Stocks of Asian storage chip manufacturers rose, lifted by SanDisk's favorable long-term outlook.

AI investor Leopold Aschenbrenner’s Situational Awareness fund nearly liquidated its entire public market stock position in late July, retaining only its private equity stake in Anthropic. It is reported that Citadel, owned by Ken Griffin, acquired most of the stock assets sold by the fund. Situational Awareness once managed up to $45 billion in assets, but after incurring losses in AI infrastructure-related stocks, the fund significantly cut its public equity positions. With nearly all public stocks sold, Anthropic became the only core holding left untouched. According to reports, Aschenbrenner’s July investor letter cited Anthropic’s potential IPO as a key catalyst. Anthropic is one of the world’s most valuable private AI companies; an eventual IPO would give early investors an opportunity to exit and realize returns. Analysts believe that Aschenbrenner’s decision to retain his Anthropic stake amid sharp corrections in AI infrastructure stocks reflects his continued confidence in Anthropic and his own long-term investment thesis on AGI. Anthropic is not yet publicly traded, so retail investors cannot directly trade its shares. The main public market proxies for exposure to Anthropic include Amazon and NVIDIA, both of which have invested heavily in AI infrastructure.

Washington state court has issued a final ruling ordering prediction market platform Kalshi to cease offering event contracts in the state covering sports, elections, politics, entertainment, culture, technology, science, and "person mentions". The court found Kalshi is likely violating Washington’s gambling regulations. Kalshi is required to implement geoblocking via IP addresses and user residency by August 19, and upgrade to a multi-source geofencing system by September 2 to block Washington state users from accessing restricted markets. The platform is also prohibited from promoting related betting products to consumers in the state. However, the ruling does not restrict all of Kalshi’s operations; contracts related to commodities, climate, and economic and financial instruments may still be offered in Washington. The decision stems from a prior lawsuit filed by Washington state. Kalshi had previously requested a stay of the injunction, but the Washington State Court of Appeals denied the request. Meanwhile, multiple U.S. states and local governments are questioning whether Kalshi’s event contracts constitute illegal gambling under state law, while Kalshi argues its business should be regulated by the U.S. Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) per federal law. On the same day, Baltimore, Maryland’s largest city, also sued Kalshi and Polymarket, accusing them of offering illegal gambling products. Kalshi faces growing regulatory pressure from state and local authorities.

Recently, Web3 AI ecosystem network X-Agent announced the official launch of the "X-Agent AI MCP Hackathon 2026: Build, Verify, MCPize, Monetize" online hackathon. Open to global developers and Web3 AI teams, the event aims to break the limitation of projects being "only a demo" by creating realistically callable, verifiable AI APIs and on-chain capabilities with sustainable monetization potential. Featuring zero-threshold standardization, it covers everything from APIs to Agent business tools. The hackathon runs for nearly 4 weeks, including a 5-day warm-up period and a 14-day development phase. Participants do not need to build complex MCP (Model Context Protocol) frameworks from scratch; they only need to develop core AI or crypto functions based on APIs and submit their source code. Projects that pass technical verification and security audits will be standardized and packaged into MCP tools aligned with Agent architecture with X-Agent’s assistance. A key benefit of the hackathon is direct access to the OKX.AI ecosystem, enabling pay-per-call monetization. High-quality winning projects will be recommended by X-Agent and listed on the OKX.AI Agent Marketplace. Via the A2MCP and x402 protocols (integrating OKX X Layer’s gas-free on-chain USDC settlement channel), developers will earn continuous pay-per-call revenue every time another AI Agent or user uses their tool. The event includes four major tracks focused on AI, Web3, and on-chain automation. The official notes that to ensure ecosystem security, security audit-related projects involving smart contract audits, security risk control, phishing detection, and rug pull checks are not eligible for participation.

According to an official announcement, Bitget has launched the ANET (Arista Networks) stock perpetual contract. The contract is settled in USDT, supports up to 20x leverage, and is available for 24/7 trading. As of now, Bitget supports a total of 272 stock contracts.

According to the recently disclosed first-half 2026 holdings of Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM), Norway’s central bank’s investment arm, the institution has for the first time disclosed a stake in Ethereum treasury firm BitMine Immersion Technologies (BMNR). As of June 30, its holding accounted for 1.16% of BMNR’s shares, with a market value of approximately 883 million Norwegian kroner (around $88.25 million). NBIM’s BitMine position makes up a small share of its first-half portfolio, but marks the first public disclosure of the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund’s holding in BitMine. The sovereign wealth fund announced Wednesday that, boosted by a rally in Asian tech stocks, it posted a 9.4% return in the first half, generating a record semi-annual profit of over $182 billion. The fund currently has total assets of roughly $2.34 trillion, with investments in more than 7,000 companies across over 50 countries, and holds approximately 1.5% of the world’s publicly traded stocks.

According to Reuters, AMD has closed a four-tranche USD bond offering worth $4.75 billion, marking the largest USD debt financing in the company’s history. The issuance comprises senior unsecured notes maturing in 2029, 2031, 2033 and 2036. The 10-year tranche was priced at 90 basis points (bps) above U.S. Treasuries, a roughly 25 bps tightening from initial guidance, indicating strong investor demand. AMD said the bond proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, including potential debt repayment. As of June 27, AMD held approximately $13.1 billion in cash and short-term investments, and carries a high investment-grade credit rating. The financing is not driven by liquidity pressure, but rather to provide flexibility for future investments and capital arrangements. The bond offering comes amid a continuous expansion in AI infrastructure investment. AMD is accelerating its expansion in AI and data center businesses, competing with NVIDIA in the AI accelerator chip market. The company recently announced partnerships with Anthropic, Microsoft and others, and plans to invest up to $50 billion in Anthropic. Market projections expect AMD’s revenue to grow 47% this year, exceeding $51 billion. The $4.75 billion financing is significantly larger than its previous investment-grade bond offering of $1.5 billion in March 2025, also reflecting that AI industry chain enterprises are entering a stage of sustained capital expansion.