Highlights for the morning: Trump's deadline, oil may break $90, Meta hunts for talent

Donald Trump has said that a decision on US participation in attacks on Iran will be made in the next two weeks. Markets reacted with restraint: trading is mixed in Asia, with Brent crude holding at $77 per barrel - although Citigroup analysts warn that the price could jump to $90 if the Strait of Hormuz is closed. In parallel, Meta continues its aggressive race for AI talent, poaching key figures from competing startups. About these and other topics - in our review of key events by the morning of June 20.

Donald Trump will make a decision on a possible strike on Iran within two weeks, his spokeswoman said. In his statement, Trump cited that there is a «substantial likelihood of negotiations with Iran in the near future - which may or may not take place,» reported Bloomberg.

In recent days, Trump has publicly pondered whether the U.S. should join Israeli strikes on Iran to destroy its nuclear program. His latest statement signals some retreat from his previous tough rhetoric, which included, among other things, calls for residents of Tehran to evacuate, the agency points out. Trump is known for his tendency to set two-week deadlines, following which he does not always fulfill what he has promised, so the phrase «within two weeks» has become a standard phrase under his presidency, indicating that a decision is still pending, Bloomberg writes. 

At the same time, senior officials in the United States have already begun preparations for a possible strike on Iran, potentially as early as the weekend, the agency's sources said. 

U.S. stock futures partially recovered the fall after the White House statement, while markets in Japan, China and Australia remained stable. Brent crude oil fell by about 2% in the Asian session, tempering early week gains.

Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is continuing his massive hunkering down in the artificial intelligence space, writes CNBC. After he brought in Scale AI founder Alexander Wang in a $14.3 billion deal last week, Zuckerberg has turned his attention to other industry stars.

According to the channel's sources, Daniel Gross - CEO of Safe Superintelligence, a startup founded by OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutzkever - and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman are now joining Meta. Meta previously tried unsuccessfully to buy Safe Superintelligence, valued in April at $32 billion, and to poach Sutzkever himself.

When talks with Sutzkever fell through, Zuckerberg began discussing a partnership with Gross, sources said. Gross and Friedman run the venture capital fund NFDG (after their initials), and both will now move to Meta, where they will work under Wang. Meta will also take a stake in NFDG.

The company has officially confirmed that it will «share more details about Meta's superintelligence efforts and the strong team that joins them in the coming weeks.»

Zuckerberg's aggressive hiring strategy is intensifying the competition for AI talent. Meta, Google and OpenAI, along with other corporations and startups, are racing to create more powerful language models and move closer to artificial general intelligence (AGI).

Daniel Gross is an experienced AI entrepreneur and investor. He founded the search engine Cue, bought by Apple in 2013, where he later worked on Siri and machine learning. He later became a partner at Y Combinator and founded Safe Superintelligence with Sutzkever in 2023.

Friedman founded two startups before GitHub, and then led GitHub after its purchase by Microsoft in 2018.

The NFDG fund has invested in such companies as Coinbase, Figma, CoreWeave, Perplexity and Character.ai. What will become of the fund's portfolio after the deal with Meta is still unclear.

The cost of Brent crude oil may rise to $90 per barrel in case of the closure of the Strait of Hormuz, according to analysts at Citigroup, reports Bloomberg. At the same time, they note that a prolonged shutdown of shipping through this strategically important route is unlikely.

Any closure of the strait could lead to a sharp jump in prices,» Citi analysts Anthony Yuen and Eric Lee wrote. - But we believe that such a situation will not last long - all efforts will be aimed at restoring shipping as soon as possible, so we are not talking about a multi-month blockade».

The Strait of Hormuz is a narrow passage at the entrance to the Persian Gulf through which about a fifth of the world's oil production passes, including supplies from key OPEC countries Saudi Arabia and Iraq. 

At the same time, the bank believes that a possible reduction in Iranian oil exports will have less impact on prices than expected. Supplies from Iran are already declining, and Chinese refineries are reducing purchases, analysts say.

Brent crude futures are now trading around the $77 per barrel mark.

X (former Twitter) CEO Linda Iaccarino said that users of the platform will soon be able to make investments and trade directly through the social network. This was reported by the Financial Times. The move supports company owner Ilon Musk's ambitions to create an «app for all occasions.»

In an interview with the publication, Iaccarino revealed that X is considering issuing its own credit or debit card as early as this year.

Musk acquired Twitter for $44 billion in April 2022 and soon renamed it X. He has repeatedly expressed his intention to turn the platform into a counterpart to Chinese super-app WeChat. According to the FT source, X earlier this year partnered with payments giant Visa to provide users with direct payment solutions.

The so-called super app - or, as Musk calls it, «all-in-one» - is being compared to a Swiss knife among mobile apps. It combines a messenger, a social network, a payment system and online shopping tools, the newspaper points out.

Markets in the Asia-Pacific region traded mixed on Friday as investors assessed economic data from China and monitored escalating tensions between Israel and Iran.

- Mainland China's CSI 300 index started the day unchanged, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng added 0.6% after the People's Bank of China expectedly left lending rates unchanged: 3.0% on the one-year rate and 3.5% on the five-year rate.

- Japan's Nikkei 225 was down 0.1% and the broader Topix index fell 0.3% amid volatile trading. Japan's core inflation rate rose to 3.7% in May, the highest since January 2023. The figure was higher than analysts' expectations (3.6%) and exceeded April's 3.5% level.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index rose 0.7%, while the Kosdaq index of small-capitalization companies also added 0.7%.

- In Australia, the S&P/ASX 200 index was down 0.6 percent.

- U.S. stock futures fell during the Asian session as investors keep a close eye on the latest developments in the Middle East. In the U.S., stock exchanges were closed on Thursday due to the Juneteenth Liberation Day holiday.