PANews

PANews, October 29 — According to an official Alphabet announcement, Alphabet’s revenue in the third quarter of 2026 was $127.6 billion, up 25% year over year. Google Cloud revenue rose 103% year over year to $30.7 billion, while Google Services revenue increased 11% to $96.3 billion. Operating profit for the quarter was $40.6 billion, up 30% year over year, with an operating margin of 31.8%. Net income attributable to common shareholders was $26.2 billion, and earnings per share were $2.12, compared with $2.87 in the same period last year. CEO Sundar Pichai said the Gemini app has surpassed 1 billion users, and first-party model APIs process nearly 32 billion tokens per minute.

PANews, October 29 — According to an official Microsoft announcement, revenue for the first quarter of fiscal year 2027 (ended September 30, 2026) was $92.3 billion, up 19% year over year; net income was $36.6 billion, up 32%; and non-GAAP earnings per share were $4.89, up 18%. Azure revenue grew 48% year over year, while Microsoft Cloud revenue totaled $63.9 billion, up 30%. Commercial remaining performance obligations rose 73% to $677 billion. Capital expenditures on property and equipment for the quarter were $39.4 billion. Microsoft CFO Amy Hood said revenue, operating income, and earnings per share all exceeded expectations.

PANews, October 29 — According to Binance market data, U.S. stocks closed higher, with all three major indexes posting gains. The Dow rose 0.50% during the day, the Nasdaq gained 0.95%, and the S&P 500 climbed 0.58%. Among notable stocks, SKHY rose 13.32%, SanDisk (SNDK) gained 7.39%, Riot Platforms (RIOT) rose 6.47%, and Micron (MU) climbed 6.04%, while Robinhood (HOOD) fell 3.61% and AMD gained 3.32%.

PANews, October 29 — According to CoinDesk, the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) hosted an artificial intelligence forum on Wednesday. CFTC Chairman Mike Selig said that the convergence of superintelligence, cryptocurrencies, and modern financial infrastructure could transform markets, with AI agents leading markets toward “autonomous trading.” He also raised a series of regulatory questions, including whether developers of AI agents need to register, who should be held responsible if an agent goes rogue, how regulators can identify whom an agent is acting on behalf of, and whether a new “Know Your Agent” (KYA) identity verification mechanism is needed. Selig said CFTC staff are already using AI extensively to monitor derivatives markets, and that crypto rulemaking could serve as a model for addressing these issues. No new AI rules or guidance were announced at the forum.

PANews, October 29 — According to an official statement from the Federal Reserve, the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) announced that it would leave the target range for the federal funds rate unchanged at 3.75%–4.00%, in line with market expectations. The decision passed by a vote of 10–2, with Fed Governor Lisa Cook and Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack dissenting in favor of a 25-basis-point rate hike. The statement said that economic activity is expanding at a solid pace and inflation remains elevated. Fed Chair Warsh will hold a press conference at 02:30 Beijing time.

PANews, October 29 — ChatGPT posted on X that users can now interact with their personal agent, Dot, via iMessage or RCS text messages, assigning tasks through text, images, or voice memos. Dot can also proactively send text messages to keep users updated on task progress. The feature is limited to messages exchanged between users and their own Dot; it does not allow Dot or OpenAI to access users’ other text conversations. The feature is currently rolling out as a preview to Pro users in the United States. OpenAI launched the Dot personal agent in late September.

PANews, October 29 — According to Reuters, citing two people familiar with the matter, the U.S. Department of Justice is making inquiries into Nvidia’s $12.93 billion acquisition of AI open-source platform Hugging Face, focusing on the deal’s impact on competition in the AI industry and whether Nvidia could use the acquisition to gain control of key AI distribution channels and suppress competitors. The inquiries are part of the DOJ’s years-long investigation into Nvidia’s acquisition, investment, and sales practices, which also covers its acquisitions of SchedMD and Run:ai, as well as its technology licensing deal with Groq. Nvidia expects the acquisition to be completed in the first half of 2027. Nvidia and the DOJ both declined to comment.

