Core Insights - Target plans to lay off approximately 1,800 employees as part of its strategy to address stagnant sales [1] Company Strategy - The layoffs are aimed at reversing the trend of stagnant sales, indicating a significant shift in the company's operational strategy [1]

Breaking: Target plans to lay off around 1,000 corporate workers and eliminate 800 open roles https://t.co/BFt7EI3gM3 ...

Core Insights - GameStop Corp (NYSE:GME) shares are experiencing an increase in trading value, attributed to a resurgence of interest in "meme stocks" driven by speculative retail traders [1][4] - The stock's performance is being influenced by extreme volatility in other heavily shorted stocks, particularly Beyond Meat Inc (NASDAQ:BYND), which has seen a significant rise due to a social media campaign [2][4] - GameStop's recent trading activity appears to be detached from its fundamentals, with traders focusing on the speculative market environment rather than company-specific news [4] Stock Performance - GameStop shares closed Thursday up 5.07% at $23.63, trading within a 52-week range of $20.35 to $35.81 [4] - The stock is currently approximately 2.3% below its 50-day moving average of $24.20 and about 6.8% below its 200-day moving average of $25.37 [5] - The relative strength index (RSI) is at 35.19, indicating neutral territory and potential for upward movement if buying interest increases [5] Market Dynamics - A short squeeze phenomenon is occurring, where rising stock prices force short-sellers to buy shares to cover their positions, further accelerating the stock's rally [3] - GameStop has a high Growth score of 99.14 out of 100 according to Benzinga Edge stock rankings, indicating strong growth potential [4]

AI & Retail Industry Focus - AI agents are the next level of AI, bringing outcomes to retail environments, where operational efficiency is key due to slim margins and budgets [2] - Retailers need to implement AI but often don't know where to start; solutions like Wobot offer easy accessibility [3][4] - The industry emphasizes speed of service and frictionless online-to-offline experiences, making checkout experience optimization a high-ROI starting point [6] Wobot's Solution & Technology - Wobot's video agents on the edge minimize bandwidth throughput while leveraging existing infrastructure to deliver outcomes in retail [3] - Wobot offers 100 automated out-of-the-box use cases, turning existing infrastructure into business intelligence insights [5][6] - Wobot enables integration with other systems, correlating visual data with transactional data for multimodal analysis [7][8] - Wobot combines data sets like QoS transaction level data to understand customer behavior and its impact on sales [8] - Wobot provides trend-level and predictive analytics, enabling retailers to make informed decisions [9] - Wobot's AI allows a human-centric view, freeing humans from base-level tasks to focus on high-impact work [9]

Retail Industry Trends - Retailers face increasing cost pressures and need to maximize value from their infrastructure [2][3] - Store modernization is a significant trend, with retailers seeking single infrastructure solutions for agile feature releases and fleet-level management [6] - Retailers are consolidating physical hardware and applications in stores to achieve more with less [7] - The "store of the future" concept is accelerating due to advancements in AI hardware [8] StorMagic's Solution - StorMagic focuses on the edge retail environment, providing solutions for those with limited budgets and IT staff [4] - StorMagic offers simple licensing based on per server and per storage, avoiding complexities related to cores or CPUs [5] - StorMagic's solution is designed to future-proof businesses, with no software cost impact from running more AI-driven applications [5] - StorMagic's hyperconverged infrastructure solution (SVHCI) is a rip and replace for VMware, reducing lifetime TCO [10][11] Collaboration and Technology - AMD hardware is breaking ground in performance and sustainability, influencing retailers' technology adoption [9] - StorMagic collaborates with HPE to provide integrated solutions on AMD platforms, reducing friction in the market [9][10] - The integrated technology stack of StorMagic, AMD, and HPE offers performative solutions for retailers [9]

