Latest / Key Markets & Headlines / Key Markets & Headlines — Thursday, June 18, 2026
Transcript
- Key markets and headlines for today. The most market-moving story this morning centers on Apple, ticker A-A-P-L, which is preparing a second-generation iPhone Air for spring twenty twenty-seven. According to people familiar with the matter, the new model, code-named V sixty-two, will add a second rear camera for ultrawide-angle photography and is expected to improve battery life. Apple sees the camera system and battery life as two of the biggest opportunities for enhancing the Air, with the current single-lens camera having drawn the most customer complaints. The updated Air will be powered by a version of the A twenty Pro processor, the same chip coming to this fall’s iPhones. In a related development, Apple plans to increase prices for its products to offset the impact of rising memory and storage chip costs. A sharp surge in artificial intelligence-driven demand from data centers has forced consumer electronics manufacturers into intense competition for dwindling supplies of key components, resulting in significant price increases. Tim Cook, Apple’s Chief Executive Officer, told the Wall Street Journal that raising prices had become unavoidable. Cook stated, “Unfortunately, price increases are unavoidable. We’re doing our best to mitigate the huge increases that are being passed to us, and we’ve been trying to shield our customers from the increases, but the situation has become unsustainable.” Cook did not disclose when the price increases would take effect, the extent of the increases, or which products might be affected. Turning to other major technology names, Adobe, ticker A-D-B-E, is facing new competition from VSCO, the photography platform best known for its popular image filters. VSCO is introducing a more advanced iOS app and an all-in-one subscription plan, moves that put it in direct competition with Adobe and other brands offering professional-grade creative software. The new app, Studio Pro, is being framed as VSCO’s next-generation professional editing experience, with a macOS version to follow later this year. The subscription plan, called VSCO One, will cost five hundred dollars a year and launches later this month. VSCO says the idea is to reduce workflow fragmentation for photographers who often stitch together separate tools for editing, creating galleries, invoicing, and other tasks. In the world of artificial intelligence infrastructure, Baseten, a company specializing in providing software and computing capacity to firms using lower-cost AI models, is finalizing a one point five billion dollar fundraising round. The round will have a dual-tiered structure, with some investors putting in money at an eleven billion dollar valuation and others at thirteen billion. Altimeter Capital, Conviction, Spark Capital, Sands Capital, and Wellington Management are co-leading the round. Baseten’s software gives customers the connective tissue to run, optimize, and train open-source models with their own data, sourcing computing capacity from twenty different cloud providers. In the space sector, Blue Origin is already rebuilding its Florida launch site after its New Glenn rocket exploded last month. Jeff Bezos, founder of both Amazon and Blue Origin, said during a Paris tech conference that some of the launch infrastructure, including propellant tanks and a booster in the integration facility, weren’t damaged by the explosion. The blast was so destructive it generated seismic waves, but the company is aiming to fly again this year and rejuvenate its ambitions to challenge SpaceX. Castelion, a missile startup founded by SpaceX alumni, is targeting a twelve billion dollar valuation in its latest fundraise, according to The Information. Artificial intelligence firms OpenAI and Anthropic have been hiring from Salesforce, ticker C-R-M, at a rapid clip this year. LinkedIn profiles point to close to one hundred moves since the start of twenty twenty-six. Anthropic has hired forty-five Salesforce employees over the last six months, and OpenAI has added forty more, primarily in sales, marketing, and go-to-market roles. AI companies are targeting Salesforce employees because of their deep relationships with Fortune five hundred companies. OpenAI, in particular, plans to double its workforce from four thousand five hundred to eight thousand by the end of twenty twenty-six. Electronic Arts, ticker E-A, is in the spotlight as its fifty-five billion dollar sale to a consortium of investors led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund has been notified to European Union merger officials. Regulators will decide by July twenty-second whether to escalate the probe or approve the deal. The buyout is also set to get scrutiny under the EU’s foreign subsidy rules. Electronic Arts agreed to sell itself to the investors in September, in what is the largest leveraged buyout on record. The investment group includes Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund, Silver Lake Management, and Jared Kushner’s Affinity Partners. Waymo, part of Alphabet and ticker G-O-O-G, is recalling three thousand eight hundred seventy-one robotaxis in the United States after identifying a software issue that could cause the vehicles to enter a closed freeway construction zone and continue driving at speed. The recall involves certain Fifth Generation Automated Driving Systems in robotaxis. Waymo has modified the scope of vehicle operations to restrict freeway driving, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Intel, ticker I-N-T-C, saw its stock surge more than nine percent in premarket trading after U.S. President Donald Trump said the chipmaker will work alongside Apple to design and produce semiconductors domestically. Trump