The Wire

Kioxia plans a $6.3 billion new memory plant in Japan, Nikkei reports
Nikkei says Kioxia plans to invest about $6.3 billion in a new memory plant in Japan for AI data-center demand. There is no US Kioxia ticker; Sandisk (SNDK), Western Digital and Micron are the proxies.

Evercore keeps Meta (META) at Outperform with an $860 target after the $18 billion settlement
Meta settled the teen-safety cases for up to $18 billion, and Evercore ISI says that clears one of the stock's two overhangs. The bigger one, capex, is still parked right over the stock.

Anthropic is reportedly leasing an Nscale data center in West Virginia for $45 billion
Financial news wires report Anthropic will lease an Nscale data center in West Virginia for $45 billion, taking 460 megawatts, as Nscale is expected to spend about $71 billion to develop the site. Here is what is confirmed and who benefits.

Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) is doubling down on making its own lasers. A new Texas equipment deal is the proof.
AOI just gave Dutch supplier Trymax a multi-year equipment order to expand its in-house InP laser chip production in Texas. Here is why owning the laser supply matters, and the dilution paying for it.

Dunamu, which owns Korea's biggest crypto exchange Upbit, is preparing an IPO, and the early signs point abroad.
Dunamu, which runs Korea's biggest crypto exchange Upbit, is preparing an IPO after a stock swap with Naver Financial. It is reviewing US accounting rules, and a Seoul listing would run into the duplicate-listing rule Korea just tightened.

Meta (META) settled the states' teen-safety case for up to $18 billion. A $10 billion charge hits Q3.
Meta settled the states' teen-safety lawsuit mid-trial for up to $18 billion over 10 years, about $12.7 billion to states plus $5.3 billion contingent on TikTok and YouTube adopting the same limits. It will record a $10 billion legal charge in Q3 and left its July guidance unchanged.

Sivers Semiconductors (SIVEF) reports Q2 Thursday. The market is watching photonics, not the numbers.
Sivers reports Q2 2026 after the Stockholm close on August 27. For a company at this stage, the market is underwriting the photonics business and whether co-developments with GlobalFoundries and Jabil turn into volume, not the quarter's loss, which carries a SEK 42.9 million non-cash charge. A July raise near SEK 700 million cleared the near-term funding overhang.

China's YMTC is raising $4.9 billion to chase Samsung and SK Hynix in NAND. It just passed Kioxia to become the world's third-largest producer
China's top NAND maker YMTC filed to raise about $4.9 billion and just passed Kioxia into third place in the market. The threat to Samsung and SK Hynix is real, but it sits in the cheaper part of the memory business.

China's Moonshot wants up to 30% of the revenue to put its Kimi K3 model on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud
Reuters reports the Chinese startup is negotiating to host Kimi K3 on Azure, AWS and Google Cloud, and wants up to 30% of the revenue. It would be the first big China AI-US cloud revenue-share deal.

A Russian news agency reported a U.S.-Iran ceasefire. Oil prices fell and neither side has confirmed anything. (August 25, 2026)
Russian state agency RIA Novosti reported a U.S.-Iran ceasefire, citing Pakistani and Iranian sources. Oil fell on the news, and no U.S., Iranian, or Western outlet has confirmed it.

Trump made about 7,000 stock trades in six months. Biden made 13 in four years.
In six months, Trump's accounts made about 7,000 stock trades. Biden made 13 in four years, and every president since Carter used a blind trust or index funds. Here's what the filings show, and why the Senate is asking questions.

OpenAI's data center chief left five months in, as the company commits $1.4 trillion to compute
Chris Malone, OpenAI's head of data centers, has left after about five months, the latest senior exit as the company pours money into compute.

A Trump memecoin outtraded Bitcoin on Korea's biggest crypto exchange last weekend. Bitcoin finished fourth.
Korean money left a cooling stock market for crypto last week, and daily trading rose 8.7 times in five days. On Upbit, a Trump memecoin and XRP both traded more than bitcoin, which finished fourth.

A day before Nvidia (NVDA) earnings, OpenAI says its Jalapeño chip beats it on efficiency
OpenAI used a Hot Chips presentation to claim its custom Jalapeño chip beats Nvidia on inference efficiency, one day before Nvidia reports. The benchmarks are real, and so are the caveats.

Eli Lilly-backed BreezeBio licensed its tech to Genentech for up to $629 million. Its next stop is Kosdaq, not Nasdaq.
BreezeBio, a California biotech backed by Eli Lilly and licensed to Genentech, wants to list on Korea's Kosdaq instead of Nasdaq. It is one of four foreign companies suddenly headed the same way.

Nasdaq rebounds before Nvidia (NVDA) earnings, with options pricing a $313 billion swing in the stock
The Nasdaq rose about 0.7% Tuesday, recovering Monday's chip-led drop, one day before Nvidia reports. Wall Street expects about $92 billion in revenue, double a year ago.

Seagate (STX)'s CEO and four other executives sold $43 million in 48 hours. The stock fell 6.5% three days later.
Five Seagate (STX) executives filed Forms 4 on Aug. 24 covering $43.3 million in stock sold on Aug. 20 and 21, three of them with no 10b5-1 plan attached. STX closed down 6.5% from those sale prices the day the filings hit.

The SEC subpoenaed four Wall Street banks over the Situational Awareness meltdown, the New York Times reports
Bank of America, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase were told to preserve records on Leopold Aschenbrenner's fund as regulators examine trade timing and leverage from its near collapse in July.

Amazon (AMZN) is working to fully automate its delivery stations, internal documents show
Internal documents reviewed by Business Insider describe Project Tetromino, an Amazon effort to fully automate delivery stations, the last manual stop before drivers. Amazon calls the figures inaccurate.

SpaceX (SPCX) and Nvidia (NVDA) aim to launch AI data centers into orbit in 2027
SpaceXAI is putting Nvidia's new Vera CPU behind Grok and says a space-optimized Vera Rubin NVL72 will reach orbit by late 2027. Here is what's confirmed and what's still a projection, for SPCX and NVDA.

Why Samsung can't match SK Hynix's massive buyback without forcing its insurers to sell
Samsung Life Insurance and Samsung Fire & Marine together own about 10% of Samsung Electronics' common stock, the exact ceiling set by a Korean banking law. That's the real reason Samsung's record payout leaned on dividends instead of the stock buyback and cancellation SK Hynix just did.

USA Rare Earth (USAR) slid even as Washington finished a $1.55 billion Serra Verde deal
Washington increased its Serra Verde rare-earth offtake to $1.55 billion, including the first guaranteed price floors on dysprosium and terbium. USA Rare Earth (USAR) fell about 6% ahead of an August 28 shareholder vote.

Nancy Pelosi opened a new Bloom Energy (BE) position worth up to $12 million in late July
Nancy Pelosi's financial disclosure, filed August 21, shows a first-time position in Bloom Energy (BE): about 15,000 shares and 200 call options worth $3 million to $12 million, her biggest new single-name bet of 2026. The same filing adds 10,000 shares and 50 call options of Intel (INTC), on top of the Intel options she reported in June.

Is money rotating out of AI stocks and into Bitcoin and gold? Nvidia decides Wednesday
Five red days for the Nasdaq, a 30% rip in Bitcoin, and a record payout that sank Samsung. It all points to one thing: the market is holding its breath for Nvidia.