What's up: More layoffs at Microsoft, buoyant Big Tech shares, and OpenAI and Oracle team up in a $30 billion deal.

Good morning. Do you have a tattoo? If so, it probably wasn't inked by an AI-enabled robot.

That may soon change, if you're up for it: Blackdot, an Austin-based startup, has built a (mostly) autonomous machine for tattooing that's now accepting appointments at Bang Bang, a high-end New York City tattoo parlor.

Rest assured, it's mostly high-tech. The machine's arm is equipped with computer vision, a laser that measures the skin’s height and thickness, and a microscope for the operator to scrutinize the tiny calibration dots.

Not so black and white. The tattoo community has responded to Blackdot with a mix of enthusiasm and disdain. Even tattoos applied by humans but designed with AI are viewed with skepticism.

But, there are tattoo artists like Keith McCurdy, the owner and operator of Bang Bang, who support the technology and say it's pretty simple: “It’s just a tattoo machine that’s not hand-held,” he said.

Read the full story.

For more on AI and labor, see below.

The Morning Download will not be published on Friday due to the Fourth of July holiday. We will resume publication on Monday.

Microsoft plans to cut another 9,000 workers in its latest round of layoffs. That brings its workforce reductions to a total of 15,000 in the past two months, WSJ reports.

The cuts to staff represent less than 4% of the tech giant’s global workforce and span levels, geographies, tenure and teams, a company spokesman said. Job cuts hit Microsoft’s gaming segment, but they didn’t account for the majority of the staff reductions.

The latest round of layoffs adds to about 6,000 roles that Microsoft eliminated in May across its product and software development teams.

CEOs start saying the quiet part out loud: AI will wipe out jobs. CEOs are no longer dodging the question of whether AI takes jobs. Now they are giving predictions of how deep those cuts could go, WSJ reports. “Artificial intelligence is going to replace literally half of all white-collar workers in the U.S.,” Ford Motor Chief Executive Jim Farley said in an interview last week with author Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Ideas Festival. “AI will leave a lot of white-collar people behind.”

“Once-in-a-lifetime” shift. At JPMorgan Chase, Marianne Lake, CEO of the bank’s massive consumer and community business, told investors in May that she could see its operations head count falling by 10% in the coming years as the company uses new AI tools. The comments echo recent job warnings from executives at Amazon, Anthropic and other companies.

Amazon CEO Andy Jassy wrote in a note to employees in June that he expected the company’s overall corporate workforce to be smaller in the coming years because of the “once-in-a-lifetime” AI technology.

Big tech's climb powers the S&P 500 and Nasdaq to new records. Technology shares in the S&P 500 rose more than 1%, buoyed by climbs in Apple, Nvidia and Tesla—three stocks that number among the so-called Magnificent Seven that have helped power major indexes to new records in recent years, WSJ reports.

Tesla’s stock rose 5%. That placed it among the biggest gainers in the S&P 500 and erasing Tuesday’s losses. The climb came after the electric vehicle maker said that its second-quarter global vehicle sales tumbled 13.5% compared with a year earlier, WSJ reports.

In other EV news, Lucid Group deliveries rise. Lucid delivered 3,309 vehicles in the second quarter, 200 more than in it did the prior quarter and above the 2,394 delivered in the same period a year earlier, WSJ reports.

OpenAI signs $30 billion data center deal with Oracle. OpenAI has agreed to lease 4.5 gigawatts of computing power from Oracle in a deal that is one of the largest cloud agreements to date for AI, FT reports.

The deal marks a big expansion of OpenAI’s “Stargate” data center project, which it launched with SoftBank in January to gain access to vast amounts of computing power to develop its powerful AI models.

Alibaba readies $7 billion boost for commerce unit and plans new data centers. The tech giant said Wednesday that it will offer about $6.98 billion in coupons and vouchers over the next 12 months to get more businesses and consumers to use its delivery and e-commerce services in the domestic market.

Alibaba also disclosed plans to launch new data centers in Malaysia and Philippines, advancing its push in AI, WSJ reports.

Ripple seeks a U.S. banking license, adding to list of crypto companies. Ripple, which manages cross-border payments and a dollar-backed stablecoin called RLUSD, filed its application Wednesday with the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, WSJ exclusively reports.

Netflix explores music shows and celebrity interviews in unscripted TV push. The streamer has held conversations with Spotify about partnering on a number of projects such as a music awards show or a live concert series, people close to the conversations said. It has also discussed doing big celebrity interviews and shorter-turnaround documentaries to capture the news of the moment, WSJ exclusively reports.

Starboard takes more than 9% stake in Tripadvisor. The move happened after the online travel-review company eschewed takeover offers in the past year, according to people familiar with the matter. Starboard’s plans for the company couldn’t immediately be learned, WSJ exclusively reports.

The House of Representatives was headed toward a final vote Thursday to pass President Trump’s sprawling tax-and-spending bill, after party leaders worked through resistance from a handful of rank-and-file members. The expected passage by the House later Thursday means Congress would get the bill to Trump’s desk by his self-imposed July 4 deadline. The legislation funds Trump’s priorities including the extension of his 2017 tax cuts, no tax on tips and overtime, and a large funding boost for the president’s immigration and border policies. (WSJ)

A federal judge on Wednesday blocked President Trump’s executive order banning people who cross the southern border illegally from seeking asylum, a decision that, should it stand, could threaten the unprecedented decline in crossings that have resulted from the administration’s immigration crackdown. U.S. District Judge Randolph Moss in Washington ruled that Trump’s order overstepped the president’s authority. (WSJ)

The U.S. and Vietnam have struck a tariff deal that will see American goods enter the country duty-free, President Trump announced Wednesday. In return, the U.S. will charge 20% tariffs on Vietnamese goods, Trump said, instead of the 46% tariffs he had announced in April, before putting the duties on pause to allow for negotiations. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.