Federal Reserve's Mester: There is a reasonable scenario that suggests that the interest rate needs to remain stable for a period of time

On May 6, Bitcoin mining firm Hut 8’s stock price surged more than 32% after the company signed a $9.8 billion lease agreement for an AI data center campus built around NVIDIA’s computing architecture. This marks the first commercialization phase for Hut 8’s Beacon Point data center campus in Nueces County, Texas. The tenant will use the computing infrastructure to support AI training and “hyperscale inference workloads,” per Hut 8. Hut 8 noted the site was initially planned under a speed-to-power underwriting framework to serve its affiliated customer American Bitcoin Corp (ABTC). However, as power demands accelerated and customer needs expanded, the campus was repositioned as AI infrastructure. Hut 8 has pivoted Beacon Point from its original ABTC-focused commercialization path to deliver an AI data center campus with contracted, investment-grade cash flows—marking the first phase of asset-level value creation for the site. On Monday, Hut 8 also released its Q1 financial report

May 6 — Apple has agreed to a $250 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit alleging the company overhyped unfulfilled AI features in new iPhones. Eligible device owners will receive between $25 and $95 in compensation, depending on the final number of claimants. At issue: Apple’s June 2024 announcement of Apple Intelligence, a feature pitched as a rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Plaintiffs representing iPhone buyers claim the AI tool “did not exist at the time, still does not exist now, will not exist for the next two years or longer, and may never exist.” When the iPhone 16 launched in September 2024, the promised Apple Intelligence was missing — as was the enhanced Siri. Post-launch issues persisted: Apple delayed the upgraded Siri’s release in March 2025 due to quality concerns, and Notification Summary (an Intelligence feature) displayed erroneous news articles, leading Apple to disable it entirely.

On Wednesday, May 6, The Wall Street Journal reported that vessels attempting to transit the Strait of Hormuz received a verbal warning from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Navy, which stated the waterway remains closed. A Greek shipowner waiting to transit the strait received a recorded message warning all vessels in the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman: any ship approaching the strait without authorization or straying from the designated route will be “targeted for action.” Iranian state television noted roughly 1,500 vessels are currently preparing to transit the strait, adding the ships cannot complete their voyages without IRGC Navy approval. (Source: FXStreet)

On May 6, Bitget data shows NVIDIA’s stock climbed 4.58% to $205.50 per share, with a market cap of $500 billion.

AMD CEO Lisa Su told CNBC in a May 6 interview that AI agents are fueling significant demand for computing power across the entire AI lifecycle, sharply lifting the company’s CPU market growth outlook. Enterprises are now truly recognizing AI’s value to their businesses, with adoption accelerating rapidly. Beyond AI accelerators, CPU demand remains strong because the latest AI agents require more general-purpose computing support. She noted that the market historically assumed a CPU-to-GPU demand ratio of roughly 1:4 or even 1:8, but that ratio has now narrowed to nearly 1:1. AMD’s prior forecast (issued in November 2023) projected the addressable CPU market to grow at an annual rate of 18%–20%. That outlook has now been revised upward to over 35%, with the CPU market expected to exceed $120 billion by 2030. Lisa Su added that AI’s practicality and commercialization pace are faster than expected six months ago—validating AMD’s long-term assessment of AI trends.

On May 6, Core Scientific announced the acquisition of Oklahoma-based Bitcoin mining firm Polaris DS LLC for $421 million. The deal grants Core Scientific access to Polaris’s 440-megawatt power contract with Oklahoma Gas & Electric— a move aimed at accelerating its AI business expansion. The transaction is expected to close in Q3 2026. Currently, Core Scientific is retrofitting and expanding existing mining facilities in Texas, Georgia, North Carolina, and Oklahoma to support high-density hosting services for AI and compute-intensive workloads. The company has broken ground on an 82.5-megawatt facility in Muskogee, with plans to eventually offer 1 gigawatt of leasable power at the site.