Western companies debut open-weight AI models... October 07, 2026 Presented By Hey, peeps. Warren Buffett is just like us. The newly retired investor is apparently spending his evenings going down random YouTube rabbit holes , including clips of Uzbekistan’s version of America’s Got Talent . Finally, a billionaire with a hobby we can relate to. —Dave Lozo, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Adam Epstein, Neal Freyman In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into: New open-weight models shaking up the AI landscape Why students all over France are protesting Why comedians are very mad at SiriusXM Markets Nasdaq 27,599.79 +0.45% S&P 7,818.93 +0.58% Dow 51,521.28 +0.49% 10-Year 5.269% -4.0 bps Bitcoin $85,581.27 -0.23% Constellation $300.4 +12.25% Data is provided by *Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean. Markets: Stocks did an impression of Rob Gronkowski after scoring a touchdown and spiked yesterday, sending the Nasdaq to another record high as AI optimism continued to fuel the tech sector. Meanwhile, Constellation Energy went nuclear after striking a 20-year deal to supply Google with power. OPEN FOR BUSINESS New open-weight AI models could disrupt the industry Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Unsplash Two Western companies are releasing open-weight AI models tailored toward businesses and governments that they claim are as powerful as the leading models offered by China—and could eventually rival some of the biggest closed models from US-based tech giants. Open weight? Is this about boxing? No, actually. Open weight means that, unlike with closed weight models, users can download and customize them with their own proprietary data. They are also cheaper to run than the difficult-to-budget closed models, which could present a new challenge for US-based AI leaders Anthropic, Google, and OpenAI. The new players US-based Reflection AI, which Nvidia financially backs, is launching its first model, Beam, which it says is adept at coding and agentic tasks. Meanwhile, France-based Mistral is debuting Mistral Large 4, called “Le Chonk” due to its 1 trillion parameters...which is a chonky (industry term) amount of parameters. Should these new models have the capabilities claimed by their companies, they could be massive disruptors to the status quo: Businesses and governments in the West are currently hesitant to use the Chinese open models due to security concerns. Reflection and Mistral could be the answer. OpenAI and Anthropic—already facing growing security concerns—may have new competition as they prepare to go public. Speaking of security: By putting powerful models that anyone can tweak into circulation, it creates the potential for even more cybersecurity issues. But Reflection and Mistral see another side of the coin: Mistral VP of Science Pierre Stock told Axios that more availability of models can help improve defenses and allows researchers to audit the technology. More to come: Reflection will release full technical details of Beam later this month. Mistral’s Le Chonk, which is currently only being previewed for developers, will have a wider release on Oct. 27 after more testing, per Axios. —DL Sponsored By Amazon Prime ’Tis the shopping preseason Holiday gifting season is just around the corner—and holiday deals are happening right now. Prime Big Deal Days ends tonight. Check everyone off your list now and skip the last-minute December scramble. With deals across fall fashion, home decor, beauty, and more, you can treat yourself ahead of the holiday rush. Whether you’re in the market for cozy fall essentials like candles and blankets or need to replace your laptop, there’s something for everyone. Shop Prime Big Deal Days now . World Tour de headlines Morning Brew Inc. 🌎 US trade deficit balloons to $105.6 billion, despite tariffs. The deficit—the difference between the value of imports vs. exports—rose to its highest mark in over a year in August as the US continued to bring in goods tied to the AI boom, per data from the Commerce Department. The overall deficit of $105.6 billion was up by 13.7% compared with July, and above analysts’ estimates. That all happened in spite of President Trump’s “Liberation Day” global tariffs, which he enacted in 2025 to try to reduce the deficit and fix what he argued were unfair trade practices by other countries. In addition to the influx of chips needed for AI data centers, the US is importing large amounts of petroleum and gold. 🐭 Disney lawyer says FCC is holding a “guillotine” over its head. In arguments before a federal judge yesterday, Disney attorney Beth Wilkinson asked the court to block the Trump administration’s early review of ABC’s broadcast licenses, likening it to the execution method used on Marie Antoinette. ABC has to “sit with our head on the guillotine and wonder if anything we say is going to make that come down,” Wilkinson said, according to Bloomberg. Disney and ABC are suing the administration on First Amendment grounds, alleging that the FCC’s unusual step to review ABC’s licenses—years before they were scheduled to—is retaliation for Jimmy Kimmel’s criticism of the president. The FCC claims its early review is part of a DEI investigation into Disney. 📡 Nobel Prize in physics awarded for work detecting “ghost particles.” As you read this, trillions of neutrinos, aka ghost particles, are passing through your body. But they have no effect on you, because they have no electric charge and almost no mass, making them extremely difficult to study...until Belgian-born scientist Francis Halzen helped set up and run the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica, which can detect neutrinos zipping in from space. For that work, Halzen was awarded the Nobel Prize yesterday. Scientists say that neutrinos can help them understand how galaxies—and the universe itself—developed. —AE Class conflict France’s school protests come amid wider trouble Lou Benoist / Getty Images Nationwide pr

