May 15 Member Morning Report: The largest U.S. stock IPO in 2026 doubles at opening; Nvidia's market value remains above Germany's GDP

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2. 【OpenAI Prepares to File Breach of Contract Lawsuit Against Apple】According to media reports on Thursday, the long-standing partnership between Apple and OpenAI has become strained over the past two years, as this AI company has failed to realize the expected benefits from the agreement and is preparing potential legal action—having hired external law firms, with plans possibly including sending a breach notice to Apple, but not necessarily filing a formal lawsuit at the outset. The company still hopes to resolve the issue outside of court. The conflict stems from a collaboration reached at the 2024 Apple Worldwide Developers Conference: embedding ChatGPT into voice assistant Siri, writing tools, and other scenarios, with no cash exchange; Apple takes a cut from ChatGPT subscriptions within the system. OpenAI originally aimed for a “Google Search in the browser” deal, expecting hundreds of millions of dollars in annual subscription revenue, but users must explicitly say “ChatGPT” in Siri for it to be invoked, and the response window is smaller than that of a standalone app. Internal data shows that Apple users overwhelmingly prefer opening the standalone ChatGPT app, with conversions far below expectations. An OpenAI executive complained to Bloomberg that Apple “did not even make a sincere effort,” recalling that when they signed the deal, Apple only told OpenAI to “take a gamble and trust us.” On the day the news broke, Apple’s stock price briefly fell 1.2% during trading.

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3. 【U.S. Retail Sales in April Hit Near Eight-Month High Year-over-Year】The U.S. Department of Commerce announced on Thursday that retail sales in April increased by 0.5% month-over-month, meeting market expectations but surpassing previous forecasts by U.S. banks; year-over-year growth reached 4.9%, the strongest performance in nearly eight months.

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5. 【Nvidia’s Market Cap Has Surpassed Germany’s GDP】Nvidia’s stock price continued to rise on Thursday, extending the gains of the past seven trading days, during which it increased by a total of 20%, highlighting ongoing investor inflows into chip stocks benefiting from massive AI-related capital expenditure. During Thursday’s trading, Nvidia’s stock price rose as much as 4.7% to $236.54, ultimately closing up 4.39% at $235.74. This round of gains added over $900 billion to its market value, approaching the $6 trillion mark—an unprecedented valuation level for any company. Just the day before, Nvidia’s market cap briefly exceeded $5.5 trillion during intraday trading, surpassing Germany’s nominal GDP for 2025 (approximately $5.05 trillion).

Commentary: Today, Nvidia’s stock hit a new all-time high, largely driven by an unconfirmed “rumor” that Nvidia’s H200 chip has found a new sales channel.