• In today’s CEO Daily: Diane Brady talks to CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator.
• The big story: Markets fall worldwide as tariff “Liberation Day” approaches.
• The markets: It’s grim out there.
• Analyst notes from UBS, Bank of America, EY, and Apollo on tariffs and the economy.
• Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.

Good morning. The performance of an IPO can reflect broad market sentiment or narrow investor enthusiasm for the company being listed—or a bit of both. There were a lot of eyes on CoreWeave’s Nasdaq debut on Friday, which closed flat at its scaled-back IPO price of $40 a share. Some saw the underwhelming performance of the Nvidia-backed AI cloud-computing provider as a bad sign for tech IPOs and AI, while others, including my colleague Jeremy Kahn, believe the reaction to CoreWeave reflects the challenges of being CoreWeave. 

Maybe it’s a bit of both. I spoke with CoreWeave CEO Michael Intrator on Friday about the New Jersey-based company’s much-scrutinized debut. He said they had scaled back the price and size of the stock offer because of “broader market headwinds,” describing the IPO as “a means to an end” for the company to grow.

“It puts us on the path towards what we need to accomplish as a business,” he said. “A little bigger, a little smaller, a little higher, a little lower. That’s not going to matter. What’s going to matter is: how do we execute on our business?”

That is a topic of much debate. Being a public company could drive down the cost of accessing debt markets, but CoreWeave’s capital-intensive model and existing debt burden unnerves some investors. The company has borrowed $8 billion to build out data centers that run graphics processing units (GPUs) provided by Nvidia. Servicing that debt is likely to cost at least $1 billion this year, which puts the $1.5 billion it raised through Friday’s IPO in perspective.

CoreWeave also relies heavily on one customer—Microsoft, which accounted for 62% of its revenue last year. Besides that, the company is betting heavily on a class of Nvidia chips that could be disrupted by newer models. And then there’s the question of whether we’re in a data center bubble, which Intrator dismisses.

“There’s a divergence between what the capital markets and what the media is thinking, and what I am feeling down in the trenches. What I am feeling is relentless demand,” he says. “I know what my clients want. I know the type of infrastructure they need. I know the type of scale that they’re requesting, and I build for them. Over time, I will be able to generate enormous value for my investors. I don’t really care where it is today or tomorrow or the day after.”

You can read my full interview with Intrator here. 

More news below.

Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

Primark chief executive Paul Marchant has resigned following a company investigation into his behaviour toward a woman “in a social environment”, the budget fashion chain’s owner Associated British Foods announced Monday.

His resignation, which takes immediate effect, comes after he spent 16 years as Primark’s CEO, overseeing its expansion in Europe and into the United States.

“Marchant cooperated with the investigation, acknowledged his error of judgement and accepts that his actions fell below the standards expected by ABF,” the company said in a statement.

“He has made an apology to the individual concerned,” the group added.

ABF said it continues to offer support to the person who brought his behaviour to its attention.

The group did not immediately provide further details when contacted by AFP.

“I am immensely disappointed,” George Weston, chief executive of ABF, said in the statement.

He added that “our culture has to be, and is, bigger than any one individual”.

Marchant will be replaced on an interim basis by Eoin Tonge, ABF’s chief financial officer.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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A French minister on Sunday accused U.S. diplomats of interfering in the operations of French companies by sending them a letter reportedly telling them that U.S. President Donald Trump’s rollback of diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives could also apply outside of the United States.

French media said that the letter received by major French companies was signed by an officer of the U.S. State Department who is on the staff at the U.S. Embassy in Paris. The embassy didn’t respond to questions this weekend from The Associated Press.

Le Figaro daily newspaper published what it said was a copy of the letter. The document said that an executive order that Trump signed in January terminating DEI programs within the federal government also “applies to all suppliers and service providers of the U.S. Government, regardless of their nationality and the country in which they operate.”

The document asked recipients to complete, sign and return within five days a separate certification form to demonstrate that they are in compliance.

That form, also published by Le Figaro, said: “All Department of State contractors must certify that they do not operate any programs promoting DEI that violate any applicable anti-discrimination laws.”

The form asked recipients to tick a box to confirm that they “do not operate any programs promoting Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion that violate any applicable Federal anti-discrimination laws.”

The letter added: “If you do not agree to sign this document, we would appreciate it if you could provide detailed reasons, which we will forward to our legal services.”

Aurore Bergé, France’s minister for equality between women and men and combating discrimination, said Sunday that the letter is “a form, obviously, of interference. That’s to say it’s an attempt to impose a diktat on our businesses.”

Speaking to broadcaster BFMTV, she said that France’s government is “following the situation very closely” and working to determine how many companies received the letter.

The minister said that “many” companies have told the government that they don’t plan to reply, “because they don’t have a respond, in fact, to a sort of ultimatum laid out by the U.S. Embassy in our country.”

“It’s out of the question that we’ll prevent our business from promoting social progress,” the minister said. “Thankfully, a lot of French companies don’t plan to change their rules.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

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