WSJ What’s News - U.S. Markets Reach New Records After $100 Billion Nvidia–OpenAI Deal

Episode Date: September 22, 2025

P.M. Edition for Sept. 22. Nvidia announced that it was investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI, sending U.S. indexes to new highs. WSJ tech reporter Robbie Whelan explains the significance of the deal. Plus, more companies are pushing for their employees to get back to the office… but workers are resisting. We hear from Theo Francis, who covers corporate news for the Journal, about why—and how—they’re able to stall in a moment when bosses have more power. And starting tomorrow, Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night show will be back on the air. Alex Ossola hosts. Sign up for the WSJ's free What's News newsletter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Uh, I'm looking into it. Stress less about security. Choose security solutions from TELUS for peace of mind at home and online. Visit TELUS.com slash Total Security to learn more. Conditions apply. Why NVIDIA is investing $100 billion in Open AI. Plus, bosses may have more power now, but employees are still pushing back on return-to-office mandates.

The current dynamic where people just aren't going into the office that much more, despite the requirement, could shift as the labor market weakens. In other words, if it's harder to find or keep a job, people may be much more diligent about coming into the office when they're supposed to. And Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show will be back on the air tomorrow. It's Monday, September 22nd. I'm Alex Osloaf for the Wall Street Journal. This is the PM edition of What's News,

the top headlines and business stories that move the world today. NVIDIA and OpenAI, two U.S. giants powering America's race for AI superintelligence, announced an expansive partnership today, as NVIDIA plans to invest $100 billion into OpenAI. For more, I'm joined now by Robbie Whelan, who covers tech for the Wall Street Journal. Robbie, why is this partnership significant? The first thing is the size of it. $100 billion is an enormous amount of capital for NVIDIA to plow into Open AI,

which has really become the world's largest private startup company. The other thing is what the money is intended to fund. So this deal is going to be essentially, invidia is investing in OpenAI and bulwarking the company's finances so that it can pay for more AI infrastructure, including chips, data centers, other hardware and software. NVIDIA and open AI have worked together for some time. What changes with this agreement? NVIDIA and open AI are not directly in competition. They are collaborators, and they have for a long time been collaborators and had a very fruitful partnership. But what's interesting about this is that Nvidia doesn't always take big stakes

or make big investments in its customers' businesses. So that's unusual. And the way we're understanding it is that Nvidia wants to have a closer, more dedicated customer relationship with OpenAI. And OpenAI, obviously, needs a lot of capital to keep things going. They can't just go out to the market

and sell a bunch of shares because they're not public. That was WSJ Tech reporter, Robbie Wheelan. Thank you, Robbie. Thanks for having me. The U.S. stock market notched new records today, thanks to that blockbuster deal between two of the largest players in the artificial intelligence boom. The tech-heavy NASDAQ led the way with a 0.7% gain. The S&P 500 rose by 0.4% and the Dow edged 0.1% higher. And Nvidia shares advanced 3.9%, reaching their own all-time high.

Spirit Airlines is planning to furlough one-third of its flight attendants, 1,800 of its roughly 5,200 employees in another effort by the bankrupt airline to slash expenses. Hundreds had already been out on voluntary leaves, but Spirit's chief operating officer said the company had reached the limit of what it could achieve through such measures. Flight attendants can volunteer for furlough, which will determine how many are involuntarily cut. Spirit last month filed for bankruptcy for a second time in less than a year. Executives said the company's first Chapter 11 process failed to address all its financial issues, including costly airplane leases and high labor costs.

Here's a trend that may surprise you. The demand for cardboard boxes is slumping. Box shipments have fallen from the record highs reached during the pandemic to the lowest levels since 2016. That's bad news for the companies that make those boxes and for the economy more broadly. Ryan December covers commodities for the Wall Street Journal. Ryan, based on the sheer number of packages on my stoop, I find this pretty surprising. Why is this slump happening? Well, you have what analysts would call secular trends, and then you have some cyclical trends right now.

We have the anxiety over tariffs. You also have weakening consumer spending. And then lastly, you have the housing slump. And if you think about it, it's not just moving boxes. involved when we move. All those building products come wrapped in corrugated packaging, refrigerators, washing machines. So you have those things weighing on demand in a cyclical nature, but more permanently, there's things like Amazon. You might notice now that your boxes are about the size of the thing you ordered and not some big box with another box floating around in it.

You might see more paper mailers, more plastic mailers. They're trying to cut down on fuel and space on trucks and planes. So you have some more lasting trends. you have some that are in the business cycle. Clearly, this is not great news for the companies that make the cardboard, but just how bad is it? This year, so far, we've had probably the most shutdowns in history, certainly in modern times, with modern levels of cardboard consumption. We've had 9% of the U.S. container board capacity shut down this year. And container board is the thick brown paper that is folded up into boxes.

