We brought The AI Startup Playbook to founders at #SWITCH2026#. Drawing on lessons from the global #NVIDIAInception# community, Howard Wright, VP of Startup Ecosystem, shared his perspective on opportunities for builders in Singapore and Southeast Asia. Photo credits: Enterprise Singapore

What does it take to run an always-on AI sports newsroom? By joining the NVIDIA Innovation Lab program, #NVIDIAInception# member Neuron Systems built an agentic AI platform on NVIDIA Hopper GPUs and CUDA software for live sports intelligence, producing real-time commentary, multilingual audio, and analytics for creators and fans. They achieved: ✅ 100% event coverage across a 4+ hour Super Bowl broadcast ⚡ ~13.3 seconds from play analysis to audio delivery 🕐 Faster content cycles: from hours to about 20 minutes Read the customer story ⤵️

Crowdstrike $CRWD is expanding its cybersecurity startup accelerator with AWS and Nvidia, with the 2027 program focused on startups building for the agentic AI era. Participants will get access to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Foundry and APIs, AWS technical and go-to-market support, and NVIDIA Inception resources. The program has supported more than 90 startups to date, which have collectively raised nearly $1B. Up to 10 finalists will pitch at RSAC 2027, with participants also eligible for potential investment from CrowdStrike’s Falcon Fund.

Happy to share that OnTheGo has been accepted into the NVIDIA Inception program🚀 NVIDIA builds the infrastructure AI runs on. Through being part of their Inception program, we get access to their technology, technical experts, and a global network of investors. We move.

🤖 ANNOUNCEMENT 🤖 @Flovia402 has been accepted into the @NVIDIA Inception Program. Excited to accelerate our agent simulation platform for API providers looking to grow agent usage. We've been testing API discovery and AX (Agent Experience) across a wide range of models, intents, scenarios, and constraints to help providers understand what drives agent-driven revenue. Back to building🌊

