Latest / Key Markets & Headlines / Key Markets & Headlines — Friday, May 15, 2026
Transcript
- Key markets and headlines for today. The most market-moving story this morning centers on Apple and OpenAI. Their two-year-old partnership has become strained, with OpenAI reportedly failing to see the expected benefits from the deal and now preparing possible legal action. According to people familiar with the matter, OpenAI lawyers are working with an outside legal firm on options that could include sending Apple, ticker A-A-P-L, a notice alleging breach of contract. OpenAI had believed that integrating ChatGPT into Apple software would drive more users to subscribe to the chatbot, deepen integration across Apple apps, and secure prime placement within Siri. Instead, Apple’s use of OpenAI technology across its operating systems has remained limited, and the features can be difficult to find. OpenAI is still hoping to resolve its issues with Apple outside of court, but Apple is reportedly preparing to open its platforms to rival AI providers, including Anthropic’s Claude and Google Gemini, later this year. This development could have significant implications for the competitive landscape in artificial intelligence and the integration of AI into consumer devices. Turning to other major equity stories, Cerebras Systems made a dramatic debut in public markets. Shares jumped sixty-eight percent in its first day of trading after raising five point five billion dollars in the year’s largest IPO so far. Cerebras, based in Sunnyvale, California, closed at three hundred eleven dollars and seven cents per share on Thursday in New York, well above its one hundred eighty-five dollar IPO price, after being halted earlier for volatility. The IPO was more than twenty-five times oversubscribed and raised nearly sixty percent more than its initial target, pricing above a marketed range that had already been revised higher. The trading gives Cerebras a market value of sixty-seven billion dollars, or about eighty-three billion dollars on a fully diluted basis. The company’s strong debut underscores investors’ surging appetite for artificial intelligence data centers and the chips that power them. Figma, ticker F-I-G, also made headlines after posting another earnings beat and raising guidance, which helped ease investor concerns that artificial intelligence would hurt software companies. Revenue rose forty-six percent year over year to three hundred thirty-three million dollars. Adjusted earnings per share came in at ten cents, beating the six cents expected. Figma lifted its full-year revenue guidance to a range of one point four two two billion to one point four two eight billion dollars, citing early traction in its AI monetization efforts. The company said its new AI credit limits are starting to work, with more than seventy-five percent of Organization and Enterprise users who had previously exceeded limits continuing to use AI credits after the rollout. New AI products, including its Model Context Protocol server and AI assistant, are also helping convert users to paid plans. However, Figma noted that AI investment is pressuring margins, and it now expects its twenty twenty-six non-GAAP operating margin to be about nine percent at the midpoint, down from twelve percent in twenty twenty-five. Piper Sandler analyst Billy Fitzsimmons lowered the firm’s price target on Figma to thirty dollars from thirty-five but kept an Overweight rating on the shares. The firm highlighted Figma’s impressive first quarter, with revenue growth of forty-six percent year over year, a revenue beat of five and a half percent, and net dollar retention of one hundred thirty-nine percent. The midpoint of Figma’s second quarter revenue growth guidance is forty percent year over year, nine points ahead of consensus, which challenges the view that AI competition will materially impact growth in the near term. Management also raised the fiscal year twenty twenty-six revenue growth midpoint to thirty-five percent year over year. Piper Sandler continues to believe Figma is one of the few application-layer names that can deliver strong upside to numbers. In other notable corporate news, Alphabet, ticker G-O-O-G, sold five hundred seventy-six and a half billion yen, or three point six billion dollars, of bonds in the largest ever yen deal by a non-Japanese company. The debut yen bond by the parent of Google included two hundred point five billion yen of five-year bonds at fifty basis points over mid-swaps, with six other tranches as part of the sale. This latest bond sale is part of a series that has raised nearly sixty billion dollars for Alphabet over the past four months, marking one of the largest corporate borrowing sprees ever. While U.S. investors are showing signs of fatigue, Japanese investors remain yield-hungry and are willing to snap up paper from big-name issuers like Alphabet. Waymo, Alphabet’s self-driving unit, is expanding its driverless ride-hailing service deeper into the South Bay in the coming weeks. The expansion will bring Waymo vehicles to Willow Glen and Vista Park in San Jose, as well as Cupertino and Campbell. The new territory will add about sixty miles to its Bay Area service area, bringing the total to more than three hundred thirty square miles. Nationally, Waymo plans to grow its service in Atlanta, Houston, and Austin, bringing its total service area to more than one thousand four hundred square miles across eleven cities. Gilead Sciences, ticker G-I-L-D, sold three billion dollars of bonds on Thursday, marking its first investment-grade bond deal in eighteen months. The drugmaker priced the notes in four tranches maturing in two to eight years. The longest bond will yield forty-five basis points above Treasuries, about thirty-five basis