Good morning, Brew Daily Show. I'm Neil Freiman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why the UAE is leaving OPEC. Then, is OpenAI doing okay? One report says no. It's Wednesday, April 29th. Let's ride. Good morning. If you're flying to Tokyo this summer and something happens to your luggage, you might be able to blame a robot. Japan Airlines is beginning a trial in May that'll introduce humanoid robot workers to the tarmac at Haneda Airport, handling luggage and cargo. The goal is to see whether these bots can alleviate some of the physically demanding work of human baggage handlers while plugging the gap on a widening labor shortage. Toby, this might be the biggest tech innovation at airports since moving walkways. Whatever Japanese airports decide to do, I'm on board with because Japan is home to Kansai International Airport, which hasn't lost a single piece of luggage since it opened back in 1994. I haven't gone one year without losing my wallet or keys, but Kansai is three decades in and they have a perfect record. Kansai even turns the handles of the suitcase on the conveyor belt in the baggage claim area so they are facing the passengers. I'd like to see a robot do that, Neil. Seriously, I would love to see a robot do that. That seems really helpful. But whatever you want to do over there in Japan when it comes to your airports, I trust you. And now a word from our sponsor, Windmill. Neil, how do you stay cool? Well, I've got these hip glasses. That's not the kind of cool I meant, although I can confirm you look great in those. The real answer is Windmill's window AC. Between its award-winning design, easy-to-install build, and smart controls, it's one of the coolest ways to stay cool this summer. And it runs as quiet as a dream. The coolest part is Windmill pre-assembles the install kit, so it's super fast to get set up, only takes a few minutes. Windmill is offering MBD listeners a special 10% discount on their first order at windmillair.com slash mbd. That's windmillair.com slash mbd for 10% off. The UAE is pulling a Harry Styles and leaving the band to go solo. Yesterday, the Emirates announced it was leaving OPEC on May 1st, dealing a major blow, perhaps a fatal one, to the group of large oil exporters. In a statement, the UAE said, During our time in the organization, we made significant contributions and even greater sacrifices for the benefit of all. However, the time has come to focus our efforts on what our national interest dictates. And increasingly, the UAE's national interest has come at odds with the aims of the wider OPEC membership led by Saudi Arabia. The UAE wants to pump more oil and invest more in oil infrastructure. OPEC, on the other hand, wants to keep a lid on oil production to boost prices. To use a sports metaphor, it's very rare for me, the UAE feels like it's a freewheeling, high-potential quarterback stuck in a conservative offensive coordinator scheme. For OPEC, this is really bad news, like existentially bad. For decades, the organization has wielded power and influence by orchestrating global oil flows and prices throughout the world, but the UAE was a key part of that. It is the third biggest oil producer in OPEC, accounting for about 12% of its overall supply. Toby, this wasn't a massive surprise. It was widely known that the UAE was disgruntled in OPEC, but you can't overlook the timing of this coming when the war in Iran has caused an unprecedented shock in energy supplies. I'm going to piggyback on your sports metaphor and say that the conservative offensive coordinator in this metaphor is Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have been beefing over the direction OPEC should go in for nearly a decade at this point. UAE and Saudi Arabia are two of the only countries that have spare production capacity that they can bring into the market that can affect global energy flows. The UAE's position is, hey, we have this extra production. We want to bring that onto the market. the Saudi position is that they want to keep oil prices right around $100 a barrel. They align more with Russia in this regard. So they don't want to bring that excess spare capacity online. And that has been, you know, simmering over time. It looks like under the cover of the Iranian war, now is the time that UAE is going forth and saying, we do want to spread our wings. We want to run that, you know, five out offense and start producing more oil. Right. So right now, OPEC quotas recently limited the UAE to 3.2 million barrels of production a day. Well, they have the capacity to produce closer to 5 million barrels a day. So they're part of this group project where they feel like where they're putting the team on their back and they're being constrained by the rest of the membership. But let's talk about OPEC's influence over time. It threw a lot of weight around in the 70s and 80s, back when the United States was maybe a more smaller producer in oil markets. But recently, because of the shale revolution, the United States has become a net oil exporter. It's now one of the largest oil producers and exporters in the world, which has diminished the power and influence of OPEC. So a bunch of countries have actually left OPEC in recent years. Angola quit. Ecuador quit. Qatar quit. But those are just very small minnows, very small players, compared to the UAE, 12 percent of overall supply, which is why a lot of energy experts have declared OPEC dead over the past few years. decades, but this could be a fatal blow just because of how much muscle the UAE has. Right. And a lot of people have been writing OPEC's obituary for many years now because there has been almost a continual exodus over time. But it looks like UAE, third biggest, could start another flow of countries leaving. Venezuela might be next in line, even