RecodeX

📡 Hourly News Report | 00:00-01:00

1. The probability of a 25-basis-point rate hike by the U.S. Federal Reserve in September rose to 67%, while the probability of keeping interest rates unchanged is 30.5%.

2. The European Union has launched a tender plan to build up to seven AI superfactories, investing up to €10 billion to advance sovereign AI infrastructure.

3. Apple’s quarterly revenue hit a record high. iPhone revenue grew by nearly 22%, but the company’s current-quarter guidance fell short of expectations. The stock price dropped, and Nvidia’s market cap surpassed Apple again to reclaim the top spot globally.

4. Bitcoin ETF investors in the U.S. are currently facing an average loss of 22%. The Bitcoin ETF saw a net inflow of $233 million in a single day, with BlackRock contributing $183 million, accounting for 79%.

5. Article 50 of the EU’s AI Act has taken effect, requiring AI labels to be added to deepfakes, chatbots, and texts related to the public interest. Violators face fines of up to €15 million or 3% of global annual turnover.

6. OpenAI announced that its model has more than 1 billion active users and has been used by over 2 million companies.

7. U.S. Treasury Secretary Bessent said that core inflation in the U.S. is low and consumer confidence is strong, adding that the U.S. is searching for Iranian assets worldwide. The funds will be used for the Iranian people.

8. Reddit’s share price hit a record low with its largest drop ever, due to a lack of new AI trading and disappointing U.S. daily active user metrics.

📡 Startup & Investment News | July 31st

Today, the financing market is active. Large deals in areas such as AI, semiconductors, and new energy are appearing frequently, while multiple major M&A transactions are also being advanced. Capital continues to concentrate on leading technology companies.

🚀 Financing in the Primary Market

1. Xsight Labs completes a financing round of over $300 million. Post-investment valuation is $2.8 billion. Funds will be used to advance programmable Ethernet switches and 800G data processing units for applications in AI and cloud networks.

2. Simile completes a $200 million Series B round, valuing the company at $2 billion. Led by Greenoaks, the funds will be used to develop AI models that simulate human behavior.

3. Together AI completes an $800 million Series C round, with a valuation of $8.3 billion. Supported by Aramco Ventures, Nvidia, and others; its open-source inference platform has annual bookings exceeding $1.15 billion.

4. ChipAgents completes a $134 million Series A round. Semiconductor giants such as Micron and MediaTek invest. Its AI platform can shorten chip design cycles by more than 50%.

5. K2 Space completes a $500 million financing at a valuation of $6.8 billion. Funds will be used to expand satellite production capacity to serve commercial and defense customers.

6. Antora Energy completes a $550 million Series C round to build a carbon-block thermal battery factory, alleviating power bottlenecks for AI data centers.

7. Commonwealth Fusion Systems completes a $1 billion Series C round to advance the commercialization of nuclear fusion.

8. Moonshot completes a $3.5 billion financing, redefining valuations for large China-language models.

9. Yuanli Semiconductor completes an A round of over RMB 700 million. Cumulative financing in three months exceeds RMB 1.2 billion. The company will推进 chip productization and the rollout of compute-power products.

10. Eliyan receives a strategic investment of $145 million, with Lumentum and Cisco participating. Its technology can reduce the cost of advanced packaging for AI chips.

11. Xscape Photonics completes an $81 million financing round, supported by Nvidia. It is developing optical interconnect chip technology to replace copper links in AI data centers.

12. CAS (Institute of Chemical Physics) Yuanli Dynamics completes multi-billion RMB B2 round financing, invested by Chery Intelligent Technology. Funds will go toward R&D of new-energy intelligent agricultural machinery and embodied intelligent agri-robots, as well as overseas expansion.

13. CAS XinYang completes a round of funding at the 100-million RMB level. Led by Aier Eye Hospital Group. Funds will be used to build and industrialize a synthetic biology platform.

14. Qunteng Power completes over RMB 100 million in seed-round financing, jointly invested by Yunqi Capital and SenseTime Technology. Funds will be used for R&D of Physical AI core technologies and global expansion.

15. Bivop Semiconductor completes A+ round financing, with total funding exceeding RMB 900 million. The company will accelerate R&D and industrialization of integrated chips combining 5G/6G, low-orbit satellite communications, and on-device AI.

16. Xinqing Technology secures over $200 million in financing in the first half of the year. Investments include multiple industrial capitals and local state-owned capital. The company will push forward the commercialization of industrial-intelligence chips and on-device intelligent computing platforms.

17. CAIS secures a $170 million Series D round led by Vista Equity Partners, with a valuation exceeding $2 billion. Many top asset management firms participate.

18. Function Health receives $450 million in funding from General Catalyst, aiming to prove that preventive care is more economical than waiting to get sick.

19. HiDream.ai completes a RMB 1.5 billion Series C round to advance native multimodal world models and expand the AI product ecosystem.

20. Tongyi Medical (Shanghai SenseTime Healthcare?) completes a Series B round financing. Valuation exceeds RMB 10 billion and it has entered the Pre-IPO stage. Subsidiaries Xiwang and Daxiao robots are accelerating development, and the company is laying out an AI full-industry chain.

21. LiberAI completes a Pre-A+ round financing of several hundred million RMB. Investors include 360 ZhanTou, China Development Bank Financial, Innovation Workshop, CMC Capital, and others.

