The Rundown - SpaceX Takes Aim at Phone Carriers, Starbucks Explores Chipotle Takeover

Episode Date: October 9, 2026

Market update for October 9, 2026Limited Time Promo: Sign up for a Public account, deposit $1,000 and get $100 in free stock (LINK)Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode, Zaid covers:Why OpenAI’s revenue numbers rattled AI stocksSpaceX’s wireless ambitions and the selloff in phone-carrier stocksWhy Starbucks is exploring a Chipotle takeoverLumentum’s rally as AI customers reserve supplies years aheadDelta’s profit warning as fuel costs and airfares climbWhat Spotify is paying for in its renewed Joe Rogan deal

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in 10 minutes. My name is Zad Admani, and today is Friday, October 9th. In today's episode, we'll tell you why one report about OpenAI's revenues sent AI and tech stocks tumbling. We'll also break down why SpaceX is making a play to be your next cell phone carrier, and why Starbucks is looking to buy Chipotle. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out about, Spotify's latest deal with Joe Rogan.

We got a great show for you today. Let's go. Stocks fell for the second straight day on Thursday. The S&P 500 dropped 0.5%, while the NASDAQ tanked by 1.3%. Thursday was the worst day for the NASDAQ since mid-August. What's interesting is that non-tech stocks actually had a decent day. An S&P 500 ETF that excludes tech stocks was actually up. half a percent and six of the 11 sectors actually finished in the green as well. But the reason that

tech and AI stock sold off so hard yesterday was because of a report that OpenAI isn't making as much money as everyone thought. The Financial Times reported yesterday that Open AI told their investors that their annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion as of the end of September. The problem is, is the estimates on Wall Street was around $70 billion of annualized revenue. So that's a $20 billion gap. So that report caused AI and chip stocks to get smoked yesterday. Invidia fell nearly 3%. Oracle dropped more than 5%. And Neo clouds like Corweave and Nebius lost nearly 8%. You got to remember, for a lot of these companies, Open AI is their biggest customer. So if Open AI's revenues aren't as high as everyone thought, but then Open AI might have to pull back on spending, which could impact

all these companies. But here's the thing. There's still so much confusion about how much revenue these AI labs are actually making. In fact, Open AI and Anthropic don't even calculate annualized revenues the same way. Anthropic counts the sales it makes through Amazon and Google Cloud. Open AI doesn't. And according to the FT article, investors tried to adjust OpenAI's numbers to make them comparable with Anthropic, and that's where the $70 billion number might have come from. So that's why I don't want to focus on the annualized revenue numbers too much.

On top of that, annualized revenue isn't a great metric to focus on anyways. It's basically one month of sales multiplied by 12. It doesn't mean that Open AI actually collected $50 billion over the past 12 months. That's not to say there isn't any concern about a potential slowdown in revenue growth for Open AI. Now, CNBC did report that total revenue run rate did grow by 77% for Open AI during the third quarter, a lot of that thanks to their enterprise business. And then Bloomberg came out with the report overnight that Open AI expects to reach or exceed $70 billion in annualized revenue by the end of the year. You know, this is why I can't wait for these AI labs to go public, because then we'll have some proper accounting to go off of and not just reporting. Anyways, it seems like the market is already bouncing back from yesterday's sell-off.

As I record this, I'm seeing green in the pre-market across the board, especially for tech stocks. So yesterday's sell-off might have just been an overreaction. I think I might have to set up my AI agent on public to automatically buy the tech dip every time there's a report of OpenEI or Anthropics revenue because I feel like the market usually bounces back. We'll continue to keep an eye on all the AI drama, along with everything else happening. So definitely get subscribed to the podcast if you haven't already and tune in every day to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines. And we're starting with SpaceX. SpaceX might be making a play to be your next cell phone carrier.

The company announced yesterday that they were buying a nationwide chunk of wireless spectrum from an investment firm called grain management. The Wall Street Journal reported that SpaceX is paying about $8 billion in cash. Now, a quick explainer here, spectrum is the radio frequencies that your phone uses to carry your calls and data. And by buying the spectrum licenses, that gives SpaceX the right to use those airwaves. And the spectrum that SpaceX bought is low-band spectrum, which travels far and goes through walls. And the reason that's key is that SpaceX already has the capability of offering satellite phone coverage via Starlink. In fact, they currently have a partnership with T-Mobile. But the thing is, satellite is great for offering coverage in remote areas,

but it's not great for cities where there are buildings and a ton of people in a concentrated area. So by buying this low-band spectrum, SpaceX could fill in those gaps in the cities and eventually turn Starlink Mobile into a full-fledged competitor to Verizon T-Mobile in AT&T. And that's why the market kind of freaked out on this news. Shares of AT&T, Verizon, and T-Mobile are all down more than 7% this morning, at the time in this recording. But the thing is, buying Spectrum doesn't mean that SpaceX will suddenly have a nationwide network

ready to go in the next few months. They still need to build out the ground infrastructure, like installing cell phone towers for reliable indoor coverage, and that could take years and billions of dollars of investments. So I feel like the 7% drop for these phone carriers might be a bit of an overreaction. And personally, I don't really understand

why SpaceX is getting into this business in the first place. Now, being a phone carrier isn't exactly a, high-growth business. It's super capital-intensive, and you're going up against established players with nationwide networks. So I'm kind of surprised that SpaceX is doing this and not just doubling down on selling satellite coverage to the carriers for remote areas. Maybe there's a bigger play here that I'm not seeing, so let me know in the comments on what you guys think about SpaceX potentially getting into the phone carrier business. Let's shift gears and talk about Starbucks and Chipotle. According to the Financial Times, who I've been on a heater, by the way,

Starbucks has been working with advisors on a possible takeover of Chipotle. Now, it's not clear from the reporting if Starbucks has actually made an offer yet, and Starbucks has declined to comment. Chipotle's stock did jump 6% yesterday on the report. Now, if this merger were to happen, it would be the biggest restaurant M&A deal ever by a lot. Chipotle currently has a market cap of about $40 billion right now, and the takeover price tag could be closer to $50 billion. For comparison, the current restaurant M&A record is Burger King buying Tim Hortons for $11.4 billion back in 2014. And you know, these two companies have a mutual connection, which is Starbucks's current CEO Brian Nicol. Before joining Starbucks in 2024, he spent six years running Chipotle and he was a big reason for Chipotle's turnaround after their E. coli outbreak in 2015.