though the current government under Delce Rodriguez says, hey, we're committed to the cartel. If the opposition government takes power. It looks like Venezuela would be hot on UAE's heels. Kazakhstan, too, already has a foot outside the door. So this could be the moment where OPEC does lose some of its sway because the U.S. has brought so much excess capacity online. And we won't even be talking about OPEC as a major player in a decade from now. And you can't help but talk about the timing, too. This is happening as the war in Iran has completely shaken up global energy markets. And it looks like the UAE decided now was the time to leave OPEC because it wouldn't shake up prices too much because, you know, there's a thing called the Strait of Hormuz that's closed. And that's the overriding factor in what oil prices are doing. So the UAE can kind of bow out at this point when everyone else is concerned with what's going on with the Strait of Hormuz. And just an update on that. I mean, there is no update. The Strait of Hormuz is still closed. Trump has vowed to continue the U.S. blockade. Meanwhile, oil prices are now continuing to rise up to a barrel and U gas prices are rising as well And they just hit their highest level in four years at a gallon Moving on it not often that a reporter can press publish on a story and know that it going to upend trillions of dollars in the global markets One of those moments happened yesterday when the Wall Street Journal's Berbergen hit send on his report about OpenAI missing key revenue in user targets. Stocks were deeply red yesterday as fear spread that the company at the center of the AI infrastructure build-out could be doing worse than people thought. Oracle, which has committed $300 billion to help fund OpenAI's data center ambitions dropped more than 4%. Chip makers like NVIDIA, Broadcom, and AMD fell a similar amount before pairing some losses. The report from the Wall Street Journal revealed that OpenAI missed an internal goal of reaching 1 billion weekly active users for ChatGPT by the end of last year. It also apparently missed its yearly revenue target after Google's Gemini rose in popularity, a trend that's only continued into this year with Anthropik emerging as the main challenger, taking bites out of OpenAI's coding and enterprise business. Again, all of these are internal figures and OpenAI never officially announced them. And the company has pushed back on any rumored shortcomings saying in a statement that the report is prime clickbait and the company is firing on all cylinders, but storm clouds are gathering. Neil, this is where the tangled web of circular deals and computing contracts that make up the AI industry really reveal itself. I love this quote from CoreWeave. So CoreWeave is a company for whom OpenAI is a major customer. It's just one of those in the constellation of circular deals that's going on. So CoreWeave did not exactly support OpenAI. They said OpenAI is a terrific partner, but not our only one. Our business is supported by a diverse and expanding set of customers like MetaAnthropic, Microsoft, Google, IPM, Perplexity, Jane Street, and many others. So if they were looking for support from some of these customers, they did not find it in Corby, which looks like it's hedging its bets. But you can't say that about other companies like Oracle, which is why you saw Oracle stock decline more so than the others. I mean, OpenAI strategy has been we are going to buy all the compute possible. We think that compute is the main constraint of the AI revolution. This is the path that we're going down. So they have committed roughly $600 billion going forward. And people were happy to, you know, fund the company. They were happy to give them debt because Chachapiti seemed like this invincible success. It was this unstoppable force that was going to be on its way to being the most used consumer product of all time. And yet, if that narrative is not true, if it is petering out, that growth is not coming down the pipeline, all of those promises, all that $600 billion in spend can't come to pass. So obviously it's bad news for OpenAI because they're not making as much money as expected. But it's really bad news for everyone else who is in line to fund those big AI buildouts. So that is why you saw one single report kind of ripple out into the global market. There are plenty of folks who came to OpenAI's defense and said this report was making a mountain out of a molehill and was backward looking to 2025. Because OpenAI has done a number of things early in 2026 to maybe supercharge growth. One of those is Codex, putting more investment into this Codex coding tool. We're seeing Anthropic make so much money from its coding tools. Well, OpenAI is investing a lot more into Codex, and it's gotten some pretty good results. And then recently, it launched GPT-5, which is a new model that has topped a number of industry benchmarks. At the same time, Anthropic, yes, it's been on a great run, but it's running into a compute crunch, the likes of which OpenAI probably wouldn't run into because it's spending so much money on it. So if you've been on Claude recently or some of Claude's various tools, then you probably noticed that there have been a couple outages because Anthropic is dealing with a supply shortage. So as much as this report was worrying about OpenAI, the same amount of defenders came to OpenAI's support and said, look, OpenAI is doing just fine. We're talking about 2025. Things are completely different in 2026. Moving on, Disney once again finds itself under legal assault by the Trump administration. Yesterday, FCC Chairman Brendan Carr took the extraordinary step of launching an early review of the company's broadcast TV licenses one day after President Trump called on Disney-owned ABC to