CNBC Daily Open: Is cheap gas America’s Godot?

Hello, this is Anniek Bao writing to you from Singapore. Welcome to another edition of CNBC’s Daily Open.

In Samuel Beckett’s tragicomedy, two men wait beside a barren tree for someone called Godot who never arrives. With the midterms nearing, Americans are waiting for a sustained drop in fuel prices that remains out of sight.

U.S. President Donald Trump has promised not to attack Iran until voters have had their say. That’s supposed to ease energy prices, but speculators on prediction market platform Kalshi aren’t convinced, placing more than 80% odds that gas will remain above $4 per gallon on Election Day next month.

Worries also arose in the AI trade. OpenAI told investors it reached about $50 billion in annualized revenue, not the $68 billion widely reported last month — dragging other heavyweight tech stocks down with it.

Trump said Thursday the U.S. will not attack Iran before the Midterm Elections, adding that the two sides were having “productive discussions.”

The president, whose approval ratings have fallen to career-lows, has sought to calm the rising energy costs weighing on American households. But speculators on prediction market platform Kalshi are not buying it, pricing in an 87% chance that the average gas prices will stay above $4 per gallon heading into the elections in November.

A day before, reports said that the Pentagon had recently told U.S. Central Command to finish preparations to resume major combat operations against Iran.

Oil eased off its highs after the post, but it didn’t give up its gains. Brent crude futures, the international benchmark, gained 4% to top $104 a barrel. U.S. West Texas Intermediate futures advanced 3.6% to settle at $91.49 per barrel.

The U.S. Treasury Department, meanwhile, sanctioned more than a dozen vessels that it says are connected to Iran’s “shadow fleet” used to transport oil and gas out of the country, as Washington seeks to further squeeze Tehran’s economy to end the war that is now in its eighth month.

Stock futures were near flat after an underwhelming revenue report from OpenAI rattled the AI trade. S&P 500 futures were up 0.09%, while Nasdaq 100 futures added 0.05%. Dow Jones Industrial Average futures advanced 23 points, or 0.04%.

OpenAI told investors that it reached roughly $50 billion in annualized revenue at the end of September, well short of the $68 billion figure widely reported late last month. Shares of Nvidia, Oracle, CoreWeave and other artificial intelligence names sank.

Vice President JD Vance announced the suspension of Microsoft, Adobe and six IT services firms from a program that helps skilled foreign workers get green cards.

“You’re a great American company, but you’ve got to hire great American workers,” Vance said of Microsoft.

“So we’re going to continue to support Microsoft and have a great relationship with Microsoft, but we’re also going to deny them the ability to apply for these permanent residencies until they show that they are going to get serious about putting American workers first,” Vance said.

SpaceX agreed to purchase a nationwide spectrum portfolio as it pushes its Starlink service deeper into the U.S. telecommunications market.

The deal involves the acquisition of a spectrum portfolio from Grain Management, which specializes in digital infrastructure, and is subject to approval by the Federal Communications Commission.

Elsewhere, Musk accused India’s “oligarchs” of blocking the launch of his company’s satellite internet service, Starlink, to protect their dominance in the market. The country’s telecom and internet service market is dominated by Reliance Chairman Mukesh Ambani’s Jio and Sunil Mittal’s Airtel, with both companies together holding over 80% market share.

“We are being blocked by certain oligarchs in order to maintain their monopolistic chokehold on the Indian people,” Musk said Wednesday stateside in a post on X, without naming his rivals. “You can guess who they are,” he said.

— Anniek Bao

The Indian billionaire investing in Trump’s refinery project is also buying more Venezuelan crude

Indian billionaire Mukesh Ambani’s Reliance Industries, which is investing in a historic U.S. oil refinery project proposed by President Donald Trump, has now emerged as the biggest buyer of Venezuelan crude outside the U.S.

Trump has been pushing India to buy more Venezuelan oil, but while state-owned oil companies are making opportunistic purchases, Reliance has been the primary buyer, according to Kpler data shared with CNBC. It shows that outside the U.S., India is the biggest destination for these supplies, with Reliance purchasing the bulk of that crude.

“Reliance’s Jamnagar complex has been the main destination for Venezuelan crude in India, and we expect it to remain the primary buyer,” Sumit Ritolia, lead research analyst at Kpler, told CNBC.

— Priyanka Salve