July 2026

A Florida man has pleaded guilty to running a cryptocurrency Ponzi scheme that took in hundreds of millions of dollars from more than a thousand investors — money he spent on luxury homes, Lamborghinis and Rolexes instead of the crypto he promised. It's a vivid reminder of how much crypto fraud is still out there.

Wayve, the London self-driving-AI company, is running an $85 million 'tender offer' that lets employees and early backers sell some shares for cash — at a valuation of about $8.5 billion. It's a way to reward staff without going public, and a sign of how hot AI startups are staying private.

Semiconductor stocks have swelled to a record share of the S&P 500 — around a fifth of the whole index — and drove roughly 70% of its gains this year. That concentration reflects real AI demand, but it also leaves the market unusually dependent on one narrow group of stocks. Fund managers now call it the most crowded trade on Wall Street.

The US government has lifted export controls it briefly slapped on Anthropic's newest, most powerful AI models — a whipsaw episode that froze foreign access for weeks. It's a small story with a big lesson: the rules built to control chip exports don't fit AI that lives in the cloud.

Transocean, the biggest offshore-drilling contractor, has landed a deal to supply three harsh-environment rigs to Norway's Equinor — adding more than $1 billion to its future revenue. The contract, at a day rate near $400,000, is fresh evidence that offshore drilling has swung from bust to boom.

Microsoft is preparing another round of layoffs — reportedly fewer than 2.5% of its roughly 228,000 employees, or up to about 5,700 jobs — even as it spends tens of billions of dollars a quarter on AI. It's the clearest sign yet that Big Tech is cutting people to help pay for the machines.

Micron's quarterly revenue leapt to about $41.5 billion — from just $9.3 billion a year earlier — as an AI-driven shortage of memory chips sends prices soaring. Its CEO offered a striking explanation: years of customers squeezing memory makers on price left the industry unprepared when AI demand exploded.

Nike's quarterly revenue and profit topped Wall Street's estimates — but most of the earnings beat came from a roughly $1 billion one-time tariff-related benefit, not from a healthier business. Underneath, sales were flat to down, China stayed weak, and the CEO called it the 'low point' of the turnaround. The stock fell.

The US Department of Energy issued an emergency order for PJM, the country's largest power grid, as a record-breaking heat wave threatened to push demand toward an all-time high. Strikingly, the order lets the grid curtail the very data centers now driving America's electricity crunch — a collision of extreme heat and the AI boom.