PayPal soared 14% in early trading Tuesday after announcing a partnership with OpenAI to integrate payments directly into ChatGPT, coinciding with strong third-quarter earnings and the introduction of its first-ever dividend. Meanwhile, Microsoft secured a 27% stake in OpenAI valued at $135 billion as the AI company completed its transformation into a public benefit corporation.
Microsoft and OpenAI completed a landmark restructuring agreement Tuesday that transforms the ChatGPT maker into a public benefit corporation while securing Microsoft's position as the AI startup's largest external investor with a 27% stake valued at $135 billion.
The deal, announced October 28, sent Microsoft shares surging 4% as investors welcomed the clarification of one of tech's most consequential partnerships. OpenAI's restructuring establishes a clear path toward a potential public offering for the company now valued at $500 billion based on recent secondary market transactions.
The U.S. carried out three new lethal strikes on four vessels allegedly operated by drug smugglers in the Eastern Pacific on Monday, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said.
In total, 14 alleged “narco-terrorists” were killed in the three strikes, which left one survivor, Hegseth wrote in a social-media post. U.S. Southern Command notified the Coast Guard to initiate search and rescue operations for the survivor, before relaying the information to a Mexican military aircraft operating in the area, according to a Pentagon official. Mexican authorities picked up the survivor, the official said.
Hegseth didn’t disclose the exact location of the strikes. The most recent attack on an alleged drug smuggling boat in the eastern Pacific, which occurred last Wednesday, took place off the coast of southern Mexico, the official said. Most of the strikes in the administration’s campaign against alleged narcotics traffickers have taken place in the Caribbean.
Monday’s strikes targeted members of a designated terrorist organization, Hegseth said. Since January, the Trump administration has designated more than a dozen Latin American drug gangs and criminal groups as foreign terrorists. Trump officials have compared the drug smugglers to members of al Qaeda and Islamic State who should be neutralized by force.
The strikes mark a further expansion of the Trump administration’s military action against alleged narco-terrorists into the Pacific, after beginning the attacks on boats coming from Venezuela in the Caribbean. Last week, Trump ordered an aircraft carrier strike group to the Caribbean, significantly increasing the firepower in a region that has already seen a large military buildup. The Pentagon has also ramped up bomber flights in the area as a show of force.
This is the third survivor of the recent U.S. strikes, after a Colombian and an Ecuadorean were rescued and repatriated to their homelands earlier this month. Colombia and Trinidad and Tobago say citizens of their countries have been killed in the strikes.
The involvement of Mexican authorities also widens the countries in the region that are being pulled into the Trump administration’s unprecedented lethal strikes against small vessels that U.S. officials say are carrying deadly drugs destined for the United States.
Mexican officials didn’t return a request for comment.
During his presidential campaign, Trump raised the threat of unilateral military action against drug cartels in Mexico if the country doesn’t do more to stem the flow of fentanyl, which is often manufactured at makeshift labs in the sierras of western Mexico. Last week, Trump threatened to expand military action into Colombia if the country’s president, Gustavo Petro, doesn’t “close these killing fields immediately.”
The Pacific became an important cocaine shipping corridor after pandemic-era border closures brought greater law enforcement scrutiny to U.S.-bound land trafficking routes through Latin America.
In recent months, the Jalisco Cartel—Mexico’s biggest transnational criminal organization—has ramped up what has been a longstanding revenue stream, shipping more cocaine than ever before through a vast fleet of speed boats and artisanal semisubmersibles out of Ecuador’s coast in grueling three-week voyages. The drugs are usually moved from the speedboats coming from the Galápagos Islands to other vessels such as fishing boats that take the narcotics to the shores of Mexico’s southern Pacific.
Mexico’s elite marine units have confiscated close to 50 metric tons of cocaine in the high seas off the Pacific coast so far this year, putting them on track to surpass the record 53 tons of cocaine seized in 2024.
United Parcel Service UPS 7.75% has cut 48,000 management and operations positions, the company disclosed Tuesday when it reported earnings.
Of those roles, 14,000 were management positions and 34,000 were jobs in operations. The reductions came through layoffs and buyouts, the company said.
The job cuts were greater than the shipper announced in April when it said it would cut about 20,000 operational jobs. In January 2024, UPS said it planned to cut about 12,000 management jobs.
“We keep finding opportunities for us to bring costs down,” Chief Executive Carol Tomé said. “We are positioned to run the most efficient peak in our history.”
Tomé has been under pressure to reverse a long slump in the company’s stock price. The pressure stems particularly from employees and retirees, who have an outsize say under the company’s unique shareholder structure, The Wall Street Journal previously reported.
Tomé is the first outsider to lead UPS. A longtime finance chief at Home Depot and a UPS board member, Tomé took the helm of UPS during the Covid-19 pandemic and revamped the business model to focus on shipping more-profitable packages rather than on volume gains.
UPS said that it is well-positioned to navigate the coming holiday shipping season, and that restructuring efforts have resulted in cost savings of about $2.2 billion so far this year.
The company has also benefited from greater automation and was hiring fewer seasonal workers for the fall and holiday stretch.
“You need less variable capacity, fewer leased aircraft, fewer rented vehicles, fewer seasonal workers. That allows you to run a much more efficient network,” said Brian Dykes, chief financial officer at UPS.
Though third-quarter profit and revenue fell, results were better than expected. Shares rallied almost 7% in afternoon trading Tuesday.
UPS said in April that it planned to cut about 20,000 jobs, citing the reconfiguration of its U.S. network. The company said then that it expected to generate $1 billion in savings from the revamp.
The staff revamp came after UPS said it was cutting volumes from Amazon.com, which at the time was its biggest customer. UPS added that it expects its average daily volume during the peak season to be lower this year due to its continued plan for lower volume from Amazon.
UPS has closed 93 buildings so far this year, and its Amazon volume was down 21.2% in the third quarter. Tomé added that UPS will continue to see a glide down in Amazon volume and that more buildings will be closed before the year’s end.