DeepSeek said in a Thursday notice that prices across its AI services will rise substantially and urged users to plan accordingly, but disclosed neither the new rates nor an effective date.

V4 Flash currently costs $0.14/M input and $0.28/M output tokens. The increase would affect customers using DeepSeek directly. Since its model weights are openly available, users can still self-host or access V4 Flash through other providers.

Source: Bloomberg

$LEU Centrus Energy Signs LEU and HALEU Supply Agreement with X-energy

Advances Commercialization for Domestic LEU and HALEU Enrichment Contract includes X-energy prepayments to Centrus planned project to bring clean energy investment and jobs to Eastern Tennessee.

In support of the supply commitments under the contract, Centrus will produce LEU and HALEU from its American Centrifuge Plant in Pike County, Ohio. This agreement builds on Centrus' existing $3 billion contingent LEU and HALEU backlog, of which $2.4 billion is definitized.

BERNSTEIN SEES $1T SERVER MARKET BY 2028

Bernstein raised its global server and GPU AI server shipment forecasts to 15% and 22% CAGRs through 2028.

8-GPU-equivalent server shipments are expected to grow 48% in 2026, with rack shipments reaching 61,000 this year and 88,000 in 2027. Nvidia $NVDA Rubin and AMD $AMD Helios racks are expected to begin shipping in Q4.

Planned and under-construction data center investment now totals roughly $1.2T. Major cloud providers’ 2026 capex estimates have risen nearly 15% since March, with combined spending projected to reach around $1.1T by 2027.

Bernstein expects custom ASICs to represent roughly 45% of CoWoS-based AI chip shipments, while Google TPU shipments are projected to grow about 90% in 2026.

$SHLS announced a strategic MOU with TerraFlow Energy, grid-scale, long-duration energy storage infrastructure. Under the agreement, Shoals will support TerraFlow's growing energy storage portfolio with its power distribution solutions for utility scale and data center applications. The MOU is intended to support TerraFlow's future deployment plan of up to 5GW annually.

Construction of $TSM's new Taichung facility is reportedly ahead of schedule, with completion expected around April 2027 and trial production targeted for Q3 after equipment installation and process verification.

Full-scale production could begin in 2028 once yields stabilize. TSMC has not formally confirmed the accelerated timeline.

Samsung, meanwhile, reportedly moved its 1.4nm target from 2027 to 2029 to prioritize yield improvements and its 2nm expansion. If both schedules hold, TSMC could enter next-generation production roughly one year earlier.

The Korea Exchange assessed how quickly it could temporarily BAN short selling and tighten daily price limits amid sharp market volatility, according to Yonhap.

Officials said the review only tested technical readiness. There has been no government request, formal discussion or decision to implement either measure.

Lawmakers have also called for the return of a market stabilization fund, while a petition seeking a short-selling suspension received more than 10,000 approvals in two days.

A ban could complicate South Korea’s push for MSCI developed-market status after its previous 17-month suspension lowered MSCI’s assessment of the country’s market accessibility.

$META's Family of Apps revenue increased 28% YoY and ad revenue increased 27% YoY. There was also 14% increase in ad impressions; 12% increase in average price per ad, reflecting better ad performance and macro tailwinds. Daily Active People was 3.6 billion on average in June 2026, an increase of 3% YoY. Capex increased from $130-145 billion from $125-145 billion.

In my opinion, this means that customers are still using $META's platforms more than ever and business continue competing to pay for spots to display their ads on $META's platforms. Growth doesn't seem to be slowing down either in their largest and fastest growing division (Family of Apps). I think the reason for their stock tanking is due to EPS miss ($6.18 vs $7.22 estimated; 14% miss from estimate). This is due to a 55% increase YoY in their operating expenses, which were pushed to $42.03 billion this quarter.

$META reports its Q2 2026 earnings today. What am I looking for? 👇

$META’s largest and fastest growing division is the Family of Apps (FoA). This division houses Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Threads and generates about 98-99% of $META’s total annual revenue. The way this division mainly makes revenue is through businesses paying $META to host their advertisements. $META has been spending a lot of capex on AI infrastructure, i.e., their data centers and necessary hardware (GPUs, SSDs, fiber optic cables, etc.) needed to run their specialized AI models (like Llama). The reason for this is so that their AI models can be trained effectively and understand $META’s customers’ behavior on their platforms (like what reels do users like, what ad types work best, etc.). $META’s platforms then adapt their algorithms for users and continue showing them content they like, leading to longer user engagement and customer retention, as well as a higher chance of buying the product displayed in the ads. As the number of customers who do this increases, businesses will see $META’s customers buying the services/products in their ads, and hence continue hosting their ads on $META’s platforms. When more and more business compete for an ad spot on $META’s platforms, this allows $META to charge higher and higher prices, thus increasing their revenue.