PANews, October 29 — According to Bloomberg, Fed Chair Warsh said at a press conference following the rate-setting meeting that the Fed would gradually adjust its meeting schedule starting next year. Warsh said that eight meetings a year was the right number for the FOMC, but that one of the eight meetings in 2027 would be replaced by a strategic discussion without a rate vote. This would increase to two meetings in 2028, reducing the number of rate-setting meetings to six per year. Warsh first proposed reducing the number of rate-setting meetings at the July meeting, so that more data could accumulate between meetings. Previously, the Fed voted 10–2 to leave interest rates unchanged. Bloomberg also reported that bond traders are currently betting on about a 90% chance of a Fed rate hike in December.

PANews, October 29 — According to an official Oracle press release, Oracle announced its long-term financial targets at its Investor Day in Las Vegas: it expects to achieve positive free cash flow in the second half of fiscal 2028, generate at least $30 billion in free cash flow in fiscal 2029, and achieve self-funded growth starting in fiscal 2029. Its target for total revenue in fiscal 2030 is more than $225 billion, representing a compound annual growth rate of over 35% compared with fiscal 2026, with a non-GAAP operating margin of over 40% and non-GAAP earnings per share of more than $21. Oracle also said that additional financing through fiscal 2030 will be limited to $20 billion, split equally between equity and debt, excluding the refinancing of existing debt. Bloomberg reported that investors had generally expected Oracle’s free cash flow to remain negative in fiscal 2029. Following the announcement, Oracle shares rose as much as 9.60%.

PANews, October 29 — According to Bloomberg, citing people familiar with the matter, Anthropic plans to offer shares to UK retail investors in its IPO through investment platform RetailBook. Anthropic will use the UK’s Public Offer Platform (POP) regime, which does not require it to prepare a UK prospectus. RetailBook, a licensed POP operator, will coordinate the offering, and other investment platforms can submit orders through it. SpaceX sold $364 million worth of shares to UK retail investors through the same mechanism in June this year. The plans have not been finalized and could still change. Anthropic filed its IPO application this Monday and plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT. Its filing shows that individual investors in the UK and some parts of Europe will be able to participate in the offering.

PANews, October 29 — According to an official Apple press release, Apple has unveiled a new MacBook Pro featuring a PROLED XDR display. It is the first Mac to support touch input, with touch sensors integrated directly into the OLED panel, and also adds Dynamic Island. The new models are powered by M5 Pro and M5 Max chips and support up to 128GB of unified memory. In the U.S., the 14-inch M5 Pro model starts at $2,899, while the 16-inch M5 Pro model starts at $3,399. The M5 Max models are priced at $4,499 and $4,799, respectively. Pre-orders begin today, with deliveries starting November 6.

PANews, October 29 — According to U.Today, Ripple CEO Brad Garlinghouse responded to market rumors at the opening of the Swell 2026 conference that Ripple would scale back its support for XRP and focus instead on its RLUSD stablecoin. He said, “We will never abandon XRP,” and that Ripple would never do anything it believed would harm the XRP ecosystem. Garlinghouse said XRP’s momentum was “significant,” and that RLUSD was one of the factors driving it. The two are complementary.

PANews, October 29 — According to Google's official blog, Google has released its next-generation frontier model, Gemini 4 Carbon, calling it its most capable model to date and saying it delivers industry-leading performance in cybersecurity and long-horizon tasks. The model ranked first with a score of 59 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (v5.0) and scored 88.2% on the vulnerability discovery benchmark SEC-bench Pro. Gemini 4 Carbon will begin rolling out this week to select cybersecurity defenders, then expand gradually to trusted partners through the Fairwind program. A broader release for developers, businesses, and consumers will follow soon. The introductory API pricing is $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens, increasing to $4 and $20, respectively, after the launch period. The model arrives just two weeks after the release of Gemini 4 Argon.

