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CEO Bill Ready rejected the idea of a 'step function,' reiterating that these are long-term, compounding initiatives. He emphasized that Pinterest is consistently growing above the market rate by transforming into a performance ad platform and taking share. He pointed to steady progress in the mid-market and international regions as evidence of this compounding growth without structural limitations.

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CEO Bill Ready reiterated his consistent message that these are long-term, compounding initiatives, not 'hockey stick' or 'step function' changes. He emphasized that Pinterest is consistently growing above the market rate by transforming into a performance ad platform, taking share, and sees no structural limitations to this steady, compounding growth.

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CEO Bill Ready did not provide a specific percentage lift for Performance+ but noted that 80% of A/B tests with the suite outperform traditional campaigns. He explained the gap between click and revenue growth is closing as advertisers adopt new measurement tools (like CAPI) and campaign automation, which validates performance and unlocks budget.

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CEO Bill Ready emphasized that AI is a core competency, powered by Pinterest's unique 'Taste Graph' which leverages hundreds of billions of user actions. He highlighted using GPUs for larger models, LLM technology for guided search, and computer vision for features like 'Shop the Look.' He also noted significant internal productivity gains, with AI-assisted tools generating roughly 15% of the company's current code base.

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CEO Bill Ready highlighted that the key growth levers for 2025 are the continued build-out of the full-funnel ad platform, particularly lower-funnel tools and the new Performance Plus automation suite. He noted that excluding the challenged food and beverage vertical, Pinterest's revenue growth was already in the low 20% range in Q3, demonstrating the underlying strength and durability of its performance advertising business.

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CEO & Chair Tony Xu countered the premise of the question, stating that based on the hundreds of customer emails he reads weekly, the company is falling short and has opportunities for improvement everywhere. He gave an example of a delivery to the wrong parking lot, illustrating that even small-sounding issues are significant at scale. He concluded that there is no single area that is harder to crack; rather, every day is a struggle with opportunities for improvement across the entire platform, from minor execution details to major strategic shifts with AI.

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CEO Tony Xu explained that Deliveroo has built leading positions in strong profit pools and that lessons from the Wolt integration, such as exchanging product knowledge, provide a proven playbook. CFO Ravi Inukonda attributed the CapEx increase to a merchant tablet refresh and investments in autonomy, stating the full-year level should be in line with the overall D&A guidance.

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CEO Tony Xu stated that investment priorities have not changed significantly, as he continues to see strong reasons to invest across all key business areas. CFO Ravi Inukonda added that the capital allocation philosophy is also unchanged, with a focus on generating returns, and that the company will continue to be opportunistic with its share buyback program.

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CEO Brian Chesky outlined a multi-pillar strategy focused on the U.S. market. The key priorities include improving ease of use, enhancing pricing and affordability through tools like total price display and better host pricing suggestions, and strategically increasing supply. This supply effort involves targeting the most constrained markets and onboarding more hotels to supplement home availability.

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CEO Brian Chesky outlined a philosophy of expanding beyond stays into adjacent travel services, aiming to make the core business stronger and increase app usage frequency. CFO Ellie Mertz detailed the margin guide, explaining that the $200-$250M investment will impact margins most in Q1-Q3, with revenue benefits concentrated in Q4, while highlighting the calendar and FX headwinds affecting the Q1 outlook.

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CFO Ellie Mertz attributed the Q4 margin outlook to timing shifts and incremental investments in product development and marketing, including for global expansion. Looking to 2025, she stated that while there is long-term opportunity for margin expansion, the company will continue to lean into growth initiatives for its core business and new offerings. These investments will be capital-light but will include hiring and marketing spend to support growth levers.

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CEO Dara Khosrowshahi attributed the 15% audience growth to a strategy of introducing lower-cost products like Moto and expanding premium offerings. He emphasized significant runway remains, as only 20% of the addressable population in Uber's top 10 markets are monthly users. For Uber One's 60% growth, he pointed to new features like 'surge savings' for Mobility users as a key driver. Regarding AVs, he noted that the average Waymo vehicle on the platform is busier than 99% of human drivers in its operating zones, indicating strong utilization and a positive 'halo effect' on the brand.

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CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated the immediate goal in Austin is perfecting the user experience and safety, not yet driving incremental trip volume. CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah added that overall mobility trip growth remains strong and that sparser, suburban markets now constitute about 20% of mobility trips and are growing faster than the urban core.

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CEO Dara Khosrowshahi stated that Uber is investing aggressively across the AV portfolio, including in fleet supply and partnerships, but these investments are not expected to impact the company's three-year financial outlook. CFO Prashanth Mahendra-Rajah added that the company makes investment decisions at a total company level and will continue to invest in Mobility to drive growth, highlighting strong performance drivers like the Uber One membership program and Uber Teens.

