Tonight’s Highlights | U.S. July CPI Rises 2.7% Year-Over-Year, U.S. Stock Futures Surge
On Tuesday, the latest U.S. inflation data came in below expectations, prompting a collective rise in the three major U.S. stock index futures.
Pre-market data showed the U.S. July CPI rose 2.7% year-over-year, unchanged from June and slightly below the market’s 2.8% forecast. Excluding volatile food and energy prices, the core CPI increased 3.1% year-over-year, slightly above the 3% expected by economists.
This report will shape market expectations for the Federal Reserve’s next policy moves. Following the data release, traders have raised their bets on a September rate cut.
As of this writing, Intel’s stock is up over 3% pre-market. This comes after U.S. President Trump, who had demanded Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan’s resignation just days ago, suddenly shifted tone, calling him a “successful individual.”
Stablecoin issuer Circle’s stock surged over 11% pre-market, driven by its latest Q2 revenue growth of 53%.
Company News
Trump Meets Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan
On August 11 local time, U.S. President Trump stated he and cabinet members met with Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan. Days earlier, he had called for the chipmaker’s CEO to resign.
Trump posted on his Truth Social platform: “I met with Mr. Lip-Bu Tan of Intel, Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent. The meeting was very interesting. His success and rise are an amazing story. Mr. Tan and my cabinet members will discuss further next week and provide me with recommendations. Thank you for your attention to this matter!”
NVIDIA Launches New Robotics Tools and Models
On August 12, NVIDIA announced the launch of the new NVIDIA Omniverse library and NVIDIA Cosmos World Foundation Model (WFM) to accelerate robotics solution development and deployment.
Supported by the new NVIDIA RTX PRO servers and NVIDIA DGX Cloud, these tools help developers create physically accurate digital twins anywhere, capture and reconstruct the real world in simulations, generate synthetic data for training physical AI models, and build AI agents that understand the physical world.
Circle’s First Report Post-Hot IPO: High Losses but Stunning Revenue
The “first stablecoin stock” Circle released its first earnings report since its U.S. listing, posting a Q2 loss but revenue growth exceeding expectations.
Circle Internet Group, Inc. (ticker: CRCL) reported a net loss of $482 million and an adjusted loss per share of $4.48, mainly due to IPO-related non-cash expenses. However, Q2 revenue hit $658 million, up 53% year-over-year, beating the $647.3 million analyst forecast.
Musk: Apple Violates Antitrust Laws, xAI to Take Legal Action
On August 11 local time, Elon Musk posted on X: “X is the #1 news app globally, and Grok ranks #5 among all apps—why does Apple refuse to list X or Grok in the App Store’s ‘Essentials’ category?” Musk claimed Apple’s actions prevent any AI company other than OpenAI from topping the App Store rankings, “undoubtedly violating antitrust laws,” and announced xAI will take immediate legal action.
TSMC Approves $20.7B Capital Budget
On August 12, TSMC announced a Q2 2025 cash dividend of 5.0 NTD per share. It approved a $20.7 billion capital budget, including: 1. Building advanced process capacity; 2. Developing advanced packaging, mature, and/or specialty process capacity; 3. Constructing facilities and utility projects.
It also approved issuing unsecured corporate bonds up to 60 billion NTD to fund capacity expansion and/or green initiatives, and increasing capital in its 100%-owned subsidiary TSMC Global by up to $10 billion to reduce forex hedging costs.