July 25, 2026: NASDAQ Below Recent Lows Ahead Of Major Week

Last week, Dow Jones fell 0.4%, S&P 500 lost 0.6%, Nasdaq composite was down 2.1%. Nasdaq is below recent June lows ahead of a heavy news week, which will see earnings reports from Apple, Microsoft, Meta Platforms, Amazon, a Federal Reserve meeting, and increased geopolitical turbulence and rising oil prices and Treasury yields. Hedge funds cut US tech exposure at a record pace, roughly 10% of market value over two months, per Goldman. US equity issuance topped US$300 billion year-to-date on SpaceX’s US$86 billion IPO, Alphabet’s US$85 billion sale and SK Hynix’s US$26.5 billion listing, on pace to beat 2021’s US$376 billion record. Anthropic could list as soon as September, and Meta is weighing a multi-billion offering. Alphabet grew revenue 24% to US$119.8 billion with Cloud up 82% to US$24.8 billion, a US$514 billion backlog and capex raised to US$195–205 billion. Shares fell 4% after hours. Google disclosed US$94.1 billion of SpaceX stock. Intel rose 12% on 25% revenue growth and US$4.5 billion free cash flow. Tesla revenue rose 26% but capex doubled to US$5.8 billion, pushing FCF negative. Reddit fell 8% on possible non-renewal of its US$60 million Google AI deal. AMD will invest up to US$5 billion in Anthropic, and also launched Helios with Microsoft as a buyer; Nvidia announced a US$500 billion SK partnership. Anduril is raising near US$100 billion, Stripe is in talks to buy OpenRouter around US$10 billion. Moonshot is preparing a Hong Kong IPO. Alibaba open-sourced 2.4-trillion-parameter Qwen3.8 Max; Zhipu completed a 1GW all-domestic-chip data center. Prediction markets reached 27% of US sports-betting volume. In news pertaining to Sophic clients, Replenish Nutrients closed the first $7.5 million of a $15 million SRC Agrominerals investment. Kraken Robotics booked $35 million in new orders ($327 million YTD). Portfolio Manager, Mathieu Martin recently appeared on the Beyond MD podcast and outlined his approach behind investing his investment in Kraken. Ionik consolidated under SHIFT44 and Q1Media. Boardwalktech restructured its placement.

Sophic Client Replenish Nutrients Holding Corp. (ERTH-CSE, VVIVF-OTC) announces Strategic Relationship with SRC Agrominerals, including $15 Million Strategic Investment, Beiseker facility expansion and Supply Agreement.

Replenish Nutrients entered into a securities purchase agreement (the “Investment Agreement”) dated July 17, 2026 with SRC Agrominerals (“SRC”) to support and accelerate Replenish’s near-term growth, including an expansion of the Beiseker facility (the “Beiseker Pelletization Expansion”). Additionally, Mr. Tim Close, the CEO of SRC, and Dr. David Morris, the founder and chairman of Morris Group Canada will join Replenish’s Board of Directors as a director and board advisor, respectively, with Dr. Morris being put forth as a director at Replenish’s next annual shareholder meeting. Pursuant to the Investment Agreement, SRC will (a) subscribe for 50 million units of the Company (the “Units”) at a price of $0.15 per Unit for gross proceeds of $7.5 million (the “Equity Investment”), each Unit will consist of one common share of the Company (a “Common Share”) and one-half of one common share purchase warrant (each whole warrant, a “Warrant”), each Warrant will entitle the holder to acquire one Common Share at an exercise price of $0.225 for a period of four years from closing, and (b) purchase a senior secured (second lien) convertible debenture (the “Debenture”) in an aggregate principal amount of $7.5 million (the “Debenture Investment”, and together with the Equity Investment, the “Strategic Investment”). The Debenture will bear fixed interest of 10% per annum, payable quarterly, in cash or Common Shares at the Company’s election, will mature four years from closing, and will be convertible into Common Shares at a price of $0.225 per Common Share. As part of the Strategic Investment, the parties will enter into a supply agreement (the “Supply Agreement”) for the supply and delivery to Replenish of carbonatite, a calcium, phosphorus, trace-mineral and microbial-rich resource used for its soil-enhancing properties, and an investor rights agreement (the “Investor Rights Agreement”), as described below. Highlights: SRC will take an initial 19.9% interest (non-diluted) in Replenish through the $7.5 million Equity Investment, providing Replenish access to key growth capital and a long-term strategic partner. Each Unit includes one-half of a Warrant – 25 million Warrants in aggregate – exercisable at $0.225 for four years from closing, subject to an acceleration provision if the Common Shares trade at or above $0.28 for twenty consecutive trading days, representing potential additional proceeds to the Company of up to approximately $5.63 million for future growth. SRC will invest $7.5 million, pursuant to the Debenture Investment, representing flexible and cost-effective capital during a period of rapid expansion. Aggregate investment proceeds will support a separate 150,000 metric tonne pelletizing facility at the Company’s existing Beiseker property, along with additional storage, load-out and processing infrastructure supporting the existing Beiseker granulation facility and the new Beiseker Pelletization Expansion. The Supply Agreement provides a long-term supply of carbonatite to be incorporated into Replenish’s proprietary regenerative fertilizer products, securing a key input that enhances Replenish’s product line. In connection with the Strategic Investment, Tim Close, CEO of SRC Agrominerals, will be appointed to the Replenish board. Mr. Close brings significant leadership and expertise across capital markets, corporate strategy, operational execution and commercial governance. Mr. Close previously served as CEO of Ag Growth International (“AGI”), a large, publicly traded global leader in storage, handling and blending equipment for the fertilizer, seed, grain and food-processing sectors. During his 10-year tenure, Mr. Close led AGI’s transformation from a regional provider of grain-handling equipment into a global leader in food infrastructure, with revenue growing fivefold during that span. He built and led a high-performing team, strengthened operational execution and advanced the company’s global growth strategy, including overseeing the deployment of more than $700 million of capital across 19 strategic transactions. Dr. David Morris, Director of SRC Agrominerals, will also join the Replenish board as an advisor and will be put forward as a director at Replenish’s next annual shareholder meeting. Dr. Morris is the founder and former Chairman of Morris Group Canada Inc., which provided innovative solutions for the construction and resource sectors across Canada and South America, including modular construction, workforce housing, site services, labour management, and safety training. Dr. Morris brings deep operational expertise at a time when Replenish is moving into significant operational and commercial expansion. Beiseker Pelletization Expansion & Facility Pipeline. The planned owned Beiseker Pelletization Expansion will consist of a separate 150,000 metric tonne pelletizing facility, along with additional storage, load-out and processing infrastructure supporting the existing Beiseker granulation facility and the new Beiseker Pelletization Expansion. The Beiseker Pelletization Expansion is expected to be completed by the first quarter of 2028. https://t.co/hDuLmkGthn

