There’s a puddle on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange, and it’s from investors drooling over the potential of Nvidia, a tech giant enabling the AI revolution.

On the heels of its jaw-dropping earnings report on Wednesday, Nvidia shares spiked 24.4% yesterday and it came oh-so-close to setting the record for the biggest one-day gain in market capitalization of a US company ever.

At Nvidia’s current market cap of $939 billion, it’s on its way to becoming just the fifth public US company worth more than $1 trillion—and the first chipmaker to reach the milestone. Only Apple, Microsoft, Alphabet, and Amazon are sipping Dom in the four-comma club.

Why are investors so bullish on Nvidia?

Because if artificial intelligence is the next gold rush, Nvidia sells the pickaxes.

Nvidia makes the chips used to train AI models—for instance, ChatGPT’s training was powered by 10,000 Nvidia graphic processing units (GPUs) on a Microsoft supercomputer, according to the BBC.

And as every company scrambles to add AI to their products, demand for that hardware is booming. In its gangbusters earnings report earlier this week, Nvidia projected $11 billion in revenue this quarter, annihilating expectations for $7.2 billion. But the potential is much greater: Nvidia’s CEO Jensen Huang (now a very rich man) said that as more companies integrate AI, $1 trillion worth of outdated data center equipment would have to be swapped out for new chips.

Analysts freaked out after listening to Huang talk about Nvidia’s position at the center of the AI universe.

• “We simply have no historical precedent for the magnitude of this step function.”—Morgan Stanley
• “The magnitude of upside is stunning.”—Truist
• “Almost unimaginable.”—Susquehanna

Bottom line: That Nvidia is making so much money already from AI dispels the idea that the tech is a bubble and suggests that we’re on the cusp of an AI-powered Fourth Industrial Revolution, Wedbush’s Dan Ives argued.—NF

Memorial Day weekend, aka the unofficial start of summer, is upon us. Will you be hitting the beach, vibing at the park, or road-tripping with family? Wherever you’re headed, improve the journey with a li’l somethin’ called In-Car Wi-Fi .

AT&T is offering 4 days of free unlimited In-Car Wi-Fi this Memorial Day weekend, starting today. Get ready to explore the possibilities with a connection in tow.

Maybe you’ll use Wi-Fi to take that last meeting from the passenger seat. Or you want to keep the kids entertained and cut down on all the backseat “Are we there yets?” Either way, game → changed.

See if your car qualifies for a free In-Car Wi-Fi trial.

Tesla and Ford partner on EV charging. In a Twitter Spaces event, Tesla CEO Elon Musk and Ford CEO Jim Farley announced that owners of Ford electric vehicles would be able to plug in at more than 12,000 Tesla Superchargers in the US and Canada starting early next year. Tesla’s charging network is currently only available to Tesla drivers, but Musk said, “We don’t want Tesla Superchargers to be a walled garden.” Access to charging is key to spurring EV adoption: In a survey last year, 61% of respondents who hesitated to buy an EV cited charging logistics as the top barrier.

Sam Altman and the EU are fighting. Altman, the CEO of OpenAI, said his company might up and leave the EU—and take ChatGPT with it—if a new Brussels law regulating AI gets passed. The current draft of the law, called the EU AI Act, may require AI companies to disclose the copyrighted images or texts their models were trained on. Altman called the law “over-regulating” and said he had “many concerns” about it in its current form. This spat reflects the deep mistrust between US tech execs rolling out AI programs and European regulators trying to minimize risks.

Get ready for a precedented hurricane season. The Atlantic hurricane season that starts June 1 is expected to be…pretty normal, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s annual forecast released yesterday. For the average storm season, you can thank the once-every-few-years weather phenomenon known as El Niño, which acts as a powerful hurricane neutralizer. Don’t get too comfy, though: The agency still predicts 12–17 named storms, with potentially four of them turning into Category 3 hurricanes. Last year’s 14 named storms racked up $117 billion in damages.

Yesterday, the Supreme Court ruled to limit the EPA’s power to regulate wetlands—a move considered a win for property-rights advocates and a blow to environmentalists.

The property owners most immediately impacted are the Idaho couple who brought this case to court: They sued the EPA over a permit issue that prevented them from building a house on their property near Priest Lake. As a result of the Supreme Court’s ruling, the pair can get to work on their teal “Lake Days Are the Best Days” sign.

