Good Morning,

Let’s start you off with today’s must-know news: A U.S. appeals court reinstated Trump’s tariffs, Elon Musk revealed SpaceX plans to launch an uncrewed Starship mission to Mars by late 2026, and White House economic advisor Kevin Hassett announced that DOGE and OMB will send Congress “way more” rescission packages to eliminate wasteful spending.

Let’s dive in.

MARKET & ECONOMY

Macro & Policy

A U.S. appeals court reinstated Trump’s tariffs Thursday, reversing a trade court’s block for exceeding his authority. (YF)

Trump met Powell for the first time in his second term, where Fed Chair emphasized that interest rate decisions would remain based on “non-political analysis.” (CNBC)

U.S. continuing jobless claims rose by 26K to 1.92M for the week ending May 17, the highest since November 2021, hinting at a possible unemployment spike. (BBG)

Pending home sales fell 6.3% in April to a Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI) of 71.3, down 2.5% year-over-year, with declines across all U.S. regions, the West seeing the largest drop. (REL)

Japanese PM Ishiba and President Trump discuss tariffs in a "meaningful" phone call. (RTS)

Mortgage rates rose for the third consecutive week, nearing 7%, according to Freddie Mac’s report. (FBN)

Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser is optimistic about the economy and entrepreneurship, expressing confidence in the direction under Trump and Bessent's leadership. (FBN)

Equities & Corporate Earnings

U.S. Stock futures fell amid trade volatility, with Dow futures down 0.1%, S&P 500 futures off 0.2%, and Nasdaq-100 futures down 0.3%. (CNBC)

Chinese markets fell after Bessent said trade talks with Beijing stalled, with CSI 300 and Shanghai Composite down 0.5%–0.7% and Hang Seng down 1.5%. (INV)

Costco's fiscal third-quarter revenue rose 8% to $63.21 billion from $58.52 billion a year ago, narrowly beating Wall Street's $63.19 billion estimate. (GF)

Kohl's shares hit a three-month high after beating Q1 expectations, with cost cuts reducing net losses to $0.13 per share despite a 4% sales drop to $3.05 billion. (GF)

Bath & Body Works reports a Q1 EPS of $0.49, surpassing forecasts by 16.7%, while revenue of $1.4 billion slightly missed expectations. (INV)

Foot Locker reported $1.79 billion in Q1 2025 revenue, down 4.5% year-over-year, missing the $1.83 billion estimate by 1.77%. (YF)

Dell boosted its annual profit forecast to $9.40 per share, fueled by $12.1 billion in AI server orders this quarter and a $14.4 billion backlog, with Q2 revenue projected at $28.5–$29.5 billion. (INV)

Gap shares fell over 15% after hours as tariffs could cost $100M–$150M, with Q1 earnings at 51 cents per share (vs. 45 cents expected) and revenue at $3.46B (vs. $3.42B expected). (BAR)

Omada Health revised its IPO prospectus Thursday, planning to sell shares at $18–$20 each, potentially raising $158 million at a $1.1 billion market cap at the high end. (CNBC)

Currencies & Commodities

The U.S. dollar weakened on Friday, poised for a fifth consecutive monthly drop, with markets focused on a crucial inflation report due later in the day. (RTS)

Kyushu Electric Power will sign a 20-year LNG supply agreement with Energy Transfer’s Lake Charles export facility if its development proceeds, marking the Japanese utility’s first U.S. LNG deal. (RTS)

White House is considering clearing small refinery exemption backlog, may approve current requests and seek industry input for older ones. (INV)

Kazakhstan’s Energy Minister Yerlan Akkenzhenov says that the country cannot cut oil production, as it lacks authority to enforce reductions on international firms operating over 70% of its oilfields. (IF)

China's leading oil refiners are boosting exports of refined products to counter weak domestic demand, despite planned maintenance and inconsistent profitability. (OP)

The eastern government of Libya, based in Benghazi, may declare force majeure on oil export terminals and oilfields due to repeated attacks on the National Oil Corporation. (MEM)

Gold price recovered most of its early losses, rising to around $3,320 in Thursday’s North American session from a weekly low of $3,245 earlier in the day. (FXS)

Cocoa prices extended their longest losing streak since July 2022, with the most-active contract in New York dropping up to 6% to $9,060 per tonne. (TE)

Crypto & Digital Assets

The SEC is moving to dismiss its lawsuit against Binance. (CD)

SEC clarifies staking on proof-of-stake networks isn’t a securities transaction, enabling crypto ETFs to include staking, says Jito Labs’ Rebecca Rettig. (TB)

Cantor Fitzgerald plans to launch a gold-backed Bitcoin fund. (CD)

Banco Santander, Spain’s largest bank, is exploring plans to offer a stablecoin and crypto access for retail clients. (BBG)