fire late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. I say extraordinary because this sort of early review almost never happens, the last one coming decades ago against a tiny station. Carr said the action against Disney was an expansion of a probe begun last year into the company's DEI practices. Critics called BS, saying the review is clearly retaliation for what's going on with Jimmy Kimmel. And here's what's going on with Jimmy Kimmel. Last week, the comedy host held a mock White House Correspondents Dinner speech where he made this joke. Of course, our First Lady Melania is here. Look at Melania, so beautiful. Mrs. Trump, you have a glow like an expectant widow. At the real White House Correspondents Dinner several nights later, a gunman allegedly tried to assassinate Trump. That led to both the First Lady and the President on Monday calling on ABC to fire Kimmel, with Trump saying his comments went beyond the pale. Later that night on his show, Kimmel defended his joke. Obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they're together. It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he's almost 80 and she's younger than I am. It was not by any stretch of the definition a call to assassination. And they know that. I've been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular. The FCC is framing its review into Disney as coincidental timing with the Kimmel controversy. Skeptics call it a direct attack on the First Amendment. And new CEO Joss DiAmaro for Disney calls it a massive headache early on into his tenure. It's a big test of his leadership because there has been a previous dust up. What are you supposed to do when Disney also got into a spat with kind of the conservative over a joke that Jimmy Kimmel made about Charlie Kirk's killing? That actually put Kimmel on the bench for a little bit. Disney suspended him. Is Josh DiMaro going to do something similar this time around? So far, he's done not much of anything. No suspension, no public statement supporting Kimmel. So it's been very interesting how he's going to navigate this tenuous situation. One factor that is different this time around, even though the FCC is kind of wielding its power, the local broadcasters are much quieter this time around because in the previous test-up in September 2025, Nextstar and Sinclair, which are two TV station owners that carry a lot of ABC programming, were pressuring Disney into saying, hey, we're going to take you off the air if you do not retract your statement. That was because they were looking to get a merger across the finish line and they wanted to appear friendly to the FCC. This time around the merger is approved so they not exerting that pressure which could be one of the reasons why it not ratcheted up to quite the same level as September 2025 So what does this mean early review I was looking into it So you mentioned that a lot of broadcasters carry ABC programming like Sinclair, but ABC actually owns just a handful of stations itself. These owned and operated stations, there are eight of them in cities like New York and Chicago. And these networks like ABC need to apply for license renewals every eight years. For ABC station licenses, they come up for renewal in between 2028 and 2031. So the fact is that FCC is right now calling on ABC to apply for a new license in early fashion because it's not 2028 yet, which is something that is completely unprecedented. So the FCC says is basically what's going to happen is just a huge legal headache and a distraction for ABC. Critics say there's no way that FCC would go ahead and revoke these licenses because this would just cause a massive legal First Amendment dust up. But what it is meant to do is put a lot of pressure on Josh DeMauro, the new CEO, to see how he's going to respond. Yeah, Disney would most likely win a court battle, but it would find itself locked into a very long and expensive legal fight. And that's exactly what the federal government wants to threaten here. Even though Disney would win, it would just take a lot of time and money. Let's take a quick break and come back with a story about electric air taxis right after this. Neil, are you obsessed with helping people keep more of what they invest? No, but I'm really into sculptures made of little cheeses right now. Then you're not cut out to be a financial advisor because that's their job and Vanguard will help with that. Vanguard is slashing fees again, this time for more than 50 of its funds. Low fees give Vanguard's skilled bond managers more freedom to maneuver as they pursue outperformance. Go see the record for yourself at Vanguard.com slash impact. That's Vanguard.com slash impact. All investing is subject to risk. Vanguard Marketing Corporation Distributor. Neil, are you a Square? Well, people have called me once since I was a child, so... Well, now Squares are officially cool because Square is the easy way for business owners to take payments, book appointments, manage staff, and keep everything running in one place. Whether you're selling lattes or cutting hair, Square helps you run your business without running yourself into the ground. And right now, listeners can get up to $200 off Square hardware when you sign up at square.com slash go slash morningbrew. That's S-Q-U-A-R-E dot com slash go slash morningbrew. Toby, you're a founder. Who told? Lucky for you, Pulley can lighten the load of a founder and take the complexity and surprises out of equity management. Pulley's intuitive workflows, built-in compliance tools, and decision-ready reporting are designed to work for founders and finance leaders, not against them. Pulley helps you issue, track, and manage equities, stay compliant with up-to-date 409A valuations, complete stock-based compensation reporting, and more. All without the