☕️ Cyberattack spoils food in French supermarkets

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🧊 Cyberattack spoils food in French supermarkets

💳 Visa wins approval to prepare China business

🤖 Meta's new AI undercuts OpenAI on price

💻 Microsoft's Maia 300 chip cuts its Nvidia reliance

🇨🇳 Huawei closes gap on Nvidia in China

Plus: 🌍 10 macro stories, 🏢 9 corporate stories, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• A cyberattack on internet-connected refrigeration systems forced fridges in several hundred French supermarkets up to 50C overnight, triggering widespread food losses and some fires in what retailers called an unprecedented strike on the food supply.
• Intermarché owner Les Mousquetaires said about 150 of its stores had fridges heated to 50C for six hours and threw out all affected food; Coopérative U and reportedly market leader E Leclerc were also hit by remotely triggered defrosting.
• France's cyber agency traced the breach to a vulnerability in software from Denmark's Danfoss, which blamed outdated firmware; the damage may extend beyond France, with Ahold Delhaize taking systems offline and its Albert Heijn and Delhaize chains reporting disruptions in the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg.

• Visa said today it won approval from China's central bank to prepare a bank card clearing business, a step toward serving the country's domestic payments market after more than 40 years of operating around its edges.
• The approval lands just ahead of next month's APEC Leaders' Meeting in Shenzhen, where Xi Jinping and Trump are expected to meet, a sign Beijing wants to show tangible progress for American businesses before the visit.
• Visa CEO Ryan McInerney, who joined Trump's May delegation to Beijing and chairs the U.S.-China Business Council, still must take further regulatory steps before operating domestically; China has said it will approve applications from all foreign financial institutions.

• Meta launched Muse Wonder and Muse Wonder Full, the first models from its Superintelligence Labs it says can compete with the best from OpenAI and Anthropic, pitching them as a step toward "personal superintelligence."
• Meta's own benchmarks put Wonder Full ahead of rivals, but independent ranker Artificial Analysis still places Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 first at 58, with the buyable Muse Wonder scoring 52, a point below OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra.
• Muse Wonder costs $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output, matching Anthropic and undercutting OpenAI by more than half, though the memory-centric pitch raises privacy questions given Meta's record handling personal data.

• Microsoft unveiled its Maia 300 AI chip on Monday and plans to shift much of the computing behind its AI products off Nvidia's processors and onto its own silicon starting in 2027, loosening its reliance on a key supplier.
• The shift targets inference, running trained models to answer questions and write code, where Microsoft says Maia 300 processes 40% more AI tokens per unit of power than leading GPU systems, though the figures are its own and untested independently.
• Nvidia keeps Microsoft's business for training large models and faces no immediate loss, but with usage potentially reaching billions of daily interactions, cutting the cost of each AI response is where Microsoft aims to protect margins as demand grows.

• Nvidia's grip on China's data-centre AI chip market slipped to 34% in the first half of 2026, with Huawei closing in at 28% as US export curbs squeezed supplies and Beijing pushed home-grown alternatives.
• Nvidia's China shipments fell 44% from a year earlier to 678,000 AI accelerators, while Huawei's jumped to 572,000 from more than 300,000, and nine of the 11 Chinese chipmakers IDC tracks increased shipments.
• With Jensen Huang warning Washington's rules are ceding China's $50 billion market to Huawei, IDC expects total shipments to rise 19% in 2026 even as GPUs drop 9%, signalling buyers are shifting toward local suppliers.

🌍 Macro News

• Hammack says tighter policy may be needed to contain an inflationary mindset. LINK
• Japanese bond yields diverged, with short-term rates rising and longer yields falling. LINK
• India's inflation hit a 22-month high, intensifying pressure for further central-bank tightening. LINK
• Greene says UK rates may need to rise further to cool activity. LINK
• Saudi Arabia will expand East-West pipeline capacity to 10 million barrels daily. LINK
• Fitzpatrick plans House vote blocking Russian oil purchases, challenging Trump's easing. LINK
• Shell opposes Australia's proposed domestic LNG reservation, calling it heavy-handed intervention. LINK
• Hall and Woodford won the economics Nobel for models smoothing booms and busts. LINK
• The dollar stayed near an 18-month high as energy attacks boosted demand. LINK
• Regulators are scrutinizing banks' advanced AI use over financial stability risks. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Tencent seeks at least $4.5 billion in bonds to fund AI spending. LINK
• IonQ will acquire Elisity for up to $1.3 billion, expanding quantum-era cybersecurity. LINK
• Micron raised its buyback authorization to a record $35.16 billion, with repurchases starting in December 2026. LINK
• Getty Images will go private through bankruptcy, backed by a $433 million equity injection. LINK
• OPay filed for a New York listing, targeting mid-November and roughly $4 billion valuation. LINK
• Kroger plans to eliminate 3,000 corporate jobs over three years to simplify operations. LINK
• ID Finance raised €545 million to expand its Plazo consumer finance app. LINK
• NTT Data nears a deal to build Anthropic's first dedicated Japanese data center. LINK
• Bumble nears a $1 billion deal to go private with Ithaca Holdings. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Aleph's finance career playbook: maps how finance roles are changing and which skills now carry a premium. Download the free playbook
• Goldman upgraded global equities to overweight, citing earnings growth and attractive valuations. LINK
• The IMF warned an AI stock slump could threaten global markets and financial stability. LINK
• US consumers welcome AI shopping help but hesitate to entrust it with payments. LINK
• Indian fintech funding rose 14% as capital concentrated in fewer, larger deals. LINK
• Bitcoin miners' AI contracts exceed $100 billion, but generate just $1.1 billion annually. LINK
• Goldman sees SanDisk, SK Hynix and Samsung benefiting from AI flash memory. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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