Sophic Client Replenish Nutrients Holding Corp. (ERTH-CSE, VVIVF-OTC) closes $7.5 Million equity investment from SRC Agrominerals.

Replenish Nutrients closed the $7.5 million equity investment (the “Equity Investment”) portion of its previously announced $15 million strategic investment from SRC Agrominerals Sales Inc. (“SRC”). The $7.5 million convertible debenture investment (the “Debenture Investment”) is expected to close on or about August 14, 2026. Strategic Investment. As a result of the Equity Investment, SRC has taken an initial 19.9% interest (non-diluted) in Replenish. Net proceeds from the Equity Investment will be used to fund the Beiseker Pelletization Expansion, working capital, inventory purchases, debt repayment, and general corporate purposes. All securities issued are subject to a statutory hold period of four months plus one day from the date of issuance. Investor Rights and Board Appointments. Concurrent with the closing of the Equity Investment, the Company has entered into an investor rights agreement with SRC (the “Investor Rights Agreement”). Pursuant to the Investor Rights Agreement, SRC has the right to nominate one director to Replenish’s board (increasing to two directors following closing of the Debenture Investment) and has been granted participation rights to maintain its pro-rata ownership. In connection with the Equity Investment, SRC’s Chief Executive Officer, Tim Close, will be appointed to the board of directors of Replenish. Mr. Close brings significant leadership and expertise across capital markets, corporate strategy, operational execution and commercial governance. Mr. Close previously served as CEO of Ag Growth International (“AGI”), a large, publicly traded global leader in storage, handling and blending equipment for the fertilizer, seed, grain and food-processing sectors. During his 10-year tenure, Mr. Close led AGI’s transformation from a regional provider of grain-handling equipment into a global leader in food infrastructure, with revenue growing fivefold during that span. He built and led a high-performing team, strengthened operational execution and advanced the company’s global growth strategy, including overseeing the deployment of more than $700 million of capital across 19 strategic transactions. Dr. David Morris, Director of SRC, will also join the Replenish board as an advisor and will be put forward as a director at Replenish’s next annual shareholder meeting. Dr. Morris is the founder and former Chairman of Morris Group Canada Inc., which provided innovative solutions for the construction and resource sectors across Canada and South America, including modular construction, workforce housing, site services, labour management, and safety training. Dr. Morris brings deep operational expertise at a time when Replenish is moving into significant operational and commercial expansion. Supply Agreement. Replenish has entered into a 10-year supply agreement with SRC (the “Supply Agreement”) for the supply and delivery of carbonatite, a calcium, phosphorus, trace-mineral and microbial-rich resource used for its soil-enhancing properties. Carbonatite is a carbonate-rich igneous rock formed from volcanic activity. The Spanish River deposit is distinguished by high concentrations of loosely bonded calcium, phosphorus, potassium, and magnesium, along with trace rare earth elements, and notably without radioactive or toxic heavy metals found in many other carbonatite deposits. https://t.co/NF5SC3r09I

Sophic Client Kraken Robotics (PNG-TSXV, KRKNF-OTC) announces $35 Million in new orders and business update.

Kraken Robotics announced continued momentum with $35 million in new product orders from customers in maritime defense, offshore energy, and ocean science. By technology solution, these orders are across navigation and positioning systems, multi-aperture sonar, positioning, and monitoring systems from Covelya, as well as Synthetic Aperture Sonar (SAS) from Kraken. “Our product portfolio forms the backbone of a wide range of platforms used across both defence and commercial applications and we expect it to represent over 75% of consolidated revenue in 2026,” said Greg Reid, CEO of Kraken Robotics. “These include crewed platforms such as ships and submarines, as well as uncrewed systems including autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs), uncrewed surface vessels (USVs) and remotely operated vehicles (ROVs). Beyond vessel-based applications, our dual-use technologies are also deployed in unattended seafloor sensors.” The Company has announced $327 million in total product orders to date in 2026 for Kraken and Covelya on a combined basis across defence and offshore energy customers, highlighting the strength and breadth of demand for the combined company’s product portfolio. These orders have been driven primarily by Kraken’s growing customer base for SeaPower batteries and SAS technology, together with demand for Covelya’s navigation and positioning equipment and advanced sonar systems. The Company’s products are integrated, or are being integrated, across a broad range of crewed and uncrewed platforms, including more than 30 AUV platforms worldwide. https://tinyurl.com/5269rbrm

Sophic Client Kraken Robotics (PNG-TSXV, KRKNF-OTC): The Art of Finding Hidden Gems in MicroCap Stocks. Portfolio Manager, Mathieu Martin recently appeared on the Beyond MD podcast and outlined his approach behind investing his investment in Kraken.

