Top Stories — Friday, April 17, 2026
What is trending in the USA today? Here is Breaking News:
- Spain touts energy resilience to Iran war as Trump tensions cast shadow over trade — CNBC
- White House Shrugs Off Shaky Economy as War Exceeds Trump’s Timeline — nyt News
- Nvidia rival tells CNBC it's seeking at least $100 million in funding as European AI chip market booms — CNBC
Spain touts energy resilience to Iran war as Trump tensions cast shadow over trade
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/17/2026, 1:27:26 PM
Spanish Economy Minister Carlos Cuerpo lauded the country's energy resilience to the Iran war, saying a pivot to solar and wind power has shielded Madrid from the worst impacts of the resulting energy shock.
His comments come at a time when Spain's government has emerged as one of the European Union's leading critics of the U.S.-Israel war against Iran, with Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez having described the ongoing Middle East crisis as a "disaster."
U.S. President Donald Trump pledged to cut off trade with Madrid after Spain prevented two jointly operated bases in its territory from being used in strikes against Iran.
Speaking to CNBC's Karen Tso on Thursday, Cuerpo said that Spain had been better prepared for this crisis, pointing out that the country has been the fastest-growing advanced economy in Europe over the last couple of years.
Spain also created 40% of all new jobs in the euro zone last year, Cuerpo said, while noting that on budgetary terms, the country's debt has nearly returned to pre-Covid levels.
"In energy terms, we're also better prepared because we've pursued our agenda on renewables," Cuerpo said on the sidelines of the IMF and World Bank Group Spring Meetings in Washington this week.
Spain's reliance on gas for electricity prices has dropped to just 16% this year, Cuerpo said, down from 75% in 2019. "So, it kind of increases our energy sovereignty and reduces the exposure to the shock," he added.
Cuerpo acknowledged, however, that citizens and businesses were still suffering the consequences of the Iran war through higher fuel and fertilizer prices.
Analysts have pointed to Spain as a prime example of how countries have been able to limit their exposure to fossil fuel price volatility in recent weeks.
Spain, alongside Portugal and some Nordic countries, is among the countries to have registered the lowest gas prices across the 27-nation bloc since the Middle East conflict began.
Spain's renewables push has not been without its critics. Indeed, the country's government was sharply criticized last year following a catastrophic blackout. The outage, which some U.S. lawmakers blamed on Spain's green agenda, was one of Europe's worst in living memory.
Spain's government subsequently denied renewable energy was to blame for the blackout, and a report by Entso-e, which had been investigating the root cause of the April 2025 incident, later found that there was no single cause and instead said there was a combination of "many interacting factors" which led to the outage.
Speaking alongside German Chancellor Friedrich Merz last month, Trump pledged to sever trade ties with Spain, saying the White House did not want anything to do with the country.
The U.S. president has also repeatedly criticized Madrid for its refusal to meet the NATO defense spending target of 5% of gross domestic product.
Trump's threat to punish Spain on trade is said to be challenging, however, given that the 27 EU nations negotiate trade agreements collectively.
"Spain did not want to participate in this unilateral conflict that is outside of international law. And that's actually what we did," Cuerpo said when asked about Spain's anti-war position and Trump's trade threats.
"We're not alone in this position against the current situation and the participation in the war in Iran, many other European countries and partners have also expressed a very similar position," he continued.
"And when it comes to trade relations with the U.S., Spanish companies operate in the exact same environment as French, German or Italian ones, because we have a unique trade relation. I mean within the EU with respect to the U.S., and we're trying to go ahead with a deal that we signed last August, and that's actually where we should put all our efforts to be able to fulfil that deal and make good on it."
White House Shrugs Off Shaky Economy as War Exceeds Trump’s Timeline
Source: nyt News • Published: 4/17/2026, 1:24:05 PM
Roughly seven weeks into the war with Iran, investors have shrugged off the sky-high price of oil, sending the S&P 500 this week to a fresh record high.
That exuberance on Wall Street has offered a sharp contrast with the hardships facing many Americans, who are feeling the financial blowback of a conflict that President Trump once promised would be brief but seems to have no end in sight.
With high gas prices cutting deeply into many families’ budgets, the U.S. economy is under increasing strain, raising the odds that inflation will worsen, unemployment will rise and growth will slow this year.
Under Mr. Trump’s original timeline, America’s entanglement in the Middle East was supposed to have been completed by now, paving the way for a swift reduction in energy costs that have roiled consumers and businesses around the world.
Instead, Mr. Trump’s war remains at a standstill, governed by a fragile cease-fire between Washington and Tehran. Among economists, the persistent uncertainty means that it is no longer a question of if, but rather, how much the standoff will come to impede U.S. growth and worsen inflation.
For many families and businesses, some of the economic toll exacted by the war is already evident. The price of Brent crude, the world’s benchmark, once again hovered around $100 per barrel on Thursday, while gasoline reached an average of about $4.10 per gallon nationally, according to AAA. That is more than $1 per gallon higher than before the war began.
