Well, it’s that time of year again: many have made their wish lists, people are scraping together the money they’ve saved to pick out a perfect gift, some are presumably leaving out refreshments for the weary delivery drivers and, more and more, drones.

It’s Amazon Prime Day — meaning that it’s the second day of the four-day promotional event that Amazon still calls Prime Day — of course, and it’s even come early this year, with the company bringing the period into late June from July, when it’s been traditionally held for the last five years.

The Prime Age

Alongside the eyes and endless clicks that the arbitrary stream of listicles on “The Best Prime Day Deals” that almost every media outlet pours into, Amazon will also be cheering the fact that there’s now more Prime users than ever before to devour the retailer and its sellers’ sometimes-contested “discounts.” Indeed, according to the latest annual estimates from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), there were just over 200 million American shoppers using Amazon’s massive subscription service at the end of 2025.

From flipping burgers to being flipped by retail traders:

It seems Wendy’s may now be a meme stock?

Shares are up over 30% in early trading, with the ticker being the most mentioned on the WallStreetBets subreddit over the past 12 hours, per SwaggyStocks.

As of 9:03 a.m. ET, more money had changed hands trading Wendy’s stock in the premarket than Microsoft, Palantir, Apple, Amazon, or Meta.

(I’m no doctor, but I think pairing this with a short-lived meme stock of 2025, Krispy Kreme, could result in negative health outcomes.)

User u/ElegantCombination43 recently tried to stir up support by posting in r/wallstreetbets that redditors “need to save Wendy’s before it’s too late,” adding that “we’ll all be out of a job” if it goes bankrupt.

On Tuesday morning, the fast food chain announced a C-Suite shuffle, hiring Steve Cirulis from Potbelly to serve as chief financial officer and chief strategy officer.

Wendy’s could certainly use a shot in the arm to bolster its operations: trailing 12-month sales and adjusted earnings per share for Wendy’s are flat and lower, respectively, since the end of 2023.

Anyhow, Wendy’s fries are superb and second to none. Don’t @ me.

Google is investing roughly $75 million in independent film studio A24 as part of an AI partnership, according the Wall Street Journal. The investment marks Google’s first direct stake in a film studio.

Under the agreement, A24 will work with Google DeepMind to develop and test AI tools for filmmaking and production workflows, the Journal reports.

The deal comes as A24 continues to expand its business beyond indie films into television, music, and live events. Since its 2013 launch, the studio has produced Oscar-winning films such as Everything Everywhere All at Once. Its revenue has more than doubled over the past two years, according to the Journal, and the company was last valued at $3.5 billion in a Thrive Capital-led funding round in 2024.

Google’s investment comes as major technology companies increasingly deepen ties with media companies as generative AI tools become more integrated into creative industries. For Google, the partnership also expands DeepMind’s reach into entertainment and film production.

The firm and TV industry is pushing to develop AI tools that can be integrated into the time-consuming and expensive production process. In a sign of the potential value of such tools, in March, Netflix announced it would acquire Ben Affleck's startup InterPositive, which is building AI film-making tools, for $600 million.

Getty Images is surging in early trading after the company announced a multi-year licensing and product partnership with OpenAI.

Under the agreement, OpenAI will license Getty’s library of images, videos, and metadata for use in training and improving its AI models, while Getty will integrate OpenAI’s generative AI tools into its own products and services.

The deal comes as Getty faces growing pressure from generative AI tools that can create stock image-like images in seconds, threatening parts of its traditional licensing business. Getty posted revenue of $226.6 million in Q1, down 2.5% year over year on a currency-neutral basis.

Getty was one of the earliest major content companies to challenge AI firms in court, suing Stability AI in 2023 for allegedly scraping millions of copyrighted images without permission to train image-generation models.

The OpenAI deal follows Getty’s 2025 licensing agreement with Perplexity, which gave the AI search company access to Getty’s library and required image credits with links to original sources.

Before the announcement, Getty shares had been trading below $1 for months. The stock surged by 124% in early trading, erasing its year-to-date losses as investors are waiting to see if Getty can turn its licensed content library into a more valuable AI asset.

Intel is soaring in early trading after President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social that Apple has agreed to work with the semiconductor giant to design and manufacture its chips domestically.

