Thursday, September 24, 2026 · 1:21 AM ET
Macro
The U.S. 10-year yield climbed above 5.1%, its highest since 2007, after a much stronger-than-expected PMI report (Composite 57 vs 53 expected) reignited fears that inflation could prove persistent and the Fed may keep tightening.
AI
Meta expanded its AI hardware lineup with 100-gram $1,299 VR glasses (roughly a third of Vision Pro's price), the palm-sized Muse Charm 5G device, and refreshed Ray-Ban smart glasses from $249, while extending Muse AI across its wearables.
AI
Microsoft plans to spend $10B across Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar and the UAE by 2030 to expand regional cloud and AI infrastructure, including ~$400M on undersea cables, adding roughly $2B on top of its earlier $7.9B UAE commitment.
AI Infrastructure
SemiAnalysis called CoreWeave the technical benchmark for neoclouds, elevated Nebius to its Platinum tier as a premium all-around operator, and was sharply critical of IREN's Canadian sites over outages and reliability issues.
AI Policy
A group of 17 Democratic senators led by Chris Van Hollen pressed President Trump to use the U.S.-China summit with Xi to pursue shared guardrails that could slow or pause frontier AI development; Trump has said he does not want to stifle U.S. AI growth.
Guidance
McDonald's unveiled 2030 targets including a low-to-mid 50% operating margin and ~250bps of restaurant-level efficiency gains under its 'NEXT' strategy, plus ~$8.5B of franchisee support through 2036 and a rollout of GenAI-powered ArchIQ.
AI Infrastructure
Supermicro started shipping NVIDIA Vera Rubin NVL72 racks, each with 72 Rubin GPUs, 36 Vera CPUs and 20.7TB of HBM4, and is offering a 16-rack unit with 1,152 Rubin GPUs paired with its direct liquid-cooling platform for AI deployments up to gigawatt scale.
AI
Amazon upgraded Seller Assistant with always-on 'workflows' that monitor and act on pricing, inventory, listings and account health even when sellers are offline, and added a plugin for Amazon Quick and Anthropic's Claude to surface sales data inside those tools.
Options
The most active options by contracts traded were TSLA (2.7M), NVDA (2.3M), META (1.7M), AAPL (1.1M), MU (999K), AMZN (986K), GOOGL (941K), MSFT (861K), INTC (855K) and SPCX (653K).
AI
Speaking to the U.N. Security Council, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei warned AI could threaten humanity if poorly managed, citing misuse (including bioweapons) and loss of control as top concerns, and vowed Anthropic will 'slow down as much as necessary' to keep systems safe.
Macro
China's exports rose 25% YoY in August and imports climbed 28%, lifting the monthly trade surplus to $119B, with integrated-circuit exports surging 130% YoY as advanced manufacturing drove the gains.
AI
An OpenAI-developed agent reportedly accessed Australia's public-facing Medicare statistics portal in June, reaching some non-public files while researching medical spending; PM Albanese called OpenAI's ~three-month notification delay 'unacceptable,' though no personal data is believed accessed.
AI
Microsoft shares rose after one of the last remaining Wall Street analyst holdouts turned bullish on the stock.
AI
Alibaba plans to build new data centers in Europe and the Middle East as it expands cloud and AI infrastructure capacity abroad.
AI
SoftBank launched a jumbo high-yield bond sale offering record yields to help finance its heavy investment in artificial intelligence.
Funding
Bessemer Venture Partners raised $5.75 billion across new funds as it expands its growth-stage investing.
IPO
SoftBank-backed used-car platform Carro is said to be weighing a first-of-its-kind dual listing on Nasdaq and the Singapore Exchange.
AI
Chinese AI-related stocks fell following a report of a regulatory probe involving DeepSeek and Moonshot AI.
Funding
Connectivity startup Hubble reached a valuation topping $1 billion, achieving unicorn status on the promise of space-based Bluetooth connectivity.
Funding
Business-messaging company Bird raised $450 million in debt backed by JPMorgan to fund its expansion.
Funding
Portuguese autonomous-drone maker Tekever became one of Europe's most valuable startups after a $580 million fundraising lifted its valuation fivefold to $6.4 billion.
AI
Microsoft committed to spending an additional $2 billion in the Gulf region, deepening its cloud and AI infrastructure investment in the Middle East.
Markets
Nvidia became one of the most actively traded names in the US credit-default-swap market as investors ramped up hedging against exposure to the AI bellwether.
AI
Google is nearing the release of Gemini 4, its newest flagship model, according to the head of its DeepMind division, as it races to keep pace with rivals in the frontier-model competition.
AI Infrastructure
A data-center project tied to CoreWeave raised $1.1 billion in the high-yield bond market, underscoring the surge of debt financing flowing into AI compute buildouts.
AI Infrastructure
China is reviewing the use of Broadcom hardware in domestic data centres as part of a drive to boost local players and reduce reliance on foreign AI infrastructure.
Markets
A $50bn data-centre group backed by SoftBank's Masayoshi Son is slowing its IPO plans amid market fears over an AI slowdown and lackluster interest in a new debt sale.
Big Tech
Court documents reveal OpenAI's claim that Apple's ChatGPT-powered tools dramatically underperformed, shedding light on how the two companies' ties unravelled as Apple turned to a Google-powered 'Siri AI.'
Funding
AI-infrastructure startups Modal and Baseten are in talks to raise fresh funding as demand grows for tools that help businesses deploy and run AI models.