Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and the broader business landscape.
Baker Hughes locked in two contract extensions with Equinor, covering integrated drilling and well services alongside wireline intervention. It's a quiet but meaningful win for the oilfield services giant, reinforcing its upstream relationship with one of Europe's largest energy operators at a time when drilling activity remains a closely watched indicator.
Shifting to the technology sector, the conversation around Big Tech's artificial intelligence buildout is increasingly centered on the finance chiefs making those capital allocation calls. At five of the major hyperscalers plus Nvidia, those CFOs are women — Meta's Susan Li, Microsoft's Amy Hood, Alphabet's Anat Ashkenazi, Oracle's Hilary Maxson, and OpenAI's Sarah Friar among them. The spending commitments they're stewarding are reshaping infrastructure investment across the entire sector.
On the health policy front, the CDC reports roughly eight percent of Americans lacked health insurance in two thousand twenty five, a rate that has held relatively stable compared to prior years. But analysts and advocates are flagging downside risk ahead, as potential federal Medicaid changes under the current administration could push that number meaningfully higher in the year ahead.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
