Google's US shares reversed pre-market losses, now up 1%.

Programmable privacy infrastructure Soda Labs has secured a $3 million seed round led by NextBlock. Over the past two and a half years, Soda Labs has developed a cryptographic privacy solution combining garbled circuits and multi-party computation (GC-MPC), relying on vetted standard cryptography such as AES and SHA256. Its privacy engine runs on standard cloud CPUs with no specialized hardware required, enabling applications to achieve privacy computing while maintaining connectivity to existing public blockchain infrastructure. Pieter van Poecke, founder of NextBlock, stated that what attracted the firm was the technology’s practicality rather than pure cryptography, noting Soda already has a working product and paying customers. The funding will support the company’s focus on commercial adoption and execution over the next 12 to 18 months, as it expands its architecture from gcEVM—an Ethereum L2 privacy layer currently running on COTI—to Soda Bubble, a chain-agnostic coprocessor for programmable privacy. Soda Labs is rolling out Bubble across major EVM ecosystems including Ethereum, Polygon, Arbitrum, and Base, while also advancing expansion into non-EVM networks such as Solana.

According to HTX market data, Bitcoin has fallen below $82,000, with a 1.67% drop in the past 24 hours.

The Real World Asset (RWA) market NUVA, developed by Animoca Brands and Nuva Labs, has launched the HOME token, providing qualified non-U.S. investors with exposure to U.S. home equity lines of credit (HELOCs). The HOME token allocates funds to a collective investment vehicle, initially holding HELOC loans originated by Figure Technology Solutions. According to Federal Reserve economic data, the total value of U.S. HELOCs climbed to $460 billion in the second quarter. Notably, HOME does not grant holders ownership of individual loans, but rather offers exposure to the entire basket of loans.

Pre-market key news for US stocks as follows: 1. Strategy announced it will release third-quarter financial results after the US stock market closes on October 29, and hold a live webcast at 5 PM ET the same day to discuss the results. 2. Google Cloud launched Gemini Agent, a general-purpose work agent compatible with Gemini models or Claude models. Driven by the news, Google’s pre-market rose over 1%, while Meta fell more than 1%. 3. Globalfoundries and TSMC signed a $2 billion silicon interposer agreement for advanced AI packaging, with an initial 5-year term. 4. TSMC’s September revenue hit NT$511.86 billion, down 0.6% month-on-month but up 54.6% year-on-year. For the first three quarters of 2026, TSMC’s total revenue reached NT$3.89873 trillion, up 41.1% year-on-year. 5. Citi projected the CPU market will reach $300 billion by 2030, sharply raising AMD’s target price from $575 to $800 and maintaining a "Buy" rating. 6. Investment bank DA Davidson lifted Micron Technology’s target price from $2100 to $3000 — the highest on Wall Street — and reaffirmed a "Buy" rating. 7. OpenAI fully rolled out GPT-6 to all free and paid ChatGPT users globally, officially replacing GPT-5.6 SOL and GPT-5.6 LUNA. 8. Federal Reserve Governor Christopher Waller said further interest rate hikes are still needed, though the pace of hikes is "flexible". The Fed’s dot plot may signal a rate hike in early 2027, followed by cuts thereafter. 9. Broadcom is arranging over $50 billion in financing for its custom AI chip project developed in partnership with OpenAI. Sources familiar with the matter said Apollo Global Management and Blackstone are among the lenders in talks to join the financing.

According to Bloomberg, sources familiar with the matter disclosed that Tencent Holdings is considering issuing up to $5 billion in offshore bonds, joining the wave of debt financing by tech companies to meet artificial intelligence (AI) demands. The bonds may be denominated in U.S. dollars and offshore renminbi, with a possible issuance as early as this month. This move comes as global tech giants take on large-scale debt to fund AI infrastructure. Earlier, Alphabet, Google’s parent, has issued $25 billion in U.S. dollar bonds and launched its first Australian dollar bond; Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon are also expected to follow up with equity or convertible bond financing. Morgan Stanley forecasts that global AI-related bond issuance will reach nearly $570 billion in 2026, more than doubling from last year.

US initial jobless claims for the week ending October 3 totaled 197,000, compared with market expectations of 200,000, while the prior week’s figure was revised from 197,000 to 199,000.