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As the US dollar stablecoin continues to dominate the on-chain payment market, Europe is accelerating the development of a digital currency system that reflects its own regulatory framework, monetary sovereignty, and privacy standards, gradually forming two parallel paths: "digital euro + private euro stablecoin." Among them, the European Central Bank is prioritizing privacy protection as an important design focus for the digital euro. Piero Cipollone, a member of the Executive Board of the European Central Bank, stated that the digital euro will provide the highest possible level of privacy under current technological conditions, with offline payments visible only to the payer and payee; in online transactions, the euro system cannot directly identify specific individuals, but banks can still obtain the information required for anti-money laundering.At the same time, private institutions have taken the lead in promoting euro stablecoins. Revolut has begun rolling out EURR to some users in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, with plans to expand to the entire European Economic Area in the future. EURR operates on Ethereum and is issued by Bridge Building, a subsidiary of Stripe, aiming to maintain a stable value against 1 euro. Forbes points out that the digital euro and EURR are not simply in a substitutive relationship: the former is a public currency issued by the central bank, while the latter is a privately issued on-chain stablecoin. The European digital currency market is developing along these two models simultaneously, with competition focusing on privacy, usability, regulatory clarity, and actual economic value.

Silicon Valley's renowned venture capital firm a16z has announced that it has raised $1.1 billion for its latest fund, the Machine Age Fund, which will focus on investing in the full suite of computing infrastructure that supports AI operations, including chips, memory, networking, storage, as well as complete systems such as data centers, robots, and home AI devices.a16z stated that over the past year, there has been a significant turning point in the growth of AI in terms of application capabilities and types of work. As AI expands from chat and reasoning further into programming and other knowledge work, the demand for computing power and tokens is experiencing exponential growth, and machine intelligence is accelerating its deep development.a16z indicated that its team possesses extensive experience in hardware, data centers, chips, networking, and large-scale computing systems. They have also established a resource network covering market expansion, talent recruitment, marketing, customers, suppliers, and American manufacturing, which will further support the next generation of AI hardware entrepreneurs. a16z mentioned that we are currently at an important juncture in the transformation of computing paradigms and look forward to collaborating with entrepreneurs dedicated to reconstructing AI hardware and advancing the arrival of the "Machine Age."

According to Bloomberg, informed sources revealed that JPMorgan Chase has begun preliminary discussions with potential lenders to seek a $5 billion debt financing plan to support Volta Infra Holdings Ltd. in building artificial intelligence data centers.Volta AI completed a $300 million venture capital financing earlier this month, with a valuation of $2.4 billion, aiming to help more tech companies access the costly resources of artificial intelligence chips.

On August 25, CITIC Construction Investment Research reported that on August 21, OpenAI reduced the price of GPT-5.6 SolAPI by over 20%, further lowering the cost of high-performance model calls, which is expected to drive growth in high Token scenarios such as Agent and code generation, continuously boosting demand for inference-side computing power.Alibaba's latest quarterly AI Cloud and Compute Services revenue was approximately 48.4 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 45%. Revenue from AI-related products has seen triple-digit growth for 12 consecutive quarters, confirming that AI demand is accelerating towards commercialization. We remain optimistic about the opportunities in the industrial chain driven by the commercialization of large models and the increase in computing power demand, including optical modules, servers, liquid cooling, and cloud computing.

According to the Industrial and Commercial Times, driven by the long-term growth in demand for memory and advanced packaging due to AI, Winbond Electronics has proactively initiated expansion plans for its Kaohsiung Luzhu plant, merging the originally planned phases two and three into Module B for simultaneous development. Construction of the cleanroom is expected to start in 2027, with equipment installation beginning as early as the beginning of 2029, and equipment will be phased in according to customer demand forecasts and LTA. Currently, there are already customers negotiating for capacity in 2029 and 2030.Industry sources indicate that Winbond's niche DRAM and SLC NAND are in short supply in the third quarter, with a quarterly price increase estimated at about 50%; NOR Flash benefits from large cloud service provider customers stocking up, with a quarterly price increase estimated at about 30%. The price increase for memory in the fourth quarter is expected to converge to 2% to 5%, but thanks to increased DRAM capacity and growing shipment volumes, revenue and profits can still maintain a quarterly increase. Winbond's consolidated revenue in the second quarter was NT$59.843 billion, a quarterly increase of 56.4% and a year-on-year increase of 184.7%. DRAM prices increased by about 100% quarter-on-quarter, while Flash rose by about 43%, with consolidated gross margin rising to 66.2% and after-tax earnings per share of NT$5.40.The Module B product plan includes Standard DRAM, CUBE DRAM, Wafer-on-Wafer (WoW), and silicon capacitors (Si-Cap), which will support 14-nanometer and future 12-nanometer DRAM processes, with plans to introduce EUV equipment in the future.

