Good morning. Andrew here. The Trump administration is reportedly considering taking stakes in semiconductor companies — beyond Intel — that were granted money as part of the CHIPS and Science Act, in a major shift toward industrial policy. Cabinet members have said that U.S. taxpayers should have received shares in exchange for funding chipmakers. But there’s some important missing context: At the time, companies like TSMC probably wouldn’t have taken CHIPS Act money if they had to give up equity. The law was meant to persuade such companies to do something that they believed wasn’t economical, namely building factories in the U.S. But the landscape has changed amid President Trump’s tariffs, which has made producing chips abroad much more expensive — and made CHIPS Act money more valuable. It appears that the administration’s approach has been more stick than carrot. What are the implications? Will U.S. companies take government money in the future? And will this approach get the right results? Tell us what you think. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Is the A.I. pendulum swinging again?For years now, investors have clambered to get a piece of the action in artificial intelligence. That’s pushed up valuations to nosebleed-inducing levels, even as some market observers (and Sam Altman) warn that things are getting out of hand. For now, private-market investors still appear to be eager to bid up the value of A.I. start-ups. But yesterday’s market moves suggest that public investors are getting more jittery, raising at least some questions about the future of the tech boom. Things still look bubbly for privately held start-ups — including OpenAI, which is in talks to let current and former employees sell about $6 billion worth of stock at an astonishing roughly $500 billion valuation. That’s nearly twice the market capitalization of Salesforce. It’s also despite Altman warning that investors are getting a little too excited. “Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about A.I.?” the OpenAI chief said at recent media dinner. “My opinion is yes.” And Databricks, an A.I. analytics company, said that it had raised funding at a valuation of more than $100 billion, up from the $62 billion level it attained less than a year ago. But some A.I. froth escaped the public markets yesterday, as tumbles in tech stocks dragged down the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq Composite indexes. Among the hardest hit:
The bleeding continues: Shares in SoftBank, which is betting billions on A.I., are down more than 7 percent today. Investors again appear worried that A.I. hasn’t (yet) lived up to the hype. Spooking some investors, according to The Financial Times, was a new report from M.I.T. that found about 95 percent of companies’ generative A.I. pilot programs did little to nothing to increase the bottom line. It’s a fear that has cropped up on Wall Street before, undercutting the justification for investors to tolerate huge amounts of spending on A.I. (That said, the M.I.T. study’s lead author told Fortune that the problem may lie more in the programs’ execution than in the tools themselves.) A big test for investors’ feelings about the A.I. boom will come next week. That’s when Nvidia reports its latest quarterly earnings.
Target names a new C.E.O. The embattled retailer announced today that it had appointed Michael Fiddelke, its C.O.O., as its new chief, replacing Brian Cornell after an 11-year run. Target’s leadership change comes as the company has struggled to hit financial targets amid economic uncertainty and backlash over its retreat from diversity policies; the company reported lower revenue and operating income in its second quarter; shares have sunk in premarket trading. The Trump administration weighs taking stakes in other tech companies. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick confirmed that the U.S. government was seeking an equity stake in Intel — without voting rights — in exchange for money pledged under the CHIPS and Science Act. He’s weighing making similar demands of other CHIPS Act recipients, including Micron, TSMC and Samsung, according to Reuters. The White House plans big moves for the Fed after Labor Day. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told CNBC that he planned to begin interviewing candidates to replace Jay Powell as the central bank’s chair — the list currently stands at about 11 — in September. And the White House has been arranging meetings between Republican senators and Stephen Miran, its pick to fill a vacancy on the Fed, with an eye to getting Miran confirmed before the central bank’s rate-setting meeting in mid-September. Investors appear poised to push for more railroad consolidation. The hedge funds Ancora Holdings and Toms Capital have acquired stakes in CSX, with Ancora pressing the railroad operator to consider deals with Berkshire Hathaway’s BNSF or with Canadian Pacific Kansas City Southern, according to The Wall Street Journal. (Toms Capital also has a history of calling for deals.) The investments come as Lutnick signaled potential support for Union Pacific’s blockbuster