News about Block

Block (XYZ) grew third-quarter gross profit 22% year over year, ahead of its own guidance, and raised its full-year outlook again; shares rose about 8% in early after-hours trading. Gross profit reached $3.24 billion, with Cash App at $2.07 billion (up 27%) and Square gross payment volume at $76.4 billion (up 14%). Operating income was $428 million (up 5%), versus $923 million on an adjusted basis (up 92%), with the gap reflecting $435 million of excluded contingency, restructuring and other charges, mostly accrued legal costs. Transaction and loan losses rose 66%, three times as fast as gross profit, as Cash App Borrow and Afterpay lending expanded. Block guides gross profit growth to slow to 15% in the fourth quarter.

Block, the payments company led by Jack Dorsey, unveiled Dessa, a voice AI model trained only on human speech that processes audio directly and can listen while speaking, handling interruptions, laughter and tone changes. Company demos drew amazement online, while filmmaker Justine Bateman warned the technology could help people be deceived, and Binance founder Changpeng “CZ” Zhao saw potential in children's education. Block trained Dessa from scratch on a single Nvidia GB200 NVL72 system and says it can run locally on a MacBook Pro with an M4 Max chip or better. Dessa is currently a research preview offered to a small group of AI safety researchers, and Block has not disclosed the model's size, benchmark results or a public release date.