Sam Altman BlackRock Infrastructure Summit Held In Washington, DC

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OpenAI to be added to ARK’s ETF lineup after completing funding round with $852 billion valuation

ARK and buzzy companies go together like early LLMs and hallucinations.

The ARK of the investment universe is long, but it bends toward Cathie Wood’s funds holding the buzziest companies.

ARK Investment Management will be adding exposure to OpenAI in three of its ETFs: the ARK Innovation ETF, ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF, and Ark Next Generation Internet ETF. (Its closed-end ARK Venture Fund already holds OpenAI.)

The ChatGPT maker announced on Tuesday that it had completed its long-discussed funding round, which raised $122 billion and valued the firm at $852 billion. Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank anchored this round, per OpenAI.

Vehicles that offer exposure to privately held juggernauts, like the Fundrise Innovation Fund and ERShares Private-Public Crossover ETF, have attracted a lot of investor attention. However, they’ve also been subject to mammoth volatility — especially Fundrise’s offering, which spiked nearly 400% in four sessions and saw its value become completely untethered from its underlying holdings before proceeding to give up the lion’s share of that advance in the following four trading days.

SpaceX reportedly files confidentially for IPO

SpaceX confidentially filed its draft IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, the next step toward what is expected to be a blockbuster summer listing.

Elon Musk’s satellite and rocket company could raise around $75 billion in an IPO that would value it at more than $1.75 trillion — both records — though the exact amounts won’t be settled until it goes public, likely in June.

Another notable thing about this IPO: the portion of shares committed to individual investors is expected to be much higher than in traditional IPOs — per Reuters, up to 30%, versus the typical 10% — a move that could broaden retail participation in one of the most anticipated public offerings ever.

SpaceX Has Filed Confidentially for IPO Ahead of AI Rivals

Elon Musk’s SpaceX to Combine with xAI Ahead of Mega IPO

Matt Phillips5h

Energy stocks tumble after massive March

Energy and chemical stocks tumbled early Wednesday on growing expectations that the US participation in the Iran war is nearing an end, and West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures slipped back below $100 a barrel.

LyondellBasell, APA Corporation, Dow, Inc., CF Industries, and Marathon Petroleum — the S&P 500’s top 5 gainers last month — all sank.

Natural gas drillers EOG Resources, Devon Energy, Coterra Energy, and Diamondback Energy dropped, as did integrated oil giants Exxon and Chevron. Fuel refiners and marketers such as Phillips 66 and Valero also fell.

Don’t shed too many tears for these energy giants; the S&P 500 energy sector rose 10% in March and 37% in Q1 2026.

The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund is coming off its second-best quarter on record relative to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, based on data going back to 1999.

Max Knoblauch6h

Nio, Li Auto rise as Q1 delivery totals beat internal guidance

China’s EV startup trio — Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng — are all climbing on Wednesday, following the release of March and first-quarter delivery totals.

Nio delivered 83,465 vehicles in the three months that ended in March, up 99% from the same quarter a year ago and slightly beating the upper end of its guidance. Li Auto delivered 95,142 vehicles in the period, up 2.5% and ahead of its guidance range. The figure was bolstered by 12% growth in March deliveries.

XPeng, on the other hand, saw Q1 deliveries drop 33% year over year to 62,682 vehicles — the company’s first quarterly drop since 2023. Shares are still up as of 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, as the automaker’s March deliveries were up 80% from February’s total.

BYD is down more than 2% on Wednesday, as the automaker posted its seventh consecutive month of sales declines. First-quarter sales fell 30% year over year, Reuters reported.

Matt Phillips6h

Data center trade reboots amid Iran relief rally

Memory, networking, chipmaking machinery, semiconductor, and rack-building stocks were all up early Wednesday, in a broad-based reboot of the data center trade on growing optimism about America’s potential exit from the Iran war.

Companies that make all the core components of data center were on the move early. Memory plays Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings all opened near the top of the S&P 500’s leaders, as they shook off last week’s jitters related to a Google Research announcement about an AI algorithm that might cut demand for memory.

Fiber-optic and networking shares like Ciena Corp., Arista Networks, Corning, Coherent, Amphenol, and Lumentum — popular recent data center plays — also rose. OG data center trades like chip companies Nvidia, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices gained. And the companies that make the machines that make the chips, like Lam Research and KLA Corp, are also catching a bid.

Even the more hard-hat elements of the AI boom were up, with Comfort Systems USA, Eaton Corp, Carrier, and Quanta Services rising. Server rack builders Dell and HP Enterprise also increased.

Clearly, there’s a big element of relief rally at play in the early bounce, building on Monday’s advance, which saw the S&P 500 post its biggest one-day gain since May.