Intel soars after buying back stake in Irish manufacturing facility

Intel is spending $14.2 billion to take back full ownership of a manufacturing facility in Ireland, the company announced on Wednesday.

“The agreement reflects Intel’s continued business momentum underpinned by the growing and essential role CPUs play in the era of AI,” according to the company’s press release.

Shares are soaring, up around 6% in early trading.

Investors appear to be viewing this measure as a concrete sign that Intel’s turnaround plan is entering a new phase — growth mode, powered by AI — after years of sluggish sales forced a focus on cost controls.

The chipmaker had previously sold a 49% stake in this fab for $11.2 billion to Apollo Global Management in order to raise cash for other investment opportunities, including its 18A manufacturing process in the US.

Intel intends to fund the transaction through available cash and an additional $6.5 billion in debt.

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Rani Molla5m

SpaceX reportedly files confidentially for IPO

SpaceX confidentially filed its draft IPO paperwork with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Bloomberg reports, citing people familiar with the matter, the next step toward what is expected to be a blockbuster summer listing.

Elon Musk’s satellite and rocket company could raise around $75 billion in an IPO that would value it at more than $1.75 trillion — both records — though the exact amounts won’t be settled until it goes public, likely in June.

Another notable thing about this IPO: the portion of shares committed to individual investors is expected to be much higher than in traditional IPOs — 20% versus the typical 10% — a move that could broaden retail participation in one of the most anticipated public offerings ever.

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Matt Phillips50m

Energy stocks tumble after massive March

Energy and chemical stocks tumbled early Wednesday on growing expectations that the US participation in the Iran war is nearing an end, and West Texas Intermediate crude oil futures slipped back below $100 a barrel.

LyondellBasell, APA Corporation, Dow, Inc., CF Industries, and Marathon Petroleum — the S&P 500’s top 5 gainers last month — all sank.

Natural gas drillers EOG Resources, Devon Energy, Coterra Energy, and Diamondback Energy dropped, as did integrated oil giants Exxon and Chevron. Fuel refiners and marketers such as Phillips 66 and Valero also fell.

Don’t shed too many tears for these energy giants; the S&P 500 energy sector rose 10% in March and 37% in Q1 2026.

The Energy Select Sector SPDR Fund is coming off its second-best quarter on record relative to the SPDR S&P 500 ETF, based on data going back to 1999.

Max Knoblauch1h

Nio, Li Auto rise as Q1 delivery totals beat internal guidance

China’s EV startup trio — Nio, Li Auto, and XPeng — are all climbing on Wednesday, following the release of March and first-quarter delivery totals.

Nio delivered 83,465 vehicles in the three months that ended in March, up 99% from the same quarter a year ago and slightly beating the upper end of its guidance. Li Auto delivered 95,142 vehicles in the period, up 2.5% and ahead of its guidance range. The figure was bolstered by 12% growth in March deliveries.

XPeng, on the other hand, saw Q1 deliveries drop 33% year over year to 62,682 vehicles — the company’s first quarterly drop since 2023. Shares are still up as of 10 a.m. ET on Wednesday, as the automaker’s March deliveries were up 80% from February’s total.

BYD is down more than 2% on Wednesday, as the automaker posted its seventh consecutive month of sales declines. First-quarter sales fell 30% year over year, Reuters reported.

Matt Phillips1h

Data center trade reboots amid Iran relief rally

Memory, networking, chipmaking machinery, semiconductor, and rack-building stocks were all up early Wednesday, in a broad-based reboot of the data center trade on growing optimism about America’s potential exit from the Iran war.

Companies that make all the core components of data center were on the move early. Memory plays Micron, Sandisk, Western Digital, and Seagate Technology Holdings all opened near the top of the S&P 500’s leaders, as they shook off last week’s jitters related to a Google Research announcement about an AI algorithm that might cut demand for memory.

Fiber-optic and networking shares like Ciena Corp., Arista Networks, Corning, Coherent, Amphenol, and Lumentum — popular recent data center plays — also rose. OG data center trades like chip companies Nvidia, Intel, and Advanced Micro Devices gained. And the companies that make the machines that make the chips, like Lam Research and KLA Corp, are also catching a bid.

Even the more hard-hat elements of the AI boom were up, with Comfort Systems USA, Eaton Corp, Carrier, and Quanta Services rising. Server rack builders Dell and HP Enterprise also increased.

Clearly, there’s a big element of relief rally at play in the early bounce, building on Monday’s advance, which saw the S&P 500 post its biggest one-day gain since May.

Luke Kawa

OpenAI to be added to ARK’s ETF lineup after completing funding round with $852 billion valuation

ARK and buzzy companies go together like early LLMs and hallucinations.

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