Plus: High rate pain hits | Wednesday, October 07, 2026 Axios Markets By Emily Peck and Matt Phillips · Oct 07, 2026 👋 Welcome back! The days are getting darker, but markets are rising. Matt digs underneath yesterday's new all-time high and finds that all is not rosy. And Emily takes a look at a new warning from the International Monetary Fund about hedge funds. 🗓️ This morning, U.S. stock futures are down slightly after the S&P 500 closed at a record high yesterday. The closely watched 10-year Treasury yield is rising. 💸 Elon Musk's SpaceX is in talks to raise $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips, according to reports late yesterday from the Financial Times and Bloomberg . The mammoth debt raise could be a sign that rising interest rates aren't slowing the hyperscaler bond binge. 👀 Later today, there's an auction of 10-year Treasury notes that will be a key test for the U.S. bond market. And the Federal Reserve will release the minutes of its September meeting. Enough gabbing. Let's dive in! In 1,235 words, a 4.5-minute read. 1 big thing: The hedge fund warning By Emily Peck Data: October 2026 Global Financial Stability Report ; Chart: Emily Peck/Axios Hedge funds are playing an increasingly important role in the two hottest markets of the moment — U.S. Treasury securities and AI stocks — and they're doing it with a lot of borrowed money. Why it matters: In times of stress, unwinding that borrowing, or leverage, can turn a sell-off into a crisis that spreads beyond hedge funds into the banking system and the wider economy. The latest: That was the message from a report out yesterday from the International Monetary Fund, which in its measured way delivered a sharp warning about the growing risk that hedge funds pose to global markets. By the numbers: Hedge fund assets have doubled since 2020, to nearly $13 trillion. That includes $7.7 trillion from borrowing, per Axios' calculation of IMF's data. "Leverage that looks perfectly manageable right now" can turn dangerous "overnight," said Valentina Bruno, a finance professor at American University, in a discussion of the paper. Between the lines: Hedge fund is a broad term covering different kinds of private investment firms. They are known for being opaque. The authors gathered data for more than 25,000 hedge funds across 78 countries since 1990. Zoom in: Their trades are getting crowded. Funds increasingly own the same stocks, and overlap among the biggest has grown since 2022, the IMF says. Think of it like everyone is in the same room, and when an alarm sounds, they all head for the exit at once. In a sell-off, more crowded stocks see more volatility, the report notes. Stunning stat: The total size of every bet that hedge funds make — all the assets they manage, plus the face value of their derivatives — was $42.2 trillion through the first quarter. A lot of that is netted out — literally by hedging — but it's built with borrowed money, so it can unwind in a vicious cycle. For example, if an investment slumps or if markets get choppy, lenders may demand more collateral. That margin call can force funds to sell, driving prices down further, triggering more margin calls. Flashback: Such worries arose this summer after the near blow-up of the hedge fund Situational Awareness, which borrowed heavily to invest in AI stocks. When AI stock prices fell in July, the fund took heavy losses, got margin calls and was forced to sell its shares. Another hedge fund saved the day — Ken Griffin's Citadel bought much of Situational's stock portfolio at a discount. Reality check: In this case, there wasn't a crisis. "There's nothing wrong with losses," said Christian Lundblad, a finance professor at the University of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School, during the discussion of the paper. "That's part of the game. ... We should have a system where people who make, you know, excess bets or something sometimes take it on the chin." Friction point: Hedge funds doubled their exposure to sovereign debt (government bonds) over the past three years, the report finds — and about two-thirds of the growth was in U.S. Treasury securities. Hedge funds' share of the Treasury market rose to 9% in 2025 from about 4% in 2022, the report says, largely through highly leveraged trades. In 2020, it was hedge funds unwinding Treasury bets that contributed to massive dislocations in global markets that prompted a rescue from the Federal Reserve. The big picture: The financial system has undergone a transformation in recent decades, from one based on bank borrowing and lending to one where the footprint of nonbank institutions like hedge funds, private credit shops and others has exploded. "Risk is now moving around a wider set of players," American University's Bruno said. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS Simplify: Do 50% more with 50% less With AI upending work and life, Jim VandeHei, Mike Allen & Roy Schwartz, the bestselling authors of "Smart Brevity" offer a one-stop survival guide to dramatically improving your life, work and happiness. The idea: Toxic complexity clogs our inboxes and calendars. We can do more, but first we need to simplify. Get your copy. 2. S&P 500 high aside, rate surge is hitting stocks By Matt Phillips Data: FactSet; Chart: Axios/Matt Phillips The S&P 500 hit a new high yesterday, but under the hood of the rally, higher interest rates are making a measurable imprint on the market. Why it matters: Rising rates have often marked the beginning of the end for bull markets, though no one knows how it will play out this time. The latest: At first glance, surging yields on long-term U.S. Treasury bonds haven't bothered the market much. The yield on the benchmark 10-year Treasury is up roughly 1 percentage point over the last six months. The S&P 500 is up about 18% over the same period. Yes, but: The S&P 500 is only one way to measure the market — you can see the impact of higher rates elsewhere. Zoom in: You can see it in the decline of valuation metrics like the