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CEO Dara Khosrowshahi noted that U.S. Mobility remains strong, though transaction growth has slowed due to the pass-through of higher insurance costs, consistent with expected price elasticity. He highlighted strong weekday and Uber for Business growth. Regarding the Waymo partnership, Khosrowshahi stated it's too early to measure incrementality in Phoenix but emphasized the positive user experience. He indicated the upcoming expansions in Austin and Atlanta will be a more significant test.

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CEO Andy Jassy countered the 'falling behind' narrative by emphasizing that it's still very early in AI. He detailed AWS's comprehensive stack, from custom Trainium chips to services like Bedrock and Agent Core, and the strategic advantage of customers' data already residing on AWS. While not providing specific guidance, he expressed optimism for future growth driven by enterprise cloud migration and scaled AI adoption.

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CEO Andy Jassy countered the narrative by emphasizing it's still 'very early' in AI and detailed AWS's full-stack advantage, from custom Trainium chips to comprehensive services like Bedrock and Agent Core. While not providing guidance, Jassy expressed optimism for AWS acceleration, citing resumed enterprise cloud migrations, growing AI adoption, and increasing supply capacity as key positive drivers.

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CEO Andy Jassy highlighted managing inventory levels within the fulfillment network as a key focus to handle potential early inventory inflows from sellers without compromising productivity. CFO Brian Olsavsky confirmed the Q2 guide's wider range reflects general uncertainty, but its primary cost drivers are seasonal stock-based compensation and Kiper expenses, not a specific one-time tariff charge like in Q1.

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CEO Andy Jassy expressed strong encouragement from the Shreveport facility, which integrates a new tranche of robotics, citing improvements in speed, productivity, and cost to serve, with plans for a broader rollout. He detailed how AI is already enhancing the retail business through productivity tools (e.g., customer service chatbots, seller listing tools) and new customer experiences like the Rufus shopping assistant, Amazon Lens, and sizing recommendations, noting about 1,000 gen AI apps are in development.

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CFO Brian Olsavsky stated that international profitability is driven by the same factors as North America, including lower cost-to-serve and advertising, with the long-term goal of reaching North America-level margins. He also noted that while Amazon leads in robotics, it's still 'early days,' highlighting a new facility in Louisiana that integrates the latest automation to improve speed and lower costs.

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CEO Steve Huffman confirmed that after a slow start in April, U.S. user trends improved through Q2 and into July, driven by product and marketing efforts. COO Jen Wong highlighted upcoming ad innovations, including the broader rollout of Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), increased platform automation, and new 'Community Intelligence' solutions like Reddit Insights, which are designed to boost advertiser performance.

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CEO Steve Huffman acknowledged a slow start to Q2 user growth in April but noted improved traction later in the quarter, with the exit rate higher than the 110M average and continued growth in July. He mentioned Google traffic was a headwind. COO Jen Wong highlighted excitement for the broader rollout of Dynamic Product Ads (DPA), increased platform automation, and scaling new solutions derived from Reddit's Community Intelligence, such as Reddit Insights and Conversation Summary add-ons.

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CEO Steve Huffman detailed that for direct visitors, simplifying the sign-up process and improving onboarding have been key. For users from search, the focus is on providing great answers first to build trust. COO Jen Wong identified applying ML optimization to brand advertising, improving measurement, and creative optimization as lower-hanging fruit for the ad business, with continuous improvement in ease-of-use and unique formats being ongoing efforts.

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COO Jen Wong detailed the 2025 ad strategy, focusing on enhancing brand advertising with more automation, building out lower-funnel shopping capabilities, and creating end-to-end automation. CEO Steve Huffman added that search development will be a focus in 2025, with monetization to follow once the product is stable, suggesting revenue impact would likely be after 2025.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg identified AI self-improvement as a fundamental research area, noting that superintelligence must learn beyond human input. He also highlighted a shift toward using small, talent-dense teams for frontier research. CFO Susan Li outlined near-term engagement drivers like more adaptive recommendations and better content discovery for smaller creators, with long-term bets on foundational models and deeper LLM integration.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg identified AI self-improvement as a fundamental research area and noted that small, talent-dense teams are optimal for frontier research. CFO Susan Li outlined near-term engagement drivers like more adaptive recommendations and better content discovery, and long-term bets on foundational models and deeper LLM integration.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg identified self-improvement as a key research area for superintelligence, noting that AI must learn to improve itself beyond human-provided data. He also emphasized the effectiveness of small, talent-dense teams for frontier research. CFO Susan Li outlined several engagement drivers, including making recommendations more adaptive within a session, helping content from smaller creators surface faster, and longer-term bets on foundational models and LLM integration.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg explained that Llama's development is focused on optimizing for Meta's infrastructure and use cases, such as low-latency voice conversations and long context windows for personalization. He noted that large models like 'Behemoth' are used to distill more efficient production models. CFO Susan Li added that the top use case for Meta AI is information gathering, followed by social interactions, with WhatsApp being the platform with the strongest usage.