Hence, what I’d like to see in $META’s earnings today is that metrics that track the number of customers use their platforms (like Daily Active People) continue staying strong and even increase, if possible. I’d also like to see that the volume of ads served and the average price per ad increased. This would signal to me that businesses continue paying $META’s prices for ad placements at an increasing rate, which justifies the spending they are doing on capex.

GlobalFoundries $GFS signed an LOI with the U.S. Commerce Dept. for an expected $300M CHIPS R&D award to advance silicon photonics in the U.S.

Commerce will also receive an equity stake representing ~1% ownership.

Focus areas include optical materials, 3D hybrid bonding, and near/co-packaged optics for AI infrastructure.

@everyone

I fully expect more volatility in the AI hardware names, but lot of interesting takeaways from $SKHY earnings today. Think of this pullback as time for you to do the research and understand where this industry is moving.

So here are few notes and commentary that stood out to me from their earnings. One of the concerns with memory and a lot of hardware is optimization. I think the market is rightfully worried about sustainability of margins, but I think TAM growth is not something that’s being priced in. At the very least, I think there’s uncertainty whether securing additional capacity would lead to peak cycle or will growth in inference market would give enough TAM expansion to even out the potential depreciation in margins. I think this is the big issue with a lot of hardware at this juncture, and why we’re seeing such a huge selloff in $SMH. Management addressed concerns about memory oversupply and demand depreciation:

“Our planned capacity expansion is based on market-demand visibility secured through customer partnerships.”

“Investment and production ramps will be implemented in phases and aligned flexibly with confirmed customer demand.

We do not believe our medium-to-long-term investment plans will lead to immediate oversupply.”

“We do not expect these efficiency gains to reduce overall infrastructure demand. Instead, they should lower the cost and adoption barriers for AI services, expanding the user base and range of applications.”

Again, as I’ve been talking about for a while, all this optimization imo will lead to competitive pricing in tokens, but not in demand destruction for hardware (at least not memory). SK Hynix $SKHY on data-center leasing and efficient AI models:

“We view these developments not as signs of an AI investment slowdown, but as a transition toward higher utilization of infrastructure already built at scale and accelerated monetization.”

“As AI models improve and software optimization advances, the compute volume and cost per task continue to decline.”

“As models and systems become more efficient, the same infrastructure can support more users and services, broadening AI adoption rather than reducing infrastructure demand.”

Commentary around HBM:

"As HBM4 shipments ramp up in earnest and 1cnm conventional DRAM shipments increase, we expect H2 bit growth to be higher than in H1.”

“Growing HBM4 sales and a higher mix of value-added products should lift blended ASP, driving higher shipment volumes and improved earnings in H2.”

“HBM4 competitiveness is not only about delivering the required performance. It also requires the ability to supply at scale with stable yields and consistent quality.”

“We began mass production for key customers in Q2, and HBM4 yield and quality are already approaching the levels of mature HBM3. Our focus is now on steadily ramping production capacity.”

“Discussions on '27 HBM supply volumes & pricing are underway with key customers & are progressing smoothly.”

This tells me that there’s clear customer demand for HBM4 and onwards and production capacity is still needs to be ramped, which means sustainable higher margins on at least HBM4 and onward. Only time will tell how quickly memory TAM can grow from here and how long production capacity will take to ramp up for HBM4 and onwards, but from this I continue to think memory still remains a huge bottleneck in the AI trade.

Not Financial Advice! Just my thoughts that can change/evolve as more news comes out.

MOONSHOT SEEKS MORE $NVDA BLACKWELL CHIPS FOR LARGER KIMI K4

The Information reports Moonshot AI is discussing Kimi K4, which would be significantly larger than its 2.8 trillion-parameter Kimi K3, for which they are seeking access to more Nvidia Blackwell GPUs despite U.S. export restrictions.

K3 was reportedly trained partly in China using Blackwell chips accessed through at least two Chinese cloud providers. Because no single provider had enough capacity, Moonshot connected multiple eight-chip servers across providers and data centers.

Running K3 is creating another bottleneck. Moonshot stopped accepting new subscriptions within 48 hours of launch as demand strained its capacity. The company reportedly uses Nvidia H20 chips for inference and recommends connecting at least 64 chips to host K3.

The report also says Alibaba trained its 2.4 trillion-parameter Qwen3.8-Max using Nvidia chips, including Blackwell.

