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In today’s post:
🚨 Apple Just Saved Intel?
🎲 Accenture's Risky $4B Gamble
💸 SpaceX Just Borrowed $20B
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🚨 Apple Just Saved Intel?
Trump dropped a bomb on Truth Social Thursday: Apple is teaming up with Intel to design and build chips on US soil.
Intel shares popped ~11%. The whole chip sector threw a party.
So what's actually going on here?
Apple has a memory problem.
DRAM and NAND prices are climbing, and they're chewing into Apple's margins.
Tim Cook basically waved the white flag, calling the situation "unsustainable" and saying price hikes are "unavoidable."
Code for “your next iPhone is going to cost more”.
Wedbush thinks those increases land in September with the iPhone 18 lineup and a shiny new foldable.
And here's the kicker. Dan Ives and his team reckon Apple can raise prices without losing customers, because Apple buyers are basically the people who'd pay $20 for airport water.
Why partner with Intel though?
Apple leans hard on TSMC for its chips. But TSMC's best production lines are jammed with AI orders from Nvidia and AMD.
Imagine trying to book a table at the hottest restaurant in town when every tech giant has the same idea. That's Apple right now.
Building at home with Intel spreads the risk.
But don’t get it wrong. This isn't a charity case for Intel.
Trump's administration grabbed a 10% stake in Intel back in 2025 and pledged ~$10B to expand US chip factories.
Now Trump says Nvidia, Elon's "TerraFab," and Apple are all lining up to build with Intel.
Intel's also just kicked off initial production on its next-gen 18A process. Timing? Chef's kiss.
The rest of the chip world went vertical:
Micron soared ~11% (Stifel yanked its target to $1,500 from $550)
Marvell jumped ~12% (KeyBanc lifted PT to $385)
Qualcomm ~6%, Nvidia ~3%, AMD and Broadcom ~4%
TSMC and Texas Instruments ~6% each
Equipment makers KLA ~8%, Lam Research ~6%
The semiconductor ETFs $SMH ( ▲ 5.76% ), $SOXX ( ▲ 6.62% ) climbed ~3%.
Oh, and the broader market is ripping too. Trump and Iran's President signed a memorandum to cool tensions, sending the Nasdaq up ~1.6%.
Wedbush kept its Outperform rating and $400 price target on Apple.
Who actually wins from the Apple-Intel deal?
TL;DR
Trump says Apple agreed to design and build chips with Intel in the US. Intel popped ~11%.
Apple's getting squeezed by rising memory chip prices, hurting margins.
Price hikes are coming, likely September with the iPhone 18 and a foldable.
The deal reduces Apple's reliance on TSMC, whose lines are clogged with AI demand.
Trump's admin owns 10% of Intel and is funneling billions into US chip plants.
Chip stocks rallied across the board; Micron and Marvell were the big winners (~11–12%).
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While Broadcom and Oracle just rattled the entire AI trade, one ETF sat completely untouched by the chaos. It holds almost no tech. Just companies that have paid rising dividends for at least 10 straight years.
Boring? Yes. And that's the entire point.
Here's the setup: AI CapEx is hitting numbers that look like typos. Amazon's guiding for $200 billion this year. Alphabet's near $185 billion. One major bank thinks total spending tops $602 billion in 2026. At some point, that bill comes due.
When it does, capital doesn't vanish. It rotates. And it runs straight into defensive, income-producing names like this one.
We're calling it a Strong Buy as a hedge against the next AI pullback. But we're not pretending it's flawless.
In today's Premium deep dive, we break down:
Why this fund could absorb the cash fleeing a tech correction
The exact sector positioning that makes it a hedge (and the 11% that surprises people)
The three risks that could sink the thesis, named plainly
What recent portfolio reshuffle tells you about where it's heading next
🎲 Accenture's Risky $4B Gamble
Accenture is going all-in on protecting the stuff that keeps the lights on.
The consulting giant just inked deals to buy a majority stake in Dragos and snap up runZero and NetRise entirely. Combined price tag? Roughly $4.18B.
The goal: lock down "operational technology" security. Think power grids, factories, pipelines. The boring infrastructure that's catastrophic when it breaks.
So how did the market react? It hit the sell button. Shares dropped 13% in early trading and finished the day down nearly 18%.
Wait, why buy these three?
Dragos is the anchor. It brings OT threat detection and a vendor-neutral platform built on its own proprietary data.
runZero adds attack-surface intelligence. Basically, it maps every door and window a hacker might try.
NetRise rounds out the package. All three fold under Dragos, which keeps running as an independent business.
And the brains stay on board.
Dragos CEO Robert M. Lee runs the show. The founders of runZero (HD Moore) and NetRise (Thomas Pace) both stick around as senior Dragos execs.
It's an acquihire and a tech grab rolled into one.
Together, the trio is projected to pull in about $208M in annual recurring revenue by June 2026.
That's 53% year-over-year growth. Not exactly slow.
