No wonder the market is defying the uncertainty of the war. By yesterday morning, 140 companies in the S&P 500 had reported Q1 earnings (about one-third of ’em) and of those, 73% beat analysts’ expectations on earnings per share, according to Bank of America.
OpenAI's CFO Sarah Friar is worried that the company is spending too much money on data centers and may not be generating enough revenue to support the contracts it has entered into, according to a bombshell report from the Wall Street Journal. She wants more discipline over spending, which has caused disagreement with CEO Sam Altman, the paper’s sources said. Friar and Altman called the report “ridiculous” in a joint statement.
China’s decision to block Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Chinese AI startup Manus raises a number of unanswered questions, Fortune’s Nicholas Gordon tells me:
Scott Gawel, 55, corporate VP/Chief Accounting Officer for Intel resigned his role on April 24 "to pursue another career opportunity," according to an SEC disclosure spotted by Fortune’s Amanda Gerut. On the same day, Nvidia's VP/Chief Accounting Officer Donald Robertson notified his company of his decision to retire. Two days later, Nvidia appointed Gawel as VP/Chief Accounting Officer with a base salary of $800,000 and equity grants with a combined value of $12.9 million.
President Trump is not satisfied with Iran’s position in talks to end the war and he will respond soon. Tehran has proposed reopening the Strait of Hormuz but doesn’t want to give up its nuclear weapons program. Stopping the nukes is Trump’s red line. Trump intends to respond to the Iranians “soon,” per Bloomberg.
Iran’s leaders are in disarray, the Financial Times writes in a must-read article on the internal divisions within the regime. One faction sees the mere existence of negotiations as “pure damage” and thinks they should not be happening.
New Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei has endorsed the talks but his relative silence and non-visibility have created space for Iran’s various internal factions to disagree over the way forward.
One tanker has escaped the Strait of Hormuz and a bunch of others are clustering around the exit point, Bloomberg reports. The Mubaraz—sailing under a Liberian flag with cargo from Abu Dhabi—switched off its tracking responder while in the Strait about a month ago and reappeared off the southern tip of India. Other Iranian ships are massing just beyond the U.S. blockade line.
U.S. air travel has “slowed substantially” below levels in 2024 and 2025, according to Bank of America analyst Aditya Bhave. Air travel usually falls off a bit at the time of year but “we think the slowdown is likely due to the impact of the Iran war on not only airfares but also confidence.”
The U.K. and Australia import the most jet fuel. The U.S. and the Netherlands are net exporters, per data from Apollo Global Management’s Torsten Sløk.
You should pick your credit card perks like Warren Buffett picks his stocks, TD Bank exec says - Catherina Gioino
Former president of Costa Rica on de-risking fertilizer shocks: how $700 billion in subsidies can do more - Carlos Alvarado Quesada
Bitcoin drives back toward $80K—but one billionaire may be fueling much of the rally - Jack Kubinec
Reed Hastings says AI will drive a return to humanities: ‘I’d be doubling down on emotional skills’ - Marco Quiroz-Gutierrez
Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff says AI won’t kill entry-level jobs. He’s hiring 1,000 new grads to prove it - Jake Angelo
Incoming Apple CEO John Ternus tells Gen Z an early mistake taught him an important lesson: ‘The care you put into your work really matters’ - Emma Burleigh
Corporate spending on AI data centers by the four big cloud service providers (CSPs), could hit as much as $660 billion this year, according to new research by J.P. Morgan. That would represent growth of 66% in capital expenditures for the year—an additional $200 billion—over 2025, Samik Chatterjee and his colleagues estimate.
It won’t slow down in 2027, either, he told clients: “For 2027, we forecast cloud data center capex to increase 40%+ y/y from the top 4 U.S. CSPs; even though the percentage rate might suggest a slowdown, the absolute increase in capex dollars is expected to track over $210 billion in 2027, representing yet another record by surpassing the robust $200 billion+ growth that we are forecasting for 2026.”
Upper estimate of AI data center capex spending in 2026, per JPM:
The number of years it took for Intel’s stock to finally overtake the all-time high it hit in the 2000 dot-com bubble. It closed at $82.54 at the end of last week. It was still down over 70% from its peak last year. But this year it is up 123.69% year-to-date.
Elon Musk sits out Thomas Massie's primary - Axios
Novartis CEO warns reality of Trump’s drug pricing policy will set in over ‘the next 18 months’ - CNBC
Coffee, fuel and houses: why Donald Trump has an inflation problem - FT
Goldman Sachs fired 26-year-old exec who got up early to make baking videos on TikTok - eFinancialCareers
The Nicest ‘Jeopardy!’ Champ Dissects His Losing Game - WSJ
Sergey Brin Moves to the Right, With a ‘MAGA Girlfriend’ by His Side - NYT
The ability to move house is now a “luxury good”
Moving—as in, the act of moving house—declined more over the last few years for poorer households than it did for the rich, according to Bank of America’s data. “When it comes to moving in the U.S., income matters. Lower- and middle-income households are pulling back sharply, while higher earners remain far more mobile. And the gap is widening—suggesting that affordability pressures are turning mobility itself into a bit of a luxury good,” BofA’s Liz Everett Krisberg and David Michael Tinsley said in a recent note.
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