May 15 Member Morning Brief: 2026's Biggest US IPO Doubles at Opening, Nvidia's Market Cap Steadily Surpasses Germany's GDP

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2. [OpenAI Preparing to Sue Apple for Breach of Contract] According to media reports on Thursday, the two-year-long collaboration between Apple and OpenAI has become tense, as the AI company has not obtained the expected benefits from the agreement and is preparing for potential legal action—they have already hired an external law firm. The process may include issuing Apple a breach notice but might not result in an immediate lawsuit, as the company still hopes for an out-of-court resolution. The conflict stems from the cooperation reached at the 2024 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference: ChatGPT was integrated into voice assistant Siri, writing tools, and other scenarios, with no cash consideration—Apple takes a cut from ChatGPT subscriptions within the system. OpenAI originally compared this deal to the "Google Search in browsers deal," expecting annualized subscription revenue of several billion dollars, but users have to explicitly say "ChatGPT" within Siri to invoke it, and the response window is also smaller than in the standalone app. Internal data shows that Apple users overwhelmingly prefer to open the independent ChatGPT app, and conversion rates are far below expectations. A senior OpenAI executive complained to Bloomberg that Apple "didn't even make a sincere effort" and recalled that when signing the contract, Apple simply told OpenAI to "take a gamble and trust us." On the day the news broke, Apple’s share price fell as much as 1.2% during intraday trading.

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3. [US April Retail Sales Year-on-Year Reach Near Eight-Month High] The US Department of Commerce released data on Thursday showing that retail sales in April rose 0.5% month-on-month (UTC+8), in line with general market expectations but higher than the previous forecast by Bank of America; the year-on-year increase reached 4.9%, the strongest performance in nearly eight months.

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5. [Nvidia's Market Cap Now Firmly Surpasses Germany's GDP] Nvidia’s stock continued to rise on Thursday, extending its seven-session winning streak, with a cumulative increase of 20% during this period, highlighting investors’ ongoing interest in chip stocks benefiting from the massive capital expenditures in artificial intelligence. During Thursday’s trading, Nvidia’s stock price rose as much as 4.7% to $236.54 (UTC+8), ultimately closing up 4.39% at $235.74 (UTC+8). This round of increases added more than $900 billion to its market cap, pushing it close to the $6 trillion milestone—a valuation no company has ever reached before. Just the day prior, Nvidia’s intraday market cap surpassed $5.5 trillion, overtaking Germany's nominal GDP for 2025 (about $5.05 trillion).

Comment: Nvidia’s share price reached another all-time high today, largely due to an unverified “rumor” that Nvidia’s H200 has found a new buyer.