June 13, 2026: Flat Is Good

Last week Dow Jones gained 0.7%, S&P 500 rose 0.65%, Nasdaq composite was up 0.7%. After witnessing some significant weakness mid-week, stocks closed the week flattish, which is encouraging, especially after the previous week’s close. SpaceX went public, raising US$75 billion and rising ~20% to a US$2.1 trillion market cap, making Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire. OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO. The company is contemplating a ChatGPT “superapp” agent overhaul. OpenAI is also considering steep token price cuts to counter Anthropic, whose viral Claude Code tool recently pushed its valuation past OpenAI’s. Anthropic suspended its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models following a U.S. export control directive. KKR, Nvidia, and Vistra launched Helix, a US$10 billion data center financing company. Broadcom will work with Apollo and Blackstone for a US$35 billion fund targeting 20GW of data centers for OpenAI and Anthropic. Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are exploring trading GPU compute futures to hedge infrastructure gluts. Bending Spoons filed for a U.S. IPO after doubling revenue to US$1.3 billion. Roku entered buyout talks. Nvidia secured a multi-year HBM4 memory deal with SK Hynix and is pitching its new agentic Vera CPU to China. Apple launched its “Siri AI” reboot utilizing Google Gemini. Oracle’s cloud revenue growth was offset by legacy software weakness. In Canada, Thoma Bravo will acquire Kneat for $650 million cash at a 40% premium. Nuvei is in advanced talks to buy Payoneer for US$2.7 billion. Challenger bank Koho is the newest Canadian Unicorn after a $130 million Series E. Online lender Nesto hit a $1.5 billion valuation. AI rollup Beacon closed a US$225 million Series C, and Maneva secured a US$27 million Series A. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Hybrid Power Solutions closed an oversubscribed $1.697 million private placement. 01 Quantum signed a strategic enterprise PQC partnership, and reported Q2 (April) revenue growth to $668k via its expanding commercialization efforts.

Kneat (KSI-TSX) enters into Definitive Agreement to be acquired by Thoma Bravo.

Kneat entered into a definitive arrangement agreement (the “Arrangement Agreement”) with an affiliate of Thoma Bravo, L.P. (“Thoma Bravo” or the “Purchaser”), the world’s largest software-focused investment firm, whereby the Purchaser will acquire all of the issued and outstanding common shares (the “Shares”) of the Company, subject to obtaining shareholder and other customary approvals (the “Transaction”). Under the terms of the Arrangement Agreement, holders of the outstanding Shares of the Company (other than any Rollover Shares (as defined below)) will receive C$6.50 cash per share (the “Purchase Price”), representing an aggregate total equity value of approximately C$650 million on a fully diluted, in-the-money, treasury-stock-method basis and inclusive of Rollover Shares. Upon completion of the Transaction, Kneat will become a privately held company. The Purchase Price represents a premium of approximately 40% to the closing price of the Shares on the Toronto Stock Exchange (the “TSX”) on May 8, 2026, the last trading day prior to Kneat announcing an ongoing strategic review, and a premium of approximately 20% to the closing price on June 5, 2026, the last trading day prior to the announcement of the Transaction. https://tinyurl.com/32e3zzdf

Sophic Client Hybrid Power Solutions (HPSS-CSE, HPSIF-OTC) announces closing of Oversubscribed Non-Brokered Private Placement.

Hybrid Power Solutions Inc., an emerging leader in the delivery of fuel-free clean power solutions, announced the closing of its previously announced non-brokered private placement (the “Offering”). The Company issued 33,940,000 Units at a price of $0.05 per Unit for gross proceeds of $1,697,000 (the “Closing”). Each Unit consists of one common share in the capital of the Company (a “Common Share”) and one common share purchase warrant (a “Warrant”). Each Warrant entitles the holder to acquire one additional Common Share at an exercise price of $0.08 for a period of two years from the closing date of the Offering. The Warrants are subject to an acceleration clause whereby, if the closing price of the Common Shares on the Canadian Securities Exchange (“CSE”) exceeds $0.15 for 20 consecutive trading days, the Company may accelerate the expiry date of the Warrants by issuing a news release, in which case the Warrants will expire not less than 30 days after the date of such news release. All securities issued under the Offering are subject to a statutory hold period of four months and one day from the date of issuance, in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws. Completion of the Offering is subject to certain conditions including, but not limited to, the receipt of all necessary regulatory approvals, including the approval of the CSE. https://tinyurl.com/4699ty8p

Sophic Client 01 Quantum Inc (ONE-TSXV, OONEF-OTCQB) announces Strategic Partnership to deliver Post-Quantum Cryptography solutions.