Plus: Will Wall Street’s Animal Spirits close the year on a high? October 7, 2026 PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Good morning. Concerned about the “growing scale and sophistication” of insurance fraud, the Association of British Insurers released new data Tuesday showing sham claims rose 14% in the UK last year to £1.3 billion ($1.7 billion). Among the most notable examples it flagged was a man who set up “crash for cash” schemes with women he met online, staging vehicle accidents to obtain payouts. The ABI also uncovered the case of a London man sentenced to 28 months in prison after obtaining £14,300 in insurance payouts after falsely claiming thieves had stolen precious valuables from him, including Lego sets. When City of London police turned up, they found Lego sets matching the ones he reported stolen on display in the living room. On second thought, maybe this guy is a bad example of “sophistication.” MARKETS S&P 500 7,818.93 ▲ +0.58% DJI 51,521.28 ▲ +0.49% AMD $649.42 ▲ +2.80% Stock data as of market close on October 6, 2026. BANKING New York State Comptroller Says Wall Street Profits Could Top $90 Billion by the End of the Year Fearless Girl must be proud. In the face of market volatility, geopolitical risk, worries of AI disruption, tariffs and more, Wall Street has refused to be rattled. Instead, it generated $45.9 billion in the first half of the year, according to a report released by New York State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli Tuesday. That’s up 51.3% from the same period in 2025 and far exceeds New York City’s $45.3 billion forecast for the entire year. If the pace continues, profits could surpass $90 billion by the end of the year, which, even adjusting for inflation, would top 2009 levels. Animal Spirits Return? While nearly all revenue lines increased, underwriting activities, account supervision and commissions were particularly strong (commodities trading was the exception, likely due to oil’s soaring prices). Global mergers and acquisitions activity topped any other half-year period on record at $2.8 trillion, and Wall Street employees benefited, too: Average salaries including bonuses for New York City’s securities industry climbed 11.1% to $561,770 in 2025. DiNapoli said he now expects the 2026 bonus pool to increase, instead of falling 20% as the city had projected. The enthusiasm and spending around AI have given the stock market a massive boost of late, with the S&P 500 hitting a new record on Tuesday, and excitement about massive upcoming IPOs from companies like Anthropic and OpenAI is likely to keep M&A activity strong. None of which is to say there isn’t plenty of risk to go around: The global bond market is still facing a sell-off, with the 10-year US Treasury yield recently hitting its highest level since 2002. Inflation is still well above the Fed’s target, and the markets are expecting at least one more interest rate hike at the end of the year. The equities rally may also be a product of algorithms rather than animal spirits, with a small number of megacap companies doing much of the work. The top 10 constituents of the S&P 500 account for 39% of the index. City That Never Sleeps on Tax Collection: DiNapoli’s report was a reminder of just how much those eight blocks in the Financial District contribute to New York’s wallet. Wall Street generated approximately $26.3 billion in tax revenue for the state in the 2025-26 fiscal year, which was a 28.5% boost from the year before and about 20.8% of all the state’s tax collections. As for the Big Apple, it pocketed $7.8 billion in tax revenue from the securities industry in fiscal year 2026. That’s roughly 9% of the city’s total tax collections. Written by Mallika Mitra PRESENTED BY CFO UPSIDE Behind the Former Savannah Bananas CFO’s Operational Swing SEMICONDUCTORS AMD Rides Muse Hype to New Heights Photo via Luis Chacón/EFE/Newscom Muse has done nothing but inspire AMD’s stock. Shares of the chipmaker are up nearly 30% since Meta launched its instantly popular Muse AI agent on September 8, a rally that has catapulted AMD into the $1 trillion market cap club. So how much higher can AMD fly? Plenty, according to a report out yesterday from Citi analyst Atif Malik. Connect the Dots That tracks with comments CEO Lisa Su gave to a gaggle of reporters in Taipei also on Tuesday; Su said the AI run will last for years, and that the company will “substantially increase our supply in 2027” to catch up to booming demand. After years watching GPU (graphics processing unit) king Nvidia dominate, the agentic era is AMD’s time to shine. That’s because agents use GPUs to think, a la large language models, but rely on CPUs to actually perform actions, such as managing email inboxes or shopping on e-commerce platforms that have not yet hung up a “No Robots Allowed” sign. The total addressable market (TAM) for agentic AI is currently worth around $29 billion, but could explode to around $300 billion by 2030, Malik wrote, adding that AMD will be a key beneficiary. It’s why he increased his price target for the stock to $800 from $575. The TAM explosion may sound huge, but it is reflective of the rapid Muse takeoff: Meta’s app scored 5 million downloads in just 22 days, according to Sensor Tower. That’s a faster pace than ChatGPT (56 days) and Claude (492 days), and roughly on par with smash app successes like Pokémon Go, HBO Max and Fortnite. Last month, OpenAI also launched an always-on agent platform, Dots. Still, AMD faces plenty of competition. Nvidia earlier this year launched its Vera CPUs designed explicitly for the agentic era, while Wolfe Research analysts have said that rival Arm could capture as much as 50% to 75% of the agentic CPU market share overall (though the analysts also named AMD as a significant beneficiary of the agentic era). AI’s a Small World: Amid its share price surge, AMD has made a splashy purchase. Last week, the company announced an $8 billion deal to acquire World Labs, which is developing “world models”

