News linked to this event type.
According to TechfundingNews, enterprise-level AI agent company HappyRobot announced the completion of a $150 million Series C funding round, co-led by Prysm Capital and Eurazeo, with a16z, Base10, and Y Combinator continuing to invest. Other strategic investors include Koch Disruptive Technologies, Orange, and T.Capital under Deutsche Telekom, among others. HappyRobot focuses on utilizing AI agents to automatically handle complex, multi-step business coordination tasks, reducing manual coordination costs. Following this funding round, its total funding amount is approximately $200 million, and the company's valuation has reached $1.2 billion, officially joining the ranks of "unicorns".
According to The Paypers, embedded investment platform InvestiFi announced the completion of a $20 million financing round, led by Vibe Credit Union, with participation from BankTech Ventures, Idaho Central Credit Union, Navari (formerly CUSG), United Financial Credit Union, Coastal Credit Union, Mid Minnesota Credit Union, Truity Credit Union, and Southpoint Credit Union. The InvestiFi platform enables credit unions and community banks to offer digital investment services directly within their existing online banking environments, covering features such as fractional share investing in stocks and ETFs, guided investing, IRA retirement accounts, cryptocurrency trading, and stablecoins. Its feature within a core patent application, "direct investing from checking accounts," allows users to complete investment operations without transferring funds to external brokerages.
据塔斯社报道，俄罗斯总统普京于 8月 4 日签署一项法律，首次对俄罗斯境内数字货币及数字权利的流通实施全面监管。该法律为加密货币交易所、数字托管机构及市场参与者建立操作框架，同时规范加密货币挖矿、数字金融资产（DFA）的发行与流通。主要内容包括：加密货币交易所须纳入特殊登记册方可运营（过渡期至 2027年 7月 1 日），最低注册资本要求为 1500 万卢布（约 18.7 万美元）；境内仍禁止使用加密货币支付商品和服务，但允许用于跨境贸易结算及挖矿所得；非合格投资者每年每家中介机构购币上限为 30 万卢布（约 3700 美元），合格投资者不受限制；银行有权冻结涉嫌未经授权的加密货币交易资金。法律核心条款将于 2026年 9月 1 日起正式生效，部分条款将于 2027年 7月 1 日及 9月 1 日分批实施。
Odaily News: Arthur Hayes posted on the X platform, stating that his article "Situationship" discusses how the AI bubble will burst and why monetary easing will push BTC back into a bull market. He believes that the key variable in determining whether AI is a bubble lies in the internal framework question, namely that investors should distinguish whether AI capital expenditure represents technology or real estate. The current market treats trillion-dollar-scale construction as technology and assigns high-growth valuation multiples. However, he argues that AI capital expenditure is essentially another form of real estate investment, except that the computing power within data centers will create silicon-based life forms, helping human civilization develop in the most profound way since the railroads. Arthur Hayes stated that the distinction between real estate and computing power is important because hedge funds, banks, private credit funds, and ultimately governments are financing data center and power plant construction as if they were lending to Apple, rather than lending to Lehman Brothers. He believes that the bursting of the AI bubble will occur when financial intermediaries, with the tacit support of the Chinese and US governments, overbuild data centers and related infrastructure. Therefore, the AI bubble is a credit story similar to 2008, not a profit story similar to 2000.
According to Bloomberg, SoftBank Group will release its first-quarter earnings report in Tokyo this Thursday, with the market focusing on its latest progress in robotics, data centers, and energy sectors to assess whether the company's AI value surpasses its debt financing bet of up to $65 billion on OpenAI. Currently, there are expectations of delays to OpenAI's IPO timeline; if SoftBank can demonstrate substantial progress in the aforementioned emerging fields, it may effectively alleviate investors' concerns regarding its financing strategy.
Odaily News: Blackstone Inc. is in preliminary discussions with investors to evaluate the feasibility of raising a second massive debt financing round for Anthropic, aimed at supporting its plan to procure Google AI chips.This financing plan reflects how AI companies are leveraging large-scale capital operations to secure computing resources. As demand for large model training and inference continues to grow, AI firms are seeking new financing methods to support the construction of expensive computing infrastructure. Sources familiar with the matter have revealed that a preliminary proposal previously put forward by Blackstone is valued at least $36 billion. The size and structure of the financing, as well as whether Blackstone will ultimately lead the deal, remain under discussion, and details may still change. (Bloomberg)
Odaily News: Yellow Card announced the completion of a $40 million strategic funding round, with participation from SC Ventures, Sony Innovation Fund, Polychain Capital, Blockchain Capital, and other strategic investors. The project primarily provides stablecoin infrastructure, and the funds from this round will be used to expand its enterprise-facing end-to-end dollar accounts, Global USD Accounts, and to extend stablecoin rails connecting global markets.
