News
Market news, earnings recaps, and daily moves in AI and semiconductor stocks.
A Russian news agency reported a U.S.-Iran ceasefire. Oil prices fell and neither side has confirmed anything. (August 25, 2026)
Russian state agency RIA Novosti reported a U.S.-Iran ceasefire, citing Pakistani and Iranian sources. Oil fell on the news, and no U.S., Iranian, or Western outlet has confirmed it.
Trump made about 7,000 stock trades in six months. Biden made 13 in four years.
In six months, Trump's accounts made about 7,000 stock trades. Biden made 13 in four years, and every president since Carter used a blind trust or index funds. Here's what the filings show, and why the Senate is asking questions.
OpenAI's data center chief left five months in, as the company commits $1.4 trillion to compute
Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers, has left after about five months, the latest senior exit as the company pours money into compute.
A Trump memecoin outtraded Bitcoin on Korea's biggest crypto exchange last weekend. Bitcoin finished fourth.
Korean money left a cooling stock market for crypto last week, and daily trading rose 8.7 times in five days. On Upbit, a Trump memecoin and XRP both traded more than bitcoin, which finished fourth.
A day before Nvidia (NVDA) earnings, OpenAI says its Jalapeño chip beats it on efficiency
OpenAI used a Hot Chips presentation to claim its custom Jalapeño chip beats Nvidia on inference efficiency, one day before Nvidia reports. The benchmarks are real, and so are the caveats.
Eli Lilly-backed BreezeBio licensed its tech to Genentech for up to $629 million. Its next stop is Kosdaq, not Nasdaq.
BreezeBio, a California biotech backed by Eli Lilly and licensed to Genentech, wants to list on Korea's Kosdaq instead of Nasdaq. It is one of four foreign companies suddenly headed the same way.
Nasdaq rebounds before Nvidia (NVDA) earnings, with options pricing a $313 billion swing in the stock
The Nasdaq rose about 0.7% Tuesday, recovering Monday's chip-led drop, one day before Nvidia reports. Wall Street expects about $92 billion in revenue, double a year ago.
Seagate (STX)'s CEO and four other executives sold $43 million in 48 hours. The stock fell 6.5% three days later.
Five Seagate (STX) executives filed Forms 4 on Aug. 24 covering $43.3 million in stock sold on Aug. 20 and 21, three of them with no 10b5-1 plan attached. STX closed down 6.5% from those sale prices the day the filings hit.
The SEC subpoenaed four Wall Street banks over the Situational Awareness meltdown, the New York Times reports
Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase were told to preserve records on Leopold Aschenbrenner's fund as regulators examine trade timing and leverage from its near collapse in July.
Amazon (AMZN) is working to fully automate its delivery stations, internal documents show
Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider describe Project Tetromino, an Amazon effort to fully automate delivery stations, the last manual stop before drivers. Amazon calls the figures inaccurate.
SpaceX (SPCX) and Nvidia (NVDA) aim to launch AI data centers into orbit in 2027
SpaceXAI is putting Nvidia's new Vera CPU behind Grok and says a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 will reach orbit by late 2027. Here is what's confirmed and what's still a projection, for SPCX and NVDA.
Why Samsung can't match SK Hynix's massive buyback without forcing its insurers to sell
Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine together own about 10% of Samsung Electronics' common stock, the exact ceiling set by a Korean banking law. That's the real reason Samsung's record payout leaned on dividends instead of the stock buyback and cancellation SK Hynix just did.
USA Rare Earth (USAR) slid even as Washington finished a $1.55 billion Serra Verde deal
Washington increased its Serra Verde rare-earth offtake to $1.55 billion, including the first guaranteed price floors on dysprosium and terbium. USA Rare Earth (USAR) fell about 6% ahead of an August 28 shareholder vote.
Nancy Pelosi opened a new Bloom Energy (BE) position worth up to $12 million in late July
Nancy Pelosi's financial disclosure, filed August 21, shows a first-time position in Bloom Energy (BE): about 15,000 shares and 200 call options worth $3 million to $12 million, her biggest new single-name bet of 2026. The same filing adds 10,000 shares and 50 call options of Intel (INTC), on top of the Intel options she reported in June.
Trump's latest disclosure shows five Berkshire trades among 1,051 June transactions
President Trump's latest financial disclosure, filed August 12 and published August 22, lists 1,051 stock, bond and ETF transactions from June. Berkshire Hathaway (BRK.B) turns out to have been bought three times and sold twice that month, not purchased once as early coverage suggested, and the filing's largest single trade was a $5 million to $25 million sale of the Vanguard Dividend Appreciation ETF (VIG).
Korea's Kakao rose 3.48% on a rumor it would split in two. It fell 7.49% when the terms landed.
Kakao's board approved splitting the company into Kakao AI and Kakao X on August 21, 2026, and shareholders vote on it December 17. The market's first answer was to sell: Kakao closed down 7.49% at 35,800 won after a 30-minute trading halt.
Nvidia (NVDA) fell six straight days. Earnings will test the $775 billion AI spending boom.
Nvidia enters its Aug. 26 earnings report on a six-session losing streak, its longest since 2022. It has beaten EPS estimates for 14 quarters straight, and the stock still fell the next day six of the last eight times.
Meta (META) gets $855 price target despite a 91% free cash flow drop
Meta (META) narrowed its 2026 AI capex guidance to $130-145 billion and free cash flow fell 91% last quarter to $784 million. BNP Paribas and Erste Group both still rate the stock a buy, betting the spending turns into ad and cloud revenue.
Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital held 20 million Infleqtion (INFQ) shares in February. Now it has 1.4 million left.
Lee Ainslie's Maverick Capital has reported about $266 million of Infleqtion (INFQ) stock sales since May, and Friday's filing shows the wind-down is nearly finished. A stake that started at 20 million shares in February is down to 1.4 million, and an August misstep means Maverick owes Infleqtion a $299,922.51 check.
Korean investors poured $85.6M into Roundhill Memory ETF (DRAM) in one week. The fund already holds Samsung and SK Hynix.
Korean retail investors bought $85.61 million of the Roundhill Memory ETF in a single week, their second-biggest US purchase after Alphabet. The fund is 26.19% Samsung Electronics and 21.61% SK Hynix, two stocks they can buy at home in won.
Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) filed to sell another $600 million of stock. It has already sold $1.1 billion of shares since March.
Applied Optoelectronics filed an equity distribution agreement after Friday's close to sell up to $600 million of common stock through Raymond James and Needham. It is the company's third such program of 2026. The first two sold about 8.1 million shares for $1.1 billion between March and August. The stock traded near $112 in the post-market, down about 10% from the close.
Ken Griffin says Citadel has closed out 80% of Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness risk
Griffin's first comment on the Situational Awareness purchase came in a Friday letter to clients. It took more than 100 block trades over $4 billion of market value to retire four fifths of the risk.
Memory chip prices are soaring. So why are Micron (MU), SanDisk (SNDK) and SK Hynix (SKHY) falling?
Korea's chip exports nearly tripled in the first 20 days of August and its semiconductor export price index has quadrupled since 2023. Micron, SanDisk, SK Hynix, Samsung and Kioxia all peaked within one week in June and have fallen 21% to 51% since.
Samsung promised shareholders $79 billion. Investors expected $108 billion.
Samsung Electronics approved the largest shareholder return in Korean corporate history on Friday, up to 110 trillion won. The market had been told to expect 150 trillion, and the stock traded lower after the close while Samsung's preferred shares rose 8.26%.