We had a record number of entries in this week’s world-famous news haiku competition™ and you can pick a winner from the top 10 in today’s poll 👇🏻.

Now for God’s sake, man, can we hear about the news?

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News You Need2Know

• Stocks jump as Tehran strikes are called off

• The race is on to build America's drone network

• We spoke to the World Cup's AI referees

• Who will win the race for electric car domination?

• Why the next space revolution is about power

• Poll of the day: It’s World-Famous-575™ time

• Poll of the day: Gated Community

What’s the stock market up to, eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 1.75% )  $DJI ( ▲ 1.86% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies mentioned in today’s newsletter

$LRCX ( ▲ 12.65% )  $KLAC ( ▲ 12.92% )  $ORCL ( ▼ 8.53% )  $TSLA ( ▲ 4.6% )  $NVDA ( ▲ 2.22% )  $AMZN ( ▲ 1.48% )  $UBER ( ▲ 1.37% )  $LNVGY ( ▲ 2.29% )  $MORN ( ▼ 4.79% )  $WAYMZZX ( ▲ 0.0% )  $HYMTF ( ▼ 7.44% )

Stocks jump as Tehran strikes are called off

The markets rallied yesterday after President Donald Trump's announcement that he was calling off a threatened military strike on Iran. The sudden de-escalation quickly raised hopes for resuming the global flow of crude oil. Broad market indices reflected the optimism: The S&P 500 $SPX ( ▲ 1.75% ) jumped 1.4%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average $DJI ( ▲ 1.86% ) rose by 839 points, and the Nasdaq $NASDAQ ( 0.0% ) composite climbed 1.8%.

Stocks shifted higher immediately after Trump posted on his social media network that “discussions and final points have been, in both concept and great detail, approved by all parties involved,” adding that the time and place of a signing will “be announced shortly.”

On Wednesday he was threatening further strikes against Iran. Markets have been on a choppy ride since their record highs on June 2 as a combination of concerns over an AI bubble, as well as hotter-than-expected jobs numbers and concerns about the viability of huge summer IPOs continue to dog stock prices.

Beyond the broader market, specific technology and chipmaking stocks saw massive movement yesterday. Lam Research $LRCX ( ▲ 12.65% ) surged by 11.2%, and KLA $KLAC ( ▲ 12.92% ) climbed 11%. Conversely, Oracle $ORCL ( ▼ 8.53% ) dropped 11.6% despite strong profits, as it announced plans to raise $40 billion to help fund heavy AI investments.

Quote of the Day

The race is on to build America's drone network

Picture the glorious future, where the serene quiet of the open sky will soon be replaced by the gentle, soothing buzz of mechanical mosquitoes rushing to deliver toothpaste to your front porch. If you thought the sky was meant for birds and clouds, you clearly lack corporate vision.

Enter Andreas Raptopoulos, CEO of Matternet, a man who certainly isn't shy about his company's world-altering importance. When asked to describe his enterprise, Raptopoulos humbly suggested, "Think about us as like a Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 4.6% )  or an Nvidia $NVDA ( ▲ 2.22% ) ." 

According to Raptopoulos, mark your calendars, because 2026 is officially "the inflection year for drone delivery here in the U S." Right now, he admits there are a measly "3,000 to 5,000 deliveries by drone done every day in the U.S." But don't worry, the skies will be sufficiently crowded soon enough. Raptopoulos confidently predicts that "this number by 2030... is gonna be three to five million every day."

Of course, Matternet is uniquely poised to monopolize the heavens. As Raptopoulos gleefully reminds everyone, his is "the only company in the world that has FAA type certification," allowing them to fly their fully autonomous gadgets right over densely populated neighborhoods. With giants like Amazon $AMZN ( ▲ 1.48% ) and Uber Eats $UBER ( ▲ 1.37% ) scrambling to get in on the action, Raptopoulos is just sitting back and watching "the magic of the market playing out."

I think he might mean he’s waiting for one of those companies to make an offer. And best of luck to him!

We spoke to the World Cup's AI referees

Finally, the beautiful game is being fixed by the one thing it always desperately needed: an omniscient corporate server farm. Lenovo $LNVGY ( ▲ 2.29% ) is running the entire operational backbone for the tournament, monitoring every single play across 104 matches.

Lenovo's CTO Tolga Cortolu insists that AI is merely an "augmentation tool," which is a highly comforting thought while they digitally scan all 1,248 players to create precise 3D digital twins. Remember the slightly creepy, inhuman avatars from Qatar 2022? Fear not! Now, when a defender and an attacker's limbs overlap in a frantic scramble, the system simply uses "generative things" to figure out which boot belongs to whom.

