Good morning, Quartz readers! The Daily Brief writers are off today for Memorial Day, so there will be no edition tomorrow. Visit qz.com today for coverage, and we’ll be back in your inbox Wednesday morning.
Here’s what you need to know
Time for techs and balances. A shortened trading week will still be a busy one as Nvidia (and other tech companies), Costco, and more report earnings alongside clues on interest rates.
Apple of his ire. President Donald Trump made big threats on Truth Social: tariffs on any iPhones made in India (i.e., not in the U.S.) and a sweeping 50% levy on goods from the EU.
Tariffs continue to give Fed pause. Uncertainty surrounding tariff policy has one top Fed official prepared to hold interest rates steady until the levies’ effect on prices is clearer.
Dialing down the drama? Both the U.S. and China have agreed to keep phone lines open for trade talks amid a challenging relationship as tariffs and tech tensions loom large.
Trump’s going nuclear. He signed a series of orders to overhaul the Nuclear Regulatory Commission and speed the deployment of U.S. reactors, sending nuclear-power stocks soaring.
A forkful of conflict. Nearly 200 investors in Trump’s $TRUMP memecoin joined the president for dinner — with a side of protest. One Democrat called it the “Mount Everest of corruption.”
Stable minds think alike. Several top financial institutions have discussed a joint stablecoin collaboration as the GENIUS Act advances in the Senate.
A soft landing for Boeing. The aerospace giant and the Department of Justice reached a deal to allow the company to avoid any prosecution over deadly 737 Max crashes.
Robotaxis take the wheel. One bullish Tesla analyst just upped his price target from $350 to $500 ahead of the EV-maker’s scheduled robotaxi rollout in Austin.
IPO-verachievers
Move over, Silicon Valley. The next 1,000 unicorns are grazing in Mumbai.
India — with its large, tech-savvy population, a growing domestic investor base, and an AI-fueled startup ecosystem — is emerging as a global startup powerhouse. IPOs are surging: There were 338 in 2024, a 44% increase from the previous year, that raised over $20 billion. Brokerage accounts have come close to quadrupling since 2020. And homegrown companies are solving complex problems at scale, such as logistics that work across wide regions and countless dialects.
The country’s not just producing code anymore — it’s producing global companies.
“India has all the ingredients to be at par with China and the U.S.,” one venture capitalist told Quartz. Meanwhile, a Goldman Sachs report from 2023 estimated that India could surpass the U.S. as the second-largest economy in the world by 2075.
What started as a hub for outsourced code has evolved into the world’s third-largest startup ecosystem, where engineers who have left some of the top tech companies are building for both India and the globe. If projections hold, India’s moves could mean $2-5 trillion in startup value over the next few decades. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on how India became a tech superpower-in-waiting.
A-head in the Cloud
At this week’s Build conference, Microsoft made a strategic pivot clear: It’s betting big on agentic AI, the next battleground in the AI arms race.
Unlike generative AI, which creates content based on input, agentic AI is built to take initiative, make decisions, chase goals, and tackle complex tasks. And Microsoft wants to power the infrastructure, tools, and workflows that make that future possible.
Deutsche Bank analysts say Microsoft’s strategy is “a vision that is clear and resonates,” noting that the company’s breadth — from enterprise software to cloud to developer ecosystems — gives it an edge in agentic AI. In his keynote, CEO Satya Nadella framed this moment as the middle innings of the AI platform shift: the build-out phase for scale and real-world use.
The stakes are high. The global agentic AI market is projected to grow from $5.2 billion in 2024 to nearly $200 billion by 2034. Quartz’s Shannon Carroll has more on how AI that acts is Microsoft’s next big act.
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