points tighter than initial price talk. Proceeds are earmarked for general corporate purposes, which may include funding acquisitions and investments. Gilead said last week it expects to take eleven and a half billion dollars of charges this year related to recent takeover agreements. In the luxury sector, LVMH has agreed to sell the Marc Jacobs fashion label to a venture between WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group, marking a rare divestment for the world’s largest luxury group as it adjusts to softer demand. Financial terms were not disclosed, but G-III said it plans to invest up to four hundred twenty-five million dollars in the fifty-fifty venture. Marc Jacobs, the brand’s founder, will continue as creative director. The acquisition will push WHP Global’s annual revenue to more than nine and a half billion dollars. LVMH has held a majority stake in Marc Jacobs since nineteen ninety-seven. The deal allows the group to capitalize on a years-long turnaround of the brand while offloading a business in the accessible luxury category to focus on higher-end offerings. Delta Air Lines is one of the few carriers opting against installing Starlink internet on its planes. Instead, Delta tapped Amazon’s low-Earth-orbit connectivity service in March to become its in-flight Wi-Fi provider. A Delta spokesperson said the airline chose Amazon’s Leo connectivity service over Starlink for several reasons, including the potential for a broader partnership beyond just in-flight Wi-Fi. Delta’s planned next-generation connectivity project with Amazon’s Kuiper network is not expected to begin until twenty twenty-eight. Pershing Square will disclose a new position in Microsoft, ticker M-S-F-T, in a thirteen-F filing later today, according to a post by Bill Ackman. Ackman believes Microsoft’s recent share price decline has been driven mainly by investor concerns around two key issues: the positioning of Microsoft three sixty-five against increasingly capable AI lab offerings, and the durability of Azure’s growth. He thinks investors underestimate the resilience of the Microsoft three sixty-five franchise, given its deeply embedded role across enterprises and its highly attractive price-value proposition. Microsoft is also rolling back internal use of Claude Code after strong adoption among developers. The company plans to replace most licenses with GitHub Copilot CLI as part of a broader push to consolidate engineering workflows and will wind down Claude Code usage across major engineering teams by the end of June. According to sources, the decision is financial and not about converging on Copilot CLI as its main agentic command line interface tool. In the world of artificial intelligence startups, Recursive Superintelligence, a U.K.-based neolab founded by former Google engineers at DeepMind and OpenAI, confirmed that it raised six hundred fifty million dollars at a four point six five billion dollar post-money valuation. The round was led by GV and Greycroft, with participation from Nvidia and AMD. River AI, a new artificial intelligence research startup founded by xAI cofounder Igor Babuschkin, is in talks to raise up to one billion dollars in initial financing at a valuation of up to five billion dollars. Venture capital firm General Catalyst is in talks to lead the round, and Babuschkin is reportedly putting up to one hundred million dollars of his own money into the company. Babuschkin previously spent more than four years at Google DeepMind and later worked at OpenAI before leaving prior to the launch of ChatGPT. OpenAI’s Chief Financial Officer, Sarah Friar, said the ChatGPT maker may raise more capital even after completing what she described as the largest private fundraising round ever. OpenAI’s recent one hundred twenty-two billion dollar round has given the company a lot of optionality, but Friar said future fundraising will depend on demand, revenue growth, cash flow, and the gap between the computing power OpenAI needs and what it can afford. She also noted that public markets could be an attractive fundraising avenue over time because they are significantly bigger than private markets and could allow the company to tap a wider range of financing options. Anthropic’s legal dispute with the U.S. government over whether the company’s artificial intelligence models will be banned from federal agencies has emerged as a financial threat to other businesses. Design software maker Figma disclosed that it may harm its ability to sell to the government if Anthropic continues to be declared a supply chain risk. Anthropic’s Claude is the large language model on which Figma built AI features for products sold to federal agencies. If the U.S. government bars Anthropic and Figma is unable to find a suitable replacement, sales to governmental entities and highly regulated organizations could suffer. President Donald Trump said in February that the U.S. government would blacklist Anthropic as a supply chain risk following a dispute with the company over the military’s use of its models. Anthropic has since sued the Defense Department, claiming it’s being banned for the company’s opposition to how the technology may be deployed. Figma’s disclosure follows similar risk warnings by other companies, including Tenable Holdings and Freightos, who have also cited regulatory and political risks due to the legal fight with the Defense Department. Elon Musk’s xAI is rolling out its first artificial intelligence coding agent, called Grok Build, in an attempt to catch up to Anthropic’s Claude on streamlining software development. The AI model, which is in early testing and only available for paying subscribers, is xAI’s initial push into professional coding. The agent can complete complex coding tasks following a user’s commands. Musk