AnalytixInsight

Last week, Dow Jones rose 1.6%, S&P 500 gained 1.7%, Nasdaq composite was up 2.1%. The majority of gains came Monday, which was a partial recovery from the previous Friday’s ugly sell-off. Headline moves masked volatility arising from headlines pertaining to US tariffs, regional banks/private credit concerns, US federal government shutdown, and AI margin questions. The continuing U.S. government shutdown has compressed the viable remaining 2025 IPO window to roughly four weeks into year-end. That said, Strava signaled an intent to list, along with a few other names. 54% of fund managers called AI stocks a bubble, according to a recent survey. An “investment surge” in artificial intelligence has helped the US avoid a sharp slowdown but risks stoking inflation, the IMF’s chief economist has warned, as the fund upgraded its outlook for the world’s largest economy. Quantum names ripped after JP Morgan earmarked US$10 billion for “frontier tech.” OpenAI announced a new chip design deal with Broadcom, the latest in a succession of announcements by OpenAI to assure itself of more computing capacity. Oracle raised its FY30 AI Cloud revenue and GPU rental target margins, despite near term skepticism. Meta will finance a Louisiana Data Center via ~US$27 billion SPV debt. Google will “backstop” TeraWulf Data Center bonds. A group of investors including BlackRock and Abu Dhabi’s MGX acquired Aligned Data Centers in a roughly US$40 billion deal, the latest big investment in companies building data centers for the tech giants. In Canada, Dominion Dynamics secured $4 million pre-seed round to build an Arctic multi-domain sensor fabric, supported by a high-caliber Canadian advisory bench. In news pertaining to Sophic Clients, Plurilock announced a $3.0 million non-brokered 10% convertible debenture with warrants (convert $0.23, warrants $0.25, 3-yr), to scale Critical Services, international expansion, and progress toward profitability.

Last week, Dow Jones fell 2.7%, S&P 500 lost 2.4%. Nasdaq composite was down 2.5%. The market was headed for a mixed week, owing to questions re. the AI trade and Friday’s tariff re-escalation led to the largest pullbacks in NASDAQ and S&P 500 in over six months. OpenAI’s dev event again showed a “halo effect,” with mere mentions lifting names like Figma, HubSpot, Salesforce, Expedia, TripAdvisor. At the same time, concern is building over dot-com-style stock pops (US$100 billion + intraday swings) and circular AI deal finance. Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan flagged record AI-linked debt issuance. A report indicated Oracle’s Nvidia cloud margins averaged ~16%. Jensen Huang countered Oracle will be “wonderfully profitable” over a system’s life and noted AI compute demand has surged in recent months, with power constraints pushing toward on-site generation (natural gas, eventually nuclear). Prediction markets saw financings as Kalshi is raising at a US$5 billion valuation, and ICE will invest up to US$2 billion in Polymarket. xAI is targeting a US$20 billion round with an SPV to finance Nvidia GPUs. SoftBank will acquire ABB’s robotics arm for US$5.4 billion to fuse AI + automation. Reuters says Confluent is exploring a sale. ASML fell on renewed U.S. scrutiny of China exposure. In Canada, investors are rotating to defense, construction, and metals as Ottawa signals higher military spend and accelerated nation-building projects. A new US$100 million TSX SPAC targeting mission-critical Canadian tech (space/defense/services) was launched. Toronto legaltech, Spellbook raised a US$50 million Series B. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Legend Power signed a North America–wide channel deal with a Fortune 500 facilities franchise network, with 150+ partners, and ~10,000 buildings, broadening access for SmartGATE™ and aligning with an equipment-only, contractor-installed model. Plurilock announced a dedicated federal capture team, new Critical Services wins, and repeat U.S./Canadian federal orders.

Last week, Dow Jones gained 1.1%, S&P 500 index rose 1.1%, Nasdaq composite was up 1.3%, despite a modest pullback Friday. AI related stocks, nuclear names, quantum computing stocks remain strong. The OpenAI employee stock tender reportedly values the company at ~US$500 billion (with OpenAI now surpassing SpaceX as the highest valued private company). H1/25 revenue grew to US$4.3 billion and cash burn was US$2.5 billion. OpenAI will also reportedly release a TikTok-like social app alongside Sora 2. The new IPO Fermi, rallied to a ~US$21.5 valuation on its NASDAQ debut, despite no revenue, underscoring the land/power-AI adjacent trade. Wealthfront, Navan, TravelPerk, and Zelis Healthcare are planning IPOs. Meta will acquire chip startup Rivos, and OpenAI taps Samsung/SK Hynix for massive High Bandwidth Memory supply. Salesforce is targeting AI developers with a new vibe coding service. Stripe is pursuing federal and NY trust charters to power client-issued stablecoins. Amazon’s ‘NBA on Prime’ streams will include FanDuel bet tracking, shopping integration, and more. Wolfspeed shares surged 33% on Tuesday, after the chipmaker successfully emerged from Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a substantially reduced debt load. In Canada, Shopify partnered with OpenAI as ChatGPT rolls out in-app shopping and “Instant Checkout” sending its stock up ~6%. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Intermap closed its upsized bought deal for C$28.75 million, including the full shoe. Boardwalktech signed a multi-year Velocity deployment with an NYSE-listed global pro-services firm for US$70K ARR and US$40K follow-on. Plurilock made a key executive appointment to scale higher-margin federal/defence across U.S., Canada, NATO markets. Kraken Robotics, completed brand integration with 3D at Depth.

Last week, Dow Jones fell 0.15%, S&P 500 was down 0.3%, Nasdaq composite lost 0.65%. September is tracking to be the busiest U.S. IPO month since Nov-2021 (US$7.6 billion excluding SPACs) with mixed after-markets (Netskope +18%, Stubhub −6%). Data-center land play, Fermi, is targeting a ~US$13 billion IPO valuation despite no revenue, underscoring the scarcity of land and power. Oracle upsized its long-dated bond sale to fund AI infrastructure to US$18 billion. Nvidia and OpenAI outlined up to US$100 billion of staged funding tied to ~10 GW of capacity. Nvidia could own, for an initial US$10 billion, ~2% of OpenAI equity, with chip-leasing models also under discussion. OpenAI expanded its Coreweave commitment to US$22.4 billion. Microsoft added Anthropic models into Copilot. Apple is testing an internal ChatGPT-like “Veritas” app for the revamped Siri. Google DeepMind released the latest version of its flagship language model designed for powering robots. Humanoid robots are Meta’s next ‘AR-size bet’. Micron beat expectations with +46% sales on strong High Bandwidth memory demand. Alibaba Group’s share price rose more than 9% on Wednesday, after the Chinese tech giant announced a slew of artificial intelligence related developments. Stripe is exploring a US$106.7 billion tender. EA is reportedly being taken private for ~US$50 billion. Tether is evaluating a speculated US$15–20 billion raise. Cloudflare is considering a USD stablecoin (NET Dollar) for AI agent payments. In Canada Sophic client, Intermap, launched a $20.1 million bought deal at $3.00, then upsized to $25.million (greenshoe to $28.8 million), for working capital and growth flexibility. Sophic client, Legend Power commissioned its first SmartGATE install with the U.S. Federal Government via GSA’s CEBT program.