According to the latest report from The Economist Enterprise, after 13 years of development and multiple strategic upgrades, Gate is gradually expanding from a traditional cryptocurrency trading platform to a comprehensive financial infrastructure that connects digital assets with traditional financial markets. The report points out that as more traditional financial products such as stocks, ETFs, tokenized assets, foreign exchange, and metals enter the digital asset ecosystem, Gate is further bridging the gap between crypto finance and TradFi through multi-asset product layouts and global infrastructure development. Gate's founder and CEO Dr. Han stated in an exclusive interview that as the industry develops, digital asset platforms are facing not only technical issues but also risk management, user protection, and industry regulation.In terms of TradFi integration, Gate has formed a multi-layered layout from tokenized assets and derivatives to native stock trading, launching products and services such as xStocks, Ondo, Gate TradFi, Pre-IPOs, direct IPOs, and Gate Stocks. Among these, Gate Stocks has supported trading of U.S., Hong Kong, and South Korean stocks, significantly lowering the barriers for global users to participate in traditional financial markets. At the same time, Gate is continuously improving its around-the-clock trading and liquidity infrastructure to meet the needs of global users for cross-market asset allocation.The Economist Enterprise also points out that as the digital asset market further moves towards institutionalization, compliance, transparency, and infrastructure capability are becoming important components of platform competition. Gate continues to advance its global compliance layout across multiple jurisdictions and has been providing third-party audits and open-source proof of reserves since 2020. In addition, Gate is introducing AI infrastructure into Web3, connecting AI with trading, wallets, and more services through products like Gate AI, Gate MCP, and GateClaw, promoting the platform's evolution from a traditional trading venue to a comprehensive financial infrastructure that connects digital assets, traditional finance, and AI applications.

According to Bloomberg, SoftBank Group invested $200 million in Swiss construction robotics startup Gravis Robotics, completing its Series A funding.Gravis originated from ETH Zurich and primarily develops autonomous hardware and software for earthmoving construction equipment, enabling heavy machinery to operate autonomously and allowing remote supervision of robotic fleets.

According to Jinshi, the People's Bank of China held a work meeting for the second half of 2026, pointing out that the high-level opening of finance is steadily advancing. The meeting emphasized optimizing policies for enterprises' overseas lending, banks' overseas loans, and cross-border interbank financing in RMB, and creating overseas central bank repurchase tools.In the first half of the year, panda bond issuance exceeded 160 billion yuan, and significant progress was made in the construction of the RMB cross-border payment system, supporting the construction of international financial centers in Shanghai and Hong Kong, as well as the construction of the Xiong'an New Area and the new western land-sea corridor.

BSC and 0G ecosystem's largest AI economic infrastructure company NeoSoul announced plans to launch the world's first highly customizable Agentic Trading framework, helping users build AI Agents that can make autonomous decisions and trade independently.As AI capabilities rapidly improve, more and more traders are beginning to use Agents to assist in trading. However, currently, building a trading Agent that can operate stably over the long term still presents a high barrier to entry. NeoSoul hopes to lower the threshold for users to utilize autonomous trading Agents through its innovative Agent trading framework.NeoSoul chooses to focus on Trading because the financial market is the most direct scenario to test the capabilities of AI Agents. Compared to traditional AI applications that mainly provide information and advice, trading Agents need to continuously make judgments in a real environment and be validated by the market.NeoSoul's Agentic Trading Framework primarily addresses the following issues:Helping users create and customize their own AI trading AgentsOrdinary users who want to participate in AI trading often face technical and strategic barriers. NeoSoul allows users to create trading Agents that align with their goals without starting from scratch, and to accumulate professional trading experience and strategies through skills.Enabling users to determine whether the Agent truly possesses trading capabilitiesCreating an Agent is just the first step. Users also need to understand whether the Agent can consistently execute strategies and manage risks. NeoSoul provides verifiable performance records, allowing users to review the Agent's decision-making process and trading results.Allowing users to manage autonomous trading permissions more effectivelyWhen it comes to asset management, permission control is crucial. NeoSoul supports users in setting Agent permissions and understanding trading behavior in real-time.NeoSoul co-founder Kaelan stated:"AI Agents are moving from providing answers to participating in real economic activities. Trading is one of the most natural scenarios for Agents to enter economic activities, as each decision results in a clear outcome. NeoSoul hopes to help traders create operational AI Agents, enabling more strategies to be executed continuously."In the future, NeoSoul will continue to improve the Agentic Trading ecosystem, allowing more users to use AI Agents to participate in the global financial market.

