Latest / Key Markets & Headlines / Key Markets & Headlines — Thursday, June 25, 2026

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Key Markets & Headlines — Thursday, June 25, 2026 · Key Markets & Headlines

• Key markets and headlines for today. The most market-moving story this morning centers on Micron Technology, ticker M-U. The largest US maker of computer memory chips surged in late trading after delivering a quarterly sales forecast that blew past Wall Street estimates, signaling that the artificial intelligence-fueled growth run in semiconductors remains robust. Micron expects revenue of approximately fifty billion dollars in the fiscal fourth quarter, which runs through August. Excluding some items, profit is forecast at about thirty-one dollars per share, compared with a projection of twenty-five dollars and thirty-one cents. The company also announced it has secured sixteen strategic customer agreements, each averaging three years in length. This suggests Micron is taking steps to mitigate the boom-and-bust cycles that have historically plagued the memory chip industry. The news comes as semiconductor stocks, including SK Hynix, continue to lead the broader market, with both companies up nearly three hundred percent year-to-date. Turning to other key equity stories, Apple, ticker A-A-P-L, is facing a new lawsuit alleging that it tracks Safari users and shares their data with advertisers, despite promises that the browser protects user privacy. The suit, filed in the US District Court for the Northern District of California, claims Apple infringed upon consumers’ privacy by allowing third parties to learn intimate details about individuals’ lives through a process called fingerprinting. This process enables websites to identify and track users via their browser data. The plaintiff, Sarah Simpson, alleges that Apple heavily markets Safari as a privacy-first browser with anti-tracking features, but in reality, enables fingerprinting that is then monetized through advertiser revenue. The proposed class action seeks to represent all US residents who purchased an Apple device with Safari pre-installed. Affirm, ticker A-F-R-M, was downgraded by Morgan Stanley analyst James Faucette to Equal Weight from Overweight, with an unchanged price target of seventy-nine dollars. Morgan Stanley also removed Affirm as a top pick, noting that the market now appreciates the durability of the company’s growth, funding, and credit. The analyst still sees Affirm as a compelling long-term story, but believes shares are more appropriately valued at current levels. The downgrade is described as a valuation call, with key drivers like buy now pay later share gains and a differentiated product portfolio still intact. Amazon, ticker A-M-Z-N, is making headlines on two fronts. First, its autonomous vehicle unit Zoox is preparing to ramp up vehicle production with a newly refreshed robotaxi design. Zoox said it can produce up to one hundred of the updated robotaxis per week to support expansion plans in the US, pending regulatory approval. The vehicles will be built at Zoox’s Hayward, California, factory and are expected to join the fleet and become available to riders later this year. Separately, Amazon announced an additional thirteen billion dollars in planned investments in India, accelerating its buildout of artificial intelligence and cloud infrastructure in the world’s most populous country. The new outlays will expand Amazon Web Services’ data center capacity in Mumbai and Hyderabad. Amazon also plans to open more than twenty new fulfillment centers and over one hundred new delivery stations across India this year. This comes on top of previous pledges to invest more than thirty-five billion dollars in India by twenty thirty. Chief Executive Officer Andy Jassy is currently visiting the country, underscoring India’s importance as a key growth market as AI fuels demand for data centers. Acuity Brands, ticker A-Y-I, reported solid fiscal third quarter results, with net sales reaching one point two billion dollars, up about two percent year over year. Operating profit rose sharply to one hundred ninety-three million dollars, a thirty-eight percent increase, and diluted earnings per share climbed forty-six percent to four dollars and fifty-six cents. Adjusted figures showed more modest improvement, with adjusted operating profit up one percent and adjusted EPS up four percent. The company highlighted strong cash generation and disciplined capital allocation, including two hundred thirty million dollars in share repurchases year to date. Performance was driven by strength in the Acuity Intelligent Spaces segment, where sales grew fifteen percent and operating profit more than doubled, reflecting strong demand and margin expansion in higher-tech building solutions. This offset a slight decline in the core Acuity Brands Lighting segment, where sales fell about two percent, though margins still improved. The quarter underscores Acuity’s ongoing shift toward higher-growth, higher-margin intelligent systems while maintaining stable performance in its legacy lighting business. Anthropic, the artificial intelligence startup, has accused Alibaba, ticker B-A-B-A, of waging a large-scale effort to illicitly access its Claude AI model using thousands of fraudulent accounts. Anthropic claims that operators linked to Alibaba’s Qwen AI lab targeted Claude’s most prized capabilities, including software engineering and agentic reasoning. According to a letter sent to several US senators and White House officials, the campaign involved nearly twenty-nine million exchanges with Claude between April and June through almost twenty-five thousand fraudulent