our path to be the winner that takes most in digital financial services.
Cross-buy continues to accelerate with 51% of new products opened by existing SoFi members. This is up from 43% last quarter and 35% in Q2 of 2025. That's a year-over-year increase of 16 percentage points. This is a reflection of the trust members have in SoFi and the superior products we are building, which work better together and are designed to promote further cross-buy. Two of the clearest examples of our unique ability to package all that we offer into uniquely differentiated products are SoFi Plus and SoFi Coach. Both are only possible because of our diverse set of products and services, and their usage drives cross-buying that powers our financial services productivity loop.
SoFi Plus is our premium membership offering that brings the best of every SoFi product into one experience with a value that is unrivaled in the market. At the start of the second quarter, we relaunched SoFi Plus with significantly enhanced benefits in each of our products.
Jeremy Allaire — Co-Founder, Chairman & Chief Executive Officer
I'm excited to be here with all of you today to discuss Circle's second quarter results. As I've done in the past, I want to begin at a higher level and put in context where we are and what is driving Circle's strategy. We are living through a global moment. Around the world, governments, financial institutions and businesses are embracing digital dollars. Stablecoins are becoming federally regulated digital dollar money in the United States and similar frameworks are taking hold in major markets all around the world.
This is the moment Circle has been building toward for more than a decade. That moment has drawn enormous attention and with it, competition. I want to address that directly. Circle is in a position of significant leadership. We have built deep and durable competitive moats around trust, liquidity, regulatory standing, technology and network scale. Our position has never been stronger. At the center of that position is USDC and the extraordinary network we have built around it.
That network was built with partners, including a strategic partnership with Coinbase that we have grown over many years, and I'm pleased to share today that our agreement with Coinbase has renewed on its existing terms, ensuring that USDC remains central across all of Coinbase's products. At the same time, we look-forward to continuing to grow our USDC network through distribution arrangements with strategically aligned partners. Let me start with the foundations of that network. USDC is the leading stablecoin network in the world and it rests on significant technology and operational infrastructure. Circle and our stablecoin infrastructure are the most widely regulated in the industry. We hold over 55 licenses and registrations across major jurisdictions. That position took years to establish and is what ensures the legal availability of our infrastructure around the world, something that will take others many years to replicate.
The software infrastructure that powers this open network runs on every major blockchain technology, spanning 35 blockchain networks and reaching users in 185 countries. We provide the critical protocols and unchained smart contracts that make digital dollars work seamlessly wherever users are in whatever application they are using in a safe way. This is unparalleled in the industry.
Alongside all of this, the financial infrastructure underneath USDC includes more than 15 partner banks around the world from some of the largest global systemically important banks to critical fintech-focused banks, ensuring the liquidity that underpins our network.
Evan Spiegel
Chief Executive Officer
Hi, everyone, and welcome to our call. Snapchat is now one of the largest internet communities in the world, approaching one billion people using our service every month. Over the past few years, we have worked intensely to rebuild our monetization platform and improve our go-to-market strategy, and those efforts are producing stronger results.
Our objective now is to turn our scale into durable growth and stronger cash generation, while demonstrating the long-term value of our investment in SPECS. We are approaching this work with a more focused, AI-enabled operating model. AI is helping us improve our service faster, deepening engagement and improving outcomes for advertisers. That supports revenue growth, margin expansion, and free cash flow. Free cash flow gives us the flexibility to continue investing in long-term opportunities, offset dilution, and strengthen our balance sheet. That is why free cash flow per share will be our primary financial objective going forward.
Our largest long-term opportunity is SPECS, a new kind of computer built into see-through glasses. SPECS are designed for a future in which AI does more work on our behalf, and people spend less time operating screens. I believe we can pursue that future from a much stronger position by continuing to improve our core business and remaining disciplined about how we invest.
Last fall, I outlined three priorities for Snap:
Strengthen our community and engagement
Accelerate and diversify revenue growth
Build a more profitable, cash-generative core business.