The deals should close around August or September 2026.
So why the stock dip? Investors clearly wanted something other than a shopping spree on earnings day.
Accenture just spent $4.18B on cybersecurity and the stock dropped 13%. What's your read?
TL;DR
Accenture is buying a majority stake in Dragos plus all of runZero and NetRise for ~$4.18B.
The play: become a heavyweight in operational technology security for critical infrastructure.
Dragos stays independent; runZero and NetRise tuck underneath it.
Founders of all three companies remain as Dragos leadership.
The combined business is eyeing ~$208M in recurring revenue at 53% YoY growth.
Deals expected to close August–September 2026. Shares still fell 13%.
1. Buy the Cybersecurity Pullback
OT security is becoming a must-have, not a nice-to-have. Accenture just paid $4.18B to prove it. The whole sector tends to move together on big deals like this.
📌 Action: Accumulate cybersecurity ETFs like $CIBR ( ▲ 0.37% ) or $HACK ( ▲ 0.65% ) on weakness. The Dragos deal validates the long-term theme even when individual names wobble.
2. Watch the IT Services Bargain Bin
$ACN ( ▼ 17.97% ) dragged the whole consulting crowd down with it. Cognizant, Infosys, and Wipro all fell on Accenture's miss, not their own. That's sympathy selling, not fundamentals.
📌 Action: Scan oversold IT services names $CTSH ( ▼ 10.49% ), $INFY ( ▼ 9.66% ) for entry points if their own earnings stay solid. Sometimes the market punishes the neighbours for one house's mess.
3. Pocket the Dividend Hiker
Past the noise, Accenture just raised its dividend 10% and is returning $9.5B+ to shareholders this year. The business still throws off serious cash.
📌 Action: Treat $ACN ( ▼ 17.97% ) as a dollar-cost-average candidate for a dividend growth sleeve. Buy in tranches if the stock keeps sliding, and let the rising payout compound.
💸 SpaceX Just Borrowed $20B
SpaceX is about to do the corporate equivalent of asking the bank for a bigger loan to pay off your old loan.
The company is lining up meetings with investors as early as next week to pitch a bond offering that could top $20 billion.
It'd be SpaceX's first investment-grade dollar bond. The plan? Refinance a $20 billion bridge loan due in September 2027.
That bridge loan is most of SpaceX's $29.1 billion in long-term debt.
Investor calls could kick off Monday, though size and timing might still shift.
The same five banks that arranged the bridge loan are running the bond show: Bank of America, Citi, JPMorgan, Goldman, and Morgan Stanley.
Think of them as the friends who lent you money once and now want in on the refinance too.
The AI Empire Behind the Debt
This isn't just a rocket company anymore.
SpaceX recently pulled off a record IPO that shot it into the world's most valuable companies. It already swallowed xAI earlier this year.
Now it's eyeing Cursor, the AI coding platform, in a $60 billion all-stock deal.
Oppenheimer's Timothy Horan calls it "highly beneficial for both sides." His logic is simple:
Cursor needs compute. It runs an AI coding tool with over 1 million daily users but leans on outside AI providers for the actual brains.
SpaceX needs a product. It has the data centers and the muscle, but wanted a hit app with real users.
Put them together and you get a flywheel: more users feed more data, which trains better models, which attract more users. Rinse, repeat.
Why Cursor Was Getting Nervous
Here's Cursor's problem. It built a great coding tool on top of other companies' AI models.
But those model makers started launching their own coding products. Imagine renting your kitchen from a chef who just opened a restaurant next door.
SpaceX solves that. Now Cursor gets the compute, and SpaceX gets the users, the data, and a fat enterprise customer base.
Roughly 64% of Fortune 500 companies already use Cursor. Horan thinks it could hit $6 billion in annual recurring revenue by year-end, up sixfold.
The Bull Case
Horan kept his Outperform rating and $250 price target.
His pitch: own the compute and the app, and you capture value across the whole stack. Better margins, tighter integration, more control.
The deal's expected to close in Q3.
What's he watching next? Whether SpaceX can fold Cursor into xAI smoothly, train competitive models, and keep growth humming.
The risks? Execution, keeping talent from walking out the door, messy integration, and bigger AI rivals throwing punches.
SpaceX is borrowing $20B and buying an AI company for $60B. Smart or stretched?
TL;DR
SpaceX is pitching investors next week on a bond offering that could exceed $20 billion, its first investment-grade dollar bond.
The cash mostly refinances a $20 billion bridge loan due September 2027, part of $29.1 billion in long-term debt.
The same five banks behind the bridge loan are leading the bond deal.
SpaceX is separately acquiring AI coding platform Cursor for $60 billion in stock, building on its xAI ownership.
The combo creates an AI "flywheel": SpaceX's compute plus Cursor's 1M+ daily users and data.
Oppenheimer rates it Outperform with a $250 target; key risks are execution, talent, and competition.