Odaily News: Ethereum infrastructure company Blockspace announced its establishment, aiming to improve Ethereum's off-protocol infrastructure and facilitate more global applications' access to Ethereum blockspace.Blockspace stated that Ethereum's core business is providing blockspace. Currently, over 90% of global Ethereum blockspace traffic relies on infrastructure outside the protocol, which still has gaps in economic models, reliability, performance, and service capabilities. Blockspace recently completed a funding round led by BlueYard Capital, with participation from ether.fi Ventures, Quasar, SharpLink Gaming, and other institutions.Blockspace stated that it will collaborate with the Blockspace Forum and the broader Ethereum community in the future to accelerate the development of off-protocol infrastructure in Ethereum's transaction process. Its business model relies entirely on ETH. The company will operate and support Ethereum infrastructure, including staking operations, earning transaction fee rewards from blocks generated by its staked ETH, and then reinvesting the proceeds into staking.
According to Bloomberg, AI cloud infrastructure company Volta Infra Holdings announced the completion of $300 million in venture financing, achieving a valuation of $2.4 billion, co-led by Andreessen Horowitz and Altimeter Capital, with participation from NVIDIA and Michael Dell, founder of Dell Technologies. Additionally, Volta secured support from a $5 billion customer financing pool designed to help small and medium-sized AI enterprises lower the barrier to purchasing NVIDIA high-end chips. The company also disclosed it has signed a $10 billion, six-year cloud computing service contract with an unnamed leading AI developer. The contract will be fulfilled in partnership with Bitdeer, delivered via its 133 MW data center in Norway. Volta was co-founded earlier this year by former Brookfield Asset Management infrastructure executives Ricard Boada and Sofia Gumuzio. It has currently secured 1 GW of data center power resources and plans to develop new sites in Texas and Wyoming, aiming to deploy multi-gigawatt compute capacity before 2030.
Odaily News: OpenAI founders and employees collectively hold 48.93% of the company's shares. Based on the company's latest valuation of $852 billion, the value of this stake is approximately $416.9 billion. (New York Times)
According to PR Newswire, crypto mining company and energy infrastructure platform Hut 8 Corp. (NASDAQ/Toronto Stock Exchange: HUT) released its second quarter 2026 earnings report. Key highlights are as follows: In terms of commercialization, the company completed the commercialization of its first gigawatt-scale AI data center campus, Beacon Point, and signed a second 352 MW IT lease after the quarter ended, with a total base period contract value of approximately US$26.6 billion, expected annual average Net Operating Income (NOI) to exceed US$1.75 billion, covering 949 MW of contracted IT capacity, with all lessors being investment-grade counterparties. In terms of financing, the company completed US$7.5 billion of investment-grade project financing in a single quarter, including US$3.3 billion for the River Bend campus and US$4.25 billion for Beacon Point Phase I, all being non-recourse non-dilutive financing, setting a precedent for investment-grade construction financing for single-sponsor data center projects. In terms of finance, total revenue for the second quarter was US$74.9 million, a year-over-year increase of 81% (US$41.3 million in the same period last year); net loss was US$177.1 million, primarily due to an unrealized loss of US$138.6 million on digital assets; adjusted EBITDA was US$10.45 million, a year-over-year increase of 149%. In terms of construction, the two major campuses, River Bend and Beacon Point, combined
According to Sifted, robotics startup Exclaim Robotics, headquartered in Zurich, Switzerland, has officially announced emerging from stealth mode, completing a $4.95 million seed funding round that will be used to develop robotic products for daily repair and maintenance operations in hyperscale data centers. The company is led by senior robotics expert Helen Oleynikova, with investors including prominent European early-stage investment institutions.
According to Fortune magazine, Bridgewater Associates founder Ray Dalio issued his strongest market warning to date on the "CEO Diary" program, explicitly stating that the current market bubble driven by the AI boom has exhibited "classic characteristics" highly similar to those on the eve of the 1929 Great Depression and the 2000 internet bubble. He directly expressed agreement with the assessment made by Jeremy Grantham, co-founder of GMO and a previous guest on the same program, who called it "the largest investment bubble in American history." Dalio pointed out that the core crisis of the bubble lies in the "confusion between wealth and money"—the paper wealth held by investors cannot be directly consumed. Once the market reverses and everyone sells off simultaneously, asset prices could plummet from $100 to $25, while debt remains not a penny less. He also identified two trigger factors for "bursting the bubble": rising interest rates and a surge in stock issuances. Currently, SpaceX has completed the largest IPO in history, and Anthropic and OpenAI are rushing to list with trillion-dollar valuations, which is precisely the real-world manifestation of the latter. In terms of bubble judgments, Wall Street institutions such as Goldman Sachs, Apollo, and BCA Research are also shifting stance, acknowledging that there is an "earnings bubble" in the technology sector rather than a simple valuation bubble. Dalio places this round of risk within his "Big Cycle" framework, warning that the bubble bursting is not only a financial event but could also become a trigger for political polarization and geopolitical conflicts—at that time, the real risk may not be portfolio losses, but rather with
According to Yonhap News Agency, Google, in order to expand the market penetration of its self-developed AI chip TPU, partnered with institutions such as Broadcom, Apollo, and Blackstone to build an infrastructure finance network with a total scale of approximately $200 billion (approximately 286 trillion Korean won), considered one of the largest projects in the history of infrastructure financing. It is reported that Google signed a TPU supply agreement with Anthropic and funded the construction of data centers to lease to the latter; to diversify the risk of direct ownership, the parties jointly established a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) "Compute", which completed the procurement of the first batch of 1 million TPU hardware units for $35 billion last month, with funds jointly provided by Apollo and Blackstone, and Broadcom providing a residual value guarantee. In addition, Google also brought in crypto mining companies such as TerraWolf, Cipher Digital, and Hut 8 to transition to constructing data centers and be responsible for power assurance.
