Israel Strikes Iran: $100 Oil?

Welcome back!

Here’s your must-read news for this morning:

• Oil surges after Israel strikes Iran

• Meta-Scale AI deal done

• House passes DOGE cuts

I’ve got all the details for you, so let’s dive in.

— Josh

MARKETS

🛢️ Oil Prices Jump After Israel Strikes Iran

The Scoop: Oil prices surged Friday, posting their largest single-day gains since March 2022, after Israeli airstrikes on Iran’s nuclear and missile facilities sparked fears that Middle East conflict could disrupt global energy supplies.

The Details:

• Brent crude rose 6.3% to $71 per barrel, while West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude climbed 8.5% to nearly $74, with intraday gains peaking at 13%.

• Israel’s strikes—code-named “Rising Lion”—killed two Iranian military commanders, prompting Iran’s Supreme Leader to vow “severe punishment” and retaliate with drone attacks.

• The Strait of Hormuz, handling 20% of global oil flows, faces potential disruption risks, with analyst Andy Lipow estimating a $100 per barrel price if exports are halted.

• U.S. stock futures declined, with Dow Jones futures down 1.3% (over 540 points), S&P 500 futures down 1.4%, and Nasdaq futures down 1.6%; gold rose 1% to $3,413.60 per troy ounce.

• Iran’s oil output, about 5% of global supply, could raise prices by $7.50 per barrel if disrupted, per Lipow, though Iran’s facilities are currently undamaged.

What’s Next: Markets are bracing for Iran’s next move. Analyst Priyanka Sachdeva warns that retaliation could disrupt oil exports from nearby producers like Qatar, threatening both crude and LNG shipments through the Strait of Hormuz. JPMorgan Chase projects Brent crude could spike to $130 per barrel in a worst-case scenario involving a full blockade, though it considers such a closure unlikely. On Friday, Trump urged Tehran to negotiate a nuclear deal “before there is nothing left.”

Markets Roundup

🏦 Economy & Policy

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Trump warned Thursday that he may raise auto tariffs soon, saying the move could spur automakers to accelerate investments in the U.S. (RTS)

• Trump said he would not dismiss Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell but cautioned he "may have to force something" to advance his push for lower interest rates from the central bank. (RTS)

• Goldman Sachs reduced its U.S. recession probability to 30% from 35%. (INV)

• Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said trade talks with the U.S. are advancing, inching closer to a commercial and security deal with President Trump. (BBG)

📈 Stock Market

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Oracle shares surged 13% to a record $199.85 after the software giant forecast a 70% rise in cloud infrastructure sales this fiscal year.

• Chime, an online banking provider, saw its shares surge 37% in its Nasdaq debut on Thursday, following an IPO that valued the company at $11.6 billion.

• Nvidia will omit China from its revenue and profit forecasts due to stringent U.S. restrictions on chip sales to the country. (CNN)

• Adobe posted Q2 earnings of $5.06 per share, surpassing the $4.97 analyst consensus by $0.09, with revenue of $5.87 billion, topping the expected $5.8 billion.

• BlackRock has set a new 2030 revenue forecast and announced an ambitious target to amass $400 billion in private-markets funds by the same year. (BBG)

🏢 Industry & Deals

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Micron, top U.S. semiconductor memory firm, will invest $200 billion in manufacturing and R&D to significantly boost domestic memory chip production. (RTS)

• JetZero, a U.S. aircraft startup, plans to invest $4.7 billion over the next decade to establish a production facility and headquarters in North Carolina. (WSJ)

💵 Energy & Commodities

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: The UK’s National Energy System Operator paid a record $3.7 billion in 2024/2025, a 10% increase from the previous year, to compensate Scottish wind farms for halting production to prevent overloading the region’s constrained power grid. (OP)

• Meta announced a deal with XGS Energy to develop a 150-megawatt geothermal power plant in New Mexico. (TV)

• Tesla will roll out its virtual power plant business nationwide in Japan, supplying companies with free storage batteries and remotely managing them to stabilize energy supply and demand. (NI)

🌕 Crypto

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Shopify partnered with Coinbase and Stripe to unveil USDC stablecoin payments, starting June 2025 with full launch by year-end. (FM)