Paris Saint-Germain soccer club unveils Bitcoin treasury, plans investments in Bitcoin entrepreneurs and ventures. (BC)

Ethereum has not experienced a significant uptick in activity despite recent upgrades, JPMorgan analysts say, attributing its market cap surge to institutional interest. (TB)

Bitcoin ETFs sustained a 10-day inflow streak, with BlackRock’s IBIT driving the entire $433 million net inflow. (BN)

Tether-backed Bitcoin treasury firm Twenty One boosts total financing to $685 million following its second note sale. (TB)

Chainalysis reports a 200% surge in AI-enabled crypto scams over the past year, with 60% of deposits into scam wallets linked to AI-driven fraud. (TD)

Polymarket users are actively betting on the predicted date of Jesus Christ's return. (UV)

BUSINESS

Tech

Meta and Anduril, founded by Palmer Luckey, partner to develop VR/AR devices, including EagleEye, for the U.S. Army. (AI)

China's tech giants, including Alibaba, Tencent, and Baidu, are shifting to domestic chips to meet AI demand, as Nvidia processor stockpiles dwindle and U.S. export controls tighten. (FT)

Amazon has appointed Xbox co-founder J Allard to lead its new ZeroOne team, focused on developing "breakthrough" consumer products. (CNBC)

Vista Equity Partners has agreed to acquire Acumatica, a software firm specializing in business workflow optimization, in a $2 billion deal. (BBG)

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang lauds Trump's tariff plan to re-industrialize and rescind the AI diffusion rule as "utterly visionary." (BBG)

An Apple-funded study reports that the U.S. App Store facilitated over $400 billion in developer billings and sales in 2024, reflecting 2.9x growth since 2019. (9T5)

Thoma Bravo is exploring a sale of Apryse, a document processing software provider, for over $3 billion, following interest from potential buyers. (RTS)

Microsoft’s Chief Commercial Officer, Judson Althoff, announced that Barclays has agreed to purchase 100,000 licenses for Copilot AI assistants. (BBG)

Banking & Finance

Former Goldman Sachs banker Tim Leissner was sentenced to two years in prison for his role in the 1MDB scandal. (CNBC)

Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund is considering an initial public offering for one of its fully owned technology companies. (BBG)

Warburg Pincus and KPS Capital Partners are in advanced talks to jointly acquire Gerresheimer AG, a German-listed pharmaceutical and cosmetics packaging specialist. (PEW)

Industrials & Transportation

Hyundai plans to raise prices on all its U.S. vehicles to offset the impact of tariffs. (BBG)

Boeing will resume airplane deliveries to China next month and increase 737 Max production. (CNBC)

Energy & Resources

U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission approved NuScale Power's (SMR.N) 77-megawatt reactor design. (RTS)

Glencore transfers $22 billion in foreign assets to its Australian subsidiary, restructuring to enable a potential mega-merger with Rio Tinto. (AFR)

Wildfires endanger approximately 4% of Canada's crude oil production as a rapidly spreading blaze in Alberta's oil sands region nears key production facilities. (BBG)

Entertainment & Media

Business Insider is cutting roughly 21% of its staff as the financial news outlet faces declining search traffic and the rise of generative AI tools. (TW)

Amazon will license New York Times content to train its AI models and enhance Alexa. (TI)

Netflix will produce an eight-episode limited series on the FTX collapse, starring Julia Garner as Caroline Ellison and Anthony Boyle as Sam Bankman-Fried. (TB)

Sports

Major League Baseball is investing over $10 million in the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, a women’s professional softball league. (SPT)

Professional sports team valuations are in a ‘bubble,’ warns RedBird’s Gerry Cardinale. (CNBC)

In 2024, Formula 1's 10 teams earned $2.05B in sponsorship revenue, second to the NFL’s $2.49B. F1 teams averaged $203M each, with deals averaging $6.22M—over 8x the NFL’s $745K average. (SPT)

TECH

AI & Frontier Tech

Elon Musk announced that if orbital refueling is successful on schedule, SpaceX aims to launch an uncrewed Starship mission to Mars by late 2026. (IND)

DeepSeek's updated R1 AI model nears OpenAI's o3 in coding, math, and knowledge benchmarks but shows increased censorship. (TC)

Hugging Face unveiled two open-source humanoid robots: HopeJR, a full-size model with 66 degrees of freedom for walking and arm motion, and Reachy Mini, a desktop unit for head movement, speech, and AI app testing. (TC)

Perplexity launches tool for Pro subscribers to generate reports, spreadsheets, and dashboards and priced at $20/month. (TC)

OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap says the startup is developing “ambient” devices to reduce screen dependency. (WSJ)

