The Rundown - OpenAI Proposes 5% Government Stake, Apple Turns to Blacklisted Chinese Chips

Episode Date: July 2, 2026

Market update for Thursday July 3, 2026Check 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:What a WEAK June jobs report could mean for the FedWhy Apple is looking to buy memory chips from blacklisted Chinese companiesSam Altman's pitch to hand the U.S. government a 5% stake in OpenAIPalantir rallying on its Nvidia partnership and a fresh analyst upgradeBending Spoons cools after its big IPO debutWhy this year’s Fourth of July barbecue is getting hit hard by inflation, especially beef prices

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zadadmani, and today is Thursday, July 2nd. In today's episode, we'll break down the week June jobs report and what it could mean for the Fed. We'll also tell you why Apple wants to buy memory chips from blacklisted Chinese companies and why Sam Altman wants to hand the U.S. government a 5% stake in OpenAAC. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out.

Now how much more your 4th of July cookout is going to cost you this year. We got a great show for you today. Let's go. The stock market kicked off the third quarter with a weird mixed session of trading on Wednesday. The S&P 500 fell 0.2% while the NASDAQ dropped by 0.7%. Now here's the thing. The majority of the stocks in the S&P actually went up yesterday, but the index still finished in the red because chip stocks dragged things down. The semiconductor ETF fell more than 6% on Wednesday.

And the catalyst for this wipeout was the news that meta is planning to build their cloud business to sell off excess AI computing capacity. And this news sent shock waves to the market because of what it signals about AI. Meta, as you guys know, is one of the biggest buyers of AI infrastructure out there. They're spending hundreds of billions of dollars building AI data centers. So if meta, of all companies, suddenly has more compute than it needs, maybe it means the supply of AI computing power is finally catching up to demand. And if that's true, the narrative about compute being supply constraint and endless demand

that's been powering this chip stock rally recently starts to look shaky. So I think that's why the whole sector sold off yesterday, especially neoclouds like Corweave and Nebius, which were down double digits. Now, the other thing the markets can be watching closely is what the Fed decides to do with interest rates, and we just got some data this morning that could impact the Fed's decision. The June jobs report came out this morning, and the numbers were weaker than expected. The U.S. economy added just 57,000 jobs in June. Wall Street was expecting around 115,000 jobs to be added.

And to make matters worse, the jobs data for April and May combined were revised lower by 74,000. So this was a disappointing jobs report, but what's funny, though, is that this might be a case where bad news is good news for the market, because a weaker labor market means the Fed has less reason to, hike interest rates. The next Fed meeting isn't until July 29, so we have some time between now and then. We'll see how things shake out in the markets over the next few weeks. Now remember, the stock market is closed tomorrow for the 4th of July, so no show from us and no deep dive as well. But we'll be back here on Monday getting ready for earnings season and everything else happening in the market. So if you're new here, definitely get subscribed to the podcast and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines.

Starting with Apple. Apple is reportedly trying to buy memory chips from two Chinese companies that are currently on the Pentagon's blacklist to help ease the supply shortage on memory that forced Apple to raise prices last week. Now, we talked about this last week, did a whole deep dive on it. AI has caused a global memory shortage right now. AI data centers need massive amounts of high-end memory. So memory makers like Samsung, SK-Hinix, and Micron have shifted their production to serve AI customers who are willing to be. willing to pay higher premiums. That's resulted in a supply squeeze of regular memory

that goes in computers and phones, and that's resulted in higher prices across the board. Apple actually raised prices on MacBooks and iPads and other products last week as a result of this memory shortage. Well, now, according to Bloomberg, Apple is in talks to buy memory components from two Chinese chipmakers, CXMT and YMTC, to use for devices sold in China.

But Apple has a political problem here because both of these companies are on the Pentagon's list of companies believed to support the Chinese military. Now, technically Apple doesn't need formal approval to buy memory from them, especially since that memory is going to be used in Apple devices sold in China. But Tim Cook has been personally appealing to Trump administration officials, including Treasury Secretary Scott Besant, to soften the political backlash if Apple went forward with this.

There's already been some members in Congress raising red flags about this. And that just tells you how bad the memory shortage has gotten and how desperate Apple is right now. By the way, the reporter who broke this story for Bloomberg, Mark German, I actually interviewed him this week about this topic and all of things Apple, including the price hike. This week's interview was very insightful. Mark dropped some interesting nuggets, so you're definitely going to want to listen to that one, especially if you're an Apple shareholder and a fanboy like me. So keep an eye on your podcast feed for that over the weekend.

