Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Breakfast, where we cover the top news for investors every morning. Good morning! Today is Thursday, July 3rd. I'm Julie Morgan. OpenAI calls foul, Alpha pays up, and Starboard books a seat at TripAdvisor.
OpenAI issued a firm statement on Wednesday denying any affiliation with the tokenized equity tokens offered by trading platform Robinhood. OpenAI emphasized that the tokens do not represent real ownership or equity in the company. The trading platform began offering tokenized shares of OpenAI and SpaceX to its users in Europe.
OpenAI wrote on X that these OpenAI tokens are not OpenAI equity and that they did not partner with Robinhood, they were not involved in this, and they do not endorse it. The company said that any transfer of OpenAI equity requires their approval and they did not approve any transfer and warned users to please be careful.
In response to OpenAI's post, a Robinhood spokesperson said that these tokens give retail investors indirect exposure to private markets, opening up access and are enabled by Robinhood's ownership stake in a special purpose vehicle. Robinhood gained 6.1% on Wednesday and is down 1.5% in pre-market trading.
Robinhood is also the topic in the Wall Street Breakfast newsletter, our daily one-page news summary. Be sure to check it out. We're focusing on what Robinhood's tokenized stocks means for the industry. You can find a link to the newsletter in show notes.
Alpha and Omega Semiconductor agreed to pay $4.25 million to settle with the U.S. Department of Commerce. The company allegedly shipped items to China's Huawei Technologies in violation of export rules. Alpha said it reached a resolution with the department's Bureau of Industry and Security, or BIS, to close its investigation of the company's export control practices.
Alpha and Omega noted that the resolution does not impact its ongoing business operations and brings an end to the U.S. government's five-year-plus investigation, which resulted in no criminal charges. Reuters reported citing a department order that Alpha engaged in prohibited conduct by forwarding 1,650 power controllers, smart power stages, and related accessories to Huawei without authorization in 2019.
Huawei was added to a restricted U.S. trade list in that same year. The Department of Commerce did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Seeking Alpha.
Starboard Value has built an over 9% stake in TripAdvisor. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that it was not immediately clear what the activist investor was seeking from the firm. The stake is valued at about $160 million. Trip is up 4.6% pre-market after gaining 8% on Wednesday. TripAdvisor has declined 15% over the past year.
Now for a look at a few other articles that are trending on Seeking Alpha. The CEO of Ford says AI will replace half of all white-collar workers in the U.S. Datadog surges after its placement on the S&P 500. And Google reportedly proposes fresh changes to search results to comply with the EU's antitrust rules.
Now for a look at the markets today ahead of the opening bell, Dow, S&P and Nasdaq futures are in the green. Crude oil is down 0.9% at $66 a barrel. Bitcoin is up 0.7% at $109,000. Gold is down 0.1% at $3,353. The FTSE 100 is up 0.4% and the DAX is up 0.3%.
Thera Technologies is on our list of the biggest movers of the day pre-market. THTX is up 30% after the biopharma firm agreed to be acquired by CB Biotechnology, an affiliate of FuturePak.
On today's economic calendar, at 8.30 a.m., the employment situation. The U.S. economy is expected to add 110,000 jobs in June, according to the Census of Economists, down from the 139,000 estimate of jobs created in May. The unemployment rate is anticipated to tick up 4.3 percent from 4.2 percent in May.
That's it for today's show. Wall Street Lunch will be published around 2 p.m. today. I'll see you right back here on Monday after the holiday break. Enjoy your weekend and be safe out there. To take full advantage of Seeking Alpha with coverage on significant stocks and ETFs, become a premium subscriber. Check out seekingalpha.com slash subscriptions. I'm your host, Julie Morgan. Go out and make it a great day.