A $153B Treasury auction collides with a record $3.5B on-chain equity market. Record Tokenization Meets a Shrinking Global Liquidity Engine A $153B Treasury auction collides with a record $3.5B on-chain equity market. Oct 7 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . GM Investors Capital is fleeing the macro periphery while anchoring itself inside institutional rails. The G10 Excess Liquidity just dropped to its lowest level underlying balance sheet expansion is grinding to a halt. At the same time, the US Treasury is hitting the market today with a massive $153 billion debt auction. This supply barrage arrives right as market participants brace for the compounding headwinds of 5% Treasury yields,and elevated dollar strength. Global capital is demanding real yield while sovereign debt issuance crowds out broader risk appetite. Yet capital on-chain is not retreating; it is formalizing. The market capitalization of tokenized stocks reached an all-time high of $3.5 billion, surging 33% this month and 860% year-over-year. Investors are no longer funding speculative yield loops when cash pays risk-free returns. They are demanding real-world financial assets on neutral ledgers. Here’s what our desk is watching. Sovereign Debt Supply and the Global Liquidity Drain The relentless bond bear market has pushed fixed income into deeply unloved territory, sparking debates around contrarian relief. We saw a sudden dump in US bond yields across the curve as traders momentarily stepped in to fade extreme levels. That knee-jerk bid faces an immediate test against heavy issuance. The Treasury selling $153 billion in debt in a single day absorbs liquid dollars directly from the private sector. When aggregate central bank liquidity drops to multi-year lows, sovereign supply acts like a sponge. Every basis point matters for global liquidity when sovereign balance sheets must fund expanding deficits. Higher yields lift hurdle rates everywhere, dragging capital back into domestic short-duration paper. Fed policy remains constrained by this sovereign refinancing wall. With commodities elevated and energy inputs threatening another cost push, policymakers cannot step in to cushion risk assets without worsening consumer prices. Instead, it drives defensive capital into an increasingly narrow basket of liquid assets, directly straining modern portfolio construction. Equity Concentration Masks Institutional Hedge Fund Selling The surface-level strength in US equities is obscuring severe distribution underneath. Although $420 billion was added to the US stock market at the opening bell, institutional money used that strength to exit. Hedge funds sold US equities last week for the first time in three weeks, taking risk off the table into broad market liquidity. The index itself has become an engine of structural concentration rather than broad economic health. Passive allocations continue to pour blindly into the largest names, creating massive imbalances across the benchmark: $153 billion: The size of the US Treasury debt auction hitting the market today. $420 billion: Capital added to total US stock market valuation at the open. 41 cents: The exact portion of every single dollar invested in the S&P 500 that now flows directly into the 10 largest stocks. 5.00%: The critical benchmark Treasury yield level threatening broader equity valuations alongside elevated dollar strength. When 41 cents of every incremental index dollar ends up in ten mega-cap counters, the S&P 500 ceases to function as a representative economy. It becomes a synthetic momentum trade. Capital seeks shelter in cash-rich mega-caps, while the rest of the equity market faces steep refinancing costs. As institutional desks lock in gains, this concentration leaves index valuations exposed to any sudden correction in leading names. Leverage Flushed While Crypto Plumbing Integrates Crypto-native leverage felt the brunt of macro tightening over the past 24 hours. Over $400 million in crypto longs were liquidated in a single hour, bringing total wipeouts across the board to $412.62 million against just $11.79 million in shorts. The flush was accelerated by headlines that the US government moved $103.2 million in seized Bitcoin and BNB, rattling thin books. Yet beneath the forced liquidation of speculative perps, structural adoption and regulatory clarity took a giant leap forward: $3.5 billion: Total market cap of on-chain tokenized equities, climbing 33% this month and 860% year-over-year. +104%: Monthly surge in tokenized equity trading volume on Jupiter following clear institutional guidelines. $12.5 billion: Record total payment volume processed through crypto cards year-to-date, marking a 140% expansion. 6 tokens: Assets explicitly cited by the CFTC as digital commodities, including BTC, ETH, SOL, XLM, XTZ, and XRP. The regulatory backdrop is maturing rapidly. The SEC’s Innovation Exemption granted on-chain platforms a five-year sandbox period to legally trade tokenized versions of real US equities. Jupiter’s 104% volume spike proves that liquidity flows directly toward compliant, useful infrastructure when clear rules exist. Similarly, the CFTC explicitly categorizing major layer-1 assets as digital commodities removes severe jurisdictional overhangs. Crypto market analysis shows a permanent divergence between high-beta altcoins and core settlement infrastructure. While retail traders keep getting washed out by headline-driven liquidity traps, everyday consumer adoption is quietly scaling. A record $12.5 billion processed across payment cards proves that crypto rails are handling day-to-day capital flow even while macro liquidity remains tight. Poll of the Day ( Powered by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Rumors point to a potential $100B FDV for Polymarket. Your move on launch? 🚀 Ape day one 🪂 Farm the airdrop 📉 Fade the hype 🛑 Ove

