Finance Brief: Trump Plans to Ease Red Diesel Limits; Cerebras Rebounds; SpaceX Surge Lifts Musk Back to Trillionaire Status

With U.S. diesel prices still elevated, the Trump administration is preparing to roll out new measures to bring them down. Bloomberg reported on Monday, October 5, Eastern Time, that the Trump administration plans to ease restrictions on the use of "red diesel," with an announcement expected as soon as Monday, allowing tax-exempt red diesel to be used more broadly, potentially including on highway vehicles. According to AAA data, as of last Sunday, the average U.S. retail diesel price was $6.32 a gallon, below last month's record high of $6.53, but still more than 60% above the $3.76 seen on February 28. ^[1]

The move is part of a recent series of measures by the Trump administration to push down diesel costs. Last Friday, the G7 and its partners announced the coordinated release of up to 100 million barrels of emergency oil and diesel reserves through the IEA, starting immediately, to be implemented over the next four months, with a large front-loaded release of diesel in the first 20 days. Trump said last Friday that the U.S. would no longer impose a diesel export ban. However, analysts warned that easing red diesel restrictions mainly reduces the tax burden and will not directly increase diesel supply in the market. ^[1]

AI chipmaker Cerebras rebounded from a bottom after a dismal week. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman posted on X on Friday, calling Cerebras a "close partner" of OpenAI, and saying the two "continue to work deeply at the frontier of speed." Boosted by that, Cerebras shares rose more than 10% at one point on Monday; the previous week, Cerebras shares had tumbled 20% cumulatively, hitting their lowest level since listing on Nasdaq. The trigger was OpenAI's choice of Nvidia GPUs, rather than Cerebras chips, for the "Ultrafast" mode of GPT-6.1 Sol. ^[2]

OpenAI also faces a new trademark lawsuit. An AI software company called TradeSun accuses OpenAI of using the "Astra" trademark without authorization in its latest large language model, and asks the court to order OpenAI to remove the related product name and disgorge profits. According to Bloomberg, TradeSun filed the lawsuit on Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California. An OpenAI spokesperson responded that the complaint is entirely without merit and that it will continue to focus on responsibly building technology that benefits everyone. The case is the latest trademark lawsuit OpenAI faces in the same court. ^[3]

Anthropic, meanwhile, faces pressure as core customers cut internal usage. On October 5, The Information reported that Meta and Microsoft are sharply reducing internal use of Anthropic's Claude AI and pushing employees to adopt their own in-house tools. Anthropic disclosed in a recent IPO prospectus that the two customers together contribute about 25% of revenue. Microsoft had previously expected internal annual spending on Claude of at least $1 billion, but that budget has been cut by more than a third; the number of Meta employees using Claude Code internally plunged to about 30,000 from about 60,000 earlier this year, a drop of nearly 50%. ^[4]

Wall Street AI hiring is shifting from "building models" to "deployment." On October 4, according to an analysis exclusively provided to CNBC by corporate recruiting data firm Draup, AI-related job postings at banks including JPMorgan Chase, Citigroup and Capital One surged 49% year over year this year to 139,819. Among them, postings for "agent orchestration engineer" roles skyrocketed 1,721% this year, making it one of the hottest jobs in finance right now. The median base salary for generative AI managers is about $190,000. ^[5]

In aerospace and AI business, SpaceX shares closed at $171.09 on Monday, a new high since mid-June, surging nearly 8% that day. According to the Forbes real-time billionaires list, Musk's net worth increased by about $30.6 billion that day, bringing his total wealth to about $1.03 trillion and placing him at the top of the list. Morgan Stanley analysts issued a bullish report the previous day, setting a $300 price target for SpaceX, implying about 75% upside from Monday's close, and advised investors to position ahead of the company's next Starship test flight and third-quarter earnings release. ^[6]