Q2 was a meaningful step forward across all three. Monthly active users grew to 971 million, and daily active users reached 493 million. Revenue increased 19% year-over-year to $1.60 billion. Advertising revenue grew 9% to $1.28 billion, while Other revenue grew 85% to $316 million. Gross margin reached 58%, net loss was $164 million, and operating cash flow was $176 million. Adjusted EBITDA was $250 million, and free cash flow was $121 million.
At its core, Snapchat helps close friends and family stay connected. Over time, we have built Spotlight, Snap Map, and Augmented Reality around that foundation, giving our community more reasons to open Snapchat, discover something new, and share it with the people they care about. I think about this as a simple flywheel that drives the growth of Snapchat. Sharing starts conversations, conversations strengthen friendships, and stronger friendships lead to more sharing and creativity.
Thompson Lin — Founder, President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of the Board
We are pleased to deliver solid second quarter results that were in line with or better than our expectations, driven by robust demand in both our data center and CATV business. We generated our fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue, and we achieved an important milestone as we return to non-GAAP profitability in the quarter.
Demand to support next-generation AI infrastructure remains so robust that our near-term revenue is bounded almost entirely by production capacity and key component availability. Because of this, we continue to anticipate steady sequential revenue growth this year and continued non-GAAP profitability.
During the second quarter, we delivered revenue of $191.9 million and a non-GAAP gross margin of 29.8%, in-line with our expected guidance range, and our non-GAAP income per share of $0.06 came in above our expectations. Importantly, during the quarter, we saw continued robust customer engagement around our 800G and 1.6 Terabit products in line with our expectations. We saw a strong volume ramp of our 800G product in Q2, which more than doubled sequentially. Looking ahead, focused demand continued to outpace our production capacity through mid-2027. We are working hard to add additional capacity to meet this demand. We continue to believe our 2026 revenue will be around $1.1 billion this year.
With that, I will turn the call over to Stefan to review the detail of our Q2 performance and outlook for Q3. Stefan?
Stefan Murry — Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer
As Thompson mentioned, we are pleased to deliver solid second quarter results that were in-line with or better than our expectations. We generated our fifth consecutive quarter of record revenue, and we achieved an important milestone as we returned to non-GAAP profitability in the quarter. Our performance continues to be anchored by robust demand across both our data center and CATV businesses, validating the power of our dual growth strategy and diversified revenue streams.
Demand to support next-generation AI infrastructure remains so robust that our near-term revenue is bounded almost entirely by our production capacity and key component availability. Because of this, we continue to anticipate steady sequential revenue growth and continued non-GAAP profitability this year as more capacity comes online.
In Q2, we delivered revenue of $191.9 million, which was in-line with our guidance range of $180 million to $198 million. We recorded a non-GAAP gross margin of 29.8%, which was in-line with our guidance range of 29% to 30%, and our non-GAAP income per share of $0.06 was above our guidance range of a loss of $0.03 to earnings of $0.03.
Notably, we continued to make progress on our key priorities in the second quarter, which included one, scaling our next-generation data center products, including both our 400G and 800G solutions, by expanding our production capacity in a disciplined manner. Two, diversifying our revenue base; and three, strengthening operational execution to improve our margins and position us for long-term profitability. Today, that execution is directly translating into tangible business momentum. During Q2, we continued to see robust customer engagement around our 800G and 1.6 terabit products, particularly as AI-driven data center investments accelerate.
In-line with our expectations, we saw a strong volume ramp of our 800G products in the second quarter. 800G revenue of $12.8 million, or 11.9% of our total data center revenue, increased more than tenfold year-over-year and more than doubled sequentially in Q2. Looking ahead, we expect revenue from our 800G products to grow by nearly 5 times sequentially in the third quarter and expect continued strong growth gated by our production capacity and component supply in the fourth quarter.
John L. Hopkins
President & Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Ramsey. I want to start with a simple observation about where the market stands now. Demand for reliable carbon-free power is not building slowly. It is accelerating. Every major hyperscaler, every large industrial off-taker, every utility with an eye on the next decade is now engaged in some version of the same conversation. We need power now. We need it to be clean. And we need it on a timeline that actually maps to our business. That urgency is real, and it is growing.