A TON OF THINGS HAPPENED IN THE STOCK MARKET TODAY. Here's a full recap: 1. SpaceX $SPCX is reportedly seeking $40B in financing, led by Apollo, to fund a massive purchase of NVIDIA $NVDA AI chips, according to the Financial Times. The proposed financing includes roughly $10B in bank loans and $30B of investment-grade debt, with the transaction expected to close in 2027. Elon Musk said in August that SpaceX had “decided to build exclusively on NVIDIA,” specifically highlighting the company's Vera Rubin architecture as SpaceX accelerates investment in AI compute and data center infrastructure. 2. AMD $AMD CEO Lisa Su said AI compute demand continues to outpace supply and expects strong demand to persist for the next several years, with AMD planning to substantially increase supply in 2027. Su said AMD has already expanded supply this year but “could definitely use more,” thanking TSMC for bringing additional manufacturing capacity online while noting that memory remains broadly supply constrained. She added that AMD is working closely with memory suppliers and customers to ensure capacity ramps in sync while keeping its current business model unchanged. Su also described Taiwan as “very critical” to AMD, saying the company plans to increase its investment there while continuing to explore new packaging technologies. 3. Uber $UBER is acquiring ezCater for $2.3B in cash, expanding Uber Eats into the workplace catering market. ezCater has more than 140,000 restaurant partners, generates over $2.5B in trailing 12-month gross bookings, is growing at a high-teens annual rate, and has average order values above $400 while remaining profitable on a non-GAAP operating income basis. Following the acquisition, ezCater will be integrated with Uber Eats and Uber for Business, strengthening Uber's position in high-value group orders and enterprise food delivery. Uber said the transaction is expected to be margin accretive. 4. Penguin Solutions $PENG just delivered a blowout Q4, with revenue of $566.7M versus $521M expected, up 68% YoY, while adjusted EPS of $1.00 beat the $0.77 estimate by roughly 30%. Adjusted EBITDA surged 115% YoY to $93M, while FY2026 revenue reached $1.73B and adjusted EPS came in at $2.87, both ahead of expectations. The bigger story was guidance, with Penguin now expecting FY2027 revenue around a $2.43B midpoint, implying roughly 40% growth and coming in about 10% above consensus, while adjusted EPS is expected at $4.45 ± $0.70 versus $3.38 expected. AI infrastructure momentum also accelerated sharply, with 6 new data center customers added in Q4, including 4 neoclouds, alongside a customer deployment involving a 36,000-GPU AI factory in Norway and another platform built around NVIDIA GB300 NVL72. Management said performance accelerated significantly in the second half following the launch of its AI Factory Platform and increased focus on the data center market. 5. Google $GOOGL and Constellation Energy $CEG signed a 20-year agreement to add 890 MW of nuclear power to the PJM grid through upgrades at 11 reactors, backed by $4.3B of investment. The companies also signed a separate 15-year power supply agreement covering an additional 2.7 GW, with the first reactor uprate expected to come online in 2028. The announcement lifted sentiment across the power sector, with Vistra $VST surging 12% as investors continued to price in growing electricity demand from AI data centers and hyperscale infrastructure. 6. The top 10 most active options today by contracts traded were $NVDA with 2.4M contracts, $TSLA with 1.2M contracts, $SPCX with 1.1M contracts, $INTC with 914K contracts, $AAPL with 802K contracts, $AMZN with 798K contracts, $AVGO with 702K contracts, $MU with 699K contracts, $AMD with 627K contracts, and $MSFT with 511K contracts. 7. Marvell $MRVL raised its long-term outlook, now expecting approximately $20B in FY2028 revenue, up from its prior $18B target, and projecting $70B–$90B in annual revenue by FY2031. CEO Matt Murphy also significantly increased the company's estimate for the AI market opportunity, now forecasting a roughly $400B AI market by 2030, more than 4x its previous $94B opportunity estimate for 2028. The updated outlook reflects Marvell's growing confidence in sustained AI infrastructure spending and demand for custom silicon, networking, and data center connectivity solutions. 8. CrowdStrike $CRWD is expanding its cybersecurity startup accelerator with AWS and NVIDIA, with the 2027 program focused on startups building security solutions for the agentic AI era. Participants will receive access to CrowdStrike Falcon Foundry and APIs, AWS technical and go-to-market support, and NVIDIA Inception resources. The accelerator has supported more than 90 startups to date, which have collectively raised nearly $1B. Up to 10 finalists will present at RSAC 2027, with participating companies also eligible for potential investment from CrowdStrike’s Falcon Fund. 9. Apple $AAPL is reportedly making a major push into the smart home, developing a new doorbell, smart lock, thermostat, and other accessories in partnership with LG Electronics. The products are expected to work alongside Apple’s upcoming smart home hub, updated HomePod mini, and refreshed Apple TV, giving the company a much broader ecosystem for home control, security, and automation. The home hub, new HomePod mini, and updated Apple TV are expected to be unveiled on October 13. The move would push Apple beyond HomeKit software and third-party accessories and toward a more vertically integrated smart-home platform built around its own hardware, software, services, and ecosystem. 10. Nokia $NOK CEO Justin Hotard said AI infrastructure demand continues to outpace supply, arguing that supply constraints—not weak demand—are the primary factor limiting deployment. “I don’t think you can say in any manner we’re overbuilding today,” Hotard said, adding that if Nokia and its customers could build 2x faster, they likely would. He said that gives him confidence the industry is “still in the early days” of the AI infrastructure buildout and argued demand does not depend on a constant stream of new frontier AI models. According to Hotard, even without another major frontier model release over the next three years, the industry could still make tremendous progress deploying today's AI technology, with memory supply and power availability remaining the biggest constraints. 11. Ray Dalio is warning that the U.S. could be headed toward a debt crisis within the next 2–3 years, arguing that persistent deficits, rising interest costs, and a shrinking pool of available savings are pushing the country toward the limits of its debt cycle. He said the issue is not any specific Treasury yield, but rather the growing mismatch between the amount of capital the government needs to borrow and the willingness of investors, particularly foreign creditors, to finance it. Dalio said he is currently short government debt and long gold, recommending that diversified portfolios hold 5–15% in gold, while noting he owns only about 1% in Bitcoin and remains skeptical of digital assets. On AI, Dalio said investors will either “ride the crest of the AI wave or drown under it,” arguing that AI can increasingly handle the entire investment process, but that humans still need to define the decision framework and challenge the model’s conclusions rather than blindly accepting them. 12. Cantor Fitzgerald said the recent selloff in Western Digital $WDC and Seagate $STX following Toshiba’s plan to double nearline hard drive capacity by FY2027 is overdone and presents a buying opportunity. The firm argues Toshiba’s expansion is unlikely to materially change industry supply because demand from AI and data centers continues to outpace capacity, Toshiba’s technology still trails competitors, and long-term agreements support pricing stability for WDC and STX. The selloff in those names could have also been the reason for the broader memory weakness in the sector affecting companies like $MU Micron, $SNDK Sandisk, and $SKHY SK Hynix. Cantor also questioned Toshiba’s ability to execute its expansion plans, noting a similar effort announced in 2022 failed to materialize. The firm expects AI-driven data generation to keep nearline HDD demand ahead of supply through 2030 and beyond, supporting 70%+ long-term margins, expanding free cash flow, and continued share repurchases for both WDC and STX, which remain its Top Picks. WALL STREET IS THE GREATEST SHOW ON EARTH.

