Good morning. Andrew here. Our colleague Michael de la Merced is down in New Orleans at a big gathering of deal makers this week. He has an insightful dispatch about what’s being said — and what’s being whispered — including some provocative comments from a prominent lawyer about the regulatory environment under President Trump. We’re also looking at the wider implications of the volatile oil market and news about where Meta’s metaverse ambitions are heading. (Was this newsletter forwarded to you? Sign up here.)
Crude realityOil prices are falling slightly, but S&P 500 futures point to a rough opening this morning as Iran escalates its attacks on neighbors, including on more key energy infrastructure. With no letup in sight, analysts are scrambling to gauge the wider economic, environmental and political costs. The growing fallout has investors and central bankers on edge and could prompt a redrawing of the global trade map, with China at its center. Over $200 billion: That’s how much the Pentagon has asked for in additional war funding, The Washington Post and The Times report. The huge sum suggests that military brass sees the war dragging on. The latest:
Mixed messages may be adding to the volatility. President Trump said yesterday that he had not committed to sending ground troops into Iran. But he also told a journalist, “If I were, I certainly wouldn’t tell you.” Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel said he saw “this war ending a lot faster than people think,” but he also said regime change in Iran would require a “ground component.” The Trump administration is trying to blunt the oil shock. To bring down prices at the pump, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said that the U.S. was weighing another release from the strategic oil reserve and mulling suspending sanctions on some Iranian oil — even if that were to benefit Tehran. That said, Chris Wright, the energy secretary, wrote on social media yesterday that the administration did not have plans to restrict gas and oil exports. Could U.S. oil majors come to the rescue? Wright and Vice President JD Vance met with oil executives yesterday. “The White House is likely to be asking for more supply as soon as it’s available,” Kevin Book, managing director at ClearView Energy Partners, an independent research firm, told DealBook. But before the companies can assess the request, he added, they are “going to try to get a sense of what the duration of this conflict is going to look like.” Still rising. The average price of gasoline rose again overnight, to $3.91. That’s nearly a dollar more than it was a month ago.
Jeff Bezos is reportedly in talks to raise $100 billion to advance his artificial intelligence ambitions. The tech billionaire traveled to the Middle East and Asia to raise a fund aimed at buying industrial firms and boosting their efficiency and profitability with A. I., The Wall Street Journal reported, citing unnamed sources. The A.I. services would potentially come from Project Prometheus, Bezos’ start-up focused on models that can interact with the physical world. The effort would be the latest move to use A.I. to shake up sectors with thin profit margins. President Trump signals his support for a criminal investigation into Jay Powell. Trump yesterday seemed to suggest that the investigation into the Fed chair over his role in a costly renovation project for the central bank headquarters should continue. Pursuing the case, which was severely weakened by a federal judge last week, could derail the confirmation of Kevin Warsh, Trump’s pick to replace Powell. Unilever is reportedly discussing the combination of its food business with McCormick. A move by the conglomerate to separate its foods business and combine it with the spice maker would continue a streamlining trend in an industry rocked by the rise of GLP-1 weight-loss drugs. Unilever reportedly also recently discussed combining its food brands with Kraft Heinz. The F.C.C. allows Nexstar to buy a broadcast rival, a deal that Trump supports. The agency approved the local television chain’s purchase of Tegna for $6.2 billion, even though the combined company’s reach of American homes will exceed the legal threshold. The deal was approved despite a lawsuit by eight states to block it on antitrust grounds, and criticism from the F.C.C.’s lone Democratic commissioner that it wasn’t brought to the full commission for a vote. Deal makers will be watching to see if this is the blueprint for mergers in the Trump administration. More on that below. Hope and worry at a major M.&A. gatheringDeal makers are by nature relatively optimistic. So it’s no surprise that the lawyers, bankers and other M.