What I want to address today is what separates a company that can meet that urgency from one that cannot. Because the answer to that question is not branding or ambition. It is readiness. And readiness in this industry is a function of years of tests in this industry is a function of years of deliberate work, work that does not generate headlines that determines more than anything else whether a nuclear project gets built on time and on budget, or does not get built at all. That distinction is what I want to focus on today.
Let me start with context. Because I think the history here explains why engineering and design maturity matters more than most investors currently appreciate. The Vogtle AP100 expansion, the most recent large nuclear construction project in the United States, is the clearest example of what happens when a project goes to construction before the engineering is substantially complete.
When that project started, the detailed design was not in an advanced state of completion. Significant engineering decisions were still being made on active construction sites. That result contributed to years of delays and billions in cost overruns. This is not a story about nuclear being hard to build. It is a story about what happens when you start construction without a mature detailed design. NuScale has spent years deliberately applying the hard lessons of past large-scale nuclear projects.
We've made significant sustained investment so that when we go-to-market, the engineering is as complete as possible. That investment is the foundation of everything I'm going to share with you today. A brief word first on two pillars of our readiness position. Regulatory approval and fuel readiness. NuScale remains the only SMR company to have received design certification from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission. Including standard design approvals for two of our designs.
The NRC's design certification is the global gold standard for nuclear safety. Certification takes years. There are no shortcuts. We will operate using standard low-enriched uranium, a proven fuel source, which is available today from established suppliers from around the world. Several other designs being marketed today require high-assay low-enriched uranium or HALEU. Which is not available on a commercial scale. That dependency is a fundamental supply risk embedded in their programs that does not exist in NuScale. The combination of NRC approval, conventional fuel and a mature supply chain that I'm about to describe the combination along with engineering is what commercial readiness actually means. No other company in this space has all four. NuScale's role in an ENTRA1 Energy plant is that of technology systems integrator and engineer of record. We are responsible for the NuScale power modules and services.
Jayshree V. Ullal — Chief Executive Officer and Chairperson
Arista is experiencing significant demand to achieve our first $3 billion quarter in revenue. To put this in perspective, just five years ago, our entire year was $2.9 billion in 2021. We have also entered the prestigious Fortune 500 list in '26. And in addition to that, we are now included in the Russell 50.
Our AI fabrics momentum with Etherlink switches now exceeds 100 cumulative customers from the initial four to five customers I spoke of in 2024. Arista has developed innovative features to enable Smart System Upgrade, SSU, deep analytics, load balancing at scale for AI training workloads. Our latest member is the 7060XE7 for 100 terabit capacity and 1.6 terabit throughput as well as the first liquid cooling options highlighting our continued scale out leadership.
Over a decade ago, we pioneered the use of leaf and spine topologies in the data center and cloud networks. We are now building upon that with our lossless and high-performance AI fabrics. The maximum possible scale for an AI network generally depends on two things, the number of tiers in the network and the number of ports per device often known as radix. Increasing the tiers and ports is expensive and power hungry. Our customers deploy and often choose the Arista flagship 7800 AI spine to achieve that high scale without adding additional tiers.
Scale across is an important application. The scarcity of compute capacity, physical space, and gigawatts of power mandates that the AI infrastructure must be designed thoughtfully. The Arista 7800 platform continues to be the flagship spine for distributed scale across applications, providing traffic isolation, contextual routing, and security.
Harley Finkelstein
President
Good morning, and thanks everyone for joining us today. We've got another exceptional quarter to talk about here at Shopify. Here's what that looks like in the numbers. GMV was up 32% to $116 billion with broad growth across our merchant sizes, geographies and sales channels. Our revenue was up 34% to $3.6 billion and our free cash flow margin was 18%. That's a growth rate of 30% or more across every metric. And this marks our fifth straight quarter of GMV growth above 30%. Now of all the numbers, our GMV is the one worth repeating. Our merchants processed $116 billion this quarter. This is commerce at an extraordinary scale flowed through the platform. And it also tells us that our merchants are thriving.