“The ticker is PNG on the TSX Venture. I made about close to 60 times my money on the initial shares I bought in 2018, up until earlier this year, and we still own it in the portfolio — a very small position, but just for full disclosure. I found this company in 2017, 2018. I met the founder at a conference and was very impressed by the team — the management team was a big check mark for me. I thought the product was really cool as well. I saw how it could grow, it had a long growth runway. It was a small company, $3.5 million in revenue back then, but I wasn’t sure about the business quality — it sounded like a good product, they had sales, sales were growing, but they were still unprofitable. It lacked a little bit of validation. In early 2018, one of the company’s largest customers decided to take a stake in the company — they bought, I think it was a 20% stake, at a 30% premium to the prevailing share price. So I thought, okay, now that’s the validation I was waiting for, because the customer likes the product enough that they’re willing to buy a piece of the business — that’s how much they believe in the long-term potential. That’s when we started increasing our position in Kraken. And then the rest is history. The company just executed perfectly — if you fast-forward five or six years later, they grew revenue almost 50% per year for the next five years, they became very profitable, and now today they’ve just made a big acquisition, they’re going to be a $300 to $400 million revenue company that’s profitable, with hundreds of millions of dollars on the balance sheet. It’s been a wild ride, but one of the lessons for me that I think is applicable to other stocks is really the discovery process that Kraken went through. It started as a $20 million market cap company and became a multi-billion-dollar company today. Initially, when you’re a $20 million company, you’re traded mostly by retail investors — small, very small investors. You’re unknown, you have no analyst coverage, no institutional ownership. And then as you grow, the process is typically that smart retail investors own it first, then the small funds get involved, then the bigger funds get involved, and then retail comes back at the end. Recently, if you look at the last six to twelve months, it’s been heavily promoted by retail investors on YouTube. https://tinyurl.com/5xs4h5u8

Sophic Client Ionik (INIK-TSXV, INIKF-OTCQX) streamlines operating structure and aligns businesses under SHIFT44 and Q1Media.

Ionik announced an organizational alignment that simplifies its corporate leadership and operating structure following completion of the Company’s US$100 million credit facilities and comprehensive debt reorganization announced on June 23, 2026. The alignment reflects Ionik’s evolution from building scale through acquisitions to operating as an integrated marketing platform organized around its two established market-facing brands, SHIFT44 and Q1Media. Since 2022, Ionik has completed a series of strategic acquisitions to add complementary capabilities spanning customer acquisition, performance marketing, first-party data, media activation and omnichannel campaign execution. These capabilities have now been substantially integrated into two operating groups, providing a clearer go-to-market structure, greater accountability and a stronger foundation for operating leverage. Operating Brand Alignment. Going forward: The Company’s Marketing Optimization operations will operate under the SHIFT44 brand. The Company’s Media Activation operations will operate under the Q1Media brand. Each brand will continue serving its existing customers while leveraging shared technology, proprietary first-party data and AI-enabled capabilities across Ionik’s platform. Leadership Alignment. Ionik is also simplifying its corporate leadership structure: Jeff Collins will transition from his current dual role as Chief Financial Officer and Chief Operating Officer to a dedicated Chief Financial Officer role. Operating responsibilities previously overseen through the corporate COO function will be assumed by the respective leadership teams of SHIFT44 and Q1Media, allowing Mr. Collins to focus on financial strategy, capital allocation, debt management, financial reporting and long-term value creation. Kevin Ferrell will transition from his role as President to a strategic advisory role with the Company, supporting management on key initiatives and long-term growth opportunities. Day-to-day executive oversight of the operating businesses will reside with the leadership teams of SHIFT44 and Q1Media. Veronica Colquhoun has resigned from the Company, including her roles as Legal Counsel and Corporate Secretary. The Board thanks Ms. Colquhoun for her service and contributions and wishes her continued success. Ted Hastings, Chief Executive Officer, has assumed the role of Corporate Secretary. The Company expects the streamlined structure to reduce corporate complexity, sharpen accountability and support continued investment in platform integration, proprietary first-party data and AI-enabled marketing capabilities. “Over the past several years, we have assembled complementary capabilities and made significant progress integrating them into a unified platform,” said Ted Hastings, Chief Executive Officer of Ionik. “With our refinancing complete and our operating brands established, this is the right time to simplify how we are organized and place greater accountability within SHIFT44 and Q1Media. This structure is designed to focus resources on execution, product development and customer outcomes while positioning Ionik for disciplined long-term growth.” https://t.co/DnAhPZyE7N

Sophic Client Boardwalktech, Inc. (BWLK-TSXV, BWLKF-OTCQB) provides Private Placement update.

Boardwalktech is providing an update to its news release dated July 13, 2026 announcing its proposed non-brokered private placement of up to 30,000,000 units of the Company (each, a “Unit”, and collectively the “Units”) at a price of C$0.05 per Unit (the “Offering”). The Company has determined to proceed with the Offering by way of a private placement in reliance on the accredited investor exemption and other applicable prospectus exemptions under National Instrument 45-106 – Prospectus Exemptions, rather than pursuant to the Listed Issuer Financing Exemption. The change is intended to facilitate participation by the Company’s existing and new investor base, including a number of investors resident in the United States. All other principal terms of the Offering remain unchanged. Accordingly, the Offering will no longer be conducted pursuant to the Listed Issuer Financing Exemption, and securities issued under the Offering will be subject to the applicable statutory hold period of four months and one day in accordance with applicable Canadian securities laws. Each Unit will be comprised of one Common Share (each, a “Common Share”, and collectively the “Common Shares”) and one Common Share purchase warrant (each, a “Warrant” and collectively the “Warrants”). Each Warrant will entitle the holder thereof to acquire one Common Share at a price of C$0.06 per Common Share for a period of 24 months from the closing date of the Offering. Closing of the Offering remains subject to the Company obtaining all necessary corporate and regulatory approvals, including approval of the TSXV. https://tinyurl.com/mtyckumc

Government of Canada launches Defence Drone Initiative to strengthen Canada’s sovereign defence capabilities.