01 Quantum Inc., announced it has entered into a Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC) Engineering Partnership Agreement with a Canadian leading global IT and business consulting services company and a premier global Systems Integrator. This agreement designates 01 Quantum as a core Subject Matter Expert (SME) to support the delivery, integration, and deployment of quantum-safe architectures for enterprise and government customers. “We have reached an engineering inflection point where the countdown to Q-Date is approaching rapidly,” said Andrew Cheung, CEO of 01 Quantum. “Cryptographic migration is an intricate, multi-year endeavor that cannot be treated as a last-minute software patch. This partnership gives us the opportunity to integrate our production ready, enterprise PQC technologies with a leading global system integrator, enabling us to immediately deploy specialized protection to Canadian enterprise and government environments before legacy security perimeters become vulnerable.” The agreement establishes a flexible and scalable corporate framework designed to facilitate long-term collaboration through multiple individual Statements of Work (SOWs) across diverse public and private sector projects in Canada. https://tinyurl.com/5n7zhn9y

Sophic Client 01 Quantum Inc (ONE-TSXV, OONEF-OTCQB) reports Second Quarter Fiscal 2026 results and provides update on business developments.

01 Quantum Inc reported the Company’s second quarter fiscal 2026 results which ended April 30, 2026. Andrew Cheung, CEO of 01 Quantum, commented, “This quarter underscored the progress we are making in transforming our technology platform into commercial outcomes that demonstrate product-market fit. We recently expanded our partner network with a Canadian leading global IT and business consulting services company as announced yesterday and expectations of more to come, and deepened our involvement with government stakeholders at both the federal and provincial levels, including defense organizations evaluating quantum-safe capabilities. To spearhead our commercialization initiatives, we have established a high-caliber, senior executive team positioned to capture high-value public and private sector opportunities. These initiatives create multiple entry points for adoption and accelerate our path to market in Fiscal 2026 and beyond.” Business Update: 1. Remote access: The Company’s PQC-enhanced remote access platform, DoMobile Ver.5, continued to scale through its Japanese partner. Deployment activity increased as the partner expanded onboarding across enterprise and regulated sectors. These deployments represent the first wave of commercial PQC adoption in remote access, a category where quantum-safe requirements are accelerating globally. 2. $qONE and qVAULT. The $qONE ecosystem advanced meaningfully during the quarter. qVAULT, the Company’s quantum-safe digital-asset utility, progressed to the Ambassador stage and is nearing general availability, which is expected later this quarter. qVAULT is designed to provide secure, quantum-resistant storage and management of digital assets using 01 Quantum’s PQC technologies. As qVAULT launches, it is expected to become a core utility within the $qONE ecosystem, increasing token utility as users adopt Q-Day protection for their digital assets, stablecoins, and tokenized digital bonds. 3. Quantum-Safe AI Commercial Pathways Broadening. Development of the Quantum AI Wrapper (QAW) progressed with a focus on encrypted inference for high-value Small Language Models (SLMs). QAW combines full homomorphic encryption (FHE) with IronCAP™ PQC to protect prompts, model parameters, and outputs even in compromised environments. United States patent application No. 19/341,748 for our QAW technology has been examined by the USPTO and has been allowed for issuance as a Patent. 4. Strategic Government & Defense Expansion: 01 Quantum continued to broaden its presence across government and defense-related channels during the quarter. The Company’s expanded executive team is executing a coordinated strategy to increase public-sector opportunities, strengthen relationships with key stakeholders, and position its PQC and AI-security technologies for long-term adoption. At the federal level, the Company is advancing discussions related to Digital Sovereignty and secure AI execution, including potential pilot environments and technical evaluations. These engagements reflect growing interest in technologies that can support next-generation cybersecurity and AI-driven workloads across public-sector operations. Provincially, the Company is progressing multiple opportunities with organizations focused on AI innovation, data-sensitive workflows, and secure digital transformation. These initiatives include collaborative technical work, evaluation environments, and early-stage commercialization pathways. The Company also continues to strengthen its academic partnerships, supporting research, testing, and validation of its technologies. In the defense sector, 01 Quantum is engaged in ongoing discussions with several branches and Tier-1 system integrators evaluating quantum-resilient cybersecurity and secure AI capabilities for mission-critical environments. These interactions include exploratory work related to advanced testbeds and long-term modernization initiatives. Financial Results: In addition to cash consideration, the Company received 22.5 million $qONE tokens as partial payment for development services. The tokens have been recorded as a digital asset at their fair value on the date received and are retained on our balance sheet as we advance the qVAULT utility to support broader functional use of the $qONE token. Revenue for the quarter was $668,331 (2025 – $102,807), the increase driven primarily by development and integration fees along with the introduction of ongoing royalties from the release of DoMobile in Japan through the Company’s Japanese partner and revenue recognized from the receipt of the $qONE token. Net loss for the quarter was $327,972 (2025 – $286,783). Cash and equivalents as at April 30th was $2,899,340. The Company believes its current capital resources are sufficient to support ongoing operations and commercialization initiatives. https://tinyurl.com/2y7yuxyy

