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# Earnings Had Receipts, Markets Didn't Care, The Coding Agent Land Grab, Google's Brain Drain, Depending Who You Ask
- URL: https://adjacent.media/scan/2026-08-07-am/
- Published: 2026-08-07T10:05:28.000Z
- Updated: 2026-08-07T10:05:28.000Z
- Description: Earnings season keeps handing out the same lesson: beating estimates isn’t enough anymore, guidance is everything. Duolingo, AppLovin and Block all posted solid growth and still got punished or shrugged at after hours.
- Author: Jonathan Greene
- Tags: #scan-am, #scan

Earnings season keeps handing out the same lesson: beating estimates isn't enough anymore, guidance is everything. Duolingo, AppLovin and Block all posted solid growth and still got punished or shrugged at after hours. The AI coding-agent pileup continues, and the Google brain drain story just got a very public rebuttal.

> **372%** — Sandisk's Q4 revenue jump YoY, and the stock still dropped on soft guidance. *(Djnewswires)*

---

### Connected World

#### [AppLovin's 53% growth gets an eye-roll](https://www.wsj.com/business/earnings/applovin-second-quarter-sales-gain-gives-soft-third-quarter-outlook-202082a6?ref=adjacent.media) (paywall)

Missed estimates by a hair, in-line guidance, 16% drop after hours — the bar for ad-tech is apparently in orbit. *(WSJ)*

#### [Block beats, raises guidance, shares slip anyway](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/05/block-shares-slip-despite-second-quarter-beat-raised-2026-guidance/?ref=adjacent.media)

Cash App gross profit up 31%, full-year outlook raised, and the market still found something to nitpick. *(SiliconANGLE)*

#### [SoftBank's Intel and ByteDance stakes are carrying the quarter](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/08/06/softbank-q1-earnings-intel-bytedance-stakes.html?ref=adjacent.media)

Net profit down 18% YoY but still crushed estimates, thanks to an $8.2B Intel gain — portfolio math beating operating math. *(CNBC)*

### Machines & Minds

#### [Meta's Muse Code joins an already crowded field](https://appleinsider.com/articles/26/08/05/metas-muse-code-is-yet-another-ai-coding-agent-on-macos?utm%5Fsource=rss)

Differentiation among terminal-based AI coding tools for macOS will come from price or data rather than features. *(AppleInsider)*

#### [Meta's cheap tier is a data trade, not a discount](https://www.macrumors.com/2026/08/05/meta-muse-code-for-mac/?ref=adjacent.media)

Up to 20x cheaper if you let Meta train on your prompts — the actual product here is your usage data. *(MacRumors)*

#### [DeepSeek is raising prices, a sign the free-lunch era is ending](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-08-06/deepseek-plans-significant-price-increase-for-its-ai-services?ref=adjacent.media) (paywall)

Cheap Chinese model pricing helped set the market floor; that floor is about to move. *(Bloomberg)*

#### [Google is shopping for an AI coding startup's team, not just its tech](https://siliconangle.com/2026/08/05/google-targets-ai-startup-mechanizes-technology-talent-proposed-1-5b-deal/?ref=adjacent.media)

$1.5B for Mechanize looks less like an acquisition and more like an acqui-hire with a very large signing bonus. *(SiliconANGLE)*

### Machines & Minds

#### [Jeff Dean is leaving to start his own lab](https://newsletter.semianalysis.com/p/gemini-is-cooked-but-gcp-is-cooking?ref=adjacent.media)

Google's Chief Scientist and Gemini co-lead exits for a new venture called Discovery Loop — the timing, right after Hassabis stepped back, is not subtle. *(SemiAnalysis)*

#### [Gary Marcus says not so fast](https://open.substack.com/pub/garymarcus/p/seven-reasons-i-wouldnt-count-google)

A contrarian counter to the "Google is cooked" narrative, arguing the exits matter less than the infrastructure underneath. *(Marcus on AI)*

#### [OpenAI calls Apple's trade secrets lawsuit "rotten to its core"](https://www.theverge.com/tech/976042/openai-apple-trade-secrets-lawsuit-dismissal-request?ref=adjacent.media)

The countersuit filing accuses Apple of using litigation to paper over its own AI integration failures — spicy for a legal brief. *(The Verge)*

> “Apple should not be permitted to use a baseless and pretextual lawsuit to make up for its failures to integrate AI into its products.” — *OpenAI court filing, via Axios*