Apple becomes a $3 trillion company again, thanks to tariff reprieve

Apple is currently in tariff limbo, having been exempted from reciprocal tariffs and not yet having been assigned sector tariffs. Presumably, the new tariffs won’t be as bad as the previous 125% levies Apple was facing on China imports, so the hit to Apple’s earnings will likely be much less. Investors consider that pretty good news, with the stock closing up over 2% today — enough to bring Apple back into the $3 trillion club, which it had exited 10 days ago. It’s a lonely spot, though, since it no longer shares the space with Microsoft or Nvidia.

More Tech

See all Tech

Google announces new models, glasses, agents, but investors are not impressed

At Google’s I/O developer conference, the company announced a bevy of new products, but none of it helped the stock one bit.

Jon Keegan11h

Rani Molla15h

Report: Tesla to build solar factory near Houston

Tesla is planning to build its solar panel manufacturing plant — an endeavor that could add up to $50 billion in value to its energy business — near Houston, Texas, Electrek reports. The plant would be located on the same site as its Megafactory, which builds Megapack battery systems.

The solar plant is part of Tesla and SpaceX’s goal of eventually putting solar-powered data centers in space.

On the company’s fourth-quarter earnings call, CEO Elon Musk said Tesla was “going to work towards getting 100 gigawatts a year of solar cell production, integrating across the entire supply chain from raw materials all the way to finished solar panels.”

At the time, the news had sent shares of First Solar down, but subsequent reports suggest Tesla is unlikely to compete directly with the country’s leading photovoltaic panel maker, instead using much of that production internally.

Exclusive: Tesla (TSLA) is building its giant solar panel factory in Houston

Rani Molla15h

Anthropic hires former OpenAI member and Tesla AI director Andrej Karpathy

Andrej Karpathy — a founding member of OpenAI, Tesla’s director of AI from 2017 to 2022, and the man responsible for the term “vibe coding” — is doing what many in tech are doing right now: heading to greener pastures at Anthropic.

Anthropic, which is slated to go public this year, recently raised money at a $950 billion valuation, making it more valuable than OpenAI and nearly as valuable as Tesla.

Personal update: I've joined Anthropic. I think the next few years at the frontier of LLMs will be especially formative. I am very excited to join the team here and get back to R&D. I remain deeply passionate about education and plan to resume my work on it in time.
— Andrej Karpathy (@karpathy) May 19, 2026

15h

TURN SIGNAL

Confessions of a (former) robotaxi hater

Rani Molla

“governments around the world will not allow Apple junk fees to stand”

Rani Molla18h

Epic Games has returned “Fortnite” to the Apple App Store globally, after the video game maker signaled confidence in its ongoing lawsuit with the iPhone maker. In a press release Tuesday, the company wrote:

“Fortnite is returning to the App Store now because we are confident that once Apple is forced to show its costs, governments around the world will not allow Apple junk fees to stand.

We will continue to challenge Apple’s anticompetitive App Store practices of banning alternative app stores and competition in payments.”

Late last year, an appeals court partly reversed sanctions against Apple but upheld the contempt finding and an injunction forcing Apple to permit outside payment options. “Fortnite” returned to the US App Store a year ago.

The suit began in 2020 over Apple’s mandatory 30% commission on in-app purchases and its refusal to allow third-party payment processors or alternative app stores on its mobile devices.

Latest Stories

Sherwood Media, LLC and Chartr Limited produce fresh and unique perspectives on topical financial news and are fully owned subsidiaries of Robinhood Markets, Inc., and any views expressed here do not necessarily reflect the views of any other Robinhood affiliate, including Robinhood Markets, Inc., Robinhood Financial LLC, Robinhood Securities, LLC, Robinhood Crypto, LLC, Robinhood Money, LLC, Robinhood U.K. Ltd, Robinhood Derivatives, LLC, Robinhood Gold, LLC, Robinhood Asset Management, LLC, Robinhood Credit, Inc., Robinhood Ventures DE, LLC and, where applicable, its managed investment vehicles.