This week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ is about how America added more jobs than expected in May, but ironically that sent the stock market down because it bolstered expectations for the fed to raise interest rates this year to cool the economy. Good luck getting anything about that into 17 syllables, let alone making it… emotional. Still, I believe in you! Send me your entry—to haiku at cheddar dot com—by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers.

Now for God’s sake, man, can we hear about the news?

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.26% )   $DJI ( ▲ 0.17% )   $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

  $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.05% )   $SPACZZX ( ▲ 1.92% )   $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 3.45% )   $WMT ( ▼ 0.79% )   $PEP ( ▲ 1.49% )

Open AI files for its big float

OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.05% ) is officially gearing up for Wall Street. The ChatGPT maker confidentially filed for an IPO on Monday, kicking off what looks to be the mother of all tech stock rushes. But do not expect to grab your shares tomorrow. In a statement, the company played it coy: “It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company.”

Like, er…lose money. They still need to freely burn through cash without public shareholders hyperventilating about profit margins. And burn cash they will. Despite pulling in $13 billion in revenue last year, the company expects to spend a staggering $115 billion over the next four years, making profitability a distant dream.

OpenAI is joining an impending avalanche of mega-IPOs, alongside Elon Musk's SpaceX $SPACZZX ( ▲ 1.92% ) and their fierce AI rival, Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 3.45% ) . With a private market valuation of $730 billion, excluding a casual $122 billion from their latest investment round, OpenAI is already floating on an absurd amount of capital. As the company noted regarding their filing, “It’s a complicated set of trade-offs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best.” 

Tech stocks reversed their Monday rallies on Tuesday, continuing to fall by about 2% as investors question the basis for sky-high AI stock valuations.

Quote of the Day

Unrelatedly…how to build an AI-proof career

In unrelated news, welcome, future obsolete humans! Are you panicking about our new robot overlords snatching your cozy desk job? You probably should be. As career expert Benjamin Todd cheerfully notes, "We'll probably see more change to the job market in the next 10 years than we've seen in the whole last generation."

Since AI is currently crushing those "standardized routine, white collar analysis type positions," your dream of safely hiding behind a spreadsheet is officially dead. Instead, Todd suggests pivoting to something our silicon replacements still completely suck at: "entrepreneurial type skills." Why? Because "carrying out a project over many months" is too hard for them, and thankfully, "AI is not allowed to run a company itself," yet.

Forget the old "follow your passion" advice, too. Todd’s new motto is ruthlessly practical: "Get good at something and then use it to help other people... passion is not sufficient for success.” Your best survival tactic is mashing up "STEM skills and social skills" so you can translate technical jargon into "solving a real problem." If all else fails, aim for a job requiring a "physical presence," like nursing. Turns out, algorithms still can't hold a patient's hand.

All those weight-loss shots are costing us $$$

America’s GLP-1 weight-loss drug boom is a cultural phenomenon, but behind the shrinking waistlines, employers are panicking over their healthcare budgets. Luckily, Paul Pruitt, co-founder of SHARx, is here to sound the alarm. Pruitt warns that "6% of all members on employer health plans are now taking one of these weight loss medications" and consuming "about 20% of total pharmacy spend." He calls this explosion "very devastating," lamenting that a single treatment "can easily be around $10,000 a person." He adds that patients take them way too long, creating a "recipe for unsustainability."

Who is to blame for this crisis? According to Pruitt, it’s the greedy Pharmacy Benefit Managers. He blasts their "vertical integration," arguing their monopoly "doesn't always equal understanding or alignment with what their clients or customers need." His selfless solution? Hiring his company, SHARx, to help employers find "alternative means of accessing those medications so they're more affordable." 

Why, thanks, Paul! Now business owners can have thin staff and fat wallets.

Song of the Day: Madonna, ‘Love Sensation’

My wife is mocking me for liking every single track off the new Madonna album. But whatever. I know YOU really understand me, Cheddar reader. Just like Madonna does.

Driverless trucks are delivering Doritos now

Technology has finally solved humanity’s most pressing issue: World peace Ensuring our precious bags of Doritos arrive at Walmart $WMT ( ▼ 0.79% ) without the cumbersome involvement of a human driver.

PepsiCo $PEP ( ▲ 1.49% ) is proudly unleashing 35 fully autonomous trucks onto the streets of Arizona, which just happens to be a strongly anti-union “right to work” state. Jim Farrell, PepsiCo’s senior VP of supply chain, wants you to know they aren't just playing around, declaring, "These operations that we’re running today are real... not like some experimental test environment."

After all, human drivers are inconvenient. They need to sleep and are constrained by federal service limits. The truck company’s CEO, Gautam Narang, gleefully highlighted the "predictability that you can introduce by having these systems." The real corporate dream? Farrell notes that autonomy allows them to "grow the business without having to add as many employees.”