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Luke Kawa

OpenAI’s leadership reportedly disagrees about when to raise money and how to spend it

Money can’t buy C-suite harmony.

Fresh off booking $122 billion at a valuation of $852 billion, OpenAI’s top brass reportedly have a difference of opinion on how quickly the ChatGPT maker should pursue its highest-profile fundraising — an IPO — as well as how much computing power it should be buying.

The Information reports that CFO Sarah Friar has “told some colleagues earlier this year that she didn’t believe the company would be ready to go public in 2026, because of the procedural and organizational work needed and the risks from its spending commitments,” citing a person who spoke with her.

CEO Sam Altman wants to go public as soon as Q4, in line with previous press on the matter, with some inside the firm looking to beat fellow chatbot company Anthropic to the punch.

While there may not be too much daylight between going public in Q4 and not being ready to go public until 2027, the strategic divide between Altman and Friar apparently runs even deeper.

Altman has made gigantic commitments of $600 billion in compute spend through 2030. But Friar has reportedly “said she wasn’t sure yet whether OpenAI would need to pour so much money into obtaining AI servers in the coming years or whether its revenue growth, which has been slowing, would support the commitments.”

These frictions have reportedly led to Altman icing out his CFO. Citing people who have worked closely with the pair, the outlet reports that Altman has “excluded [Friar] from some conversations related to the company’s financial plans.”

Well, I can tell you that when my bosses and I have had disagreements (about things like pay, responsibilities, or the appropriateness of miniature poodles in the office)... they tend to win.

Of course, drama between Altman and some of the AI company’s top talent or leadership core is nothing new. This reported episode is considerably less spicy compared to him briefly getting bounced from the company in 2023 or the exodus of employees (including Dario Amodei!) who would go on to found Anthropic in 2021.

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Matt Phillips

Iran war winners Dow, LyondellBasell downgraded by Bank of America

Dow, Inc. and LyondellBasell — two petrochemicals stocks that surged as markets priced in shortages due to the closure of the Strait of Hormuz — should decline as investors focus on the long-term outlook for normalized petrochemical prices once the war resolves, Bank of America analysts wrote in a note downgrading the two stocks Monday.

BofA moved its rating on the shares from “neutral” to “underperform,” writing:

“Over time, as chemical markets normalize, we expect 1) investor focus to shiſt back to ‘normal’ or ‘sustainable’ earnings profiles and 2) the conflict to resolve without material asset rationalization, both of which likely bias shares lower over the next twelve months.”

Analysts also lowered their stance on another petrochemicals and building materials stock, Westlake, to “neutral” from “buy.”

While cutting those ratings, BofA actually raised its more near-term price targets for the shares. It upped LyondellBasell to $68 from $55, and Dow to $35 from $31.

But those price targets still imply declines of more than 10% compared to where both shares were trading late Monday morning. Both stocks are up roughly 30% since the start of the Iran war.

markets
Luke Kawa

BNY and Robinhood to run “Trump accounts”

The Treasury Department named BNY as the financial agent to manage savings accounts for children established by the 2025 tax law, with the bank partnering with Robinhood Markets to serve as the brokerage and initial trustee. A custom “Trump accounts app” will be created as part of this venture.

The news was first reported by The Wall Street Journal.

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

These so-called “Trump accounts” were part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which sees the government contribute $1,000 toward an investment account for each child born in 2025 through 2028.

Exclusive | Treasury Taps BNY, Robinhood to Help Run Trump Accounts for Children

Exclusive | Treasury Taps BNY, Robinhood to Help Run Trump Accounts for Children

(Robinhood Markets Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions.)

These so-called “Trump accounts” were part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which sees the government contribute $1,000 toward an investment account for each child born in 2025 through 2028.

markets
Luke Kawa

Memory stocks forget TurboQuant and remember how to rally

US memory stocks are forgetting about a negative catalyst and remembering what it’s like to lead major indexes.

Shares of Micron, Western Digital, Sandisk, and Seagate Technology Holdings are soaring in early trading on Monday.

Morgan Stanley reiterated its confidence in hard drive disk sellers on Monday, saying that recent channel checks “point to strengthening demand, elongating visibility, and most importantly, a much stronger pricing outlook.”

