5 Things to Watch on
June 29, 2026

Stocks are up more than +0.8% in premarket trading after the U.S. and Iran agreed yesterday to pause hostilities and guarantee free passage through the Strait of Hormuz, easing fears over Middle East oil supplies. The deal followed a weekend of military exchanges after Washington accused Tehran of attacks along the strait. President Trump warned further action remains possible, leaving doubts about the agreement's durability.

Comcast (CMCSA) is up +26% in premarket trading after announcing a tax-free spin-off of NBCUniversal and Sky, creating two independent publicly traded companies. CMCSA shareholders will receive shares in both entities, with CMCSA retaining up to a 19.9% stake in NBCU for up to a year following the spin's completion. CEO Brian Roberts said the separation will "unlock a more entrepreneurial management approach" and open new strategic opportunities for each business. The transaction is expected to close in approximately one year, pending regulatory and board approvals.

Rocket Lab (RKLB) is up +5% in premarket trading after announcing an $8B cash-and-stock deal to acquire Iridium Communications (IRDM), which rose +1% on the news. IRDM shareholders will receive $27 in cash plus RKLB shares, implying $54 total per share. The deal creates a vertically integrated space company spanning launch services, satellite manufacturing, and communications, adding IRDM's $871.7M in 2025 revenue at a 57% OEBITDA margin. RKLB secured a $3.6B bridge loan from Deutsche Bank and Wells Fargo to fund the cash portion, with close expected in mid-2027.

xAI's Grok 4.5 has entered private beta testing at SpaceX and Tesla (TSLA), as Elon Musk's AI venture accelerates its push to compete with OpenAI, Anthropic, and Alphabet (GOOGL). Built on a 1.5 trillion-parameter V9 foundation and supplemented with data from AI coding platform Cursor, the model targets software development and coding use cases. Musk also said SpaceX plans to release entirely new, "completely trained from scratch" AI models every month for the remainder of 2026.

Palantir Technologies (PLTR) is up +2% in premarket trading after announcing a deal with Nvidia (NVDA) to deploy NVDA's Nemotron open AI models within PLTR's critical infrastructure platforms for U.S. government agencies and national security environments. The integration embeds NVDA's open models into PLTR's AIP, Foundry, and Apollo products, enabling secure, isolated deployments with full data auditability. NVDA CEO Jensen Huang called open-source AI "foundational to national security," while PLTR CEO Alex Karp said the deal allows the government to harness large language models without the security risks of closed systems.