Tech stocks today: Elon Musk loses court battle against OpenAI, Samsung extends talks to avert looming strike
Quick Take
Elon Musk loses a court case against OpenAI, while Samsung extends negotiations to prevent a strike.
Key Points
- Musk's legal battle focused on AI-related issues.
- Samsung aims to reach an agreement with workers.
- Tech stocks remain volatile amid these developments.
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Updated 1 min read
Tech stocks continued to face pressure on Tuesday morning as investors grew more cautious amid inflation concerns and looked toward Nvidia’s (NVDA) earnings report. On Monday, a sell-off in chip stocks weighed on the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite (^IXIC).
Nvidia’s results come out on Wednesday, after CEO Jensen Huang traveled to China with President Trump. Investors were hoping Chinese President Xi Jinping would allow Nvidia to import more chips to the country, but Trump told reporters Friday that China is instead focusing on developing its own AI processors.
Investors are also watching a potential 18-day strike at Samsung Electronics (005930.KS) — the world’s largest memory chip manufacturer — that could begin on May 21 if talks fail. A strike at Samsung would cause significant disruption to South Korea’s economy and to global supply chains that rely on its chips.
Meanwhile, jurors unanimously ruled against Elon Musk in his lawsuit against OpenAI (OPAI.PVT), stating that Musk waited too long to bring the case, and a federal judge approved the verdict, bringing the case to a close.
Musk’s lawsuit against one of the world’s most valuable private companies provided a number of details about the inner workings of OpenAI and the relationships between Musk, Altman, president Greg Brockman, former chief technology officer Mira Murati, and former board member and mother of four of Musk’s children, Shivon Zilis.
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Samsung, labor union meet again as Seoul threatens to intervene to block strike
Reuters reports:
Samsung Electronics and its South Korean labour union began another round of government-mediated talks on Tuesday to break an impasse in negotiations over pay and bonuses and avert the biggest strike in the tech conglomerate's history.
The two sides are under mounting pressure to prevent an imminent strike by 45,000 workers that could hurt the Korean economy and global supply chains by disrupting chip production. South Korea's prime minister threatened over the weekend to step in through emergency arbitration to resolve the crisis.
Samsung and the labour union remained far apart during talks on Monday, the chairman of the National Labor Relations Commission told reporters. But he said on Tuesday the two sides are narrowing some differences and there is still a possibility that they could reach an agreement.
Google, Blackstone launch cloud company as Wall Street races to fund AI boom
Yahoo Finance’s David Hollerith reports:
Google (GOOG, GOOGL) and Blackstone (BX) are launching an artificial intelligence cloud company, the latest sign that Wall Street is getting deeper in the AI infrastructure race.
The joint venture will provide data center capacity, operations, networking, and Google Cloud's Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) as a compute-as-a-service offering.
The business will give customers another way to access Google’s TPUs, in a similar fashion to cloud provider CoreWeave (CRWV).
Blackstone said it will make an initial $5 billion equity investment through its funds. It expects the company’s first 500 megawatts of power to come online by 2027. Though precise figures aren't disclosed, Blackstone would be a majority shareholder, according to a person familiar with the deal.
The announcement is a major signal for how the hard assets that power artificial intelligence’s computing needs are becoming a highly appealing investment for finance.
Elon Musk loses $150 billion lawsuit against OpenAI
A jury rejected claims by Tesla (TSLA) leader Elon Musk that OpenAI (OPAI.PVT) and its leader, Sam Altman, violated key tenets of its nonprofit status, finding that Musk waited too long to file the suit and exceeded the statute of limitations.
Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers accepted the advisory jury’s verdict, bringing to a close a sprawling legal case that could have sent shockwaves through Silicon Valley.
On Monday afternoon, a nine-person federal jury rejected Musk’s $150 billion case against OpenAI, closing a two-week trial that featured testimony from two of Silicon Valley’s most visible leaders.
The jury ruled that Musk’s “Breach of Charitable Trust” claim against Sam Altman, OpenAI co-founder Greg Brockman, and OpenAI itself is barred by the statute of limitations.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman arrives at the federal courthouse, as the trial in Elon Musk's lawsuit over OpenAI's for-profit conversion continues, in Oakland, California, U.S., May 14, 2026. REUTERS/Manuel Orbegozo · Reuters / REUTERS The jury also ruled that Musk’s “Aiding and Abetting Breach of Charitable Trust” claim against Microsoft (MSFT) exceeded the statute of limitations.
