Final Tally: Microsoft & OpenAI Make It Facebook Official… Crypto Bros Invade the Bookies

After months of passive aggressive meetings (and Sam Altman playing hard to get) Microsoft and OpenAI finally made it Facebook official. The tech world’s most chaotic couple have signed the dotted line where somewhere in the contract states: “It’s complicated, but it’s lucrative.”

Under the new deal, OpenAI will morph into a public benefit corporation… Silicon Valley’s favorite way of saying, “We’re absolutely going to make billions, but please still think we’re saving humanity.” Microsoft will scoop up a 27% stake, valuing the ChatGPT-maker at around $500 billion, while Sam Altman promises to spend $250 billion on Azure cloud services.

And the timing couldn’t be better. The deal dropped one day before Satya Nadella has to face analysts on Microsoft’s earnings call… a power move so slick it should be studied at business schools. Needless to say, if you’re ever sitting at a poker table, bring Satya (just make sure Chauncey Billups isn’t dealing).

Of course, the Microsoft-OpenAI power move (alongside another round of Nvidia fireworks) sent markets into full celebration mode. It doesn’t hurt that traders are already foaming at the mouth ahead of Jerome Powell’s word salad tomorrow, where there’s a 99% chance he starts metaphorically printing money live on stage.

All in all, the S&P 500 climbed 0.4% to a new all-time high. The Nasdaq jumped 1%, and even the Dow propelled 0.4% higher. Nvidia had itself another historic day (+5%) after Jensen Huang told the crowd at GTC that the AI industry had “turned a corner.” (Cool, Jensen. I turn corners every day… where’s my $3T valuation?)

Meanwhile, Paypal rocketed 14% after revealing a partnership with OpenAI that lets ChatGPT do your online shopping… and somewhere, Dave Ramsey’s already licking his lips at the thought of all the new “Financial Peace” graduates this is about to create.

Wayfair launched 20% after beating earnings, while DraftKings and Flutter got flattened after Polymarket announced it’s planning to gamble on their gambling (chess not checkers).

If you think robots aren’t replacing humans yet, Amazon disagrees. Andy Jassy just announced a plan to lay off 30,000 employees under what he’s calling an “efficiency initiative.” Translation: the robots got promoted. It’s the biggest cut since Bezos was taping boxes in his own garage. 

And as always, don’t forget to catch our Stock Prophet Watchlist recap of today’s trading action… exclusively in the official Stocks.News app.

If you read all of this, congrats for having a 10 second attention span (better than me). As always, here’s our heatmap for today.

At the time of publishing this article, Stocks.News holds positions in Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon as mentioned in the article.