The US stock market’s optical module sector is down across the board in pre-market trading, with AAOI falling 3.78%.

Dongcha Beating AI News Flash: Semiconductor research firm SemiAnalysis has released a survey on China’s data centers, tracking over 1,000 facilities from more than 60 operators. The report estimates that by the end of 2026, China’s data center capacity will exceed 24GW, ranking second globally behind the U.S.’s 56GW. ByteDance alone accounts for roughly one-fifth, making it China’s largest data center tenant. ByteDance has leased over 4GW of data center capacity, with suppliers including ChinaNetCenter, China United Network Data, and 21Vianet. The report notes that as of early 2026, ByteDance still contributes around 90% of ChinaNetCenter’s revenue. ByteDance has also accelerated self-built data center projects, constructing large facilities in Shanxi, Anhui, and Inner Mongolia to reduce reliance on external suppliers. While China’s data centers have long been viewed as having high vacancy rates, AI server rooms remain in tight supply. This is because many old data centers lack sufficient power and cooling capacity, making it difficult to directly deploy high-power AI servers. Newly built large AI data centers are being leased up rapidly. Taking a 100MW data center as an example, excluding IT equipment such as servers, China’s construction cost is approximately $300 million, compared to $1.5 billion in the U.S. Facilities of the same scale in China are typically delivered in around 12 months. Compared to the U.S., which faces power supply and approval hurdles, the more prominent bottleneck for expanding AI data centers in China is the supply of advanced chips.

Bitcoin mining pool operator Foundry announced that its founder and CEO Mike Colyer is set to step down after seven years in the role. He will remain at Foundry as a strategic advisor for the next six months, assisting the company with its transition and CEO selection process.

Circle has partnered with Tereina, a financial services firm backed by SAP, to integrate USDC and EURC stablecoins into SAP’s enterprise payment software ecosystem. The integration will kick off with SAP Cloud ERP and be made available to eligible enterprise customers via SAP Pay. The collaboration aims to enable businesses to send and receive stablecoins within their existing SAP business applications and payment workflows without switching to a separate crypto asset system. USDC will be primarily used for USD-denominated payment scenarios, while EURC is intended for euro-denominated operations. Circle and Tereina plan to launch a customer validation project in the coming months, testing stablecoin payment functions for use cases including global payments and corporate treasury management.

AguilaTrades(@AguilaTrades), who has been liquidated 33 times and lost a total of $37.64M, is back after more than 6 months of inactivity. He deposited 499K $USDC into #Hyperliquid and opened a 40x long on 200 $BTC($16.58M). Liquidation price: $81,466.75

Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller published a statement saying the U.S. Federal Reserve’s decision to raise interest rates in September was the result of months of accumulated evidence, not driven by a single data point. Waller recalled that the Fed had cut rates by 75 basis points consecutively from September to December 2025. However, in the first half of 2026, the labor market stabilized, inflation progress stalled, Middle East conflicts pushed up energy prices, AI-related construction boosted high-tech consumer prices, and trade conflicts and new tariffs also created upward inflationary pressure. After August inflation data came in higher than expected, the Fed decided to raise rates in September. Waller said the latest data reinforced the judgment that "employment is stable while inflation remains too high". August core PCE rose 3% year-over-year; core inflation has hovered roughly between 2.5% and 3.0% since spring 2024, exceeding the Fed’s 2% target. He emphasized: "At least in the near term, policy will focus on the inflation side of our mandate." Waller is not overly concerned that policy tightening will cause a sharp economic slowdown, but he worries that accelerating inflation will push up inflation expectations across the board. Regarding the future path, Waller pointed to the possibility of further rate hikes, such as a potential 75-basis-point increase, but he did not lock in the pace or magnitude, stressing that decisions will depend on data. September projections showed 16 out of 18 Fed participants expected at least one more rate hike this year, while 4 projected two hikes. Markets assign an 85% probability of at least one rate hike before December, and a nearly 80% chance of at least two hikes by March 2027. Waller said that if data comes in as expected, further rate hikes are likely, but they do not need to be implemented at consecutive meetings, just completed within an acceptable timeframe.

StarkWare co-founder and CEO Eli Ben-Sasson stated that Starknet, as a layer-2 (L2) network relying on Ethereum’s underlying security, is currently evaluating multiple options—including converting to a layer-1 (L1) network—to independently manage its security migration process and mitigate cryptographic risks posed by quantum computing and AI. He added that Starknet, built on ZK-STARK, boasts cryptographic agility and has already developed a post-quantum security migration roadmap. Ethereum aims to achieve full L1 quantum resistance by the end of 2029, while Bitcoin has not made a comparable commitment; Starknet expects to roll out the relevant upgrade as early as 2027.