The energy surge has threatened to make airfares and groceries more expensive, while raising costs for farmers and making it more expensive for Americans to purchase a home. Yet Mr. Trump and his top advisers have continued to project confidence about the nation’s economic outlook, while brushing aside the early signs of damage.
“The stock market is good, the oil prices are coming down, and it’s looking very good that we’re going to make a deal with Iran,” the president told reporters on Thursday, before later adding that gas prices are actually “not very high.”
The comments marked a sharp turn from Mr. Trump’s own acknowledgment just days earlier that prices at the pump might not retreat in time for the midterm elections in November. At one point this week, the president also expressed surprise this week that the economy — and the stock market — had not suffered far greater setbacks “in the midst of everything” with the war.
“There is a hit,” the president said in an interview on Fox Business earlier, “because you know, we go through it for whatever it is, six weeks — there is going to be a hit, but it’s going to recover, I think, fully somehow.”
Economists have cautioned that it is difficult to measure the costs of an unpredictable war. But they agree that the U.S. economy is at a crossroads, and that its trajectory hinges on whether Washington and Tehran can reach a lasting peace.
By Thursday, officials in Pakistan sought to host a new round of talks between the two warring parties, but formal negotiations had not been announced. In a move that could help facilitate discussions between the United States in Iran, Israel and Lebanon agreed to a brief cease-fire. But the development came hours after Pete Hegseth, the defense secretary, renewed a threat to bomb civilian infrastructure in Iran if leaders there did not agree to a deal.
Offering its latest snapshot of the costs of the war, analysts at Goldman Sachs predicted on Sunday that the U.S. economy would grow more slowly, and prices would rise at a greater clip, than it projected before the conflict. They also predicted that the unemployment rate would reach 4.6 percent this year, up from 4.3 percent in the latest federal gauge.
David Kelly, the chief global strategist at JPMorgan Asset Management, said that the pressure could eventually ease — and oil prices could plunge — if the war is “settled this week with some sort of win-win solution.” He said that would entail the resumption of safe oil shipments, particularly in the Strait of Hormuz.
But, Mr. Kelly added, the economic shocks would be much greater if fighting between the United States and Iran were to restart, especially if a return to military operations affects energy infrastructure throughout the Middle East.
“Then, you’ve got a more serious problem,” he said.
The White House has declined to furnish detailed projections for the economy this year. But Pierre Yared, the acting chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, said in an interview this week that the United States had entered the war in a “very strong situation,” and was “well positioned to withstand” a spike in oil prices that he described as “temporary.”
“That increase in the price can generate inflation while the price is rising, and then once the conflict is over, you can have a reversal of that increase,” Mr. Yared said.
But the war has nonetheless created new political challenges for Mr. Trump, precisely when he had been trying to convince Americans that his policies have improved families’ finances. This week, the administration had planned to tout its signature new tax cuts in time for the April 15 tax filing deadline. Instead, the White House found itself on the defensive about the economic toll of the war.
Appearing at an event hosted by CNBC, Scott Bessent, the Treasury secretary, acknowledged on Wednesday that the spike in gas prices could cut into Americans’ tax refunds, which he described as more generous under Mr. Trump. Federal data suggest those refunds are not as large as the White House once predicted.
Still, Mr. Bessent stressed at a White House briefing that day that he believed gas prices could fall to around $3 per gallon by the summer, adding that the timetable for relief would hinge on the negotiations.
“I’m optimistic that sometime between June 20 and Sept. 20 that we can have $3 gas again,” he said.
The risk of a protracted war also seemed to create new challenges for the Federal Reserve, where policymakers appeared newly wary about future interest rate reductions now that fear of inflation has intensified.
Thomas I. Barkin, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond, acknowledged in an interview on Wednesday that the war in Iran had created tension between the Fed’s two goals of low, stable inflation and a healthy labor market. He warned that a prolonged period of higher gas prices risked “putting a squeeze on the consumer,” but he stressed that overall spending has held up well so far, even as Americans seek ways to defray higher costs.
“The oil price spike, like many supply shocks, is negative to both sides of our mandate,” Mr. Barkin said. “You can convince yourself to lean in one direction or lean in the other direction,” he said of the Fed’s interest rate decisions.
Despite that uncertainty, Mr. Trump renewed his call for swift and steep rate cuts on Thursday, as he and his aides dismissed the recent economic turbulence as a temporary setback.
At an event hosted by the news organization Semafor, Kevin Hassett, the director of the White House National Economic Council, insisted on Tuesday that the Trump administration had made an “enormous amount of progress” on affordability.
His comments came days after the government’s own inflation gauge showed a rise in prices, driven by rising gas costs. Yet Mr. Hassett said he still believed the economy would grow by about 4 to 5 percent this year, a faster clip than many of his peers have projected.
“Right now, I guess the question is, are we confident that the economy is going to be strong this year? And we really are, because we have so many positive effects we’re seeing in the data,” Mr. Hassett said.
Tony Romm is a reporter covering economic policy and the Trump administration for The Times, based in Washington.
Colby Smith covers the Federal Reserve and the U.S. economy for The Times.
