Highlights for the morning: oil is cheaper, court dismisses Musk's lawsuit against OpenAI

Google and Blackstone are launching a joint AI service with Blackstone investing $5 billion. Meta is moving 7,000 employees to AI teams and at the same time cutting about 10% of its staff. These and other topics - in our review of key events for the morning of Ma 19.

Oil prices fell after US President Donald Trump said he postponed a planned strike on Iran after requests from the leaders of Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, CNBC wrote. Brent was down more than 2% to around $109 a barrel and WTI was down to $106.7.

The market took the statement as a signal to reduce the risk of immediate escalation in the Middle East, although disruptions in oil supplies through the Strait of Hormuz remain, the channel points out. ING analysts note that some shipping activity through this waterway has resumed, and some tankers have returned to energy transportation, but the supply volumes are still significantly below normal.

A jury in California found OpenAI co-founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman not guilty in the suit of Elon Musk, who accused them of unjust enrichment due to the transformation of OpenAI from a non-profit organization into a commercial one, Yahoo Finance reports. The court decided that Musk filed the suit too late - after the statute of limitations had expired.

Musk's lawyers tried to portray Altman as unreliable and pointed to his temporary dismissal from the OpenAI board in 2023. However, OpenAI said Musk never made it a condition of his investment that the company maintain its nonprofit status. Amid the litigation, OpenAI and Anthropic continue to prepare for a possible IPO in 2026.

Google and investment company Blackstone are launching a joint AI service that will lease computing power and Google chips (TPUs - tensor processors) for training and operation of neural networks, Yahoo Finance writes. Blackstone will invest $5 billion in the project, and the launch of the first capacities is expected in 2027.

The deal shows how Wall Street is increasingly investing in AI infrastructure. Google and Amazon are simultaneously trying to reduce their dependence on Nvidia by promoting their own chips as an alternative to its GPUs (graphics processing units) for AI, the publication notes.

Semiconductor maker Analog Devices is in talks to buy non-public startup Empower Semiconductor for about $1.5 billion, according to The Information and Bloomberg. The deal reflects growing demand for technologies that help reduce the power consumption of AI chips.

Empower develops solutions for more efficient power distribution in AI systems where workloads and electricity consumption are growing rapidly. The purchase will allow Analog Devices to strengthen its position in the AI infrastructure market, The Information notes.

Meta will reallocate about 7,000 employees to divisions related to artificial intelligence, including the development of AI agents and applications, according to The New York Times and Bloomberg. At the same time, the company is preparing to cut about 8,000 employees - about 10% of its staff - as part of restructuring.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg has made AI a top priority for the company, with Meta spending hundreds of billions of dollars on infrastructure, developing large language models and hiring specialists to compete with OpenAI and Google.

- Japan's broad Topix index was up 0.6 percent on Ma. 19, while the Nikkei 225 was down 0.5 percent.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was little changed, while mainland China's CSI 300 index was down 0.5 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was down 3.5 percent and the Kosdaq was down 3 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.9 percent.

- Futures on the S&P 500 were falling by 0.3%. Futures on Nasdaq Composite - by 0.5%. Exchange contracts on Dow Jones Industrial Average - by 0.2%.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor