☕️ Trump proposes $103K H-1B visa fee

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

🇺🇸 Trump proposes $103K H-1B visa fee

⚡ Nvidia's $20B Groq inference racks go live in 2026

🇹🇼 Taiwan charges Nvidia staff over China chip smuggling

📱 Xiaomi debuts its first 3nm phone chip

💰 Treasury may tap $1T cash for bond buybacks

Plus: 🌍 8 macro news, 🏢 10 corporate news, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• The Trump administration has proposed a $103,265 fee on H-1B skilled-worker visa applications, a charge Homeland Security says would cover the government's cost of running the legal immigration system.
• The fee applies to visas under the annual cap of 85,000-65,000 standard plus 20,000 for U.S. advanced-degree holders, but exempts universities, hospitals and research institutions, unlike an earlier $100,000 version a judge struck down in June.
• The tech sector faces the biggest exposure, as computer roles like software engineering, data science and IT support make up nearly two-thirds of H-1B approvals; companies get a 30-day window to comment once the rule publishes Tuesday.

• Nvidia said its Groq 3 LPX rack, built on technology from its $20 billion December purchase of chip startup Groq, is now in full production and will go live later this year at cloud provider Nebius.
• The racks target low-latency "inference", the speed at which AI agents respond, especially for coding, which Nvidia says lets cloud firms charge premium rates, with each rack packing 256 Groq chips and delivering 3,400 tokens per second.
• Nvidia frames the chips as a complement, not a replacement, for its GPUs; CEO Jensen Huang, who projects $1 trillion in combined Blackwell and Vera Rubin sales through 2027, plans to devote a quarter of coding-focused data center space to Groq.

• Taiwan has indicted nine people, including employees of Nvidia and Super Micro, for illegally exporting restricted AI servers to China, in what prosecutors call the first prosecution over black-market trade in high-performance AI hardware.
• The scheme centered on an order of 130 B300 servers, of which 74 reached Chinese customers via routes through Japan, Indonesia and Hong Kong using fake paperwork, before customs seized the remaining 56; the alleged ringleader faces a five-year prison term.
• Nvidia's shares fell more than 2% and Super Micro's dropped nearly 7% after the news, which tests US export controls in place since 2022 that US officials say billions of dollars of Nvidia hardware have evaded via illicit networks.

• Xiaomi rolled out three in-house Xring chips, led by the 3nm Xring O3 phone processor built by TSMC, its bid to design its own silicon rather than lean solely on Qualcomm and MediaTek.
• The push follows more than 21 billion yuan ($3.1 billion) invested since 2021 and a team of nearly 3,000 engineers, giving Xiaomi (HKEX: 1810) more leverage with suppliers even though most phones will still use Qualcomm and MediaTek chips.
• The O3 debuts in September in the Xiaomi 18 Fold, targeting 200,000-300,000 units, as Xiaomi's newer bets in EVs and AI posted a 2.6 billion yuan operating loss in the quarter to June 2026.

• The US Treasury may draw on its near-$1 trillion cash account to fund expanded government bond purchases, two senior officials said, giving it firepower to push down long-term borrowing costs without leaning on the Federal Reserve.
• The plan builds on last week's surprise move to at least double buybacks of older long-dated bonds from $2 billion to $4 billion, an operation Secretary Scott Bessent dubbed a "Treasury Twist" and suggested could run even larger.
• Bonds have since given back an initial rally, pushing yields up on skepticism about the plan's firepower, but tapping the cash account, built to roughly $950 billion versus a Biden-era $550-600 billion goal, could shift that view.

🌍 Macro News

• Bessent threatens sweeping secondary sanctions on any Iran trade partners. LINK
• Trump threatens 50% tariff on Canadian cars and trucks. LINK
• India to launch first blockchain-based corporate bond next month. LINK
• FTC proposes requiring disclosure of personalized pricing using shopper data. LINK
• Iran blacklists 45 tankers transiting Hormuz amid US sanctions standoff. LINK
• Bitcoin tops $80,000 on ETF inflows and rising risk appetite. LINK
• SEC's new crypto asset proposal gives firms measurable regulatory cost. LINK
• ECB defends digital euro privacy, denying it can identify payers. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Franklin Templeton partners with HashKey to distribute tokenized fund in Asia. LINK
• Standard Chartered HK cleared to distribute city's new HKD stablecoin. LINK
• Coinbase launches tokenized stocks on its Base blockchain network. LINK
• Alabama subpoenas OpenAI over AI model's hack of Hugging Face. LINK
• Oura reportedly plans US IPO valuing it above $16 billion. LINK
• Stablecoin bank Fasset hits $1 billion valuation after new funding. LINK
• Porsche signs €1.25 billion AI deal with Tata Consultancy Services. LINK
• PDD shares stay pressured despite strong second-quarter profit beat. LINK
• Zillow, Redfin settle FTC antitrust case over 2025 partnership. LINK
• Amazon hikes device prices sharply while boosting AI capital spending. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• 6 free Claude skills for finance teams: cover close, forecasting and reporting work, ready to drop in. From Aleph. Get the 6 skill files for free
• UK fintech funding falls to decade low in first half 2026. LINK
• China's humanoid robots move from demos to real commercial use. LINK
• India's data centre capacity set to nearly quadruple by 2030. LINK
• BofA warns AI is splitting corporate borrowers into winners, losers. LINK
• Industry groups unveil framework for first fully electronic stock IPO. LINK
• S&P warns European heatwaves could squeeze insurers' earnings, raise premiums. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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