5 Things to Watch on
March 16, 2026

Markets are up more than +0.9% in premarket trading as Federal Reserve officials ready to convene for their two-day policy meeting against a backdrop of rising geopolitical tensions stemming from the U.S.-Israel-Iran conflict. The oil shock has complicated the Fed's outlook, deepening divisions within the central bank over the path forward on interest rates.

Meta (META) is up over +2% in premarket trading after reports it is planning to cut more than 20% of its workforce, potentially affecting over 15,000 of its ~79,000 employees, as it looks to offset surging AI infrastructure costs. The cuts would be META's largest since 2022 and come alongside plans to spend $115B-$135B on AI capex this year, part of a combined $700B in hyperscaler AI spending. Analysts framed the move as a broader signal that AI is increasingly driving productivity, with important implications for headcount and margin dynamics across the internet and software landscape.

Micron (MU) is up +4% premarket after the company announced plans to build a second chip manufacturing facility at its Tongluo site in Miaoli County, Taiwan, following the completion of its $1.8B acquisition from Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing in January. The existing site features roughly 300K square feet of 300mm cleanroom space, with the new facility adding ~270K square feet, set to begin construction by end of fiscal 2026. The expansion targets growing AI-driven demand for DRAM and HBM products, with shipments expected from the existing fab beginning in fiscal 2028.

Elon Musk's xAI is recruiting finance professionals to sharpen its Grok chatbot across private credit, portfolio management, equity, M&A, and quantitative analysis. The move mirrors efforts by Anthropic and OpenAI, which have each built tools targeting market analysis and investment workflows, reflecting a broader race among AI firms to monetize professional users.

Nebius (NBIS) is up over +13% in premarket trading after signing a long-term agreement for Meta (META) to spend up to $27B on its AI cloud infrastructure over five years, including $12B in dedicated capacity and up to $15B in additional compute purchases. The deal will feature one of the first large-scale deployments of Nvidia's (NVDA) Vera Rubin chips, and follows a $2B NVDA investment in NBIS last week and a $19.4B Microsoft (MSFT) compute deal signed in September.