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Good morning. Katy Perry bid farewell to American Idol after 7 seasons and right after changed her profile pictures on all her social media handles to a new KP logo and the world is quaking.

If this means a KP album is close - it’s time for some fireworks!

- Ruchrngd Sharma & Shatakshi Sharma  

📊 Markets

🇮🇳 India

• Equity indices ended positively on Wednesday. Large-cap and mid-cap stocks led the gains in broader indices. However, the Bank Nifty index fell 0.55% to 47,781.95. Realty and FMCG stocks outperformed, while Metal and Financial Services declined.

🌍️ International

• Wall Street fell due to Federal Reserve's minutes revealing concerns over long-term disinflation. Losses increased post-release. Oil prices dropped for a third session amid fears of demand impacts from Fed's extended restrictive policy. Nvidia's shares rose over 4% after-hours, predicting higher quarterly revenue, but some worried about AI-stock hype.

🏩 No take backsies

Oyo, the SoftBank-backed hospitality company, has withdrawn its draft IPO papers for the second time. The company is now in talks with investors for a new round of funding at a valuation as low as $2.B, down over 74% from its peak valuation of $9B achieved in funding from Microsoft in 2021.

So…why now, and what happened?

• The significant valuation cut comes as new-age firms like Ola Electric, FirstCry, and Swiggy have filed to go public later this year. 

• SoftBank, Oyo's largest investor, slashed the hospitality firm's valuation to $2.7B in 2022 from $3.4B earlier.

• The latest fundraising effort, expected to be around $70-80M, will be used to refinance some of the firm's debt obligations. 

• In February, Oyo had around $200-250M cash in the bank, having significantly reduced its operating burn.

Overall: Oyo's founder, Ritesh Agarwal, has personally participated in calls with a group of high-net-worth investors (HNIs) for this financing round. InCred Wealth, a wealth management firm, is working on building a consortium of investors for the fundraise.

The company's FY24 revenue is said to be around ₹5830 Cr. ($700M), and it expects to hit a net profit of ₹30 Cr. during the third quarter of FY24 after the second quarter saw it come into the black for the first time.

Read more: Economic Times

🤖 IBM says AI is the way

For a while, IBM has been emphasising the need for open-source AI models in India to ensure cultural and linguistic representation and maintain sovereign capabilities in the technology. 

They are all about the hype too: 

• The company has open-sourced its advanced language and code Granite large language models and, in collaboration with Red Hat, launched InstructLab, a model alignment technique to bring open-source community contributions directly into large language models.

• According to Dario Gill, director of IBM Research, open innovation enables a "community endeavour," which is crucial for addressing India's vast linguistic diversity as it seeks to leverage AI. 

• Rob Thomas, senior vice president of IBM Software, highlighted that an open-source focus aligns with the desire fv or sovereign capabilities among emerging markets like India, which want to leverage the best technology while maintaining control over their destiny.

Why now? 

• IBM is optimistic about the Indian market, citing its favourable demographic outlook and accelerating GDP growth. The market offers opportunities in areas such as data, automation, generative AI, cybersecurity, and sustainability. 

• The company believes that an open innovation strategy strongly resonates with the world as it provides economic dynamism and long-term independence in terms of technology strategies through AI.

• Plus, IBM introduced new AI-powered automation capabilities and previewed IBM Concert, a generative AI-powered tool to be launched in June. This tool will provide insights across clients' portfolios of applications to identify, predict, and fix problems.

Read more: Economic Times

🗞️ Bite-sized summaries

🤑 Microsoft to pay the penalty - The corporate affairs ministry has imposed penalties totaling ₹27.1 lakh on Microsoft-owned LinkedIn India, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky, and seven other individuals for violating significant beneficial owner norms under the Companies Act. The Registrar of Companies found that Nadella and Roslansky failed to report themselves as significant beneficial owners of LinkedIn India as required under Section 90 of the Act. LinkedIn India was fined ₹7 lakh, while Nadella, Roslansky and the other individuals each received ₹2 lakh penalties for the violations related to disclosing the company's ownership structure. The order mentioned LinkedIn's 2016 acquisition by Microsoft and Roslansky's appointment as LinkedIn CEO in 2020 reporting to Nadella.

💹 Nvidia continues to pop off - Nvidia reported better-than-expected first quarter earnings with adjusted EPS of $6.12 on revenue of $26 billion, driven by soaring data center demand for AI chips. The company announced a 10-for-1 stock split effective June 7 and a higher dividend payout, following moves by other tech giants. While data center revenue from cloud providers was strong at 45% of the total, Nvidia faced headwinds in China due to export restrictions. The gaming segment brought in $2.6 billion in revenue. For the current quarter, Nvidia forecasts $28 billion in revenue, above analyst estimates. The stock split could fuel speculation about Nvidia's potential addition to the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

🎟️ Sunak calls for an election on June 4th - Rishi Sunak called a surprise UK general election for July 4th, much earlier than expected, as he seeks to win a fifth straight term for the Conservatives. The Prime Minister made the announcement in a rain-soaked speech outside 10 Downing Street, framing it as a chance to secure economic recovery after a period of high inflation and recession. However, Labour has been posting large leads in opinion polls, with leader Keir Starmer saying it's "time for change" away from "Tory chaos." The early election overrules expectations of an autumn poll and means Parliament must rush remaining legislation through in just two days before being suspended.

🧑‍🍳 What else is cookin’?

What’s happening in India (and around the world 🌍️)

• Harvard selects AI entrepreneur Manish Maheshwari for Mason Fellowship

• Flipkart ropes in former Swiggy executive Anuj Rathi as Cleartrip CEO.

• Paytm Q4 Results: Loss widens to Rs 550 crore; revenue drops 3% YoY.

• Nykaa Q4 Results: Profit zooms 187% YoY to Rs 6.9 crore; revenue rises 28%.

• TCS signs deal with Kuwait’s Burgan Bank.

• New evidence bolsters allegations Adani Group overcharged for coal.

🍿 Entertainment, Entertainment, Entertainment

• RR beat RCB by 4 wickets. KKR beat SRH by 8 wickets. Top 4 in order are KKR, SRH, RR and RCB - IPL leaderboard here.

• Dominic Thiem, a two-time finalist at Roland Garros, out of French Open qualifiers.

• PV Sindhu progresses to Malaysia Masters sec

• Aditi Rao Hydari, basking on the recent praise of Heeramandi, makes her way to Cannes. An overview of the Cannes so far here.

• Santosh, British-Indian director Sandhya Suri's first fiction feature, premiers at the Cannes Film Festival and gets positive reviews.

• ‘Deadpool & Wolverine’ First-Day Ticket Sales Set R-Rated Record, Climb to $8M-$9M.