accounts. Anthropic warns that Alibaba and other Chinese labs are making systematic and unauthorized use of results from leading US models to develop rival chatbots at a fraction of the cost, via a practice known as adversarial distillation. Bloom Energy, ticker B-E, has seen its stock price soar more than thirteen hundred percent in the last year, propelled by the race to power data centers. Bloom makes fuel cells that produce electricity from natural gas, resulting in less carbon emissions than conventional power plants. Oracle agreed in April to use two point eight gigawatts of Bloom components to power data centers after the company installed a fuel-cell system in just fifty-five days, a month ahead of schedule. Brookfield Asset Management has pledged as much as five billion dollars to deploy Bloom devices at data centers, marking the first investment from its AI fund. Google, ticker G-O-O-G-L, is facing more high-profile departures from its artificial intelligence team. Two leading AI researchers, Jonas Adler and Alexander Pritzel, are planning to leave for rival Anthropic, according to people familiar with the matter. Both are viewed internally as key contributors to Google’s Gemini AI model. This follows recent exits, including Nobel laureate John Jumper heading to Anthropic and star researcher Noam Shazeer going to OpenAI. The departures highlight the pressure Google faces from startups like Anthropic and OpenAI, which are on the cusp of going public and offering employees the chance at a rare payday by joining before an IPO. Samsara, ticker I-O-T, introduced the Samsara 360 Camera, new AI multicam capabilities, and two-way voice features through its dash cam for road fleets. The 360 Camera is a single-module device capturing a full three hundred sixty-degree view from one mount point, allowing equipment operators to see potential risks in real time and enabling safety managers to examine any angle of a recorded event in detail. The company is also expanding its AI multicam system with Bird’s Eye View, Rear Collision Warning, and Vehicle in Blind Spot Detection to improve driver awareness during high-risk maneuvers. With two-way voice, Samsara AI and managers can converse with drivers through the dash cam in real time, delivering location-based safety alerts and enabling communication without relying on a phone. In media, Sky, the Comcast-owned British pay TV group, has agreed on terms to buy ITV’s broadcast and streaming unit, according to sources familiar with the matter. As part of the deal, ITV will acquire "The Great British Bake Off" producer Love Productions. The one point six billion pound deal is being finalized by lawyers. ITV Studios will acquire Sky’s Love Productions, which also makes "The Piano," with a valuation between eighty million and one hundred twenty million pounds, plus an earn-out. The tie-up aims to create a top-three UK streamer to compete with global giants like Netflix, YouTube, Amazon Prime Video, and Disney Plus. Kalshi, the rapidly growing predictions market, is reportedly in talks to raise funds at a valuation of about forty billion dollars, according to the Financial Times. The company could close a fresh funding round as soon as the third quarter of this year. Kalshi raised one billion dollars at a twenty-two billion dollar valuation last month, and attracted more than seventeen billion dollars in trading volume, up from less than five billion a year ago. The company’s rapid rise has been helped by US regulators’ light-touch approach to prediction market companies and President Trump’s de facto blessing. Sports bets dominate the platform, accounting for about sixty-five percent of Kalshi’s volume, and wagers similar to parlays have proved wildly popular since their rollout last September. Meta is aggressively shifting from human labor to artificial intelligence across moderation and internal operations. About fifty percent of content review requests are already handled by large language models, with a goal of exceeding ninety percent automation for certain categories by the end of the year. The company is also using AI to reduce operating costs by automating tasks like coding and internal workflows. Employees have been directed to rely on Meta’s “Muse Spark” model for moderation and customer support. Meta frames the transition as performance-based, stating that these systems are deployed once they consistently outperform existing human-led enforcement methods. OCI, the Dutch chemicals company, confirmed it received an indicative takeover proposal of four point one zero euros per share from NNS Holding, a member of the privately owned NNS Group. The proposal is presented as an alternative solution to the current impasse in ongoing negotiations with Orascom Construction. Some OCI directors view the indicative offer as a better alternative to other options, including a solvent wind-down. NNS intends to file its voluntary all-cash public offer for OCI with the Dutch Authority for the Financial Markets in the coming week. OCI received a proposal from Orascom in twenty twenty-five, but a vote on the deal was delayed by an Enterprise Chamber order. OpenAI unveiled an artificial intelligence processor called Jalapeño, which incorporates silicon from Broadcom and rack technology from Celestica. The chip is designed specifically for AI inference, which refers to using trained large-language models to execute tasks and solve problems. Jalapeño will be part of a broader AI platform set for initial deployment by the end of the year and will eventually be used at gigawatt scale with OpenAI’s data-center partners, including Microsoft. In a separate development, publishers that collectively own and operate nearly