Tim Cook Took Apple to $5 Trillion. John Ternus Must Win on AI.
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What is the SEC investigating about pre‑IPO share promises?
The SEC probes whether firms promising pre-IPO shares in hot companies actually hold those positions. Plus, Tim Cook hands over the reins of Apple to John Turnus, and the Trump administration dials up its crackdown on immigrant truck drivers.
Companies, good companies who are hiring drivers who don't speak English or didn't go to a well-qualified school. Watch out. It's Tuesday,
September first. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal, and here is the AM edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today. The Securities and Exchange Commission is turning up the heat on investment firms promising access to highly sought-after private startups. We're exclusively reporting that money managers have been asked to prove that they actually hold shares in companies like SpaceX and Stripe. Journal Finance Editor Alex Frangos joins me now to break down this story. Alex, first off, we should give a shout out to our colleague Corey Drebusch for breaking this news. What exactly is What is the SEC examining here and why?
Yeah, they're looking at these things called SPVs or special purpose vehicles that these companies set up and say that they've gone and acquired shares of companies that haven't gone public yet. So SpaceX or some of the big AI companies. And then they go to investors and say, Hey, you want an early piece of this before the IPO happens, you can buy into our SPV. And then when it goes public, you'll get a lot more money back.
How do special purpose vehicles (SPVs) risk investor fraud?
There's been some big problems with with these, namely that some of them didn't have the underlying shares in there. They're basically promising to have them and not having them, or they sold them before the IPO happened. So this is like a classic case of alleged investor fraud where investors are being told they're buying one thing and it's not actually there.
And investors should be paying attention to this because notably we have this Anthropic IPO coming up and that company has been warning folks that it's not gonna honor just any old share that a company says it it has in anthropic, right?
Well, right. I mean, what they're concerned about is, you know, that shares are getting sold through these SPVs and that people might think they're buying shares in Anthropic, but in fact there's no underlying shares. And so they're warning people to be careful of this sort of thing. This is in a way a reflection of this moment of this hyper excitement over this new industry, this new possibility. Everyone has, you know, FOMO, fear of missing out, that they're not going to get a piece of AI. AI early and when investors are desperate and in a kind of mania, as some people think the market is now over AI, then though you know people take risks that they shouldn't take and people will exploit those risks by trying to sell them things that don't exist.
That was Journal Finance Editor Alex Frangos. Alex, as always, thanks for breaking this down for us. Thanks, Luke. It's the start of a new era at Apple. John Turnus is taking over as CEO today, closing out Tim Cook's reign, in which the company grew to nearly five trillion dollars in market cap and saw yearly iPhone sales more than triple.
Why is Apple’s new CEO John Ternus facing an AI challenge?
Tim Cook's biggest success over the years he was CEO is just the amount of value he created for Apple shareholders. That's general reporter Rolf Winkler. So increasing volumes like that, hitting these annual release dates like clockwork, minimizing risky capital investments, and at the same time, he returned more than a trillion dollars of capital to shareholders through dividends and buybacks, which is a truly amazing number when you think about it. And by the way, on Yeah. And Apple now sells more watches in Switzerland and also AirPods. It's something that people don't think about as a major product, but it's as big as Major League Baseball by revenue.
Rolf says that investors will want to see that John Turnus can leave his mark with equally innovative devices, and he'll face the added challenge of doing so when Apple is no longer the biggest company in town when it comes to sourcing components across highly competitive supply chains.
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Chapters
7 chapters
1
What is the SEC investigating about pre‑IPO share promises?
0:03–1:35
2
How do special purpose vehicles (SPVs) risk investor fraud?
1:35–3:10
3
Why is Apple’s new CEO John Ternus facing an AI challenge?
3:10–4:33
4
What supply‑chain pressures will Apple face from AI hyperscalers?
4:33–6:27
5
How will Apple’s next Siri and foldable iPhone impact its AI strategy?
6:27–8:03
6
What are the health‑care implications of patients using AI chatbots?
8:03–9:59
7
How is the Trump administration targeting immigrant truck drivers?
9:59–11:27
Speakers
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