President Trump positioned the agreement as the latest victory for his administration’s industrial policy after the federal government acquired a 9.9% equity stake in Intel last year.

"Stupid Presidents took our Economy for granted, and let Taiwan and others steal our Semiconductor Factories," Trump wrote in the post. "We design everything, but we need to BUILD it here, NOW! So I decided to help Intel because we need to design and build our Chips right here in America... and, finally, Apple has agreed to work with Intel to design and build its Chips in America."

Intel reportedly reached a preliminary agreement back in May to manufacture chips for the Apple, which has been facing supply constraints for its iPhone as well other products. The deal could help Apple reduce its reliance on longtime partner TSMC by bringing more of its chip manufacturing stateside.

"This partnership helps Apple with chip development and manufacturing on US soil with greater focus on reducing dependence on Asian manufacturing facilities." Wedbush's Dan Ives commented in a company report. He has a $400 price target for Apple this year.

The timing aligns with Intel's technical roadmap. Earlier this week, Intel confirmed that its advanced, performance-boosted 18A-P process node officially entered its risk production phase. This move serves as a blueprint for both Intel chips and processors the company plans to build for foundry customers.

“The current capacity crunch is probably emboldening customers to give Intel a harder look at this stage than perhaps they might ordinarily be inclined to do as the prospect of more advanced capacity will take on higher value in a constrained environment,” wrote Bernstein analyst Stacy Rasgon. “We are sure that Trump’s encouragement is at least not going to hurt though.”

Momentum was built around Intel Foundry services as surging global AI demand continuously outpaced capacity. Earlier this month, Google reportedly placed an order with Intel to manufacture more than 3 million of its increasingly popular tensor processing unit chips in 2028. According to the report, Nvidia is also testing to see if Intel could manufacture its next-gen Feynman chips.

Stocks rose Thursday morning after President Trump and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian signed a memorandum of understanding aimed at ending the war, in another sign that a months-long war that caused energy prices to spike could be coming to an end.

Trump signed the MOU before a dinner in Versailles, France on Wednesday evening. The president previously announced that a deal had been reached on Sunday evening, saying that traffic through the Strait of Hormuz would resume and that the US naval blockade would be lifted.

The deal comes after both sides exchanged attacks last week, escalating tensions to some of the highest levels since the US and Israel struck Iran in late February.

The price of Brent Crude ticked even lower after dropping on Sunday, sitting at about $76 a barrel. Oil giants like Shell, Chevron and Exxon fell on the news, as average gas prices in the US dropped below $4 for the first time in months.

Futures for the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite rose 0.9% and 1.5%, respectively. Last week, inflation readings for May showed both wholesale inflation and consumer prices rose in large part because of higher energy costs.

Signs of the peace deal have also lead to buying of momentum stocks this week. iShares MSCI USA Momentum Factor ETFrose another 1.46% in premarket trading.

Figma shares are rising moderately in pre-market trading after Citigroup initiated coverage with a Buy rating, saying demand tied to AI could help fuel the design software company’s next phase of growth, according to the note provided by Bloomberg.

Citi set a $36 price target on the stock and said Figma is well-positioned to offset AI disruption concerns through its own AI-driven consumption growth.

"Our proprietary customer and go-to-market (GTM) checks with hyperscalers and large financial services (FS) firms suggest strong seat upgrades & credit pack utilization, which offer positive reads on AI-monetization strategy," analyst Tyler Radke commented.

The company has been moving to roll out AI-native features in recent months, including developer-focused tools and in-house Figma agent aimed at making Figma a more central operating layer between product teams, engineers and AI systems.

Citi also pointed to upcoming product launches and potential monetization tied to Figma’s Model Context Protocol server which is an emerging framework that could allow AI systems to interact more directly with design environments.

Figma’s most recent earnings posted stronger-than-expected revenue growth while management raised its full-year guidance, saying that AI-related products were seeing encouraging adoption.

Still, the company that went public in 2025 has faced intense pressure with stock tumbling more than 50% this year-to-date over fears that automated AI code-generation tools and design alternatives from competitors like Anthropic might squeeze the need for seat-based design software.