Welcome back to your daily memorandum talking tech, business, AI, markets, and more. 🗞️

In today’s edition, we are tackling the following:

✂️ Cloudflare lays off 1,100 staff and credits agentic AI directly.
💸 NVIDIA equity bets across the AI stack pass $40B.
⚖️ U.S. trade court strikes down Trump's Section 122 global tariffs.
🕊️ Russia and Ukraine begin a three-day Trump-brokered ceasefire.
💳 Ramp closes in on a $40B pre-money valuation round.

TECHNOLOGY

• Cloudflare stock sinks 24% after earnings as the company cuts 1,100 employees due to AI changes (CNBC) 

  ^{_{More: The Register, Quartz, Cloudflare Blog}} 

  • Cloudflare cut about 20% of staff while reporting Q1 revenue of $640M, beating the $622M consensus.

  • CEO Matthew Prince said agentic AI now handles work previously handled by internal support, HR, and finance roles.

  • Departing employees receive base pay through year-end, healthcare through 2026, and equity vesting through August 15.

• NVIDIA embraces AI investor, topping $40 billion in equity bets in 2026 (CNBC) 

  ^{_{More: Benzinga, The Next Web, Bloomberg}} 

  • NVIDIA's 2026 commitments include a $30B investment in OpenAI plus seven multi-billion-dollar public-market deals.

  • The chipmaker secured rights to invest up to $2.1B in IREN tied to a five-year, $3.4B cloud contract.

  • Analysts call the pattern "circular" because portfolio companies often turn around and buy Nvidia GPUs.

• Ramp in talks to hit $40B+ valuation, 6 months after reaching $32B (TechCrunch) 

  ^{_{More: PYMNTS, Yahoo Finance, TipRanks}} 

  • Spend management startup Ramp is negotiating a $750M round co-led by existing backers GIC and Iconiq.

  • The pre-money valuation would top $40B, up from $32B just six months earlier.

  • Ramp recently crossed $1B in annualized revenue and is targeting $1.4B in annualized revenue as it eyes an IPO.BUSINESS.

BUSINESS

• Trade court strikes down a second round of Trump tariffs (NPR) 

  ^{_{More: Washington Post, The Hill, U.S. News}} 

  • The Court of International Trade ruled 2-1 that Section 122 does not justify the 10% global import surcharge.

  • Judges said there is no balance-of-payments deficit, the legal precondition Trump used to replace earlier tariffs.

  • The government plans to refund more than $166B in earlier import taxes, with first payments next week.

• U.S. stocks rise to records following the latest sign of a healthy job market (Washington Post) 

  ^{_{More: CNBC, TheStreet, Trading Economics}} 

  • The S&P 500 rose 0.84% Friday to 7,398.93, and the Nasdaq jumped 1.71% to 26,247.08, both records.

  • U.S. nonfarm payrolls grew by 115,000 in April, almost double the 62,000 economists had expected.

  • Both major indexes posted six straight weekly gains, the longest winning streak since 2024.

• Boeing, Citigroup CEOs set to join Trump on China visit next week (CNBC) 

  ^{_{More: CSIS, Brookings, World Economic Forum}} 

  • Trump will meet Xi Jinping in Beijing on May 14 and 15 in the first U.S. presidential visit since 2017.

  • Boeing CEO Kelly Ortberg and Citigroup CEO Jane Fraser are expected to travel with the president.

  • China is reportedly preparing a large Boeing aircraft order, breaking a years-long drought for the manufacturer.

MARKETS

WORLD

• Russia holds scaled-down Victory Day parade as temporary ceasefire in Ukraine war takes effect (CNN) 

  _{^{More: CBS News, Kyiv Independent, Fox News}} 

  • Trump announced a three-day ceasefire from May 9 to 11, plus a 1,000-for-1,000 prisoner exchange.

  • Putin's Red Square parade lacked heavy weapons for the first time in nearly two decades on Saturday.

  • Putin told reporters the war ‘is heading to an end,’ but said preconditions must be met before any meeting with Zelensky.

• Iran says it will respond to US peace offer 'at the appropriate time' (Fox News) 

  ^{_{More: CNN, CBS News, Times of Israel}} 

  • Iran's Revolutionary Guard threatened a ‘heavy assault’ on U.S. assets after recent tanker exchanges in the Gulf.

  • Witkoff and Rubio met Qatar's prime minister in Miami, with Doha mediating the latest peace talks.

  • U.S. Central Command says more than 70 tankers remain blocked from entering or leaving Iranian ports.

• Israeli drone strikes kill Syrian man and his 12-year-old daughter in southern Lebanon (Times of Israel) 

  _{^{More: CNN, Fox News, NPR}} 

  • Lebanon's health ministry said three drone strikes killed a father and child riding a motorcycle in Nabatieh.

  • Hezbollah claimed 26 attacks on Friday, including its first cross-border strike since the April truce.

  • Lebanon's death toll from Israeli airstrikes since March 2 has risen to 2,795 people, officials said.

FUTURISM

• NVIDIA and IREN Announce Strategic Partnership to Accelerate Deployment of up to 5 Gigawatts of AI Infrastructure (NVIDIA Newsroom) 

  ^{_{More: Yahoo Finance, CNBC, Sherwood News}} 

  • IREN's 2-gigawatt Sweetwater campus in Texas will anchor flagship deployments of Nvidia's DSX architecture.

