Five Figures from a Busy Wednesday — May 13, 2026
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Wholesale inflation broke higher this morning, Cerebras prices the biggest IPO of the year tonight, and the president landed in Beijing in between.
May 13, 2026
Air Force One Landed in Beijing This Morning Carrying 17 of America's Most Powerful CEOs — the First Sitting U.S. President to Visit China in Nearly a Decade
Trump's two-day state visit opened with a delegation that included Apple's Tim Cook, Tesla's Elon Musk, Boeing's Kelly Ortberg, and Nvidia's Jensen Huang — who reportedly boarded Air Force One when it refueled in Alaska after initially declining the trip. The full roster also features the chief executives of BlackRock, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Micron, Qualcomm, Mastercard, Meta, and Visa, a coalition representing roughly 40% of global GDP between the two countries. No major trade breakthrough is expected; the agenda centers on a proposed U.S.-China "board of trade" and on persuading Xi to lean on Iran to reopen the Strait of Hormuz. The chip stocks that got hammered yesterday opened green this morning anyway.
Source: CNN / Fortune / Euronews
Wholesale Prices Jumped 1.4% in April — Nearly Triple the 0.5% Consensus and the Largest Monthly PPI Gain Since March 2022
This morning's Producer Price Index dropped at 8:30 a.m. and ran even hotter than yesterday's CPI: final demand prices climbed 1.4% month-over-month and 6.0% over the past year, the biggest annual increase since December 2022. Core PPI surprised by even more — up 1.0% against the 0.4% estimate — and the services index rose 1.2%, its sharpest monthly gain in over four years. Two-thirds of that services move came from a 2.7% jump in trade services, a sign that the tariff costs introduced over the past year are finally working their way through the supply chain. Futures markets now put the odds of a 2026 rate hike at 39%, up from 30% on Monday.
Source: U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics — Producer Price Index, April 2026 / CNBC
Cerebras Systems Prices Its IPO Tonight After the Order Book Closed More Than 20 Times Oversubscribed — and the Implied Valuation Has More Than Doubled in 90 Days
The AI-chip company filed its original S-1 on May 4 at $115–$125 per share, raised the range to $125–$135 four days later, and as of Monday is pricing at $150–$160 — putting the implied market value near $48.8 billion, up from a $23 billion private round in February. Orders reportedly topped $10 billion against a $4.8 billion deal, making CBRS the largest IPO globally in 2026 to date. The bull case rests on a 750-megawatt contract with OpenAI and a chip purpose-built for AI inference rather than training. The bear case is that at the top of the range, the deal would price at roughly 95 times trailing sales, a multiple last sustained at scale during the 2021 cycle.
Source: Reuters / Investing.com / TradingKey
Microsoft, Alphabet, Meta, and Amazon Raised Their Combined 2026 Capex Guidance to $725 Billion — Up 77% From Last Year and Larger Than the GDP of Switzerland
The four hyperscalers' updated post-Q1 guidance now totals roughly $725 billion in capital expenditure for 2026, up from $410 billion last year and nearly triple what they spent in 2024. Microsoft alone is at $190 billion, with CFO Amy Hood attributing $25 billion of that to memory chip inflation — the same dynamic that has Micron stock up more than 50% in the past month. Meta's capex is heading toward 54% of revenue this year, a level no megacap has sustained outside of a recession. The bet is that AI demand stays durable enough to justify those numbers. The cost of being wrong is harder to compute.
Source: Tom's Hardware / Fortune / Statista
U.S. Credit Card Balances Hit $1.33 Trillion in May — a Fresh All-Time High Reached as Average APRs Sit Above 21% and the Personal Savings Rate Has Slipped to Its Lowest Since 2022
New York Fed data show total credit card debt climbing to a record $1.33 trillion this month, with the average household carrying roughly $11,000 in balances and APRs on revolving credit pinned above 21% — the highest reading the Fed has on record. The personal savings rate, meanwhile, fell to 3.6% in March, its lowest level since the end of 2022. A WalletHub survey released this week found that 42% of Americans now expect to be in credit card debt until they die. While the hyperscalers above commit $725 billion to AI infrastructure, a growing share of the consumer running the economy beneath them is using plastic to cover groceries. Both stories are real.
Source: Federal Reserve Bank of New York / Bureau of Economic Analysis / WalletHub