The Rundown - OpenAI IPO Likely Delayed to 2027, Apple Jacks Up Prices to Absorb AI Shock

Episode Date: June 26, 2026

Market update for Friday, June 26, 2026. Check out the Public app for incredible investing tools and to support the show (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode, Zaid covers:Apple AND Microsoft are raising prices and what it means for the AI tradeWhy OpenAI could delay their IPOBayer jumps on Supreme Court rulingOn Semiconductor falls on acquisition news Fun Fact: Iren signed a $50M jersey patch deal with the Warriors

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Friday, June 26th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why Apple and Microsoft are raising prices. We'll also break down why OpenAI might be delaying their IPO. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out which AI company just signed a record jersey patch deal with the Golden State Warriors. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Thursday was another rocky day for the stock market, and once again, AI was at the center of it. The S&P 500 fell by 0.1%, while the NASDAQ fell half a percent. And, you know, early on in the day, it looked like tech stocks were going to rip following the monster micron earnings. Well, the good news from the micron earnings got overshadowed by Apple announcing that they were raising prices on their price,

products across the board. We're going to talk more about why Apple is doing this in a bit, but that news sent Apple stock down 6% yesterday, and it dragged down the entire market with it. And it seems like we might be in for another down day tech and chip stocks are selling off across the board in pre-market trading. Here's a fun fact. Investors pulled money out of U.S. stocks for the first time since March with a record $9.3 billion yanked from tech funds in a single week. So that is just the latest signs that the AI trade is starting to cool off. Now, zooming out, the good news is that oil prices keep falling. U.S. crude is now trading under $70 a barrel as more tankers move through this trade of Hormuz.

Now, there was a report yesterday that Iran attacked a cargo shift in the trade of Hormuz, but the market doesn't seem to be too worried about it. So yeah, a lot of interesting things happening in the markets right now with oil prices falling and the AI trade kind of going through some bumpiness. I wonder what the next couple weeks looked like as we wait for earnings season to kick off again. We're going to be staying on top of everything. So, If you're new here, definitely get subscribed for the podcast and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Apple. Apple announced yesterday that they were raising prices across the board. Now, many people expected this was going to happen, but I think

a lot of people were shocked with how drastic the price hikes were. Macbooks, iPads, even the Vision Pro are all going up $2 to $300. And by the way, just hours later after hours. Apple announced their price hikes, Microsoft came out and said they were hiking prices of the Xbox by $100 to $150. And, you know, both of these companies are blaming the increased cost of memory. And we've talked about this multiple times in the show. The data center boom has resulted in a huge surge in demand for memory and storage, and that's now leading to a supply crunch. And prices of memory have quadrupled over the last year. And since memory is needed for every modern day tech device, everything from phones, laptops, and gaming consoles,

The prices for those components have gone up. So Apple didn't want to keep eating that cost and take a hit to their margins, so they're passing that on straight to the consumer. Now, this has been great news for Micron, which is one of the major memory makers in the world. We covered their earnings on yesterday's show. And the most eye-popping thing that come from the earnings report was that Micron's gross margins are now at nearly 85%. And the reason they're that high is because Micron has raised prices substantially. So that means that the extra $200 that people will pay for their MacBook, a big chunk of that will go

straight to Micron's bottom line. In fact, it's gotten so tense that Apple and Microsoft are basically accusing the memory companies of price gouging. And look, the supply crunch is expected to last for another couple years. So, you know, this is just the latest example of why there's been such a huge backlash to AI these days. Big Tech's obsession with AI is leading to higher prices across the board. You know, all this AI spending is driving up costs of tech products like memory chips and laptops, but also things like electricity. The Wall Street Journal is calling it the third way, of inflation. We're actually going to talk more about this on our deep dive episode tomorrow, so make sure you guys keep an eye out for that. Going back to Apple, I'm really curious to see

what happens to Apple's sales after this price hike. Like, are they going to see a significant hit to their revenue? And more importantly, is Apple going to roll back these price hikes after the memory supply crunch thing is figured out? I think that's probably not going to happen. Also, Apple didn't announce any price hikes for the iPhone. I'm sure they're going to raise prices when the iPhone 18 comes out. The market seems to think that Apple will take a hit, though. shares of Apple fell 6% yesterday following the price hike news. Let's shift gears and talk about OpenAI because they might be pumping the brakes on their IPO.

Open AI filed to confidentially go public a few weeks ago. Well, now according to the New York Times, Open AI is now leaning towards waiting until next year to go public, even though they've hired bankers and lawyers with the original goal of listing as soon as the third or fourth quarter of this year. There seems to be a lot of internal disagreements at OpenAI on when to go public. CEO Sam Altman has been pushing for an IPO and nudging his advisors to find a way to juice OpenAI's valuation to a trillion dollars up from the company's last private valuation of $730 billion.