  • NVIDIA received warrants to purchase 30 million IREN shares at $70 per share, exercisable over five years.

  • IREN shares jumped roughly 9% to 20% in extended trading after the partnership was announced Thursday.

• Flight 12 Starship Booster 19 performs a full-duration 33-engine static fire test ahead of launch (Tesla Oracle) 

  _{^{More: Spaceflight Now, Wikipedia, NVIDIA Blog}} 

  • Booster 19 fired all 33 Raptor 3 engines simultaneously at Starbase on Thursday in its second static test.

  • The redesigned Pad 2, with a dual-way flame trench, held up under nearly 9,240 tonnes of thrust.

  • Flight 12 will be the first launch of Starship's V3 design and the next major step before lunar missions.

• Anthropic unveils 'dreaming' system for self-improving AI agents (MarketingProfs) 

  _{^{More: Hipther, TechStartups, OpenAI}} 

  • Anthropic's "dreaming" technique enables agents to review past behavior and identify patterns across sessions.

  • The capability is a research preview tied to Anthropic's push for long-running autonomous agents.

  • Expanded beta tools allow agents to coordinate sub-agents and grade work using a rubric-based evaluation.

• Explore the essential startup reading database*

  • Learning from the best is how you become the best. We've curated a list of top-notch articles, blogs, and readings essential for startup founders.

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  • As aspiring leaders and innovators, this list helps you absorb the knowledge that has propelled others to success.

CONTENT

• Elon's Anthropic Deal, The Next AI Monopoly?, "FDA for AI" Panic, Trading the AI Boom (All-In Podcast) 

  • Chamath, Sacks, Friedberg, and Calacanis dissect the SpaceX-Anthropic deal, Elon Web Services, and SpaceX IPO valuation.

  • The hosts debate whether Anthropic is becoming the next great AI monopoly given its growth trajectory.

  • They cover the "FDA for AI" White House framework, AI safety panic, and trading the current market.

• Snapchat CEO: Why distribution has become the most important moat (Lenny's Podcast) 

  • Evan Spiegel argues software is no longer a moat, with Stories, AR, and swipe nav all cloned by rivals.

  • He explains how Snap runs a 9-to-12-person design team with no titles and weekly idea reviews.

  • Spiegel predicts humanity's comfort with AI, not technology itself, will be the real adoption bottleneck.

• 20VC: Replit CEO Amjad Masad on Coding Models Hitting a Plateau (The Twenty Minute VC) 

  • Masad explains why product quality, not cost optimization, decides which AI coding platforms survive.

  • He details Replit's path from $10M in revenue to $100M in nine months, toward $1B in ARR by year-end.

  • The conversation argues that a "SaaS apocalypse" is fair as AI flattens traditional software business models.

EXTRAS

• Bobby Cox, the legendary Atlanta Braves manager who led the 1995 World Series champions, is dead at 84 (Fox News) 

  _{^{More: NPR, CNN, CBS News}} 

  • Cox managed the Atlanta Braves to 14 consecutive division titles and the 1995 World Series championship.

  • He retired with 2,504 career managerial wins, fourth most in Major League Baseball history.

  • The Braves announced his passing on Saturday, prompting tributes from across the baseball world.

• Three hikers killed after climbing restricted Indonesian volcano to create online content, police say (Fox News) 

  ^{_{More: BBC, Reuters, AP}} 

  • Mount Dukono in Indonesia erupted, killing two Singaporean hikers and one other on Friday.

  • Authorities said the hikers entered a restricted zone despite repeated official warnings about volcanic activity.

  • Police indicated the group climbed the active volcano to capture footage for social media platforms.

• Americans to be evacuated from Hantavirus cruise ship as global health chief travels to quarantine island (Fox News) 

  ^{_{More: CNN, NPR, CBS News}}

  • The M/V Hondius will anchor off Spain's Canary Islands, carrying 150 passengers, including 17 Americans.

  • Three deaths have been confirmed in the hantavirus outbreak that began during the polar expedition cruise.

  • The World Health Organization's director-general is traveling to oversee the response to the quarantine island.

AND MORE

• The U.S. Court of International Trade ordered refunds totaling more than $166B for importers harmed by earlier Trump tariffs.

• Putin said the war with Ukraine is "heading to an end" in remarks after Saturday's Victory Day parade.

• Syrian President al-Sharaa met Lebanese PM Salam in Damascus to discuss border smuggling and economic ties.

• Hire vetted LATAM engineers in as little as five days, and save up to 70% on salary costs.*

• Cloudflare CEO Matthew Prince said employees running thousands of agent sessions made many support roles obsolete.

• The UK deployed HMS Dragon to the Middle East amid Hormuz tensions ahead of a possible shipping protection mission.

• NVIDIA's $30B OpenAI investment is paired with multi-year compute commitments and silicon-roadmap alignment, raising concerns about circularity.

• Anthropic donated its open-source Petri alignment tool to an independent nonprofit to broaden adoption across rivals.

• A specialized Section 122 trade ruling leaves replacement tariffs in place pending appeal but vindicates importer plaintiffs.