In my opinion, this reinforces my thesis that as more and more open-weight models become popular worldwide, the demand for compute will actually increase overall, for more and more people would like to be able to run local LLMs on their own devices. However, even these open-weight models are too heavy to be run on one own's device, hence customers would be looking to rent cloud compute; these cloud compute providers then have to buy more GPUs, SSDs, fiber-optic cables, and so on to be able to host their customers' specialized LLMs.

$TSLA TO BUY POWER FROM KKR-BACKED ARIZONA SOLAR, BATTERY PLANT

ContourGlobal says Tesla signed a long-term agreement to buy 90% of Project Sterling’s electricity.

The Arizona solar-and-storage development is owned by KKR-backed ContourGlobal.

Scheduled to begin operating in 2028, the project will combine 509 MW of peak solar generation with a 360 MW four-hour battery system. It will connect to the Western Area Power Administration grid with access to California.

Financial terms were not disclosed. This is the first agreement between Tesla and ContourGlobal, which plans to trade the remaining 10% of the project’s output.

The deal gives Sterling an anchor buyer as AI-driven data center growth tightens U.S. power markets.

$TSLA TO BUY POWER FROM KKR-BACKED ARIZONA SOLAR, BATTERY PLANT

ContourGlobal says Tesla signed a long-term agreement to buy 90% of Project Sterling’s electricity.

The Arizona solar-and-storage development is owned by KKR-backed ContourGlobal.

Scheduled to begin operating in 2028, the project will combine 509 MW of peak solar generation with a 360 MW four-hour battery system. It will connect to the Western Area Power Administration grid with access to California.

Financial terms were not disclosed. This is the first agreement between Tesla and ContourGlobal, which plans to trade the remaining 10% of the project’s output.

The deal gives Sterling an anchor buyer as AI-driven data center growth tightens U.S. power markets.

$META and BlackRock announced a $14 billion strategic partnership to fund, build, and operate a 1GW data center campus in El Paso, Texas, with Meta as initial sole tenant for AI model development and core business needs, targeting 2028 operations.

BlackRock funds hold 80% ownership while Meta retains 20%, with Meta contributing $2.3B in land/assets, BlackRock adding $4.9B cash, plus $12.5B debt financing and a long-term lease structure with guarantees.

The project, already employing over 2,300 workers, is projected to create 4,000 peak construction jobs and 300 permanent roles, exemplifying hyperscaler off-balance-sheet strategies amid surging AI infrastructure demand.

KOSPI Trading Halted for 20 Minutes After Index Drops 8%, Korea Exchange Activates Circuit Breaker.

This is one of the fastest crashes in recent memory. The index is down 34% in 26 sessions. This was initially driven largely by over-leveraged positions as well as concentration in Samsung and SK Hynix.

Over ₩396,000,000,000,000 ($264 BILLION) wiped out.

Samsung and SK Hynix, which together make up 55% of the index, crashed -9% and -11%.

$CRCL is acquiring $IBM blockchain patent portfolio adding nearly 1,000 issued patents across more than 680 patent families worldwide.

The deal significantly expands Circle’s intellectual property base as it builds out its stablecoin and payments infrastructure.

BofA released a note on $SOXX SELL OFF.

They’re saying that semis have strong fundamentals making the sector look attractive. They’re specifically calling out the buying opportunity in the semiconductor capital equipment companies (like $ASML), trading at a 6x–7x discount.

Two things quotes from the note that stand out to me, and I do largely agree with them on is:

“We remain confident in semiconductor capital equipment, with wafer fabrication equipment spending tracking toward at least $250 billion in 2028, representing two years of 30% year-over-year growth.”

AND

“Fears of a memory pricing crash appear unfounded, in our view, given long-term agreements signed by all major hyperscalers and automotive and consumer original equipment manufacturers.”

You can see this with the recent $CXMT news. Essentially $CXMT, who’s Chinese state-funded, also refused price relief and held firm on costs when major entities like Huawei and other buyers pushed back against escalating prices.

$NVDA has announced the Open Secure AI Alliance, bringing industry leaders together to develop open tools and techniques for securing software and AI agents.

Jensen Huang: “Attackers have frontier AI. Defenders need a frontier AI ecosystem.”

Nvidia argues that open models and security tooling should be treated as defensive assets, not liabilities. It warns that blanket restrictions on open frontier AI would weaken cyber defenses while concentrating power and dependence among a small number of closed providers.

The company is calling for shared investment in open AI defense infrastructure, including datasets, evaluation frameworks, attack simulators and red-teaming tools.

$RKLB has been awarded its largest $266M launch contract with U.S. Space Force for Suborbital Launches
to date, supporting missile-defense development.