Okay. Now for the story behind those numbers. Since day one, our operating principle has been simple and consistent. Shopify creates what most merchants need most of the time. And for everything else, we empower our incredible ecosystem of partners. Now, I know you've all heard that before, but here's why it matters now. The principle that got us here also explains why we're able to deliver durable growth quarter after quarter and it perfectly captures how we are building to win in this new era of commerce.
Let me explain. First, our addressable market of most merchants is now a very large pool. Because we made it easier to start, there are now simply more merchants to serve and the breadth of our capabilities has expanded so that merchants of all sizes now run on Shopify.
Second, the range of those most of the time merchant needs is expanding quickly. They need access to new and emerging surface areas. They need best-in-class tools that will allow them to keep pace with the rate of change in commerce, and they need it all in one place. Added complexity only reinforces the demand for a simple unified platform that they can rely on, and that is Shopify.
And here's the third critical piece. Our open ecosystem model is uniquely well-suited to this agentic era. We have always focused on most merchant needs, while making the platform extensible for everything else. We build the primitives, we open them up and we best developers and the best companies in the world build on top of us. In the last year, we kicked that model into a whole new gear. Some of the largest technology companies in the world like OpenAI, Google, Meta, and Microsoft have chosen to partner with us to open more front doors for commerce. Every new surface area they build is another place our merchants can sell all because they're on Shopify.
Ramy Farid
President & Chief Executive Officer
Thanks, Jaren, and thank you, everyone, for joining us today. We are very pleased with our momentum across the business in the second quarter. The biopharma industry is increasingly recognizing that a computationally driven predict-first approach is a critical driver for accelerating drug discovery timelines and improving probabilities of success. Our ACV growth of 27%, driven by broad-based demand reflects this ongoing shift.
In the quarter, we saw continued scale-up within large customers, uptake of new products and improved biotech sector and new customers across life sciences and material science. A key driver of our growth strategy is introducing new products that expand platform usage and provide access to new budgets.
We are excited about Bunsen, our AI co-scientists, which we officially launched in early access last week. We have optimized Bunsen to execute our validated computational methods and leverage our decades of molecular discovery expertise. By executing complex multi-step workflows, Bunsen helps expert computational chemists work more efficiently and run more design projects.
Bunsen will also enable more broadly drug hunters to access our software and run advanced simulations, expanding our user base over time. Our long-standing collaborators, NVIDIA and Google Cloud are providing additional tools and compute resources to support early access to Bunsen. Our throughput-based licensing model ensures we are positioned to capture the value of the significantly increased platform usage we expect Bunsen to drive.
Cristiano Amon
President & Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Brett, and good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for joining us today. In fiscal Q3, we delivered revenues of $9.9 billion coming in at the high end of our guidance and non-GAAP earnings per share of $2.21. QCT revenues were $8.5 billion with another quarter of record automotive revenues as well as growth in IoT. Licensing business revenues were $1.3 billion.
At our recent Investor Day, we lay out the next chapter of Qualcomm built across three dimensions. One, expanding into the data center with four unique product lines. Two, driving agentic and physical AI compute everywhere. And three, expanding beyond silicon to full stack software and platform solutions.
We also updated our fiscal 2029 financial targets, which now include more than $24 billion in revenue across automotive and IoT, plus more than $15 billion in data center, bringing our total known handset revenue outlook to $40 billion by fiscal 2029, up from our previous target of $22 billion. This reflects our conviction in the opportunities throughout the end of the decade and the scale of our business diversification.
In the short-term, the entire industry continues to be impacted by unprecedented memory prices, higher manufacturing and input costs, as well as supply chain shortages driven by overall data center demand. In addition to the resulting revenue decline in mobile and consumer electronics, this is creating short-term pressure on QCT gross margins, which will be slightly below our historical range. We're implementing price increases and as they take effect, we expect to see gross margins realigned to our operating model.
