Wall Street Lunch: Ford Aims To Sell Over 100K Fathom EV Trucks In First Year

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Ford targets 100K sales for its new Ford Fathom. (0:15) Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9B. (1:02) New York puts a freeze on classroom AI. (1:59)

This is an abridged transcript of the podcast:

Our top story so far, Ford (F) aims to sell more than 100K units of its new electric truck in its first year of production, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The starting price for the truck, called the Ford Fathom, will be nearly $30K. Ford will begin taking customer orders early next year.

Besides Tesla (TSLA), no other automaker has sold 100K units of a single EV model in the U.S. in a year. Tesla sold ~357K Model Y SUVs in 2025 and more than 190K Model 3 sedans.

Ford executives say Fathom’s price tag, which is similar to mainstream sedans and SUVs, and design will help drive sales.

Fathom trucks will include Apple Maps built into their navigation system and Ford’s hands-free driving system BlueCruise. The Fathom will also have more passenger space than the best-selling SUV Toyota RAV4.

Among active stocks, after a week of speculation, Nvidia (NVDA) sealed the deal for Hugging Face, agreeing to pay $12.9B for the AI platform.

Hugging Face will remain an open platform for the entire AI ecosystem, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said.

Snowflake (SNOW) is rallying more than 20% after the data warehousing company reported fiscal second-quarter results and guidance that topped forecasts.

Snowflake said it expects product revenue to be between $1.588B and $1.593B, above the $1.51B estimate. Adjusted operating margin is forecast to be 15.5%.

Ciena (CIEN) is higher after the optical networking company reported better-than-expected results and guidance.

CEO Gary Smith said “AI continues to drive compounding waves of network investment.”

And Campbell’s (CPB) is slumping after missing revenue estimates for Q4. The company said top-line softness and inflation-driven margin headwinds were factors.

Campbell’s also cut its quarterly dividend to $0.25 per share from $0.39 per share.

In other news of note, New York City, the largest U.S. school district, is imposing a one-year moratorium on students using generative artificial intelligence (OPENAI) (ANTHRO) (DEEPSEEK) in public ​elementary and middle schools.

The policy, which will take effect in the 2026-2027 school year and will impact nearly 600,000 public school students, bars AI use for students in 2-K through 8th grade.

This includes all software that uses student-facing generative AI. Companion chatbots will be banned across all grades.

And Walmart (WMT) said it is expanding its restaurant delivery business through a collaboration with Inspire Brands, a global multi-brand restaurant company whose portfolio includes Dunkin’, Arby’s, Baskin-Robbins, Jimmy John’s and Sonic.

Walmart continues to expand the restaurants available through its app, including restaurants located beyond its stores. The Dunkin’ chain will launch first via its 150 in-store tenant locations, with plans to expand to the majority of its 10K locations outside of Walmart stores nationwide.

And in the Wall Street Research Corner, Société Générale strategist Manish Kabra says investors may want to buy any equity weakness triggered by a renewed Federal Reserve hiking cycle.

SocGen has shifted its house view in a hawkish direction and now expects the Fed to deliver three rate hikes starting in September. Fed funds futures price in a 60% chance of a September hike.

History suggests stocks initially struggle when the Fed resumes raising rates mid-cycle, with the S&P 500 typically going through a one-to-three-month “digestion phase,” Kabra said. However, the benchmark has historically gone on to reach new highs within six months if the yield curve doesn’t invert.