next-generation

Tesla has announced that it will hold a launch event on October 1 to showcase its next-generation Roadster electric sports car. This event may spark speculation about a merger between Tesla and SpaceX. The phrase "Go for launch" used by Tesla officially echoes SpaceX's rocket launches.

Minara officially released the next-generation universal financial intelligence tool Minara Harness, which is now available for download by users worldwide. Minara Harness covers multiple asset markets, allowing for investment research 24/7 and operating automated trading within the scope authorized by users. Users can query financial markets using natural language, generate research reports, develop quantitative strategies, and handle daily tasks such as programming, web searching, and document processing. The platform supports users in selecting their own underlying large models.On the investment research side, Minara Harness can simultaneously call multiple professional AI Agents to analyze the same investment opportunity from perspectives such as fundamentals, valuation, market trends, and potential risks. Users can view the information sources and different judgments of each Agent and decide whether to execute trades based on the research results. Minara Harness also supports writing trading strategies in natural language, automatically generating code, and completing backtesting. Users can also subscribe to other traders' strategies, view strategy codes, historical performance, and real-time operating metrics. Minara also offers an optional decision review mechanism, which can verify past judgments against subsequent market results and assess which experiences can be applied to future research. At the same time, Minara announced the benchmark test results of Harness, which outperformed OpenClaw, Hermes, and Claude Code in multiple tests and demonstrated leading performance in tasks such as financial reporting, web research, and spreadsheets.

According to Citrini analyst Jukan, SK Hynix is working on diversifying the foundry suppliers for the substrate chips used in high bandwidth memory (HBM), which are constructed by vertically stacking multiple memory chips. It is reported that the company is considering outsourcing part of the substrate chip production for the seventh generation HBM, namely HBM4E, to Intel's foundry. So far, SK Hynix has relied entirely on TSMC for outsourcing substrate chip production.This move is seen as an effort to establish a multi-supplier foundry strategy to reduce the concentration of the supply chain on TSMC while enhancing SK Hynix's bargaining power in pricing. According to industry insiders on August 31, SK Hynix is advancing a plan where the substrate chips for HBM4E may be jointly manufactured by TSMC and Intel, potentially starting from the HBM4E generation.As the market expects the cost burden of substrate chips for HBM4E to further increase. Since HBM products are mainly covered by long-term supply agreements (LTA), SK Hynix also finds it difficult to immediately pass on the higher foundry costs to customers by raising product prices. Therefore, industry observers believe that if Intel ultimately joins SK Hynix's substrate chip supply chain, the company will gain more options in terms of cost competitiveness and supply stability.

On August 24, SK Hynix is introducing advanced packaging technologies, including Intel's EMIB, for its next-generation HBM solutions and plans to eventually enter the 3D packaging era. At the 2026 Hot Chips conference, SK Hynix's Vice President of Packaging Engineering, Jaesik Lee, delivered a presentation titled "Advanced Packaging for High Bandwidth Memory," explaining how the company will leverage advanced packaging technologies to accelerate its HBM product roadmap.Currently, SK Hynix is exploring methods such as hybrid bonding to break through the limitations of 16-layer stacking. In the future, SK Hynix also plans to address power consumption challenges by increasing the number of TSVs, improving IO speeds of logic process integration, and optimizing power distribution networks. As of the time of publication, SK Hynix's stock rose by 1.71%.

Ethereum co-founder Vitalik Buterin published a new article titled "Obfuscation (Part 3): Local Mixing," which delves into a cryptographic obfuscation technique being explored—"Local Mixing." He claims it may become a new foundational cryptographic tool following elliptic curves, RSA, and lattice-based cryptography.Vitalik states that current mainstream obfuscation techniques mainly rely on complex mathematical assumptions, often resulting in extremely high computational overhead. In contrast, Local Mixing adopts a completely different approach, not relying on elliptic curves, large integer factorization, or lattice cryptography. Instead, it draws on experiences from symmetric cryptography and hash function design, continuously shuffling, reconstructing, and hiding circuit structures to eliminate information leakage while maintaining functionality.The Local Mixing technique primarily includes steps such as reversibility, hardening, mixing, splitting, crossing walk, and "gadgetization." By introducing random structures into the circuit, rearranging logic gates, and employing nonlinear hiding mechanisms, it makes it difficult for attackers to recover the original computational logic.Vitalik points out that this technology is still in its early stages, with security not yet validated over the long term and facing challenges such as random attacks and linear analysis. However, he believes that Local Mixing represents a completely new path for cryptographic exploration, aiming to construct more efficient indistinguishable obfuscation (iO) schemes.If breakthroughs in Local Mixing technology are achieved, it could lead to new quantum-resistant public key encryption schemes and promote the development of general obfuscation techniques. The field still requires years of cryptanalysis and optimization validation, but AI-assisted research may significantly accelerate this maturation process. Vitalik states that obfuscation technology is seen as the "final frontier" of cryptography because, theoretically, other cryptographic primitives can be constructed based on obfuscation and one-way functions. Local Mixing may not only reduce the costs of traditional obfuscation schemes but could also become an important direction for future cryptographic infrastructure.