Despite this headwinds, we expect top line growth for Qualcomm in fiscal '27, driven by an inflection in non-handset revenues throughout the fiscal year. We're incredibly excited about the next chapter of Qualcomm, our relevance in the next phase of AI, and distributed intelligence from edge to cloud, and we remain firmly focused on the execution phase of our strategy. I will now share some key highlights on the business.
Mark Zuckerberg
Chief Executive Officer
All right. Hey, everyone. Thanks for joining today. We had a strong quarter for our community and business with 3.6 billion people using at least one of our apps each day. We reached several milestones. Instagram reached 2 billion daily actives, Threads crossed 500 million monthly actives, making it the fastest-growing conversation app ever. Facebook has reached more than 2 billion daily actives for a while now. WhatsApp just hit an all-time messaging record, peaking at 30 million messages sent per second during the World Cup final. And also, Kunal Shah just joined as our new Head of WhatsApp. He built one of India's most important payment companies and will be a great addition to the team.
We also shipped some strong new models from Meta Superintelligence Labs and released new glasses. Overall, the scale and reach of our community across our apps is pretty remarkable, and it gives us a strong platform for delivering new innovations to billions of people. The opportunity in front of us is massive. First, we are now at a point where our investments in AI are accelerating every major part of our core business. They're improving the experience for people using our apps, driving better performance for advertisers, and helping our teams build new experiences and ship faster.
Second, we are developing new personal agents that will be the foundation for our next wave of products and revenue lines in the months and years ahead.
And third, we see a large enterprise opportunity to sell to businesses, including APIs, Business Agents, potentially selling compute directly, and other services that we're building for large customers. And I want to spend some time today laying out exactly how our investments are delivering results today, and the opportunities that we see over time.
Four, accelerating our core business, we are seeing strong and promising results in several areas. In Instagram and Facebook, I'm very optimistic about our work to integrate large language models into our recommendation systems. LLMs add a first-principles understanding of what the content is about, and why it is compelling, as well as a deeper understanding of what people are interested in and what their goals are when they're using our apps. So this means that we can show more relevant and engaging content that better reflects people's goals and interests.
Jacob Thaysen
Chief Executive Officer
Thank you, Conor, and good afternoon, everyone. We had a great first half of 2026, including another strong quarter in Q2, and I couldn't be prouder of what the Illumina team delivered.
Revenue grew at the fastest rate since I joined the company, driven by increasing demand for Illumina's technology as customers expand clinical applications. Our deep relationships with leading U.S. clinical customers and large install base reinforce the durability of our position in these markets. Margins also came in above our guidance, despite higher-than-expected costs.
I want to thank our teams for their focus and commitment to our customers and shareholders. Our first-half results put us in a strong position as we look ahead. We are raising our 2026 guidance for revenue growth and profitability by remaining committed to executing against our long-range targets.
Today, I'm going to focus on three areas. Our performance in the quarter and the trends we are seeing across our end markets. How we are expanding the value of our platform through new workflows and multiomics capabilities. And the progress we are making against our long-term strategy and financial targets.
Let me start with how the quarter came together. Rest-of-world, organic revenue grew 8.1% above the high end of our guidance. And demand for NovaSeq X remained high more than three years after launch. With more than 95 placements in the quarter.
Together with disciplined expense management, this translated into both margin and EPS above guidance. Clinical markets, which represent approximately 65% of sequencing consumables revenue remained our primary growth driver. Rest-of-world clinical growth was broad-based across regions and applications with particular strength in our U.S. Canada region. Strong instrument placements over the past three quarters are expanding customer capacity and will support consumer growth for many quarters to come.
Placements will vary from quarter-to-quarter, but demand remains elevated. In research and academic markets, results improved from Q1, but customers remain cautious as they navigate funding uncertainty. We saw some signs of improvements late in the quarter, but it's too early to call a recovery. These customers remain an important source of innovation and help drive clinical adoption over time. Our expanding multiomics portfolio give customers more ways to analyze biology and broadens how we can support these markets over time.
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