expensive legal fees or endless manual work that come with spreadsheets. Learn more and get started at poley.com slash brew. That's poley.com slash brew. Joby Aviation is almost ready to offer flights to get you to your flight on time. The Electric vertical takeoff and landing company aka e-VTOL completed its first demonstration flight in New York City this week as it looks to bring its unique take on urban air mobility to the masses. A Joby pilot flew between some midtown helipads in JFK airport which can take upwards of two hours in a car depending on traffic but took just 10 minutes in the skies. Now if you're thinking don't we already have vertical takeoff vehicles that can ferry you from point to point and the answer is Yes, helicopters do exist, but Joby's value prop is one. Their smaller rotors mean a ride is a lot quieter than the thwomp thwomp of a helicopter. Plus, it's electric, which means zero emissions. The New York flight was a key proof of concept moment for the company as it gears up to launch passenger flights in the second half of this year. Air taxi proponents are hoping that this will be a turning point for the industry, but there will be no traffic skipping rides that will help you make your flight just yet. Joby is still awaiting final FAA approval for commercial passenger service. Neil, eventually Joby wants to bring these flights to people for around the price of an Uber Black. Would you fly in one? Well, when I'm sitting in standstill traffic on the Van Wick, then yes, it'd probably be something I'd consider. Joby is bringing a very compelling pitch to New Yorkers in that it would make a lot of these helicopters go away or be a lot quieter. Noise complaints have absolutely surged in New York City in the past few years. There were just 3,300 noise complaint calls to 311 in 2019. That grew to 59,000 in 2023. And there are also a lot of safety concerns around helicopters. There's been a few fatal crashes over the past four to five years, including that Siemens executive last year. So I think a lot of New Yorkers perhaps aren't so satisfied with the status quo, whether it's ways to get to New York City or the two-hour Uber, $200 Uber it takes to get there, or all the noise from all the helicopters. So this is a very small pilot program, no pun intended, for Joby to see whether these electric air taxis can bring a safer, quieter option for people heading to JFK. And we cannot emphasize enough how much quieter a Joby air taxi is than a helicopter. The acoustic profile, according to a Joby company rep, is 100 times lower than a helicopter. While Joby's CEO was kind of debuting this new product to the New York City assembled reporters, a helicopter came and hovered over him while he was speaking. No one knew if it was on purpose or not, but obviously you couldn't hear anything he was saying. So it really just drove home the point that, hey, these air taxis are silent as a whisper when you compare it to these giant birds making a lot of noise. Yeah, except, I mean, Joby has a long way to go to bring this air taxi to the masses. It also wants to introduce service, not just in New York City, but in Florida and Texas later this year. First of all, these aircraft are small. They can fit four passengers plus a pilot. This is not going to revolutionize transportation compared to just making a new subway line or investing in more buses. This is going to be a bespoke service, probably for rich people, because who's going to pay for an Uber Black price level to get from Manhattan to JFK when you can just take the subway? I mean, by the way, that Uber Black price level is aspirational. It's not going to debut at that price. It's going to come in much higher than that. So $150 is their absolute value prop price point, not necessarily what it's going to cost right out of the gate. So yes it going to be costly It sounds great on the surface They also have some other ways to make money though They have tested these Joby Air taxis around military bases to get around airports itself So it's not only going to be a passenger faring service, but it was kind of interesting to see it just make its mark on a urban footprint. Although it only flew over water because, again, it doesn't have the FAA license as of now. but still kind of cool to see what could be the way that you get to the airport in the future going forward. All right, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. When you flip open your passport at Customs, you might be greeted by a familiar face, and it won't be Francis Scott Key. The State Department announced yesterday that a limited number of new U.S. passports will feature an image of President Trump on the inside front cover. The special edition is set to commemorate America 250 and will be available for anyone who applies for one at the Washington Passport Agency until supplies run out. There seems to be a theme here recently, Neil. Trump's face is also coming to the new America the Beautiful National Parks Pass. He'll appear on a commemorative 250th anniversary coin, and he's trying to bring his name to the Kennedy Center, though that's caught up in litigation for now. Trump appears to be literally appearing everywhere. Yeah, and I just want to emphasize, if you don't want Trump's face on your passport, All you have to do is just renew online or go to a passport, any passport agency outside of Washington, D.C. This is only going to be available, about 30,000 of them, at the Washington Passport Agency. Many people were quick to point out that there are almost no examples of pictures of sitting leaders appearing on passports, not even in North Korea. Kim Jong-un is not on the North Korean passport. There actually are some presidents featured on U.S. passports, and those are the four on Mount Rushmore, which is