• Walmart and Amazon are also exploring the issuance of their own stablecoins. (WSJ)

• Coinbase unveils credit card, powered by American Express, offering up to 4% Bitcoin rewards on every purchase. (X)

• Tether purchased a 31.9% stake in Canadian precious metals royalty firm Elemental for approximately $89.2 million. (TR)

• Trident Digital, a Singapore-based tech firm, aims to raise $500 million to create a major XRP treasury, positioning itself as one of the first public companies to adopt XRP as a core treasury asset. (CD)

• The SEC delayed decisions on the Bitwise Dogecoin ETF, Grayscale Hedera Trust, and VanEck Avalanche ETF. (TB)
  

TECH

🧠 Scale AI Closes $14.3 Billion Meta Investment, CEO Alexandr Wang Heads to Meta

The Scoop: Scale AI officially confirmed the data-labeling startup secured a significant investment from Meta, valuing the company at $29 billion, while its CEO Alexandr Wang steps down to join Meta’s AI efforts.

The Details:

• Meta’s $14.3 billion investment acquires a 49% stake in Scale AI, which labels data for training large language models critical to generative AI.

• Wang will exit as CEO to aid Meta’s superintelligence initiatives, remaining a Scale AI board director.

• Jason Droege, Scale’s chief strategy officer, assumes interim CEO role.

• Funds will repay investors, shareholders, and drive Scale AI’s growth as an independent entity.

• Follows Scale AI’s $1 billion raise last year from investors including Meta and Amazon at a $13.8 billion valuation.

• Move counters Meta’s AI lag, amid a 4.3% talent loss to competing labs last year.

What’s Next: Meta aims to leverage Scale AI’s data expertise to accelerate its AI model development, with Wang’s role signaling deeper integration. Scale AI, flush with capital, will expand its high-skill data annotation for frontier AI labs, while industry watchers eye whether Meta’s investment can close the gap with leading AI competitors like OpenAI and Google.

Tech Roundup

🧠 AI

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: AMD CEO Lisa Su unveiled the Instinct MI400 AI chips, slated for 2026, touting their rack-scale design for hyperscale data centers, as OpenAI’s Sam Altman endorsed the technology and confirmed plans to adopt it. (CNBC)

• BlackRock launched "Asimov," an AI research platform now utilized in its fundamental equity business, characterized by Chief Operating Officer Rob Goldstein as a "virtual investment analyst." (BBG)

• Mattel partnered with OpenAI to create AI-integrated toys and games, with plans to introduce its first artificial intelligence-powered product by late 2025. (RTS)

• Chinese EV maker Xpeng is developing advanced Turing AI chips for Volkswagen vehicles, which it claims outperform Nvidia’s processors. (CP)

🤖 Hardware & Robotics

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Tesla filed a lawsuit against former engineer Zhongjie “Jay” Li, alleging he stole secrets from its Optimus humanoid robotics program to launch rival startup Proception. (TC)

• Gecko Robotics, a provider of AI-driven robotic inspection for critical infrastructure, raised $125 million in a Series D led by Cox Enterprises, valuing the company at $1.25 billion. (TLY)

• Donatos Pizza and Appetronix debuted a fully autonomous robotic pizza kitchen at John Glenn Columbus International Airport. (RAN)

• Scientists at ETH Zürich have harnessed Nvidia RTX machine learning to train a robot to play badminton. (TS)

🚀 Defense & Space

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Microsoft is developing a tailored version of its Copilot AI tool for Pentagon use. (TBC)

•  Israel launched the Centipede Initiative to fund low-cost, versatile robots for IDF use, operated remotely to deliver real-time situational awareness, detect threats, prevent ambushes, and enable life-saving decisions. (JNS)

• Muon Space, a satellite manufacturer, secured $89.5 million in funding to boost production and acquire propulsion startup Starlight Engines. (SN)

💰 Venture Capital & Deals

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Meter, a startup that sells and maintains custom data center networking equipment, has secured $170 million in a Series C funding round led by General Catalyst, with a valuation surpassing $1 billion. (BW)

