3 Things: Tariffs, OpenAI revenue, EA & dealmaking

Last night President Trump announced tariffs of 10% on softwood timber and lumber alongside a 25% tariff on "certain upholstered wooden products" due to take effect on October 14. The Information reported that OpenAI's revenue over the first half of 2025 hit $4.3 billion. Just last week the ChatGPT owner received a $100 billion investment from Nvidia (NVDA). Also, M&A deals hit $1 trillion in the third quarter thanks to deals like Electronic Arts' (EA) $55 billion leverage buyout. For more live coverage of markets watch the full episode of Market Sunrise and head to Yahoo Finance.

Video Transcript

00:10 Speaker A

Well, the first thing you need to know is that last night President Trump announced tariffs of 10% on softwood timber and lumber alongside a 25% tariff on certain upholstered wooden products, due to take effect on October 14th.

00:27 Speaker A

Canada is set to be hit hard by the order, as it's the US's largest wood supplier and already subject to duties of 35.2%.

00:37 Speaker A

But countries that have already carved out deals with the US have lower rates. For example, tariffs on wood products from the UK won't exceed 10%.

00:46 Speaker A

Okay, the next thing you need to know about is the rising revenues at OpenAI. According to the information, OpenAI generated $4.3 billion in revenue in the first half of 2025.

00:58 Speaker A

That's at that's actually 16% higher than it generated in the whole of 2024. However, it did burn through cash, two and a half billion dollars, mainly because of R&D costs for developing AI and for running ChatGPT.

01:10 Speaker A

Now remember that Nvidia last week said it will invest up to $100 billion in OpenAI and supply data center chips.

01:19 Speaker A

The last thing you need to know about is that we have we have seen a record number of mega deals in the third quarter. In fact, yesterday's $55 billion leverage buyout of Electronic Arts helped take M&A activity past $1 trillion in Q3.

01:31 Speaker A

Over the last three months, there were 47 deals that were made that valued more than $10 billion.

01:38 Speaker A

Also after last night's closing bell, investment bankers advising clients at Jeffries reported their best quarter on record. A performance that's that's reflected higher values on M&A deals and helped lift firmwide profits by 34%.