The Government of Canada launched the Defence Drone Initiative (DDI), a new initiative that will accelerate the development, testing and production of Canadian uncrewed and autonomous systems to help provide the Canadian Armed Forces (CAF) and the Canadian Coast Guard (CCG) with access to the sovereign capabilities they need in an increasingly complex security environment. Recent conflicts have underscored how rapidly drone technologies are transforming modern warfare and are central to modern military operations. These technologies can provide intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance, support logistics, protect personnel, counter hostile drones, and perform a range of operational tasks. Success increasingly depends on the ability to innovate, adapt and field new capabilities at speed. Canada must be prepared to do the same. Led collaboratively by the Department of National Defence and the Defence Investment Agency (DIA), the initiative will create a faster pathway for promising Canadian technologies to move from concept to operational testing and, where they meet defence requirements, into production. This will help provide Canadian personnel with the capabilities they need while creating new opportunities for Canadian industry. The initiative will engage broadly with the Canadian defence ecosystem, from start-ups to medium-sized enterprises and established defence manufacturers. The DDI will connect CAF and CCG operational requirements with Canadian expertise in drones and drone-related technologies, including robotics, artificial intelligence, aerospace, advanced manufacturing, sensors, secure communications, navigation, propulsion and advanced materials. It will enable promising technologies to be tested, refined through operational feedback, accelerating their transition to production. Initial areas where these capabilities could support CAF and CCG operations include: low-cost tactical intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance drones; uncrewed ground vehicles for logistics and complex terrain; uncrewed maritime surface and underwater systems; low-cost, low-collateral counter-drone interceptors; standardized drone munitions and explosive payloads; and deep precision strike systems.
https://tinyurl.com/y88cefa

Alphabet, SpaceX spur record U.S. equity sales.

U.S. stock sales are on track for a record this year, as massive offerings from SpaceX, Alphabet and others push totals past a 2021 high. More sales are coming. Anthropic is headed for an initial public offering as soon as September. And bankers are pitching other public tech companies on issuing more stock. These include Intel, after the chipmaker’s shares more than doubled since the start of the year, according to people familiar with the banks’ efforts. The pitches reflect Wall Street’s expectations that headline-grabbing listings of SpaceX and Alphabet will entice investors to rush for the next new offerings, overriding concerns that the massive issuance will swamp demand. Companies have already raised more than US$300 billion in U.S. equity capital sales this year, according to data provider LSEG. SpaceX’s US$86 billion June IPO, Alphabet’s US$85 billion stock sale and SK Hynix’s US$26.5 billion U.S. listing boosted the total. IPOs made up about US$128 billion of the share sales, or less than half, while companies sold more than US$142 billion in follow-on stock sales. Equity offerings announced this year include a popular form of follow-ons employed by Alphabet and others, called at-the-market issuance. Companies have also been raising money through convertible debt sales. The total didn’t include money raised from special purpose acquisition companies. The next half-year is likely to push equity sales past the US$376 billion sold in all of 2021, when companies took advantage of the bull market set off by the pandemic era’s ultralow interest rates. Meta Platforms, for instance, is considering raising tens of billions of dollars in a stock offering, according to the Financial Times. The stock flood has raised the question of whether investors will get tapped out, especially once Anthropic’s megalisting and other smaller IPOs hit the market later this year. https://tinyurl.com/334t7jm5

Goldman says hedge funds sell US tech stocks at record pace.

Hedge funds pulled back from US tech stocks at a record pace over the past two months, according to Goldman Sachs Group Inc.’s Prime Services desk. The cumulative reduction in market value totaled about 10%, marking the largest such retreat from the sector since the data series began more than a decade ago. The S&P 500 Information Technology Index has dropped some 10% since early June as investors take profits and grow more skeptical that AI-fueled valuations are sustainable. https://tinyurl.com/taft7tzd

AMD to invest up to US$5 billion in Anthropic, strikes chip deal.

Advanced Micro Devices said Wednesday it would make an equity investment of “up to US$5 billion” in Anthropic “in the future,” and the Claude AI maker would use AMD’s AI server chips starting next year. Anthropic has been steadily diversifying its AI server sources and is evaluating chips from other providers including startups and Microsoft. AMD implied that Anthropic would agree to purchase a substantial number of its server chips, which would eventually consume up to 2 gigawatts of power, and their announcement also implied AMD would purchase access to Claude models to help it design better chips. AMD shares rose 2% and have already risen nearly 150% this year. AI developers OpenAI and Meta also have announced agreements to use AMD chips, though it isn’t clear how much they will end up using or when. AMD’s stock has surged as numerous cloud providers purchase its hardware to diversify from Nvidia’s. However, Nvidia is nearly seven times bigger than AMD in revenue and is growing its revenue about 30 percentage points faster than AMD (while also experiencing accelerating sales), underscoring the gap in performance. Besides Google’s DeepMind, Anthropic is one of the other major AI developers that doesn’t heavily rely on chips from AMD rival Nvidia; it has developed its models using chips from Google and Amazon, for instance. But even Anthropic has started paying billions of dollars a year for Nvidia chips as it races to get more computing capacity to meet customer demand. Anthropic’s private valuation is nearly $1 trillion, meaning the AMD investment would represent about 0.5% of Anthropic shares at the current price. Anthropic has filed to go public as soon as this fall. This post has been updated to clarify the investment would be up to $5 billion. https://tinyurl.com/4xh5u4ms

Exclusive-Defense tech company Anduril in talks to raise funding at about US$100 billion valuation.

Defense tech firm Anduril is in discussions with investors for a new funding round that could see ‌it valued at roughly US$100 billion, rivaling companies such as Northrop Grumman and Lockheed Martin, ‌two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters. The funding round and the valuations, reported here for the first time, are still fluid, the sources said. One idea that had been floated was for the company to use a two-stage process, where investors would need to commit to financing a second round at a higher valuation that could occur within a year, the sources said. The valuation for the second funding round ‌could involve Anduril meeting certain financial ⁠benchmarks, they said. Reuters could not determine how much Anduril planned to raise. In a statement, a spokesperson for Anduril said no decisions had been made about ⁠any future financing. “As a private company, we regularly evaluate opportunities to fund the growth of the business,” the spokesperson said. The talks come as the company has posted booming military sales and generated investor enthusiasm around its suite of drones, software and missiles amid the U.S. conflict with Iran. Just two months ‌ago, the company doubled its valuation to US$61 billion in a US$5 billion funding round led by Thrive Capital and Andreessen Horowitz. The discussions also underscore how fast-growing startups are increasingly wielding market power and demanding highly unusual concessions from investors.The potential ‌valuation would make California-based Anduril nearly as valuable as Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s largest defense conglomerates and maker of several of the Pentagon’s priciest fighter jets, including the F-22, F-15 and F-35. Lockheed is valued ‌at US$130 billion. https://tinyurl.com/2psfwrzk

Moonshot AI seeks investor approval to begin IPO process.

