Key Highlights

● MARA Holdings reported a $611.3 million second-quarter net loss as Revenue fell 27% to $174.9 million, even as it lifted energized bitcoin-mining hashrate 22% to 70.3 EH/s and pushed toward 4.8 gigawatts of power capacity for AI and HPC hosting.

● Amdocs posted fiscal third-quarter revenue of $1.175 billion, up 2.7%, with free Cash Flow of $171.9 million and a record $4.26 billion backlog, anchored by a new 10-year agentic-AI engagement with Liberty Latin America.

● Bilibili grew second-quarter net revenues 8% to RMB7.94 billion, or about $1.17 billion, with net profit up 55% and Advertising revenue up 28%, as daily active users reached 116.5 million.

● Digimarc reported second-quarter revenue of $7.4 million, down from $8.0 million, with annual Recurring Revenue falling to $11.6 million from $15.9 million a year earlier, as the company narrows its focus to retail and consumer-packaged-goods authentication.

A Bitcoin miner turning into a power company, a B2B media house selling intent data, China's biggest video community, a watermarking specialist, and a telecom-software mainstay: five very different Nasdaq names, each testing a distinct thesis about where AI, software and technology services actually pay off as the Fed's next move hangs in the balance.

Five Companies, Five Angles on the Same Question

The AI trade that carried the Nasdaq Composite to fresh records through 2026 has quietly split into two conversations. One is about the mega-cap platforms and chipmakers everyone already owns. The other is about the long tail of software and technology-services companies trying to convert AI enthusiasm into recurring revenue, defensible data, or cheaper compute.

MARA Holdings (NASDAQ: MARA), Informa TechTarget (NASDAQ: TTGT), Bilibili (NASDAQ: BILI), Digimarc (NASDAQ: DMRC) and Amdocs (NASDAQ: DOX) sit squarely in that second conversation. None is a household AI name, yet each reported in August 2026 and each offers a cleaner read on a specific fault line: energy-hungry compute, B2B intent data, China's ad-and-entertainment cycle, content authentication, and the unglamorous plumbing of telecom software.

A Hawkish Fed Reframes the Software Trade

The backdrop shifted late in the summer. On August 28, 2026, Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh used his Jackson Hole appearance to warn that Inflation remained too high, and analysts across several major outlets read the speech as hawkish, pushing up the odds of a rate hike at the September 15-16 FOMC meeting rather than a cut. The federal funds target range has stood at 3.50%-3.75% since December 2025.

That matters for this cohort. Higher-for-longer rates compress the valuations of long-duration, cash-burning growth stories most, and reward companies that already convert revenue into free cash flow. It is a useful lens: MARA and Digimarc are capital-hungry or still loss-making; Bilibili and Informa TechTarget are working toward durable profitability; Amdocs is the cash-generative incumbent. The same AI narrative lands very differently on each balance sheet, and with the September decision arriving just one day later, positioning around these names is as much a rates call as a fundamentals call.

MARA Holdings (NASDAQ:MARA): A Miner Rewiring Itself Around Power

The company is the clearest example of a bitcoin miner trying to become an energy-and-compute business. For the quarter ended June 2026, reported August 6, revenue fell 27% year over year to $174.9 million, and it posted a net loss of $611.3 million, a sharp Reversal from year-earlier net income, according to a summary of the release.

MARA held 35,577 BTC at quarter-end, mined 2,422 BTC, and lifted energized hashrate 22% to 70.3 EH/s. Management is pushing toward 4.8 gigawatts of power capacity, secured land rights in Matagorda County, Texas, and awaits regulatory approval for its Long Ridge acquisition.

The enormous loss is best read through fair-value accounting, which flows bitcoin price swings straight through earnings, rather than as an operating collapse. The strategic tell is the pivot from pure Mining toward AI and high-performance-computing infrastructure, where owned power is the scarce asset. If MARA can convert megawatts into contracted HPC or AI hosting revenue, the market may re-rate it away from a pure bitcoin proxy; Long Ridge approval, any HPC customer announcements, and bitcoin's price, which still dominates the reported numbers, are what to watch.

Informa TechTarget (NASDAQ:TTGT): Selling Intent Data Into an AI Buying Cycle

Informa TechTarget is the entity created by combining TechTarget with Informa's tech-media assets, and the name change is worth confirming: this is no longer simply "TechTarget." For Q2 2026, reported August 6, revenue was $116.1 million, down 3.2% year over year, with a net loss of $21.7 million that narrowed dramatically from a very large year-earlier loss, and adjusted EBITDA of $15.1 million.

The company reiterated full-year adjusted EBITDA guidance of 100.0 million and pointed to roughly 59 million permissioned first-party audience members across more than 220 technology-specific properties, plus new AI-enabled search and intent-intelligence features.

