5 issues to know earlier than the bell on Monday | USAEMALL.com

Good morning. It was anything but a quiet weekend for news, so I’ll cut to the chase.

S&P 500 futures are up slightly this morning. The market is coming off a losing week.

Here are five key things investors need to know to start the trading day:

President Donald Trump said early Saturday that the U.S. carried out a large-scale strike on Venezuela. Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro and his wife were captured and taken to New York to be indicted for narco-terrorism.

Here’s what to know:

• Many members of Maduro’s security team were killed, but his top allies still have control over the South American country. Trump said that Venezuelan leader Delcy Rodríguez could pay a “bigger” price than Maduro if she “doesn’t do what’s right.”
• Trump’s military operation is facing scrutiny from Democrats in Congress and from some world leaders. The drug trafficking charges have also reignited criticism over Trump’s pardon of former Honduran President Juan Orlando Hernandez, who was convicted of using his position to aid the flow of cocaine into the U.S.
• In an address from his Mar-a-Lago residence in Florida, Trump said the U.S. could “run” Venezuela until a political transition could be completed. Secretary of State Marco Rubio later explained that the U.S. would use leverage from its oil blockade and regional military presence to achieve policy goals.
• Venezuela is a crude-rich country that could see billions of dollars in investment from U.S. oil companies following Maduro’s ouster, Trump said. But Venezuela is also saddled with distressed debt, resulting in a yearslong financial crisis.
• Following the strike, regulators closed airspace in the Eastern Caribbean to U.S. airlines. After the restrictions expired, air carriers added flights for the tens of thousands of travelers stranded in the region.

As CNBC’s MacKenzie Sigalos reports, the buzzy artificial intelligence startup has been disciplined when it comes to spending. This strategy stands in stark contrast to other major AI players, who have raced to ink billion-dollar deals to bolster their leadership on the technology.

As Amodei puts it: “Anthropic has always had a fraction of what our competitors have had in terms of compute and capital, and yet, pretty consistently, we’ve had the most powerful, most performant models for the majority of the past several years.” Read and watch the full interview here.

Tesla lost its spot as the world’s largest electric vehicle maker for the first time last week.

The company reported 418,227 deliveries in the fourth quarter on Friday, missing Wall Street’s forecast and marking a 16% decline from a year ago. Tesla’s 2025 calendar year total of 1.64 million placed it behind China-based company BYD, which sold 2.26 million vehicles in the year.

Users also criticized Musk’s xAI company last week over recent Grok chatbot posts showing AI-generated, sexualized images of children shared on X. Meanwhile, Musk’s Starlink business said it would provide free broadband internet service to Venezuela users until early February following the U.S. strike.

Chick-fil-A is ringing in its 80th anniversary with its biggest marketing campaign ever.

As CNBC’s Amelia Lucas found, the fast-food chain is dishing out retro packaging, collectible cups, special merchandise and freebies to mark the occasion. The company said the theme at the heart of the campaign is “newstalgia” — a combination of the words new and nostalgia.

Chick-fil-A’s marketing blitz comes as the restaurant industry grapples with sliding traffic. The company’s franchise disclosure documents show system sales growth came in at 5.4% in 2024, which marked the first year in more than a decade with an increase in the single digits.

CNBC Pro subscribers can see a calendar and rundown for the week here.

CNBC’s Spencer Kimball, Victor Loh, Dan Mangan, Justin Papp, Hayley Cuccinello, Jessica Dickler, Leslie Josephs, MacKenzie Sigalos, Sam Meredith, Lora Kolodny, Samantha Subin, Amelia Lucas and Sarah Min contributed to this report. Melodie Warner edited this edition.