Let's shift gears and talk about OpenAI. According to a report from the Financial Times, CEO Sam Altman is considering giving the U.S. government a 5% stake in the company. Open AI raised money back in March at a $852 billion valuation, so that would give Washington a stake worth nearly $43 billion. Now, Sam Allman argues that this proposal would be the best way for the general public to share in the economic upside of AI. The idea is to put this equity into a sovereign fund that would eventually pay dividends to residents. In fact, he wants all top AI companies to cough up 5% of the government, including Anthropic, Google, Meta, and others. No word on whether these companies would sign up for a

pitch like that. Personally, I think this is a way for Open AI and other AI companies to get political buy-in and soften some of the backlash that AI is facing right now. The public and politicians are getting way more concerned about AI data centers being built all over the country, along with AI taking jobs, and the cybersecurity risk along with it. Not to mention the Trump administration is playing a more active role in AI development these days. I talked on yesterday's show about the administration wanting AI companies to submit their state-of-the-art models for review before releasing them to the public. So giving the government an equity stake in the company could ease some of that pressure. And by the way, Sam Aldman is working every angle here.

He's been in talks with President Trump. He's talked to Commerce Secretary Howard Ludwig. He's talked to Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. He's even talking to Senator Bernie Sanders who wants AI companies to give up closer to 50% of their ownership to the government. So compared to Bernie's number, I mean, 5% would be a bargain. But whether Sam Malman is doing this because he wants regular people to participate in the AI upside, or if he just is trying to work the room in Washington is up for debate. But look, there is precedent here. Remember, the U.S. government took a 10% stake in Intel last year, and President Trump went from publicly attacking the CEO to then eventually backing the company. So we'll see what ends up happening here. Now,

to be clear, these talks are still in the conceptual phase, but if Open AI and Anthropic can get the government off their backs for just 5% of the company, I mean, that could be a worthwhile tradeoff. as they race towards an IPO. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Palantir shares are ripping higher again this morning, adding to the 7% jump from Wednesday thanks to a new partnership with NVIDIA and an analyst upgrade. Analyst Gill Laurier from DA Davidson, who's been on the rundown before, actually. He upgrade Palantir to a buy rating with a price target of $175 a share,

which implies a nearly 40% upside from yesterday's close. On Monday, Palantir announced a partnership with Nvidia to build custom AI models for the US government. Now, Palantir is trying to position themselves as the company that sits between enterprises and governments and the frontier AI labs. Now, some companies don't want to build directly

on top of one of the AI models from OpenAI or Anthropic in case the model gets restricted like Mythos just recently did. So Palantir sits in the middle and kind of orchestrates these models, basically becoming the operating system for enterprise AI and also government AI. So that's the bull game. case for Palantir moving forward and investors are buying it up. Shares of Palantir are up more than 5% this morning at the time of this recording and up more than 11% for the week. Now, on the flip side, shares of Bending Spoons are cooling off this morning after their massive IPO debut yesterday.

Bending Spoons is an Italian software company that owns a bunch of internet brands that you've definitely recognized like AOL and Vimeo and Eventbride, Evernote, We Transfer, and more. They're basically running the private equity roll-up playbook, but for these zombie software companies. They buy older or struggling digital businesses. They cut costs. They rebuild the product and they try to squeeze more profit out of them. And look, that strategy seems to be working. The company made $27.5 million in profit last quarter on $601 million in revenue. And the company successfully IPOed yesterday at $29 a share, raising $1.68 billion in the process. And the stock closed the first day at $40.50, up 40% on its first day of trading, giving them a market value of nearly $26 billion.

But after that huge first day, pop to stock is pulling back today. Shares are down around 7% this morning in pre-market trading at the time of this recording. On a side note, I was kind of surprised to learn that AOL still has like 25 million active users using their platform and over 200 million monthly visits. That is mind-blowing to me. If you know anyone that actually uses AOL, let me know. the comments. Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Millions of Americans will be celebrating America's 250th birthday over this 4th of July weekend, and the celebrations are going to get a bit pricing. According to the American Farm Bureau Federation, the average 4th of July cookout for 10

people will cost about $74 this year, which is up 9.4% from last year. The biggest culprit is the price of beef. Ground beef and all beef hot dog price. prices are up more than 17% from a year ago. And by the way, the price increases don't just stop at the meat counter. Hamburger buns are up 10%. Barbecue sauces up 13%. Tomatoes are up 32%. So basically every item on the picnic table got hit by inflation.

Even the condiments aren't safe. Now, there are a couple of factors driving up the cost. The Iran War drove up the price of oil and fertilizer. And then for beep specifically, it's a supply problem. The U.S. cow herd is at its lowest level in 80 years after years of drought forced ranchers to sell off their livestock. But look, if you did want to save some money this weekend, chicken and cheese prices are cheaper compared to last year.

But I don't know about you guys. I feel like bringing grilled chicken to a Fourth of July party just feels kind of weird. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Hope everyone has a fantastic long weekend. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike.

for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys back here on Sunday for the interview.