TLDR

MARKET RECAP → The S&P 500 (VOO) traded flat on Wednesday as investors took a breather after a strong rally earlier in the week pushed the benchmark index back into positive territory for the year.

AI SAFETY TAKES A BACKSEAT →🚨 Silicon Valley's race to commercialize AI has pushed safety and research aside, with companies releasing powerful models faster — and sloppier — than ever, raising concerns that what’s profitable may also be risky.

DELI SCAM DUO SENTENCED → 🥪 A father-son team behind a $100 million fake deli scheme got prison time after duping investors and inflating shares of a sandwich shop with $36K in annual sales—reminding Wall Street that even pastrami can’t justify a nine-figure valuation.

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MARKETS

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TODAY’S TOP NEWS

AI Safety Takes A Backseat

🧠 Tech giants including Meta, Google, and OpenAI prioritized product launches over foundational AI research, leading to a shift away from safety checks and academic transparency as competition for consumer-ready tools accelerated.

⚠️ Experts warned that models are becoming more capable and more dangerous, as companies skip or shorten critical evaluations, increase speed-to-market, and minimize internal transparency—raising red flags for misuse and hallucination risks.

📉 Once-elite research labs like Meta’s FAIR were downsized or absorbed into product teams, while incidents at OpenAI and Google revealed flawed rollouts, untested final models, and growing tensions between commercialization and public safety.

TODAY’S TOP NEWS

Deli Scam Duo Sentenced

📉 $100 million deli scheme unraveled: Peter Coker Jr. was sentenced to 40 months in prison after inflating the stock value of a money-losing New Jersey deli and shell company E-Waste. His father, Coker Sr., got six months jail plus home confinement for his role in the fraud that duped even Duke and Vanderbilt investors.

👨‍👦 Family affair with lasting fallout: Coker Jr. renounced U.S. citizenship and will be deported after serving time, while Coker Sr. expressed deep regret as his wife and grandchildren looked on. A third co-conspirator, James Patten, awaits sentencing in June.

🥪 “The pastrami must be amazing.”: The scam gained attention after hedge fund manager David Einhorn mocked the deli’s $100 million valuation despite earning less than $36K annually. The fraud ran from 2014 to 2022, with stock prices for E-Waste surging nearly 20,000%.

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