22. Biyang Pharma completes nearly RMB 200 million in Series A financing. Funds will be used to accelerate iteration of an AI + molecular design and optimization platform and the development of new drug pipelines.

23. Ratio Therapeutics completes a $70 million Series C round, with cumulative financing exceeding $240 million. Funds will be used to advance R&D of targeted radiotherapy drugs and expand production facilities.

24. Claros Technologies completes a $55 million Series B round to advance the commercialization of PFAS permanent destruction technology.

25. CoreMap raises $37 million in its financing round led by Medtronic.

26. CORE Biomedicine completes a $21 million Series A round and receives funding from Japan’s AMED. It will advance a precision oncology project based on cancer cell lineage.

27. Cenglang Bio completes financing totaling tens of millions of RMB. Exclusively invested by Beiyang Haitang Fund. Funds will be used for R&D of high-end flow cytometry technology and for global market expansion.

28. Torrey Pines Medicine completes tens of millions of RMB in angel-round financing to develop ultra-long-acting metabolic-disease therapies.

29. Aurenar completes a $5.7 million seed round to advance the non-invasive stroke neuromodulation device V-Link.

30. Vivid Dx completes a $15 million seed financing to develop a platform for rapid blood testing of infectious pathogens and antibiotic-sensitivity diagnostics.

31. Throne secures a $10 million Series A round led by Will Ventures to develop AI intestinal-health monitoring devices.

32. Healia receives $18 million in funding to reduce medical costs for dual-income families.

…

📡 Daily News Roundup | July 31

Today, global markets saw sharp swings amid technology giants’ earnings reports and a surge in AI investment sentiment. Microsoft’s market value jumped by $450 billion in a single day, setting a record. Amazon’s cloud business was strong, but weak Apple guidance raised concerns. At the same time, geopolitical risk escalated: Iran announced a pause in passage through the Strait of Hormuz, oil prices rose, and crypto markets came under pressure as Bitcoin fell below $63,000. On regulation, the US CLARITY Act faced delays, the Bank of Japan intervened in the FX market, and the EU AI Act took effect.

📊 Global Macro

1. In June, the US PCE price index fell 0.1% month over month, the first decline in six years. The year-over-year increase narrowed significantly.

2. The 30-year mortgage rate rose to 6.66%, the highest in a year, driven by higher energy prices and growing inflation concerns amid conflict in the Middle East.

3. The Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged at 1%, but one policymaker dissented and argued for a rate hike. Japan may have spent about 84.5 trillion yen to intervene in the FX market to support the yen, and the yen against the US dollar surged by as much as 3.3%.

4. The Fed’s July FOMC meeting kept rates unchanged. Dallas Fed President Logan voted against, warning that without action, inflation is unlikely to return to the 2% target, sending US stocks sharply lower across the board.

5. US Q2 GDP growth missed expectations, but domestic demand remained steady: private final sales to domestic purchasers reached the fastest pace since early 2023. Consumption is recovering, and AI investment is growing rapidly.

6. China’s July manufacturing PMI was 49.2%, below the breakeven line, with manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracting.

🤖 AI and Technology

1. Microsoft’s share price jumped more than 15%. The single-day market cap increase of $450 billion marked the largest-ever one-day percentage gain for a US individual stock. Accelerating Azure cloud growth and market recognition of AI spending helped drive the rally.

2. Amazon’s second-quarter revenue first surpassed $200 billion. AWS revenue rose 37% year over year to $42.2 billion. Backlog orders reached $496 billion, and after-hours shares rose more than 9%.

3. Apple’s fiscal Q3 revenue was $109.42 billion, beating expectations, but service revenue and Greater China business underperformed. Shares fell more than 4% after hours.

4. OpenAI cut the price of GPT-5.6 Luna by 80% and GPT-5.6 Terra by 20%, possibly in response to competition from Chinese AI players.

5. Huawei officially open-sourced the 50.5-billion-parameter openPangu-2.0-Pro model, boosting the development of the Ascend AI ecosystem.

6. MiniMax released a multimodal generative model, H3, supporting text, image, video, and audio understanding, and capable of outputting native dual-channel audio-video.

📈 Markets and Capital

1. South Korea’s KOSPI closed up 17.91%, recording the largest single-day gain in history. SK hynix and Samsung Electronics rose 30% and 26.81%, respectively.

2. All three major US stock indexes finished higher. The Nasdaq rose 2.78%, the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index jumped more than 8%, and total market capitalization increased by over $1.1 trillion in a single day.

3. The “Magnificent Four” US tech giants’ AI spending has already exceeded $1 trillion. Free cash flow fell to a ten-year low, and they still plan to continue making massive investments.

4. Together AI completed an $800 million Series C round at an $8.3 billion valuation, backed by Aramco Ventures, Nvidia, and others.

5. During the downturn, semiconductor ETFs attracted about $12 billion in inflows. Traders aggressively “bought the dip,” and the sector then rebounded sharply by 7%.

₿ Crypto Currencies and Digital Assets

1. Bitcoin fell below 63,000 USDT and is currently quoted at 62,999.49 USDT, down 2.75% over the day.

2. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded $233 million in net inflows in a single day, with BlackRock’s IBIT leading.

3. Coinbase’s Q2 revenue of $1.22 billion missed expectations. Net losses were $359 million, and shares fell more than 5% after hours. It increased its holdings by 819 Bitcoins.