didn’t elaborate on the tie-up, which he mentioned after championing Nvidia and Elon Musk’s Terafab chipmaking ambitions in a Truth Social post. Apple has held exploratory discussions about using Intel and Samsung to produce the main processors for its devices in the United States. For Intel, finding external customers for chip production is a key piece of its comeback plan under Chief Executive Officer Lip-Bu Tan. Landing Apple as a customer would be a massive win for Intel and could help attract additional new business. Artificial intelligence startup Midjourney announced its first hardware project at an event in San Francisco, outlining a move into the personal health and medical industries. Chief Executive Officer David Holz revealed a “full-body ultrasound machine” called the Midjourney Scanner. The company’s goal is to build a fleet of fifty thousand of these scanners, which require users to be partially submerged in water. The machines will debut in “Midjourney Spa” locations, with the first to come in a twenty-five thousand square foot space in San Francisco that will include hot tubs, saunas, cold plunges, and a gym. The device is one of eight projects that Midjourney is currently focused on, split between four hardware and four software initiatives. Microsoft, ticker M-S-F-T, has built a large business selling AI models to Chinese companies. Sources say ByteDance is on track to spend over one billion dollars per year on Microsoft AI and cloud services, with Ant Group, Meituan, and Tencent among other Chinese tech firms spending significant money on AI models via Microsoft’s Azure cloud service. OpenAI has reportedly complained privately to Microsoft that the company is not doing enough to prevent Chinese companies from copying its models. One of Google’s most prominent researchers, Noam Shazeer, is leaving for rival OpenAI, dealing a setback to Alphabet in the multibillion-dollar race to build the world’s most powerful artificial intelligence models. Shazeer, who co-authored a seminal paper that helped catalyze the AI boom, announced his departure in a post on X. He will be OpenAI’s lead for AI architecture research, essentially studying how to build models. OpenAI Chief Research Officer Mark Chen welcomed the move, calling it a big win for the company, which is vying with Anthropic to develop ever-more sophisticated models ahead of an initial public offering. MTV has agreed to pay more than one hundred fifty million dollars to Rob Dyrdek and others that created “Ridiculousness” as part of a multi-faceted deal reached in the bankruptcy of the production company behind the canceled reality clip show. The settlement resolves a host of claims stemming from the network’s decision to end the show shortly after the merger of MTV parent company Paramount Global and Skydance Media. The deal is subject to the approval of Judge Mike K. Nakagawa in the US Bankruptcy Court for the District of Nevada. Relativity Space, a rocket maker acquired by former Google executive chair Eric Schmidt last year, might just beat SpaceX to Mars. On Tuesday, NASA said it hired the company to build a spacecraft to house a suite of scientific instruments, launch it into space, and fly it to Mars. The mission, called Aeolus, will contain four instruments to measure and image Mars from orbit, providing what NASA expects to be the first daily, global view of dust, winds, and temperature in the planet’s atmosphere. The agency said that data will make it safer for landers and, someday, astronauts, to visit the surface of the Red Planet. SpaceX said it had elected Roelof Botha, a long-time Sequoia Capital investor, to join the board as an independent director, less than a week after the Elon Musk-led company’s record-setting initial public offering. Botha, who is South African like Musk, was the chief financial officer at PayPal when Musk was CEO more than two decades ago. He’s been at Sequoia since two thousand three, a venture capital firm that first backed SpaceX at the end of twenty nineteen. Sequoia owns about one point five percent of the company and had also invested into X, the social media network formerly known as Twitter that Musk acquired in twenty twenty-two. Botha is the latest investor to join SpaceX’s board, with other names including Antonio Gracias, Luke Nosek, and Steve Jurvetson. Uber will offer driverless robotaxi rides in Houston in vehicles developed by Lucid Group and Nuro, setting it up to challenge Waymo in the fourth-largest US city. Nuro is already testing the vehicles in Houston, but the service won’t launch until mid twenty twenty-seven. Uber has invested hundreds of millions of dollars in Lucid and Nuro, and plans to offer robotaxi service in the San Francisco Bay Area as part of a broader partnership announced last year. In April, Uber expanded a purchase commitment with Lucid to at least thirty-five thousand robotaxis, which it said will be made available in dozens of markets in the coming years. In Houston, Uber has signed a multiyear lease for a fifty thousand square foot depot and dedicated charging pitstop for the Lucid-Nuro vehicles. Chinese regulators have cleared the merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, according to a source familiar with the matter. This comes after similar approvals from the US Department of Justice and several other countries. Turning to macro and policy developments, Brazil’s central bank cut its key interest rate by a quarter-point for a third straight meeting while flagging a worsening inflation outlook. The bank, led by Gabriel Galípolo, lowered the benchmark Selic to fourteen point two five percent, as forecast by thirty-one of thirty-four economists in a Bloomberg survey. In a post-decision statement, board members said economic growth and inflation had both