The fun doesn't stop there. We also get a sensor-stuffed Smartball, AI-stabilized referee body cameras, and venue-wide crowd surveillance. Lenovo is even gifting all 48 teams access to "Football AI Pro" to mathematically calculate their tactics, graciously "leveling the playing field" before FIFA predictably hoards all the lucrative match and physics data the second the tournament ends.

Despite this massive algorithmic overhaul, Cortolu promises that the ultimate decision-maker is still the human referee. So, when your team is eliminated by a pixel-perfect, AI-generated offside call, relax, you can still scream at the human on the pitch.

Song of the Day: KI/KI, ‘Going Existential in the Rave’

This song by Amsterdam-based DJ KI/KI is a high-octane single that blends ‘90s nostalgia with heavy acid basslines and euphoric hard trance. The track, described as a "soundtrack of the summer," has been praised in rave communities for its authentic throwback energy and ability to deliver kinetic, fast-paced escapism. Enjoy!

Who will win the race for electric car domination?

As Seth Goldstein, senior equity analyst at Morningstar $MORN ( ▼ 4.79% ) , puts it, we are actually "still in the very early innings of the shift to electric vehicles.”

Currently, 2026 is a brilliant "reset transition year." Translation? The EV tax credits expired early, and now EV sales are expected to fall this year as consumers flock to "traditional hybrids" to save money. Revolutionary!

But what about the autonomous robotaxi utopia Elon Musk promised for half the U.S. by the end of the year? Don't hold your breath. Goldstein generously calls Musk's timeline "more of a goal or a challenge to Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 4.6% )  employees." Right now, these supposed miracle cars are just undergoing "early testing," trapped in "geofenced, very tight-knit areas" so they don't wreak havoc. Goldstein predicts we might see a "full commercial launch by 2028," provided regulators don't pull their licenses first.

Meanwhile, Waymo $WAYMZZX ( ▲ 0.0% ) is desperately "trying to make it a real viable business" by teaming up with Hyundai $HYMTF ( ▼ 7.44% ) to finally lower their costs. So, who is currently winning the great EV race?

Apparently, anyone still selling a gas-powered hybrid.

Why the next space revolution is about power

Our multi-million-dollar orbital technology essentially runs on the same energy capacity as your kitchen appliances. According to Andrew Rush, CEO of Star Catcher Industries, the average satellite in low Earth orbit generates about 1,500 watts, which he helpfully notes is "what like your average microwave has, or like my kid's gaming computer has."

Because these incredibly expensive satellites occasionally plunge into darkness—who could have possibly predicted eclipses in space?—Rush has decided to build "the world's first power grid for space" to solve our glaring "access to power" bottleneck. His solution? Just shoot lasers at them. Star Catcher plans to beam "invisible and near-infrared light" at existing solar panels so we can finally escape our pathetic "world of power budgets" and enter a glorious "World of Power Abundance™."

Why do we need this? So we can toss massive data centers and cell phone towers into orbit, obviously. Rush confidently predicts that a decade from now, the defining innovations of this era "will be reusable launch vehicles at a power grid in space." So get ready, because the next giant leap for mankind is all about space lasers powering orbiting microwaves.

Free yourself from advertising forever!

Should you check your 401(k) today?

👎️ 

Still a hard “no” from us, I’m afraid. Unless you count yesterday’s modest rise as helping offset the previous 10 days of heavy losses, which we don’t.

Poll of the day: It’s World-Famous-575™ time

Poll of the day: Gated Community

We asked: Do you think Bill Gates did irreversible damage to his reputation with Jeffrey Epstein?

You answered:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Oh, absolutely not. Who wouldn't repeatedly meet with a convicted sex offender just to obtain support for their global health philanthropy? (44)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Nah, people totally buy that the tech genius who co-founded Microsoft simply couldn't figure out that Epstein was up to no good. (52)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Please, he is a billionaire. The fact that Epstein tried to blackmail him over his extramarital affairs with Russian women is just a tiny bump in the road. (125)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ What reputation damage? It is perfectly fine that his friend Warren Buffett entirely stopped speaking to him because he didn't want to "know things" about the Epstein files. (72)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 He still started Microsoft. Whatever damage he's done, he'll weather the storm in the end and his obituary will be glowing. (197)
490 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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