The Rundown - OpenAI Partners with Shopify for "Instant Checkout," Spotify CEO Steps Down

Episode Date: September 30, 2025

Stock market update for September 30, 2025. Follow us on Instagram ⁠⁠⁠@therundowndaily⁠⁠⁠This video is for informational purposes only and reflects the views of the host and guest, not Public Holdings or its subsidiaries. Mentions of assets are not recommendations. Investing involves risk, including loss. Past performance does not guarantee future results. For full disclosures, visit ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Public.com/disclosures⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Tuesday, September 30th. In today's episode, we'll tell you some ways that Open AI plans to make money, one of which is very disturbing. We'll also tell you about the latest big tech company to sign a deal with CoreWeave and why Spotify stock is taking a hit. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out why soda companies are embracing

dirty sodas and why I'm not a fan of this new trend. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stox were off to a decent start this week with the S&P 500 jumping 0.3% and the NASDAQ was up nearly half a percent. Turns out Wall Street doesn't seem to care too much about the upcoming government shutdown as of right now. Today's the deadline for lawmakers in D.C. to pass a budget. And if no stopgap deal is reached by midnight, the government shuts down to tomorrow. Now, Democrat and Republican lawmakers met with President Trump yesterday at the White House, but I don't think those talks went very well because Vice President J.D. Vance came out of there and basically said a shutdown was coming. So unless some miracle deal gets worked out by the end of today,

we're headed for a shutdown starting tomorrow. Now, shutdowns always sound scary, but historically, they've had minimal impact on the economy. In fact, stocks have actually gone up during two of the last three shutdowns. So that might be why markets are kind of shrugging this one off. At least for now. Now, one thing to note is that if the government shuts down tomorrow, there will be delays in getting key economic data from the government. Like, we're not going to get the jobs report this Friday. And if the shutdown extends all the way into mid-October, then we might not get the CPI

inflation report either. And the lack of data is not great, especially right now because it makes it harder for the Federal Reserve to make a decision on what to do with interest rates. Their next meeting is coming up on October 29. And it's going to be hard for them to set monetary policy without data. So let's hope the shutdown doesn't extend all the way through October. But yeah, overall, we got a lot going on right now as we wrap up September and close out Q3. Q4 officially kicks off tomorrow and we're about to enter into earnings season in a couple of weeks.

So we'll have plenty to cover over the next few weeks. So make sure you guys are subscribed for the podcast to stay in the loop. Also, I want to give a huge shout out to everyone that took the time to give this podcast a five-star rating. We officially crossed 6,000 five-star ratings on Spotify. yesterday. Our goal was to hit that mark before the end of Q3 and you guys made it happen. So thank you so much for that. Now to celebrate, we are going to be doing a merch giveaway soon. Producer Mike is cooking up some merch ideas right now. If you guys have any recommendations for Mike, let us know in the comments on Spotify or YouTube. And thank you guys again for

all the incredible support. Let's run through some headlines. Starting with Open AI. OpenAI announced a partnership with Etsy and Shopify that will allow users to make purchases directly through chat GPT. This new feature is called Instant Checkout and it lets users buy products from Etsy and soon Shopify without ever leaving the chat. There's no links, there's no redirects, just straight up transactions inside a chat GPT chat. And honestly, it sounds like a great idea because what better sales agent than your AI chatbot? and these chat bots sound so friendly, so when it recommends a product, people are probably more likely to buy it. And as for OpenAI, they're going to take a cut from the merchants on every sale, while shoppers don't have to pay anything extra. Investors love this news for the retailers. Etsy's stock jumped 16% yesterday, and Shopify's popped more than 6%.

And as for Open AI, I mean, this is another revenue stream that they desperately need right now. The company pulled in $4.3 billion in revenue for the first half of the year, but they burned through $2.5 billion largely due to high costs associated with R&D. And overall, OpenAI posted an operating loss of $7.8 billion to the first six months of the year, likely because GPUs are very expensive. And by the way, this shopping feature is just one of many moves that Open AI is making. They're also prepping a standalone app for AI generated short form video powered by their SORA 2 model. So think like a TikTok like app, but with AI Slash,

videos instead of real people. Oh, you know, I guess open AI sees all the advertising revenue that Instagram and TikTok pull in and they want a slice of that. And by the way, open AI is not the only ones doing this. Meta also just introduced a feed of short form AI generated videos inside their meta AI app. And this is just disappointing, you know, not too long ago, AI was hyped as this world changing technology that was going to help solve cancer and potentially lead to superintelligence. And instead, what we're getting right now is more. or AI slop and replacing entry-level jobs. Now, speaking of video, let's talk about YouTube.

