Tonight's Highlights: Oil Gains Pressure U.S. Futures; Intel Pops 4% Pre-Market on Price Hike Reports

U.S. stock index futures moved lower on Tuesday as escalating military conflict between the U.S. and Iran pushed crude benchmarks higher, reigniting inflation anxieties across Wall Street. European bourses traded mixed.

Crude futures climbed for a third consecutive session, hovering near six-week highs following weekend reciprocal airstrikes between Washington and Tehran:

West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures gained more than 2%.
Brent crude advanced nearly 1.5%.

The persistent rally in crude over the past month continues to exert upward pressure on Treasury yields, with traders increasingly uneasy that elevated energy inputs will spill over into headline inflation.

"With Brent hitting a six-week high, signals of an agreement between Iran and Oman to control part of the shipping flows through the Strait of Hormuz effectively underscore Tehran's grip on the chokepoint," noted Dan Coatsworth, head of markets at AJ Bell. "Investors will be watching later this week to see if U.S. inflation data shows signs of heating up again."

In other commodities, three-month copper on the London Metal Exchange (LME) rose over 1%, hovering near $14,700 per metric ton.

Trade tensions escalated sharply as Canada's retaliatory tariffs on roughly $20 billion worth of more than 700 U.S. goods took effect at 12:01 a.m. local time Tuesday.

Tariffs range between 15% and 50%, with duties on steel and aluminum doubling to 50%. A day prior, U.S. President Donald Trump posted on Truth Social warning that Canadian aerospace manufacturer Bombardier would face an outright U.S. sales ban unless it shifts manufacturing to American soil.

In currency markets, the Japanese yen jumped as much as 1% against the greenback to touch its strongest level since February before trimming gains.

Upward revisions to Japan’s second-quarter GDP alongside July real wages logging their steepest advance in five years have hardened expectations for a Bank of Japan rate hike at its September meeting.

Among individual equities, Intel shares rallied more than 4% in pre-market trading following press reports that the chipmaker intends to hike PC CPU prices by approximately 10% in early October.

In European trading, Swiss pharmaceutical titan Novartis tumbled over 10% in morning deals—marking its worst intraday decline since March 2020—after announcing that its investigational drug del-desiran failed to meet the primary endpoint in the Phase 3 HARBOR trial for myotonic dystrophy type 1 (DM1).

Company News

Samsung Opens Advanced Semiconductor Packaging R&D Center in Japan

Samsung Electronics has established an advanced packaging research hub in Yokohama, Japan. The launch forms part of Samsung’s previously announced 40-billion-yen, five-year capital commitment starting in 2024 to enhance its packaging technical capabilities.

The facility will partner with Japanese suppliers, universities, and research institutes to co-develop next-generation materials and processes, targeting a headcount of over 100 researchers by 2027.

Apple Reportedly Signs Long-Term NAND Flash Supply Deal With Kioxia

Apple has reportedly executed a long-term supply agreement (LTA) with a major NAND flash manufacturer, with industry sources identifying Japan's Kioxia as the likely counterparty. While formal contractual parameters remain undisclosed, reports suggest the agreement spans three to five years and lacks fixed price ceilings.

ASML Secures High-NA EUV Commitments from TSMC, Samsung, and Intel

ASML rolled out three major milestone announcements on September 8 detailing High-NA extreme ultraviolet (EUV) adoption across leading foundries:

TSMC plans to integrate High-NA EUV into volume production for advanced nodes beginning in 2030.
Samsung Electronics targets commercial deployment of High-NA EUV for advanced DRAM fabrication by 2028.
Intel Foundry disclosed it has already processed more than 1 million production-equivalent wafers utilizing High-NA-related flows.

Additionally, ASML and TSMC launched an industry consortium to scale EUV photomasks from standard 6-inch substrates to 12-inch formats. The roadmap targets a 12-inch pilot line by 2031 and deployment on production High-NA systems by 2033 to bypass reticle-stitching limits and lower die fabrication costs.

Novartis Phase 3 DM1 Candidate Fails Primary Endpoint

Novartis disclosed that its Phase 3 HARBOR study evaluating del-desiran in patients with DM1 failed to meet its primary efficacy metric. The drug showed no statistically significant improvement in video hand opening time (vHOT) compared with placebo.

While secondary and exploratory analyses showed signals of biological activity with consistent safety profiles, the company noted it will review full data sets with regulatory bodies before determining next steps for its antibody-oligonucleotide conjugate (AOC) pipeline.

Mistral Closes €3 Billion Series D at Over €21 Billion Valuation

French generative AI startup Mistral closed a €3 billion Series D funding round at a post-money valuation exceeding €21 billion, marking Europe’s largest private tech financing to date.

Samsung Electronics led the round alongside co-leads EQT's Scaleup Europe Fund and existing backer PSG Equity. Mistral plans to direct proceeds toward compute acquisition, foundational model architecture research, and international commercial scaling.

Anthropic Shelves $6 Billion Acquisition of Compute Efficiency Startup Decart

Anthropic has walked away from a potential $6 billion acquisition of AI systems startup Decart after concluding formal due diligence.

Decart specializes in hardware-efficiency virtualization software aimed at slashing model training and inference overhead. The two firms are expected to explore commercial partnerships instead as Anthropic aggressively manages capital allocation for frontier model scaling.

Samsung Reallocates Over 50% of 4nm Foundry Capacity to HBM4 Base Dies

Samsung Electronics has converted an estimated 50% to 60% of its 4-nanometer foundry capacity toward fabricating base logic dies for sixth-generation high-bandwidth memory (HBM4).

The pre-emptive capacity reallocation is aimed at securing supply allocations for enterprise AI accelerators from customers including Nvidia, Broadcom, and AMD beginning in the second half of the year.

Intel Plans Additional 10% Price Increase on PC Processors in October

Intel is reportedly preparing to lift desktop and mobile PC processor prices by approximately 10% in early October.

The move follows several rounds of price hikes enacted since late 2025 across client and server silicon tiers. Concurrently, Intel is conducting a portfolio review, weighing potential phase-outs of low-margin Small Core entry-level product lines.