Smaller tokens fell harder than Bitcoin, and the long tail took the oil shock first. 🚨5 Smart Trades as Stocks Printed a Record, and Oil Took It Back. Smaller tokens fell harder than Bitcoin, and the long tail took the oil shock first. Oct 7 READ IN APP None of this is financial advice. Do your own research. By reading this newsletter, you acknowledge and accept the terms and conditions outlined in our disclaimer . Hey Traders, The tape gave Tuesday’s record back to oil, not to a truce. The S&P closed at a high near 7,819, then futures slipped as the 10-year pushed back toward 5.33% and the 30-year hit its highest since 2002. The October hike is still off the table, with hold odds near 78%. December is not. Equities followed the bonds into the Fed minutes. They did not lead them. Crude reclaimed $101 as Iran stepped up attacks on tankers in the Strait. Gulf barrels are still moving, the reserve release did not stick, and WTI is back near $90. Oil is not sprinting. It is not calm, and it is shoving yields around again. Bitcoin lost the mid-$80,000s and slipped under $84,000, with liquidations jumping to about $547 million. Spot ETFs had taken in about $119 million on Tuesday, into the drop. Crypto is on the same stack as stocks: a long end that only blinked, a war that can reprice oil before the open, and a bid that is still picky. Here is what we are watching. Poll of the Day ( Presented by Rain Trade ) 🎯 POLL Goldman says U.S. bonds have no buyers, yet the S&P sits at all-time highs. What breaks first? 📉 S&P 500 dumps 💥 Bond yields spike 🖨️ Fed prints more 🐂 Rally keeps going Today’s Charts: Chart #1 – Sui(SUIUSDT) 1-Day Chart #2 – Internet Computer(ICPUSDT) 1-Day Chart #3 – Akedo(AKEDOUSDT) 1-Day Chart #4 – Aptos(APTUSDT) 1-Day Chart #5 – Advanced Micro Devices(AMD) 1-Day Chart #1 – Sui(SUIUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Sui is consolidating in a high-timeframe ascending pennant and support retest following a vertical multi-week expansion out of its prior accumulation range, holding structural support above the $1.0427 horizontal breakout pivot shelf to trade near $1.1224 on the daily timeframe. Architected by Mysten Labs as an ultra-high throughput Layer-1 blockchain, Sui utilizes an object-centric data model written in Sui Move alongside the Mysticeti DAG-based consensus engine, allowing single-owner transactions to bypass consensus via a fast path for sub-second finality while processing shared-object transactions in parallel. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $1.4240 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.9270–$1.0427 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $1.04 Stop Loss: $0.93 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $1.42 Powerful narratives create powerful moves. With 247 Research , you get the insights to be early to the biggest trends in crypto. Chart #2 – Internet Computer(ICPUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Internet Computer is testing dynamic ascending trendline support following a multi-week continuation rally out of its summer accumulation base, holding constructive structural positioning above the $2.645 horizontal pivot shelf to trade near $3.184 on the daily timeframe. Developed by the DFINITY Foundation, Internet Computer functions as a sovereign Layer-1 "World Computer" blockchain powered by Chain Key Cryptography and WebAssembly (Wasm) canister smart contracts, enabling decentralized hosting, full-stack on-chain execution of web applications, AI models, and trustless multi-chain interoperability with Bitcoin and Ethereum without intermediaries. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $3.707 overhead swing-high resistance target as long as the $2.362–$2.645 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $2.6 Stop Loss: $2.3 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $3.7 Chart #3 – Akedo(AKEDOUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Akedo is compressing along a base-retest support shelf following a massive speculative expansion and mean-reversion retrace, holding tightly above the $0.0269402 horizontal pivot level to trade near $0.0299287 on the daily timeframe. Built as a decentralized Web3 gaming and intellectual property platform, Akedo operates an ecosystem combining NFT-backed digital collectibles, arcade-style battle games, and community-driven metaverse assets powered by transparent smart contract logic and decentralized gaming mechanics. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $0.0885327 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.0105014–$0.0269402 support base holds. Trade Levels: Entry: $ 0.026 Stop Loss: $0.020 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $0.088 Chart #4 – Aptos(APTUSDT) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) Aptos is executing a constructive pullback retest following an impulsive multi-week breakout rally out of its summer accumulation floor, absorbing sell-side pressure directly above the $0.8036 horizontal structural pivot to trade near $0.8246 on the daily timeframe. Built as a scalable Layer-1 blockchain engineered by former Diem engineers, Aptos utilizes the Move programming language and Block-STM parallel execution engine to achieve ultra-high transaction throughput, sub-second finality, and rigorous smart contract security. This long trade setup targets an upward expansion toward the $1.2381 overhead resistance target as long as the $0.6576–$0.8036 support base holds Trade Levels: Entry: $0.80 Stop Loss: $0.65 Take Profit Levels (TP): TP1: $1.23 Chart #5 – Advanced Micro Devices(AMD) 1-Day Chartist: Kapoor (For the chart screenshot, ) (AMD refers to the stock of company Advanced Micro Devices and not a cryptocurrency.) Advanced Micro Devices is consolidating constructively following an impulsive multi-week breakout rally to new highs, establishing buyer absorption above the $624.90 structural pivot shelf to trade near $631.73 on the daily timeframe. As a premier semiconductor designer, AMD provides high-performance