and xAI are racing to catch up to other AI companies on coding, a lucrative market for artificial intelligence and an area where Musk admits his firm has fallen behind. Michael Nicolls, xAI’s president and an executive at Starlink, has urged staffers to match Claude’s performance across tasks, calling it a near-term goal. Netflix has been working on a new internal studio known as INKubator that seeks to use generative AI to create short-form animated content. The company is hiring for a wide variety of roles at the studio, including producers, software engineers, and computer graphics artists. The studio quietly launched in March, according to several LinkedIn profiles, though Netflix has not yet publicly announced plans for INKubator. Joshua Kushner’s Thrive Capital, best known for bets on startups like OpenAI, has invested about one hundred million dollars for a stake in Shopify. The investment is framed as a bet on how artificial intelligence could lead to gains in commerce. In the fintech space, NuBank posted profit that fell short of analysts’ estimates, as the company had to set aside more money due to growth in its credit portfolio. Net income was eight hundred seventy-one million dollars in the first quarter, up forty-one percent from the same period last year, but below the average estimate of nine hundred thirty-six million dollars. The company boosted its credit portfolio by forty percent in the first quarter compared with the same period a year earlier, to thirty-seven point two billion dollars. However, NuBank’s cost of credit also rose, climbing seventy-two percent in the first quarter from a year earlier. The company said it’s intentionally expanded into higher-risk lending, supported by improved models to assess risk and extend credit profitably. The quality of NuBank’s credit portfolio held up during the period, with the ninety-day delinquency ratio ending the quarter at six point five percent, up slightly from six point four percent a year earlier. The firm’s Mexico unit broke even in terms of profitability after several quarters of losses, a milestone as NuBank ramps up investment in one of Latin America’s most competitive banking markets. NuBank is also in the early stages of establishing its U.S. bank, for which it was granted conditional approval earlier this year, and continues to invest in artificial intelligence capabilities. Its AI private banker functionalities now serve more than fifteen million monthly active users. In the digital marketing sector, Barclays analyst Glen Santangelo downgraded Phreesia to Equal Weight from Overweight, with a price target of ten dollars, down from twenty-four. Growth in the digital advertising space is slowing while competition is ramping up, according to Santangelo. Barclays expects industry growth to remain lackluster, keeping shares of Doximity and Phreesia range-bound. Digital marketing industry players have been reporting slower growth in the past couple of quarters, and the firm sees no sign of this easing. In the sports world, a group led by Silver Lake executive Egon Durban is acquiring twenty-five percent of the Las Vegas Raiders. The equity being sold is from minority investors and not controlling owner Mark Davis. The transaction values the Raiders at nine point nine billion dollars, but Durban’s blended rate in the deal is believed to be under eight billion. When the deal closes, the consortium, which also includes Michael Meldman, founder and chairman of Discovery Land Company, will own close to forty percent of the NFL team. The league’s finance committee has already approved the deal, and other owners are set to vote on the matter next week at the second owners meeting of the year in Orlando. Byron Allen, who recently made a deal for a majority stake in BuzzFeed, also has his sights set on Starz Entertainment. Allen revealed to The Hollywood Reporter that his next target for a full takeover is Starz, stating that he is the second largest stockholder and has a good relationship with Steve Mnuchin, who owns eleven percent. Allen said he plans to control Starz and is not deterred by the company’s so-called poison pill. Paramount Skydance’s planned takeover of Warner Bros. Discovery will be subject to a thorough investigation in the European Union due to the transaction’s potential impact on market competition. Lawmakers from both the European Parliament and the U.S. have sent a letter to Paramount’s chairman and CEO, David Ellison, stating that EU bodies will closely examine market definition, market share threshold, customer substitutability, vertical integration effects, and downstream impacts of the merger. They also cautioned that shareholder approval alone will not be sufficient to finalize the deal. Turning to macroeconomic developments, Argentina’s inflation slowed for the first time in eleven months, marking a victory for President Javier Milei after prices had jumped on the Iran war-related oil shock in March. Consumer prices rose two point six percent last month compared with March, while annual inflation slowed marginally to thirty-two point four percent from thirty-two point six percent. Economy Minister Luis Caputo had previewed that the print would show a slowdown and said the best months for the economy would arrive in June. Earlier Thursday, an International Monetary Fund spokesperson announced the lender’s executive board would vote on the second review of Argentina’s twenty billion dollar program next week, potentially unlocking another one billion dollars for the country. Bitcoin climbed past eighty thousand dollars after the Senate Banking Committee advanced a landmark U.S. digital asset market structure bill following months of negotiations. The so-called Clarity Act would establish the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as