accelerated, warning that stimulus measures could fuel consumer price increases that are already above target. Cutting interest rates was appropriate “at this moment,” they added, but the “total magnitude of the calibration cycle” still depends on new information. Some economists now believe the easing cycle may be halted as soon as August. The United States will kick off a review of its military presence in Europe, Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said, weeks after Washington rattled its allies with a plan for deep cuts to American military support for the continent. Hegseth announced a six-month Department of War review that will examine America’s force posture and basing in Europe. The review is designed to ensure that NATO is moving fast and “irreversibly toward Europe leading, stepping up to take primary responsibility for the defense of Europe, stepping up to ensure our forces and postured toward America’s global need.” Hegseth said US annual dues to NATO will be contingent on other allies meeting their defense spending targets. On the policy front, the Federal Reserve may need to raise interest rates as soon as September if inflation remains elevated, according to Rob Kaplan, vice chairman at Goldman Sachs and former Dallas Fed president. Kaplan said in a Bloomberg TV interview, “If inflation prints don’t cool between now and we get to September, I actually think the balance of risks suggest it would be wise to take some action, either in September or in the fall.” He also noted that Fed policy moves rarely occur as one-off actions, with rate changes more often coming in a series of two or three. Kaplan cautioned against reading too much into the Fed’s latest dot plot, saying it might not have reflected the US-Iran deal and reopening of shipping routes. The Swiss National Bank retained its heightened readiness to sell the franc, guarding against renewed geopolitical turmoil in a decision that also left borrowing costs unchanged. Policymakers led by President Martin Schlegel restated their “increased” willingness to intervene in the currency, a line they have used repeatedly since the Iran war broke out. The franc weakened against the euro after the decision. The announcement on Thursday also held the Swiss National Bank’s interest rate at zero for a fourth quarterly meeting, putting Switzerland on track to enter a second year at that very low level. Schlegel told reporters in Bern, “If necessary, we have an increased willingness to intervene in the foreign exchange market. We thereby counter a rapid and excessive appreciation of the Swiss franc, which would jeopardize price stability in Switzerland.” In event-driven news, Toms Capital Investment Management has become the latest activist investor to build a stake in Devon Energy, ticker D-V-N, according to the Financial Times. The investment makes Toms Capital one of the top five owners in the shale giant. Devon completed a twenty-five billion dollar transformational deal for Coterra Energy last month. Toms Capital last year pushed for strategic changes at Kenvue and built a stake in Target. The report did not specify what sort of changes Toms Capital may be seeking with Devon. Siemens Energy is considering spinning off its “Transformation of Industry” division, which includes its multi-billion-dollar compressor and steam turbine business, according to Manager magazine. An internal document obtained by the publication concludes that a separation would be beneficial for both the unit and its shareholders in the long run. Even a merger is being discussed. Intertek Group, ticker I-T-R-K L-N, agreed to a nine point three billion pound, or twelve point three billion dollar, takeover bid from private equity firm EQT AB. This deal will mean another British company leaves the London stock market. Shareholders will receive sixty pounds a share in cash as well as the final dividend. EQT is leading the bid, which is also being backed by Abu Dhabi sovereign wealth funds ADIA and Mubadala. The deal is the latest in a string of takeovers of UK companies, including asset manager Schroders and ingredients maker Tate & Lyle. Intertek had rejected previous proposals from EQT, saying they undervalued the company, and had separately been exploring a breakup to boost its value. Private investment firm Mill Pond Capital sent a letter to the board of fiber producer Rayonier Advanced Materials, ticker R-Y-A-M, urging it to pursue a full sale. Mill Pond’s managing member, Daniel Farb, said in the letter that while Rayonier’s assets are attractive, a full sale is the best path forward. Farb wrote that the company has been poorly managed and carries about fifty-five to sixty million dollars in annual corporate overhead, which could be reduced by a strategic acquirer. In November, private equity firm American Industrial Partners made an unsolicited bid to buy Rayonier for eleven to twelve dollars a share, close to a one hundred percent premium at the time, to combine it with Global Cellulose Fibers. Rayonier said in April that it had started a strategic review of alternatives, retaining financial and legal advisers. Looking at some key charts and market levels, only one of the so-called Magnificent Seven stocks has made a new high in June, even as the market rally continues to broaden, according to Strategas. On the Federal Reserve, nine out of eighteen officials have at least one rate hike penciled in for this year, and six of those nine have multiple hikes in their projections, according to Daily Char. In China, a major Chinese stock gauge is on the cusp of a bear market, Bloomberg reports. And in the credit markets, Treasury bills now account for almost eighty-five percent of gross Treasury issuance, near the highest share in over two decades, according to Apollo. Thanks for listening.