Good morning. Fortune editor-in-chief Alyson Shontell recently sat down with President Donald Trump for a conversation in the Oval Office. Did tech topics come up? You betcha.
On Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg: “A very good friend.”
On the Supreme Court ruling some of his tariffs unconstitutional: “It really pisses me off.”
On Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan: “I said, ‘Give the country 10% ownership for free in Intel.’ He said, ‘You have a deal.’ I said, ‘Shit, I should have asked for more.’”
On American AI companies and the arms race with China: “They need two times more electricity than we have right now. We are beating China by a lot [in AI] because I allowed these plants to be built. These companies build their own electric units now, they don’t use the grid at all. Otherwise, we wouldn’t be able to compete … It’s important that we win.”
Read the rest of their discussion here. Today’s tech news below. —Andrew Nusca
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
SpaceX heads into a record IPO with the ‘deepest moat’
The biggest IPO ever is just a few weeks away as reports say SpaceX has accelerated its timeline for coming public.
Elon Musk’s rocket and satellite giant, which recently merged with his AI startup, expects to price its IPO as soon as June 11, with a trading debut on the Nasdaq due to follow the next day under the ticker SPCX, sources told Reuters.
Before that, SpaceX could file publicly for the IPO as early as Wednesday, with a roadshow kicking off on June 4, the report said.
The company had already filed confidentially and is seeking to raise up to $75 billion at a valuation of $1.75 trillion. That would surpass the current record holder for the biggest IPO ever: Saudi Aramco, which raised $29 billion at a $1.7 trillion valuation in 2019.
Since its founding in 2002, SpaceX has taken over the market. It claimed more than 80% of global rocket launches last year and has over 10,000 Starlink satellites in orbit, providing space-based internet connections to businesses and militaries.
“It’s a truly unique business with the deepest moat that exists today,” an investor told the Financial Times. “This company launches over 90% of Western payload into space each year. It’s like if you own the only undersea cable from the U.S. to Europe, it’s the only way you can get internet.”
At the same time, SpaceX has proposed an unprecedented governance structure that would give Musk nearly unchecked executive power, according to Reuters. And the only person who could fire Musk as CEO? Musk himself. —Jason Ma
A labor strike at Samsung’s memory chip plants is nigh
Samsung makes about a third of the world’s DRAM—the memory inside virtually every phone, laptop, server, and data center on the planet.
Together with its Korean rival SK Hynix, it controls roughly two-thirds of the global DRAM market and an even larger share of high-bandwidth memory (HBM), the specialized chips that AI systems cannot run without.
That’s why it’ll be a shock to the system when, on May 21, nearly 45,000 of Samsung’s unionized workers plan to walk off the job for 18 days. If that happens, it will be the largest work stoppage in the history of the semiconductor industry, at the single most important chokepoint in the AI supply chain.
In April, a one-day labor walkout forecasted what an extended strike could do. Foundry output reportedly dropped 58% and memory fabrication fell 18% during that affected shift.
Samsung believes a full shutdown could occur for the strike’s planned 18-day span, with nearly 45,000 union members expected to participate. Should such a thing happen, industry estimates put potential losses at 30 trillion to 100 trillion won.
Samsung is leaving nothing to chance. The company has already begun “warm-down” procedures, scaling back wafer inputs, as halting chip fabrication mid-process means scrapping wafers that cost $20,000 each. —Catherina Gioino
AI hasn’t stopped U.S. companies from hiring offshore labor
As more companies adopt agentic AI in hopes of replacing or making human workers more efficient, one top economist has noted that customer service roles—particularly those overseas—are only growing.
Apollo chief economist Torsten Slok noted in a recent blog post that from 2016 through 2025, call center employment in the Philippines has risen each year, nearly doubling to 2 million over the 10-year span.
He also found that from 2021 to March 2026, unemployment rates in the Philippines have decreased from 9% to about 4%, suggesting AI has not displaced offshore workers.
(In India, unemployment has remained steady at around 7%. The Philippines dethroned India as the largest call center employer about 15 years ago.)
Offshore call center jobs began booming in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a cost-cutting measure. The labor is considerably cheaper overseas than in the U.S., with Filipino call center workers earning wages of 15,000 to over 120,000 Philippine pesos per month, or about $243 to $1,948.
But these jobs are also among the most susceptible to AI displacement. The Brookings Institution estimated that 86% of customer service representative tasks had high automation potential.
The apparent contradiction points to a centuries-old economic paradox reflected across labor more broadly, according to Slok.
“This is Jevons paradox in action,” he wrote. “As AI makes call center work cheaper and faster, companies are buying more of it, not less.” —Sasha Rogelberg
More tech
—Apple’s new Siri assistant may launch in beta. (Whatever that means anymore!)
—Chinese AI labs beat their U.S. rivals in video generation, according to developers.
—NRG’s new CEO has a plan to power the AI boom: Virtual power plants, or VPP.
—Shein acquires Everlane for a paltry $100 million.
—Grafana hacked. Hackers demanded ransom after accessing the AI observability firm’s GitHub environment; it refused to pay.
—2 in 5 CEOs plan to cut junior roles over the next couple of years, thanks to AI.
—Can IDEO’s human-centered design survive the Age of Intelligence?
