Highlights of the week: a chance for U.S.-Iran talks, Apple's head change, Intel's rise

The US and Iran are set to hold a new round of direct talks in Islamabad. Apple will have a new CEO from September 2026 - John Ternus, Senior Vice President of Hardware Engineering, will replace Tim Cook. The market saw signs of Intel's business recovery. The main events from April 20 to April 24 are in our review.

On Saturday, April 25, US Presidential Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Whitkoff and Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner will travel to Pakistan for direct talks with Iranian representatives, White House spokeswoman Caroline Leavitt said. Islamic Republic Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi has arrived in Islamabad and plans to meet with the U.S. envoys, the New York Times wrote Friday, citing Iranian officials.

The previous round of talks between the two countries failed on April 11. But now the U.S. and Iran once again have a chance for a peace agreement.

The market took the news positively. S&P 500 and Nasdaq added 0.8% and 1.6% on Friday, respectively, and reached new records. S&P 500 showed the longest series of weekly growth since 2024, Bloomberg calculated.

Brent crude futures were trading around $106 a barrel on Friday evening.

Hopes for peace talks and the opening of the Strait of Hormuz support the market, but in general it has become less sensitive to geopolitical news and fluctuations in oil prices, writes Bloomberg. Angelo Kourkafas of Edward Jones called "strong growth in corporate profits" a key reason for this.

Market sentiment was also affected by the termination of the criminal investigation against U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell, Bloomberg noted.

What else is there to read about it?

- How the conflict in the Middle East has affected the perception of the US dollar by investors - in the material of financier Sergey Romanchuk "The war in Iran has changed the position of the dollar. What will happen to it next?"

Tim Cook will step down as Apple's CEO on Sept. 1 to take over as the company's executive chairman, with its senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, becoming the new CEO.

Ternus, 50, is one of Apple's youngest senior executives, having been hired by Steve Jobs in 2001. At the company, he oversaw the development of key devices, including the iPad and AirPods. At the end of 2025, he took over design, one of Apple's most important areas.

What else is there to read about it?

- What inheritance Turnus will get and what he will have to convince the market - in the material of journalist Roman Moguchy "Three challenges for the future head of Apple John Turnus: what to pay attention to the investor".

Intel shares jumped 23.6% on Friday, April 24. Since the beginning of the year, the increase amounted to 123.7%.

The day before, on April 23, the struggling company released a report for the first quarter of 2026 that far exceeded analysts' expectations. Its revenue totaled $13.58 billion against a forecast of $12.42 billion, and diluted earnings per share came in at $0.29 instead of the expected $0.01. The main growth was driven by the data center segment, whose revenue increased by 22%. All thanks to the demand for Xeon processors.

Next quarter, Intel expects revenue of $13.8 billion to $14.8 billion, which is also above analysts' expectations ($13 billion), Bloomberg writes.

A year ago, everyone was debating whether Intel could survive, CEO Lip-Bu Tan said at the company's earnings conference. "Today, it's about how fast we can ramp up production capacity and scale shipments to meet the tremendous demand for our products," he added.

The rapid growth of Intel quotations supported the rally of semiconductor companies. The benchmark Philadelphia Semiconductor Index hit a record on Friday after rising for 18 consecutive sessions.

Meta announced the reduction of about 8,000 employees (about 10% of the staff) and the closure of 6,000 vacancies in order to improve efficiency and reallocate resources. The decision is related to the sharp growth of the company's investments in AI, which may reach $135 billion this year.

Microsoft, in turn, launched a program of voluntary layoffs in exchange for compensation, which could affect almost 9,000 employees, about 7% of the staff in the U.S., Bloomberg reported. Previously, the company has not conducted such programs on such a scale.

The agency attributes this to the fact that tech giants are looking for ways to cut their costs as they invest billions in building infrastructure for AI development. The same Microsoft is actively building data processing centers around the world. Meta is optimizing costs while increasing investments in human resources and infrastructure for the development of advanced AI products.

Chinese startup DeepSeek on Friday, April 24, released a preview version of its V4 open-source AI model. The company's materials say its "unprecedented efficiency" and that it will be a direct competitor to OpenAI's GPT-5.4 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.5.

V4 is adapted to run on Huawei chips, which emphasizes China's growing capabilities in the AI industry. In addition, it is significantly cheaper for users than Western competitors.

Last year, the release of DeepSeek's R1 caused a massive sellout in the US market. But this year the same reaction did not happen. Bloomberg, citing experts, explains this by the fact that the new Chinese model does not noticeably reduce the gap between the PRC and the US in the field of AI. After the release of the V4, "it seemed a sigh of relief could be heard in Washington and Silicon Valley," the agency wrote.

What else is there to read about it?

- What's special about the new AI model from DeepSeek - in the piece by Oninvest correspondent Yana Zakomoldina "DeepSeek has released a new "competitor to ChatGPT and Claude". It crashed the market a year ago"

- On Thursday, April 23, OpenAI also released a new AI model GPT-5.5, aka Spud. What is special about it - in the article by Oninvest correspondent Vladislav Osipov "OpenAI presented GPT-5.5 two months after the previous release. What does it mean?"

Elon Musk bought $1.4 billion worth of SpaceX stock last year from former and current employees, building up a stake ahead of an expected IPO, The Information has learned.

These data were obtained by journalists from the draft of the confidential prospectus of the IPO SpaceX. The publication also reported that Musk could receive another 60 million shares of the company provided that its capitalization grows from $1.1 trillion to $6.6 trillion and it implements an ambitious plan to build data centers in space, Reuters paraphrases The Information article.

SpaceX could have a valuation of about $1.75 trillion and raise as much as $75 billion, Reuters writes. This will make SpaceX IPO the largest in history.

What else is there to read about Elon Musk's business?

- Tesla released its first-quarter earnings this week - its earnings per share rose 52% and beat forecasts, and it also reported positive cash flow. But at the conference call, Tesla's top managers made a number of statements that made the market reconsider its prospects. Details - in the material of Oninvest editor Vesna Pedchenko "Tesla announced the growth of capital expenditures up to $25 billion. Quotes went negative"

Anthropic's valuation has reached about $1 trillion on Forge Global, one of the non-public company stock trading platforms. In two months, it increased more than 2.5 times. The valuation of Anthropic's competitor, OpenAI, is $880 billion on the same platform.

Such demand is caused by successful launches of corporate AI products of Anthropic, including assistant for programmers Claude Code. But the psychological moment also plays its role, says Glen Anderson, head of Rainmaker Securities, who participates in deals with non-public companies' securities. In his opinion, investors are driven by the lost-money syndrome (FOMO). "It's almost not so much about yield anymore, it's about being able to say they're an Anthropic investor - and that's driving up the price," he told Business Insider.

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