Chinese startup Moonshot AI, whose powerful new open-source model is upending Silicon Valley, is seeking formal approval from investors to begin preparations for an initial public offering in Hong Kong, according to two people with knowledge of the matter. The Beijing-based company recently distributed a shareholder resolution regarding its IPO plan, according to the people. The timing of its listing depends in part on regulatory approval. But based on how long it typically takes for a company to go public in Hong Kong after such a resolution, the IPO could take place in as early as six months, the people said. Before the IPO, Moonshot, whose backers include Alibaba Group and Chinese venture capital firm HongShan, needs to complete its ongoing corporate restructuring. The company is unwinding its original structure that included an overseas holding company, after Chinese regulators’ new stance made it harder for companies with such a structure to gain approval for a Hong Kong listing. The IPO discussions come as Moonshot’s new model, Kimi K3, is gaining massive traction. K3, released last week, matched or even surpassed top U.S. models on some benchmarks, sparking debates whether China’s increasingly ambitious open-source models are catching up with U.S. leaders such as Anthropic and OpenAI. K3’s popularity is also straining Moonshot’s compute capacity. “Over the past 48 hours, demand has pushed close to the limits of our current capacity,” Moonshot said in a post on X. While the company is scrambling to expand its capacity, it is temporarily pausing new subscriptions to its model platform in order to make sure existing subscribers have access to enough compute, according to the post. A Hong Kong listing could help Moonshot tackle the rising cost of running its AI models—a challenge facing many Chinese AI labs. Zhipu AI and MiniMax, two of Moonshot’s domestic rivals, went public in Hong Kong in January. DeepSeek, which raised US$7.4 billion last month in its first-ever funding round, is already in talks to raise another US$7.4 billion in a new round, while also discussing a plan to list on Shanghai’s Star Market. Bloomberg earlier reported on Moonshot’s shareholder resolution for a Hong Kong listing. https://tinyurl.com/yc3rpjxr

Stripe in talks to buy startup OpenRouter.

Stripe is in talks to buy OpenRouter, a startup that helps app developers access hundreds of AI models, for close to US$10 billion, according to a person with knowledge of the talks. A transaction could be announced within the next month, though the talks could still fall apart, the person said. OpenRouter has also held early discussions with Databricks about a sale, they said, but it’s not clear what happened with those talks. The startup, last valued at US$1.3 billion, has been fielding takeover interest from other tech companies that could value the startup for billions of dollars. A deal for OpenRouter could help Stripe, which processes billions of transactions mainly for business customers, direct customers to the cheapest model and the ones best suited for specific tasks. Stripe already helps businesses track AI consumption in real time and bill customers directly per tokens. It bought Metronome, a startup that offers usage-based billing, earlier this year. Stripe’s free cash flow surged 52% to US$3.2 billion in 2025, giving it more firepower for acquisitions. OpenRouter has previously raised US$153 million in funding from investors including CapitalG, a venture arm of Google parent Alphabet, Menlo Ventures and Andreessen Horowitz, and in April was generating US$50 million in annualized revenue as of April, up five-fold since October. https://tinyurl.com/2s4w92by

Alphabet stock jumps after Information report of new Google chip.

Alphabet stock jumped 3% on Monday morning after The Information reported that Google was working on a new chip that could be 6 to 10 times more efficient than its current line of homegrown AI chips. The new chip, internally dubbed “Frozen v2,” works by etching the blueprint for Google’s Gemini AI model into the silicon, making the chip faster and more efficient by cutting down on the number of decisions necessary when running Gemini models. Google expects that the chip could launch as early as 2028. If successful, the Frozen chip could help address Google’s compute crunch. On recent earnings calls, Google executives have said that its cloud computing business is capacity constrained. But the chip also represents a bet on Google’s current model architecture: While some changes will be possible, including updating model weights, the chip will be usable for future models only if they keep using the same underlying architecture. https://tinyurl.com/2std9vht

Google Cloud growth drives Alphabet 24% revenue increase.

Alphabet’s revenue grew 24% year-over-year to US$119.8 billion in the second quarter, driven by especially strong growth in Google’s cloud-computing unit. Google Cloud’s revenue grew 82% year-over-year USto $24.8 billion, outpacing the previous quarter’s 63% year-over-year growth, the company reported on Wednesday. Operating income growth in that division was even more dramatic, more than tripling to US$8.8 billion, underlining the unit’s growing contribution to Google’s overall profits. Google said the cloud computing business had a US$514 billion backlog as of the second quarter, reflecting contractual commitments from Google’s customers, up from US$460 billion the previous quarter. Google also increased its capital expenditure projection for full-year 2026 to US$195 billion to US$205 billion from US$180 billion to US$190 billion, which Chief Financial Officer Anat Ashkenazi said was to accelerate expansion of cloud capacity to meet growing demand. Google remains capacity constrained in its cloud business, meaning that there’s more demand for services than Google can meet, said Ashkenazi, who also reiterated that Google plans to increase its capex further next year. In the earnings call, Pichai acknowledged that Google is behind on AI coding, although he said that isn’t the only AI application that businesses want. Google is focused on catching up on coding, Pichai said. “There are areas where we’ve acknowledged we need to improve,” Pichai said. “Coding and agentic coding is an example of that, and I think the teams are very very focused on it.” Alphabet shares were down about 4% in after-hours trading, after sliding during the earnings call. Alphabet’s growth shows that despite questions over whether Google is falling behind in AI model development, its core businesses continue to gush cash, in part driven by customer demand for AI. Google Search, still the company’s main revenue driver, generated US$63.3 billion in revenue, although its 17% year-over-year growth was slightly slower than the previous quarter. CEO Sundar Pichai said in the earnings statement release that demand for AI infrastructure and services drove Cloud growth. Alphabet’s overall net profit nearly quadrupled, though that reflected in part a US$99 billion gain from net unrealized gains on its equity securities. While the company didn’t specify the investments, the gain is likely driven by Alphabet’s positions in SpaceX and Anthropic. For the first time in the second quarter, Google delivered its AI chips, tensor processing units, to customer data centers. TPUs represent a burgeoning new business line as Google starts to compete with Nvidia on chips. Most of the revenue from TPU delivery will come in 2027, Ashkenazi said. https://tinyurl.com/28juxx7z

