TNB Tech Minute: Amazon Joins the $3 Trillion Club artwork

TNB Tech Minute: Amazon Joins the $3 Trillion Club

WSJ Tech News Briefing

August 3, 2026

Plus: nuclear energy startup Valar Atomics closes a $1 billion fundraising round. And Alibaba’s new AI model impresses analysts. Imani Moise hosts. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Speakers: Imani Moise
**SPEAKER_1** (0:00)
So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 percent of common questions.
Not noise, proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smart business, IBM.

**Imani Moise** (0:31)
Here's your afternoon TNB Tech Minute for Monday, August 3rd. I'm Imani Moise for the Wall Street Journal.
Amazon shares jumped today, propelling the company's market valuation above $3 trillion for the first time. The gain comes on the heels of a 15 percent jump last Friday, when Amazon stock had its best day in years after investors liked what they saw in the latest earnings report. The e-commerce giant is the fifth ever company to reach the $3 trillion milestone. Apple, Microsoft, NVIDIA and Alphabet are the other four in that order.
Nuclear energy startup Valar Atomics said it's closed a $1 billion fundraising round as it aims to start producing fleets of nuclear reactors. The fundraising round was led by Sequoia Capital, and Sequoia partner Sean Maguire will join the Valar board. Other investors include 0.72 Ventures and Valar Equity Partners. Valar said it also closed a $200 million credit facility. The three-year-old company is part of the Department of Energy's reactor pilot program. In June, it completed a zero-power-fueled criticality demonstration in Utah. And Alibaba's new Quen 3.8 Max model has significantly improved benchmark scores, according to city analysts. As developers speed up their iterations, a model-agnostic environment where enterprises adopt multiple models for different tasks instead of locking into one single vendor is emerging. While long-term success will acquire immense resources and a loyal customer base, analysts say companies like Alibaba, with full-stack capabilities from chips to cloud infrastructure to models and applications are better positioned to lead.
And that's it for your TNB Tech Minutes. We'll have another quick tech update in the morning.

**SPEAKER_1** (2:17)
So there's a lot of noise about AI, but time's too tight for more promises. So let's talk about results. At IBM, we work with our employees to integrate technology right into the systems they need. Now, a global workforce of 300,000 can use AI to fill their HR questions, resolving 94 percent of common questions.
Not noise, proof of how we can help companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smart business, IBM.

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