According to Bloomberg, the current venture capital market is undergoing significant structural differentiation. As capital concentrates on top artificial intelligence startups, a large number of small and medium-sized venture capital funds are facing severe challenges including fundraising difficulties, declining performance, and narrowing exit channels. The report pointed out that the excessive hype for artificial intelligence has distorted the venture capital market. Data shows that just five companies—OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI, Waymo, and Nscale—accounted for 78% of all venture capital transaction volume in the first quarter of this year. Capital has flowed heavily towards a few top investors who bet early on AI, such as Founders Fund and Andreessen Horowitz, while small emerging fund managers find it difficult to compete with these top institutions. This differentiation is directly reflected in fundraising data. Last year, newly established management companies (managing three or fewer funds) raised only about $62 billion, a significant decrease of about 60% compared to $163.4 billion during the 2022 pandemic peak. Even for experienced management teams, last year's fundraising amount was only $84 billion, only one-third of that in 2022. Many LPs face liquidity pressure and are more inclined to demand returns on existing investments rather than commit new capital.
According to Jin10 Data, SpaceX will announce its first earnings report since listing after the US stock market close on Tuesday. Since listing on June 12, the company's stock price has fallen nearly 50% from its high, with market capitalization shrinking by over $500 billion. As of Monday's close, it was reported at $114.53, approximately 15% lower than the IPO issuance price. Market focus centers on three key areas: • Starlink: S&P Global expects Q2 revenue to reach $6.9 billion, primarily driven by Starlink, which is currently SpaceX's only profitable business segment; • AI: SpaceX's AI business revenue was $818 million in the first three months of this year. It has reached compute supply cooperation agreements with Google, Anthropic, etc., and acquired coding startup Cursor (approximately $60 billion); • Starship: The 13th test flight was completed, but the booster experienced a hard landing. Analyst firm Bernstein believes Starship is one of the most critical factors supporting the high valuation. Additionally, after the lock-up period ends on Thursday, over 911 million shares (market value approximately $100 billion) will be unlocked for circulation. Coupled with short selling funds' paper profits reaching $8.3 billion, market selling pressure cannot be ignored.
Odaily News: SoftBank will release its Q1 results for fiscal 2026 on Thursday, with the market focusing on how it will continue to fund OpenAI and AI infrastructure projects. In the fiscal year ending March 2026, SoftBank posted its highest net profit in history, but since early June this year, the company's share price has fallen by nearly half, and the cost of credit default swaps (CDS) has also climbed significantly. Additionally, SoftBank has pledged over $60 billion in investments to OpenAI and related projects, with approximately $30 billion in funding commitments due in the second half of 2026.Some analysts believe that if AI company valuations pull back, SoftBank will still face considerable pressure. Until enterprise customers truly demonstrate that AI can deliver productivity gains, SoftBank, Arm, and the memory chip sector may continue to face headwinds.
Bloomberg columnist Shuli Ren wrote on Tuesday that the South Korean stock market recently plummeted nearly 40% within 27 trading days at one point, triggering a market reassessment of its investment value. Although Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix still benefit from artificial intelligence chip demand and the KOSPI valuation remains at a low level, market focus has shifted from corporate fundamentals to trading mechanisms, regulatory capabilities, and policy credibility.
Odaily News The market expects SK Hynix to announce a more detailed shareholder return plan as early as the evening of August 4, Korea Standard Time, including measures such as dividends, share buybacks, and cancellations. Analysts believe the company's previous failure to disclose related plans may be linked to U.S. SEC information disclosure restrictions following its ADR listing on July 10, and the plan is expected to be officially announced after the approximately 25-day quiet period ends. Market participants stated that a clear shareholder return policy would help boost investor confidence and drive further valuation re-rating of the company. (The Korea Economic Daily)
According to Konsulteer, blockchain rewards platform Bundle announced the completion of a $5.5 million Pre-Seed funding round, co-led by Ethereum co-founder Joe Lubin's Ethereal Ventures and Further Ventures, with participation from institutions including Nascent, GSR, Scenius Capital, Anchorage Digital, and Nuwa Capital.