📰On The Record – 28th July 2026

Nvidia was reportedly closing in on a deal to guarantee $250 billion in financing for OpenAI, helping fund what could become the world's largest data centre, planned for southern Ohio. The project alone could cost north of $500 billion once chips are included, and Nvidia is also weighing a separate $350 billion arrangement just to cover chip purchases. This matters because it shows Nvidia isn't just selling the shovels in the AI gold rush anymore — it's now bankrolling the miners too. That blurs a line investors have quietly worried about for a while: when your biggest customer's growth depends on your financing, whose balance sheet is really carrying the risk?

Porsche confirmed plans to eliminate roughly 9,000 jobs by 2035, about a fifth of its workforce, as collapsing sales in China, soft EV demand and U.S. tariffs squeeze one of the world's most profitable carmakers. Most exits will come through voluntary schemes rather than layoffs, and Porsche is simultaneously pledging €2.1 billion to its German plants through 2035. This matters because Porsche was supposed to be the brand immune to the industry's turmoil — proof that luxury margins could outrun any storm. If Porsche is trimming this hard, the message for the rest of the auto world is blunt: nobody gets to sit this transition out.

The trend of the moment: firms announcing painful layoffs and eye-watering investment commitments in the same breath, exactly as Porsche did yesterday.

The case for it — this is disciplined capital allocation, protecting the parts of the business that will matter in a decade while shedding the parts that won't, and it's likely to keep happening as companies race to fund AI and EV transitions simultaneously.

The case against it — announcing billions in fresh investment on the same day as mass job cuts reads as tone-deaf at best, and risks hollowing out morale exactly when execution matters most. What it reveals about business right now: capital and people are increasingly being treated as separate budgets, not one team.

Singapore's Keppel agreed to sell up to ten oil rigs for close to $2.9 billion as it exits non-core assets to focus on asset management, with Apollo Global Management putting $1.5 billion into a new fund that will own six of those rigs immediately and four more by 2028. This matters because it's a textbook example of private capital stepping in exactly where public companies want out — turning yesterday's heavy industrial assets into tomorrow's yield-generating fund products. The broader signal: even unglamorous, ageing infrastructure like oil rigs is finding eager buyers, as long as someone's willing to package the risk cleverly enough.

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Oil prices fell sharply as easing hostilities between the U.S. and Iran reduced fears of supply disruption through the Strait of Hormuz, offering relief to markets and consumers alike. Shipping through the region remains severely constrained despite the calmer mood, and analysts warned the drop could reverse fast if talks collapse. The takeaway: cheaper petrol and lower shipping costs are welcome right now, but this is fragile relief, not a resolved crisis.

Elon Musk's estimated net worth fell below $700 billion after SpaceX shares lost more than $20 billion in value in a single day, extending a rough stretch for both SpaceX and Tesla. Delayed Starship tests and disappointing Tesla earnings are feeding investor unease. Musk remains the world's richest person by a wide margin, but the swing is a reminder that fortunes built on high-growth bets can shrink just as fast as they grow.

LVMH chairman Bernard Arnault joined X for the first time to publicly reject reports of division within his family, after articles questioned succession plans at the luxury empire. Arnault insisted his five children, all senior LVMH executives, remain united. A rare public move from a notoriously private billionaire, it shows how much scrutiny is building around who eventually inherits the world's largest luxury group.

Tech stocks traded cautiously ahead of earnings from Microsoft, Apple, Amazon and Meta, alongside a fresh Federal Reserve rate decision. Investors want proof that Big Tech's enormous AI spending is actually paying off, especially after recent semiconductor wobbles. For anyone with a pension tied to these five companies, this week's results could set the tone for markets well into autumn.

NBCUniversal struck a deal to bundle Peacock Premium into YouTube Premium starting in early 2027, giving YouTube's 125 million-plus subscribers access to Peacock's shows, films and live sport. It's Peacock's biggest wholesale partnership yet, and another sign that streaming's next phase is less about standalone apps and more about bundles nobody has to think twice about paying for.

A daily score of business conditions (scored out of 100), with a breakdown of what’s driving it.

The Daily Business Index rose to 53.8 today, up 2.4 points, as oil prices tumbled after Iran signalled it would stop striking back so long as the US held its own pause — Brent crude fell more than 8% in a single session. That relief rippled through markets worldwide, though chipmakers on both sides of the Atlantic sold off on AI-spending worries and rising Chinese competition, and Germany's businesses quietly grew more confident despite the region's lingering tensions. A mixed but broadly encouraging day for global business.

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Around a year ago, on 28 July 2025, Union Pacific signed an agreement to acquire Norfolk Southern for $85 billion, creating what would become America's first transcontinental railroad and a combined enterprise worth over $250 billion. The deal, announced publicly the next day, promised 50,000 miles of connected track across 43 states and roughly $2.75 billion in annual savings once combined. It's still working its way through regulatory approval a year later, which is a useful reminder that yesterday's mega-deals — Nvidia's included — take years to actually prove themselves out, no matter how big the headline number looks on day one.

What it means: This is when a company helps finance its own customer's purchases from it — essentially lending someone the money to buy your product. Think of a car dealership offering you a loan to buy the car sitting on its own lot. It's exactly the dynamic raising eyebrows in the Nvidia-OpenAI talks: Nvidia potentially guaranteeing hundreds of billions so OpenAI can keep buying Nvidia's chips and infrastructure. Useful for growth, but it can flatter both companies' numbers in ways that are worth watching closely.

Here's an uncomfortable one: business loves nothing more than a good turnaround narrative — the scrappy comeback, the bold restructuring, the CEO who "made the tough calls." We write these stories as triumphs. But every turnaround has a denominator most headlines skip: the thousands of people whose jobs were the "tough call." It's not that restructuring is wrong. It's that we've built a media and investor culture that applauds decisiveness while treating the human cost as a footnote, then acts surprised when trust in big companies keeps eroding. You can't cheer the cut and wonder why nobody trusts the cutter.