According to Sifted, the renowned European venture capital firm Index Ventures recently announced the completion of a new fundraising round of $2 billion, increasing its total investable assets to $3.5 billion. This round of fundraising consists of three parts: a $400 million seed fund, a $900 million early-stage venture fund, and an additional $700 million to the existing growth fund (which has expanded from $1.5 billion to $2.2 billion).Index Ventures stated that the new funds will continue to support founders "from the first round of financing to IPO and beyond," covering the markets in Europe, Israel, and the United States. In the context of this fundraising, AI is its core betting direction, and the firm has successively invested in Mistral, Cohere, and Ineffable Intelligence, founded by former DeepMind researcher David Silver. Previously, Wiz, part of the Index portfolio, was acquired by Google for $32 billion, Figma completed its IPO, and Revolut completed a secondary market share sale (valued at $115 billion), all of which provided strong endorsement for this round of fundraising.

Global stablecoin payment infrastructure service provider WasabiCard today announced its participation as an official sponsor at WebX 2026, the top Web3 event in Asia, to be held on July 13-14 at the Prince Park Tower Hotel in Tokyo. As an industry flagship summit hosted by Japan's largest crypto media CoinPost, this year's WebX is expected to attract over 15,000 attendees to discuss the deep integration of Web3 and traditional finance.With the explosive growth of stablecoin applications in global commerce, WasabiCard is committed to connecting stablecoin liquidity with the traditional financial system, providing efficient and compliant cross-border payment channels for global enterprises. At booth S26, WasabiCard will focus on showcasing its core B2B solutions for enterprise-level scenarios, covering global corporate card issuance, real-time settlement of stablecoins and fiat currencies, as well as cross-border issuance capabilities that span over 200 countries and regions and support more than 30 fiat currencies.During the exhibition, WasabiCard's core executive team will be stationed at the booth to discuss customized white-label card issuance and global expansion plans with partners worldwide.

The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) has publicly solicited opinions on exchange-traded funds (ETFs) that invest in new asset classes or adopt new investment strategies, to assess whether existing regulatory rules are still applicable and whether adjustments to the registration process for new products are necessary. The public comment period will be open for 60 days after publication in the Federal Register.The SEC pointed out that in recent years, the global ETF assets under management have surged from $4 trillion in 2019 to over $12 trillion by the end of 2025. Meanwhile, ETF issuers in the crypto space are moving beyond simple spot tracking to launch increasingly complex strategy products, including those involving crypto asset staking (such as Grayscale's recently launched Hyperliquid Staking ETP), stablecoin reserves, Bitcoin yield products that combine covered call options (such as proposals from BlackRock and Goldman Sachs), and hybrid funds that combine traditional stock dividend reinvestment with Bitcoin exposure. The SEC aims to explore how to effectively regulate such emerging and highly specialized ETF structures through this consultation.

According to Andrew Curran, the next-generation Mythos model from Anthropic, which has stronger capabilities (named either Mythos 5.1 or Mythos 6), has completed training. It is currently uncertain whether this model will be publicly released or kept for internal use only to accelerate the development of subsequent technologies.Analysis indicates that although some cutting-edge models like Fable 5 or Mythos 5 face restrictions or scrutiny regarding public release, this has not slowed down the research and development pace of top AI laboratories. In the face of fierce competition from open-source models represented by GLM-5.2, leading AI companies still need to continuously invest in and train more powerful systems to maintain their commercial and technological leadership.

According to CoinPost, SBI Holdings completed a strategic investment in the global stablecoin payment and cryptocurrency trading platform Fasset in May 2026, and announced that its international remittance subsidiary SBI Remit signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Fasset. Both parties will jointly build a next-generation international remittance infrastructure based on stablecoin technology.Fasset is a digital bank focused on the Asian, Middle Eastern, and African markets, providing stablecoin settlement, remittance, and investment services through its own payment network "Own Network." It currently covers 125 countries and regions and has over 2 million users. The company completed a $51 million Series B financing in the same month, with investors including SBI Group, Bahrain asset management company Investcorp, and Turkey's Arz Portföy, among others.