Nuvei in advanced talks to acquire payment firm Payoneer for US$2.7 billion, sources say.

Canadian payments firm Nuvei is in advanced talks to acquire cross-border payments company Payoneer Global for about US$2.7 billion, according to two people familiar with the matter. The US$2.7 billion purchase price includes ‌Payoneer’s cash, implying an enterprise value of about US$2.3 billion, the sources said. Nuvei, backed by private equity firms Advent International, Novacap and Canadian investment group CDPQ, could sign a deal to acquire New York-based Payoneer in the coming days, the sources added. A deal would combine Nuvei’s business of helping merchants accept payments with Payoneer’s networks for sending money to suppliers, freelancers and sellers. It would also increase Nuvei’s presence in emerging markets where Payoneer has built a large customer base, and give it access to Payoneer’s large online marketplace clients, including Amazon, Walmart, and eBay. Payment companies are increasingly seeking scale through M&A as well as ‌exposure ⁠to faster-growing segments such as cross-border and business-to-business payments amid slower growth for traditional payment processing. Montreal-based Nuvei provides payment processing, risk management and payout solutions to merchants globally. It has pursued growth through acquisitions since it was taken private in a roughly US$6.3 billion buyout led by Advent in 2024 alongside ⁠existing investors Novacap and CDPQ. Payoneer, which has a current market capitalization of around US$1.7 billion, processes cross-border transactions for freelancers, online sellers and smaller businesses. The company generates much of its revenue from businesses in ⁠emerging markets that sell to customers in the United States and Europe. Payoneer faced uncertainty stemming from tariffs and U.S.-China trade tensions, with customers in greater China accounting for 34% of its ⁠revenue in 2025, according to company filings. https://tinyurl.com/43vtcy6k

Koho becomes Canada’s latest unicorn following $130-million Series E round.

Canadian challenger bank Koho Financial has secured $130 million in Series E financing as the FinTech company continues its quest to obtain a federal banking licence. The all-equity round, which Koho closed in recent weeks and announced on Thursday, provides the initial capital base the company requires to become a federally regulated bank, and cash to invest in continued growth. It comes at a post-money valuation of $1.33 billion, officially granting Koho—which was last publicly valued at $800 million—unicorn status. CEO Daniel Eberhard wants Koho to build Canada’s “next great bank.” https://tinyurl.com/3smu9m7c

Nesto secures nearly $1.5-billion valuation in new Series E round.

Montréal-based online mortgage lender Nesto has secured a nearly $1.5-billion valuation as part of a new Series E funding round meant to bring AI into the lending process. Nesto said it will use the money to develop its technology and AI capabilities so it can faster onboard partners and clients while scaling its platform. The round is backed by new investors La Caisse, Fidelity, Picton Investments, and Endeavor Catalyst, as well as returning investors Portage, Diagram, NAventures, Fonds de solidarité FTQ, and Fondaction. https://tinyurl.com/3x4m95hn

AI rollup company Beacon closes US$225-million Series C round.

