ONE BIG THING<\/h3>\nChina\u2019s AI labs are challenging American ones\u2014and beating them on cost<\/b><\/h2>\n
In mid-July, online sleuths who obsessively track the internet for signs of new AI models started to whisper about the latest offering from Moonshot AI, the Beijing-based artificial intelligence startup behind the Kimi large language model: Something big was coming. Moonshot AI\u2019s latest model didn\u2019t just live up to the hype\u2014it raised the stakes, <\/span>Fortune\u2019s<\/span><\/i> Nicholas Gordon reports<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n On July 16, Moonshot debuted Kimi K3, the largest open-source model ever released, and promised it could perform close to the level of Anthropic\u2019s Fable 5\u2014perhaps the most powerful publicly available model on the market today\u2014at a fraction of the cost.<\/span><\/p>\n Kimi K3 blew up the timeline: Chinese AI is now cheap enough and good enough that even U.S. startups and Fortune 500 companies are quietly plugging the models into their operations to rein in spiraling AI budgets. It\u2019s a remarkable closing of the gap that China achieved despite Washington imposing export controls to choke off China\u2019s access to the world\u2019s most advanced chips.<\/span><\/p>\n Shares in chipmaker CXMT<\/b> soared on their stock market debut in China today, closing up 465.82% and\u2014at $484 billion\u2014briefly making the company <\/span>the largest by market cap in China<\/span>. CXMT competes with Micron, SK Hynix, and Samsung, and is a supplier to Apple.<\/span><\/p>\n As stocks climb ever higher, bullish sentiment declines.<\/b> This chart from Bespoke Investment Group shows \u201cbullish sentiment among individual investors \u2026 hit its lowest level of the year this week, dropping 15.3 percentage points down to just 29.6% for the biggest weekly drop\u201d since 2021.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n The U.S. government invested $27 billion in corporate stakes. Good luck finding them<\/span> – Eva Roytburg<\/span><\/p>\n Amazon and Microsoft are spending $400 billion on AI\u2014and investors are low on patience<\/span> – Amanda Gerut<\/span><\/p>\n McKinsey: Global households got $40 trillion richer in 2025 as the paper wealth economy swelled to $1.8 quadrillion<\/span> – Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n AI and the \u2018skinny hamburger, fat bun\u2019 problem \u2014 why the future of work needs to look more like a pizza<\/span> – Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n China is using the steel playbook on AI \u2014 and America\u2019s tech billionaires are standing in the blast zone<\/span> – Nick Lichtenberg<\/span><\/p>\n Money usually wins elections. Billionaires have already poured $433 million into the 2026 midterms\u2014and 80% of it is going to Republicans<\/span> – Sydney Lake<\/span><\/p>\n New York City women are making up to $30,000 per month by renting out their closets to strangers<\/span> – Sarah Glodek<\/span><\/p>\n The <\/span>CME Fedwatch index shows<\/span> that interest rate traders have become far less sure that U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Kevin Warsh will keep rates on hold when the FOMC meets on Wednesday. Back in May, speculators thought there was a 99% certainty that the base interest rate would stay at the 3.5% level. Today, only 62% think that. Moreover, 33% think it will move up.<\/span><\/p>\n Jessica Rindels at Goldman Sachs counted five members of the FOMC who have made remarks suggesting they are prepared to raise rates since the last meeting, in a note dated July 24.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cOur base case is that the Fed will stay on hold at 3.5-3.75% in July. But the spike in oil prices has made it a close call,\u201d Bank of America\u2019s Aditya Bhave said in an email. \u201dChair Warsh faces a difficult choice. Not hiking could challenge the Fed’s credibility on inflation. But raising rates would go against his framework of looking through supply shocks. We think July is Warsh’s call as he has enough votes either way. He has strategic incentives to hike soon.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n The U.S. suspended its attacks on Iran<\/b> for a second straight night to give peace talks a chance, <\/span>according to U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz<\/span>. He denied that it was because the U.S. is running down its missile stocks. Iran has also paused its strikes.<\/span><\/p>\n The talks<\/b> are focused on whether Iran is willing to permit a certain number of ships to transit the Strait of Hormuz <\/span>via the southern route close to Oman<\/span>, which is controlled by the U.S. Navy.<\/span><\/p>\n There is a \u201cdebate\u201d inside the White House<\/b> about how many missiles the U.S. has left and when they should be used, <\/span>the WSJ reports<\/span>.<\/span><\/p>\n President Trump<\/b> spent hours last night posting AI-generated memes about himself on Truth Social, many of them depicting him bombing Iranian ships.