Daily Earnings: Tech giants freeze software hiring | MELI, UBER, SNDK | Aug 5

Today’s earnings confirm that artificial intelligence is fundamentally restructuring software labor models, while upstream hardware suppliers force cloud giants to underwrite the physical infrastructure boom.• MercadoLibre (MELI) instituted a 2026 engineering hiring freeze as human-written code becomes the exception.• Uber (UBER) officially doubled developer output per headcount via near-universal internal AI adoption.• Sandisk (SNDK) locked tech buyers into a decade-long, $94 billion revenue floor to derisk supply.Despite stellar operational execution across these enterprise platforms, massive paper equity markups severely distorted headline profitability metrics today, masking true operating margins and confusing retail markets.