You have the outer layers and you have the fluted medium and those get made into boxes. So the mills that produce that are shutting down at a clip we've never seen before. That's a big flashing warning sign for the business ahead. Now, some of this is related to mergers and new strategies by some of the biggest box companies like international paper to focus on the most profitable customers, not just be worried about volume. What does this show us about how the broader economy is doing? So cardboard is one of these, like, fun alternative indicators.

Because if you think about everything from a pizza to the oven, you cook it in, comes in a box, right? If boxes are coming out of plants at a lower rate, it's a warning sign about consumer spending and a slowdown in the economy. That was WSJ reporter, Ryan DeSember. Thank you, Ryan. Thank you. Coming up, why the push for employees to return to office is stalling. That's after the break. With Amexper, Platinum. Access to exclusive Amex pre-sale tickets can score you a spot trackside. So being a fan for

life turns into the trip of a lifetime. That's the powerful backing of Amex. Pre-sale tickets for future events subject to availability and varied by race. Turns and conditions apply. Learn more at amex.ca.com. For many companies, the push to get workers back to the office continues. News. Employers from Paramount to Amazon to JPMorgan are dialing back on remote work this year. Employer policy data from Workplace Think Tank Work Forward shows that companies are requiring 12% more in office time than in early 2024. But so far, this push hasn't really worked. A survey from Stanford economist Nicholas Bloom found that Americans still work from home about a quarter of the time, much like in 2023. Teo Francis covers corporate news for the journal. Tayo, why don't workers seem to be keen to return to the office?

The reasons are as varied as the American workforce. Flexibility can be a great thing during the week, being able to run an errand quickly, being able to keep up with laundry. A lot of people got used to it during the pandemic where everyone was at home in a lot of places and a lot of kinds of jobs. And it's hard to switch back. There's a lot of resistance in parts of the workforce to coming back to the office. Why are companies pushing for this? Companies tend to emphasize the value of collaboration and cooperation, the importance of kind of all being on the same page, on the same schedule. It's also a matter of generation to some degree.

A lot of the people who aren't very happy with return into the office point out that most of the senior managers who are really pushing these things are older men, older women. who tend to place a high value on seeing the people they're working with. And a lot of people tend to think that if you're not at work, you might not be working as hard as you could be. I've noticed a bit of a trend, and you touch on it in your story, that when companies make the sort of more extreme return to office pushes, like four days a week, five days a week, there tends to be a reduction in headcount.

Is that an explicit goal of some of these mandates, or is it just one of those theories? It is very clear that there's a correlation here, that return to office mandates often show up around layoffs, either before or after. The Federal Reserve went so far as to take note of it in their regular economic brief or summary in which they noted that in a number of areas, these kinds of return to office pushes may be helping managers reduce the number of people on their payrolls. We've been talking a bit on the show over the past few weeks about how there's this sort of other cultural shift happening where bosses are having more control over workplace dynamics. And yet this dynamic persists that employees continue to push back. How are they able to do that given the sort of consolidation of power of the managerial level? A big way they can push back is by simply not complying.

And it's very, very hard for companies to really know if someone who's not at their desk is out because they're sick. or because they are visiting a client off-site or working from home and hoping nobody notices. So in the end, it can be easier to use this as a tool to weed out people who, for whatever reason, managers think they're not a great fit or whatever. One thing that all of the experts I talked with pointed out is that the current dynamic where people just aren't going into the office that much more, despite the requirements, that dynamic could shift as the labor market weakens. In other words, if it's harder to find or keep a job, people may be much more diligent about coming into the office when they're supposed to.

That was WSJ Special Writer, Teo Francis. Thank you, Teo. Thank you. The Food and Drug Administration has moved to approve a version of a little-known medicine as a treatment for autism symptoms. That's according to a public document and people familiar with the matter. The move coincides with an event at the White House this afternoon. When people familiar with the event say the administration is expected to warn that acetametaphon, the active ingredient in Tylenol, is a potential cause of autism. Officials are expected to lay out potential regulatory actions, including labeling changes for acetamine, and the new approval for the medicine known as Lukavoren as a way to help alleviate autism symptoms in some people.

The American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists says that acetamapin is safe to use in pregnancy, though it recommends that pregnant women consult with their doctorate. before using it, as with all medicines. And finally, Jimmy Kimmel's late-night show will resume broadcasting tomorrow. The show has been off the ABC network since September 17th, when Disney pulled the show indefinitely over the host's remarks about the shooting of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. The company said it had made the decision to return Kimmel to the air after, quote, thoughtful conversations with Jimmy in recent days. President Trump and other conservatives had hailed.

Disney's decision to take Kimmel off the air, while some Democrats and people in Hollywood expressed concerns about government censorship. And that's what's news for this Monday afternoon. Today's show is produced by Pierre Biennameh and Rodney Davis with supervising producers Janah Heron and Michael Cosmides. I'm Alex Ocelov for The Wall Street Journal. We'll be back with a new show tomorrow morning. Thanks for listening.

Thank you.