Toronto-based Beacon Software has secured US$225 million in Series C financing to buy more niche software businesses and equip them with AI. The AI holding company’s latest all-equity, all-primary capital financing was led by existing Silicon Valley-based investor General Catalyst and Boston’s HarbourVest Partners, and supported by Toronto’s Intrepid Growth Partners, among others. According to The Globe and Mail, this latest round values Beacon at $1.4 billion. Since launching in 2024, Beacon has bought over 30 businesses across areas like education, finance, logistics, and recreation. The profitable company’s AI rollup strategy provides portfolio firms with a shared tech platform and access to advisors from Instacart, Meta, OpenAI, and Shopify. This latest round brings Beacon’s total funding to more than US$550 million, making it one of the better-capitalized players in the AI rollup space. https://tinyurl.com/6ku6byfn

Maneva raises US$27-million Series A to expand AI vision in manufacturing.

Toronto AI company Maneva, founded by a former Alberta welder turned engineer, has raised a US$27-million Series A round for its AI intelligence software for manufacturing. Maneva plans to use the capital to scale its presence in North America, expand into Asia, and further develop its agentic AI. While anonymized, a Maneva media kit claims the platform can increase worker productivity, resulting in up to a 10 percent increase in total output. It’s part of a bigger trend of tech being used to monitor workers with tools like remote keyloggers or the algorithmic, camera-based monitoring used at Amazon warehouses. https://tinyurl.com/4vds7nbs

SpaceX shares jump 19% in first day of trading.

SpaceX shares ended their first day of trading at US$160.95 on Friday, up 19% from the company’s initial public offering price of US$135. Shares of the company opened at US$150 per share and climbed as high as US$176 shortly after trading began before declining somewhat in the afternoon. The successful first trading day “pop” is a victory for the legions of bankers working on the IPO. The offering makes SpaceX CEO Elon Musk the world’s first trillionaire and puts SpaceX among the world’s top 10 most valuable companies with a market capitalization of US$2.1 trillion. SpaceX raised US$75 billion in the IPO. Tesla stock, meanwhile, also climbed about 2% on Friday. Other space firms, including Vast Space and Sierra Space, are looking to potentially capitalize on SpaceX’s momentum through their own IPOs. https://tinyurl.com/33346rpz

OpenAI confidentially files IPO paperwork, plans separate employee share sale.

OpenAI said on Monday that it has filed draft paperwork for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission, a week after rival Anthropic said it had done the same. OpenAI also plans to let employees sell their shares ahead of the IPO, according to a person familiar with the situation. OpenAI has held several such tender offers in recent years, allowing insiders to sell billions of dollars worth of shares. In a single-paragraph statement, OpenAI said it had not decided on IPO timing. “It may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best,” the statement said. The employee tender offer will be at OpenAI’s March valuation of US$852 billion, after its most recent funding round. Employees have not yet been told how much they can sell, or when the tender offer will be. https://tinyurl.com/d4s7psrb

OpenAI preps new AI model, expects to go public ‘within the next year’.

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told staff in a Slack message on Monday that he expects OpenAI to go public “within the next year” and that “many things could cause it to be sooner or later in that range, but filing now gives us optionality if we want to go sooner.” Another OpenAI leader also teased an upcoming new AI model that the company is preparing to release. Altman sent the message at roughly the same time OpenAI said in a blog post that it had filed paperwork for an initial public offering with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The cautious tone of his message contrasts with the rising perception among investors and others that OpenAI and its bigger rival Anthropic are racing to list their shares as soon as possible at roughly $1 trillion valuations. Altman said that if the company’s technology advances at a rapid pace to the point where the AI itself is able to create new AI—known as recursive self-improvement—that would lessen the chance of a quicker public listing. “The faster the potential RSI takeoff looks like it could be, the more it could be advantageous to delay an IPO,” because the “technology and the world may change in surprising ways, and there might be good reasons to be a private company during that time,” Altman said. However, he said, the magnitude of capital OpenAI needs for its compute and infrastructure buildout could cause it to accelerate IPO plans. Altman also told staff that the company is preparing to launch a tender “very soon” at the current share price. That share price is $687.69, according to employees with knowledge of the figure. The company is separately preparing to release a new AI model, codenamed 5.6, which will be a “meaningful improvement” over the current flagship, GPT-5.5, OpenAI’s chief scientist, Jakub Pachocki, wrote in a message to staff. OpenAI plans to launch that model this month, according to a person with knowledge of the launch date. An OpenAI spokesperson declined to comment. https://tinyurl.com/3m8b47ne

Anthropic suspends customers’ access to latest models after government order.

