☕️ Trump threatens to halt trade with Spain

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🇺🇸 Trump threatens to halt trade with Spain

📰 New York Times asks court to sanction OpenAI

💻 Meta launches its first paid AI coding model

💾 Micron pledges $250B for US chipmaking through 2035

🏦 Goldman Sachs wins $70B from Verizon and Lockheed

Plus: 🌍 11 macro news, 🏢 6 corporate news, 💰 9 deal flow, and 📑 5 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

📰 Top News

• President Trump threatened to "cut off all trade" with Spain, reigniting a months-long dispute over NATO spending and Madrid's stance on Iran, though the legal authority and path to enforcing any such embargo remain unclear.
• Spain's benchmark stock index fell 2.7% Wednesday, its biggest one-day drop since Trump's last embargo threat in March, while the extra yield investors demand to hold Spanish debt over Germany's hit a monthly high on rising risk.
• A single-member embargo would seemingly unravel the recently enacted US-EU trade deal, and any disruption to Spanish imports from pharmaceuticals to olive oil would add inflation risk in the US as Middle East tensions keep energy costs elevated.

• The New York Times, The New York Daily News and 15 other media organizations asked a federal court on Thursday to sanction OpenAI, accusing the company of withholding evidence central to their copyright lawsuits against the AI start-up.
• The publishers say OpenAI acted in bad faith and broke court rules during the evidence-gathering phase by refusing to hand over information showing how its AI systems, including ChatGPT, are trained and used.
• The dispute traces to late 2023, when the Times sued OpenAI for infringing its copyrights to train ChatGPT; other publishers filed similar claims, and many of those cases were combined into one consolidated action last year.

• Meta began charging for its Muse Spark 1.1 coding model on Thursday, its first paid AI product, as it tries to turn heavy AI spending into revenue and catch rivals OpenAI and Anthropic in the market for autonomous "agent" software.
• Pricing, which AI chief Alexandr Wang called "aggressive," starts with $20 in free credits per account, then $1.25 per million input tokens and $4.25 per million output tokens, undercutting comparable offerings from Anthropic and OpenAI.
• The paid push signals a strategy shift from Meta's open-source Llama roots toward selling proprietary model access, as Wall Street pressures CEO Mark Zuckerberg to show returns on AI infrastructure he funds without a cloud business to offset costs.

• Micron committed to spending up to $250 billion on U.S. chipmaking through 2035, a roughly $50 billion increase, as demand for its memory chips surges alongside the artificial intelligence buildout.
• The pledge, which sent Micron shares up 7% on Thursday, is meant to shore up domestic memory production and lock in supply as AI-driven demand for its chips accelerates.
• A separate $3 billion strategic investment includes $500 million for GlobalWafers to expand Texas manufacturing under a 10-year raw silicon supply deal, while peers ARM Holdings rose 11% and Applied Materials, KLA and Lam Research each gained 7%.

• Goldman Sachs said Thursday it secured mandates to manage a combined $70 billion in retirement assets for Verizon and Lockheed Martin, one of the larger recent wins in the market for outsourced corporate investing.
• The deals cover roughly $30 billion in pension assets across both companies and $40 billion in Verizon's employee retirement savings, typically 401(k)s, as large employers hand complex portfolios to outside managers with public- and private-market expertise.
• Goldman is chasing these long-term mandates because they generate steady, recurring fees unlike its volatile trading and dealmaking; its outsourced investment business held about $480 billion at March 31, within a $3.7 trillion asset and wealth division.

🌍 Macro News

• Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh names members of five bank review task forces. LINK
• White House blames Senate Democrats for stalled crypto regulatory nominations. LINK
• Kalshi traders see 54% odds of a Fed rate hike this year. LINK
• Fed's Williams expects oil prices to ease despite Iran tensions. LINK
• Gold steadies near $4,115 after three-day slide amid Fed uncertainty. LINK
• US stock funding markets stay strained after last month's borrowing cost spike. LINK
• US jobless claims fell to 215,000, below economists' expectations. LINK
• Supreme Court lets Trump remove agency heads, but not Fed leaders. LINK
• Japan's pension fund likely to resist pressure to buy more domestic assets. LINK
• Munis held steady Thursday while Treasury yields fell and stocks rose. LINK
• IEA sees global oil demand falling in 2026 for first time since 2020. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• OpenAI's Fidji Simo steps down to focus on health recovery. LINK
• Starbucks builds in-house AI software, hitting Microsoft and IBM shares. LINK
• Coinbase's chief legal officer departs amid senior legal team reshuffle. LINK
• PepsiCo beats revenue forecasts but profit falls short on weak US demand. LINK
• AstraZeneca shares drop 9% after heart drug trial fails main goal. LINK
• MARA shares jump 14% on plans for Texas bitcoin mining campus. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Nearly a third of executives can't track their AI system costs. LINK
• Magnificent 7 stocks trade at narrowest valuation premium to S&P 500 in years. LINK
• Citi favors Rockwell, Emerson, and Honeywell as top physical AI plays. LINK
• Vanguard's Joe Davis backs value stocks, global equities, and bonds long-term. LINK
• Sequoia's Cahn says AI needs $3 trillion revenue to justify 2026 spending. LINK

💰 Deal Flow

• AI startup Mercor acquires Andreessen Horowitz-backed Deeptune for undisclosed terms. LINK
• EasyJet weighs $7.7 billion Apollo bid amid takeover battle with Castlelake. LINK
• MiniMax founder forgoes salary as firm seeks $2 billion after share slide. LINK
• Rubrik commits £375 million to UK, naming London its EMEA hub. LINK
• UK lender Lendable finalizes £500 million raise to expand lending business. LINK
• French startup Aria raises $283 million to fund supplier invoice payments. LINK
• Gauntlet raises $125 million from SBI Holdings, its largest funding round. LINK
• Paris voice AI startup Gradium raises $100 million seed round with Nvidia. LINK
• Wonder raises hundreds of millions in likely final round before IPO. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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