This is the purest "intent data" play in the group. Its bet is that as enterprise buyers research AI, cloud and security purchases, permissioned first-party data on who is actually in-market becomes more valuable, not less, in a privacy-constrained, cookie-less world. The softening Top Line shows the B2B tech-advertising cycle has not fully healed, so the EBITDA guidance is the number that matters, along with whether AI-enabled products lift revenue rather than just margins.

Bilibili (NASDAQ:BILI): Advertising and AI Do the Heavy Lifting

Bilibili offers a read on China's consumer-internet recovery and on AI as an engagement tool rather than a product line. For Q2 2026, reported August 27, total net revenues rose 8% year over year to RMB7.94 billion, or US$1.17 billion, with net profit up 55% to RMB339.1 million and adjusted net profit up 25% to RMB703.6 million.

Advertising was the standout, up 28% to RMB3.13 billion, while value-added services rose 5% and mobile games fell 14%. Gross Margin expanded to 37.2%, daily active users reached 116.5 million, and average daily time spent hit 113 minutes. CEO Rui Chen framed AI as a way to deliver content with greater precision and scale.

The profit inflection is real, and advertising strength suggests better ad-tech and recommendation systems, plausibly AI-assisted, are monetizing the same engaged audience more efficiently. The soft games line is the offsetting risk. As a US-listed China ADR, BILI also carries regulatory and geopolitical risk that sits outside the fundamentals, so sustained ad growth and a stabilizing games pipeline are worth tracking alongside continued margin expansion.

Digimarc (NASDAQ:DMRC): Authentication in Search of Scale

Digimarc is the smallest and most speculative name here, and it is in the middle of a strategic reset. For Q2 2026, reported August 13, total revenue was $7.4 million, down from $8.0 million, with subscription revenue of $3.7 million and annual recurring revenue of $11.6 million, down from $15.9 million a year earlier. Net loss per share widened to $0.54.

The new CEO is narrowing focus to retail and consumer-packaged-goods use cases, citing a Secure Gift Card product and a Digital Link platform tied to GS1 Sunrise 2027 and EU Digital Product Passport rules. Subscription gross margin was a healthy 89%.

The ARR decline is the uncomfortable headline; this is a turnaround, not a growth story, and the market will want proof the retail and CPG focus reverses the trend. The intriguing option value is content provenance, C2PA compliance and AI-agent authentication, which management flagged but explicitly declined to prioritize. In a hawkish-rate environment, a small, loss-making name with declining ARR is vulnerable, so sequential ARR stabilization and regulatory-driven CPG adoption are the near-term tells.

Amdocs (NASDAQ:DOX): The Cash Machine Betting on Agentic AI

Amdocs anchors the group as the profitable, cash-returning incumbent of telecom software and services. For fiscal Q3 2026, reported August 5, revenue was $1.175 billion, up 2.7% year over year, with non-GAAP diluted EPS of $1.84 and free cash flow of $171.9 million. Twelve-month Backlog reached $4.26 billion.

Managed services set a record at 67% of revenue with near-100% renewal rates, and Amdocs signed a 10-year engagement with Liberty Latin America built on aOS, its agentic operating system for telcos. The company narrowed full-year revenue-growth guidance to 3.2%-4.0% and reaffirmed non-GAAP EPS growth of 5.5%-6.5%, while cutting its GAAP EPS outlook to reflect restructuring charges.

Amdocs is the low-drama way to own the AI-services theme, monetizing agentic AI through modernization contracts rather than headline product launches, with recurring revenue insulating it from rate swings. Growth is modest and carrier spending is cyclical, so aOS deal count converting into revenue, restructuring costs normalizing, and continued Capital returns via dividends and Buybacks are the things to track.

What Investors Should Watch

Three catalysts frame the next few weeks. First, the September 15-16 FOMC decision: a hawkish surprise would pressure the loss-making names, MARA and DMRC, more than the cash generators like DOX. Second, execution proof points, MARA's HPC pipeline, Informa TechTarget's AI-product revenue, Digimarc's ARR trajectory, and aOS conversion at Amdocs. Third, sentiment: with commentators openly debating an AI bubble, any wobble in the mega-cap AI trade would ripple through this longer tail. Bilibili adds a fourth, separate variable, China ADR risk, that no US data point can resolve.

Five Tests of Whether AI Value Reaches Beyond the Obvious Winners

Five tests of the same hypothesis, that AI, software and technology services can generate durable value beyond the obvious winners, run through this basket. Amdocs shows the incumbent path: modest growth, real cash, agentic AI sold quietly into modernization deals. Bilibili shows AI as an engagement multiplier feeding an advertising recovery. Informa TechTarget is betting first-party intent data compounds in value. MARA is trading mining risk for power-and-compute optionality, and Digimarc is fighting to prove authentication can scale. Against a Fed that may be leaning toward tightening, the market is likely to reward the cash generators and scrutinize the cash burners, and this remains only a map of where the evidence currently points.