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CEO Mark Zuckerberg highlighted the focus on Meta AI as a personalized assistant and the goal for Llama 4 to be a leading, multimodal open-source model, while keeping specific 2025 product launches a surprise. CFO Susan Li explained that custom silicon (MTIA) is optimized for Meta's unique workloads to improve cost and power efficiency, noting it's currently being ramped up for ranking and recommendation inference with plans to expand to training workloads next year.

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CFO Susan Li explained that Meta AI sees frequent use for information gathering, content discovery, and image generation, with potential for more monetizable queries over time. She noted that Meta AI integrates with search partners like Bing and Google. Regarding 2025 headcount, Li stated that budgeting is ongoing, with a focus on investing in strategic priorities like monetization and Gen AI while maintaining operational discipline.

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CEO Sundar Pichai explained that AI will expand Search's capabilities into more powerful, multimodal, and agentic use cases, citing Project Astra and Gemini Deep Research as examples. CFO Anat Ashkenazi identified key areas for efficiency gains, including optimizing technical infrastructure, moderating headcount growth, reducing the real estate footprint, and simplifying the organization by using internal AI tools.

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Philipp Schindler, Senior Vice President and Chief Business Officer, responded that Q1 saw broad-based strength in ad verticals, led by finance, retail, and healthcare. He noted it was too early to comment on Q2 but mentioned a slight headwind from changes to the de minimis exemption. Schindler identified AI Overviews as the core driver for the increase in commercial queries, stating the company is confident in its performance and potential for expansion.

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CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted AI Overviews, Circle to Search, and Lens as key innovations expanding search capabilities and driving user engagement. He noted that while constraints like latency and cost per query exist, Alphabet has made substantial progress, reducing machine costs by over 90% in 18 months, and does not see them as a major barrier to scaling.

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CEO Sundar Pichai noted that consumer-facing AI in products like Search has shown positive traction, while enterprise solutions still require more work to unlock their full value. CFO Ruth Porat emphasized the company's focus on "durably reengineering our cost base" through product prioritization, organizational efficiency like combining teams, and optimizing technical infrastructure, procurement, and real estate.

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CFO Ewout Steenbergen explained the U.S. strategy involves numerous small initiatives across product, supply, and marketing that are contributing to market share gains, despite mixed signals like lower ADRs. CEO Glenn Fogel addressed GenAI, stating the challenge is an incremental process of integrating proprietary data and models to create a superior, personalized service that drives direct traffic, a process already underway with features like natural language search.

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CFO Ewout Steenbergen explained the U.S. strategy involves numerous small initiatives across product, supply, and marketing to achieve gradual market share gains, noting Booking likely outpaced the industry in Q2. CEO Glenn Fogel described the GenAI challenge as an incremental process of building a superior, personalized service that integrates proprietary data to proactively solve travel issues, with features like natural language search being an early step in this evolution.

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CFO Ewout Steenbergen explained that the guidance range was widened to account for increased geopolitical and macroeconomic uncertainty for the second half of the year, while the high end of the range remains unchanged. Regarding marketing, he gave social media channels as an example where scaling up provides attractive, positive ROIs that are accretive to the business, even if they are below the average ROI of more established channels.

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CEO Glenn Fogel explained that partnership agreements are carefully structured to manage data and economics, emphasizing Booking's strong negotiating position due to its brand trust and data. CFO Ewout Steenbergen added that a proliferation of AI agents could be an economic advantage, creating more customer acquisition channels and potentially lowering overall acquisition costs for Booking.

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CFO Emily Maher described a dynamic budgeting process focused on reinvesting efficiency gains into high-return growth initiatives while maintaining a commitment to annual EBITDA expansion. She declined to break out the restaurant GTV percentage, emphasizing its flywheel effect on the core grocery business and noting that adoption is still in its early stages.

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CEO Fidji Simo clarified that shopper supply is very healthy, with waitlists in many cities, and the focus is on efficiency through batching and optimized routing, not just growing the total number of shoppers. For advertising, she identified three key drivers for 2025: proving ad performance with superior measurement, launching new formats like shoppable recipes, and expanding ad supply through Carrot Ads on retailer sites and Caper screens.

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CEO David Risher stated Price Lock is rolled out nationally, targeting commuters, and is showing low churn and driving incremental rides. Regarding San Francisco, he noted that while AVs are visible, Lyft views them as future partners and that current AV usage is skewed by novelty and tourism, making it too early to see a competitive impact on volume.

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