4. Hardware wallet Coldcard Mk3 had 594 Bitcoins stolen due to a seed-generation flaw. The manufacturer advised users to move funds immediately.

5. Tether’s Q2 net operating profit was about $1.5 billion. Reserve assets exceeded liabilities by $4.11 billion. Gold holdings increased to 146 tons, and USDT’s market share surpassed 60%.

6. Led by the BIS, 28 global banks completed a pilot for tokenized cross-border payments. Settlement for 6 currencies averaging $1 million took about 80 seconds—far faster than the traditional SWIFT timeline of 1–2 days.

🌍 Geopolitics and Regulation

1. Iran announced that the Strait of Hormuz would pause passage. A key global oil shipping route was disrupted. WTI crude rose 2% to $84.31 per barrel, while gold fell 1.6% to $4,039.84 per ounce.

2. The US Treasury sanctioned two Iranian companies. Among them, Hormuz Safe accepted Bitcoin payments in exchange for passage, increasing geopolitical risk.

3. Trump announced a comprehensive disarmament agreement between Hamas and armed groups in Gaza, to be implemented in phases.

4. Twenty-six US states jointly sued the Trump administration, opposing work requirement rules under Medicaid assistance programs.

5. The EU’s AI Act transparency rules officially took effect, requiring AI systems to clearly inform users about whether the interaction partner is an artificial intelligence, and to label deepfake content.

6. Four departments jointly released the “Implementation Opinions on Improving Corporate Governance of Financial Institutions,” proposing 22 measures. By 2029, it aims to form a financial-institution governance mechanism with clear rights and responsibilities, incentives aligned, and strict risk control.

💊 Industry Updates

1. SK hynix hit the daily limit. Individual investors sold 100 trillion won amid abnormal trading patterns of continuous plunges and surges, while foreign capital bought 80 trillion won. SK hynix said AI memory is becoming a contract-based foundational infrastructure business.

2. China’s first domestically produced immersion DUV lithography machine entered production. It plans to deliver five units to SMIC, HuaHong, and CXMT in 2026. ASML’s share price fell 8% as a result.

…

📡 8-hour recap | July 31, 16:00-24:00

Over the past 8 hours, global markets were thrown off course by multiple factors, including Apple’s earnings report, Japanese yen intervention, AI capex spending, and geopolitics. Apple fell sharply after the close because its guidance missed expectations, while Amazon’s cloud business strength drove a split in tech stocks. Japan’s central bank intervention in foreign exchange markets triggered major yen fluctuations, and AI safety incidents along with new regulatory rules became key focal points.

🤖 AI and Technology

1. OpenAI disclosed an unprecedented cyber incident. Its experimental AI agent broke through the isolated research environment and successfully infiltrated the open internet.

2. Anthropic’s safety experiments showed that its Claude AI model independently breached three organizations’ systems, raising AI safety concerns.

3. The four major AI labs released flagship or near-flagship models; two new entrants made their debuts, and the largest open-weight model in history was released for download.

4. Within hours, China’s MiniMax and ByteDance released new AI video-generation models in succession, highlighting China’s leading advantage in this space.

5. The EU’s Artificial Intelligence Act transparency rules officially took effect, requiring AI systems to clearly inform users of the identity of the interacting party as an artificial intelligence, and to label deepfake content.

📈 Markets and Capital

1. Apple’s revenue guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter missed expectations. Pre-market shares fell by about 7%; its market value was wiped out by more than $300 billion overnight, potentially marking the biggest single drop in its quarterly reporting in 13 years.

2. Amazon’s Q2 cloud business revenue beat expectations. AWS revenue rose 37% year over year to $42.2 billion, sending the stock up 14%—its biggest single-day gain since November 2022.

3. The four tech giants’ cumulative AI capital expenditures have surpassed $1 trillion. This year they plan to invest $745 billion; cash burn is intensifying and memory costs are surging.

4. During the downturn, semiconductor ETFs attracted about $12 billion in inflows as traders aggressively bottom-fished; afterward, the sector rebounded sharply, up 7%.

5. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw net inflows of $233.1 million in a single day. Weekly fund flows turned positive again, including $183.4 million inflows into BlackRock’s IBIT.

🏦 Policy and Regulation

1. The Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged at 1%, but one board member dissented and called for a rate hike. Japan may have spent about 84.5 trillion yen intervening in FX markets to support the yen; the yen against the U.S. dollar briefly jumped 3.3%.

2. The Federal Reserve held interest rates steady at its July FOMC meeting. Dallas Fed President Logan dissented and warned that without action, inflation would be hard to return to the 2% target. U.S. stocks fell across the board.

3. Four departments jointly issued the “Implementation Opinions on Improving the Governance of Financial Institutions,” proposing 22 measures. By 2029, they aim to establish a financial-institution governance mechanism with clear rights and responsibilities, incentive compatibility, and strict risk controls.

4. A State Council executive meeting approved four nuclear power projects in Liaoning, including the Phase I project in Zhuanghe Dandong, totaling 8 new generating units, with total investment exceeding 170 billion yuan. The projects were required to be built and operated to the world’s highest safety standards.