Read the full story at nyt News.
Nvidia rival tells CNBC it's seeking at least $100 million in funding as European AI chip market booms
Source: CNBC • Published: 4/17/2026, 12:53:22 PM
European chip startups developing alternative technology to Nvidia's graphics processing units (GPUs) are eyeing big funding rounds as they look to scale amid the AI boom.
Dutch company Euclyd, backed by the former CEO of chipmaking equipment giant ASML, is currently in discussions with investors for a round of at least 100 million euros ($118 million), its founder Bernardo Kastrup, told CNBC in an exclusive interview.
Elsewhere, U.K. startup Optalysys is planning a $100 million plus fundraise later this year and British company Fractile and France's Arago are reportedly fundraising for nine-figure rounds. Fractile declined to comment and Arago did not respond to a request for comment. So far in 2026, investors have already funnelled more than $200 million into the Netherlands' Axelera and the U.K.'s Olix.
Nvidia has rapidly become the world's most valuable company as its GPUs, originally designed for gaming, have been repurposed for training AI models, but eyes are now turning to the most efficient ways to use those models, known as AI inference.
While the U.S. chip giant is developing semiconductor systems for that purpose too, a crop of new European startups are emerging that claim the tech they're building can do it more efficiently.
"Inference is dominant now, and the existing GPU architecture wasn't built for it in ways that matter most at scale," Patrick Schneider-Sikorsky, director at the Nato Innovation Fund (NIF), which has invested in Fractile, told CNBC.
"The geopolitical tailwinds are obvious with U.S. export controls, concentration risk around [chipmaker] TSMC and a genuine European sovereign compute imperative are all pushing capital toward homegrown silicon."
Euclyd is developing AI chips that operate in a system which it says can deliver 100x higher power efficiency for inference compared to Nvidia's latest generation Vera Rubin chips. Nvidia did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC.
The Dutch startup, founded in 2024 by former ASML director Kastrup and counting ex-ASML CEO Peter Wennink as advisor and investor, has already raised a seed round of under 10 million euros and is now looking for fresh funds to scale its tech and begin supplying its first customers.
Euclyd is building chip systems to replace GPUs, but with a different architecture, Kastrup said. While GPUs spend time and energy moving data through the memory stack, Euclyd's chips will process data in multiple places, which Kastrup says will increase efficiency for AI inference.
The company's silicon systems for foundational models will reduce the energy, cost and footprint of AI data center infrastructure, he added. But, unlike Nvidia's chips, Euclyd's systems have not yet been proven in deployment at scale with commercial partners.
Euclyd is working on that. It has already developed a chip for AI inference, and is currently developing a multi-chiplet system — which will process faster than the current iteration of its product — which it aims to produce by 2028. It is in negotiations with four potential customers, said Kastrup, two of which the company hopes to begin supplying next year and two the year after.
Olix, which is developing photonics-based processors for AI, is also targeting initial customers next year, though it is currently in a research and development phase, Taavet Hinrikus, partner at Plural, an investor in the company, told CNBC.
Photonic processors are chip systems that use light to move data and, in some cases, to perform computation.
The startup will target any customers in need of inference services, Hinrikus said, including hyperscalers and governments. Olix did not respond to a request for comment.
The electronic architecture of chips, which include GPUs, is really "hitting the limits" in terms of how small they can be made, said Hinrikus. Chipmakers are trying to make processors smaller so they can fit more components on wafers and improve the economics of running systems on them.
"The heat [current chips] generate is becoming a major issue. We strongly believe that the photonics platforms will be the next paradigm," he added.
Nvidia is also working hard to stay at the front of the pack. The chip giant spent more than $18 billion on research and development in its most recent full financial year, ending January 2026. In December, it acquired assets from AI inference startup Groq for $20 billion and announced in March it had invested $4 billion in two companies developing photonics technology.
European startups face hurdles.
"Chip development timescales are long, the distance from tape-out to volume deployment is tough, and Europe's foundry ecosystem still needs to mature," the NIF's Schneider-Sikorsky said.
Axelera CEO Fabrizio Del Maffeo told CNBC that governments in Europe are still "conservative" in investing in products from new companies and they don't have an equivalent of DARPA, a U.S. Department of Defense agency research organization that funds startups and other tech projects.
Europe also lacks mechanisms to encourage consumption of locally built products and fragmented labor laws across borders make it harder to recruit European talent, he added.
European AI chip startups are behind in funding, raising $800 million so far in 2026, compared with $4.7 billion for their U.S. counterparts, according to Dealroom.
In the U.S., Cerebras Systems picked up $1 billion in February, and there have been $500 million rounds for MatX, Ayar Labs and Etched this year.
Nonetheless, European startups developing chips for AI inference to rival Nvidia are increasingly garnering interest from investors.
"We're seeing it in deal flow and in the conversations we're having with founders in the space," Carlos Espinal, managing partner at Seedcamp, which backed chip startup Vaire Computing, told CNBC. "It's no longer a niche bet. It's becoming a core part of how people think about AI infrastructure."
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