Google says it holds US$94.1 billion in SpaceX stock.

Alphabet’s Google disclosed Thursday it owns US$94.1 billion in SpaceX shares, representing the bulk of a US$99 billion in unrealized gains in marketable securities in the second quarter. The tech giant’s marketable equity securities include US$80 billion in SpaceX shares it can’t sell in the short-term and US$14.1 billion locked up through the third quarter of 2027, according to a quarterly filing. SpaceX’s June 12 IPO included restrictions on founders, employees and early private investors from selling their shares immediately after a company goes public. SpaceX shares closed at US$118.24 Thursday, down from their US$135 IPO price. Google was an early investor in SpaceX, pouring US$900 million in the company in 2015 when the rocket company was valued at roughly US$10 billion. The bet proved lucrative. Starlink has since launched over 5,000 low-Earth-orbit satellites and become SpaceX’s financial engine, generating the vast majority of its revenue today. https://tinyurl.com/e7tx94t8

Intel shares jump 12% after second quarter report shows it generated US$4.5 billion in cash.

Intel shares rose 12% in after-hours trading after the company said revenue growth hit a 15-year high in the second quarter on the back of chip demand from AI customers. Intel’s data center and AI hardware unit grew 59% to US$6.3 billion as central processing units, one of Intel’s longtime fortes, benefited from AI demand that relies on part on the chips. That includes AI agents, which use software tools to perform tasks over extended periods. These workloads rely heavily on memory and so-called system orchestration—areas where CPUs outperform graphics processing units that are used for heavy number-crunching. AMD and Nvidia also have been reporting stronger sales of CPUs in addition to their GPUs. There was also good news in the Intel chip foundry business, whose revenue rose 31% to US$5.8 billion in the quarter while shrinking its negative operating margin nearly 18 percentage points compared to a year earlier. The U.S. government has invested in Intel in part because of the strategic national importance of this business; today, the world’s most important chip foundries lie in Taiwan. Just as important, Intel overall generated about US$4.5 billion in free cash flow in the quarter. The company has been burning lots of cash for years, including in the first quarter of this year. Overall, revenue rose 25% in the second quarter, though the company said revenue would rise between 15% and 23% in the current quarter. https://tinyurl.com/2te24bzk

IBM cuts revenue target as AI eats into its sales.

IBM on Wednesday said it was reducing its full-year projection for revenue growth to between 4% and 5% this year compared to an earlier forecast of more than 5% growth. The lowered forecast came during the company’s quarterly earnings report, which showed sluggish sales growth. The company first warned shareholders about the slowdown last week. IBM’s revenue in the second quarter rose 1% to US$17.2 billion, with revenue in its data center mainframe unit down 7% and revenue in its software business up 5%. The company, which makes the bulk of its revenue from software sales, attributed the weak growth to customers spending more on AI. IBM shares fell 25% last week when it disclosed its slowing growth but rose around 2% on Wednesday after it reported earnings. During the company’s earnings call Wednesday, CEO Arvind Krishna said IBM is confident that it will see rising demand for its technology but that it failed to close several large deals it was expecting in the last quarter, in part because customers were spending money on other AI-related products. “It comes down to execution. That is where we fell short in the second quarter,” Krishna said. He added that the company will aim to accelerate sales by hiring more forward deployed engineers while using AI to cut costs and “accelerate productivity” in its sales organization. https://tinyurl.com/y29rufxc

Tesla’s revenue climbed 26% in the second quarter.

Tesla’s revenue jumped 26% year over year in the second quarter, boosted by its vehicle deliveries and the company’s energy business. Even as the company generated more cash from its day-to-day business, it spent heavily on new manufacturing capacity and AI projects, sending its free cash flow into the negative. Tesla’s capital expenditures more than doubled from a year earlier to nearly US$5.8 billion. In its quarterly presentation, Tesla said it had started production of the Cybercab at its factory in Austin, Texas and is in the process of continuing its Robotaxi expansion into Las Vegas, Nevada, and Phoenix, Arizona, after releasing the service in two new Florida cities on Tuesday. The company also said it had begun installing production lines for its Optimus humanoid robot in its Fremont Factory after decommissioning Model S and Model X manufacturing lines earlier this year. https://tinyurl.com/2z574zdp

AI server maker Supermicro surged 17% after announcing new orders.

