Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.
In today's newsletter:
🍎 Apple cuts EU App Store fees to settle dispute
🇨🇦 Trump pauses 50% Canada tariffs for 3 days
🤖 OpenAI pauses its biggest AI training run
📈 Anthropic's revenue run rate hits $65B
🪙 SEC proposes crypto fundraising rules up to $75M
Plus: 🌍 10 macro news, 🏢 5 corporate news, and 📑 6 research & reports.
| 🍎 Apple cuts EU App Store fees to settle dispute LINK |
- Apple has settled its European Commission dispute over App Store pricing, agreeing to a fee overhaul that takes effect across the EU on October 1 to resolve the bloc's competition concerns.
- The changes scrap the per-install Core Technology Fee in favor of a flat 5% levy on digital sales made outside Apple's ecosystem, and cut standard in-app purchase commissions from 30% to 26%, with qualifying smaller developers paying 15%.
- Apps using outside payment methods pay 20%, and those sending users to external checkout pay 15%, a rate Epic Games calls too high, giving it roughly 60 days to challenge a parallel US proposal in its six-year fight with Apple.
| 🇨🇦 Trump pauses 50% Canada tariffs for 3 days LINK |
- Trump paused for three days the 50% tariffs on billions of dollars of Canadian goods that were due to hit at 12:01 a.m. Wednesday, citing a tentative deal with Prime Minister Mark Carney that still needs finalizing.
- The duties, threatened under a never-before-used 1930 tariff provision, would have hit Canadian alcohol, hockey equipment, cement and dairy, though energy, potash and critical minerals were carved out from the new levies.
- The fight stems from US claims that Canadian policies hurt American auto and dairy exports, with Canada's province-level bans on US alcohol a key sticking point; the question now is whether the pause leads to a broader trade agreement.
| 🤖 OpenAI pauses its biggest AI training run LINK |
- OpenAI has kept its largest planned frontier AI training run on hold while it rewrites its safety rulebook, having already paused deployment-focused training for more than two weeks before restarting many narrower, lower-risk workloads under tighter controls.
- The tighter oversight carries a cost: expanded monitoring of tool actions, reasoning traces and activity logs consumes roughly 20% of the compute used by the process being watched, with a target of alerting human teams within 30 minutes of concerning activity.
- Beyond the flagship run, significant workloads for Astra, an unreleased model that may hit OpenAI's Critical cyber threshold, remain paused, and the company has yet to publish its postmortem of a July breach or evidence behind Astra's possible Critical rating.
| 📈 Anthropic's revenue run rate hits $65B LINK |
- Anthropic's projected annual revenue, or run rate, reached $65 billion by late July, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025, positioning it for what could be the largest IPO in history at a valuation above $2 trillion.
- Bankers are pricing the IPO off Anthropic's own 2028 revenue forecast rather than today's sales, a high-growth-software method that, if public investors accept it, would let other AI firms justify similar valuations on future rather than current revenue.
- The push is backed by adoption, with 43.5% of US companies paying for Anthropic versus 39.7% for OpenAI, though the model hinges on revenue outpacing the heavy costs of chips, training and talent, a bet that could reverse if those economics disappoint.
| 🪙 SEC proposes crypto fundraising rules up to $75M LINK |
- The SEC reversed course on Tuesday, proposing rules that would let crypto projects raise money by selling tokens without going through the full securities-registration process that usually applies to public fundraising.
- The plan, dubbed "Regulation Crypto Assets," offers two paths: a startup exemption allowing token sales of up to $5 million over four years, and a larger one permitting up to $75 million a year for issuers that file financial statements and ongoing reports.
- The move fills a gap after the Clarity Act, which would formally legalize most US crypto activity, stalled in Congress this year, with SEC Chair Paul Atkins having signaled in late July the agency would act on its own if the bill failed.
🌍 Macro News
- FASB proposes letting firms treat some stablecoins as cash equivalents. LINK
- Pennsylvania orders strict new limits on large AI data centers. LINK
- JPMorgan warns UK inflation rebound signals bigger price pressures ahead. LINK
- US-Iran talks failure sends global bond yields to multi-decade highs. LINK
- Strait of Hormuz's half-open status now biggest risk to oil markets. LINK
- US diesel crack spread hits record $102, signaling refined-fuel shortage. LINK
- Nvidia's China chip share shrinks despite H200 sales resuming there. LINK
- ECB economists warn AI-driven stock rally risks a sharp correction. LINK
- Mizuho expects Bank of Japan to accelerate rate hikes, possibly September. LINK
- US housing starts plunged 12.4% in July, far exceeding forecasts. LINK
🏢 Corporate News
- Baidu's revenue fell 4% as ad weakness offset AI cloud growth. LINK
- Cerebras launches CS-4 system, doubling performance at similar hardware cost. LINK
- Anthropic to give Amodei extra-voting shares ahead of expected IPO. LINK
- Nvidia to fund $105 billion SoftBank-OpenAI data center in Ohio. LINK
- Visa seeks new stablecoin partner after Mastercard acquired BVNK. LINK
📈 Stocks
📑 Research & Reports
- Goldman finds AI already denting entry-level jobs in rich economies. LINK
- India now Asia's least-favored stock market, Bank of America survey shows. LINK
- Goldman sees global space economy reaching $1.8 trillion by 2035. LINK
- Real-world asset tokenization matures into institutional market worth billions. LINK
- Crypto VC funding held near flat in July as deal count dropped. LINK
- Data-center gas plants could raise US power emissions by a fifth. LINK