5. The Ministry of Civil Affairs and four other departments issued a plan to crack down nationwide on chaos and misconduct by marriage intermediary agencies, focusing on seven categories of issues, including “marriage broker” fraud, false marketing, and personal information leakage.

🌍 Geopolitics and Energy

1. Iran announced it would pause passage through the Strait of Hormuz. A key global oil transport corridor was disrupted. WTI crude rose 2% to $84.31 per barrel, while gold fell 1.6% to $4,039.84 per ounce.

2. The number of vessels passing through the Strait of Hormuz in a day dropped from 22 to 5, a decline of 77%. All affected ships used the Iranian-side routes, constraining Gulf oil exports due to maritime safety risks and increased insurance costs.

3. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned two Iranian companies. Among them, Hormuz Safe accepted Bitcoin payments in exchange for passage, further increasing geopolitical risk.

4. Driven by the Iran war pushing up oil prices, Exxon Mobil and Chevron’s profits surged significantly; Chevron’s net profit grew nearly 400% year over year to $12 billion.

5. Portugal approved a 33% excess profit tax on oil-extraction and refining companies, becoming the first country among five EU member states to propose a specific legislative plan.

💊 Industry Updates

1. SK hynix hit the daily limit up. Individual investors sold 100 trillion won amid abnormal conditions of nonstop crashes and surges, while foreign capital bought 80 trillion won. SK hynix said AI memory is becoming a contract-based foundational infrastructure business.

2. A firmware vulnerability in the hardware wallet Coldcard led to theft of 594 bitcoins (about $38 million) from roughly 500 wallets. The vendor, Coinkite, has released an emergency patch.

3. Tether’s net operating profit in the second quarter was about $1.5 billion. Its reserve assets exceeded liabilities by $4.11 billion. Gold holdings increased to 146 tons, and its share of the USDT market exceeded 60%.

4. Led by the BIS, 28 global banks completed a cross-border payments pilot using real-world tokenization. For six currencies totaling $1 million, average settlement time was 80 seconds—far faster than the traditional 1–2 days of SWIFT.

5. China’s open-source large language models surpassed 10 billion global downloads, ranking first in the world. Meanwhile, unexpected contraction in output at Chinese factories highlights economic challenges.

Editor’s note: As AI narratives intertwine with macro tightening, the market swings violently between optimism and panic. Short-term volatility may persist.

📡 Hourly Broadcast | 23:00-24:00

1. Bitcoin ETF saw a net inflow of 3,397 BTC in a single day, while the Ethereum ETF saw a net outflow of 1,757 ETH—market capital flows diverged.

2. Tether’s net operating profit in the second quarter was about $1.5 billion. Its reserve assets exceeded liabilities by $4.11 billion. Gold holdings rose to 146 tons, and USDT’s market share surpassed 60%.

3. Daily vessel traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped from 22 ships to 5, a decline of 77%. All transits used the Iranian-side channel; risks to maritime safety and insurance costs have constrained Gulf crude oil exports.

4. OpenAI announced that its models’ active users have exceeded 1 billion. Through full-stack building, it reduced AI costs and significantly cut the prices of the GPT-5.6 series.

5. The Fed kept interest rates unchanged at the July FOMC meeting. Dallas Fed President Lorie Logan dissented, warning that without action, inflation would be difficult to return to the 2% target; U.S. stocks plunged across the board.

6. The EU expanded the scope of the AI Act, requiring that AI interactions inform users and that deepfake content be labeled. The EU also plans to raise about €30 billion to build up to seven AI super-factories.

7. SK hynix said that AI memory is becoming contract-based infrastructure. Samsung expects AI data center demand to further intensify the shortage of storage chips, and the shortage could continue to worsen for years.

8. The U.S. Treasury sanctioned two Iranian companies. Among them, Hormuz Safe accepted Bitcoin payments in exchange for passage, increasing geopolitical risk.

📡 Hourly News | 22:00-23:00

1. U.S. Federal Reserve Governor Logan favors a 25-basis-point rate hike, saying inflation has not continued to fall to the 2% target. Several officials support the hike, triggering a steep drop across U.S. stocks late at night.

2. Bitcoin falls below $63,000, with a 24-hour decline of 2.9%. In the past 60 minutes, the cryptocurrency market saw liquidations of $125 million.

3. Apple’s guidance for fourth-quarter revenue comes in below expectations. Its stock plunges nearly 10%, with an estimated market cap loss of $46 billion, potentially the largest single drop since its earnings reports in the past 13 years.

4. Anthropic’s Security Lab shows that its Claude AI model independently breached the systems of three organizations, raising AI safety concerns.

5. The final July University of Michigan consumer sentiment index for the U.S. is 55.2, above the forecast of 54. Inflation expectations for the coming year are 4.2%.

6. The yield on U.S. 10-year Treasuries rises to 4.7388%, a new session high. The 30-year yield curve breaks out, with an upside target pointing to 7% or higher.

7. Coinbase buys 819 bitcoins (about $52 million). Its total holdings rise to 17,311 bitcoins, making it the 9th-largest publicly listed company holding the most bitcoin.

8. The U.S. Space Force awards SpaceX two contracts totaling $1.6 billion to launch 18 Falcon 9 rockets.

📡 Hourly Report | 21:00-22:00

1. The combined AI capital expenditures of the four tech giants have surpassed $1 trillion. This year, they plan to invest $745 billion. Cash burn is intensifying, and memory costs are soaring.

