Samuel Boivin | Nurphoto | Getty Images
Hello, this is Hui Jie writing to you from Singapore, and Leonie Kidd in London. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.
Semiconductor giant Micron has claimed an unlikely crown: Wall Street’s new margin king, ahead of Nvidia and Meta.
But a new challenger has also entered the fray: South Korea’s SK Hynix, which filed for a massive $29.4 billion Nasdaq ADR listing, making it the second-largest U.S. listing on record after SpaceX.
Meanwhile, as oil prices continue to retreat, the temperature in Europe continues to go up amid a record-breaking heatwave.
Read on!
What you need to know today
Move over, Nvidia. There is a new king in town. At least in profit margins, that is.
That tops every major U.S. tech company, surpassing social media giant Meta’s latest gross margin of 81.9% and Nvidia’s 75%.
The AI infrastructure buildout continues to fuel demand for high-bandwidth memory, allowing Micron to set profitability records almost as quickly as customers can snap up its chips.
Another company that saw its shares jump 15% was Qualcomm, after the chipmaker raised its forecasts for non-handset revenue in fiscal 2029 to $40 billion, nearly doubling its previous projection of $22 billion.
The company is making an aggressive push into data centers, as it revealed a central processing unit for data centers called Dragonfly C1000 and said that Meta would use it when production begins in 2028.
The new processor is designed for agentic AI applications while emphasizing energy efficiency.
Another AI winner across the Pacific will soon head to Wall Street. South Korea’s SK Hynix, which recently briefly surpassed Samsung Electronics as Seoul’s most valuable firm, has filed for a Nasdaq ADR listing that could be worth up to $29.4 billion, reportedly the second-largest share sale after SpaceX. Its shares popped as much as 11% in Thursday trading.
But while Wall Street has fun in the sun, shadows of the Middle East conflict loom over the White House.
Oil prices extend their declines after at least 20 oil tankers stranded in the Persian Gulf with 35 million barrels have exited the Strait of Hormuz since the U.S. and Iran agreed to open the sea lane. U.S. crude futures fell below $70 for the first time since March.
U.S. President Donald Trump claimed that Iran had informed him there would be no tolls, insurance costs, or charges of any kind for ships looking to pass through the strategically vital Strait of Hormuz.
He also said unfrozen Iranian assets would be used to purchase U.S. agricultural products, a claim echoed by Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent.
Iran, though, does not seem to be on the same page. Iranian officials on Tuesday rejected the idea that Washington or its partners would dictate how Iran spends unfrozen assets, saying any agricultural purchases would be based on price and quality rather than U.S.-imposed terms.
The bill of the Iran conflict also now seems to be coming back to roost in Washington. The White House has sent Congress a request for $87.6 billion in supplemental funding for the Iran war and farm aid, among other things. The bill was met with immediate opposition from congressional Democrats.
In Europe, a record-breaking heatwave has prompted red alerts across the continent. France suffered a major power outage on Wednesday, leaving 68,000 homes without electricity. There was widespread disruption to schools and transportation in the U.K., Germany and Switzerland.
Europe is warming faster than any other continent, at twice the speed of the global average since the 1980s, according to the European Union’s Copernicus Climate Change Service.
— Lim Hui Jie, Leonie Kidd
And finally…
Anthropic accuses Alibaba of campaign to ‘brazenly’ and ‘illicitly’ extract AI capabilities
The letter, which was addressed to Sen. Tim Scott, R-S.C., and Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., on June 10, said Alibaba carried out “the largest known distillation attack on Anthropic to date.”
Distillation is an AI training method where a small, less capable model is built using outputs from an existing, stronger model.
— Ashley Capoot