Retail IT Challenges & Solutions - Retailers face challenges including thin margins, lack of on-site IT staff, and the critical need for infrastructure to sustain operations [1] - Downtime in larger retailers can cost $9,000 per minute, highlighting the importance of uptime [2] - AMD, HPE, and StorMagic offer solutions focused on efficiency, sustainability, and ease of deployment for retail environments [3][4][8] Technology & Product Highlights - The AMD EPYC processor and HPE DL145 server are designed for sustainability and cost-effectiveness without sacrificing performance [3] - StorMagic's software, combined with efficient hardware, reduces total cost of ownership and allows for scalable growth [4] - HPE DL145 Gen11 ProLiant server with integrated StorMagic is designed for edge deployment, with acoustics suitable for store floors (under 45 dBA) and filtering capabilities for challenging environments [7][8] - AMD CPUs offer high core density (up to 192 cores) and a node-based licensing model, simplifying budgeting and allowing for flexible hardware upgrades [5][6] - AMD 8004 series CPUs are energy-efficient, offering leadership in performance per watt per dollar [8] Partnership & Value Proposition - The partnership between AMD, HPE, and StorMagic provides validated, readily deployable solutions for retailers [5] - StorMagic emphasizes trust and reliability at the edge, ensuring stores remain operational [9]

Industry Focus - AMD focuses on the retail and e-commerce sectors, showcasing its EPYC Server Business Unit at NRF Europe 2025 [1] - The retail industry is seeing trends that enable AI use cases at the edge [2] Partnerships - AMD partners with StorMagic, experts in virtualization at the edge for retail [2] - AMD collaborates with Wobot AI, a multimodal AI company providing insights at the edge with a low-code, no-code platform [2] - AMD partners with Supermicro to host a Happy Hour event, engaging with customers alongside Wobot and StorMagic [2] Technology and Solutions - StorMagic specializes in virtualization at the edge, particularly in the retail space [2] - Wobot AI offers a physical AI, multimodal AI platform for solving insights at the edge in retail [2]

Edge Computing & AI Solutions - AMD focuses on edge-focused, hyper-converged infrastructure to support applications solving specific market problems [2] - Wobot concentrates on building a model plus layer to demonstrate the return on investment of their application in quick-serve restaurants, retail, manufacturing, and stadiums [3] - AMD aims to integrate solutions like StorMagic and Wobot into OEM platforms, offering cost-effective virtualization at the edge with AI capabilities [4] - The combined software solution enables customers to leverage AI integrated solutions on existing hardware, with multiple vendor options powered by AMD for future refreshes [11][12] Retail Industry Focus - Retailers operate with small budgets at the store level, emphasizing the total cost of ownership [6] - The solution aims to solve the problem of converging multiple data streams for retailers, reducing endpoint hardware [7] - Camera technology consolidates various functions, replacing IoT sensors and enabling customer counting and conversion rate tracking [9][10] - Edge-based virtualization and multimodal AI are critical to support various markets, including retail, public sector, healthcare, life sciences, and manufacturing [12][13] Key Benefits - StorMagic operates on as few as two nodes for high availability, simplifying video components and potentially replacing other data source analyzers [8] - The integrated solution offers best-in-class, cost-effective virtualization at the edge, bundled with AI capabilities for generative AI, physical AI, computer vision, and multimodal integration [4] - The solution enables retailers to achieve new outcomes and insights previously unattainable, highlighting that the data center is not the edge [5]

Hello, I'm Aaron Behman, Global Lead for Retail and E-commerce at AMD, part of the Server Business Unit. I'm here in Paris at NRF Europe, and I'm joined by Marc Del Vecchio, who heads up business development for edge and computer vision at Supermicro. Marc, great to see you, man.How are you. Yeah, thanks for having us out here. I really appreciate it.Absolutely. So maybe share with me some of the big trends that you're seeing here at NRF or just in general. Sure, absolutely.Well, you know, AI has been the b ...

Apparel Business Size & Growth - Costco's apparel business has reached nearly $10 billion [1] - Costco's apparel sales have grown by almost 40% over the past five years [1] - Costco's apparel segment growth surpasses competitors like BJ's (28%) and Sam's Club (21%) [1] - Costco's apparel segment is larger than brands like Gap, Calvin Klein, Tommy Hilfiger, Abocrombie & Fitch, and Old Navy [2] Inventory & Sourcing Strategies - Costco sources products directly from manufacturers, who create specific lines for the wholesale club [2] - Costco secures licensing deals with major brands to sell their products [3] - Costco acquires overstock or excess inventory from retailers or third-party sellers [3] Market Recognition & Legal Challenges - Men's apparel sales at Costco experienced double-digit growth in the most recent quarter [4] - Lululemon filed a lawsuit against Costco alleging product duplication, indicating increased industry attention [4]