Jensen Huang, chief executive officer of Nvidia Corp. speaks during a Bloomberg Television interview on the sidelines of the Dell Technologies World Annual Convention event in Las Vegas, Nevada, US, on Monday, May 18, 2026.
Ian Maule | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Hello, this is Dylan Butts writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of the CNBC Daily Open.
Big Tech has dominated the news cycle, with Nvidia delivering another quarter of strong revenue growth, as AI leaders like SpaceX and OpenAI move closer to IPOs.
Meanwhile, Wall Street rebounded sharply amid cooling oil prices and moderating rate concerns, with Asia following suit.
Enjoy!
What you need to know today
Nvidia will be the talk of town after posting another strong quarter, with data center revenue — the heart of its AI business — nearly doubling year-over-year on relentless demand for its GPUs.
But while the results beat expectations across the board, the company’s shares slipped in after-hours trading as investors scrutinized guidance, margins and the sustainability of hyper-growth amid rising competition.
Watch Jensen Huang’s full interview with CNBC by clicking here.
The earnings came after a trading day that saw Wall Street stage a strong rebound, with the Dow surging more than 600 points as easing oil prices and moderating rate concerns lifted sentiment. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq also posted solid gains.
Big Tech dominated market news, with Elon Musk’s SpaceX filing its long-awaited IPO prospectus as it advances toward what could be one of the largest and most watched IPOs in history.
While SpaceX didn’t say how much it plans to raise, it is reportedly aiming to reel in around $75 billion. That’s more than triple the size of the biggest U.S. IPO to date, which was Alibaba.
However, SpaceX, which also owns Musk’s AI company xAI, is far from the only major U.S. tech company racing to IPO this year. OpenAI is preparing to confidentially file a draft of its IPO prospectus as soon as Friday, CNBC confirmed on Wednesday, as an AI IPO horse race heats up.
While news of an IPO from Anthropic has been comparatively muted, the company’s growth is accelerating rapidly, with Q2 revenue on track to reach $10.9 billion, a source has told CNBC.
In Asia, investors will be focusing on another AI beneficiary in memory giant Samsung Electronics. The company has narrowly avoided disruption after its union suspended a planned strike following a last-minute tentative agreement on wages and bonuses.
The deal, reached through mediated talks, will go to a member vote and is likely to offer temporary relief to global semiconductor supply chains critical to the AI boom.
Traders also continue to monitor geopolitical developments in the Middle East, with Oil prices retreating below the $100 psychological level after President Trump indicated U.S.-Iran negotiations are in their final stages.
Meanwhile, Asia-Pacific markets opened higher Thursday, tracking Wall Street gains, as optimism that the Middle East conflict could end soon grows.
— Dylan Butts
And finally…
Bezos defends billionaires, hypes AI, talks taxes and praises Trump in CNBC interview
Ultrabillionaire Jeff Bezos on Wednesday hyped artificial intelligence, blamed government meddling for economic woes and broadly defended himself and his megarich peers in an exclusive interview with CNBC.
But the Amazon and Blue Origin founder, in a wide-ranging interview with Andrew Ross Sorkin, initially struck a populist tone, at times sounding more like some progressive Democrats than one of the most successful capitalists in history.
“It’s kind of a tale of two economies,” Bezos told Sorkin at the start of the interview when asked about growing criticism toward billionaires. “You have a bunch of people in this country who are doing really well, but you also have a bunch of people in this country who are struggling.”
— Kevin Breuninger, Annie Palmer