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/span><\/p>\n AI is not creating new tech jobs, according to data from Oxford Economics, and in fact employment in the tech sector has declined as a share of the total job market in some countries where AI\u2019s contribution to the economy has increased. The data comes with caveats: It only reflects what is happening in selected Asian countries, such as Taiwan and Singapore, where tech jobs make up no more than 8% of total jobs.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Nonetheless, \u201cThe high-tech employment share has remained broadly unchanged across most Asian economies since the AI boom started and has declined in countries where its contribution to the economy has increased, such as Malaysia and Singapore. This suggests higher production has been met primarily through rising capital inputs and productivity gains rather than additional hiring,\u201d analyst Alexandra Hermann Prasad said in a note. <\/span><\/p>\n Members of Gen-Z think they will need a salary approaching $700,000 and a net worth near $10 million to experience \u201cfinancial success,\u201d according to this chart (below) from Deutsche Bank.<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cSome theories suggest the ease of \u2018aspirational connections\u2019 and \u2018dream scrolling\u2019 on social media has fueled sky-high expectations for Gen-Z. In fact, one survey shows that Gen-Z thinks they need twice as much wealth and triple the annual salary as the previous generation to achieve \u2018financial success\u2019,\u201d analysts Luke Templeman and Galina Pozdnyakova said in a recent paper. <\/span><\/p>\n Note the column on the far right\u2014which reflects reality:\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n Meet the Woman Who Stands to Inherit Much of Jeffrey Epstein\u2019s Fortune<\/span> – NYT<\/span><\/p>\n China memory chipmaker CXMT skyrockets 500% in blockbuster Shanghai debut<\/span> – CNBC<\/span><\/p>\n Prosecutors call for Barclays protesters to be sentenced under UK terror laws<\/span> – FT<\/span><\/p>\n Fed Faces Growing Pressure to Hike Rates as Price Risks Rebound<\/span> – Bloomberg<\/span><\/p>\n Nvidia in Talks With OpenAI to Guarantee $250 Billion Financing for Data Center<\/span> – WSJ<\/span><\/p>\n Netflix exec goes ballistic after being fired for stunning \u2018trust exercise\u2019 confession at retreat: suit<\/span> – NYT<\/span><\/p>\n The ratio of college-educated men to college-educated women has fallen from 1.8 to 0.8 over the decades, and there are now 1.6 million more women than men enrolled in four-year colleges nationwide, <\/span>according to a study<\/span> by economists Clara Chambers of Yale, Benjamin Goldman of Cornell, and Joseph Winkelmann of Harvard.<\/span><\/p>\n At the same time, the share of marriages in which the wife has a four-year degree and the husband doesn\u2019t has quadrupled, from 2.3% of all women in the 1930 birth cohort to 9.6% in the modern era. Crucially, they\u2019re marrying the highest earners without college degrees.<\/span><\/p>\n That pattern matches what Institute for Family Studies researchers have called \u201cskimming\u201d \u2014 college-educated women aren\u2019t rejecting non-college men wholesale, but they disproportionately end up with the most economically stable ones, leaving less-stable non-college men further behind in the marriage market.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n #Stocks #rise #globally #hopes #peace #talks #Iranbut #Fed #deliver #shock<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u27a1\ufe0f Did someone forward you thi… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":920,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[173,1565,515,1336,516,1071,1562,456,1564,166,381,1563,70,1566,221,1423],"class_list":["post-919","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-finance-news","tag-china","tag-deliver","tag-economics","tag-fed","tag-fortune-500-digest-weekday","tag-globally","tag-hopes","tag-iran","tag-iranbut","tag-markets","tag-news","tag-peace","tag-rise","tag-shock","tag-stocks","tag-talks"],"yoast_head":"\nTHE MARKETS<\/h3>\n
Stocks are up as Chinese chipmaker CXMT sets new market cap record<\/b><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\nMORE FROM FORTUNE<\/h3>\n
THE FED<\/h3>\n
There\u2019s a chance\u2014just a chance\u2014the Fed will hike interest rates on Wednesday<\/b>\u00a0<\/span><\/h2>\n
IRAN<\/h3>\n
Peace talks resume as U.S. and Iran suspend deadlocked conflict<\/b><\/h2>\n
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CHART OF THE DAY<\/h3>\n
Data from Asia suggests AI is replacing, not creating, new jobs<\/b><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\nNUMBER OF THE DAY<\/h3>\n
$10 million<\/b><\/h2>\n
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<\/div>\nTHE FRONT PAGES TODAY<\/h3>\n
ONE MORE THING<\/h3>\n
College-educated women are \u2018skimming\u2019 off the highest-earning men without degrees\u00a0<\/b><\/h2>\n