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A former JPMorgan broker was awarded $4M in a wrongful termination lawsuit spawned by a $642.50 deli platter. The bank said it was served at a personal Super Bowl party. Now it’s on the hook for the most expensive cold cut spread in history.

Stocks rallied and oil sank to a three-month low yesterday on the heels of the U.S.-Iran deal. The Fed’s expected to hold rates steady tomorrow, but the focus will be on the tone set by new Chairman (not Chair) Kevin Warsh. In today’s letter:

• OpenAI considers price cut as Anthropic maintains its lead
• Big Tech increasingly relies on debt and equity financing
• Fill in the blank: “____” mentions in earnings calls hit a record

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The next phase of the AI wars could be fought on the pricing field — and there’s not much yardage

OpenAI is weighing slashing what it charges for tokens in anticipation of similar price cuts from Anthropic, The Wall Street Journal reports. A price war between the top AI labs would be welcome news for finance teams. The spiraling cost of AI spend has been a top concern for companies, and we’re seeing the beginnings of a tokenmaxxing comedown as firms weigh elusive ROI against ballooning expenses.

• Anthropic surpassed OpenAI in adoption by U.S. businesses in April, and the latest Ramp AI Index shows Anthropic maintained its edge in May, leading by 1.5 percentage points. Price cuts could help OpenAI win back enterprise users.

Exploring, not married… A price war could be effective precisely because there’s low loyalty in the AI vendor space. In this new category with minimal switching costs and low lock-in, the playing field changes fast. Anthropic’s swift rise is evidence of this (43% of its customers switched from another genAI vendor, according to Ramp data). Get this:

• The top 1% of AI adopters on Ramp use 8 AI vendors, and the top 10% use 5. This level of multihoming isn’t seen in traditional software categories like CRM or ERP, where enterprise adoption tends to create long-term commitment.

Up to now, innovation has been the key driver of switches. Picture: teams going from Anthropic to OpenAI or vice versa when a buzzy new model is released (seemingly every month). AI labs have been racing to ship upgrades faster than ever to gain these competitive advantages. But as token costs strain budgets, price could be the new competitive playing field — and there’s not much room to run there.

The bottom line:

A “race to the bottom” is untenable for AI… The only way to lead a price race is to be a loss leader. Labs may compete on price, but the bottom is capped by the eye-watering level of spending required to train and run models. OpenAI and Anthropic are already burning through billions to sustain this spending ahead of their expected IPOs.

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Watch this space: Big Tech taps outside capital to fund AI

Historically, Big Tech companies have relied on their massive cash balances to fund investments. But now that their capex is expected to exceed $700B this year, tech giants like Meta, Amazon, and Google are increasingly relying on outside capital to fund their AI expansions.

In the past week alone, Nvidia sold $25B in high-grade bonds and Oracle announced plans to raise $40B through debt and equity financing.

Google parent Alphabet recently announced plans to raise $85B through sales of its stock to fund its AI buildout, and the Financial Times reported that Meta is considering selling “tens of billions” in new stock to finance AI infrastructure expansion.

Meanwhile, U.S. corporate bond sales have boomed this year. AI-related companies have issued about $140B in investment-grade bonds so far, accounting for about half of the total issuance. On a record-breaking day for corporate borrowing in March, Amazon alone issued $37B worth of bonds.

The unusual reliance on outside money is a sign of how incredibly capital-intensive AI infrastructure is — and how big the bets on its future are.

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AI mentions in earnings calls hit a record

A sign of the times: The term “AI” was cited on 337 S&P 500 earnings calls this past earnings season, according to FactSet research.

That’s well above the 5-year average of 164 and the 10-year average of 103. But it’s only three more mentions than in Q4 2025, which set the previous record.

S&P 500 companies that mentioned “AI” on Q1 earnings calls have seen a higher average price increase compared to those that haven’t since March 31, 2026 (12.7% vs. 2.6%).

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Signals Shortlist

• Elon Musk’s trillion-dollar net worth is so massive, many don’t even understand it (The Wall Street Journal)
• Bank of Japan hikes rates to 1%, highest since 1995 (CNBC)
• Nvidia set to sell $25B of bonds, joining Oracle and others in AI debt boom (Bloomberg)
• U.S. wholesale inflation hit 6.5% in May, the highest rate since November 2022 (CNN)
• How quickly can the Strait of Hormuz get back up and running? (The Wall Street Journal)
• Solar overtakes coal in U.S. electricity for the first month on record (Ember)

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🗓️ Leading Events

Tuesday, June 16: FOMC meeting begins. U.S. import/export price indexes

Wednesday, June 17: Fed rate decision and press conference. Retail sales. Earnings expected from CarMax and Progressive

Thursday, June 18: Weekly jobless claims. Earnings expected from Accenture and Kroger

Friday, June 19: U.S. stock market closed for the Juneteenth federal holiday

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