Anthropic announced in a blog post Friday night that customers could no longer access its advanced models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, following a U.S. government order over national security concerns. The company also disabled access for foreign-national employees. The company said it had received an export control directive from the Trump administration because government officials had believed they had “become aware of a method of bypassing, or ‘jailbreaking’” the models. Axios reported that the letter came from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick and the decision came after another company claimed it was able to jailbreak Mythos. Anthropic downplayed U.S. officials’ concerns, and characterized the national security risks as “minor vulnerabilities. The dramatic standoff comes three days after Anthropic released its latest models publicly. Anthropic said in the blog post that it had ensured its “safeguards are so strong that many users have complained that they are overly broad.” Spokespeople for the White House and Commerce Department, which manages export controls, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. https://tinyurl.com/mskmb2zd

Bending Spoons files to go public.

Italian conglomerate Bending Spoons, which has acquired a string of aging U.S. internet businesses including AOL, Eventbrite, Evernote and Vimeo, filed to go public in the U.S. to give it the funds to pursue more acquisitions. The company’s IPO paperwork shows Bending Spoons’ revenue doubled to US$1.3 billion in 2025, and also doubled in the first quarter of this year to US$601 million, reflecting its spate of acquisitions. The company spent US$3.3 billion to buy AOL, Eventbrite and Vimeo since last year, funded mostly by borrowings. In the first quarter, Bending Spoons had an operating profit of US$120 million, compared with an operating loss of US$4.6 million. The IPO filing shows that AOL was solidly profitable when it was acquired, earning US$333.6 million in operating profits on US$633 million in revenue in 2025. Bending Spoons paid US$1.454 billion for AOL. https://tinyurl.com/4p53ned4

OpenAI plots biggest ChatGPT overhaul since launch.

OpenAI is preparing the biggest overhaul of ChatGPT since its launch kicked off the AI boom, as the US$850 billion group hunts for new engines of growth ahead of a planned listing this year. The company intends to transform the chatbot into a “superapp” that combines coding tools and AI agents, adding products that executives believe will generate more revenue. The changes are part of a broader reorganisation at OpenAI as the San Francisco-based company shifts resources into trying to win lucrative business customers and compete more fiercely with rival Anthropic, according to more than a dozen current and former employees. OpenAI faces growing pressure to drive revenues higher and forge a path to profitability, as it prepares for an initial public offering. The strategy marks a departure for a company, led by chief executive Sam Altman, that became the face of the AI boom and took the technology mainstream when it unveiled ChatGPT in 2022. The changes, which will give greater prominence and resources to OpenAI’s coding product Codex, reflect a growing conviction within the company that the future of AI lies not in chatbots that answer questions but in agents that perform tasks for users. “Chat is dead,” said one senior OpenAI employee.OpenAI executives increasingly view ChatGPT, which has attracted nearly 1 billion users since its launch, as a gateway to introduce users to higher-value products. The majority of consumers use the chatbot for free. The company is embarking on the changes amid a belief that the advent of AI agents, which can perform multiple tasks for users from booking travel to organising calendars, will be a more valuable product than the chatbot. The overhaul, which is set to begin rolling out in coming weeks, will initially appear as changes to ChatGPT’s website and mobile apps, encouraging customers towards using coding, image-generation and apps from external partners. The changes underline how OpenAI’s strategy is moving closer to that of Anthropic, whose focus on developing products for businesses has stoked its blistering growth, and will be at the heart of its pitch to investors in an IPO this year. https://tinyurl.com/4u9knfkw

OpenAI considers drastic price cuts, anticipating war for users with Anthropic.