the primary regulator for large parts of the crypto industry, while the Securities and Exchange Commission would retain authority to oversee digital securities. The bill now heads to the Senate floor, where lawmakers will need to combine it with another version from the Agriculture Committee. Shares of Coinbase, the largest U.S. crypto exchange, jumped around seven percent following the committee vote. In China, President Trump’s recent trip ended with warm rhetoric but few concrete wins. According to Reuters, there was no major breakthrough on trade, no clear Chinese help on Iran, and no resolution to the rare-earths dispute. The biggest specific commercial takeaway was a weaker-than-expected Boeing order that disappointed investors. The article also highlights that President Xi used the meeting to warn Trump privately about Taiwan, underscoring how tense the relationship remains despite the friendly public tone. In short, the summit produced pageantry and a temporary sense of stability, but little that materially changed the underlying trade, security, or supply-chain disputes. Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe visited Cuba for talks with top leaders, as the U.S. grows frustrated over a lack of progress on getting the island to open its economy and political system. Ratcliffe conveyed to Cuban officials that the Trump administration wished to negotiate with the communist government, but only if it made changes. During the visit, the two sides discussed economic and security issues as well as possible cooperation on intelligence. Ratcliffe reportedly made clear that Cuba must make fundamental changes, though he did not specify what those changes were. He cited the example of Venezuela as evidence that President Trump must be taken seriously. Bank of America strategists are warning that the stock market is ripe for profit-taking in early June due to investors crowding into equities and rising inflation risks. Growing price pressures are having a broad impact in the U.S., from energy and transportation costs to rents, at a time when the market is soaring to fresh record highs. Several key dates next month could spur caution in equity markets, including the next OPEC gathering, the start of the World Cup, the G7 summit, and the first Federal Reserve FOMC meeting under Kevin Warsh. The strategists say that bull capitulation into stocks and tech is likely to be fully complete in the next few weeks, making early June ripe for taking some off the table. They also warn that U.S. CPI is on course to exceed five percent by November’s midterm elections unless the zero point four percent monthly gains of the past half year slow rapidly. Historically, once inflation crosses four percent, the S&P five hundred has fallen four percent on average in the three months that follow, and seven percent over a six-month time frame. In the Middle East, the United Arab Emirates tried to persuade neighboring states including Saudi Arabia and Qatar to take part in a coordinated military response to Iran’s strikes but was left frustrated when they refused. UAE President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed held a series of calls with fellow leaders, including Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, shortly after the U.S. and Israel began bombing Iran on February twenty-eighth. MBZ, as the UAE president is known, was convinced of the need to retaliate as a group to deter Iran, but his Gulf Arab counterparts told him this was not their war. The already fractious relationship between the UAE and Saudi Arabia worsened as a result. Qatar considered retaliating after Iran hit Ras Laffan, the world’s largest LNG plant, in mid-March, but ultimately decided against the move, favoring de-escalation. Bahrain and Kuwait, which generally act in lockstep with Saudi Arabia, opted to stay out of the conflict, and Oman was never realistically likely to join given its closer ties to Iran. Peru will delay the official announcement of first-round election results by two days as officials continue to resolve a record number of disputed tally sheets. Electoral authorities had initially planned to announce results of the April vote on Friday, but are still settling disagreements over a small number of ballot tallies. Official results are expected to confirm that conservative Keiko Fujimori and left-wing candidate Roberto Sánchez will advance to a June runoff. The runoff will pit two different economic visions against each other, with Fujimori considered pro-business and Sánchez pledging to reform Peru’s market-friendly constitution and hike taxes on its key mining industry. In the United Kingdom, gilts tumbled after Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham secured a pathway to potentially challenge Keir Starmer for the prime minister’s job, threatening a fresh bout of political instability that investors fear could result in more expansive fiscal policy. The yield on ten-year gilts jumped as much as thirteen basis points to five point one two percent, set for the biggest weekly increase since March. Global concerns about high energy costs and inflation also contributed to the move. Burnham’s announcement that he intends to run for Parliament, a prerequisite to challenge Starmer, helped put the pound on track for its worst week since twenty twenty-four against the dollar. The prospect of Burnham becoming prime minister is seen as a risk by U.K. bond traders, who fear he might increase public spending and with it gilt issuance. Although Burnham said that his remarks last year about the country being “in hock” to bond markets were taken out of context, it nonetheless spooked investors. He has suggested there could be an exception for defense spending that would sidestep the government’s fiscal rules. Turning to event-driven news, China agreed to buy two hundred Boeing planes, President Donald Trump said, in a multibillion-dollar deal that would mark the nation’s first purchase of U.S.