YouTube just cut a $24.5 million check to settle a lawsuit with President Trump over his account being suspended following the January 6 riots back in 2021. That makes Google the latest big tech social platform to settle with the president. Meta paid Trump $25 million back in January. And X, formerly known as Twitter, paid $10 million. And by the way, tech companies are not the only one. cutting Trump a check, media companies like Paramount agreed to pay a $16 million settlement tied to a lawsuit regarding a 60 Minutes interview with then VP Kamala Harris. And then ABC's

parent company Disney paid $15 million over comments made on ABC News. Now, legally speaking, private platforms aren't required to give anyone access. Courts have been pretty clear about this. But analysts see these settlements as less about the law and more about business. Big Tech would rather pay up right now than fight with a sitting president who regulates their industry. And 25 million bucks for a company like Meta and Google is lunch money. In total, Trump has collected about $80 million in the settlement fees since winning the election back in November. Some of that money is going to be going towards its presidential library and also to build a

ballroom inside the White House. I wonder if these media executives will get the invite to that ballroom. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. CoreWeave shares are up big this morning after landing a $14 billion AI infrastructure deal with meta. The neocloud company will provide computing power to meta, giving them access to Nvidia's latest GB300 systems. You know, Corweaves's entire business model is centered around renting out Nvidia's leading AI chips to big tech companies. And up until recently, Microsoft has been its key customer, accounting for 71% of CoreWeave's. as revenue. But now CoreWeave is starting to diversify. This meta deal today comes just a week

after it expanded its already huge agreement with OpenAI, which is ballooned to as much as $22.4 billion. So CoreWeave continues to be a big beneficiary of the demand for AI computing power, and it probably helps having a close relationship with Nvidia, which gives them access to the latest chips. We actually did a deep dive over the weekend on Nvidia's relationship with CoreWeave, and whether these insane AI infrastructure deals are a cause for concern, especially around an AI bubble. So if you missed that episode, I highly recommend going to check that out. Now, on the flip side, Spotify stock is taking a hit this morning after the company's founder and CEO, Daniel Eck, announced that he was stepping down at the end of the year.

Daniel Eck founded Spotify nearly 20 years ago in Sweden, and he will now transition from CEO to becoming the executive chairman of the board on January 1, 2026. Xx will be succeeded by Alex Nordstrom and Gustav Sauterstrom as co-CEOs starting on January 1st. Investors weren't too happy with that shakeup. Spotify stock is down 3% this morning in reaction to this news. Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Pepsi is releasing a new line of dirty sodas. In a few weeks, Pepsi is going to roll out two new drinks, one of them being the dirty

dew, which is Mountain Dew with a cream. cream soda twist and the other is going to be mug floats vanilla howler. That doesn't sound very appealing to me. Now, if you haven't heard of dirty sodas, they're basically regular soda with cream, syrup or other ridiculous add-ons. The trend started in Utah thanks to a chain called Swig and they're really blown up after it got featured on the reality show The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives. The craze has gotten so big that even McDonald's and Taco Bell are testing their own dirty

soda versions. But personally, as you can probably tell, I'm not a fan at all. There's a swig that opened up near my house. I checked it out. And yeah, not for me. Maybe I'm just old and boring, but I'm going to stick with a classic Coke Zero, you know? I don't need the extra vanilla icing and sprinkles and whatever else they're putting in there. But yeah, this dirty soda trend is really taking off right now.

And I wonder if it's just a short-term thing or we're going to have this around for a while. Let me know in the comments of what you guys think about dirty sodas. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like eight extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify,

don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really helps us out and it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike and Connor for all the work behind the scenes. I'll see you guys back here tomorrow. Rosen lasagna, medium power, 15 minutes.

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