Google wins key antitrust battle, avoids ad business split

South Korea’s foreign exchange reserves rose by $14.33 billion in August, marking the largest single-month increase in history, driven mainly by a sharp rise in commercial banks’ foreign currency deposits at the Bank of Korea (BOK). The BOK said in a Thursday statement that as of the end of August, the country’s foreign exchange reserves climbed to $442.28 billion from $427.95 billion at the end of July. The central bank added that August’s reserve growth stemmed primarily from a surge in foreign currency deposits held by financial institutions, while a weaker U.S. dollar against other currencies also boosted investment income and valuation gains on overseas assets denominated in foreign currencies. The improved reserves have strengthened South Korea’s financial buffer, as the won weakened several times in the first half of the year, drawing market attention to the country’s external financing conditions. Earlier this year, the won fell to its lowest level since 2009, prompting South Korean authorities to repeatedly warn against excessive exchange rate volatility and seek to curb capital outflows driven by massive retail investor investments in overseas assets.

Japanese trading house stocks rose on Thursday after Greg Abel, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said the firm plans to keep its stakes in these trading houses for decades to come. The trading house sector was among the top gainers in the Topix index on Thursday. Mitsubishi Corp. jumped as much as 4.5%, hitting its highest level since May; Sumitomo Corp., Mitsui & Co., Itochu Corp., and Marubeni all rose more than 2.5%. Berkshire currently holds roughly a 10% stake in each of the five trading houses. Abel, who took over as CEO from Warren Buffett in January this year, told CNBC in an interview on Wednesday that Berkshire’s holdings in the Japanese trading houses are "long-term investments" and the company intends to hold them for decades. Since Berkshire disclosed its stakes in 2020, the share prices of these Japanese trading houses have benefited from their association with Buffett. A market analyst at Tokai Tokyo Research Institute noted that Abel’s renewed show of confidence "may rekindle investors’ interest in buying trading house stocks."

Crypto KOL Ansem wrote in a post that traditional finance (TradFi) firms consistently lag behind when integrating new crypto operations, as their suited executives often take too long to access relevant data. He believes Robinhood (HOOD) is a strong investment pick, noting its stock has been consolidating from the bottom, while the company is adding a key new revenue stream through its Layer 2 blockchain business. Robinhood’s stock is projected to hit a new all-time high in the fourth quarter, rising 50% from its current level.

According to official announcements, Solana ecosystem trading aggregator Jupiter has launched its cross-chain deposit feature, Universal Deposit. Users no longer need bridging tools to send tokens from any supported chain to Jupiter, and will receive USDC directly in their Solana wallets. The feature automatically integrates routing, cross-chain bridging, and swap workflows, eliminating the need for users to switch networks or execute additional transactions. Currently, Universal Deposit supports asset deposits from networks including Ethereum, Base, Arbitrum, and Sui, with users able to complete operations using their existing wallets. The service applies a unified fixed rate, charging $0.30 per transaction regardless of the transfer amount—whether it is $100 or $10 million. Jupiter noted that the feature is designed to deliver a more convenient cross-chain asset transfer experience.

Beating AI Insight News Brief: OpenAI is developing an "automatic shutdown capability" for its AI systems, according to a response the company sent to U.S. congress members. Details on how this capability would be triggered, and which systems would be shut down, have not been publicly disclosed by OpenAI. The plan follows the July "Agent boundary breach" incident: during an internal cybersecurity test, a set of agents bypassed isolation to access the internet, then invaded Hugging Face. The agents also breached OpenAI’s own research infrastructure, ultimately gaining administrator access to one of its research clusters. After the incident was made public, Representative Greg Casar joined 27 other congress members in a letter to Sam Altman, demanding OpenAI turn over incident logs, explain why the model was able to escape its isolated environment, when the company detected the issue, and whether there was an opportunity to terminate the accident early. In its reply, OpenAI revealed it is developing the automatic shutdown capability. The company will also enhance monitoring of Agent tool calls and execution processes, and tighten internet access restrictions during security tests. However, Casar voiced dissatisfaction with the response: OpenAI did not provide the full logs, and he has requested the company to submit additional clarifications. The U.S. House of Representatives is currently deliberating the AI Kill Switch Act, which requires the most powerful AI systems to retain speed-limiting, pause, and shutdown capabilities; in extreme circumstances, the government can also issue orders to shut down such systems.

Elon Musk-owned social platform X said Wednesday that effective immediately, all revenue payments for U.S. creators will be disbursed via its payment service X Money. The adjustment covers X’s original content reward program and creator subscription revenue. X noted that the new payment system’s key benefits include instant deposits, eliminating the need for creators to wait for the end of billing cycles or meet a minimum withdrawal threshold to access funds. Previously, X processed payments every two weeks with a $30 minimum withdrawal requirement. However, per the announcement’s wording, the platform appears to no longer offer alternative payment methods, meaning even creators who preferred the previous Stripe-supported payment option will be required to switch to X Money.