But the consequences, of course, extend beyond rural Idaho. As a result of the SCOTUS ruling, the EPA’s power over the nation’s wetlands will shrink like a pair of linen pants in the dryer: Roughly half of all wetlands and about 60% of streams in the US will lose federal protection.

It presents risks for the environment but opportunities for some industries—homebuilding and oil and gas, in particular—which no longer have to worry as much about complying with the Clean Water Act and its many permitting requirements (Section 401, iykyk).

• Now, homebuilders will be able to fill wetlands and construct housing developments on or near them without the Army Corps of Engineers signing off.
• Companies will be able to discharge pollutants into unprotected wetlands with no regulatory oversight.

This isn’t the first instance of the Supreme Court weakening environmental regulations recently. In June of last year, SCOTUS also limited the EPA’s power to regulate carbon emissions.—CC

After months of dodging court papers, the 7-foot-1-inch NBA legend, who’s been surprisingly hard to locate, was served in connection with the FTX meltdown on Tuesday…while commentating on the Celtics vs. Heat playoff game at the stadium formerly known as FTX Arena. Poetic.

The charge(s): Along with 10 other celebrities, O’Neal is being sued for doing paid advertisements for FTX, the collapsed and allegedly fraud-riddled crypto company. He also received a second complaint about a supposedly scammy NFT venture.

It’s been a costly game of Shaq and mouse: Attorneys have spent $100,000 sending more than two dozen process servers—people hired to notify defendants they’re being sued—to Texas, Georgia, and Florida to try to hand O’Neal the court documents.

• One process server said he quit after receiving an “ominous” text message mentioning his wife from someone who seemed to know O’Neal.
• Attorneys said they succeeded last month when process servers threw the papers at O’Neal’s car as he made a getaway, but his lawyers said it didn’t count.

One down, two to go: Process servers are also hunting for Google co-founder Larry Page for questioning in a federal case and Church of Scientology leader David Miscavige in connection with alleged human trafficking. They’re proving to be as shifty as Frank Abagnale.—ML

Stat: Gas is more than $1 cheaper in the US this year compared to the start of Memorial Day Weekend last year. The national average for a gallon of gas dropped to $3.57 yesterday, compared to $4.59 on the same day in 2022, according to AAA. That’s about the only good news you’ll hear regarding travel this weekend and, frankly, the rest of summer as airports and highways brace for record passenger levels. AAA is expecting 2 million more drivers on the road this weekend than the 35.1 million road-warriors last MDW.

Quote: “We give you our word that the public will never handle Pāora again.”

A Miami zoo set off a minor international incident after videos emerged on social media of the zoo offering guests the opportunity to pet a kiwi, the national symbol of New Zealand. Kiwis (as New Zealanders are known, such is the importance of the bird to the country) grew outraged at seeing the kiwi bird, named Pāora, exposed to light when it is a nocturnal animal. Zoo Miami apologized profusely for allowing the kiwi to be pet, and said it won’t happen again.

Read: All the household types in the US. (FlowingData)

Getting a 5/5 on the Brew’s Weekly News Quiz has been compared to pulling the plastic film off your new phone.

It’s that satisfying. Ace the quiz.

 Those are good-looking apps: Check out the winners of the Apple Design Awards.

 For your Eurotrip this summer: A subway-style map of sleeper train routes across Europe.

 Fade to black: Ahead of the Succession finale on Sunday, get caught up with the 20 best series finales of all time or this rival list of the best 40 finales.

 Trick a chatbot: See if you can get Gandalf to reveal a password he’s been programmed to keep secret.

Make work data…work: HR Brew chatted with Hilton’s SVP of HR Strategy & Talent about how to use data to make your company more effective. Watch now.

Carpe this weekend: MDW celebrations are leveling up this year thanks to AT&T. Starting today, they’re offering 4 days of free unlimited In-Car Wi-Fi. See if your whip qualifies.*

^{*This is sponsored advertising content.}

Jigsaw: Today’s Jigsaw will whisk you to Japan for the Hamamatsu Festival. Play it here.

Friday puzzle

Place each letter from the word CULTIVATE onto the blank spaces below to spell a three-letter word, a five-letter word, and a seven-letter word. Each letter can only be used once.

_ C _

_ O _ N _

_ A _ I _ N _

Our one-week Financial Forecasting course is back on June 5. Set yourself up for success in the second half of the year.

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