In fact, during his tenure, Chipotle stock went up more than 700%. But since he left two years ago, Chipotle's stock has dropped nearly 40%. Now, the Brian Nickel Turnround Magic hasn't worked on Starbucks yet. The stock is basically flat since he took over back in September of 2024. As for a merger between these two companies, it seems kind of weird initially, but there is a business case to be made. Roughly 90% of Chipotle locations are within a mile of a Starbucks. And I'm sure there's a lot of overlap in the Venn diagram of people that go to Starbucks and Chipotle. I think the most bullish case here is that Starbucks could help take

Chipotle Global. Chipotle only has about 100 restaurant locations outside the U.S. while Starbucks has about 23,000. Not to mention Brian Nicol knows the Chipotle business pretty well, so he must have an idea on how he wants to integrate the two companies. Personally, though, I'm still skeptical on this deal actually happening. I mean, these are two very different businesses. Not to mention, Starbucks is still working through its own turnaround, and a massive acquisition like this would just add another layer of complexity. So I'm still skeptical that this deal will actually happen, but if it somehow does and people start getting Starbucks cold brew with their Chipotle burritos for lunch, I think I might have to go along on toilet paper and plumbing

companies, especially the ones that service office buildings. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Shares of Lumentum are getting a pot this morning after their CEOs said that their optical components are sold out through 2029. See, Lumenum making a lot. lasers and other components that move data using light, and they've seen an explosion in demand from AI data centers. The company says the demand is so strong that some of their customers are already locking in orders for 2030. The thing is, though, it's going to take Lumentum three to five years to build more capacity, so we might be in a supply crunch for some time. Lamentum stock is up more than 5% this morning at the time of this recording, and if you zoom out,

the stock has gone up nearly 7x in the last 12 months. Now, on the flip side, shares of Delta Airlines are down this morning after the company missed earnings expectations for the first time in two years, and they also cut their 2026 profit outlook. Revenues in Q3 were up 16%. And earnings per share came at $1.72. Both those metrics missing estimates. You know, Delta is the most profitable airline in the U.S., but they're feeling the pressure from higher fuel prices because of the Iran War. Delta said that fuel costs jump 62% from a year earlier to $4.1 billion. in the third quarter alone. Now, CEO Ed Bastion said that Delta is absorbing a $6 billion increase in fuel cost this year, which is why Delta cut its full year profit outlook by more than 20%.

But Delta is also passing some of those costs to passengers. Now, if you look at the inflation report from September, that showed that airline prices were up 23% versus a year ago. So we'll have to see how much more of the fuel cost these airlines can keep passing to the passengers before it impacts demand. Delta is still expecting revenues to increase by 20% in Q4, so there isn't a demand problem just yet. Shares of Delta Airlines are down about 3% this morning at the time of this recording, but if you zoom out though, the stock is still up around 16% on the year.

Let's wrap the show with a fun fact. Joe Rogan has renewed his deal with Spotify for his podcast, and the structure of this deal is pretty unique. Joe Rogan has had the number one podcast in the world since like 2019. and it's only getting bigger. According to the data, his podcast reached about 28.4 million Americans a week last quarter. You know, at the start of 2020,

that audience was about 6.6 million, so it's grown substantially. The Wall Street Journal reported that this new multi-year agreement has similar terms to his previous deal with Spotify, which had an estimated payout of $250 million. The exact value of this renewal hasn't been disclosed. You know, Spotify first signed Joe Rogan back in 2020, paying him more than $100 million to make his podcast exclusive to the platform.

I think by doing that, Spotify was hoping that they would spark growth in their podcast listeners. And I think it did work. But then the company pivoted in 2024 when they updated their deal with Joe Rogan to allow the podcast to return to other platforms, including YouTube. So Spotify isn't paying for exclusivity anymore. The deal covers licensing rights and ad sales. I think what Spotify wants to do is monetize Joe Rogan's audience wherever they listen to his podcast. And this is a great deal for Joe Rogan because he gets a guaranteed payout without having to chase the ad dollars himself.

So yeah, I mean, the podcasting space is getting pretty lucrative these days. You also have Netflix trying to get into the podcasting space. They've signed some exclusive deals with some podcasters. You know, we're big fans of Spotify here at the rundown. I've even had a chance to hang out at the recording studios in New York and record an interview there. So if Spotify is still looking to write big checks to podcasters, my DMs are open. Or you can also email producer Mike. No, Joe Rogan's podcast reaches about 28 million Americans every week.

So the rundown is in the ballpark of that. If the ballpark was the size of Texas. Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. That's the rundown for this week. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting. Shout out to Mike and V for all the work behind the scenes. And we'll see you guys.

here for the interview. At Capital One, we don't just use technology. We architect it. Our teams have true end-to-end product ownership, shipping distributed systems that handle high concurrency at scale. No single-server bottlenecks, engineered beyond legacy downtime, and operating right here in downtown Toronto. That's Technology at Capital One.

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