Good morning. Andrew here. Warning: If you bet on prediction markets about things you could know about from your work, it may be insider trading. That’s the lesson from new charges against an employee of Google. Also, Jamie Dimon is thinking about spending $20 billion on acquisitions; we go through some possible targets. And take our quiz about the U.F.C. fight scheduled to take place at the White House. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Gaming prediction marketsIn the public’s view, prediction markets are a way to bet on the N.B.A. playoffs, the Texas Senate race or what Costco executives will say on their next earnings call. They’re also often seen as a hive of insider trading, a view reinforced by charges filed yesterday against a Google employee who made more than $1 million on Polymarket. The case raises more questions about how these platforms are policed — and who should do the policing. What happened: The Google employee, Michele Spagnuolo (who used the handle AlphaRaccoon), was accused of betting on what people were searching for on Google — wagers he was sure to win because he had access to internal search data. “Spagnuolo correctly predicted virtually all of the outcomes on these positions,” the Commodity Futures Trading Commission wrote in its complaint. A Google representative said in a statement that using confidential information for making these kinds of bets was “a serious breach of our policies.” Spagnuolo isn’t the only person charged with insider trading on Polymarket. Federal prosecutors in Manhattan last month accused Master Sgt. Gannon Ken Van Dyke, a U.S. Special Forces soldier, of betting on the capture of Nicolás Maduro of Venezuela, an operation he participated in. Insider trading is an increasing problem for prediction markets. Polymarket has faced significant scrutiny because its unregulated offshore platform has long made it easy to bet anonymously. (Kalshi, which is regulated in the U.S., has also suffered from insider trading.) Polymarket has started clamping down on that practice, according to The Information — though some longtime users have chafed at those efforts. “Polymarket will go down the drain if they make KYC mandatory,” one user wrote on the company’s Discord discussion forum, referring to “know your customer” practices. What are policymakers doing? Critics have accused the C.F.T.C., the primary American regulator of prediction markets, of failing to adequately police the industry. (Mike Selig, the commission’s chairman, told ABC News that his agency actively patrolled for wrongdoing.) Some lawmakers are seeking to crack down on insider trading, including Representative James Comer, the Kentucky Republican who leads the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee, and several bipartisan groups of senators. Why it matters: Prediction markets have become big businesses. (Kalshi was most recently valued at $22 billion.) But a growing perception that they’re rife with cheating could threaten their popularity.
The Trump administration is reportedly preparing to fund U.S. drone companies. Shares in Unusual Machines, a drone start-up in which Donald Trump Jr. is an investor and advisory board member, are soaring in premarket trading after The Wall Street Journal, citing unnamed sources, reported on the potential investments. (The Times hasn’t independently confirmed the report.) The deals, aimed at bolstering domestic production, are still in the negotiation stage — equity stakes are a possibility — as the Pentagon vets the companies, The Journal adds. Investors brace for today’s inflation data. The Personal Consumption Expenditures report for April, which will be closely watched by the Fed, is expected to show this morning that headline inflation hit a three-year high of 3.9 percent. The wartime energy spike is a big culprit, and that’s likely to tie the Fed’s hands on interest rates. Lisa Cook, a Fed governor whom President Trump has tried to fire, is the latest policymaker to say that there’s even a rate increase in the cards. Jensen Huang reportedly agrees to join the board of a Chinese university. Huang, the Nvidia C.E.O., is expected to be the latest U.S. business leader to join the advisory board of Tsinghua University School of Economics and Management, The Financial Times reports. Tim Cook, Apple’s departing C.E.O., is the chairman, and Michael Dell and Elon Musk are members. (Nvidia is trying to jump-start business in China as the Washington-Beijing trade war continues.) Laura Loomer, a right-wing agitator, quickly seized on the Huang news, calling it “a massive scandal!!!!” on social media, and a national security risk.