OpenAI is considering drastically lowering the prices it charges users as it seeks to win customers from its rival Anthropic. The company is weighing significant cuts to what it charges for tokens, the unit of measurement artificial-intelligence firms use to bill for their products, according to people familiar with the matter. The move would be in anticipation of similar cuts the company expects at Anthropic, the people said. Business executives have begun to balk at the high prices for AI usage. OpenAI Chief Executive Sam Altman said at a recent event that costs had become “a huge issue.” Drastic price cuts could potentially erode the profit margins of both companies, which already lose billions of dollars because of the enormous cost for computing resources needed for AI systems to process queries and carry out tasks. OpenAI is trying to catch up with its younger rival in the race to win enterprise customers that are paying large amounts of money for AI tools that can improve workplace productivity. Anthropic’s revenue recently surged after its coding tool Claude Code went viral among software engineers, and the five-year-old startup surpassed OpenAI’s valuation for the first time. OpenAI has since made its own coding tool Codex a focus of the company. Some corporations poured so much money into Anthropic’s products that their leaders are now seeking to rein in spending. Earlier this year, an Uber executive said the company had maxed out its 2026 budget for agentic, or autonomous, AI use, and another company leader said last month that it was difficult to link AI coding productivity improvements to new customer features. Such comments from many executives have triggered a debate within Silicon Valley about tokenmaxxing, or the practice of using as many tokens as possible to boost productivity, including in ways that don’t generate returns on investment. https://tinyurl.com/3znups4u

KKR, Nvidia, others launch US$10 billion data center company.

Private equity firm KKR, the Kuwait Investment Authority, Nvidia and power generation company Vistra launched a new company on Thursday to finance and help build AI data centers. Nvidia’s role as an anchor investor in Helix signifies another extension of the AI giant’s growing role in financing its own boom, which thus far includes equity investments in companies that use its chips, backstops for unused capacity and, potentially, providing credit support for massive data center projects. This raises questions about how sustainable the AI data center buildout will be once Nvidia—and others—stop stimulating the ecosystem. Adam Selipsky, who was Amazon Web Services’ CEO from 2021 to 2024, is CEO of the new company, Helix Digital Infrastructure, while KKR’s global head of digital infrastructure Waldemar Szlezak will be the firm’s chief investment officer. Helix said it has more than US$10 billion in committed capital, though it’s unclear what projects the company will fund. Helix projects that the AI data center buildout needs US$15 trillion in additional investment. Its website says Helix is a wholly owned subsidiary of KKR; a reference to Helix first appeared in KKR’s regulatory filings in December. “Data centers, power, and connectivity have all too often been built on separate tracks,” Selipsky said in a LinkedIn post on Thursday. “In the unprecedented infrastructure build-out of the AI era, that fragmentation has become an industry-wide bottleneck.” During a time when nearly half of data center projects are being delayed, according to real estate firm JLL, Helix aims to work against the bottleneck by pooling capital from those specializing in the different areas under one umbrella company. https://tinyurl.com/bdh73kzd

Broadcom to help finance Anthropic, OpenAI chip deals with Apollo, Blackstone.

Broadcom said Tuesday that it is launching a new fund—backed by Apollo and Blackstone—to help finance more than 20 gigawatts of AI data centers through 2028 using chips designed by Broadcom, including projects tied to Anthropic and OpenAI. Apollo will lead an initial US$35 billion commitment to launch the fund, alongside participation from Blackstone. Broadcom said the financing will support its previously disclosed agreement to supply roughly 1 gigawatt of AI chips to Anthropic. The financing is expected to help fund Anthropic’s purchases of Google’s tensor processing units, or TPUs, which are slated to be deployed at data centers operated by partner Fluidstack. Bloomberg previously reported details of the $35 billion financing package tied to Anthropic. Broadcom did not disclose what projects it expects the fund will finance for OpenAI. However, The Information previously reported that Broadcom and OpenAI have been negotiating a potential vendor-financing package worth as much as US$18 billion tied to OpenAI’s first custom AI chip, code-named Jalapeño. https://tinyurl.com/4c2f2cph

Goldman, JPMorgan explore trading compute futures as AI financing hedge.

