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Original title: Everybody Wants to Rule the (AI) Stack.
Original author: David Levy
Editor’s note: As AI computing demand continues to grow, competition for new cloud providers is shifting from “who has more GPUs” to “who can control the complete technology stack from hardware to software.” As pure GPU power rental becomes increasingly difficult to escape price competition, a more critical question is emerging: what ultimately determines the value of AI infrastructure—are the GPUs themselves, or the software layer that schedules, orchestrates, and optimizes how GPUs operate efficiently?
The author, David Levy, traces his story through Nscale’s roughly $165 million acquisition of Anyscale, mapping deals such as Nebius’s acquisition of Eigen AI, CoreWeave’s acquisition of Weights & Biases, and IREN’s acquisition of Mirantis. These five acquisitions point to the same trend: new cloud companies that have GPUs, power, and data centers are collectively extending into the MLOps and AI orchestration layer.

Original title: Neocloud Economics
Original author: APP ECONOMY INSIGHTS
Editor’s note: Generative AI continues to drive sustained growth in compute demand. Industry discussions are shifting from “Is there enough GPU?” to “Who can convert electricity, chips, and data centers into usable compute at lower capital cost?” As growth in orders and compute shortages gradually become a consensus, a more critical question begins to emerge: before revenue is realized, new cloud providers are investing billions of dollars—are they building the next generation of AI infrastructure, or are they using debt and capital expenditures to pre-finance future demand?

BlockBeats message, August 17: after Samsung, Western Digital, and Toshiba, SK hynix has also been reported to have an SSD after-sales policy of “refund only and no replacement.” A Reddit user recently filed a warranty claim for an SK hynix SSD. However, because the official side has no replacement inventory available, the final offer was not to replace the product with the same model. Instead, the user received a refund based on the original purchase price.
This is especially awkward given that SSD prices are continuing to rise. Taking SK hynix Platinum P41 and P51 as examples: for some capacities, prices have already increased noticeably compared with their earlier low prices, and some have even reached about twice the price from the same year. If an SSD that was bought at a low price in the past fails now, and the user can only get back the original amount paid, they may no longer be able to afford products with the same specifications.

BlockBeats message: On August 17, this week’s market will see the Federal Reserve’s July meeting minutes, the August PMI, and earnings reports from retail giants such as Walmart and Target. Recent U.S. CPI, PPI, and retail sales data have been weak, and market pricing for a September rate hike has fallen to about 27%. Goldman Sachs also believes a September rate hike is “very unlikely,” which has eased near-term interest-rate pressure somewhat. However, the FOMC minutes still need to be assessed for officials’ attitudes toward inflation and energy prices. If the minutes deliver a more hawkish signal, interest-rate expectations may be repriced again.
Meanwhile, whether the Strait of Hormuz can truly restore commercial shipping will directly affect oil prices and inflation expectations. According to reports, Iran and Oman have made progress on shipping routes, but actual shipping volumes remain far below normal levels. Therefore, this is still diplomatic progress rather than a resolved supply risk. If shipping continues to recover, the crude oil risk premium could decline; conversely, if talks break down or maritime tensions escalate, oil prices moving higher again would increase global inflation and interest-rate pressure.

Original title: (AI giant internship pay revealed: Anthropic over 5,000 RMB, Kimi can only rank in the fourth tier)
Original author: Wenser, Odaily Planet Daily
In 2026, the “fundamentals” of internship pay for domestic college students are: the monthly median is 5,000 RMB. If it’s in a first-tier city and the role is a technical position, you can reach 10,000 RMB.
I was pretty okay with accepting the era’s dividend setup and admitting I made a professional wrong turn. I wasn’t that bitter—until I stumbled upon—
An AI company intern makes over 5,000 RMB a day……a day? 5,000?
It’s really hard to take. I went ahead and looked up internship salaries for 12 of the world’s AI giants—from OpenAI and Anthropic to ByteDance and DeepSeek, from official public hiring pages to sites like levels.fyi and Glassdoor.

BlockBeats message: On August 17, according to GMGN monitoring, the BSC on-chain Meme coin “Niu Lai” has seen trading volume over the past 24 hours exceed $44 million. The per-coin trade size has nearly matched the entire Meme coin sector on the Robinhood Chain. The market cap has declined slightly and is currently at $35.2 million.
CoinGecko data shows that Robinhood Chain Meme coins generated total trading volume of about $53.2 million over the past 24 hours. The single-coin trading volume of “Niu Lai” is already roughly 83% of that figure.
When compared horizontally with mainstream crypto assets, its trading heat has also entered the top-tier range. CoinGlass spot trading volume shows that HYPE and DOGE’s trading amounts over the past 24 hours were approximately $53.83 million and $44.70 million, ranking 12th to 14th across the entire market.

Original title: (Today, the world finally understands why the “AI stock god” fell)
Original author: Azuma, Odaily Planet Daily
In the early hours of August 15, Beijing time, the Situational Awareness LP fund, once dubbed the “AI stock god” by the market and owned by Leopold Aschenbrenner, officially released its 13F quarterly holdings report.
· What is a 13F? It is a quarterly disclosure document that is mandated by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for funds with asset management scale exceeding $100 million. The SEC requires that funds meeting the disclosure requirements submit this document within 45 days after the end of each natural quarter. In the filing, funds must highlight the U.S.-listed stocks, call/put options, convertible bonds, and certain ETF positions they held at the end of the previous quarter.

BlockBeats message: On August 17, Goldman Sachs said that given U.S. inflation is cooling, market expectations for further Fed rate hikes remain too aggressive. In a report, Goldman’s chief economist Jan Hatzius wrote that due to weak retail sales data, disappointing employment figures, and continued easing of inflation data, the likelihood that the Fed will raise rates at its September meeting is “extremely low.”
Hatzius wrote: “Based on our baseline economic forecast, over time the probability that inflation data improves further is higher than the probability that it worsens again. We still believe that the market’s pricing of the federal funds rate is overly hawkish.” The data shows that the market has pushed back expectations for the next 25-basis-point Fed rate hike to January next year; a week earlier, the market had fully expected a rate hike in December.

Original title: Charts of the Week: Head In The Neoclouds
Original author: Moses Sternstein, a16z
Editor’s note: Against the backdrop of generative AI driving a new round of compute investment, the market’s discussion of AI infrastructure is shifting from “do we have enough GPUs” to “who can deliver compute in a sustainable way.” When it has become consensus that model training, inference demand, and data center expansion are all accelerating, a deeper underlying question begins to surface: can the rapid growth in compute demand truly translate into stable profits and cash flow?
In a16z New Media’s (Charts of the Week), author Moses Sternstein starts with emerging cloud companies such as CoreWeave, Nebius, and Applied Digital to discuss the growth, valuations, and profitability contradictions in the AI compute market, and then further expands into horizontal SaaS, model routing, and competition for talent at frontier labs.