PANews, October 29 — The U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) announced that it will hold an industry roundtable on December 15 to discuss the feasibility of implementing 24/7 trading in derivatives markets. The meeting will continue the CFTC’s work this summer seeking public feedback on extending trading hours for standard futures contracts and introducing perpetual contracts.
The meeting will reportedly be held at the CFTC’s headquarters in Washington and livestreamed to the public. The detailed agenda, speakers, and registration information will be announced later. Discussions will cover topics including overnight trading, asset tokenization, infrastructure development, staffing, and operational readiness, exploring how to promote financial innovation while protecting market participants and preserving the integrity and resilience of U.S. derivatives markets.

PANews, October 29 — According to Bloomberg, an analysis by market surveillance firm Solidus Labs found that a trader placed more than $170 million in suspicious orders through two accounts on Hyperliquid during sharp swings in international oil prices from March 8 to 10, allegedly using “spoofing” to influence market prices. The accounts placed a large number of orders on one side of the order book and quickly canceled them, while executing trades on the other side. Solidus said the trader made about $119,000 during the period in question, but the trader’s identity and intent to manipulate the market have not been confirmed.

PANews, October 29 — According to Bloomberg, Anthropic’s planned IPO could value the company at $1.5 trillion. It is also planning to invest about $800 billion in computing infrastructure, potentially benefiting TSMC, SK Hynix, and Samsung Electronics. Strong demand and related restrictions make it difficult for Asian investors to participate directly in the IPO, prompting them to turn to indirect investment channels such as crypto derivatives.
OKX and Binance have reportedly launched perpetual futures linked to Anthropic’s valuation. The implied valuation on Hyperliquid-affiliated platform EntropyIO’s related perpetual futures briefly reached about $1.88 trillion. However, Anthropic still faces risks, including an uncertain path to profitability, heavy funding requirements for AI projects, and intense industry competition. These “proxy” investments may also be affected by factors in other industries.

PANews, October 29 — NVIDIA announced that its open-weight Nemotron 3.5 Transcribe speech model now supports RTX Spark, enabling speech transcription, speaker recognition, and translation in 40 languages. Liquid AI’s LFM3 series models are also now supported and can run locally and be fine-tuned. In addition, NVIDIA has added GPU resource management features that let users allocate GPU computing power between foreground applications and background AI agents. RTX Spark laptops are now available from manufacturers including ASUS, Dell, HP, Lenovo, Microsoft, and MSI, with prices starting at $2,599. They offer up to 128 GB of unified memory and up to 1 petaflop of FP4 AI compute performance.

PANews, October 29 — According to a press release from the Government of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, Christopher Hui, Secretary for Financial Services and the Treasury, chaired the sixth meeting of the Fintech Project Implementation Steering Group. Participants exchanged views on various areas of fintech, including the proposed regulatory regime for virtual asset trading, custody, advisory and management services. The Hong Kong Monetary Authority also gave updates on Project Ensemble and the quantum readiness of Hong Kong’s banking sector. In addition, Hong Kong FinTech Week 2026, themed “FinTech Hub Connecting the World to Build the Future Together,” will be held jointly with the StartmeupHK Festival from November 2 to 6. Its main forum will take place at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre from November 2 to 3.

PANews, October 29 — According to Bloomberg, Solana is trying to shift from a growth model reliant on meme coins and speculative trading toward more mainstream financial applications, such as stablecoins and tokenized assets, in a bid to attract adoption by Wall Street institutions. Financial institutions including JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley and Standard Chartered, as well as payment networks such as Visa and Fiserv, have already begun conducting related business on the network.
However, as the crypto market slumps and competitors such as Hyperliquid gain ground, Solana faces challenges in transitioning its growth model. Data shows that SOL is down nearly 20% year to date, while U.S.-listed spot and staking SOL ETFs have seen outflows for two consecutive weeks this month, totaling about $50 million. Meanwhile, Solana’s share of on-chain perpetual futures trading volume has fallen from 17% to 6%.