Hyperscale Data GPUS announced that it has sold 100 bitcoins to fund the construction of its AI data center in Michigan. CEO William Horne stated that this is "converting one balance sheet asset into another" and clarified that his confidence in BTC has not changed. Its Bitcoin 100 ranking is 44th.

According to Gate Ventures' latest weekly report, the global market continued to be influenced by high interest rate expectations and geopolitical factors last week, with the cryptocurrency market overall maintaining volatility. BTC rose 0.2% over the week, ETH increased by 1.2%, and market sentiment saw a slight recovery. Meanwhile, BTC spot ETFs ended eight consecutive weeks of net outflows, recording a net inflow of approximately $197 million, and ETH spot ETFs also resumed net inflows, with institutional allocation demand showing marginal improvement.On the industry front, traditional financial institutions are continuing to accelerate the construction of on-chain infrastructure. Swift officially launched a blockchain-based shared ledger and partnered with 17 global banks to initiate a tokenized deposit pilot; fintech platform Toss is collaborating with Optimism to advance the infrastructure development for the Korean won stablecoin; Robinhood Chain, which launched only two weeks ago, has surpassed a total locked value (TVL) of $132 million.In terms of investment and financing, a total of 8 financing deals were disclosed last week, amounting to $381 million, with the infrastructure (Infra) sector dominating. Prime Intellect completed a $130 million financing round to accelerate the construction of enterprise-level AI infrastructure; Gauntlet received a $125 million strategic investment from Japan's SBI Holdings to further expand its institutional-level DeFi treasury business. Gate Ventures believes that stablecoins, on-chain finance, and institutional-level infrastructure are continuing to become important development directions for the industry, with institutional capital further increasing its investment in digital asset infrastructure.

Based on the x402 open standard, the HTTP native payment infrastructure PayGo officially announced the completion of strategic financing, with investors including United Overseas Bank (UOB), Signum Capital, and Ledger Capital.It is reported that PayGo is natively built on the ENI blockchain, with its core business providing account-free, subscription-free, and API Key-free request-level instant stablecoin (USDT/USDC) payment settlement services using the HTTP 402 "Payment Required" status code for APIs, AI entities, and the machine economy. PAYG is the governance token for the project.

Stablecoin issuer Tether announced a strategic financing round investment of $20 million in the Latin American on-chain financial services platform Mercado Bitcoin to support its development in asset tokenization, payments, credit, capital markets, and compliant digital financial services.Founded in 2013, Mercado Bitcoin has expanded from a digital asset trading platform to a comprehensive on-chain financial infrastructure platform, covering areas such as trading services, tokenized investment products, lending, stablecoin payments, banking infrastructure, and cross-border financial services. The funds from this financing will primarily be used to expand payment infrastructure, increase the scale of tokenized products for institutional and retail investors, develop credit business, advance on-chain capital market construction, seek strategic cooperation opportunities, and promote international expansion.

According to reports from Jiemian News, Kingsoft Cloud will accelerate the construction of GPU computing clusters in the second half of the year to meet the explosive growth in computing power demand from major clients. Among them, Xiaomi's demand for Kingsoft Cloud's GPU computing power has upgraded from a ten-thousand-card cluster, with the related budget significantly increasing from nearly 4 billion yuan to over 10 billion yuan. In addition, Alibaba's large model team has signed a 5-year computing power leasing contract with Kingsoft Cloud, involving more than 3,000 eight-card GPU servers. Based on the contracted price, the annualized revenue after full delivery will exceed 4 billion yuan.To meet the surging customer demand, Kingsoft Cloud's capital expenditure plan for 2026 has been raised to 15 billion yuan, with an annual revenue target of 12.5 billion to 13.5 billion yuan. It is reported that due to tight upstream supply, Kingsoft Cloud is currently only accepting long-term contracts from clients for 3 to 5 years, and some orders are facing delivery delays. Due to concerns about the risk of impairment of high-level card assets, Kingsoft Cloud is currently pausing aggressive hardware expansion, anticipating that the prices of computing hardware may reach a turning point for decline in the third quarter of this year.