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke says AI will boost engineers' creativity, enabling them to reach a "magical flow state" more easily while automating the "production" side of developing software. (BI)

Voice AI startup Hume's EVI 3 offers custom voice creation designed for customer support, health coaching, storytelling, and companionship, prioritizing naturalness and empathy. (VB)

Black Forest Labs, formerly powering X’s Grok image generation, released new image-generating models Thursday, some with create-and-edit capabilities. (TC)

Peer, an AI-native platform, launched its Global Simulation—a real-time digital Earth where avatars connect by location and build relationships in a dynamic, spatial network. (VB)

A new AI test identifies men with high-risk, non-metastatic prostate cancer who benefit from abiraterone, with scientists finding it nearly halves death risk for about 25% of patients. (ICR)

Manulife is advancing its AI transformation, with over 43 generative AI use cases in production and a similar number anticipated by year-end. (IBM)

Funding & Venture Capital

Grammarly raised $1B from General Catalyst to boost sales, marketing, and acquisitions. (CB)

Khosla-led investment round has valued data startup ClickHouse at $6.35 billion. (BBG)

Northrop Grumman invests $50 million in Firefly Aerospace to advance their co-developed Eclipse rocket. (BBG)

David, a protein bar brand co-founded by RXBar’s Peter Rahal, secured $75 million in a Series A funding round led by Greenoaks, with Valor Equity Partners. (ATN)

Heron Power, founded by ex-Tesla exec Drew Baglino, raised $38M to develop compact solid-state transformers for the electrical grid. (TC)

Buildots secures $45M in Series D funding, led by Qumra Capital with OG Venture Partners, to enhance AI-driven construction progress tracking. (CT)

Zeal Capital Partners, led by Nasir Qadree, raised $82M for Fund II to invest in 25+ early-stage fintech, healthcare, and future-of-work startups. (VCJ)

Rillet, an accounting tech startup, raised $25 million in a Series A funding round led by Sequoia Capital. (TC)

Cybersecurity & Privacy

Victoria's Secret took its U.S. website offline and shut down its online customer service operations over a security incident. (CNET)

Chinese state-sponsored hackers, identified as APT41, have been exploiting Google Calendar in stealthy new cyberattacks. (TR)

POLICY & LAW

Economic & Tax Policy

The reconciliation bill raises the SALT deduction cap to $40,000 in 2025 for filers earning up to $500,000, dropping to $10,000 for higher earners, with 1% annual increases from 2026-2033, pushed by Republicans from NY, NJ, and CA. (FBN)

Trump's proposed "Big Beautiful Bill" could disrupt decades of favorable U.S. tax treatment for Canada's largest companies and pension funds. (FP)

Business & Tech Regulations

Supreme Court narrows environmental review requirements for major infrastructure projects, potentially accelerating approvals for highways, airports, and pipelines. (CNN)

The FTC rules that the DOJ's plan for Google to share search data with competitors has sufficient user privacy protections. (RTS)

Reform UK, led by Nigel Farage, is the first European political party to accept crypto donations, enabled through payment platform Radom. (CD)

Sens. Jim Banks and Elizabeth Warren press Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang for answers regarding the company’s reported plans to establish a research facility in Shanghai. (BBG)

Sen. Josh Hawley called for a DOJ probe into Chinese-owned TuSimple, alleging it shared sensitive tech with Beijing-linked entities.

Healthcare & Education Rules

A Boston federal judge plans to issue a preliminary injunction preventing the Trump administration from revoking Harvard's ability to host foreign students. (FOX)

RFK Jr. and Milei have agreed to explore establishing an alternative to the World Health Organization. (MP)

Government Waste & Accountability

Hassett says there will be "way more" rescission packages sent to Congress to get rid of wasteful spending identified by DOGE and OMB. (FOX)

Three DOGE officials—Steve Davis, Katie Miller, and James Burnham—will leave their White House roles as Elon Musk exits, a White House official. (TH)

White House press secretary Leavitt thanked Elon Musk for launching DOGE, affirming that efforts to eliminate waste, fraud, and abuse will continue. (X)

Elon Musk will continue as unofficial adviser to Trump, could potentially attend White House meetings in future, official says (ABC)

Merit, Free Speech & Woke Overreach

White House introduces "merit-based" federal hiring rules, banning race and gender considerations. (AXS)

That's a wrap! You're officially caught up on all things tech, markets and freedom. Subscribe to CAPITAL below.

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DISCLAIMER: The CAPITAL newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute financial, investment, or professional advice. Readers should conduct their own research and consult a qualified financial advisor before making investment decisions. The CAPITAL newsletter and its owner and operator, Josh Caplan, are not liable for any loss or damage resulting from reliance on this information. The CAPITAL newsletter is solely owned and independently operated by Josh Caplan, separate from any employer affiliations.