Tonight, ahead of the CPI data release, the probability of a Fed interest rate hike this year is 68.8%.

Citrini analyst Jukan has responded to recent bearish NAND notes and negative rumors about QLC price negotiations circulating in the market. Accepting a price lower than the initial offer when SanDisk signed a long-term agreement (LTA) with Meta is not surprising. As the most active NAND vendor in pursuing LTAs, SanDisk plans to allocate over 50% of its total shipments to such deals. Based on this strategy, it is naturally willing to accept LTA prices lower than current quarterly contract rates, so one cannot infer that "SanDisk cannot seamlessly resell all orders to higher-bidding North American clients." Regarding the rumor that Chinese module manufacturers were rejected when promoting eSSDs to domestic cloud service providers (CSPs), Jukan explained that Chinese CSPs have direct procurement channels from Yangtze Memory Technologies (YMTC) rather than insufficient demand. As for the claim that hyperscale cloud vendors are pressuring down QLC eSSD prices leading to unsold volumes, he noted that new cloud vendors have enough demand to absorb these volumes. Jukan concluded that negative headlines tend to be amplified when storage stocks underperform, but the sector’s fundamentals have not seen substantial deterioration. He reaffirmed his "bullish stance on storage." Earlier, Jukan had stated that DRAM contract prices still have around 40% upside potential by the end of 2027, and HBM supply remains tight. This clarification on the NAND segment further solidifies his bullish outlook for the entire storage space.

According to Hyperinsight’s monitoring, the Pre-IPO contract price of CXMT (Changxin Memory Technologies, whose listed entity is Changxin Technology) on Hyperliquid has fallen to $6, with a more than 5.7% drop in 24 hours. The corresponding RMB share price stands at 40.62 yuan. Calculated based on the post-issue total share count of 66.881 billion shares, the on-chain implied market capitalization is approximately $400 billion, equivalent to around 2.7 trillion yuan. At this valuation, the subscription cost per lot of 500 shares for retail investors who win the online application is 4,330 yuan. The estimated market value of 500 shares on the first day of listing is 20,310 yuan, translating to a profit of roughly 16,000 yuan per lot.

The latest draft of the U.S. Senate’s Cryptocurrency Market Structure Act (the CLARITY Act) includes provisions encouraging white hat hackers to responsibly disclose cybersecurity vulnerabilities, proposing to authorize rewards for individuals who identify and report such flaws to bolster protection for digital asset infrastructure before they are maliciously exploited. The provision incorporates the views of former CFTC Chairman J. Christopher Giancarlo, a long-time advocate for digital asset innovation.

According to statistics from the Financial Times in partnership with Challenger, Gray & Christmas, U.S. tech industry layoffs since 2026 have accounted for more than one-third of all announced layoffs nationwide. Amazon, Oracle, Meta and Microsoft alone have cut nearly 50,000 jobs, roughly 6% of their total workforce. In sharp contrast, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta and Microsoft are projected to invest a combined $725 billion in AI infrastructure such as data centers this year. After laying off staff in March, Oracle’s total headcount dropped by 21,000 for the full year; this month, S&P downgraded its credit rating, citing weak cash flow and uncertain AI returns. Microsoft cut 4,800 jobs this month, mainly in its Xbox gaming division, essentially a full reset of its $75 billion acquisition of Activision Blizzard three years ago. The narrative that "AI causes layoffs" is met with skepticism in academic circles. Enrico Moretti, an economics professor at the University of California, Berkeley, notes that AI-related layoffs are more of an excuse for management to correct over-hiring during the pandemic. "Claiming AI-driven efficiency gains is easier than admitting to over-hiring back then," he said. Market pricing also contradicts this narrative: within 30 trading days of announcing layoffs, companies that attributed cuts to AI saw their stock prices underperform the Nasdaq by nearly 10%, while companies laying off for other reasons lagged by only around 4%. Amazon and Microsoft have explicitly stated that AI adoption is not a decisive factor in their layoffs. In contrast to the tech giants’ non-core business contractions, AI-native startups like Anthropic and OpenAI are still rapidly expanding their workforce, driving fast growth in AI sector employment. "What is being cut is merely all other non-core business segments."

Layer 1 blockchain project Vanar announced that its infrastructure migration to Base will kick off next Tuesday. Users currently staking VANRY must first unstake, wait for the cooldown period to elapse before claiming their tokens. Earlier, Vanar stated that existing VANRY token holders can complete the migration at a 1:1 ratio, with their holding amounts remaining unchanged. Additionally, VANRY’s total supply will rise from 2.4 billion to 10 billion tokens, approximately 62% of which will stay locked during the migration. Once the migration is complete, staking for Vanarchain validators will be halted.

U.S. data center power demand is projected to surge by 253% from 2026 levels, reaching a record 194 gigawatts by 2035 — with 1 gigawatt roughly matching the capacity of a traditional nuclear reactor. Currently, data centers consume 6% of the U.S.’s annual electricity; that share is estimated to climb to around 12% by 2030, and will account for roughly 20% of total U.S. electricity consumption by 2035. Most of the growth in U.S. power demand is concentrated in a handful of grid regions, such as the PJM Interconnection, which serves Washington, D.C. and 13 states including Virginia, Pennsylvania and Ohio. Power will be the next AI bottleneck.