AEGIS X officially launches the global genesis co-construction phase, marking the project's formal entry into a new stage of ecological construction. Global users can now participate in the genesis co-construction with USD1 according to the protocol rules, jointly promoting the construction of the on-chain liquidity network around USD1.It is reported that AEGIS X uses USD1 as the core value settlement asset, integrating AI and DeFi protocol mechanisms, and building an ecosystem around stablecoin liquidity, on-chain payments, DAO collaboration, and AI Agent application scenarios. With the launch of the global genesis co-construction phase, the project will further connect users, liquidity, and application scenarios, accelerating the development and improvement of the USD1 ecological network.

According to a report by the Financial Associated Press, Nvidia announced a new AI infrastructure collaboration model on July 1 local time. Through revenue-sharing and credit-support mechanisms, it will jointly build large-scale, multi-tenant AI factories with AI cloud service providers, helping startups, model developers, enterprises, and research institutions to access AI computing power more quickly, while creating a sustainable revenue stream for Nvidia linked to computing power usage.According to the plan, AI cloud vendors will deploy AI factories based on the Nvidia DSX AI Factory architecture to provide cloud computing services. The first batch of partners includes Sharon AI and Firmus. Among them, Sharon AI plans to deploy up to 40,000 NVIDIA Grace Blackwell GB300 GPUs; Firmus will build a DSX AI factory park on Batam Island, Indonesia, with plans to expand to a power scale of 360 megawatts and deploy up to 170,000 Nvidia GPUs.

CITIC Construction Investment Research Report points out that the following factors will determine the trend of the third quarter market: In terms of fundamentals, AI computing power remains at a high level of prosperity, with mid-year performance and overseas financial reports worth paying attention to. At the same time, since April, under pressure from the macro economy, the economic measures from the Politburo meeting in July are quite important; In terms of liquidity, external disturbances have increased, while internal conditions remain neutral; In terms of risk appetite, geopolitical events and the listing of industry giants will cause short-term fluctuations in the market. Considering the global tech stock correlation effect, major overseas computing powers such as Japan, South Korea, and the United States also need to be continuously monitored.In terms of industry allocation, although the logic of AI computing power remains unchanged, volatility has intensified. It is recommended to be cautious about chasing highs and to position during pullbacks; lithium batteries are expected to welcome a peak season, and energy storage demand continues to warm up, while new energy presents opportunities for phased valuation recovery; dividends are expected to rebound from oversold conditions, with relatively high cost-performance ratios. Key areas to focus on: banks, coal, public utilities, AI, optical modules, storage, chips, industrial metals, lithium battery materials (VC), etc.

South Korea will incorporate tokenized securities into the overall framework of capital market reform. The Financial Services Commission (FSC) recently launched a review meeting on capital market infrastructure to coordinate the advancement of reforms such as speeding up securities settlement, extending trading hours, and digital transformation.According to the plan, the tokenized securities framework will officially take effect in February 2027, and relevant subordinate regulations are expected to solicit public opinions in July this year. In terms of infrastructure development, Samsung SDS has been contracted by the Korea Securities Depository (KSD) to develop a tokenized securities management platform, aiming to integrate the existing electronic securities account system with blockchain data, with the goal of completing this by February 2027.

According to the latest weekly report from Gate Ventures, market risk appetite continues to be under pressure, and the overall cryptocurrency market is experiencing a pullback. BTC fell 3.7% over the week, ETH fell 1.2%, and the total market capitalization of cryptocurrencies declined by 3.1%, with the Fear and Greed Index remaining in the "Extreme Fear" range. In terms of capital flow, digital asset investment products continued to see net outflows, with the spot BTC ETF experiencing a net outflow of $226.8 million in a single week, and the spot ETH ETF seeing a net outflow of $10 million, reflecting ongoing market hesitation. Meanwhile, STRC under Strategy has traded below par for the fifth consecutive week, and the market continues to pay attention to its subsequent capital operations and yield adjustment space.In terms of industry development, stablecoin payments and RWA infrastructure construction are being continuously advanced. Trace Finance has completed $32 million in financing to expand its compliant stablecoin payment network and cross-border settlement infrastructure; Philippine regulators have released positive signals supporting the development of RWA tokenization, with related explorations further deepening. In terms of investment and financing, four financing transactions were disclosed last week, with a total financing amount of $39.5 million, of which the DeFi sector accounted for the majority. Overall, although the market is still in a correction phase in the short term, stablecoin payments, RWA, and underlying infrastructure construction remain important directions of ongoing industry focus.