What might Dimon buy?Jamie Dimon, the C.E.O. of JPMorgan Chase, is sitting on a pile of cash and says he’s open to a deal. He even put a number on it: up to $20 billion. While that’s not a big sum relative to the bank’s assets, it got us thinking: Where could JPMorgan, whose last major acquisition was First Republic during the 2023 regional-banking crisis, go fishing for a company to buy? Brian O’Keefe asked Mike Mayo, a banking analyst at Wells Fargo. Here are three possibilities: Wealth management. Driven by solid margins and lucrative high-net-worth customers, this area of finance has experienced an M.&A. boom in recent years. (The First Republic deal already bolstered JPMorgan’s wealth-advisory ranks.) Such a move would tick a lot of boxes, Mayo said, adding, “It could be a high-end private bank, it could be kind of a mass-affluent brokerage firm, it could be wealth advisory.”
Payments. JPMorgan has invested heavily in new payment platforms, including in JPM Coin, a digital token it has tested with Coinbase and Mastercard. The bank handles between $5 trillion and $10 trillion in transactions daily, Mayo said. “There could be more opportunities to enhance the efficiency, the effectiveness, the timeliness or the geographic reach in the payments area,” he added. Digital banking. Dimon recently singled out Revolut, the British banking app that is plotting expansion into the U.S., as an emerging competitive threat. “To the extent that an acquisition could help JPMorgan become the next Revolut outside the United States, that would seem to be attractive,” Mayo noted. There are some big asterisks to consider. Because of its size, JPMorgan would most likely be barred from buying another U.S. lender on antitrust grounds. For that reason, Mayo thinks that a deal, if there is one, would probably happen abroad. Dimon himself is being coy. The bank may have amassed ample capital for acquisitions, but “it’s not burning a hole in our pocket at all,” Dimon said yesterday at an investor conference. “If it sits there for a while, no problem,” he added. Dimon did not suggest any potential targets yesterday. Here are some guesses:
Meta will charge for its chatbotMeta will begin charging customers for access to its A.I.-powered chatbot, a big change for a company best known for its free products — and the latest sign that even deep-pocketed companies are wrestling with the enormous cost of artificial intelligence. Yesterday we looked at how companies were reining in the costs of consuming A.I., including by switching to cheaper models. Meta’s move shows that the companies supplying A.I. models are also reckoning with ballooning costs, and seeking revenue to make up for those losses. Meta is spending a fortune on A.I. Last month the company increased its 2026 capital expenditure forecast to as high as $145 billion, and Meta’s C.E.O., Mark Zuckerberg, said it would spend at least $600 billion on A.I. infrastructure in the next few years. Some investors have looked skeptically on that plan. The company’s stock is down 2.3 percent this year. Meta will use paid subscriptions to offset some of its A.I. investment. The basic tier of the chatbot, Meta One Plus, will be $7.99 per month. A premium version, Meta One Premium, will cost $19.99. From Bloomberg, which reported the subscription news earlier: Meta has long argued that its A.I. investments are already paying off in the form of highly targeted and efficient advertising, which is improved thanks to A.I. models. But the company is also looking for other ways to recoup its A.I. spending, and consumer chatbot subscriptions have become popular with several other A.I. competitors, including Alphabet Inc.’s Google and OpenAI. Both rivals offer similarly priced subscription tiers. The company has sought to expand its subscription business, testing plans for WhatsApp, Instagram and Facebook. It has also tried to cut costs in other corners of its business. This month, Meta laid off 10 percent of its employee base, about 8,000 workers. Investors, eager to see revenue gains from A.I., cheered Meta’s subscription-chatbot plan. The company’s stock price was up 3.7 percent at the market close yesterday.
Quiz: U.F.C. on the South LawnThis question comes from a recent Times article. Click an answer to see if you’re right. (The link will be free.) President Trump is getting ready to celebrate his 80th birthday — and America’s 250th — with an evening of mixed martial arts. Preparations are underway to host Ultimate Fighting Championship matches in an octagon on the White House’s South Lawn on June 14. Construction of the temporary arena, along with a 90-foot-tall arch known as “The Claw,” featuring LED lights and audio equipment, began this week. U.F.C. plans to spend around $60 million on the event, said Mark Shapiro, the president and chief operating officer of TKO Group Holdings, U.F.C.’s parent company, on a recent earnings call. (He added that U.F.C. would lose about $30 million on the event but that it would be “an investment for the long term.”) The expenses include about $700,000 to repair the lawn after the fight, Dana White, the U.F.C. president and chief executive, told Sports Business Journal. How many people will the temporary arena hold for the U.F.C. event at the White House? We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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