Welcome to Seeking Alpha's Wall Street Lunch, our afternoon update on today's market action, news, and analysis.

Good afternoon, today is Thursday, July 10th, and I'm your host, Kim Conn.

Our top story so far, meta-platforms has offered huge compensation packages to key hires for its new superintelligence division, including a deal

worth more than $200 million for Roaming Pang, a former engineer at Apple.

Bloomberg says Pang, who previously led Apple's AI models team, received a multi-year offer

for Meta worth hundreds of millions. Apple did not attempt to match Meta's bid, which

far exceeds typical compensation for its senior

leaders, aside from CEO Tim Cook. New details about Pong's deal surface as tensions intensify in Silicon

Valley's AI talent war. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently revealed on a podcast that Meadows offered

his employee's signing bonuses of up to $100 million, and even more in total

compensation, to entice them to jump ship. Despite the lucrative offers, Altman claimed that

many open AI employees remain drawn by the company's culture and reputation for innovation.

The superintelligence team now includes former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman, AI startup founder Daniel Gross, and Scale AI co-founder

Alexander Wang, who was named Meta's chief AI officer as part of a deal giving Meta a 49% stake

in scale, valued of $14.3 billion. Looking to the economy, weekly initial jobless claims declined by

5,000 to 227,000 versus the 236,000 consensus. Continuing claims for the

week rose to 1.965 million, the highest level since November 2021, from 1.95 million, but it was

lower than the 1.98 million consensus. Pantheon macro says the small drop was likely due to later

timing of auto manufacturer's summer shutdowns.

Looking ahead, we continue to expect the unemployment rate to rise more quickly in the second half of the year than the FOMC expects, they added.

Among active stocks, Delta Airlines is rallying after topping Q2 estimates and setting profit guidance ahead of expectations.

Looking ahead, Delta guided for Q3 EPS of 125 to 175, midpoint 150 versus 134 consensus.

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