&A. advisers in New Orleans for Tulane University’s Corporate Law Institute largely believe that 2026 has the ingredients for a solid year for transactions. But in public presentations and private conversations, traces of anxiety could be detected, too, Michael de la Merced writes from the scene. Hope floats. Deals will continue, despite wars, a wavering economy, jitters prompted by artificial intelligence and wobbles in private credit. Many attendees publicly and privately agreed with the assessment of Stephan Feldgoise, the global head of M.&A. at Goldman Sachs, that boards have grown more comfortable with uncertainty. Business size matters. Everyone agreed that, for the most part, the Trump administration had loosened the tight leash on mergers imposed by the Biden administration. The current administration’s approach to deals, according to Scott Barshay of Paul Weiss, is “if we can’t really find a specific problem, let it go through.” But that could pose an issue for smaller companies. They now find themselves more vulnerable to takeovers by bigger companies that aren’t constrained by Biden antitrust enforcers like Lina Khan, formerly of the F.T.C., or Jonathan Kanter, formerly of the Justice Department. The government has a role. Federal agencies are increasingly inserting themselves into private enterprise in the name of the national interest, an approach explained by officials from the Energy and State Departments and the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation. Those officials said that their goal was to protect the U.S. from competition from state-sponsored entities backed by the likes of China. “We’re free-marketeers,” said James Danly, the deputy energy secretary. “We don’t want to displace private capital with public capital.” That said, Leo Strine, a former chief justice of the Delaware Supreme Court who is now of counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, repeatedly criticized what he sees as the Trump administration’s punishment of private businesses.
R.I.P. to the metaverse?In 2022, McKinsey predicted that annual spending in the metaverse could reach $5 trillion by 2030. Today, you might ask: Wait, what was the metaverse again? The metaverse was envisioned as an immersive digital world where people would work, hang out and go shopping. And to emphasize his confidence in its potential, Mark Zuckerberg renamed his company Meta in 2021. Now the division of Meta that worked on the metaverse has laid off 10 percent of its employees in recent months, and it said that starting this summer it would pull back from some work for its flagship immersive world, the Horizon Worlds app, Eli Tan and Mike Issac write: In other words, Mr. Zuckerberg’s original conception of the metaverse is effectively over. Even after Meta lost roughly $80 billion on its endeavor, the metaverse and virtual reality remain niche interests among hobbyists and some businesses. Other digital worlds, like Roblox and Fortnite, became more popular. Instead, Meta has gone all in on artificial intelligence. Last year, Mr. Zuckerberg proclaimed — again — a new future, this one centered on “superintelligence,” a form of godlike A.I. that can be the ultimate personal companion. His company has forecast spending at least $115 billion this year, primarily on A.I., including on the construction of vast data centers to power the technology.
Talking A.I. with the C.E.O. of Maven ClinicEvery week, we’re asking a leader how he or she uses artificial intelligence. Kate Ryder, who leads the telehealth company Maven Clinic, told Sarah Kessler that A.I. helped her navigate complex caregiving for a family member. The interview has been condensed and edited. How do you personally use A.I.? A family member had an accident last year, and it sent me into a wild caregiving journey. I trained a GPT on all of their health records, and because it happened in France, it had to translate everything. We had a voice A.I. app that we would speak into and the nurses would speak into, so we would understand the latest prognosis. In one case, it said my family member was prescribed a medication they probably shouldn’t have been taking. And the A.I. was right. What have you told your employees about how you want them to use A.I.? I was at a C.E.O. dinner last night where we talked a ton about this. Everyone’s doing it differently. But I think the common theme was really that there are people inside everyone’s org who are just so good at A.I. The question is, how do you celebrate them and have them help teach the team? How are you doing that? Someone recently asked me, “Am I going to be trained on A.I.?” And yes, we’ll definitely provide some support, but ask Claude how to do it. If you can’t figure something out, say, “Claude, I don’t know how to do this.” And that’s your assistant. We hope you’ve enjoyed this newsletter, which is made possible through subscriber support. Subscribe to The New York Times.
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