-made commercial jets in nearly a decade. Trump’s announcement fell short of the five hundred aircraft Chinese airlines were expected to buy at the upper extreme of a landmark deal. Boeing shares fell as much as five point four percent after the announcement. Resuming sales to China would help Boeing shore up its finances amid a corporate turnaround led by Chief Executive Officer Kelly Ortberg and end Boeing’s lengthy order drought in the world’s second-biggest aviation market. Bloomberg Intelligence analyst George Ferguson said an order for two hundred jets is a disappointment for a market looking for three hundred or more. DexCom said it plans to add two independent directors to its board as it works with activist investor Elliott Investment Management. The company has started searching for candidates with experience in medical technology leadership or lean operations after entering an agreement with Elliott. With the two additions, DexCom will have appointed six new independent directors since the start of twenty twenty-three. DexCom also said it will rename its technology committee as the operations and innovation committee, expanding its mandate to focus on scaling efforts including operations and quality. Ford Motor became the latest old economy manufacturing company to be swept up in the hype around artificial intelligence after the automaker’s pivot toward energy storage sent its stock surging. Shares climbed as much as ten percent Thursday, pushing the two-day gain to twenty-five percent, the biggest intraday advance since March twenty twenty. Ford is investing two billion dollars to get into the energy storage business, including converting a Kentucky factory from making electric vehicle batteries to producing large energy cells for storage systems. Chief Executive Officer Jim Farley said the company is already seeing strong demand for its energy storage batteries and is in the contracting phase with several customers. Analysts cautioned that the rally appears driven more by AI-related momentum speculation than a sober reassessment of Ford’s long-term prospects. JPMorgan’s trading effort in the one point eight trillion dollar private-credit market is building momentum after years of sluggish growth. The bank has traded roughly two billion dollars of private-credit loans this year, more than in all previous years combined. The pickup in activity coincides with turmoil in private credit, where concerns over credit quality and artificial intelligence’s impact on software companies have prompted investors to request withdrawals from funds. JPMorgan executives said the current period of stress is likely to accelerate structural change in private credit and increase demand for secondary trading. Most of the transactions so far have fetched more than ninety cents on the dollar despite investor concerns about the asset class. Kioxia Holdings, the world’s best-performing major stock this year, said it would list its shares in the U.S. as it benefits from a global memory chip shortage that’s driven up prices of the vital component. The company is preparing to list American depositary shares and forecast operating profit of one point three trillion yen, or eight point two billion dollars, for the quarter ending in June, far higher than the average analyst estimate. It also posted record earnings of five hundred ninety-six point eight billion yen for the quarter ending in March, surpassing even Toyota to become one of Japan’s most profitable businesses. Kioxia’s shares are up about three hundred percent so far this year, reflecting booming demand for memory as hyperscalers rush to build AI infrastructure. Investment firm Irth Capital is working with Papa John’s largest U.S. franchisee, who operates roughly ten percent of domestic stores, on a potential take-private deal. The deal would include a significant investment from franchise operator Nadeem Bajwa and has been communicated to the company’s board and management. Papa John’s has been in active discussions about a potential sale for the past year. Tate & Lyle has received a takeover offer from Ingredion, raising the prospect of another famous brand leaving London’s stock market. Ingredion has made a conditional proposal worth up to six hundred fifteen pence a share, representing a sixty-four percent premium to Tate & Lyle’s closing price on Wednesday. Shares in Tate & Lyle were up forty-three percent at five hundred thirty-five pence in London, giving the company a market value of about two point four billion pounds, or three point two billion dollars. Ingredion was trading three point four percent lower in New York for a market capitalization of six point five billion dollars. Under the terms of the offer, Tate & Lyle investors would get five hundred ninety-five pence a share in cash, plus up to an additional twenty pence in dividends, valuing the company at as much as two point seven four billion pounds. Looking at some notable charts and data points, the equities rally continues, though with a smaller percentage of stocks in an uptrend, according to Strategas. In credit markets, the move higher in two-year Treasury yields has closely tracked Brent oil futures. In housing, median sale prices rose two point two percent year over year during the four weeks ending May tenth, marking the second-biggest increase in the last seven months, according to Redfin. And in private credit, there’s a comical interpretation circulating of the sector’s love of software-as-a-service companies, as noted by Diameter. That wraps up today’s key markets and headlines. Thanks for listening.