Bankless Founder Shifts Positions to Altcoins, All of Which Have Significantly Outperformed ETH; ZEC, LIT, and VVV Have Repeatedly Hit New All-Time Highs.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), U.S. pre-market trading on Wednesday saw modest strength in the semiconductor, storage, and optical communications sectors. Semiconductor stocks rose broadly: Lam Research (LRCX) gained 0.91%, Applied Materials (AMAT) climbed 0.41%, and Arm (ARM) advanced 1.12%. The storage sector also trended higher, with SK Hynix (SKHY) up 1.63%, Micron Technology (MU) rising 0.84%, Western Digital (WDC) gaining 0.38%, SanDisk (SNDK) increasing 1.19%, and Seagate Technology (STX) adding 0.39%. Optical communication-related stocks led the gains: Astera Labs (ALAB) rose 1.31%, Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) gained 0.98%, Coherent (COHR) advanced 0.79%, Credo (CRDO) up 0.95%, Lumentum (LITE) climbed 0.5%, and Nokia (NOK) jumped 4.79%.

Bernstein analysts have retained their "Outperform" rating on Robinhood Markets, along with a $160 price target, noting that the firm’s newly launched Layer 2 network has quickly become a profit driver. In a Tuesday report sent to clients, the team led by Gautam Chhugani pointed out that Robinhood Chain has grown rapidly since its July 1 launch. The network currently holds a Total Value Locked (TVL) of roughly $1.5 billion, with Decentralized Exchange (DEX) trading volume exceeding $50 billion. The analysts wrote: “This chain is now capable of generating profits.” They added that Robinhood Chain’s daily transaction fees currently range from $2 million to $4 million. Over the past 15 days, the chain ranked first among all blockchains in fee revenue, totaling roughly $33 million—surpassing Solana’s ~$11 million and BNB Chain’s ~$9 million.

Arthur Hayes announced in a post that Flop Labs will launch a KOL ranking program, assigning each participating KOL a unique referral link. KOLs can embed this link in their content, and the platform will use it to track their referred users’ contributions to FLOP and network usage. Additionally, users who create wallets via a KOL’s exclusive referral link will be eligible to participate in regular FLOP giveaways. The program will be open to all users in the future, with more event details to be announced soon.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), Lithium Americas' US stock gained over 5% in pre-market trading, following JPMorgan Chase assigning the stock an "overweight" rating.

Beating AI Insight News Brief: AI video and world model company Runway has acquired Paris-based AI research firm Kinetix. Seven Kinetix employees are joining Runway, with the acquisition amount undisclosed. Kinetix specializes in research on 3D human motion and physics-compliant video generation. The team will join Runway’s Paris research center, focusing on developing world models for robotics.

Beating AI News reports: Anastasis Germanidis, co-founder and co-CEO of AI video and world model firm Runway, stated that the company’s annual recurring revenue (ARR) topped $200 million last week, doubling from $100 million in April over five months. Bloomberg, citing insiders, noted Runway expects its ARR to exceed $350 million by the end of this year. A large portion of recent growth stems from enterprise clients. Runway disclosed in August its net revenue retention (NRR) surpassed 300%, with one Fortune 20 client seeing usage grow 17 times this year. Enterprises including Amazon, Microsoft, Adobe, and Robinhood are all using Runway.