takeover of Norfolk Southern. The peace betDespite a frenzy of diplomatic maneuvering, peace in Ukraine looks a long way off. But investor interest in the country’s recovery has surged over the past two weeks, as President Trump increases pressure to end the war there, Vivienne Walt reports. The trade is showing in the markets again this morning, with shares in European defense giants falling as bets climb for some kind of truce with Russia. “Ever since the Alaska summit was announced, people went, ‘Oh, we are going to get a cease-fire soon,’” Joachim Klement, the head of investment strategy at Panmure Liberum, told DealBook. He has said that he’s spoken to European fund managers and to an Asian sovereign wealth fund, and that they are eyeing investment opportunities in the eventual rebuilding of the war-ravaged country. It could be the biggest infrastructure spending project in Europe since the Marshall Plan. Consider that:
Wall Street wants in. Citigroup has been pitching investors on a debt refinancing deal for Ukraine’s state-owned grid operator NPC Ukrenergo, according to Bloomberg. So far, investor interest is mixed, Bloomberg added. Natural resource riches could be even more lucrative. Barely mentioned publicly in Trump’s separate meetings with President Vladimir Putin of Russia and European leaders was the immense natural resource wealth in eastern Ukraine. On paper, its reserves of oil, gas, coal, lithium, graphite, titanium, uranium and rare-earth metals could be worth about $26 trillion, Robert Muggah, a founder of SecDev, a risk consulting firm, told DealBook. The bonanza makes the war “a strategic contest for long-run industrial advantage, not just territory,” he added. A wild card: Nearly half of that mineral wealth is in territory Russian forces now occupy, Muggah said. After February’s blowup with President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine, Trump squeezed a mineral rights deal for U.S. mining companies, initially in exchange for military aid. But investors aren’t sold. “It will take years if not more than a decade to develop those minerals to begin with,” Klement said. Security is key. Investors are looking for much more robust military support from NATO powers — a discussion that has intensified in Washington and European capitals since Monday, despite Moscow’s vigorous opposition — that could prevent future Russian invasions. “Durable security guarantees remain the gating item for most private capital,” Muggah said. The next phase of talks could be crucial for business. “If the guarantees are too weak, a lot of your long-term investment projects will certainly not start,” Klement said, “because no one knows whether you can finish them, let alone make money from it.” “It’s almost an eerie silence.”—Steven Nekhaila, the chair of the Libertarian National Committee, on not hearing any updates about Elon Musk’s plans to start a new political party. The Wall Street Journal reports that Musk is reluctant to jeopardize his ties with powerful Republicans, especially Vice President JD Vance, with whom he has stayed in regular contact recently. The SPAC is backThere’s a notable shift in the I.P.O. market: The SPAC is making a comeback. After some spectacular flameouts, special purpose acquisition companies lost appeal with investors just as regulators increased scrutiny of the stampede of these shell companies heading to the public market. SPACs accounted for 41 of the 59 companies that went public in the U.S. last quarter, according to S&P Global. Globally, the 796 new listings were a slight drop from the previous quarter, but U.S. blank-check I.P.O.s “bucked this trend,” analysts at S&P Global wrote in their report.
The “SPAC king” is jumping back in. During the coronavirus pandemic, Chamath Palihapitiya, a Facebook executive turned investor and podcaster, leveraged his huge social media following to pitch a string of SPACs to the public. (A few never made it to market, and his firm, Social Capital, had to return money to investors in 2022.) This week, the face of the SPAC craze filed to raise up to $250 million for his latest venture, the American Exceptionalism Acquisition Corporation. American Exceptionalism will target “companies that operate in sectors that we believe will be instrumental in maintaining U.S. global leadership for the next century,” which includes artificial intelligence and defense, it said in the filing. Can SPACs jump-start the I.P.O. market? At their height in 2020, SPACs accounted for more than half of the new publicly listed U.S. companies. But that boom quickly fizzled as the market turned, and investors lost money. A wave of shareholder lawsuits ensued. The S.E.C., under the Biden administration, issued rules to regulate this corner of the market in an effort to bolster investor protections, especially around disclosure rules. But the Trump administration has reportedly pushed the S.E.C. to loosen these Biden-era regulations. President Trump and his family have attached their names to a number of SPACs over the years. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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