Musk’s lawyers argued over the past two weeks that OpenAI breached its founding agreement as a nonprofit by adding on a for-profit entity and raising outside capital, including $13 billion from Microsoft.
Musk had been seeking $150 billion in damages for Altman’s removal from OpenAI’s board of directors.
Samsung and its labor union extend talks as a disruptive strike looms
A dispute over semiconductor workers’ bonuses in Korea could upend global technology supply chains and weigh on South Korea’s economy, as Samsung’s (016360.KS) labor union has threatened to go on strike on May 21 for 18 days.
On Sunday, Samsung and the union agreed to extend negotiations after the first round of government-mediated talks failed and a South Korean court granted a partial injunction that could compel workers to show up amid a strike, according to Reuters.
Relations between the world’s largest memory chip manufacturer and its workers broke down over how bonuses are allocated. Samsung is expected to bring in $200 billion in operating profits this year amid booming chip demand, and employees are seeking a 15% share of those profits.
At stake, should the strike move forward, is 22.8% of South Korea's exports, which come from Samsung, as well as broader economic fallout across industries that rely on memory chips, including artificial intelligence, gaming, and consumer electronics like laptops. Already, companies are dealing with supply bottlenecks for memory and storage as AI data centers scoop up these components to try to meet booming demand.
"Just one day of suspension at Samsung Electronics' semiconductor factory is expected to incur direct losses of as much as 1 trillion won [$667.68 million]," South Korea’s Prime Minister Kim Min-seok said on Sunday, per Reuters.
Tens of thousands of unionized Samsung Electronics Co. employees participate in a rally in front of the Samsung Electronics Pyeongtaek Campus on April 23, 2026, in Pyeongtaek, South Korea. (Chung Sung-Jun/Getty Images) · Chung Sung-Jun via Getty Images SpaceX reportedly issues 5-for-1 stock split as IPO timeline accelerates
SpaceX (SPAX.PVT) is barreling toward its initial public offering, and it is trying to make its stock even more attractive with a stock split before it even debuts.
Bloomberg reported over the weekend that SpaceX told its investors it will implement a 5-for-1 stock split, a move that would potentially reduce the price of the stock ahead of its IPO.
SpaceX informed shareholders that the current fair market value per share has been adjusted to about $105.32 from $526.59 as a result of the split, per Bloomberg sources.
The stock split will be processed this week and is expected to be officially completed by May 22, the sources said.
News of the split comes as SpaceX is quickly headed toward the public markets. On Friday, Reuters reported that SpaceX is planning to price its IPO as early as June 11, with the rocket company listing on the Nasdaq starting on June 12.
Here's how Nvidia stock has historically performed after earnings
Yahoo Finance’s Jared Blikre reports:
For Nvidia (NVDA) investors, the first move after earnings has historically been only part of the story. Buying the stock just before quarterly results has produced modest short-term gains, but the longer-term picture has been much stronger.
This chart shows the difference clearly.
Nvidia: 10-year median return if you buy before earnings and hold for various periods · Yahoo Finance Since 2016, Nvidia’s post-earnings returns have been positive across every holding period studied. But the edge has been far more modest over the next day, week, or month than over a quarter or a year. The median gain has been only 0.3% after one day, 3.3% after one week, and 0.4% after one month. That rises to 11.1% over one quarter and 87.6% over one year.
That helps frame what traders are up against heading into the next report.
Options are pricing in a 6% post-earnings move, well above Nvidia’s typical daily range over the prior quarter. But it’s also close to what the stock has already shown it can do around earnings, based on its most recent setup.
Nvidia to report Q1 earnings as chip competition grows
AI heavyweight Nvidia (NVDA) will report its first quarter results on May 20, in what is easily one of the most anticipated announcements of the earnings season.
Yahoo Finance’s Daniel Howley previews what to expect:
In addition to its China woes, Nvidia is contending with increasing competition in the AI chip space. Chip company Cerebras (CBRS) held its initial public offering on Thursday, with shares climbing 68%.
Cerebras sells a different form of AI processor than Nvidia, which the company says offers faster overall performance speeds.
Nvidia is also facing ever-increasing competition from AMD (AMD), which will launch a competing rack-scale server system later this year, as well as from customers, including Amazon (AMZN) and Google (GOOG, GOOGL), which are offering their AI chips to third-party customers.
In its latest earnings report, Amazon announced that its chip business now has an annual revenue run rate of more than $20 billion and is growing at triple-digit percentages year over year.
— Originally published at finance.yahoo.com
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