But then earlier in the year, the CFO, along with other executives, cast the doubt on whether the financials at OpenAI were good enough to hit the public market. On top of that, some executives at OpenAI are a little spooked by how the SpaceX IPO played out. or SpaceX went public earlier this month at $135 a share, raising more than $85 billion in the process at a $1.77 trillion valuation. Now, following the IPO, the stock ripped as high as $202 a share, but now the stock has come back down to Earth, no pun intended. At the time of this recording, it's currently trading around $150 a share. And then you add in the broader tech selloff we just talked about with investors starting to ask tougher questions about AI spending and AI margins and whether these companies can actually turn this massive revenue into massive profit,

you can see why some OpenAI advisors are nervous about walking into this market. So now these advisors are giving Sam Altman two options. Either he can wait until next year and target a $1 trillion valuation, or OpenEI can hit the public markets earlier with a lower valuation. As of right now, Sam Altman doesn't seem to want to budge from the $1 trillion number. So we'll see what ends up happening. I was really hoping to get a peek at OpenAIs S1 and dive into their financial. I guess I might have to wait a bit longer for that.

Now, there have been reports that Open AI is still not profitable and they've burned through $3.7 billion in Q1. So we won't know the full financial picture until they actually go public and file all their paperwork. And look, these numbers will get heavily scrutinized once that happens. And I don't think many people on Open AI's team want to face the heat right now.

Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of the pharmaceutical company, Bayer are surging today after the company scored a major win at the Supreme Court. Now, for some quick context here, Bayer is the German pharma and agricultural giant that owns Monsanto, the maker of Roundup, the most popular weed killer in the world. And ever since Bayer bought Monsanto for $63 billion back in 2018, they've been buried under thousands of lawsuits claiming that Roundup causes cancer. Well, on Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled in a seven-tool-ruling in Bayer's favor.

basically saying the company can't be sued under state law for failing to warn about cancer risk because federal regulators never required a warning label. So this ruling could wipe out thousands of these failure to warn cases against Bayer and making it much easier for the company to finally settle the remaining cases. Bayer is already working on a $7.5 billion settlement to help resolve the litigation. So this was a big sigh of relief for investors. Bayer stock jumped roughly 19% on the German stock exchange. And the U.S. listed shares jumped about 16%.

And, you know, if you zoom out, the stock was already up about 50% over the past 12 months because I think investors expect this ruling from the Supreme Court. Now, on the flip side, shares of On Semiconductor is getting hit this morning after announcing a big acquisition. On Semi is an Arizona chipmaker best known for making analog and power chips that go into cars, factories, and industrial equipment. Well, now On Semi is trying to get a piece of the AI action by announcing a roughly $7 billion, all-stock deal to buy synaptics. Synaptics makes high-tech wireless and AI chips that allow for

AI to run locally on things like robots and self-driving cars. With this deal, On Semi would get exposure to what they call physical AI. But the market didn't love this deal on Semi stock is down around 14% in pre-market trading, while Synaptic stock is up around 5%. But zooming out, even after today's drop, on Semi-stock has more than doubled this year, thanks in large part to the overall surge in semiconductor stocks. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. The Golden State Warriors just signed the biggest jersey sponsorship deal in the history of North American sports.

And no surprise here, it's with an AI company. According to Sportico, the AI cloud company, Iron, will pay the Warriors $50 million a year to put their logo on the Warriors jersey for next season. Now, we've actually talked about Iron before. they're one of those Neo-Cloud companies that rents out computing capacity in their data centers for AI workloads. Iron used to be a crypto mining company, but they pivoted to AI and business is booming right now. And as a result, their stock price is up 300% over the last year as the company signed a deal with Microsoft for $9.7 billion and announced a partnership with Nvidia. And now they're slapping their logo on Steph Curry's chess.

Now, I'll be honest with you guys, this does give me a little bit of that 2021 crypto sponsorship vibe. where every crypto company on the planet, like FTX was slapping their name on everything. Like the arena where the Miami Heat Play was named FTX Arena. Now, I'm not saying that iron is FTCS or anything, but I think we've hit that part of the AI cycle where AI companies are going to put their name on everything. So keep an eye out for that. I wouldn't be surprised if we see more AI companies slap their logos on NBA jerseys.

Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. I hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did, and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube, wherever you listen to your podcast, all that engagement really does help us out, and it helps other people find the show.

Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike for all the work behind the scene. And we'll see you guys back here tomorrow. Spotify, it's Jay Shetty. Are you one of those media strategy people? Scrolling through spreadsheets, searching for an audience that pays twice as much attention to your ads than they do on social? Let me introduce you to fans. And they're here with me on Spotify.

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