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are exploring ways to trade on the cost of computing power, according to people familiar with the matter. That includes trading futures contracts tied to rental prices for graphics processing units, among the scarcest resources of the AI boom, which exchanges plan to list later this year. The discussions show how the hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into data centers and chips are reshaping financial markets. For banks financing the AI buildout, futures could provide a way to manage the risk of a compute glut down the road and help their clients hedge their own compute needs. The banks’ exploration is still early and they may not move forward immediately, while the compute trading market is nascent and could face regulatory questions. But the idea is not entirely foreign to big banks, which already trade power and other commodities related to AI infrastructure. Compute trading could be a natural next step, some market participants say. More broadly, firms including exchanges and data providers are racing to transform GPU rental pricing into a formal financial market. The goal is to make a major cost of AI infrastructure behave more like a commodity, with prices that can be tracked and hedged, as short-term costs swing and longer-term supply and demand remain difficult to match up. Compute futures would resemble existing commodity futures, letting AI companies that rent or sell GPU capacity bet on whether rental prices will rise or fall. Such futures will likely also attract speculators like hedge funds looking to wager on where the market is headed. The exchanges developing compute contracts haven’t yet outlined exact contract lengths, though mature futures markets often offer trading on prices months ahead. The trades would be settled in cash, meaning traders pay or receive money based on where prices land, and no actual hardware capacity changes hands. Beyond the exchanges, building an active market would also require brokers and trading firms. That would help clients trade the contracts and keep activity moving, a role some firms are already positioning themselves to play. https://tinyurl.com/2src7pfz

Anthropic proposes public fund for giving Americans stakes in AI companies.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei released a policy framework on Wednesday that proposed a mechanism for Americans to acquire a financial stake in the gains from the AI industry. The paper argued for the establishment of capital accounts for newborn Americans, similar to the new Trump Account program, which would be funded by equity in AI companies. Under Anthropic’s proposal, the accounts would also be extended to adults entering the workforce as well as “incumbent” workers in industries who could be displaced by AI. The framework comes after Trump said last week that he plans to meet with AI leaders to discuss the government taking equity stakes in their companies. OpenAI released a similar proposal in April, calling for a public wealth fund financed with “diversified, long-term assets.” Neither Anthropic nor OpenAI’s proposals include specific figures for how much funding or equity AI companies would supply. Sen. Bernie Sanders (D-Vt.) published an op-ed in early June calling for a sovereign wealth fund backed by 50% of AI companies’ stock. On Wednesday, Trump told reporters again that he planned to meet with the “top 12 or 15” executives from AI companies without sharing more details. “We’re talking about giving back something to the public,” he said. https://tinyurl.com/4vmbh8zx

Roku in discussions to be acquired.

Roku is in discussions to be acquired by another company, Bloomberg reported, sending shares of the streaming device maker up 20%. At the higher price, Reddit has a market capitalization of US$21 billion. The idea that Roku might be acquired isn’t new. Roku’s ability to survive as a standalone entity has long been a question, particularly given that most of its revenue comes from selling ads that run its program menu and on channels its streaming platform runs. While Roku’s ad revenue has grown steadily—to US$2.5 billion in the 12 months to March 31—the streaming video ad market is relatively small and crowded. That limits how much more growth Roku could achieve. To be sure, a sale isn’t guaranteed. Roku is controlled by founder Anthony Wood, through supervoting shares, so he would have to agree to a sale. https://tinyurl.com/njrdmj5k

Nvidia, SK Hynix sign multi-year deal for next-gen AI memory.

Nvidia and SK Hynix have signed a multiyear deal to work together on advanced memory chips, as AI demand strains global memory supply. The agreement covers chip design and manufacturing, and includes memory for Nvidia’s Vera Rubin platform, its next major AI system. The deal, announced during Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang’s visit to South Korea, gives SK Hynix an edge as it ramps up HBM4, the next generation of high-bandwidth memory used in the most powerful AI chips. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said Samsung Electronics, SK Hynix and Micron Technology have all been cleared to supply HBM4, keeping competition intense among the three dominant memory makers. For Nvidia, the agreement helps secure a key part of its AI supply chain as cloud companies race to buy more accelerators. Vera Rubin is already in full production and is expected to ship at scale later this year, with advanced memory playing a central role in the system’s performance. The announcement also shows why Huang is pushing to build closer ties in South Korea. Nvidia needs more access to advanced memory for its AI computing systems, and Huang warned during his trip that shortages across the chip supply chain could last for several years. https://tinyurl.com/3xcae3yr

Oracle reports mixed quarter as cloud growth is offset by software weakness.

