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Shares of Doximity soared Friday, more than doubling at one point and trading up 61.17% to $33.25 by mid-morning, after the digital platform for U.S. medical professionals delivered a stronger-than-expected quarterly report and revealed striking early profitability figures for its new artificial intelligence search product.

The Coeur d’Alene, Idaho-based company’s stock had entered the week down roughly 50% for the year, with a market value of $3.7 billion heading into the earnings release. Friday’s surge, one of the sharpest single-session rallies for any major U.S. stock in recent months, was fueled by a combination of a revenue beat, an upgraded full-year outlook and bullish commentary from the company’s chief executive about the economics of its AI-powered search tool.

A Beat on Revenue, a Narrow Miss on Profit

Doximity reported first-quarter fiscal 2027 revenue of $156.6 million, up 7.3% from the same period a year earlier and comfortably ahead of the $151.7 million analysts had expected. Adjusted earnings came in at 29 cents per share, narrowly missing the 30-cent consensus estimate by a single cent, a shortfall that investors largely brushed aside given the strength elsewhere in the report. Adjusted EBITDA reached $74.8 million for the quarter, representing a 48% margin and beating the high end of the company’s own guidance by roughly 8 percentage points.

The Comment That Sparked the Rally

The single biggest driver of Friday’s surge appears to have been remarks from Doximity Chief Executive Jeffrey Tangney regarding the profitability of the company’s newer AI search product. Speaking during the company’s earnings call, Tangney said that while it remains early days for the AI search offering, the product is generating more than 10 times what it costs to run in revenue per search, a margin figure that stunned analysts and investors tracking the stock.

Tangney also framed the AI push as central to Doximity’s next phase of growth, saying the company has established itself as the digital platform for physicians and that artificial intelligence represents the next evolutionary phase of that expansion.

Rapid Growth in AI Tool Adoption

Beyond the headline profitability claim, Doximity highlighted substantial growth in engagement with its suite of AI-powered products during the quarter. The company’s Scribe note-taking feature, which helps physicians automatically document patient visits, saw a tenfold increase in active users in July compared with the same month a year earlier. Utilization of the company’s Search AI functionality also expanded meaningfully during the quarter, according to the company, reinforcing the broader theme of accelerating adoption across Doximity’s AI product suite.

Guidance Sends Mixed Signals

Despite the overwhelmingly positive market reaction, Doximity’s forward guidance told a somewhat more nuanced story. The company projected second-quarter revenue in a range of $170 million to $171 million, with a midpoint of $170.5 million that aligned closely with Wall Street’s expectations but fell slightly below some of the more optimistic analyst forecasts heading into the report. For the full fiscal year, Doximity raised its revenue guidance midpoint by $6 million, even as it lowered its adjusted EBITDA guidance midpoint by $10 million, a combination that reflects the company’s willingness to sacrifice some near-term margin in favor of continued investment in its AI capabilities.

A Rally Amplified by Short Sellers

Part of the scale of Friday’s move has been attributed to a short squeeze, in which investors who had bet against Doximity’s stock were forced to buy back shares to cover their positions as the price surged, further amplifying the rally beyond what the underlying earnings beat alone might have generated. Given that shares had fallen by roughly half over the course of the year heading into the report, the stock had attracted a meaningful base of short interest that appears to have been caught off guard by the scale of Friday’s positive reaction.

A Strong Balance Sheet Heading Into the Report

Doximity entered the earnings release with a solid financial position, holding $687.8 million in cash and securities with zero debt on its balance sheet. The company also repurchased $91.6 million worth of its own shares during the quarter, part of an ongoing capital return program even as it continues investing heavily in its AI product roadmap. Free cash flow declined 34% during the quarter, however, as stock-based compensation rose 68%, factors that some analysts flagged as areas warranting continued scrutiny even amid the broader positive earnings reaction.