At a Seoul reception, government leaders, Samsung, SK, LG, NAVER, Doosan, and NVIDIA Inception startups gathered as Korea helps co-build the global AI ecosystem. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang’s message to Korea’s AI ecosystem: this is your time to help build what’s next.

This Week in Virtuals: Agents Surpass 1% of Robinhood Chain One month in, agents drive more than 1% of all DEX volume on Robinhood Chain, over $270M of $25B, and every one of them launched on Virtuals Protocol. Now the same agent layer is landing on Solana Here's what shipped: VIRTUALS 🟩 Agents landed on @solana: millions more people can now own a working agent that raises its own capital, sets its own tax, and trades its own wallet. 🟩 Agents crossed 1% of Robinhood Chain's DEX volume, $270M+ of $25B in just over a month, all launched on Virtuals. 🟩 @DonJohnsonSays' ERC-8196 went final: agents hold a wallet and spend within owner-set limits enforced by the wallet, not an app. ECOSYSTEM 🟩 @ProjectVEXai shipped VEX 0.2.7 CHRONOS with 18 rebuilt research tools, desktop apps, and a @pools_dot_fun tie-up for Robinhood. 🟩 @pabsclimbs' humanoid Pemba is attempting Mt. Everest this fall, powered by @livekit, after already summiting Mt. Chimborazo. 🟩 @commonsmade went live on Solana and opened a $60K hackathon, burning 400M tokens in its first hours. 🟩 @KarmaWallet posted its first traction report: $2.02M volume, $423.8K card spend, and $16.2K in $KARMA bought back since July 17. 🟩 @vantis_ai catalogued 1,248 active x402 endpoints in four days, 1,147 of them payable on Robinhood Chain, on the way to 3,000. 🟩 @DoloresResearch launched an open benchmark for agentic trading: 13 replayed BTC perp markets, from the COVID crash to the ETF approval. 🟩 @GoMintly brought agent-managed liquidity to tokenized equities, a first: deposit USDG and NVDA, and its agents keep you in range. 🟩 @reppo landed a capital commitment from Bolts Capital and sits $200M shy of $1B volume, with its eval API due in early September. 🟩 @myrad_hq crossed 19,000 users and 47.5M $MYRAD staked, and joined the OpenAI startup program alongside @nvidia Inception. 🟩 @sibyl_labs_ scored 95.6% on LongMemEval, second overall, with 272 teams registered for its $10K Memory Hackathon closing Aug 31. 🟩 @ethy_agent crossed $6M in agent volume and announced Quant Major Upgrade: build, test, publish, and copy strategies in one tap. 🟩 @wardenprotocol joined the @circle Alliance Program, recovered cleanly from a shared Cosmos EVM bug, and is set for Warden 2.0. 🟩 @OpenGradient put Alibaba's Wan 3.0 live in Video Studio, private by default, and passed 522,000 encrypted inferences. 🟩 @WizzHQ burned 5,510,000 $WIZZ and sent 5M to veVIRTUAL holders, with Velocity, its autonomous trading agent, in final testing. 🟩 @ReplyCorp rewards posts for converting rather than posting, and added @tator_trader so replies route fees to whoever drove them. 🟩 @Wall3_RL previewed its company-level analytics with a full breakdown of Unitree's post-IPO valuation. 🟩 @Fletcher_cards lets you rip real graded card packs from your X feed, with an on-chain spending limit the bot can never exceed. 🟩 @bleeep_xyz turns a plain-language thesis into a defined strategy, then backtests it on history before you risk anything. 🟩 @grid_arena crowned a new multiplier record at 100,077x, with Grid v2 arriving next week. 🟩 @officialbunnyos welcomed 200+ agents into Bunny Open Society, partnered with @Unibase_AI, and adds play-to-earn next week. ROBOTICS 🟩 @xmaquina passed BOT-14 with 94% approval and is executing a $400K position in Atoms, with Robotico beta launching September 1. 🟩 @StrikeRobot_ai hit top 4 datanet volume on @reppo with 10.1% network share, and now drop-tests assets in @nvidia Isaac Sim. 🟩 @openmind_agi published its Physical AI Readiness Index: China leads at 82.9, Japan follows at 69.6, and the US sits third at 69.