four hundred newspapers are suing OpenAI and Microsoft for scraping their content to build products like ChatGPT and Microsoft Copilot without permission or compensation. The complaint, filed in the US District Court for the Southern District of New York, alleges that the defendants systematically and secretly crawled the publishers’ websites, copied articles and other original works onto their own servers, used them to train large language models, stripped out copyright management information, and reproduced the works in response to user prompts. The publishers argue that these generative AI products have made billions of dollars in market value for the defendants, without any compensation to the publishers. Qualcomm, ticker Q-C-O-M, confirmed it is acquiring Modular for about three point nine billion dollars in stock, adding artificial intelligence software capabilities that will aid its push into data centers. The two companies plan to close the transaction in the second half of twenty twenty-six, with Qualcomm set to issue nineteen point two million shares to Modular’s owners. Modular’s technology offers customers versatility in how they offer AI services, with the ability to process queries via the cloud or on smartphones and other devices. Qualcomm notes that software will need to work on multiple chips from different suppliers, requiring an open system. Intel-backed SambaNova is set to raise between eight hundred million and one billion dollars at a ten billion dollar valuation, according to The Information. Chairman Lip-Bu Tan discussed the plans for the raise at an event, and sources familiar with the deal note the valuation is about five times higher than the prior round just four months ago. Sony Pictures will invest one hundred million dollars and take a minority stake in virtual reality venue operator Cosm, as the studio continues to build a business in communal experiences. As part of the investment, Sony Pictures Chief Executive Ravi Ahuja will join Cosm’s board of directors. The size of Sony’s minority stake was not disclosed, but the investment marks Sony’s latest venture into experiential entertainment. The European Union is set to approve Paramount Skydance’s eighty-one billion dollar bid for Warner Bros. Discovery, ticker W-B-D, if the company accepts certain remedies to allay competition concerns, according to the Financial Times. Remedies might include Paramount divesting its joint venture with Universal Pictures that distributes movies in several international markets. A final decision has not yet been made. Turning to macro and rates, US investment-grade bond sales set another record in June, fueled by voracious investor demand and a wave of borrowing tied to the artificial intelligence spending boom. Issuance has reached one hundred seventy-five billion dollars, sixty percent above the total for all of June twenty twenty-five and topping the previous high set in twenty twenty, when near-zero interest rates in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic drove a borrowing frenzy. The brisk pace of debt issuance underscores how heavily debt markets are being shaped by technology companies funding the AI infrastructure buildout. Nvidia and SpaceX each sold twenty-five billion dollars of high-grade bonds this month, helping drive volume well above dealers’ June forecasts of about one hundred thirty billion dollars. Also fueling the borrowing spree are expectations that the Federal Reserve may soon boost rates, following Chairman Kevin Warsh’s commitment to bringing US inflation down. That has prompted companies to lock in financing before borrowing costs climb further. The European Union’s US trade deal is set to go into effect after the bloc gave its final sign-off, banking that the pact will ensure some stability despite ongoing economic tensions. EU member states approved the agreement on Thursday, ending nearly a year of halting ratification talks that almost derailed the arrangement. Under the deal, the EU will erase levies on US industrial goods and some agriculture products in exchange for a fifteen percent tariff ceiling on its US exports. The deal’s implementation is likely to offer some immediate relief to strained transatlantic ties, as US President Donald Trump had threatened to hit the EU with fresh tariffs if it didn’t move forward by July fourth. However, the two sides remain at odds over issues like metals tariffs and tech regulations, which could upend the relationship in the coming months. Iraq said it might one day consider leaving OPEC unless the group accommodates it with a higher oil production quota, just a few months after the United Arab Emirates quit the group to pump more oil. The Oil Ministry spokesman said that while Iraq currently has no intention of withdrawing from OPEC and remains committed to operating within the organization’s framework, it is moving forward with increasing production to align with its capabilities and needs. If OPEC does not raise Iraq’s production level, the ministry indicated a decision would have to be made regarding whether to remain in or withdraw from the group. OPEC has been rocked in recent months by the departure of the UAE, following years of tension with Saudi Arabia over output restraints. In the United Kingdom, key members of the Burnham team are reportedly looking at breaking up the Treasury and reforming the Bank of England’s mandate to refocus the government’s growth agenda. Both former Bank of England economist Andy Haldane and former transport secretary Louise Haigh advocate for breaking up the Treasury to form a standalone growth unit. Haigh has also suggested the Bank of England could be reformed to see whether better coordination