Axios

Nvidia shares are up over 740% since the start of 2023.

• Today they ticked up again to a new record high, giving the company a $3 trillion+ market cap, passing Apple for second position.

The bottom line: AI has been good for the chip business.

Xavier Jernigan, or "X," Spotify's AI DJ, thinks a lot about his legacy.

Driving the news: During this afternoon's AI+ Summit in New York, Jernigan spoke on stage with Hope about the process of lending his voice to Spotify's personalized curation feature and the idea of being immortalized.

What they're saying: "This is a legacy project," he said, describing how he decided to be Spotify's AI model.

• With hundreds of millions of people now able to access the feature through his voice, he says his goal is to make the experience of interacting with X about a human-to-human exchange.
• "Ultimately, AI is the conduit to people to connect to the human version of me."

Gov. Kathy Hochul on Wednesday paused indefinitely the implementation of congestion pricing for drivers in New York City, weeks before the controversial initiative was set to take effect.

Why it matters: The first-in-the nation policy aimed to boost public transit use and improve air quality, but Hochul said it risked "unintended consequences" for New Yorkers' wallets and visits into Manhattan.

Iggy Azalea's meme coin is inching toward a $100 million market cap, at least for the full supply of the token, which is just under a billion.

• So even a small set aside of that is a pretty decent payday for a minor celebrity. She could get real fancy.

The intrigue: Another meme coin, IGGY, has launched, attempting to ride her brand's coattails, but she has disavowed it.

Zoom out: Pump, the Solana app that makes it crazy easy to mint meme coins, is absolutely crushing, bringing in a total of $32 million in revenue since launching early this year.

Denver is now in charge of Utah, within the SEC.

• In a press release yesterday, the securities regulator announced it was closing its office in Salt Lake City, after "significant attrition."

Flashback: The Salt Lake City office was the site of one of the agency's worst unforced errors in recent memory.

• In a case brought against Utah-based crypto company DEBT Box, a federal judge accused the agency in March of a "gross abuse of power."
• The attorneys who led the charge resigned.
• The agency was then ordered to cover the company's legal costs and to bring any further cases against the company to the same judge.

Whether you want to escape record-breaking heat with a "coolcation" or take a road trip across state lines, we rounded up a few live events that might be worth a trip.

The next recession may happen amid a new technological landscape: wide adoption of generative AI, a phenomenon untested by an economic shock.

Why it matters: The potential economic upsides of AI, including how it might fuel productivity growth, are fairly clear. More uncertain are the potential hits to labor and financial markets when the boom time ends.

Walmart is adding a new bonus for hourly store workers months after hiking store managers' pay and redesigning the bonus program for managers, the retailer announced Wednesday.

Why it matters: The nation's largest private employer and largest retailer is looking for more ways to retain employees in the competitive labor market.

At the macro level, the labor market has fallen back to earth and landed in a pretty healthy place — cold comfort to folks who experienced the bounty of the post-pandemic job search.

Driving the news: In April, there were 1.24 job openings for every unemployed American — same as in October 2019, the all-time high reached before the post-pandemic recovery.

A pair of election surprises in Mexico and India have left international investors reeling.

Why it matters: Stocks and currencies plunged in both countries as India Prime Minister Narendra Modi's party lost its parliamentary stronghold and Claudia Sheinbaum won by a landslide victory in Mexico.

The job market may be in a slow-motion cooldown, but you can still get a virtual job.

State of play: Ikea is hiring employees to work at its new virtual store on gaming platform Roblox, where they can perform tasks at the Swedish Food Market and Bistro or arrange virtual showrooms.

S&P 500 company CEOs got a median raise of 12.6% in 2023, far better than their workers and the rate of inflation, AP found based on study by Equilar, an executive data firm.

Why it matters: "At half the companies in this year's pay survey, it would take the worker at the middle of the company's pay scale almost 200 years to make what their CEO did," AP writes.

Zoom in: CEOs flourished as earnings often exceeded expectations amid a better-than-expected economy.

• But critics say CEOs are raking in exorbitant compensation while workers struggle to keep pace with price increases.

Elon Musk told Nvidia to send a bunch of AI chips slated for Tesla to his social media company X, instead.

Why it matters: The news, first reported by CNBC from internal emails at Nvidia, raised immediate questions about whether Musk was being truthful with Tesla's public shareholders about the company's AI spend and about the tech's near-term potential to power things like self-driving vehicles and robotaxis.

Musk confirmed the diversion today, but also downplayed its significance.

• In a post on X he said Tesla simply had no place to send the chips to turn them on, so they would have "just sat in a warehouse."

An index called CESR (said like the salad), or the Composite Ether Staking Rate, aims to show what rate people committing their ether are getting on average.

• There are many staking service providers out there, and the rates they pass on to their customers vary. So the CESR aims to make the take more transparent.

What we're watching: If ether ETFs sans staking end up being extra good for ether investors who aren't in those ETFs, a theory we reported on, the yield on this thing should go up as the new funds start to see meaningful inflows.

Crypto evangelist Michael Saylor and the enterprise software company he co-founded, MicroStrategy, will pay $40 million to settle tax fraud allegations in D.C.

Why it matters: It's the largest income tax fraud recovery in city history, D.C. Attorney General Brian Schwalb announced yesterday.

Zoom in: D.C. alleged that Saylor dodged city income taxes by claiming he lived in Virginia or Florida while owning a lavish Georgetown penthouse. Schwalb's office claimed Saylor owed over $25 million in income taxes between 2005 and 2020.

• Whistleblowers alleged Saylor "bragged to friends and acquaintances about evading D.C. taxes," per Schwalb's office.

The latest trending product from Trader Joe's has come just in time for beach season. The chain's new mini insulated tote bags, selling in stores for $3.99 each, are expected to go fast.

Why it matters: The 1.5-gallon bags, available in two colors, are already showing up on the resale market for marked-up prices.

Newsrooms typically immersed in political coverage during a presidential election year are instead focused on saving their own businesses.

Why it matters: Major restructurings, layoffs and newsroom overhauls are unusual for America's biggest news companies just months ahead of a highly anticipated presidential race.

American media companies are missing out on billions of dollars in revenue a year by neglecting to focus more on Asian American stories, according to the conclusions of three recent reports.

Why it matters: Broadcast, cable, streaming and Hollywood giants have been struggling to keep audiences consistently engaged in the current era of content production and consumption.