Daniel Bach

Typically, companies have to wait several months to a year after going public to prove their stability and liquidity to enter those indexes.

This week, the Nasdaq shared proposals to update how it lets companies into the Nasdaq 100, including one that would allow especially large companies to join within just 15 trading days.

At their current valuation, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic would all qualify.

Elon Musk's rocket and satellite business will make its stock market debut later this year.

In other market news, Danish shipping giant Maersk is cutting 1,000 jobs to slash costs as it forecasts a sharp drop in earnings.

Chinese search engine Baidu is getting into the buyback game for the first time to the tune of $5 billion.

And Europe's largest steelmaker ArcelorMittal says EU efforts to protect the industry from Chinese competition should help it capture market share in the coming years.

The reclassification will make it easier to fire career officials in senior positions, with the Office of Personnel Management saying it aims to prevent officials from, quote, sabotage or trying to find ways to thwart the objectives of the administration.

And we have a lot more coverage of the day's news on the WSJ's What's News podcast.

You can add it to your playlist on your smart speaker or listen and subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.

Here's your morning brief for Tuesday, February 3rd.

I'm Daniel Bach for The Wall Street Journal.

Elon Musk is merging SpaceX and XAI, forming a $1.25 trillion company.

The merger was confirmed in a memo by Musk posted by SpaceX, which brings together the mature rocket and satellite business with his AI startup that is facing steep competition.

Shares in Palantir Technologies surged overnight on the back of record fourth-quarter revenue.

The 70% jump in earnings was fueled by an increase in U.S.

government demand for its AI tools.

While that government connection is the company's primary growth engine, it's also a double-edged sword, as contracts with ICE draw criticism from lawmakers.

And on Capitol Hill, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson says that he has the votes to end a partial government shutdown as soon as today, passing a bill that would fund the government for the rest of the fiscal year, but the Department of Homeland Security for just two weeks.

That short-term extension is designed to provide time for a bipartisan deal to be reached on stricter policies for immigration enforcement agents.