Analysts Weigh In

Ahead of Friday’s premarket trading, Doximity’s surge pushed shares 42% above the average analyst price target of $24.65, approaching Morgan Stanley’s more bullish $35 target but remaining below the single highest analyst target of $42. Analysts have generally cautioned that the coming quarters will serve as a more meaningful test of the AI search product’s staying power, with the third fiscal quarter in particular expected to be significant, since that is when a growing number of AI Search contracts, including an initial cohort of more than two dozen healthcare programs already signed, are expected to convert from signed agreements into formally recognized revenue.

A Longer-Term Growth Picture

Looking beyond the immediate quarter, Doximity has posted a compound annual revenue growth rate of 21.9% over the past five years, though that pace has moderated more recently, with the two-year annualized growth rate standing at 15.2%. Sell-side analysts currently project revenue growth of approximately 3.6% over the coming 12 months, a considerably slower pace that underscores the importance investors are placing on the company’s newer AI initiatives as a potential source of reacceleration.

With Friday’s dramatic rally driven in large part by early, unverified claims about the AI search product’s per-search economics, investors are likely to watch closely for further detail and independent validation of those figures in the coming quarters. The conversion of Doximity’s initial AI Search contracts into recognized revenue during the third fiscal quarter is expected to serve as the next major test of whether Friday’s optimism reflects a genuine inflection point in the company’s growth trajectory or a shorter-term reaction to a single quarter’s standout commentary.

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NEW YORK — Shares of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. rose sharply in morning trading Friday, extending a rebound that began a day earlier when the stock absorbed one of the largest post-initial public offering lockup expirations in recent market history without a sustained selloff.

By midmorning Eastern time, SpaceX stock, trading under the ticker SPCX, stood at $122.58, up $7.66 or 6.67 percent. The advance built on Thursday’s 6.14 percent gain that closed the session at $114.92. That earlier rally came as approximately 911.5 million previously restricted shares held by employees and early investors became eligible for sale, expanding the potentially tradable float significantly.

The company, founded by Elon Musk, completed its initial public offering on June 12, pricing shares at $135 and raising tens of billions of dollars in what ranked among the largest U.S. listings on record. Shares opened higher and later climbed as high as $225.64 before retreating in subsequent weeks amid broader technology sector volatility, concerns over valuation and the approaching share unlocks. By early August the stock had traded near its post-IPO lows around $105 before the latest recovery.

On Aug. 4 SpaceX reported its first quarterly results as a public company. Second-quarter revenue reached $7.81 billion, up 92 percent from $4.07 billion a year earlier and ahead of analyst expectations. The net loss narrowed to $541 million from $1.01 billion in the year-earlier period. Adjusted EBITDA rose to $3.54 billion from $1.21 billion.

The Connectivity segment, driven primarily by the Starlink satellite broadband service, generated $4.29 billion in revenue and $1.66 billion in operating income. The AI segment contributed $2.56 billion in revenue, reflecting growth in cloud infrastructure services and related subscriptions, though it recorded an operating loss. The traditional Space segment, encompassing launch services, posted $962 million in revenue and an operating loss.

SpaceX ended the quarter with approximately $100 billion in cash, cash equivalents and marketable securities and a backlog of $47.5 billion. The company had earlier closed its IPO, generating about $85.7 billion in net proceeds, and completed a $25 billion investment-grade bond offering.

The Aug. 6 lockup release represented the first major tranche of restricted shares becoming available, estimated at roughly 20 percent of eligible insider holdings. Market participants had anticipated potential selling pressure that could weigh on the share price. Instead, volume was elevated and the stock closed higher, suggesting absorption of supply without a disorderly decline. Additional staggered releases are scheduled in the coming months, including further portions through October, a larger release after third-quarter results and the remaining lockup expiration in December.

Analysts and investors continue to weigh the company’s growth trajectory against its valuation and capital intensity. Starlink subscriber expansion and government contracts, including multi-year awards for Starshield, support the Connectivity business. Launch cadence remains high, with Falcon 9 vehicles achieving frequent reuse. At the same time, heavy investment in Starship development, manufacturing capacity and AI-related infrastructure has kept overall profitability negative on a net-income basis even as adjusted metrics improved.