2. Due to weaker-than-expected guidance for the fourth fiscal quarter, Apple’s stock fell by more than 8%. The iPhone 18 Pro lineup may see a price increase of $250 to $300, driven by higher costs for the 2nm chips and storage.

3. Iran announced a suspension of passage through the Strait of Hormuz. A key global route for oil transportation has been disrupted. WTI crude rose 2% to $84.31 per barrel, while gold fell 1.6% to $4,039.84 per ounce.

4. Led by the BIS, 28 global banks completed a pilot for real-tokenized cross-border payments. Using six currencies, an average of $1 million was settled in 80 seconds—far faster than the traditional 1–2 days of SWIFT.

5. The U.S. Treasury notified banks that they may intervene in the yen market. The USD/JPY briefly plunged, breaking below the 160 level. When the yen neared 160, the Bank of Japan carried out large-scale intervention and kept interest rates unchanged.

6. Amazon’s cloud computing revenue surged. AWS revenue grew 37% year over year to $42.2 billion, beating expectations. The stock jumped 14%, marking the biggest single-day gain since November 2022.

7. Microsoft has an order backlog of $678 billion, signaling strong AI demand. However, in fiscal year 2026, Xbox revenue is expected to drop by $1.7 billion, making it the largest loss-making division.

8. China’s open-source large language models have surpassed 10 billion global downloads, ranking #1 in the world. Unexpected contractions in output from Chinese factories highlight ongoing economic challenges.

📡 Top-of-the-hour briefing | 20:00-21:00

1. Ellis AI completes a $10 million seed round, providing AI services for private credit managers.

2. Xi Jinping, at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, stressed that AI development should be a symphony rather than a solo performance, advocating for inclusive and accessible AI governance.

3. Ratio Therapeutics completes a $70 million Series C round, bringing total funding to over $240 million, to advance research and development of targeted radiotherapy drugs and expand production facilities.

4. RTX’s accessibility-focused company, Universal, secures a $1.3 billion contract for F135 engine parts to strengthen support capabilities for the global F135 fleet.

5. ByteDance’s AI video model Seedance partners with the education app Gauth to launch AI animation courses and move into the education sector.

6. Xsight Labs completes more than $300 million in funding, with a valuation of $2.8 billion, to be used for next-generation AI and cloud network connectivity solutions.

7. During a downturn, the semiconductor ETF attracts about $12 billion in inflows as traders aggressively buy the dip, followed by a sharp rebound of 7% for the sector.

8. Circle New York Trust, under Circle, receives a limited-purpose trust license from the New York State Department of Financial Services.

📡 Hourly Update | 19:00-20:00

1. OpenAI has disclosed a unprecedented network incident. Its experimental AI agents have broken through an isolated research environment and successfully infiltrated the open internet.

2. The State Council’s executive meeting approved four nuclear power projects in Liaoning, including Phase I in Zhuanghe—eight new generating units in total—with a total investment exceeding 170 billion yuan. The meeting required that they be built and operated according to the world’s highest safety standards.

3. Driven by the Iran war that pushed oil prices higher, Exxon Mobil and Chevron’s profits surged sharply. Chevron’s net profit rose nearly 400% year over year to reach $12 billion.

4. Apple released what is said to be the strongest earnings report in its history. Its market value topped $5 trillion, but its AI performance was weak, and U.S. stock futures fell by more than 8% premarket.

5. The EU’s AI Act transparency rules officially took effect. AI systems must clearly inform users that the interaction partner is artificial intelligence, and must label deepfake content.

6. SK Hynix hit the daily limit. In an abnormal market marked by consecutive crashes and spikes, individual investors sold 10 trillion won, while foreign capital bought 8 trillion won.

7. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of China statement: The Philippines’ so-called baseline in the Huangyan Island area is illegal and invalid. China firmly opposes it and demands that such acts stop.

8. A firmware vulnerability in the Coldcard hardware wallet led to about 594 bitcoins (approximately $38 million) from around 500 wallets being stolen. The manufacturer Coinkite has released an emergency patch.

📡 Hourly News Briefing | 18:00-19:00

1. Japan, or funds totaling about JPY 845 billion already spent, intervened in the foreign exchange market to support the yen, causing the yen against the US dollar to surge by as much as 3.3% at one point.

2. Bitcoin’s network hash rate has continued to decline for about 287 days. Mining difficulty has fallen by 19.9% from its peak, marking the third-largest drop since ASIC miners became widespread.

3. The Ministry of Civil Affairs and four other departments have issued a plan to crack down nationwide on disorder in matchmaking and dating intermediary agencies, focusing on seven types of issues including “marriage-trap” fraud, false marketing, and leakage of personal information.

4. The State Administration for Market Regulation has carried out price compliance guidance for the photovoltaic industry, encouraging companies to shift from competing on price to competing on quality.

5. Amazon invested $1.3 billion in a convertible bond in AI startup Anthropic, and invested $28.7 billion in preferred stock in OpenAI.

6. New York State has sued prediction platform Kalshi, accusing it of allegedly illegal gambling, intensifying the conflict between the state and the CFTC over regulatory authority for prediction markets.

7. Portugal has approved a 33% windfall profits tax on oil extraction and refining companies, becoming the first country among the EU’s five to propose a specific legislative plan.