Supermicro said Tuesday it had received new orders worth more than US$60 billion in its June quarter, sending its shares up 17% after normal trading hours. The Nvidia server producer made the announcement in a preliminary business update ahead of the company’s official earnings release Aug. 11. It also said gross margins will be better than expected, between 15% and 17%, almost double its earlier forecast for the quarter. The company’s shares are down big overall from their highs in 2024 due to a variety of factors, including needing to make large purchases for components, share sales to support some of those purchases, and regulatory probes stemming from the arrest of employees who allegedly diverted Nvidia-powered servers to China despite U.S. export controls aimed at preventing that. Supermicro said the new backlog is expected to be spread across “future quarters” and won’t be paid all at once. Supermicro estimates that revenue for the June quarter will be near the low end of its earlier forecast, US$11 billion to US$12.5 billion. Still, it’s a good sign for AI server demand; Supermicro generated US$34 billion in revenue in the 12 months that ended in March. Supermicro did not reveal which customers placed the new orders, but longtime customer SpaceXAI could be a contributor; Supermicro CEO Charles Liang posted on X in June that Supermicro is involved in supplying a large AI data center for SpaceXAI. SpaceXAI is buying tens of billions’ worth of Nvidia’s most advanced server racks from Supermicro and Dell, according to multiple people with knowledge of the work. While Supermicro doesn’t typically report order backlogs in earnings reports, in March it reported US$2 billion of remaining performance obligations, which are legally binding payments it expects to receive, mostly within the next year or so. https://tinyurl.com/4mcy594u

SpaceX snaps 7-day losing streak, sets earnings date that triggers first big share unlock.

SpaceX’s stock gained 3% on Tuesday, snapping a seven-day losing streak after setting its maiden earnings report, which coincides with a major share lock-up expiration. Elon Musk’s aerospace and defense contractor on Monday announced Aug. 4 as its debut earnings report after its record initial public offering. The date also triggers the company’s unique lock-up period, which allows insiders to begin selling shares earlier than the typical 180-day period. SpaceX took a staggered approach, allowing insiders to sell portions of their stock at earlier intervals to prevent massive selling and price volatility. The first earnings report paves the way for investors to sell 20% of their eligible locked-up stock, a total of up to 911.5 million shares, on the second full trading day immediately following the first earnings release date, Aug. 6. An additional 10% could be freed up if the stock closes at least 30% above the IPO price for five of the ten trading days heading into the report. As of Monday’s close, SpaceX shares had shed nearly half their value from the company’s intraday high of US$225.64 per share on June 16, or 43% from its all-time high closing price of US$211.39 on that same day. https://tinyurl.com/mu27km48

Short sellers notch US$15.5 billion profit as SpaceX shares slide.

Short sellers targeting SpaceX shares are sitting on an estimated US$15.5 billion in paper profit since the rockets-to-AI firm’s mid-June initial public offering, as its stock slipped below the IPO price, according to data through Tuesday from analytics firm Ortex Technologies. Short sellers, who borrow shares ⁠to sell them and later buy them back at a lower price for a profit, have pressed their bearish bets on SpaceX as the company’s shares slipped below its IPO price of US$135 from a post-IPO high of US$225.64. SpaceX shares have been volatile, experiencing brief bouts of strength before slipping further. On Wednesday, the stock dropped to a new low of US$115.26. “There is no sign of short sellers taking profits on SpaceX,” Ortex co-founder Peter Hillerberg said. “If anything they are leaning in harder,” Hillerberg said. About 360 million SpaceX shares, ‌about ⁠56% of the free float, were out on loan, Ortex data through Tuesday showed. https://tinyurl.com/3fa3yhmf

Reddit stock sinks on report it may not renew Google AI content deal.

Shares of Reddit slid 8% on Wednesday after the Wall Street Journal reported the company has discussed shutting off Google’s access to its content for artificial intelligence use. Reddit stock is down roughly 25% year-to-date. The two companies struck a deal in 2024 to allow the search giant to train its AI models on Reddit’s content. But as Google’s AI summaries reduced traffic to websites from the search results page, Reddit is reconsidering the benefits of the deal, according to the Journal, citing people familiar with the matter. According to the report, the US$60 million-a-year deal is ending soon, and the companies are in talks about potentially renewing the partnership. https://tinyurl.com/2vsbc7rh

Nvidia forms US$500 billion AI ‘partnership’ with memory chip giant SK.

Nvidia on Friday announced a US$500 billion partnership with the conglomerate that owns SK Hynix, whose high-bandwidth memory chips are critical to Nvidia’s AI servers. The partnership aims to help Nvidia access more memory chips and fill more data centers with its servers. Nvidia’s representatives didn’t elaborate on which firms would spend such a large amount or precisely what it would be for. Nvidia and the SK Hynix parent company said they would build two gigawatts of AI cloud capacity together, which could cost around US$100 billion, based on today’s prices for data centers that consume such power. Their engineers also plan to work more closely together to develop new high-bandwidth memory products. An Nvidia executive said the company’s biggest priority is to get its AI servers online as fast as possible, so it’s helping more customers find land, power, memory and raw materials to make AI data centers happen quickly. “ What’s limiting the access to compute capacity is the fact that it’s very hard to find powered data centers, powered land,” said Raj Mirpuri, Nvidia’s vice president of global AI clouds and infrastructure, in a briefing with reporters. For instance, he said Nvidia helped Naver, the South Korean search firm, secure access to land and power to expand an AI data center from 55 megawatts to 200 MW by 2028. (Such a facility is relatively small compared to AI facilities underway in the U.S.) Nvidia also plans to invest US$1 billion in Naver and asset manager Brookfield has committed to fund the project with US$9 billion. Naver is set to pay for the rest. The new data center is expected to start with Nvidia’s Grace Blackwell server racks and later add next-generation Vera Rubin racks. Nvidia is increasingly using its balance sheet to help its customers afford more AI chips and help its cloud provider partners get financing to build new facilities for the chips. https://tinyurl.com/yc22smzp

AMD launches Helios, its first rack AI system to rival Nvidia, adding Microsoft as newest buyer.

After a decade-long comeback, chip giant Advanced Micro Devices is preparing to ship its first rack-scale system for artificial intelligence, called Helios, to a growing list of customers that now includes Microsoft. It’s the first rival to Nvidia’s wildly popular Grace Blackwell and Vera Rubin systems, and is aiming to give the world’s most valuable chipmaker its first real competition in years. Microsoft announced Monday it will use the Helios system in its data centers, joining Meta, OpenAI, Oracle and others in a race to grab as much compute as possible. AMD will begin shipping to customers, including Microsoft, later this year. Shares of AMD climbed more than 4% on Monday. Microsoft stock climbed more than 1%. https://tinyurl.com/9djayd2a

Microsoft commits billions for ‘shared’ GPUs with Europe’s Mistral.

