Pre-market news roundup for US stocks: NVIDIA expands its share buyback program to $235 billion; SpaceX carries out its first Starship orbital test; Google invests $15.2 billion in Finnish AI infrastructure.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), NVIDIA (NVDA.O) rose as much as approximately 3.6% intraday, marking its largest single-day gain since September 2. On the news front, NVIDIA received multiple positive developments today. The company’s current portfolio comprises 13 publicly listed companies and 229 private firms. The contract value in Anthropic’s report alone exceeds $180 billion. Today, NVIDIA announced it would increase its stock repurchase authorization by $150 billion. Meanwhile, the company’s committed amount rose from $119 billion in the previous quarter to $279 billion.

Beating AI Express News: AI assistant startup Instinct has closed a $1 billion Series C funding round, reaching a $10 billion valuation, with participation from firms including Sequoia Capital, Benchmark Capital, and Coatue. A month ago, Instinct had just secured a $350 million funding round at a $2.5 billion valuation. Instinct launched its invitation-only service in August 2026, focusing on AI agents that perform real-world tasks for users, such as booking travel and restaurants, shopping, paying bills, canceling subscriptions, conducting research, and ordering groceries. The company recently rolled out the "Concierge" feature, which makes calls on users' behalf, and the "Trusted Person Network" that enables AI agents of different users to coordinate with each other. Reports note that Instinct's rapid fundraising reflects growing market interest in consumer-facing AI agents. However, the company's previous privacy policy sparked user concerns over personal data security, and it has since been updated. Meanwhile, Meta's AI assistant Muse has seen rapid growth recently and is competing with Instinct.

Capital Economics believes the sell-off in US Treasuries is primarily driven by changes in the market’s near-term interest rate expectations. Current 10-year US Treasury yields are approaching their June 2007 highs; economist James Reilly points out that this trend reflects rising oil prices and the strength of the US economy, rather than being fueled by AI-related bond issuance or fiscal concerns. Reilly forecasts that as the Federal Reserve’s tightening falls short of investors’ current expectations, 10-year US Treasury yields will “fall sharply to 4.25%” by the end of 2027. He notes that while AI-related bond issuance will continue to exert upward pressure on yields, its impact is less significant than media reports have implied, and will be offset by shifts in monetary policy expectations. As for fiscal concerns, he added that there have been no substantial fiscal developments recently sufficient to trigger a sharp spike in yields.

Polymarket’s development lead Josh Stevens stated the team is fully building a new Rust Central Limit Order Book (CLOB) system and unveiled the latest migration plan for Polymarket DeFi. The existing CLOB is widely regarded as the root cause of most current issues. Per the plan, October will bring end-to-end testing of the full order lifecycle—including trading, settlement, on-chain interactions, indexers, and engine notifications—in a test environment. In November, all production traffic will be mirrored to the new trading cluster, with results compared against the existing system, and test access opened to market makers. The team also aims to finalize the migration switch plan in November, completing two full dry runs before the official switch. If progress goes smoothly, the new system will then be officially launched. Stevens added that the migration will minimize required changes for market makers and developers: request and response interfaces are expected to stay unchanged, with only possible additions of some fields and the deprecation of one field; any deprecation will be announced in advance.

According to market data from BIT (bit.com), U.S. stocks opened: the Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 0.64%, the S&P 500 index dropped 0.43%, and the Nasdaq declined 0.47%. Nvidia (NVDA.O) rose 2.3% after the company announced it would increase its stock repurchase authorization by $150 billion. Meta Platforms (META.O) slipped 0.9%, having notched a nearly 13% gain in the prior week. SpaceX (SPCX.O) was nearly flat, as its Starship completed its first orbital flight.

Apollo Chief Economist Torsten Slok warns that as AI agents begin managing users’ funds—automatically shifting household cash from low-yield demand deposit accounts to high-yield alternatives—it could trigger a “slow-motion bank run.” Slok notes the average annual interest rate on U.S. demand deposits is just ~0.1%, while providers including Revolut, SoFi, Varo, LendingClub, and Wealthfront offer rates between 3.3% and 5%. For a $10,000 deposit, this translates to roughly $10 in annual interest from traditional accounts, versus $330 to $500 from high-yield options. Slok contends that widespread adoption of such AI agents to optimize household cash returns could erode banks’ low-cost deposit base—their key funding source for lending—posing potential risks to the financial system. These AI agents can monitor account balances in real time, compare yields across financial institutions, automatically transfer idle funds, and repatriate money before bill due dates. Additionally, the report highlights that the crypto sector has started building payment infrastructure for AI agents: Coinbase’s x402 protocol enables AI agents to make fast online payments using stablecoins, with cumulative transactions totaling approximately 188 million to 205 million and around 69,000 active agents.