News
Market news, earnings recaps, and daily moves in AI and semiconductor stocks.
Korea's stock crash sparked a criminal complaint against President Lee Jae-myung, and a separate petition to impeach him already has more than 500,000 signatures.
A civic group filed a criminal complaint against President Lee Jae-myung and three officials on August 3, five days after investors sent funeral wreaths to the National Assembly over leverage ETF losses Citi puts at 56.3 trillion won ($38.7 billion USD). A separate petition to impeach Lee, unrelated to the market, already has more than 500,000 signatures.
SK Hynix's US chip unit is reportedly heading toward Nasdaq. Korea's new spinoff rule might not actually apply.
SK Hynix's US NAND unit Solidigm is raising money toward a possible Nasdaq listing worth up to 50 trillion won ($35.3B USD), four days after Korea's new rule on subsidiary listings took effect. Solidigm wasn't created the way the rule defines a spinoff, so the toughest part of it might not apply.
Amkor (AMKR) director Guillaume Rutten has filed to sell $7.9 million of stock this year. Only one sale was under a trading plan.
Five Amkor insiders have filed to sell stock since February, $7.9 million of it from one director alone. Only one of his five filings has a trading plan behind it. The other four, including this week's, do not.
Michael Burry shorted Oracle (ORCL) at $144.63 and Nebius (NBIS) at $211.77. This time it's the stock, not puts.
Michael Burry shorted Oracle at $144.63 and Nebius at $211.77 on August 6, this time selling the shares short instead of buying puts. His argument: their AI-era earnings are inflated by understated chip depreciation.
Cathie Wood bought nearly $20 million of SpaceX (SPCX) as it crashed 13.6%. She hasn't sold a share since June.
Cathie Wood's ARK Invest bought 181,830 SpaceX shares on Aug. 5, about $20 million, the day the stock fell 13.6% to $108.27, and funded it by trimming Roblox, Palantir and Shopify. ARK has put over $475 million into SPCX since June and hasn't reported selling a share.
Korea's stocks crashed. So why is the won hitting a 10-month high?
A falling stock market and heavy foreign selling usually pull a currency down. This week they didn't. The Korean won reached its strongest level against the dollar in about 10 months, helped by exporters selling dollars, SK Hynix's Nasdaq listing, and a softer dollar everywhere.
The $5.5 billion optics startup in this week's headlines already has a public partner: POET Technologies (POET)
Lumilens emerged from stealth at a $5.5 billion valuation. POET Technologies (POET) is the public company that signed in May to build its optical engines, a $50 million order that can scale to $500 million.
Korean investors dumped SK Hynix (SKHY) after a report on Nvidia's Rubin Ultra chip. Some analysts say the selloff went too far.
A report says Nvidia is testing versions of its next AI chip that carry less high-bandwidth memory than planned, some with an older kind. SK Hynix, which makes most of that memory, fell about 15% in two days, though some analysts in Korea think the reaction is too big.
An Applied Digital (APLD) director just sold $2.34 million of stock. Four other insiders only looked like they did.
One Applied Digital director genuinely sold on August 4, and his Form 4 confirmed it on August 6: 75,000 shares for $2.34 million, an open-market sale with no 10b5-1 plan behind it. Four other insiders filed the same week and only looked like sellers, because their dispositions were tax withholding on newly vested stock, and all four finished the day owning more of the company.
Why T1 Energy (TE) stock is surging on the polysilicon tariff (Aug. 6, 2026)
The White House said Trump will impose a 15% tariff and minimum import prices on polysilicon and its derivatives. T1 Energy (TE) round-tripped a 15% spike, then rose after hours on the confirmation.
Samsung Biologics just made a $1.8 billion bet on peptide drugs. One Korean biotech fell 30%, then rallied 30%, within a month.
Samsung Biologics agreed to pay $1.8 billion for a Swiss peptide manufacturer as SK Pharmteco raced to finish its own plant. The Kosdaq stocks already making these drugs are moving 30% in a week, in both directions, while the US and Korea tighten different rules that do not touch the supply chain.
