5 things to know before the stock market opens Wednesday

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Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

Nvidia took center stage yesterday — literally and figuratively. In addition to inking deals with multiple well-known companies, CEO Jensen Huang made a major domestic production announcement during the chip titan’s technology conference.

Here’s the full rundown:

• Nokia said Nvidia is taking a $1 billion stake in the company. U.S.-listed shares of the Finnish networking firm surged more than 22%, their best day since 2021, following the announcement.
• Eli Lilly and Nvidia announced a partnership to build a supercomputer and artificial intelligence factory for the pharmaceutical industry aimed at speeding up drug discovery and development.
• EV maker Lucid said it’s using Nvidia’s technology in its push to become the first automaker to provide highly advanced self-driving capabilities — what it calls “mind-off” driving — within the next couple of years.
• Speaking at the company’s GTC conference in Washington, D.C., Huang said Nvidia’s fastest AI chips are now being manufactured in Arizona. The Blackwell GPUs were previously being made in Taiwan.
• Shares of Nvidia jumped 5% yesterday, helping drive U.S. stocks to another day of all-time highs. The gains put the chipmaker — the largest company in the world by market cap — on course to become the first company to hit the $5 trillion valuation mark.
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The Federal Reserve will announce its penultimate interest rate decision for 2025 at 2 p.m. ET today, and traders see a cut as a foregone conclusion: Fed funds futures are pricing in a 99.9% chance of a 25 basis point cut, according to the CME’s FedWatch tool.

Still, investors will keep an eye on whether any Fed officials break with the majority, and whether Fed chair Jerome Powell’s post-announcement press conference provides any clues into the future path on monetary policy. Respondents to CNBC’s October Fed Survey also expressed concern about how the central bank is analyzing the economy with some data on hold thanks to the government shutdown.

OpenAI officially wrapped up its restructuring into a nonprofit yesterday. The startup’s nonprofit, now named the OpenAI Foundation, has a controlling stake worth around $130 billion in OpenAI’s for-profit business, which is called OpenAI Group PBC. (PBC stands for public benefit corporation.)

The buzzy AI startup also confirmed that longtime backer Microsoft holds an investment in the for-profit arm that amounts to $135 billion. As CNBC’s Ashley Capoot notes, that’s equivalent to about 27% of the company on an as-converted diluted basis.

Microsoft is set to report earnings after the bell today, along with Big Tech peers Alphabet and Meta.

The federal government shutdown is officially one month old — and Washington is feeling the heat.

A group of more than two dozen states sued President Donald Trump’s administration yesterday to maintain benefits tied to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, also known as SNAP, which provides food stamps. The Agriculture Department, which oversees SNAP, has said the benefits will end this weekend.

A federal judge yesterday also extended a temporary ban on firing federal workers during the shutdown. Air traffic controller union officials meanwhile said some of their members have picked up second jobs to bring in money while they work without pay.

Shares of Boeing are slightly down in premarket trading this morning after the planemaker reported earnings for its third quarter. The company returned to cash-positive territory for the first time since 2023 but logged a $4.9 billion charge tied to delays of its 777X plane.

Boeing — which has been plagued by manufacturing and supply chain issues, as well as the fallout of two crashes — is on track for its most deliveries since 2018. CEO Kelly Ortberg, who took Boeing’s helm in 2024, said in a staff note that “there’s still more work to do to advance our development programs” but “we’re seeing positive signs across our business.”

— CNBC’s Kif Leswing, Annika Kim Constantino, Mike Wayland, Sean Conlon, Ashley Capoot, Jeff Cox, Kevin Breuninger, Dan Mangan and Leslie Josephs contributed to this report. Josephine Rozzelle edited this edition.