Analyst Erik Woodring boosted his price target on Seagate to $582 from $468 and on Western Digital to $380 from $369.

Aside from that, there’s no real news supporting their advance, so this looks to be a case of, “We now return to our regularly scheduled programming,” a world in which memory stocks benefit from a substantial supply/demand imbalance and enjoy ample pricing power thanks to the AI boom.

The group slumped in early March when the US-Israeli attacks on Iran began, as the war sparked an unwind of popular trades, and then sold off again late in the month after Google published details on its TurboQuant algorithm, which could decrease memory intensity in data center environments.

It’s worth noting that after March 25 was when the US stock market, in general, really hit the skids. So after that negative catalyst, the group was getting caught up in a tide of risk-off activity.

Wall Street analysts at Bernstein and Bank of America, among others, suggested the TurboQuant-inspired sell-off in the group was overdone.

“Despite TurboQuant, GOOGL capex still up +100% YoY,” wrote BofA analyst Vivek Arya, who added that Google “has been publishing similar techs over the last 18 months.”

With Monday’s early gains, these stocks (ex Micron) have now recovered all their post-TurboQuant declines.

markets
Luke Kawa

Applied Optoelectronics jumps after hyperscaler more than doubles its recent order

Applied Optoelectronics is soaring on Monday after a hyperscaler upped demand for its components, which help servers in data centers relay information.

After the close on Thursday, the optics and networking company announced that a key customer ordered an additional $71 million worth of 800-gigabit single-mode data center transceivers. Per the press release, orders from this buyer now total $124 million since mid-March, with this commitment doubling AAOI’s backlog for this customer.

The stock is up more than 5% in premarket trading; other names in the industry like Coherent, Lumentum, and POET Technologies are also trading well in the green.

Shares of AAOI ended Thursday up 20% before this news dropped, with the industry having displayed strong momentum as of late to reaffirm its status as one of the few areas of the AI trade that investors have loved in 2026.

“We anticipate completing delivery of the initial order in the third quarter, with this new order by end of this year,” said Dr. Thompson Lin, founder, chairman, and CEO of Applied Optoelectronics. “We also recently shipped the first 10,000 units of an 800G single-mode transceiver order to another hyperscale datacenter customer.”

markets
Luke Kawa

US job growth crushes estimates in March, with the unemployment rate unexpectedly dipping to 4.3%

US hiring surged in March, with job growth of 178,000 well ahead of estimates while the unemployment rate unexpectedly edged down to 4.3%.

Economists had anticipated nonfarm payrolls growth of 65,000 for the month with the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.4%.

Event contracts had presumed that job growth would come in between 70,000 and 80,000, a sunnier view than Wall Street.

Prediction markets had anticipated roughly 70% odds that the unemployment rate would hold steady at 4.4%, with a much higher implied likelihood of an increase versus a decrease.

(Event contracts are offered through Robinhood Derivatives, LLC — probabilities referenced or sourced from KalshiEx LLC or ForecastEx LLC.)

S&P 500 equity futures, which were modestly negative ahead of the report in thin holiday trading, were little changed in the immediate aftermath of this release. Treasury yields jumped, with the 10-year yield rising to 4.35% from 4.31%.

The inflationary impact of the higher crude prices in the wake of US-Israeli attacks on Iran and the subsequent challenges in shipping oil through the Strait of Hormuz has been the dominant macroeconomic development of the past month, rather than US labor market data.

Before the conflict began, roughly 60 basis points of easing by the Federal Reserve was priced in for 2026. Heading into this release, that slimmed to just 5 basis points as US gas prices jumped above $4 per gallon.

The Federal Reserve’s “dot plot” from the March meeting still suggests that officials think it will be appropriate to lower the policy rate this year if the economy unfolds in line with their expectations.

The February jobs report had been a big disappointment, with jobs unexpectedly contracting and the unemployment rate edging higher. With this release, the February figures were revised to show an even larger decline of 133,000.

Strikes that in February had weighed on employment in healthcare, a critical source of US employment growth in recent years, seemingly reversed. The industry accounted for more than half of net job growth for March.

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