Alphabet (GOOGL) is borrowing $25 billion more for AI. Bond investors are charging more for it than a week ago. (Aug. 6, 2026)
Alphabet launched a new $25 billion bond sale Thursday, its third of the year. GOOGL barely moved, but hyperscaler bond spreads widened, a signal from credit investors that the stock market hasn't caught up to yet.
Aeva Technologies (AEVA) stock is surging after the lidar maker landed its first AI data center customer
Aeva's stock spiked as much as 45% Thursday, then settled near a 32% gain, after the automotive lidar maker announced a pivot into supplying optical hardware for AI data centers, alongside a still deeply unprofitable Q2.
SpaceX's 911 million share unlock landed today. The stock rose, and the rest of the space trade rallied harder.
SpaceX's 911.5 million share unlock landed today and the stock rose anyway. Fourteen other space stocks rallied harder, from Rocket Lab's new Space Force deal to Voyager's raised guidance.
SK Hynix reached a $70 billion cash target in four months. It denied a report that shareholders would receive a similar amount.
SK Hynix set a 100 trillion won ($70B USD) net cash target in March and reached it by summer. A June report said it would return a similar amount to shareholders, and the company denied it. Analysts are now landing near the same number anyway.
Datadog (DDOG) beat every number Wall Street asked for. The stock sank anyway.
Datadog beat Q2 estimates on revenue and adjusted profit and raised full-year guidance, and shares still fell as much as 19.5% in premarket trading. The stock had run almost 200% since February, and net additions of large customers slowed.
Samsung and SK Hynix (SKHY) said they will expand shareholder returns. Neither gave a number, and SK Hynix fell 7% in Thursday's first hour.
Both companies sent statements to Reuters on Wednesday, a day after the US rule that had kept SK Hynix quiet since its Nasdaq listing expired. SK Hynix said a concrete plan is coming by the end of the year. Samsung named no date at all. Seoul had already priced in more than that.
ProPetro Holding (PUMP) director Larry Lawrence sold 35,831 shares. The number wasn't random. It was his exact balance from last October.
Two ProPetro insiders sold on the same afternoon. The director's 35,831 shares are the exact balance he was carrying before his restricted stock vested in May, so he sold the old block and kept the new one.
Hudson Technologies (HDSN) lost a $210 million defense contract to a protest in January. The DLA just awarded it again.
The Defense Logistics Agency re-awarded Hudson Technologies a $210.4 million industrial gas contract on August 5, eight months after a competitor's bid protest voided the original award.
SoundHound AI (SOUN) revenue rose 45% to a record $61.9 million and beat by $9 million. The stock gained 13% after hours.
SoundHound reported second quarter revenue of $61.9 million, up 45% and $9.5 million above consensus, with a $0.02 non-GAAP loss against the $0.06 expected. It raised the floor of full-year guidance to $230 million and the stock traded up 13.6% after hours.
Korea’s Kosdaq fell below 800 and left 307 companies facing delisting. Four sessions later it was up 24%.
Two weeks ago the Kosdaq was under 800 with 307 companies facing delisting tests. It has now risen 24% in four sessions, and on three of them the buying was fast enough that the Korea Exchange froze program orders, something that has never happened three days in a row before.
SharonAI (SHAZ) signed its third cloud deal of the year. It took the smallest one to make the stock go up.
SharonAI’s third cloud deal of 2026 is its smallest, and the first the stock rose on. The five-year, $373 million contract deploys 2,048 Nvidia B300 GPUs in Australia for an unnamed AI platform.
Jane Street's short in Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF) is gone from the public list. D.E. Shaw's isn't.
Jane Street's disclosed short position in Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF) fell back below Sweden's 0.5% threshold on August 5, one day after it was first named. D.E. Shaw's 0.62% short is still public. Total reported short interest is 3.13% of shares.
Anthropic is building AI chips and paying up to $850,000 to teach Claude how to design them.
Anthropic confirmed Wednesday it is building an in-house Custom Silicon team for Claude, the first time it has said so publicly. The job listings pay $320,000 to $485,000 for the chip designers and $500,000 to $850,000 for the researcher teaching Claude to do the design work.