Oracle reported 21% higher revenue of US$19.2 billion in the three months to May, its final quarter for its fiscal year. The growth rate was slightly slower than the previous quarter although on a constant currency basis—adjusting for foreign exchange changes, Oracle’s growth rate accelerated. The cloud and software firm continues to ramp up its AI data center business. Revenue from that operation nearly doubled in the quarter to US$5.8 billion, although capital expenditures to pay for AI data center expansion also rose sharply to US$16.5 billion. For the year, Oracle’s capital expenditures more than doubled to US$55.66 billion, significantly above the US$31.9 billion in cash the company generated. Oracle is financing the cash shortfall by borrowing money and selling equity. The company signaled it will borrow another $20 billion in 2027. Meanwhile, the quarter shows that Oracle’s software business is growing relatively slowly. Oracle’s traditional software business fell 2%, as businesses switch away from software they buy to software they subscribe to in the cloud. Oracle’s subscription-as-a-service software business grew just 10% to US$4.1 billion in the most recent quarter, three percentage points slower than the previous quarter, although Oracle executives that software apps revenues yet to be recognized grew faster. Oracle shares fell 9% in after-hours trading. https://tinyurl.com/567sfee9

Apple tries for another Siri reboot.

Apple launched a much anticipated new version of its Siri voice assistant at the start of its annual developer conference on Monday, which users will be able to access through a new Siri app. The refreshed voice assistant, now called Siri AI, which uses Google’s Gemini models, will allow users to communicate with it using written commands. As with OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude, users of the new Siri app will be able to back at previous conversations they’ve had with the assistant, which was not possible when Siri was primarily a voice experience. Still, Apple’s demonstrations of the new Siri capabilities didn’t include some of the more dazzling features of rival chatbots. While ChatGPT and Claude can be asked to carry out more vague and bigger picture goals, Apple executives showed simple back-and-forth interactions with Siri. In one scenario, Siri lead Mike Rockwell looked up a local concert using Siri, asked it how to buy tickets, set a reminder to enter a lottery to get those tickets and then played a song of the artist’s new single. In some cases, there were delays of several seconds before Siri responded to commands. Apple also said it’s launching new visual intelligence capabilities, through which AI can analyze and take actions based on what’s taking place on a user’s iPhone or Mac screen. For example, Apple showed how the feature can examine a schedule for a music festival and add multiple events to a users’ personal calendar. Apple’s shares traded down 4% following the announcement. In addition to the AI features, Apple said it made a number of software improvements to its new operating system that will enhance how its devices perform. Apps will now launch 30% faster than previously, and new photos will appear 70% more quickly than before in the photo library, it said. Apple also said it remade the search tool on its devices to deliver results that are more comprehensive than in the past and better surface old and new content. Finally, Apple will be adding new child safety features, likely in response to growing regulatory scrutiny about the company’s past parental controls. The new feature lets parents decide what their children can see and do on Apple devices, such as which websites they can visit and which apps they can use. Parents will also be able to decide which people they can communicate with. https://tinyurl.com/3thwayh4

Nvidia pitches Vera CPU to Chinese customers.

Nvidia is pitching Chinese customers on its new Vera central processing units for AI data centers, telling them the chips could be available as soon as August and that orders can begin now, Reuters reported, citing three people familiar with the matter. The push gives Nvidia another potential route into the China market after sales of its graphics processors were squeezed by U.S. export controls and Beijing’s own scrutiny of foreign AI chips. Vera is Nvidia’s first standalone data-center CPU built for agentic AI. The company said the chip is already in full production and is faster than rival processors. Chinese cloud companies have expressed interest in Vera, according to Reuters. AI agents require far more CPU power to run, plan and coordinate tasks, and have been in short supply in China. CPUs may be easier to sell into China than graphics processors because U.S. export restrictions targeted mainly high-end graphic processors, not general-purpose CPUs. It remains unclear if Nvidia would need an export license to sell advanced CPUs like Vera. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang previously hinted that the company’s CPUs are available to Chinese customers. Asked by reporters in Taipei last month whether Nvidia’s CPU market forecast included China, Huang said, “I would think so,” Reuters reported. https://tinyurl.com/mr2cyrau