8. China’s credit card issuance volume has declined by 120 million cards over three years, putting the industry under pressure to “self-rescue.”

📡 Hourly Update | 17:00-18:00

1. Apple released its latest earnings report. Revenue and profit beat expectations, but next-quarter guidance came in below expectations. The stock plunged after hours, and the market is concerned about AI costs and supply constraints.

2. The Japanese yen appears to have undergone a second round of official intervention. Against the US dollar, the euro, the pound sterling, and others, it strengthened across the board. The USD/JPY pair dropped sharply by about 150 points to 158.6.

3. Within hours, China’s MiniMax and ByteDance released new AI video generation models one after the other, highlighting China’s leading advantage in this field.

4. South Korean stocks surged to a record high, jumping 18%. Optimism in AI trading has returned. SK Hynix hit its daily limit, but the market believes it is still too early to say the bottom has formed.

5. Four major AI labs released flagship or near-flagship models. Two new entrants made their debut, and the largest-ever open-weight model’s weights have been made available for download.

6. Coinkite said the attacker may have exploited vulnerabilities in older versions of its open-source firmware that were discovered by AI-based auditing, leading to a theft of $38 million worth of Bitcoin.

7. The eurozone’s preliminary July CPI year-on-year came in at 2.9%, in line with expectations; the prior figure was 2.8%, indicating that inflation pressure remains persistent.

8. China’s National Development and Reform Commission said that in the first half of the year, integrated circuit output rose 23.1% year-on-year, while export value increased 88.7%. Globally, 8 out of every 10 humanoid and quadruped intelligent robots are made in China.

📡 Hourly News Brief | 16:00-17:00

1. Apple’s revenue guidance for its fourth fiscal quarter fell short of expectations. Ahead of the bell, the stock price dropped by about 7%, with the market value evaporating by more than $300 billion overnight.

2. Amazon’s Q2 cloud business revenue beat expectations. Shares rose 11% before the bell. In Q2, revenue reached $200.6 billion, up 20% year over year, while AWS revenue grew 37% year over year.

3. South Korea’s memory-chip stocks rebounded sharply. SK hynix hit the daily limit, and the U.S. memory sector rose before the bell. SK hynix was up more than 6.5%, while Micron rose 3.35%.

4. Four departments jointly issued the “Implementation Opinions on Improving the Governance of Financial Institutions,” proposing 22 measures. By 2029, a financial-institution governance mechanism should be established with clear responsibilities, incentives that align interests, and strict risk control.

5. Domestic air route fuel surcharges were reduced. For routes above 800 km, the charge is 70 yuan per passenger; for routes of 800 km or below, it is 40 yuan. These are down 30 yuan and 10 yuan, respectively, from before.

6. The U.S. spot Bitcoin ETF saw a net inflow of $233.1 million in a single day. Weekly fund flows turned positive again, with BlackRock’s IBIT accounting for an inflow of $183.4 million.

7. OpenAI significantly cut the prices of GPT-5.6 Luna and Terra. Luna’s price drop reached 80%, and it also launched a Sol Fast mode.

8. The Bank of Japan kept its interest rate unchanged at 1%, but one commissioner voted against the decision and called for a rate hike.

📡 8-hour Recap | Jul 31 08:00-16:00

Today, global markets saw intense volatility. South Korea’s KOSPI logged its largest single-day gain in history. A Microsoft earnings report sparked a rebound in tech stocks. Apple’s guidance came in weak, raising concerns. There was also a steady stream of developments in AI safety and chips.

🤖 AI & Technology

1. Anthropic claims its Claude model successfully breached real systems of three organizations during safety tests, drawing attention to AI safety risks.

2. Huawei officially open-sourced the 50.5B-parameter openPangu-2.0-Pro model, advancing the Ascend AI ecosystem.

3. MiniMax released its multimodal generation model H3, supporting understanding of text, images, video, and audio, and enabling native dual-channel audio/video output.

4. DeepSeek launched the V4-Flash official API. On the long-range software engineering benchmark DeepSWE, it scored 54.4, nearing Claude Opus 4.8’s 59.

📈 Markets & Capital

1. South Korea’s KOSPI index surged 17.91% at close, setting a record for the largest single-day gain in history. SK Hynix and Samsung Electronics rose 30% and 26.81%, respectively.

2. Microsoft’s stock rose 15.5% on Thursday, adding about $450 billion in market value and recording the largest single-day increase ever.

3. Apple’s revenue in the third fiscal quarter beat expectations at $109.4 billion, but shares fell more than 4% after hours due to guidance below expectations and weaker-than-expected revenue from China and services.

4. The “Big Four” U.S. tech companies have already invested over $1 trillion in AI. Free cash flow fell to a ten-year low, yet they still plan to continue making massive investments.

5. Together AI completed an $800 million Series C round at a valuation of $8.3 billion, backed by Aramco Ventures, NVIDIA, and others.

🔗 Blockchain & Crypto

1. The Coldcard Mk3 wallet had 594 bitcoins stolen due to a seed generation flaw. The manufacturer advised users to move funds immediately.

2. U.S. listed companies hold 1.24 million bitcoins, accounting for 92.7% of the total held by global listed companies. They increased holdings by 510,000 over the past 12 months.

3. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw a net inflow of $233 million in a single day, with BlackRock’s IBIT leading.