AI labs are paying this crypto network for web data. 🥛 GRASS: Revenue is real, but token sink is broken 🌱 AI labs are paying this crypto network for web data. Rohit Chauhan GM. This is Milk Road, the newsletter that takes you deep into crypto rabbit holes so you can make informed decisions on the other side. Here’s what we’ve got for you today: ✍️ AI labs are paying this crypto network for web data. 🎙️ The Milk Road Show: $71K or $205K? The Bitcoin Setup That Could Decide This Cycle . 🍪 DRV launches zkVM-based v3 settling directly on Ethereum mainnet. Nexo is a premier digital asset platform that helps clients build, manage, and preserve their wealth. Get started with Nexo today. Prices as of 2:00 p.m. ET. Powered by CoinGecko. AI LABS ARE PAYING THIS CRYPTO NETWORK FOR WEB DATA 🌱 GRASS is up ~300% since its February low. That's a big move for a token most people have never heard of… so naturally, we went digging. Turns out AI labs have paid Grass ~$32M since the start of 2025, and Multicoin Capital (one of crypto's best-known investment firms) bought in last week. The team also has a much bigger plan: go from selling old internet data to AI companies to becoming the way AI agents browse the live web. My take: Grass has one of the few businesses in crypto where outside customers pay real dollars for the product. Whether owning the token gets you a slice of those dollars is a separate question, and it's the one this whole play is built around. But first, what the heck is Grass? It's an app that uses your spare home internet in the background to visit public websites, then packages up what it collects (text, images and a whole lot of video) and sells it to AI labs to train their models. Home internet is an important piece of the puzzle here, because websites routinely block traffic from big data centers, while letting normal households through. That puts Grass in the DePIN sector (Decentralized Physical Infrastructure Networks), where a token pays regular people to build a network instead of one company paying for it all. DePIN has a bad reputation. Back in January, Meltem Demirors (Crucible Capital) posted that DePIN is dead, arguing these networks pump out so many new tokens (often 10%+ of supply a year) that they can't compete with the cheap money funding regular AI infrastructure. For most of the sector she's right, but Grass is one of the rare cases where somebody is paying, and the market has noticed. 👇 Source: TradingView (It's also still ~83% below its November 2024 high of ~$3.90, so plenty of early holders are underwater.) Grass's revenue by half-year: H1 2025: $2.7M. H2 2025: $14.3M. H1 2026: $14.5M verified ($17-18M by Grass's own count). That's ~5x a year earlier, and Grass says nearly every AI lab that's bought from it has come back for more. Since July, Grass has also paid contributors in USDC out of that revenue, instead of handing out newly created GRASS. That cuts out a lot of selling, which is exactly the DePIN problem Demirors was talking about. Multicoin (an early backer of Solana and Helium, one of the first DePIN networks) bought through both its token fund and its venture fund, a sign it plans to hold for a while. Its pitch goes something like this… Training data is a one-off sale, and a model's knowledge freezes the day its training ends. But when you ask an AI agent about something happening today, it has to check the live web before it answers. Every one of those lookups is a fresh, paid request, and Multicoin is betting Grass becomes the network agents use to make them. The business is growing. But if you own GRASS, you don't own the business… ONE ACCOUNT FOR ALL YOUR CRYPTO NEEDS Crypto is still a weirdly fragmented experience. One app to buy. Another to earn yield. A third to borrow against your stack. But Nexo is now bringing it all under one roof: Trade, Earn, and Borrow. Nexo is a premier digital asset platform that helps clients build, manage, and preserve their wealth. Here's what makes them worth trusting: Official Crypto Partner of Tennis Australia First Digital Asset Partner of the Audi Revolut Formula 1 Team Operating since 2018 $7B+ in AUM SOC 2 & SOC 3 certified 24/7 client care Get started with Nexo today. AI LABS ARE PAYING THIS CRYPTO NETWORK (P2) 🌱 Before we get to the token, here's why Multicoin thinks live web search is the bigger prize 👇 Source: OpenRouter (Btw - "tokens" here means the chunks of text an AI model processes, not crypto.) On OpenRouter, a marketplace that sends requests to different AI models, agents passed humans in February and their usage has grown ~14x since. Agents check the web constantly, and Grass is building three products to serve them: Contents API: lets an AI open any public web page through Grass's network of home connections. Search API: an index of the web that tells the AI where to look in the first place. Multimodal: video, images and PDFs, so agents can pull more than text. (An API is a plug that lets one piece of software use another and pay per request.) That's why Grass stands out to me from the pile of AI tokens - most are selling a roadmap, while Grass is selling data to labs today, and using the cash to build the next product. At ~$0.66, GRASS has a fully diluted value (what it'd be worth if every token that will ever exist were trading today) of ~$660M. That's around 9-10x Grass's 2026 revenue guidance, which is a reasonable price if two things hold up: the guidance, and token holders eventually getting paid. Does any of this money reach GRASS holders? Everything sits under the Grass Foundation, which has no shareholders, and Wynd Labs (the original builders) handed over all its intellectual property and now works as a paid contractor. That avoids the usual crypto setup where a company's shareholders keep the revenue and the token gets leftovers. But the token itself still has no claim on the cash. GRASS is used for staking, voting and rewards, and its only buybacks to date (~$350K in late 2025) add up

