Highlights for this morning: two newcomers to the "trillionaires club," the idea to merge Tesla and SpaceX

The capitalization of chip supplier Micron exceeded $1 trillion for the first time after the stock jump, followed by South Korea's SK Hynix. Meanwhile, SpaceX received a $2.29 billion military contract in the U.S. and may merge with Tesla in the future. These and other topics are discussed in our review of key events by the morning of Ma. 27.

Micron's capitalization exceeded $1 trillion for the first time after the stock jumped nearly 20% - the best day for the company since 2011, Yahoo Finance reports. The occasion was the forecast of UBS, which more than tripled the target price of the securities: from $535 to a record for Wall Street $1625 per share.

The bank believes that the AI boom has changed the memory market and made Micron's business less cyclical and more predictable. If the new goal is achieved, the company's capitalization could grow to $1.8 trillion - above Tesla, Meta and Berkshire Hathaway. Other chip makers, including AMD, Intel, Qualcomm and Marvell, grew along with Micron.

South Korea's SK Hynix has become the next memory maker with a capitalization above $1 trillion after its shares rose more than 12%, Yahoo Finance writes. This comes just hours after US-based Micron also crossed the milestone, and earlier in May, Samsung Electronics joined the club.

The AI boom has sharply increased demand for computer memory for training and neural networks, turning SK Hynix, Micron and Samsung into the main beneficiaries of the market, the publication notes. The companies' production capacity is already sold out through the end of 2026, and SK Hynix shares have gained nearly 250% since the beginning of the year, compared with 214% for Micron and 160% for Samsung.

The U.S. Space Force has awarded SpaceX a $2.29 billion contract to build a secure satellite communications network to transmit data between military sensors and weapons systems around the world. A fully operational prototype should be ready by the end of 2027.

The network will be part of the Golden Dome missile defense system promoted by the Donald Trump administration. In February 2025, SpaceX CEO Gwynne Shotwell said the company's government contracts had reached about $22 billion, of which about $15 billion went to NASA. In April of that year, SpaceX received another $5.9 billion for 28 U.S. space missions.

On Wall Street and inside Elon Musk's companies are discussing a possible merger of Tesla and SpaceX after the space company's IPO, which is expected as early as June, CNBC writes, citing sources. Tesla is now valued at about $1.6 trillion, while SpaceX is valued at $1.25 trillion after a merger with AI startup xAI, which would potentially make Musk the head of two of the top 10 most valuable companies in the United States.

The companies are already closely aligned, with Tesla investing $2 billion in xAI, SpaceX purchasing nearly $700 million worth of Tesla Megapack batteries and $131 million worth of Cybertruck batteries, and Nvidia diverting a $500 million GPU order from Tesla to xAI at Musk's request. More than 75% of SpaceX's capital expenditures in the first quarter were AI-related, and Tesla's spending on AI infrastructure could exceed $25 billion this year. Wedbush analyst Dan Ives believes a full-fledged merger between Tesla and SpaceX is possible as early as 2027.

Employees of Samsung Electronics have approved a record profit-sharing agreement under which employees of the semiconductor division will receive an average of about $400,000 in bonuses, the Financial Times reports. The payments will be allocated 10.5% of the company's operating profit - that's more than $22 billion with Samsung's projected profit in 2026 at 327 trillion won. After the news, the company's shares rose nearly 7%.

The main beneficiaries were employees of the AI memory business: workers in the memory division could receive about 600 million won ($400,000.) each, while employees in the loss-making divisions and consumer electronics could receive only 6-200 million won. Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron are now experiencing record growth thanks to demand for AI memory chips, and the capitalization of each of the three companies has already exceeded $1 trillion.

- Japan's broad Topix index was down 0.4 percent, while the Nikkei 225 was up 0.4 percent.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 1 percent, while mainland China's CSI 300 index was down 0.4 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was up 3.4 percent, while the Kosdaq was falling 3 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.4 percent.

- Futures on the S&P 500 were almost unchanged after a record close a day earlier. Futures on Nasdaq Composite also showed almost no dynamics. And exchange-traded contracts on Dow Jones Industrial Average added a little more than 0.1%.

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