Top stories for the morning: US hits Iran, OpenAI to cut prices, Xbox to cut employees

The U.S. has struck sites in Iran: surveillance, communications and air defense systems that Washington believes posed a threat to the U.S. military and commercial shipping. OpenAI is considering lowering prices for its AI services amid increasing competition with Anthropic and both startups preparing for IPOs. These and other topics - in our review of key events by the morning of June 11.

The U.S. struck targets in Iran, targeting surveillance, communications and air defense systems that posed a threat to the U.S. military and commercial shipping, Washington said, CNBC reported. In response, Iran announced attacks on U.S. bases in Kuwait and Bahrain. Kuwait temporarily closed its airspace and reported intercepting aerial targets.

Amid the escalation, Iran announced the complete closure of the Strait of Hormuz and threatened to attack any ships that attempted to pass through it. President Donald Trump warned that the US is ready to continue strikes if Tehran does not agree to a deal. Markets reacted with a jump in oil prices, with US WTI up nearly 2% and Brent up 1.3%. By morning, the growth had slowed down.

OpenAI is considering significantly lowering the prices of its AI services to strengthen its position in competition with Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reports. The company may reduce the cost of tokens, the units of calculation used to charge for AI models, as it expects a similar move from Anthropic. Various subscriptions to OpenAI's flagship GPT-5.5 models cost between $8 and $100 a month, access to Anthropic's Claude Pro costs $17 a month for an annual subscription, and access to Claude Max starts at $100.

Competition between the companies is intensifying amid preparations for IPO. In May, Anthropic attracted investment at a valuation of $965 billion against OpenAI's $852 billion in March. At the same time, ChatGPT became the first application to reach 1 billion users per month just three years after its launch, the newspaper recalls.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei said that the massive loss of jobs due to artificial intelligence may not be a temporary effect, but a consequence of the very nature of the technology, which is getting better at performing human cognitive tasks, writes Business Insider.

He said authorities should prepare for this scenario through retraining and employment support programs. Earlier, Amodei warned that within five years, AI could displace up to half of entry-level office positions and raise unemployment to 10-20%.

Microsoft's Xbox gaming division plans new employee layoffs after its fiscal year ends June 30, and intends to make significant cuts to marketing and other budgets, Bloomberg has learned. The new head of Xbox, Asha Sharma, told employees that the revenue of the business has declined by almost $500 million over the past five years, despite investing more than $20 billion in content, platform and hardware.

The company is also revising its development strategy: Xbox intends to bet more actively on exclusive games, refusing to release some future projects on PlayStation and Nintendo. According to Sharma, the division is facing a component crisis and needs a new business model for the next generation of consoles.

Shares of Alibaba and JD.com fell sharply in Hong Kong trading after China's antitrust regulator accused the biggest online platforms of using misleading promotions during an annual sale, Bloomberg writes. Alibaba's shares plummeted 5.9 percent, the biggest drop in three months, before cutting some of the losses. Quotes of JD.com at the moment fell by 5%.

The agency also issued warnings to companies such as PDD Holdings (owner of Pinduoduo and Temu) and ByteDance (owner of TikTok), pointing to misleading statements about the scale of discounts offered. The increased scrutiny comes amid a price war in the e-commerce sector, which is squeezing companies' profits and raising concerns of authorities due to weak consumer demand and low inflation in China, the agency points out.

- Japan's broad Topix index was down 0.4 percent, while the Nikkei 225 added 0.2 percent.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index fell 1.1 percent, while mainland China's CSI 300 Index fell 0.9 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index rose 0.7% and the Kosdaq rose 3.7%.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was little changed.

- S&P 500 futures were up 0.4%, Nasdaq Composite futures were up 0.7% and Dow Jones Industrial Average exchange-traded contracts were adding 0.3%.

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