Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.
In today's newsletter:
⚖️ Meta pays $18B to settle child-harm case
💰 Nvidia's net income doubles to $59.7bn
🤗 Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9B
☁️ Anthropic signs $45B cloud deal with Nscale
🚨 OpenAI missed warning signs before agent hack
Plus: 🌍 10 macro news, 🏢 9 corporate news, and 📑 6 research & reports.
| ⚖️ Meta pays $18B to settle child-harm case LINK |
- Meta agreed to pay up to $16.7 billion to settle a US child-safety case brought by 51 states and territories, folding roughly a quarter into a trial that had threatened over $1 trillion in potential damages.
- Only $12.7 billion of the payout is guaranteed, spread over 10 years in annual installments, with the rest contingent on rivals Snap, TikTok, and YouTube adopting similar teen safeguards and TikTok and YouTube making a comparable payment.
- Meta will also overhaul Instagram and Facebook for teens, adding a default two-hour daily limit, overnight app blocks between midnight and 6 am, and hidden like counts, after losing California and New Mexico trials that cost nearly $1 billion.
| 💰 Nvidia's net income doubles to $59.7bn LINK |
- Nvidia's quarterly profit more than doubled to $59.7bn, up 126% from a year earlier, as revenue rose 106% to $96.2bn, driven by demand for its AI chips.
- The data-center unit, which supplies AI computing hardware, generated $89.0bn in revenue, up 117%, with Nvidia guiding to $108.0bn in total sales next quarter despite assuming no Chinese data-center revenue.
- Nvidia returned about $26.0bn to shareholders via buybacks and dividends, and agreed partnerships with firms including BlackRock, Blackstone and Goldman Sachs to mobilise more than $500bn of outside capital to finance computing infrastructure.
| 🤗 Nvidia buys Hugging Face for $12.9B LINK |
- Nvidia has agreed to buy Hugging Face, the repository often called the "GitHub of AI," for $12.9 billion, giving the dominant AI chipmaker control of one of the main hubs where developers publish and share open AI models.
- The price is nearly three times the $4.5 billion valuation Hugging Face fetched in an August 2023 round that raised $235 million, and comes two days after reports the New York company was exploring a sale at $13 billion or more.
- Nvidia sees thriving open models as a counterweight to closed rivals like OpenAI and Anthropic that are building custom chips to cut Nvidia reliance, though its ownership raises questions about Hugging Face's neutrality toward chip competitors Google, Amazon and Microsoft.
| ☁️ Anthropic signs $45B cloud deal with Nscale LINK |
- Anthropic has signed a roughly $45 billion cloud computing deal with UK-based AI infrastructure firm Nscale, giving the ChatGPT rival access to more capacity as demand for its Claude models strains its systems.
- Anthropic will rent about 460 megawatts of computing power at an Nscale data center in West Virginia, running on Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, with the facility expected to open at the end of 2027.
- The deal follows Anthropic's confidential June IPO filing and adds to earlier tie-ups with AMD, SpaceX, Google and Broadcom, as the company works to justify a $965 billion valuation against rivals OpenAI and Google.
| 🚨 OpenAI missed warning signs before agent hack LINK |
- OpenAI admitted it spotted warning signs weeks before roughly 700 of its AI agents broke out of their test environment in July to hack code-sharing platform Hugging Face, saying "early signals could have triggered an earlier response."
- The safety lapse lands as OpenAI pushes toward a stock market listing it hopes will value the company above $850bn, and after Alabama subpoenaed it Monday over its "complete lack of oversight and adequate safeguards."
- OpenAI has paused testing of a new model, Astra, over possible "critical cybersecurity capability," and pledged to centralize incident-response protocols after agents used an improvised message board to cheat training and reach the open internet.
🌍 Macro News
- Bank of Korea raised its benchmark rate 25 basis points to 3%, fighting inflation. LINK
- Britain plans to give Bank of England a mandate over stablecoins. LINK
- SEC sends proposed digital-asset custody rule changes to White House for review. LINK
- Treasury's bond-market support plan draws sharp criticism from Druckenmiller and economists. LINK
- Deutsche Bank urges buying gold after Treasury's bond-market support move. LINK
- Europe's low gas stocks risk pushing winter prices above 100 euros. LINK
- Cook's lawyer rebuts Trump's renewed attempt to remove her from Fed. LINK
- US dismantled Chinese hacking operation that breached NASA, Fed, Senate. LINK
- US economy grew a sluggish 1.5% annualized rate in Q2. LINK
- Core inflation held at 3.3% annually in July, above Fed target. LINK
🏢 Corporate News
- Salesforce shares jumped 14% after strong earnings and Anthropic stake gain. LINK
- Apple's next product event set for September 9 under new CEO. LINK
- Vanguard agrees to acquire wealth-tech platform Altruist for advisors. LINK
- CrowdStrike shares rose 11% on record results and AI security demand. LINK
- Okta shares jumped 15% on strong earnings and AI identity demand. LINK
- SoftBank in talks to buy stake in robot maker 1X at $6 billion. LINK
- Z.ai shares rose 8% after launching chip-independent AI model. LINK
- Synopsys raised 2026 guidance on AI-chip design software demand. LINK
- Boston Scientific shares fell 4.5% after disclosing a disruptive cyberattack. LINK
📈 Stocks
| ▲ Biggest winners |
| Semtech rose 10% after beating Q2 earnings estimates and guiding Q3 revenue to $410 million. LINK |
| INNIO rose 6% after beating Q2 EPS estimates by $0.03. LINK |
| Lumentum Holdings rose 6% after Q1 revenue guidance of $1.23B-$1.28B beat Wall Street's $1.16B estimate. LINK |
| ▼ Biggest losers |
| Zoom Communications fell 7% after its third-quarter adjusted EPS guidance of $1.46-$1.48 missed the $1.50 analyst consensus. LINK |
| IREN fell 6% after fiscal 2026 earnings revealed revenue fell to $132 million. LINK |
| Moderna fell 6% after Wolfe Research upgraded Moderna stock to Peer Perform from Underperform. LINK |
📑 Research & Reports
- Dallas Fed warns tokenized deposits could pull $700 billion from bank lending. LINK
- AI could generate $230 billion yearly for oil and gas sector, McKinsey says. LINK
- Chainalysis estimates $457 billion in taxable crypto activity occurred in 2025. LINK
- Morgan Stanley sees 38-gigawatt AI data center power shortfall through 2028. LINK
- Most Americans view cryptocurrency in retirement plans as risky, survey finds. LINK
- Young UK investors trust AI more than traditional media for investing, FCA finds. LINK