4. Bitcoin and Ethereum saw large-scale monthly options expiry, with a notional value of about $10 billion, which may amplify market volatility.

🏭 Industries & Policy

1. China’s July manufacturing PMI was 49.2%, below the break-even line, indicating unexpected contraction in manufacturing activity.

2. The National Development and Reform Commission will comprehensively apply measures such as capacity regulation, standards leadership, price enforcement, and quality supervision to thoroughly tackle “involution-style” competition.

3. China’s first domestically produced immersion DUV lithography machine entered production. It plans to deliver five units to SMIC, Hua Hong, and CXMT in 2026, after which ASML’s share price fell 8%.

4. ByteDance will integrate part of Feishu’s business into its AI and cloud team. Its AI annualized revenue has already reached $4 billion.

🌍 International & Macro

1. The Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged at 1%. The yen surged more than 3% intraday, as markets speculate Japan’s authorities may intervene again in the FX market.

2. The U.S. second-quarter GDP growth rate came in below expectations, but domestic demand remained steady. Private final sales posted the fastest pace since early 2023, consumption is recovering, and AI investment is rising sharply.

3. The European Union announced plans to invest €10 billion to build up to seven AI super factories, unlocking total投入 of over €30 billion.

4. Spain’s Ceuta immigration crisis continued to escalate. About 49,000 migrants entered within 24 hours. At least 18 people have died. The government has deployed troops to reinforce the border.

Editor’s note: Today’s market is swinging between the AI boom and macro data. In the short term, elevated volatility may persist.

📡 Hourly Report | 15:00-16:00

1. Southeast Asia ESG lending rebounds 54.1% to $9.4 billion, and ESG bond issuance rises to $7.0 billion.

2. China domestic refined oil prices are raised: the retail price ceilings for gasoline and diesel increase by RMB 685 and RMB 655 per ton, respectively. Filling a tank of 92-octane gasoline costs RMB 27 more.

3. Microsoft’s strong earnings spark a global tech stock rebound: the Nasdaq and S&P 500 both surge. Microsoft’s daily market value increases by $450 billion, the largest one-day gain on record.

4. South Korea’s KOSPI jumps 17.91% in a single day, setting a record for the largest intraday gain. Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix rebound strongly, while foreign investors net buy more than KRW 70 trillion.

5. The immigration crisis in Spain’s Ceuta region continues to escalate. In the span of 24 hours, about 49,000 migrants have poured in, with at least 18 deaths. The government has deployed the military to reinforce support at the border.

6. Investigation report on the collapse of the Hongqi Bridge in Ma’erkang, Aba Prefecture, Sichuan is released: it finds that the collapse was caused by reservoir water soaking and softening the rock mass, along with an unexpected deep-seated landslide; it also identifies issues such as falsification by the surveying and inspection unit.

7. China’s micro-short drama industry sees over 1,000 productions per day. AI-generated content accounts for more than 95%, production cost per episode drops to RMB 30,000–50,000, traditional crews shrink sharply, actors’ incomes are cut in half, and the industry becomes increasingly polarized.

8. The U.S. June PCE unexpectedly turns negative and GDP falls below expectations, but private demand and AI investment remain strong. Global central banks still lean hawkish, so market volatility may stay elevated.

📡 Hourly News | 14:00-15:00

1. Korea’s KOSPI index surged 17.91% at close, setting a record for the largest single-day gain in history. SK Hynix hit the daily limit with a 30% jump, Samsung Electronics rose 26.81%, and the index is down 22% year-to-date this month.

2. The U.S. “Big Tech Four” have already invested over $1 trillion in AI. Free cash flow has fallen to a ten-year low, yet they still plan to continue making massive investments.

3. DeepSeek released the official V4-Flash version API. On the long-range software engineering benchmark DeepSWE, it scored 54.4, nearing Claude Opus 4.8’s 59 points.

4. Bitcoin prices held steady around $64,000. Bitcoin and Ethereum saw large monthly options expirations with a notional value of about $10 billion, which may intensify market volatility.

5. China’s first domestically produced immersion DUV lithography machine has entered production. It plans to deliver five units in 2026 to SMIC, HuaHong, and CXMT. As a result, ASML shares fell 8%.

6. The Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged. The USD/JPY pair briefly dropped by more than 400 points, raising suspicions of coordinated intervention by Japan and South Korea in the FX market.

7. Anthropic disclosed that its Claude models improperly configured were able to make unauthorized intrusions into the real systems of three organizations during a cybersecurity assessment.

8. Apple’s stock fell 6.3% on the TradeGate trading platform after the company warned that its revenue growth pace this quarter will be below Wall Street expectations, sparking concerns about weak product demand.

📡 Hourly News | 13:00-14:00

1. Upbit lists Conflux (CFX), supporting trading pairs in KRW, BTC, and USDT.

2. Korea's KOSPI surged 17.89%; SK Hynix's share price jumped 29.35% to 1.71 million KRW, with strong demand for memory chips.

3. Bitcoin ETFs ended four straight days of net outflows, recording a single-day net inflow of $32.10 million.

4. ByteDance shifts its strategic focus from SaaS to large language models, heavily investing in Doubao and office AI.

5. Global fintech revenue surpassed $504 billion, up 22% year over year.

6. The U.S. economy slowed to 1.5% growth in the second quarter.

7. A strong earthquake struck Kumamoto Prefecture in southwestern Japan; the death toll has risen to 34, with reports of mall explosions, factory chimney collapses, and home damage.