Microsoft will spend billions of dollars to purchase new Nvidia GPUs that it plans to share with the European AI startup Mistral, the two companies announced Tuesday. The move follows Microsoft’s pledge last year to spend more money on building new data centers in Europe, which Microsoft president Brad Smith said was meant to give its European customers reassurance that “geopolitical volatility” wouldn’t disrupt their businesses amid the Trump administration’s trade war against the E.U. It also comes as Microsoft embraces open source models such as Mistral’s as part of a broader effort to lessen its reliance on Anthropic and OpenAI and reduce AI costs for itself and its customers. Microsoft did not disclose the exact size or terms of Tuesday’s deal, but said it plans to set up new European data center capacity for Mistral, which will use the Nvidia GPUs to train and run future AI models. Microsoft will also use the “shared” GPUs to serve AI models to European customers of its Azure cloud service, and said that it’s adding more of Mistral’s AI models to its own Copilot AI software. https://tinyurl.com/5n9a6yd9

Alibaba unveils new model as Chinese AI firms shake up Silicon Valley.

Chinese tech giant Alibaba Group has unveiled a preview version of Qwen3.8 Max, its latest and most powerful model, saying its performance is comparable to that of top U.S. models. Alibaba said in a post on X that it believes Qwen3.8 Max, its largest-ever model with 2.4 trillion parameters, is “second only to [Anthropic’s] Fable 5.” Alibaba’s announcement comes just a few days after Chinese startup Moonshot AI’s new model, Kimi K3, became a global sensation because of its capabilities that match or even surpass frontier models from Anthropic and OpenAI on some benchmarks. The ambitious new open-source models from Moonshot and Alibaba show how Chinese AI developers are stepping up their efforts to challenge the most advanced models from Anthropic and OpenAI. Another Chinese competitor, MiniMax, is currently developing a new large-size model with 2.7 trillion parameters, The Information reported earlier this month. Alibaba is changing its strategy with the new model release. Previously, it always offered the largest, most powerful Max versions of its LLMs—such as Qwen3 Max, Qwen3.5 Max and Qwen3.7 Max—as proprietary models, while open-sourcing many other smaller versions. But this time, the company is open-sourcing Qwen3.8 Max, in a move that could further intensify the competition between U.S. frontier ones and their increasingly capable Chinese open-source alternatives. https://tinyurl.com/a56yb587

China’s Zhipu AI builds data center using only domestic chips.

Chinese AI developer Zhipu AI has completed the construction of a large-scale data center in China that only uses domestic chips, Bloomberg and Chinese media outlets reported. The new 1-gigawatt data center is the latest indication of how China’s AI sector is stepping up its effort to reduce its dependence on U.S. chips from Nvidia. How to secure enough computing resources is an urgent question for Zhipu and other Chinese AI firms, given the surging demand for their open-source models and U.S. export restrictions on advanced chips. Beijing-based Zhipu has begun partially operating the new 1-gigawatt data center, with several computing clusters each with more than 10,000 chips, according to Bloomberg. Earlier this month, The Information reported that Zhipu is considering designing its own AI chip that is optimized for running the company’s GLM series of large language models. Zhipu has made preliminary inquiries with some Chinese chip design houses about the possibility of working together on a bespoke AI processor. https://tinyurl.com/4hnup66h

OpenAI says its AI broke containment, went to internet and hacked Hugging Face.

OpenAI said Tuesday that an AI agent it developed went rogue last week and hacked into the systems of AI model repository Hugging Face. OpenAI said that it was testing the agent, powered by its most advanced publicly available model, GPT-5.6 Sol, and other unreleased models to see how well it fared at cybersecurity tasks. The tests were supposed to take place in a “sandbox” environment without any access to the internet, OpenAI said, but the agent found a previously undiscovered vulnerability in software connected to the sandbox, accessed the internet and hacked into Hugging Face to download answers to a common cybersecurity test. The model took these actions in an apparent effort to perform better at OpenAI’s cyber evaluations, the company said. The incident shows how advanced AI models have in some ways exceeded human cybersecurity capabilities, in terms of the speed with which they find and exploit software vulnerabilities. OpenAI and Anthropic have both warned that their most advanced models can hack into popular applications. They have made these models available to a select group of companies and government agencies to test and patch their own software while publicly releasing neutered versions of those models that they say can’t carry out such hacks. Hugging Face said in a blog post that when it originally discovered the hack last week, before it realized the cause, it tried using the publicly available versions of OpenAI’s models to fix the vulnerabilities but those models were unable to do so. OpenAI said on Tuesday that it has since granted Hugging Face access to full-fledged versions of its models so the company can improve its defenses. https://tinyurl.com/2wa8w8uv

Prediction Markets swell to 27% of sports bets during World Cup.

Prediction-market trading has surged during a blowout World Cup, far outpacing the growth at traditional sportsbooks and driving home the competitive threat that companies like Kalshi now pose to the sports-gambling industry. Kalshi, the biggest player, has repeatedly broken its own trading records during the World Cup, doubling the peak it hit just a week before the tournament began, during the New York Knicks’ dramatic playoff run, and running at nearly 10 times what it was at many points early in the year. H2 Gambling Capital estimates that prediction-market activity was around 27% of all legal US sports-betting volume during the World Cup, up from 9% at the beginning of the year, based on public data from the tournament’s first month. The comparison is imprecise because prediction markets and gambling companies calculate activity differently, and the sportsbooks have not yet released their recent internal numbers. But it illustrates the speed at which the exchanges are gaining ground. In a stark sign of how the competitive dynamic has changed, Kalshi had more daily users on its phone app during the tournament than either of the two largest US online sports-gambling apps, DraftKings and FanDuel, according to Apptopia. https://tinyurl.com/jkcwz7rd