What's up: Apple is asking the EU to repeal its Digital Markets Act; Intel leaves an Ohio town in limbo; Desk workers are facing a deluge of AI 'workslop.'

Good morning. Less than one week after President Trump announced an overhaul of the H-1B program, including a new $100,000 fee for companies sponsoring foreign tech workers, legislators are calling some of the visa program’s heaviest users to the carpet.

The WSJ reports that Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley (R., Iowa) and Ranking Member Dick Durbin (D., Ill.) sent letters to a range of companies—including Amazon, Apple and JPMorgan Chase—asking them to explain why they continue to hire thousands of H-1B visa holders while also cutting other jobs.

The letters cited reporting by the WSJ about the weak tech job market. The firms were asked to respond by Oct. 10.

The debate raises a fundamental question: To what extent are U.S. workers fully prepared to take on those jobs? “With all of the homegrown American talent relegated to the sidelines, we find it hard to believe that Amazon cannot find qualified American tech workers to fill these positions,” the senators wrote to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.

The question of U.S. worker preparedness is the key issue here. U.S. workers are in fact competitive, but there’s more work to be done making sure they are fully prepared for the complex and shifting opportunities in a tech and AI-driven economy. “Recent global standardized test scores show that students in the U.S. are, in fact, lagging behind their peers in other wealthy nations when it comes to math. But America’s students are doing better than average in science compared with pupils in these other countries,” the Pew Research Center said last year.

The U.S. has made it a national priority to rebuild its technology infrastructure, as it should. But it won’t reap the full benefits of those investments if education and worker training don’t keep pace.

To the extent that there are unfair incentives to bring foreign workers and students into the country, they need to be addressed. But the U.S. still needs to double down on preparing its workforce for a changing economy. As tech leaders said at the WSJ Leadership Institute‘s Tech Council Summit earlier this month, success in the tech-driven economy turns on the role that people play.

Apple is asking the EU to repeal its Digital Markets Act

The company believes the landmark law on digital competitiveness is making it harder to do business in the bloc. “The [commission’s] extreme interpretations of the law have created new vulnerabilities for our users and a degraded experience,” Apple said in remarks submitted to the European Commission.

Under the DMA, Apple is obliged to let rival app stores set up shop on iPhones and show users a choice screen that allows them to choose a different default browser in the European Union. The company said the law has led it to delay launches of new features in the EU, including a live translation tool.

Since the DMA went into effect, officials have fined Apple 500 million euros, or about $590.8 million, for failing to comply. 

Europe also eats its own.

EU officials said the German software company requires customers to seek maintenance and support services from SAP for their on-premises ERP software, potentially restricting competition from third-party providers.

Wall Street reconsiders AI’s hefty price tag

The AI spending boom has helped propel U.S. indexes to dozens of record highs this year. But some portfolio managers worry that AI’s hefty price tag could weigh on share prices. 

On Wednesday, those worries manifested into the second straight slide in tech stocks.

“Most technology, as it progresses, becomes more cost effective,” said Julie Biel, chief market strategist at Kayne Anderson Rudnick. “That’s not really happening with AI.”

The deals continue.

After joining forces with Nvidia and OpenAI in the Stargate U.K. AI data center initiative, Nscale Global Holdings said it raised $1.1 billion from Nvidia, Dell Technologies, Nokia and other investors. The U.K.-based AI infrastructure startup seeks to roll out data centers across Europe, North America and the Middle East.

Ticking down to a deal

NBC News reports that President Trump is expected to sign a TikTok deal today, delivering a new version of the popular short-form video app to a group of American investors.

Under the agreement, existing investors and a group of new U.S. backers that includes private-equity firm Silver Lake and Oracle would together own about 80% of TikTok's U.S. operations. A new version of TikTok’s content-recommendation algorithm would be retrained.

Intel leaves an Ohio town in limbo

In 2022, Intel pledged it would spend $20 billion, then $28 billion, to build two semiconductor factories in New Albany, Ohio. Intel promised a 2025 opening. The state meanwhile provided $2 billion in financial incentives for the project and built roads and 16 miles of storm pipes, among other infrastructure.

Three years later, work has slowed and the first factory won’t open until 2030, at the earliest.

Separately, Intel has been talking with Apple about having that company invest in its business, the New York Times reports. Conversations started before the U.S. government agreed to take a 10% stake in the troubled chip maker. 

Desk workers are facing a deluge of AI 'workslop'

The practice of running memos and emails through the company-approved AI chatbot has earned a new name: workslop. And like its first cousin, AI slop, the product is proving to be annoying, often useless and sometimes just plain weird. 

A Stanford University study published in Harvard Business Review found desk workers blaming workslop for literally slowing down their workday as they waded through content that often lacked substance. 

Asked how workslop made them feel, more than half of the surveyed 1,150 U.S. adults said they were annoyed. Some 38% were confused and 22% were offended.

Chinese self-driving company Pony AI said it plans to launch 1,000 robotaxis in the Middle East by 2008. Chinese robotaxi rival Baidu is also making moves into the region, announcing Wednesday that it received 50 testing licenses for robotaxis in Dubai. 

Self-driving truck company Kodiak AI is scheduled to begin trading Thursday following its merger with a special-purpose acquisition company in a deal that valued the startup at about $2.5 billion. 

Waymo is rolling out a new app that will let businesses connect their subsidized travel plans for employees to the robo-taxi company's services, Bloomberg reports.

As OpenAI cuts deals, long-time backer Microsoft is starting to play the field as well, incorporating AI models from OpenAI rival Anthropic into its Microsoft 365 Copilot assistant for businesses, CNBC reports.

Facing up-front costs in the wake of inking massive cloud and AI deals, Oracle on Wednesday sold $18 billion in U.S. investment-grade bonds, Bloomberg reports.

Chinese leader Xi Jinping took an indirect jab at President Trump and criticized countries that are turning away from the fight against global warming as he presented a new plan to cut greenhouse-gas emissions under the Paris accord. (WSJ)

Delta Air Lines is replacing power units on more than 300 of its Airbus  jets in an effort to stem cases in which toxic fumes have leaked into the air supply and led to health and safety risks for passengers and crew. (WSJ)

The White House’s budget office directed federal agencies to draw up plans to permanently reduce their workforces if there is a government shutdown next week, raising the specter of mass firings on top of the customary furloughs during a lapse in funding. (WSJ)

Nearly 6.3 million people tuned in to watch Jimmy Kimmel’s emotional return to the airwaves Tuesday night, nearly a week after his show was suspended over remarks he made about the killing of conservative activist Charlie Kirk. (WSJ)

The WSJ CIO Journal Team is Steven Rosenbush, Isabelle Bousquette and Belle Lin.

The editor, Tom Loftus, can be reached at thomas.loftus@wsj.com.