| | Good morning and happy Monday. The acronym may seem as dated as, say, VHS, but the world's leading energy watchdog is bringing it back in vogue. The International Energy Agency is asking member countries, including the United States, to urge residents to WFH (work from home) to ward off a potential oil supply shock. That recommendation was one of 10 offered up by the IEA on Friday in response to the Middle East conflict. Others include reducing highway speeds, encouraging carpooling and public transportation use, and avoiding air travel, including business flights. If it's been awhile since you've indulged in some WFH, here's a productivity tip: Wear some pants without an elastic waistband. A belt can actually help set the mood. | | | | | | | | Companies like Nvidia, AMD and Apple design them, but it's the foundry companies running specialized factories that make the advanced chips powering AI. Taiwan's TSMC utterly dominates the sector, but Samsung Electronics may have something to say about that. Bargaining Chips Given the AI boom, you won't be surprised to read that the top 10 foundry companies made a combined $169.5 billion in revenue last year, up 26.3% from 2024, according to technology research firm TrendForce. But that growth was concentrated at TSMC, where sales climbed 36.1% to $122.5 billion. The Taiwanese firm's market share rose 5.5 percentage points to 69.9%. In a very distant second-place, like an NFL offensive lineman racing Usain Bolt, was Samsung Electronics. Foundry revenue at the tech subsidiary of South Korean holdings giant Samsung fell 3.9% to $12.6 billion, and its market share dipped 2.2 percentage points to 7.2%. Samsung's foundry business has struggled to sign up customers because of poor yields, a term for the percentage of chips it produces that aren't defective (last year, Korean daily Chosun Ilbo reported Samsung foundry yields as low as 50%, compared with TSMC's more than 90%). But Samsung's foundry business may have found an ace card: High Bandwidth Memory (HBM). Top-of-the-line AI chips, such as those from Nvidia and AMD, require substantial memory bandwidth to support large-scale training and complex inference. While TSMC doesn't make its own branded memory chips, Samsung does. That includes its advanced HBM4, released this year, amid a growing memory chip shortage. That shortage has opened a lane for Samsung to assert itself in the chip supply chain: It leapfrogged Micron for second place in the HBM market last year and, in the fall, announced plans to build a new factory with Nvidia that will have HBM capacity. And now, Samsung is reportedly using its advantageous position in the memory space as a bargaining chip for foundry business: - Last week, Samsung agreed to supply more HBM4 to ADM, which desperately needs the memory to keep up with rival Nvidia's massive memory orders. As part of the deal, the two will explore whether Samsung's foundry can manufacture next-generation AMD chips.
- In addition, the Hankyung business daily reported last week that the Korean firm is also poised to supply HBM4 to OpenAI later this year, representing its third-largest memory order after Nvidia and AMD.
  Texas, Not Just for Tortilla Chips: Samsung Electronics said last week it plans to invest $73.5 billion in facilities and research this year, a 21.7% year-over-year increase, as it tries to win more major AI chip customers. Notably, it plans to begin mass-producing AI chips for Tesla at its growing semiconductor compound in Taylor, Texas, in the second half of 2027, as part of a $16.5 billion deal. Written by Sean Craig | | | | | | | | | Photo via hear.com | In business, the smallest details often drive the biggest outcomes. Whether it's a meeting, an investor call, or a packed conference room, clarity isn't just a perk. It's a performance advantage. Horizon IX uses dual-processing AI to separate speech from background noise in real time, giving you the kind of conversational precision most people don't even realize they're missing. Nearly invisible. Rechargeable. Seamlessly connected to your phone. Built for how modern professionals actually work. And you wouldn't be the first to upgrade — 540,000+ people already have. You can test it yourself with a 45-day, no-risk trial. That's a better risk-adjusted return profile than most trades this week. Qualify now.  | | | | | Lilly didn't just move the needle, it broke the scale. Results of a late-stage trial show that Type 2 diabetes patients using Eli Lilly's highly anticipated next-generation weight-loss drug retatrutide experienced a significant reduction in blood-sugar levels and weight loss, the drug manufacturer said last week. The drug, an injectable taken once a week, helped patients on the highest dose lose 15.3% of their body weight on average and lower their blood sugar by 1.9% over nine months. "Retatrutide delivers the highest levels of weight loss we've seen from an obesity drug to date," Scotiabank analyst Louise Chen said, according to Reuters. Triple Threat GLP-1 drugs have upended the business and science of weight loss, with millions of Americans (approximately one in eight, according to a survey late last year from the nonprofit KFF) taking medications like Ozempic or Wegovy for weight loss, diabetes, heart disease and more. And with J.P. Morgan Global Research reporting that the global market for incretins, metabolic hormones that include GLP-1s, will reach $200 billion by 2030, it's no wonder companies are racing to bring new meds to market. But while current treatments focus on activating just one or two hormone receptors, newer versions are taking it a step further. Retatrutide was nicknamed "triple-G" due to its activation of three hormones: GLP-1, GIP and glucagon. The next-gen drugs are expected to offer even more weight loss and metabolic benefits than those on the market today. While injectables remain a cornerstone of the market, Eli Lilly and its rivals are also turning their attention to pill versions of the drugs: - In December, the Food and Drug Administration approved the first GLP-1 weight-loss pill: Novo Nordisk's Wegovy. Since then, roughly 400,000 Americans have started taking the medication, CNN reports.
- Eli Lilly expects to introduce its own pill, orforglipron, to the masses as early as next quarter, pending regulatory approval.
More Advancement: Innovation in the space isn't slowing down any time soon. In February, Kirk Habegger, a professor of medicine in the Division of Endocrinology, Diabetes and Metabolism at the University of Alabama at Birmingham, said he'd recently seen a presentation from a group working on a five-receptor drug. While it included activation of nuclear hormone receptors that had previously been used in effective drugs with use-limiting side effects, "if you can target those receptors to specific cell types, you might bypass some of the side effects," Habegger said. Written by Mallika Mitra | | | | | | | | | Photo via YieldMax ETFs | | | | | | | | | Baker Hughes is wearing a new hat. Amid the AI rollout, the oil field services giant is supplying energy infrastructure equipment to power-hungry data centers. It's a makeover that Wall Street can't get enough of. Hughes News Shares of the energy infrastructure firm took a ding following the outbreak of war in Iran (a sudden crunch on Qatar-sourced helium, a key component for AI chips, certainly didn't help), but the stock has already clawed back its losses and remains up some 28% year-to-date as of market close on Friday. The excitement is obvious: Data centers need strong localized power systems, and Baker Hughes' portfolio of generators and equipment, typically well-suited to powering remote oil fields, fits perfectly. In turn, the company is finding a key diversification avenue amid declining sales in its oilfield services and equipment business, making the surge of data center clients a more than welcome development: - The company said earlier this year that it is on track to double its data center-related orders to $3 billion over the three years through 2027. More recently, the company announced that it had secured contracts to supply equipment capable of delivering up to 250 MW of power for use at Twenty20 Energy's data center sites in Georgia and Texas.
- "Due to surging demand for generative AI, we see increasing opportunities for our power generation solutions to support behind-the-meter power requirements for data centers," executive vice president Ganesh Ramaswamy said in a recent statement.
Hit the Gas: The company has similarly pivoted hard in recent months toward liquid natural gas services, a timely gambit as the US becomes perhaps the world's most reliable LNG provider so long as disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz persist. Company leaders are expected to attend CERAWeek in Houston, Texas, dubbed "the world's premier energy conference" and hosted by S&P Global. US LNG export terminals are already operating near peak capacity; we have to imagine conference chatter will center on who can deliver product most quickly to Europe and Asia. Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | - Losing Its Shine: Gold fell 10% last week, its worst week in over 40 years, with energy market turmoil pushing the dollar higher and leading central banks to reassess inflation policies.
- New Rules: The Trump administration released an AI policy blueprint, including new child safety rules and permitting regulations for data centers, that it wants Congress to enact before next year.
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