The stock’s path since the IPO has been volatile. After the early peak, shares declined more than 50 percent from the high at points, reflecting both profit-taking and questions about how quickly the company can convert rapid top-line growth into consistent bottom-line results. The first earnings report and subsequent lockup test provided the market with fresh data points on operational momentum and the willingness of existing holders to sell into strength or hold.

Broader market conditions have also played a role. Technology and growth-oriented stocks have experienced swings tied to interest-rate expectations, artificial-intelligence spending scrutiny and macroeconomic data. SpaceX’s combination of aerospace, satellite communications and expanding compute offerings positions it at the intersection of several high-profile themes, amplifying both upside interest and downside sensitivity.

Trading volume on the days surrounding the lockup and earnings has been substantial, reflecting active institutional and retail participation. Options activity has also been notable as traders positioned around key price levels and the unlock event. The average analyst price target remains well above the current trading range according to consensus data, though individual estimates vary widely, underscoring differing views on long-term execution risk and competitive dynamics in launch, broadband and AI infrastructure.

SpaceX continues to pursue vertical integration across manufacturing, launch operations and satellite deployment. The company has highlighted the scale benefits of its approach in recent communications with investors. Government work, commercial satellite deployments and enterprise connectivity deals form the core of near-term visibility, while longer-horizon projects such as next-generation vehicles and expanded AI capacity represent both opportunity and spending commitments.

Friday’s early gains kept the focus on whether the post-lockup stability can persist as additional shares become eligible in coming weeks. Investors will monitor subsequent trading volumes, any commentary from management and the pace of operational milestones for signals on demand for the stock. The next scheduled earnings report is expected to provide further insight into the trajectory of the three reported segments and capital allocation priorities.

As a newly public company with a market capitalization still measured in the trillions of dollars even after the post-IPO decline, SpaceX remains one of the most closely watched names in the technology and aerospace sectors. The combination of rapid revenue growth, substantial cash reserves and ongoing investment programs continues to shape the debate over its valuation and the durability of recent price support.

The morning advance on Aug. 7 added to the evidence that the initial wave of unlocked shares was absorbed without triggering a prolonged decline, at least in the immediate aftermath. Whether that pattern holds through the remaining unlock schedule will be a central question for market participants in the months ahead.

Scientists at Stanford University and the Arc Institute have used artificial intelligence to design entirely new viruses capable of infecting and destroying bacteria, a scientific first that researchers say could open new paths for fighting drug-resistant infections while simultaneously reigniting debate over how quickly biotechnology is outpacing the safeguards meant to govern it.

The research, published this week in the journal Science, marks the first time scientists have used AI not simply to tweak existing viral genomes but to generate functional, previously unseen viruses from scratch, built entirely from patterns the AI learned by studying genetic sequences drawn from millions of organisms across the natural world.

Moving Beyond Copying Nature

For years, scientists have been able to synthesize viruses in the lab, typically to develop and test antiviral drugs and vaccines or to better understand how these microorganisms behave. That earlier work, however, relied almost entirely on replicating known pathogens or their existing variants. The new study represents a meaningful departure from that approach, using AI to generate genuinely novel genetic blueprints rather than working from a template drawn directly from nature.

The research team worked with bacteriophages, viruses that infect only bacteria and are increasingly viewed as a promising alternative to antibiotics in the fight against drug-resistant infections. Because bacteriophages have relatively small, comparatively simple genomes, they are easier to synthesize and manipulate under controlled laboratory conditions than viruses capable of infecting humans or other complex organisms.

How the AI Models Were Built

The viruses were generated using Evo 1 and Evo 2, foundational AI models developed specifically for computational biology applications. Both systems were trained on genetic sequences, rather than text, drawn from across all domains of life, allowing them to learn complex evolutionary patterns, including how genes are typically organized, which sequences tend to be conserved across species, and the underlying biological constraints that allow an organism to remain functional. According to researchers, the models were further trained specifically on genetic sequences from thousands of viruses belonging to the same broad family as Phi X-174, a well-studied bacteriophage capable of infecting the bacterium E. coli, while deliberately excluding any viral sequences capable of infecting humans, animals, plants or fungi from that additional training step.

