Nvidia is in talks to acquire Hugging Face for over $13 billion.

Video conferencing giant Zoom projects adjusted earnings per share (EPS) of $1.46 to $1.48 for its third quarter, below the average analyst estimate of $1.50 compiled by LSEG, indicating that while the company continues to add AI features, competition in the video conferencing market is pressuring its profitability. Following the earnings release, Zoom’s shares fell 3.8% in after-hours trading. Zoom forecasts third-quarter revenue of $1.275 billion to $1.28 billion, matching the average analyst estimate of $1.28 billion. The company is currently rolling out AI Companion assistants, meeting reception tools, and its Zoom AI Services suite for enterprise clients to attract more users, though it still faces fierce competition from Microsoft Teams and Alphabet’s Google Meet. Zoom’s stake in Anthropic has risen in value to $3.13 billion. According to the company’s disclosures, this investment generated $1.61 billion in paper gains during the three months ending in July. Zoom first invested in Anthropic in early 2023, when the two parties established a partnership to integrate Anthropic’s Claude model into Zoom’s products. Additionally, Zoom revealed that it made an additional $301 million investment in Anthropic over the six months ending in July this year.

Amazon (AMZN) and Nvidia (NVDA) announced Wednesday local time that Amazon will deploy approximately 2 million of Nvidia’s high-end chips in 2027 and 2028. The chips are designed for training and running artificial intelligence (AI) models. Separately, Amazon stated in March this year that it would begin installing 1 million Nvidia chips in Amazon Web Services (AWS) data centers starting this year. The latest deal covers Nvidia’s Blackwell Ultra, Rubin, and Rubin Ultra graphics processing units (GPUs). Each of these products is priced at at least tens of thousands of dollars, though large clients are eligible for discounts.

The "Big Short" prototype Michael Burry disclosed his latest holdings: he bought Nvidia (NVDA) long positions as a hedge, while increasing his Nvidia short positions. Additionally, he added to his short positions in Oracle (ORCL), Palantir (PLTR), Nebius (NBIS), and Caterpillar (CAT). On the long side, Burry increased his holdings of Birkenstock (BIRK) at around $30 per share, and added to his positions in Freddie Mac (FMCC) at around $5 per share. Burry stated that his stock short positions now account for more than 21% of his portfolio, a figure that does not include put options. He noted that the size of his put option positions is difficult to quantify simply, as these options are typically deep out-of-the-money, have long maturities, and are asymmetric, high-leverage directional strategies, though their current market value is low.

Doppler Finance will launch its native utility and governance token XDP, noting that the token will act as the coordination layer for protocol participation, decentralized governance, and ecosystem development—not just a reward token. XDP has a total supply of 10 billion tokens, with over half allocated to ecosystem development, treasury programs, strategic partnerships, and community growth. The initial function of XDP is protocol staking: users will later be able to stake XDP to gain access to advanced vaults and strategies, priority access to new products, eligibility for designated ecosystem activities, and other protocol features, with specific staking rules to be announced separately. The XDP genesis airdrop will distribute 1% of total supply to early users, contributors, and supporters, all of which will unlock at the Token Generation Event (TGE). An additional 43% of the supply is reserved for ecosystem and incentives, including future Doppler points campaigns, XDP staking, and other community initiatives. The official XDP contract address has not been released yet, so users should not interact with any so-called XDP tokens that appear prematurely.

Beating AI Insight News Brief: NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang responded to criticism over the company’s expanded financing support for the AI ecosystem on CNBC’s *Mad Money*, saying critics overlook the AI industry’s unique capital needs. He noted that these are the first startups requiring billions of dollars to launch and tens of billions to turn profitable, with AI development and deployment inherently demanding massive capital. NVIDIA has so far invested in model developers including OpenAI and Anthropic, as well as new cloud service providers that lease NVIDIA’s computing power, and provided financing for data center projects. Among these efforts, the company committed $105 billion to a large Ohio computing campus leased by OpenAI, and is partnering with major Wall Street financial institutions to arrange up to $500 billion in financing for data centers. Some critics argue these arrangements resemble "circular financing," where NVIDIA provides funds to clients that then use a portion of the money to purchase its products, potentially artificially boosting demand and revenue. Huang countered that cutting-edge AI labs represent a "once-in-a-generation" investment opportunity, with NVIDIA aiming to act as their equity investor and partner, supporting these firms to build and expand ecosystems on NVIDIA’s platform. He added that these companies typically lack investment-grade credit and the financial track records needed to access low-cost capital, making NVIDIA’s support necessary. Even if individual supported firms face operational struggles, the underlying computing infrastructure can be transferred to other clients and workloads, keeping NVIDIA’s risks low. He noted that these investments are expected to generate substantial returns.

The Bank of Korea announced a 25 basis point interest rate hike, raising its benchmark rate from 2.75% to 3.0%, marking the second consecutive rate increase at its policy meeting, in line with market expectations.