• Nominal, a company developing software for the industrial companies, has secured $75 million in a Series B funding round led by Sequoia Capital. (SOR)

• Antimetal, a startup leveraging AI to optimize cloud cost efficiency, has raised $20 million in a Series A round led by Sound Ventures. (X)

• Shinkei Systems, a startup focused on strengthening the U.S. food supply chain, has raised $22 million in a Series A round co-led by Founders Fund and Interlagos Capital. (X)

• Landbase, a startup that sells AI-driven sales solutions, has secured $30 million in a Series A funding round led by Sound Ventures and Picus Capital. (SA)

• Mario Gabriele of The Generalist published an in-depth analysis of Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund, revealing previously undisclosed returns and the size of Thiel’s personal investment in each fund. (TG)

🔒 Cybersecurity

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services, and other cloud-based services like Twitch, CoreWeave’s Weights and Biases, Elastic, GitLab, LangChain, Microsoft’s GitHub, Replit, and Intuit’s Mailchimp experienced widespread global outages. (TNW)

FREEDOM

🪚 House Approves Trump’s $9.4 Billion Plan to Slash Foreign Aid, NPR

The Scoop: The House narrowly approved Trump’s $9.4 billion rescissions package, rescinding funds for foreign aid and public broadcasting, passing 214-212 along mostly party lines.

The Details:

• Targets $8.3 billion from USAID, including funds for programs like Haitian voter ID and Iraqi Sesame Street.

• Cuts $1.1 billion from the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, which supports NPR and PBS, long criticized by conservatives for liberal bias.

• Four Republicans—Reps. Brian Fitzpatrick (PA), Mike Turner (OH), Mark Amodei (NV.), and Nicole Malliotakis (NY)—voted against; two GOP holdouts switched to yes after leadership talks.

• Marks the first legislative push to enact savings identified by Elon Musk’s Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), following a stopgap spending bill three months ago.

• Congress has 45 days to approve the proposal once formally sent to Capitol Hill, or it is automatically rejected.

What’s Next: Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-SD) has signaled a July timeline for Senate action, after addressing Trump’s “Big, Beautiful Bill,” with possible amendments to ease bipartisan concerns. The White House calls this a trial run, hinting at further cuts if Congress agrees. Democrats and moderate Republicans may resist, threatening the 51-vote majority needed within the 45-day window.

Freedom Roundup

🏛️ Economic & Healthcare Policy

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Trump launched a "gold card" visa program, offering U.S. permanent residency for $5 million, with 15,000 people reportedly on the waitlist. (FBN)

• U.S. officials are exploring the use of the Defense Production Act to secure financing, loans, and other resources for projects tied to rare earth elements. (BBG)

• The State Department plans to lay off hundreds of U.S.-based staff in the coming weeks as part of a major reorganization. (FT)

• Sens. Bernie Sanders (I-VT) and Angus King (I-ME) introduced a bill to ban consumer drug advertisements, aligning with a proposal championed by HHS Sec. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (WSJ)

💻 Business & Tech Policy

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Trump signed three congressional resolutions to block California’s statewide initiatives promoting electric vehicles, phasing out diesel engines, and prohibiting the sale of gas-powered vehicles by 2035. (CNBC)

• White House AI czar David Sacks says the U.S. can declare victory in the AI race against China if it secures 80% of global compute power within five years, but an equivalent market share for Huawei would mean China won. (X)

• Trump called Elon Musk “a friend of mine” and expressed support for electric vehicles, including Tesla, signaling a potential thaw in their relationship. (NYP)

💬 Free Speech & Woke Overreach

• ⭐ Editor’s Pick: Mark Cuban, a Bluesky user, says the platform’s increasing hostility and lack of diverse thought are driving users back to X. (FM)

• Pride Toronto faces a nearly $1 million shortfall just weeks before its annual festival, as multiple sponsors pull funding. (CBC)

• Three dozen federal contractors face "high risk" of violating Trump’s executive orders banning DEI policies, according to a report. (DW)

• FTSE 100 companies reduced DEI mentions in annual reports by over 16%, while ESG references dropped by 22%, per a survey. (TO)

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