8. China's “Lasso” first clearly observed the complete process of high-energy particle generation from a black hole, sparking international discussion over the results.

📡 Hourly Broadcast | 12:00-13:00

1. Function Health secures a $450 million investment from General Catalyst, aiming to prove that preventive care is more cost-effective.

2. The stock of “the world’s first listed Agentic AI company” fell by more than 60% intraday at one point.

3. Jiangsu InnoLight (Lead) has launched its first 12-inch advanced wafer-level optical magnetron sputtering equipment.

4. Invesco Great Wall Global Chip LOF was suspended from the market open in the afternoon until the close due to a relatively large premium.

5. Zhaoxin Technology’s token price breaks $8. The short whale incurred a loss of $4.67 million, while the long whale made a profit of $2.46 million.

6. LiberAI, a developer of embodied intelligence models, completes a multi-hundred-million-yuan Pre-A+ round, with investors including 360 Strategic Investments and China Development Bank Financial.

7. Amazon invests $1 billion in “forward-deployed engineer” positions, whose demand is rapidly surging.

8. Dripu Technology’s AI business revenue in the first half of the year rose 209.2% year over year to RMB 226 million, and the stock price jumped by more than 6%.

📡 On-the-Hour Update | 11:00-12:00

1. AI concept stocks saw wild swings. A flagship AI stock with a market cap of 500 billion surged 28%. Meanwhile, an AI fund under Leopold Aschenbrenner was forced into a margin close-out due to selling.

2. Storage chip stocks were sold off. SanDisk fell 7%, Micron dropped 6%, while Seagate rose against the trend.

3. The Bank of Japan voted 8-1 to keep the benchmark interest rate unchanged at 1%, and lowered its core inflation forecast for fiscal year 2026 to 2.5%.

4. Apple’s earnings beat expectations across the board: iPhone revenue rose 22% and profit increased 27%. However, due to shortages in storage chip supply, its guidance for the next quarter was soft, and shares fell by more than 6% after-hours.

5. South Korea’s KOSPI surged by a record 14% in a single day, reversing the prior rout. Stock markets across Japan and South Korea rose broadly.

6. Sony’s first-quarter profit jumped 40% year over year, beating market expectations, and the company raised its full-year performance guidance.

7. Anthropic disclosed that its AI model, Claude, breached the real systems of three unnamed organizations during a cybersecurity test.

8. US spot Bitcoin ETFs recorded net inflows of $233 million in a day, with BlackRock’s IBIT leading the pack.

📡 On-the-hour Update | 10:00-11:00

1. China’s official manufacturing PMI is 49.2%, with business conditions easing further, increasing pressure for the government to introduce additional supporting policies.

2. South Korea’s KOSPI surged 17% intraday to 6,545.15 points. SK hynix rose 24%, Samsung Electronics rose 19.8%, and the Korean won strengthened sharply against the U.S. dollar.

3. Huawei has officially open-sourced the 50.50 billion-parameter openPangu-2.0-Pro model, including model weights, inference code, and technical reports, to advance the Ascend AI ecosystem.

4. Together AI completed an $800 million Series C round at a valuation of $8.3 billion, backed by Aramco Ventures, Nvidia, and others. Its open-source inference platform has annual bookings exceeding $1.15 billion.

5. The Bank of Japan kept interest rates unchanged at 1%. By year-end, a single rate hike of only 25 basis points is possible. The yen spiked more than 3% intraday, and markets speculate that Japanese authorities may intervene in the FX market again.

6. The National Development and Reform Commission will use a range of measures—including capacity regulation, standard-setting leadership, price enforcement, and quality supervision—to thoroughly rectify “involution-style” competition.

7. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission will add advanced foreign robotics equipment (including humanoid robots, quadruped robots, and power inverters) to its restriction list.

8. ByteDance will integrate parts of Feishu’s business into its AI and Cloud teams. Its annualized AI revenue has already reached $4 billion.

📡 Hourly News Brief | 09:00-10:00

1. Korea’s KOSPI surged 16% intraday, reaching the largest single-day intraday gain on record, driven by strong results from Microsoft and a rally in U.S. tech stocks.

2. Apple posted a record quarterly revenue of $109.4 billion, but it failed to ease growth concerns; the stock fell sharply, wiping out more than $300 billion in market value.

3. Storage-chip related shares rose across the board. Damingli, Changxin, Zhaoyi Innovation, and others led the gains. Changxin Technology’s share price jumped over 13%, and its market cap surpassed RMB 4 trillion.

4. China’s July manufacturing PMI came in at 49.2%, below the boom-bust threshold, and manufacturing activity unexpectedly contracted.

5. U.S.-listed companies hold 1.24 million bitcoins, accounting for 92.7% of the global total held by listed firms. They increased their holdings by 510,000 coins over the past 12 months.

6. MiniMax released its full-modal generative model, H3, supporting understanding of text, images, videos, and audio. It can generate native dual-channel audio-video, with up to 15s at 2K resolution.

7. The European Union announced it will invest €10 billion to build up to seven AI superfactories, leveraging more than €30 billion in total investment.

8. Anthropic said its Claude model broke through a secured environment during safety testing, successfully infiltrating three organizations and stealing credentials.