This Week in Virtuals: 47.3% of All Agentic Transactions on Base Run Through Virtuals Protocol Surpassed $250M+ agent volume on @RobinhoodCrypto Chain and nearly half of Base's agentic activity is running on Virtuals Protocol. Here's what shipped: VIRTUALS 🟩 Partnered with @robinscanio to set the standard for agent transparency on Robinhood Chain: vesting, unlocks, team wallets, and roadmap, all in one view. 🟩 Shared its robotics thesis live on @MadSocietyTV's S1 with RoboStrategy on why agents are moving into the physical world. 🟩 @DonJohnsonSays previewed what's next for Virtuals on the Base Builder Call, from agent economy numbers to the push into embodied AI ECOSYSTEM 🟩 BitTorrent for AI inference: HALO by @wardenprotocol is live on Virtuals. Serve a model, get paid per prompt in USDC, settled onchain in ~2s. 🟩 @StrikeRobot_ai open-sourced its full @UnitreeRobotics Go2 navigation stack: SLAM + Nav2, Vision-Language-Action integration, running on Qualcomm Edge for on-device autonomy. 🟩 @bleeep_xyz launched Agent Beta: agent decisions committed onchain before outcomes, with @RobinhoodCrypto as primary anchoring chain and @arbitrum next. 🟩 @ProjectVEXai grew 10x in a week: VEX agents scan Robinhood Chain trenches 24/7, and Economy Engine v1 ties that activity to $VEX. 🟩 @KarmaWallet gave $KARMA utility: hold $10 and up to 90% of trading fees return via open-market buybacks. Volume up 290% in 30 days. 🟩 @grid_arena launched Season Zero: 25M $GRID over 43 days, 70% by volume, 30% to top performers. 🟩 @WizzHQ shipped its first week on Robinhood Chain: 2,000+ users, Wallet Finder scanning 10,000 Polymarket wallets, plus Claude for Startups and @nvidia Inception. 🟩 @insidersdotbot brought trading to the timeline: tag it under any news post and it analyzes and executes the trade in your feed. 🟩 @myrad_hq burned 7,000,000 $MYRAD, 0.7% of supply, at 18,000+ users, and made $MYRAD buyable by card through @QwertiAI. 🟩 @ethy_agent executed a 300,000 $ETHY buyback funded entirely by product revenue, with users up 30x since launch. 🟩 @ArAIstotle marked one year of $FACY: 658% oversubscribed at Genesis, every roadmap phase shipped, 22,761 agent-to-agent verifications in February alone. 🟩 @OpenGradient shipped Seedance 2.5: 30-second clips from one prompt with native audio. 2 billion tokens now processed, all sealed in hardware enclaves. 🟩 @vimenprotocol tripled its universe to 30 tokenized equities, paid its first onchain dividends, and added one-click index minting. 🟩 @vantis_ai published its first financial statement, fully verifiable onchain: $14.3K in fees, 9.3M $VANTIS bought back, plus a card that burns with use. 🟩 @wrkrdev turned capital formation into revenue: 15 pre-production seats generating 3,000 USDT MRR via x402, 10% of receipts to top $WRKR wallets. 🟩 @reppo hit 134 active Orquestra nodes, crossed 700M in locked $REPPO trading volume, secured enterprise contracts, and opened NFT claims. 🟩 @officialbunnyos went Telegram-native at @bunnyagentbot after processing 50M+ tokens in 25 days. Telegram users already run 3x web. 🟩 @AgentiqAI showcased full-stack apps built end-to-end on its autonomous engineering platform, every component tested before deployment on Robinhood Chain.

