NVIDIA hit an intraday all-time high, rising 2.4%.

Insight: Beating AI Newsflash – ByteDance is in advanced negotiations with MediaTek to source custom ASIC chips for its data centers. Bloomberg reported on October 15, citing people familiar with the matter, that the two sides are close to a deal, though details including procurement volume, chip specifications, and delivery timeline remain undisclosed. If finalized, ByteDance would become MediaTek’s second major ASIC client after Google. This is not ByteDance’s first foray into securing data center chips from mobile chipmakers: in May this year, Bloomberg revealed the company had reached an agreement with Qualcomm to source millions of ASICs for powering AI Agents, with Qualcomm set to help bring ByteDance’s self-developed chip designs to production. The latest engagement with MediaTek signals ByteDance is expanding its custom chip supply channels to alleviate computing power pressure stemming from U.S. export restrictions and domestic chip capacity shortages. MediaTek, which previously focused primarily on its mobile processor business, has now entered Google’s TPU supply chain and begun competing with players like Broadcom and Qualcomm for data center orders. The firm projects its data center AI chip revenue will exceed $2 billion this year. In August, Nvidia also subscribed to $3.5 billion in MediaTek’s convertible bonds and announced a partnership to develop custom AI infrastructure. While such ASICs can optimize performance, power efficiency, and cost for specific tasks, it remains unconfirmed whether the chips ByteDance is negotiating to purchase will be used for model training or inference.

Arthur Hayes posted on social media that if AI trading eventually crashes, it could trigger a trillion-dollar-scale market bailout, a scenario that would drive up Bitcoin and Ethereum’s prices. “Will AI eventually crash? I don’t know, and I won’t bet on either side. Instead, just trade for that upcoming trillion-dollar-scale market bailout: go long on BTC and ETH.”

According to official announcements, Upbit, South Korea's largest cryptocurrency exchange, has listed the PUFFER/KRW trading pair.

According to HTX market data, PUFFER saw a short-term 20% surge following news that Upbit has listed the PUFFER/KRW trading pair, and is currently priced at $0.0285.

US-listed public firm Axe Compute (AGPU) has announced a multi-year strategic cooperation agreement with Penguin Solutions (PENG), integrating the latter’s technologies and services into its partner network to accelerate delivery of its customized AI infrastructure initiative “Axe Compute Build”. To date, Axe Compute’s contracted AI infrastructure projects exceed $3.45 billion in total value, and the company has selected Penguin for multiple sites, with a focus on large GPU cluster deployments designed, owned and operated by Axe Compute itself. Under the deal, Penguin will provide expert deployment and maintenance services for designated GPU cluster sites, including its ClusterWareAI operating system software, plus 24/7 network operation center support in collaboration with Axe Compute. Axe Compute positions itself as an enterprise-focused bare-metal AI infrastructure neocloud, while Penguin states its AI Factory platform combines software, hardware and system integration capabilities to help clients accelerate time-to-launch and meet service level agreements.

According to HTX market data, likely impacted by news that Upbit has listed the PUFFER/KRW trading pair, PUFFER surged 155% in 8 minutes, currently trading at $0.06.