Author: Da

🍂Now Accepting Internship Applications for Fall 2026!Stepmark Partners is excited to welcome a new cohort of Fall Analysts beginning Mid-August. If you’re passionate about the intersection of AI and deal-making, we invite you to apply. To learn more, please email da@stepmark.ai Corporate earnings and dealmaking offered a counterweight to a week of mounting regulatory and…

July underscored accelerated agent deployment, surging compute commitments, and greater market/cyber risk. OpenAI released GPT-5.6 and ChatGPT Work to 10M combined users, agreed to acquire Northslope, lifted projected 2030 compute spend to ~$750B, and planned a $20B, 3.2GW Georgia data-center campus as SoftBank explored a $10B loan and IPO timing slipped toward 2027. Anthropic expanded…

🍂Now Accepting Internship Applications for Fall 2026!Stepmark Partners is excited to welcome a new cohort of Fall Analysts beginning Mid-August. If you’re passionate about the intersection of AI and deal-making, we invite you to apply. To learn more, please email da@stepmark.ai. The U.S. economy grew at a 1.5% annualized pace in Q2, down from 2.1%,…

Wall Street fell sharply Thursday as Brent crude topped $100 and the Dow shed about 500 points, while Tesla and Alphabet closed down 14.5% and 6.9%, respectively, after signaling increased AI spending. A judge paused Paramount’s $110B takeover of Warner Bros., and Apple entered talks to settle the Justice Department’s smartphone-monopoly case. Stripe entered talks…

Markets turned lower on Thursday as the Nasdaq fell 1.5% and the Dow slipped 0.2%. June CPI fell 0.4%, its sharpest drop since 2020, though annual inflation held at 3.5%, while U.S.-Iran tensions continue to pressure the Strait of Hormuz. SpaceX briefly fell below its $135 IPO price on Wednesday, closing at $135.27 after losing 40%…

This week’s news shows how AI is driving bigger capital commitments, sharper market reactions and rising infrastructure and legal risk across tech. SK Hynix raised $26.5B in a landmark debut, making it the largest U.S. market debut by a foreign company, while Samsung’s chip unit is reportedly headed for a record 2026, with Q2 profit…

Stocks posted their strongest quarter since 2020, with the S&P 500 up 14.9% through June on strong AI-driven hyperscaler earnings and hopes for an end to the U.S.-Iran war. U.S. job creation cooled in June with payrolls growth of just 57,000; unemployment rate at 4.2%. Semiconductor risk also moved into focus as Taiwan expanded a chip-smuggling…

June highlighted AI leaders locking in compute, advancing IPO optionality, and facing sharper pressure from lower-cost open-source challengers. SpaceX raised a record $75B IPO, later expanded to $86B after exercising the greenshoe, completed a $25B bond sale with nearly $90B of demand, and exercised its option to acquire Cursor in a $60B all-stock transaction. Anthropic…

Geopolitical risk eased this week as US-Iran talks made “encouraging progress” toward a 60-day roadmap that could reopen the Strait of Hormuz. Core PCE inflation rose to 3.4% in May, the highest since October 2023, reinforcing Fed rate-hike expectations. Public-market activity also accelerated across indexes, IPOs, and listing vehicles, with Alphabet set to replace Verizon in the…

U.S. stocks recovered from a Fed-driven selloff, with the S&P 500 rising 0.8% and the Nasdaq gaining 1.1% as Intel’s 7% rally lifted chip stocks after Trump said Apple would partner with Intel on U.S. chip design. The rebound came as the Fed rate cut stayed at the center of the policy conversation and the Fed…