Plus: Jon Rahm's leaving LIV | Wednesday, October 07, 2026 Axios Closer By Nathan Bomey · Oct 07, 2026 Wednesday ✅. Today's newsletter is 865 words, a 3½-minute read. 📉 The dashboard: The S&P 500 closed down 0.2%. 🥶 Today's stock spotlight: Caterpillar (-5.8%) and Deere & Co. (-3.8%) fell with other farm equipment manufacturers after the FTC and the Department of Agriculture announced a public inquiry into "potential anticompetitive conduct" in ag equipment manufacturing and distribution markets. 1 big thing: SpaceX's $40B AI bet Illustration: Aïda Amer/Axios SpaceX executed the largest IPO in history when it sold over $85 billion in shares. Now, just four months later, it's reportedly looking to raise $40 billion in debt — financing that would rank among the largest tied to the world's nearly $2 trillion AI buildout. Why it matters: Rising rates haven't curtailed hyperscalers' appetites, despite debt bubble concerns voiced today by Ray Dalio , Axios' Dan Primack writes . 💸 Driving the news: SpaceX is seeking the $40 billion to buy Nvidia chips, per multiple reports . The package would include around $30 billion in investment-grade debt and another $10 billion in bank loans. The talks were characterized by Bloomberg as "early stage." Between the lines: Elon Musk's ambitions for SpaceX are enormous. He told investors in August that the company is aiming to have 15 gigawatts of computing capacity online through various projects by the end of next year. And he's betting entirely on Nvidia to fill that capacity, saying SpaceX will build "exclusively" on Nvidia's chips and expects to receive a "very significant percent" of Nvidia's GPUs next year. 💳 The big picture: A recent analysis of the world's AI buildout puts estimated infrastructure investment through 2032 at $10.3 trillion, Axios' Courtenay Brown reported . And the AI boom has become far too big and too costly for even the largest tech companies to finance alone, she noted, resulting in trillions of dollars in demand for outside capital. Follow the money: The biggest chipmakers have jumped in to help keep the spending train running. Last week, Bloomberg reported that banks were in the market to raise $60 billion to finance Broadcom-powered AI equipment for Anthropic and other companies, with Broadcom backstopping $42 billion of the financing. Nvidia has struck similar financing partnerships , aimed at creating more than $500 billion in third-party capital to buy its infrastructure, while providing some guarantees. 🔭 What we're watching: How much more appetite investors have to shoulder the risks of the ever-growing debt load backing AI data centers and chips. There are already signs of unease: The cost to insure SpaceX's debt against default hit a record high today, FT notes . 2. Jon Rahm's leaving LIV Jon Rahm during a LIV Golf tournament in August. Photo: Michael Miller/ISI Photos/ISI Photos via Getty Images Jon Rahm is exiting LIV Golf after deeming the league's reinvention plan "unacceptable," an attorney for the Spanish star confirmed this morning. Why it matters: Rahm's departure marks a significant blow to the effort to create "LIV 2.0" after the league filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in September. 🗣️ Zoom in: Rahm rejected the league's proposal to launch a second version of LIV and so "he will not be participating going forward" in the league, his attorney, John Beck, said today during a bankruptcy court hearing. Rahm is engaged in "advanced discussions for a consensual separation agreement" with a goal of reaching a deal by Oct. 15, Beck said. 💰 The big picture: Rahm was among the highest-profile PGA stars lured by LIV with lucrative deals that included guaranteed payouts and huge tournament prize pools. When it filed for bankruptcy, the league said it hoped to maintain its star players under new deals. 3. Other happenings Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, speaking at Microsoft's Windows event in San Francisco on Wednesday. Photo: Ina Fried/Axios 💻 Microsoft 's new Surface Laptop Ultra, which contains an Nvidia AI chip, will start at $2,599. The laptop allows users to run large AI models directly on the device. ( Axios ) 📺 Disney said this year's Super Bowl — airing on ESPN and ABC — will also stream on Disney+. ( ESPN ) 💸 Fed officials worried that higher costs tied to energy, AI investment and other shocks could spill over into broader, more persistent inflation, according to minutes from its Sept. 15-16 meeting. ( Axios ) A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS See what's next for media in 2027 Media Trends Executive Annual members receive the 2026 Annual Report, our special media document featuring global forecasts, sector analysis and exclusive media data insights. 🔒 Get the report by becoming a Media Trends Executive member. 4. Email snafu A mock-up display of a Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II stealth fighter aircraft. Photo: Artur Widak/NurPhoto via Getty Images Shipping a new candle from Etsy is one thing — but sending sensitive parts from an F-35 stealth fighter requires close attention to detail, Axios' Pete Gannon writes . UPS shares slipped around 1% this afternoon following a report that a shipment — described by Bloomberg as "an F-35 cockpit canopy and weapons-bay door coated in radar-absorbing material" — fell into China's hands after an employee missed an email with instructions to avoid shipment through Hong Kong. Zoom in: The email, per Bloomberg, which cited a person briefed on the incident, came from freight forwarder DSV on behalf of manufacturer Lockheed Martin. Reality check: It isn't clear whether UPS is to blame for the incident. The same person told Bloomberg that the email "may have been sent through a different IT system than the one used by the UPS agent." UPS didn't immediately respond to Axios' request for comment and declined to comment to Bloomberg. DSV also declined to comment to Bloomberg. A MESSAGE FROM AXIOS See what's next for media in 2027 Media Trends Executive Annual members receive the 2026 Ann