George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. I thought you had a trivia quiz me there for a second. Well, honestly, I was thinking about that. I was like, could I name the four presidents on Mount Rushmore? You probably could. Probably. And you just did. All right, moving on. The good vibes are back at Pike's Place. Starbucks showed its turnaround is picking up steam, reporting a more than expected 6.2% increase in same-store sales last quarter, the second straight gain after seven quarters of flat or declining sales. The stock popped nearly 6% after hours, adding to a 16% jump already this year. It's a stamp of approval for CEO Brian Nickel, the retail turnaround artist who came into the position in 2024 at a time when the coffee chain was flailing. Nickel implemented a back-to-Starbucks strategy that pushed for better, faster service, as well as more appealing store interiors where customers would want to hang out for a while. Toby, they don't call him the retail messy for nothing. And it looks like the retail Messi's biggest contribution was not necessarily the back to Starbucks program, but it was the fact that they just made a lot of great add-ons that people love putting on their coffee. Cold foam, like boba things. There's ube cold foam. There's more cold foams than I've ever could possibly want to try over my lifetime. But it does look like menu innovation has been the big through line here that has brought people back inside to Starbucks. And I can attest, I walk by a lot of Starbucks here in New York City, and they are advertising something different every single time I walk by. So it does look like the pace has picked up, and it's making young people want to stop by and try whatever, you know, that weird cold foam is staring back at the window promotion at them. And finally, we close out every Wednesday show with Suggestion Box, the segment where Toby and I share helpful life recommendations we found rewarding. Toby, what have you got in your Suggestion Box today? All right. My suggestion is to start writing a personal newsletter to your friends and family. So every month or every three months, send an email out to your relatives and friends where you detail career updates, personal updates, and just catch them up to speed on your life. You can also restrict it to just your local friends and family and include powerful invite links to hang out so you can make it an IRL thing as well. It kills so many birds with one stone, though, because it helps make you a better writer. You have this nice little peer into your life if you want to look back over what you did in the last year. And on the flip side, it helps everyone in your life feel closer to you as well. My friend actually did this. He moved to Tanzania a few years ago, and he started writing us. If newsletter sounds intimidating, you could just call it an email. Yeah, it is an email. It's basically just an email, and he kept us updated with all that was happening in his life, and I read every single word. It was amazing. It is nice because you fill your inbox, too, with your friends' newsletters coming in. you're like, of course you want to read about what they've been up to. And the idea too is you don't sugarcoat things. Like it's not just the highlights of your life. You can get into the low lights as well. It just makes everyone feel closer to you. It's a good idea. I haven't even actually done it myself. I've always wanted to. So that's why I'm putting it out on the air for everyone. What do you have for us? All right. My recs are some small lifestyle changes you can make to your daily routine to live a healthier life. Courtesy of New York Times readers who responded to a survey. One person who lives in New York City gets off one subway stop early from their commute home and walks the rest of the way. Really love that. Another said she's terrible at drinking enough water. So her hack is to fill a large Stanley bottle with a bunch of frozen strawberries, a few ice cubes, and water, then waits an hour until it mellows out into a delicious fruity concoction. And finally, for a bit of exercise in the kitchen, one person says every time they hit the 30-second button on their microwave, they stand on one foot and alternate throughout the day. Little stability work while your Trader Joe's frozen dinner heats up. Toby, any of these resonate? I do these and I didn't even know that this was a thing other people were doing. But every time I brush my teeth, I sit in kind of this lunge position on both my toes because I've always had Achilles and calf issues when I run. And so now I do stability work. Half of the time I do on my right leg, half I do on my left leg. It makes me brush my teeth for two minutes. And I have done it literally every single day since the new year. Now, it's almost Pavlovian. And as soon as I put toothpaste on my toothbrush, I just hit that lunge position. And it is great because you don't even think about it anymore. I definitely have gotten better at it. It used to be a struggle to last two minutes. Now it's no problem. So yes, I endorse this wholeheartedly. Find out whatever your weird thing that you do during whatever mundane parts of your life is. And it can lead to big gains over time. Okay, that is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Wednesday. If you'd like to reach us, send an email to morningbrewdaily at morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at mbdailyshow. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Liu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham. And our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Hair and makeup gets off the subway two stops early. Devin Emery is our president. And our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great. So did I, Neil? Let's run it back tomorrow. you