with government policy and a greater focus on economic growth should be included. Moving to event-driven headlines, EasyJet signaled it is willing to entertain a higher offer from Castlelake by granting the US investment firm more time and access to improve on its latest bid, which values the UK discount carrier at about four point nine three billion pounds, or six and a half billion dollars. The airline sought an offer extension to July fifth, giving Castlelake a little more than an additional week to weigh its options. Castlelake’s bidding group includes Brookfield Asset Management as well as European Union nationals, among them airline executives Peter Bellew and Mark Breen, who would hold a majority to overcome ownership restrictions. EasyJet said the sweetened bid of six pounds fifty a share still falls short, while the extra time and more access to limited commercial information might produce a more attractive proposal that better reflects the carrier’s value. Castlelake’s latest bid improves on a previous offer of six pounds twenty-five a share. EasyJet’s shares have consistently traded well below that range, suggesting investors are doubtful a bid will materialize at that level. On Thursday, the stock jumped as much as five point nine percent to five hundred seventy-one point four pence. Jefferies, ticker J-E-F, posted second-quarter earnings that missed analyst estimates as the bank pulled in less fees from Point Bonita, which bet on the embattled auto-parts supplier First Brands Group. Earnings per share of one dollar and two cents fell short of the one dollar and sixteen cent average estimate from analysts in a Bloomberg survey. Asset-management fees and investment-return revenues were down thirty-five percent compared with the same period a year earlier. The bank has been grappling with the fallout from First Brand bets made by Point Bonita, which was managed by the bank’s Leucadia Asset Management arm. However, Jefferies’ overall results were buoyed by a fifty-seven percent jump in investment-banking revenue, the highest quarter on record for that business, while trading desks posted a nearly fourteen percent gain. The company’s net income surged one hundred fifty-seven percent from a year earlier to two hundred twenty-six point two million dollars. Kioxia Holdings plans to offer US depositary shares in the spring of twenty twenty-seven and conduct a stock split to take advantage of runaway demand for exposure to AI-related semiconductor stocks. The supplier of NAND storage has grown into Japan’s most valuable company this year, thanks to an AI-fueled boom for memory products, and joins rival SK Hynix in seeking access to the world’s largest financial arena. Kioxia, which had previously said it planned an eventual listing in the US, is also actively considering a stock split domestically to expand its investor base. Lockheed Martin, ticker L-M-T, has been awarded a contract worth as much as thirty-five billion dollars from the US Defense Department to quadruple production of missile-defense interceptors as part of a broader effort by the Trump administration to bolster munitions output. The defense contractor will increase production of Terminal High Altitude Area Defense, or Thaad, interceptors under the seven-year undefinitized contract action. The award stems from a framework agreement reached with the Pentagon in January to significantly increase production over a multi-year period. It’s the latest agreement stemming from the administration’s campaign to mobilize the defense industrial base, an effort that President Trump has increasingly made a White House priority as military planners work to replace thousands of missiles and interceptors used during months of conflict with Iran. Ryman Hospitality Properties, ticker R-H-P, is exploring the sale of its seventy percent interest in Opry Entertainment Group, which owns storied country music venues such as the Grand Ole Opry House and the Ryman Auditorium. The Nashville-based real estate investment trust has hired Morgan Stanley to find a buyer. There’s no certainty that a sale will occur. The Grand Ole Opry is a regular, live country-music radio broadcast and the longest-running radio show in America, dating back to nineteen twenty-five. The Ryman Auditorium, known as the “Mother Church of Country Music,” was the original home of the Grand Ole Opry from nineteen forty-three until nineteen seventy-four. Germany’s Merck KGaA announced a deal to buy US lab-tools supplier Bio-Techne for eleven point four billion dollars, marking its biggest acquisition in recent years. Merck offered seventy-three dollars a share in cash to buy Minneapolis-based Bio-Techne, giving it an enterprise value of about eleven point three billion dollars. The price represents a twenty-four percent premium to Bio-Techne’s closing price on Wednesday. The proposed acquisition is an early move by Merck’s newly appointed chief executive, Kai Beckmann, to bolster the business. The deal, subject to regulatory approvals and to approval by Bio-Techne shareholders, will be funded through a combination of existing cash and new debt. Looking at market trends and charts, even with the recent pullback, semiconductor stocks remain about sixty percent above their two hundred-day moving average. SK Hynix and Micron are leading the way, each up nearly three hundred percent year-to-date, according to Bloomberg data. Despite Tuesday’s sell-off, more stocks advanced than declined, indicating that rotation continues in the equity markets. Meanwhile, Michael Saylor’s Strategy Inc. continues its slide even as the price of Bitcoin has stabilized. That wraps up the key markets and headlines for today. Thanks for listening.