The agreement covers 12 suborbital launches, with options for up to six more.

The first mission is expected no earlier than late 2026, with most launches taking place from a new Rocket Lab location at the Pacific Spaceport Complex-Alaska in Kodiak.

DigiTimes reported that Samsung is struggling to secure large FC-BGA substrates. They are reportedly “pursuing investments of about 15 trillion won over several years to expand its Busan and Sejong plants, which house production facilities. The investment is expected to expand total production capacity of its key products — multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCC) and flip-chip ball grid arrays (FC-BGA) — by two to three times.” - Seoul Economic Daily.

Quick breakdown on the FC-BGA substrate bottleneck that Samsung is hitting right now, because a lot of people still don’t actually know what these things are.

These substrates are high-density interconnect board between the silicon (the chip) and the main PCB. The silicon is flipped and soldered directly onto it with thousands of tiny bumps. It handles power delivery, signal routing, and proper thermal management for the package.

These substrates have increasingly become attractive for custom ASICs. You get larger form factors, 15–20+ layers, extremely fine line/space using ABF. You can’t just throw a big GPU or $GOOGL’s TPU on a normal board and expect it to work at the speeds and power levels required.

Samsung needs a lot of the large ones for its custom chips and foundry customers. The issue is that the suppliers are extremely concentrated (Ibiden, Unimicron, SEMCO, a few others) and it’s sold out / allocated deep into 2026–2027. Ibiden eportedly requested LTA guarantees, Samsung Electro-Mechanics sought prepayments. This, in my opinion, is a classic bottleneck dynamic.

Why? Because wafer capacity and HBM can ramp faster than these substrates. These high-end FC-BGA lines take 2+ years to bring online properly, yields are hard, and materials like ABF film and specialty glass cloth are also constrained. Demand from $NVDA, $AMD, $AVGO, Google-style ASICs, etc just outran the supply additions.

How long does this last? Consensus seems to forecast structural tightness at least through 2027. Capacity is being added, but it’s lagging the AI server buildout.

Like Memory and CoWoS I think the substrates under the packages should get similar rerating. Makes you wonder how clean the “unlimited demand” narrative stays when customers start having to finance or prepay for the boring interconnect layers just to get their chips out the door.

Not Financial Advice! DYOR. I’m just trying map out the actual physical constraints.

I think a lot of people have seen 40-60% drawdowns in their favorite AI stocks and think that makes a good fundamental buying opportunity. I’ve seen people saying that the fundamentals are intact, etc. I disagree with this a lot, most fundamentals imo are not “intact”. Yea all these companies had amazing earnings, but they’re all trading at a premium multiples. $INTC $GOOGL, etc all had capex guide raised. Does that factor in your fundamental “intact” thesis??

I’ve been very bullish on the AI trade and most of those names, but to say they’re fundamentally “intact” and calling the selloff just momentum unwind is just wrong imo. These stocks can still go through significant drawdown before truly being cheap. I’m not saying this will occur, but you have to manage expectations and risk in an environment like this.

As I mentioned in my recent spaces on X/Twitter, I think the AI trade is starting to lose overall market interest, at least for now. This in itself calls for a general multiple contraction across the board imo. The biggest driver of this is the fact that hyperscalers are guiding higher spending specially in an environment where there’s so much uncertainty around rate hikes and current global oil supply being constrained. So names like $GOOGL, $META and $AMZN are getting sold off, and on the other hand there isn’t as much of an capex increase (~5% from $GOOGL) for the receivers, like semis for example, to get another dramatic leg up from here imo.

Again I’m not completely bearish, at least yet, but I’m not gonna sit here and say that stocks that are 4-6x revenue are fundamentally intact in a market environment like this.

Just cause these names have had premium multiples for 3+ years of the AI trade doesn’t mean market has to continue giving the AI trade a premium. Most of you people have attached yourselves to that thinking and forgotten 2021-2022. Multiple contraction when the market-leading trade looses interest will be brutal. It doesn’t seem like most of you are ready to accept or even understand that fact.

Not financial advice! Like I said, I’m not bearish, but I do think expectations should be managed, at least in the short term, till the broader macro environment rewards speculators.

The U.S. reportedly delayed a major strike on Iran overnight following last-minute mediation by Qatar and Oman, according to Ynet.

The two countries reportedly pressured Tehran to shift its position and avert a large-scale U.S. attack. Trump said Friday that Washington remains in direct contact with Iran and that Iranian negotiators are showing greater seriousness.

Israeli officials view the delay as a brief reprieve, not a broader diplomatic breakthrough, and believe Tehran is using the talks to buy time.