☕️ Elon Musk's X launches payments in US

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

💸 Elon Musk's X launches payments in US

🇨🇳 China starts making its own chip machines

🏦 SoftBank lands $40B loan for OpenAI stake

💰 Nvidia invests $5B in Sutskever's AI lab

Plus: 🌍 11 macro news, 🏢 8 corporate news, 💰 5 deal flow, and 📑 5 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• Elon Musk's X has opened its X Money banking service to all US Premium and Premium+ subscribers, offering deposits, peer-to-peer transfers, bill payments, wire services and check mailing directly inside the social media app.
• Premium+ members are offered up to 6% annual yield on deposits — well above the roughly 4% to 5% on leading US high-yield savings accounts — with funds held at Cross River Bank under FDIC insurance covering up to $250,000 per account.
• The service pits X against PayPal's Venmo, Block's Cash App and SoFi, though Senator Elizabeth Warren has questioned how X sustains such high rates, citing prior FDIC enforcement actions against Cross River over its lending practices.

• China has begun mass-producing its own immersion DUV chipmaking machines for the first time, via a state-backed Shanghai company, threatening the dominance of Dutch equipment giant ASML in a technology long seen as the hardest hurdle in semiconductor manufacturing.
• ASML shares dropped more than 7% after The Information broke the news, erasing an earlier 2% pre-market gain, as investors feared for its China DUV sales — revenue that had offset banned EUV shipments and made up 14% of net systems revenue last quarter.
• US equipment makers fell in sympathy on worries the rest of the supply chain could follow, with Lam Research down nearly 7% and Applied Materials and KLA both off about 5%, though China's output remains small at just five machines this year rising to 20 by 2026.

• SoftBank has widened its $40 billion bridge loan backing its OpenAI investment, bringing in 21 additional lenders who took on roughly $7 billion of the facility, one of Asia-Pacific's largest such deals.
• First Abu Dhabi Bank, Singapore's sovereign fund GIC, and Standard Chartered each committed close to $1 billion, while original arrangers led by JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs still hold the remaining $33 billion, which may be distributed further.
• The 12-month loan, priced near a 6.14% interest rate and due March 2027, funds a $30 billion injection into OpenAI—valued at $852 billion in March—lifting Masayoshi Son's total commitment past $60 billion.

• Nvidia has committed roughly $5 billion to Safe Superintelligence, the AI lab founded by former OpenAI co-founder Ilya Sutskever, though both sides described the sum only as "substantial" and declined to confirm the figure.
• The deal gives SSI access to Nvidia's forthcoming Vera Rubin chip systems, expanding its computing power tenfold, and follows an April 2025 funding round that valued the two-year-old company at $32 billion.
• The tie-up echoes Nvidia's existing OpenAI arrangement and rival AMD's pact with Anthropic, a sign that top AI labs are locking in hardware partners as competition for next-generation computing capacity intensifies, with Nvidia shares near record highs.

🌍 Macro News

• US equity futures jumped as oil tumbled on easing US-Iran tensions. LINK
• US stock futures rose and Brent crude fell 9% on Iran de-escalation. LINK
• South Korea's Kospi crashed 10.8%, triggering circuit breakers amid tech selloff. LINK
• China accused US AI firms of copying its models, threatened retaliation. LINK
• Judge blocked Minnesota's prediction-market ban, siding with Kalshi and Polymarket. LINK
• Trump administration seeks single national AI framework to replace state rules. LINK
• Hong Kong launched framework to prepare banks for quantum-computing risks by 2030. LINK
• Japan plans to invest in overseas oil pipelines to bypass Hormuz risk. LINK
• Iran held talks with Saudi Arabia and Oman on Strait of Hormuz security. LINK
• Stablecoin supply fell $7.7 billion in June, but transaction volume hit record. LINK
• Wall Street is deeply split on whether the Fed will hold or hike rates. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Agility Robotics to go public in 2026 via Churchill Capital Corp XI merger. LINK
• The Exploration Company seeks $300 million raise, valuing it above $2 billion. LINK
• Shein posted a $99 million loss after US tariff exemption ended. LINK
• Baidu began testing self-driving cars in London with Lyft partnership. LINK
• Circle became top US blockchain patent holder after IBM asset purchase. LINK
• Fanatics bought Water Street Labs and CX Clearinghouse from BGC Group. LINK
• Lido began migrating $16.5 billion in staked ether to new validators. LINK
• Storj Labs filed for Chapter 11, the fourth crypto failure this week. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Jefferies warned US risks massive capital destruction from AI spending boom. LINK
• Global IT spending is projected to rise 14.2% to $6.37 trillion in 2026. LINK
• HSBC flagged August 6 unlock of 912 million SpaceX shares. LINK
• Strategy's new capital framework buys time but doesn't fix its structure, Galaxy says. LINK
• AI data-center spending lifted US durable goods orders 0.3% in June. LINK

💰 Deal Flow

• The Boring Company seeks $4 billion raise at $20 billion valuation. LINK
• SoftBank in talks to buy driverless-excavator maker Gravis Robotics for $500 million. LINK
• Nuclear startup Antares raised $470 million to build reactors for military bases. LINK
• Nuclear Turbines raised €17.5 million to develop compact nuclear power systems. LINK
• Alphabet's SpaceX stake is now worth $94.1 billion, filing shows. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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