$NVIDIA(NVDA.US) isn't just selling chips anymore, it's helping finance the buildout: the company signed non-binding agreements with six Wall Street heavyweights to raise over $500 billion for AI infrastructure, treating compute capacity like a new asset class. The same AI-capex wave is showing up everywhere else too, from TSMC's blowout July revenue to Intel's first share sale since its 1971 listing to fund its own AI push, to Singapore's own GDP forecast getting an upgrade. Coherent and Lumentum sold off hard ahead of earnings, and Apple caught a rare downgrade. Let's dig in 👇

💬 Nvidia is now financing the same AI boom it sells chips into — genius, or a red flag?

📊 Quick Recap — What Moved & Why

🇺🇸 US — Nvidia Teams Up With Wall Street on a $500B AI Push

🔑 Key Event: $NVIDIA(NVDA.US) signed non-binding agreements with six firms, Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs, and KKR, to build financing platforms aimed at raising over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure, treating GPU and data-center capacity as a borrowable asset class like real estate. No capital has actually been committed yet, and no timeline was disclosed. US indices closed little changed Monday: $S&P 500(.SPX.US) and $Dow Jones Industrial Average(.DJI.US) both slipped 0.1%, while $NASDAQ Composite Index(.IXIC.US) fell 0.3% as chip and optics names weighed.

@Dacai : NVDA's chart shows a double bottom with the weekly MA50 near $190.76 as support, and it should test $236 next, though that path depends heavily on how the Fed handles rates after the weak July jobs report.

👀 Other to Watch

• $Intel(INTC.US) → announced a $15B common-stock offering, its first public share sale since its 1971 listing, to fund AI-compute investment; shares fell about 3-4%. Later Monday, reports said the deal could be upsized toward $20B.
• $Taiwan Semiconductor(TSM.US) → July revenue rose 44.7% year-on-year to about NT$467.6B (~$14.5B), running ahead of its own 40%+ full-year guidance, as AI chip demand from customers designing next-gen accelerators keeps outpacing supply, the same dynamic underpinning Nvidia's push to line up outside financing for the datacenters that will run those chips.
• $Coherent Corp.(COHR.US) and $Lumentum(LITE.US) → fell 11-14% and 7-8% respectively on pre-earnings profit-taking after a parabolic run, with no negative company news; Lumentum reports today, Coherent tomorrow.
• $Apple(AAPL.US) → Jefferies downgraded it to Underperform and cut its price target to $263.66, citing the cancelled 20th-anniversary all-glass iPhone and rising iPhone 18 Pro component costs.
• $SpaceX(SPCX.US) → climbed back above its $135 IPO price for the first time since mid-July, recovering from last week's lockup-expiry overhang.

@FaithAnchor : I'm holding SpaceX but not averaging down here — the lockup unlocked up to 911.5M shares worth about $116B, and with the stock still deeply free-cash-flow negative despite blistering AI-revenue growth, I'd rather wait for the selling to stabilize before adding.

• $Archer Aviation(ACHR.US) → surged after Boeing agreed to sell its Wisk Aero, Insitu, and SkyGrid units to Archer in exchange for roughly a 20% stake plus warrants.

🇸🇬 Singapore — MTI Lifts 2026 GDP Forecast on the AI Capex Wave

🔑 Key Event: Singapore's Ministry of Trade and Industry raised its 2026 GDP growth forecast to 4.5%-5.5%, up from 2.0%-4.0%, after the economy grew 6.1% year-on-year in the first half. The upgrade was explicitly attributed to accelerating global AI-related capital expenditure lifting the precision engineering and electronics manufacturing clusters, the same capex wave behind today's Nvidia and TSMC stories. $FTSE Straits Times Index(STI.SG) reopened Tuesday after Monday's National Day holiday up about 1.25% to roughly 5,770.

🇭🇰 HK/China — Hang Seng Rises as Consumer Names Lead, Chips Lag

🔑 Key Event: $Hang Seng Index(00HSI.HK) closed Monday up 1.05% at 25,937.49, with $Hang Seng China Enterprises Index(HSCEI.HK) up 1.1%. Consumer and property names led, with $LAOPU GOLD(06181.HK) surging 12.4% and $CHOW TAI FOOK(01929.HK) up 6.6%, while chip and optical-component names lagged the broader rally, echoing the same pre-earnings weakness hitting Coherent and Lumentum in the US.

👀 Other to Watch

• $WUXI APPTEC(02359.HK) → shares hit a multi-year high after a US court blocked the Pentagon from enforcing a "Chinese military company" designation against it, and the company separately beat estimates with its H1 results and raised full-year guidance.

🌍 Other

• Oil extended its climb, with Brent up about 5% and WTI up around 3%, as Iran said reopening the Strait of Hormuz still depends on the US lifting its naval blockade, and Yemen's Houthis claimed a strike on a Saudi refinery.
• Cleveland Fed President Beth Hammack said "some number" of rate hikes may still be needed to tame inflation; markets priced the odds of a September hike above 50% following her remarks.
• GameStop's Ryan Cohen is reportedly weighing withdrawing the company's $56B bid for eBay, made back in May and already rejected, in favor of proposing a commercial partnership instead.

📅 Key Events Tonight / This Week

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🚫 No duplicates · ⏰ Deadline: Aug 11, 2026, 11:59 PM SGT

Not investment advice, just market talk 🙏