Using Phi X-174 purely as a reference point, rather than a template to be copied, the AI models generated hundreds of thousands of candidate viral genomes engineered to retain the biological architecture necessary to recognize and infect E. coli, while differing considerably from any naturally occurring bacteriophage at the level of their actual genetic sequence.

From Hundreds of Thousands of Candidates to 16 Working Viruses

Researchers narrowed that enormous pool of AI-generated candidates down to roughly 300 genomes considered most likely to be functional, based on factors including gene organization and the presence of regulatory elements informed by the biology of Phi X-174. Each of those 300 candidate genomes was then physically synthesized, molecule by molecule, in the laboratory and introduced into E. coli bacteria to test whether it could actually produce a working virus.

Of those 300 synthesized genomes, only 16 gave rise to fully functional bacteriophages. Each of the 16 successful viruses featured previously unpublished genetic sequences, different genes, new regulatory elements, and in some cases entirely different genome sizes compared with anything found in nature. The viruses’ behavior also varied considerably from one another, with some infecting bacteria more quickly than others and differing in their overall ability to replicate.

Testing Against Drug-Resistant Bacteria

Beyond simply confirming that the AI-designed viruses could function, researchers also tested their ability to combat bacterial resistance directly, a key question given the viruses’ potential as an alternative to antibiotics. In that experiment, scientists exposed strains of E. coli that had already developed resistance to Phi X-174 to a mixture of the newly AI-designed phages alongside a comparison mixture of natural phages similar to Phi X-174. The AI-generated viruses were able to rapidly overcome the bacteria’s existing resistance and establish infection, a result the study’s authors said demonstrates what they described as a path toward AI-generated phage therapies capable of targeting rapidly evolving bacterial pathogens.

A Milestone With Two Very Different Implications

Researchers involved in the work say the approach could eventually support the development of highly personalized bacteriophage treatments capable of evolving nearly as quickly as the bacterial pathogens they are designed to fight, a potentially significant advance given the growing global public health threat posed by antibiotic-resistant infections.

At the same time, the achievement has renewed concern among biosecurity experts about the pace at which AI-driven genome design is advancing relative to the regulatory frameworks meant to govern it. While the viruses created in this specific study were deliberately restricted to targeting bacteria rather than humans, the underlying capability, using AI to design an entirely novel, functional virus from scratch, raises broader questions about how such tools might eventually be misused.

Moritz Hanke, a researcher at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security, warned about that dual-use risk directly, noting that a similar genome language model could in principle be asked to design something considerably more dangerous, such as an influenza genome modified to be more infectious or lethal. Speaking separately to The New York Times, Hanke said there remains what he described as a huge disconnect between the speed at which the underlying science and technology are advancing and the development of regulatory frameworks capable of keeping pace with it.

A Debate That Predates This Study

Concerns over AI’s potential role in biological weapons development are not new. A study published roughly three years ago by the Rand Corporation warned that even the AI systems available at that time had the capacity to help refine the planning and execution of attacks using biological weapons. Rand separately cautioned that the speed at which AI systems continue to evolve routinely outpaces governments’ ability to develop and implement effective regulatory oversight, a warning that has only grown more pointed as genome-design capabilities like those demonstrated in this new study have continued to advance.

With the research now published and drawing significant attention across both the scientific and biosecurity communities, calls are likely to grow for closer collaboration between AI developers, biologists, policymakers and regulators to establish clearer safeguards around genome language models before the technology advances further. In the meantime, the study’s authors have framed their work primarily as a proof of concept for AI-assisted phage therapy, even as the broader scientific community continues grappling with how to balance the technology’s genuine medical promise against the biosecurity risks it simultaneously introduces.