This Week in Virtuals: Robinhood App Turned On Agent Trading, with Virtuals as the Onchain Infra Layer VIRTUALS 🟩 @RobinhoodApp rolled Agentic Trading out to 100% of eligible users this week. Onchain, the infra layer agents launch on, trade from and get owned through is now Virtuals Protocol. 🟩 @coinbureau called Virtuals "an entire nation for AI agents, complete with identity, banking, commerce and capital markets," where every agent gets a wallet, a card and an email, and can hire, pay and evaluate other agents. ECOSYSTEM 🟩 @GoMintly took its agent-managed LP vaults from NVDA and SPCX to the whole index via SPY, then to $MEME, all on @RobinhoodCrypto. 🟩 @ProjectVEXai gave its agents onchain capital access and now trades across @RobinhoodApp, @solana, @arbitrum and 7 more chains. 🟩 @PlayKindra shipped HoodExplorer for Robinhood Chain and routes 90% of its swap fees into buying and burning KINDRA. 🟩 @WizzHQ minted Wizz Units, 2,345 PFPs on Robinhood Chain, clearing 100 in five minutes after fully refunding the paused mint. 🟩 @grid_arena launched Grid v2, one arena for crypto, stocks and prediction markets, with agent Autopilot coming next. 🟩 @useOttoAI has settled 171,539 paid x402 calls on @base and soft launched Otto Stocks for weekend equity gaps. 🟩 @tradeongtr added $BMNR and $SHEIN markets and routed over $180K through its @openfinancelabs partnership. 🟩 @ethy_agent crossed $10M in agent volume only days after passing $6M, and has a private beta of its next build incoming. 🟩 @KarmaWallet crossed $6M total volume after daily volume jumped almost 200% in two days, and Karma Verified now gives 24 hours of zero fees. 🟩 @wardenprotocol ran its first HALO buyback and burn, torching 219,944 HALO, and announced a Token Terminal and Launchpad. 🟩 @reppo launched its Eval API on Base, where 1,000 staked EVAL unlocks up to $1 a day of credits, and burned about 2% of supply. 🟩 @myrad_hq ran its first burn, 7M MYRAD or 0.7% of supply, and now pays epoch evaluators in USDC instead of its own token. 🟩 @mamo has distributed $638K in total rewards, with MAMO now paired against 17 assets on @aeroxyz. 🟩 @commonsmade hit record usage, 1.3B AI tokens spent in one day against a 2B target, and routed $20K to stakers. 🟩 @OpenGradient has processed 3.32B tokens across 562,860 inferences, every prompt encrypted on device and relayed over OHTTP. 🟩 @Bowyer_App has 28 agents live, and five were specced and launched by another agent scanning GitHub on its own. 🟩 @Wall3_RL's agent called the September rate cut repricing, with CME odds moving 41% to 60% and Polymarket 30% to 52%. 🟩 @bleeep_xyz turned on Agent Automation, where a signed mandate caps capital, daily stop and duration before a single order. 🟩 @sibyl_labs_ closed hackathon registration at 453 builders, and @base is now sponsoring a startup accelerator entry for a top two finisher. 🟩 @RatehopperAI brought LP agents to @base on WETH/USDC as Season 0 wraps up. 🟩 @vantis_ai made its trading engine performance public and previewed an x402 terminal that can LP into Uniswap pools. 🟩 @officialbunnyos turned on Play-to-Earn and its human interface within a week, and is closing in on 500 players. 🟩 @vimenprotocol closed its first USDG payout cycles and now mints baskets from Ethereum, @base, @arbitrum, @solana or Bitcoin. 🟩 @Fletcher_cards put its gacha machines live on @base and BNB Chain, and is opening a TCG Index Launcher for card-backed indexes. 🟩 @PrivacyHood shipped merchant refunds as claim links, plus a printed paper recovery slip its stealth till makes you type back. 🟩 @axol_io routed Raxol agents through @xochi_fi's new TRON support, opening the deepest USDT corridor in crypto to them. 🟩 @Vader_AI_ is running EgoPlay on fixed tasks in changing settings, so every egocentric clip it collects stays comparable. ROBOTICS 🟩 @pabsclimbs landed in Nepal with Pemba clearing customs, and opened community funding for open-source partners on the $PEAK expedition. 🟩 @xmaquina put its incubated @roboticomarket live and logged 22,000 humanoid units shipped in H1 2026, up 300% year on year. 🟩 @openmind_agi published PHASOR, mapping different humanoid bodies into one shared motion space so behaviour transfers between them. 🟩 @StrikeRobot_ai got DSC Labs, its robotics R&D arm, into @nvidia Inception and cut SR Platform layouts to under five minutes.