Why Melvin favors Samsung now... 🥛 Samsung > Micron? 🤔 Why Melvin favors Samsung now... Chevy Cassar GM. This is Milk Road Stocks, the newsletter that's basically a cheat code for your brokerage app. Today we’re putting Micron and Samsung in a cage, along with a rusty knife, and seeing who comes out alive. First, a quick detour. Incogni helps remove your sensitive information from all broker types, including those tricky People Search Sites. Get 55% off Incogni using code MILKROAD. WHY MELVIN WOULD SWAP MICRON FOR SAMSUNG 🧠 Last week, a PRO member caught one of our analysts in a contradiction. Melvin (our AI and equities analyst) keeps saying Samsung will beat Micron over the next year. But Micron is one of his biggest positions, while Samsung is one of his smallest. So the member asked him: if you rebuilt your portfolio today, would you still size it that way? Melvin said the sizes only reflect when he bought each stock - and if he started from scratch today, Samsung would be slightly bigger. Micron's ride with Melvin hasn't exactly been smooth... Melvin first bought it in March at ~$380, sold the lot two weeks later when Google's TurboQuant research (a way to shrink how much memory AI models need) spooked memory investors, then bought back in at ~$364 two days after that. Micron now trades at ~$1,068, and his position is up 129%. That's been the story across memory all year. AI chips need huge amounts of it, and the three companies that make most of it can't build it fast enough. Micron's latest quarter (reported Sept 30) showed what that's worth: $54.2B of revenue, up 379% from a year ago, at an 87% gross margin (the share of each sale left over after production costs). But Samsung hasn't kept up. Micron is up ~237% this year, while Samsung is up ~111%. 👇 Source: TradingView Melvin thinks that lag = opportunity, and it starts with HBM. HBM (high-bandwidth memory) is the stacked memory that sits right next to an AI chip and feeds it data. For two years, Samsung trailed SK Hynix in making it, and Melvin reckons plenty of investors still see it that way. That's changing fast: Samsung is asking customers for mid-to-high $4 per gigabit for its newest version (HBM4), according to Korean newspaper Maeil Business. The current version sells for ~$1.50. UBS and Daishin Securities both see Samsung potentially taking the #1 spot in HBM market share next year. Goldman expects Samsung's HBM revenue to jump from ~$20B this year to ~$74B next year. Source: Goldman Sachs Then there's everything Micron doesn't do... Samsung also runs a foundry (it manufactures chips other companies design, like TSMC does), though that business has been losing money. Goldman models the loss shrinking from ~$4.5B this year to ~$740M in 2027, with a shot at turning a profit in the back half of 2027. On top of that, it can make the memory, the logic chip and the packaging that joins them all together under one roof. Micron and SK Hynix only make the memory. And Samsung still trades at roughly 4x next year's expected earnings, versus roughly 7x for Micron. Of course, plenty can still go wrong... That $4+ HBM4 price is an opening ask, and customers will haggle before anything gets signed. Samsung's foundry also still trails TSMC. And expectations across the whole sector are sky-high. As our analyst M0xt pointed out, Wall Street expects memory makers to earn $1.2T of operating profit on $1.5T of revenue in 2027 - that's 80 cents of profit on every dollar of sales, which leaves little room for disappointment. Melvin is still bullish on Micron too. He calls it one of his highest-conviction memory names, but thinks Samsung has more things that can go right from here. The first test of his theory will be tomorrow (Oct 8), when Samsung releases its preliminary Q3 results. Analysts expect ~$80B of operating profit (profit from the core business, before interest and taxes), up from ~$66B in Q2 - which would be the biggest quarter in the company's history. This early release only includes revenue and operating profit, so the HBM and foundry details come with full results later this month. (Patience is a virtue.) Btw - Melvin has been building his Samsung position since August and added more this week, after Micron already more than doubled for him. Don’t miss his next entry, try Milk Road PRO for a buck for 7 days . KEEP YOUR SSN OFF THE DARK WEB Every day, data brokers profit from your sensitive info—phone number, DOB, SSN—selling it to the highest bidder. What happens then? Best case: companies target you with ads. Worst case: scammers and identity thieves breach those brokers, leaving your data vulnerable or on the dark web. It's time you check out Incogni. It scrubs your personal data from the web, confronting the world’s data brokers on your behalf. And unlike other services, Incogni helps remove your sensitive information from all broker types, including those tricky People Search Sites. Help protect yourself from identity theft, spam calls, and health insurers raising your rates. Plus, just for MILK ROAD readers: Get 55% off Incogni using code MILKROAD This content is for educational purposes only. Read full disclaimer Interested in reaching smart readers like you? Sponsor Milk Road Update your email preferences or unsubscribe here © 2026 ImpactDM Inc. operating as Milk Road Stocks 1257 Dundas St W Toronto, Ontario M6J1X6, Canada