According to CoinPost, the "Next Generation AI and On-Chain Finance Concept Project Group" of the Liberal Democratic Party of Japan has released a proposal that suggests combining AI with blockchain to automate decision-making, financing, and asset management, operating around the clock, and lists finance as the "18th growth investment area."Specific measures in the proposal include: promoting the tokenization of current accounts at the Bank of Japan (including wholesale CBDC), completing the argument organization within the year; the three major banks jointly issuing stablecoins, aiming to launch practical operations before March next year; and promoting the on-chain tokenization of real assets (RWA) such as accounts receivable and real estate.On the international cooperation front, the proposal suggests establishing an "AI and On-Chain Finance Asia Policy Dialogue Framework" and advancing cross-border settlements using yen-denominated stablecoins, building a "Global SC Corridor Concept."

The Web3 asset data platform RootData has outlined Mastercard's cryptocurrency business partners, which now exceed 100, covering multiple key areas such as public chains, stablecoins, trading platforms, risk control services, and payment infrastructure. Unlike Visa and PayPal's more "selective partnership" strategy, Mastercard aims to become the connective layer for all payment links.Structurally, this network can be understood as a "multi-node collaborative system":Assets and Settlement: Through stablecoin issuers like Circle and Paxos, as well as multiple public chains, it undertakes on-chain assets and settlement capabilities.Connection and Circulation: Integrating cross-chain protocols, custody services, and payment channels to allow different chains and assets to flow within its system.Compliance and Security: Introducing risk control service providers like TRM Labs and Elliptic to build compliance capabilities aimed at the global regulatory environment.Applications and Reach: Collaborating with exchanges, wallets, and financial institutions to transform on-chain capabilities into user-perceived payment and consumption scenarios.Therefore, Mastercard's strategy is essentially not about selecting suppliers but about lowering access thresholds and expanding network externalities. It connects more upstream chains and asset issuers while attracting payment institutions and financial terminals downstream, making its strategy more aligned with the center of the next-generation payment system. Related compilation: 【Mastercard Crypto Partner Network Compilation (Continuously Updated)】Cryptocurrency projects actively showcasing their partner networks have become a key way to enhance transparency and market trust. It is reported that RootData welcomes Web3 project parties to claim data and continues to track and open more project business relationship disclosure channels. The platform has continuously released multiple editions of the cryptocurrency project ecosystem map, nominating Web3 ecosystem partners for upstream clients such as Visa, Stripe, and Coinbase.If you wish to nominate your project in future ecosystem maps, please fill out the 【RootData 2026 Industry Ecosystem Mapping】 form to supplement your important clients and partners.

According to tracking data from the Web3 asset data platform RootData X, in the past 7 days, the blockchain-based next-generation email Dmail has been the project that X (Twitter) top figures have unfollowed the most. New unfollowers of this project include DeFi analyst Ignas (@DefiIgnas), crypto KOL Yuyue (@yuyue_chris), and small catcher CHAOS (@iamyourchaos).In addition, the projects that X top figures have unfollowed the most also include Tribe.run and boop.

NVIDIA announced strategic partnerships with photonics device manufacturers Lumentum and Coherent, each investing $2 billion, totaling $4 billion.Both investments are aimed at supporting each other's R&D, manufacturing capacity expansion, and operations in the United States, with Lumentum planning to build a new wafer fab. Both agreements are non-exclusive collaborations, including multi-billion dollar procurement commitments and future capacity rights for advanced laser and optical network products. According to market news, the stock prices of both photonics companies surged significantly after the announcement.

According to an announcement on Circle's official website, USDC issuer Circle has signed a memorandum of cooperation with licensed cross-border payment institution LianLian Global.The two parties will explore stablecoin-based cross-border payment solutions to enhance payment efficiency, transparency, and accessibility, focusing on emerging markets such as Asia and the needs of global merchants, and considering promoting interoperability between traditional payment systems and on-chain settlement through the Circle Payments Network and L1 chain Arc.

Chainlink posted on the X platform that the institutional-grade on-chain asset and yield management platform Kiln has integrated the Chainlink Runtime Environment (CRE) and the Automated Compliance Engine (ACE). Currently, the CRE has been launched on Base, serving as a coordination layer to enable the automated execution of treasury logic and settlement workflows. Chainlink ACE will execute KYC requirements and policy controls for specific treasuries.