OPENAI JUST BOUGHT BACK ROUGHLY $7 BILLION OF EMPLOYEE SHARES ITSELF, INSTEAD OF BRINGING IN OUTSIDE INVESTORS Current and former employees sold in the tender offer, but the buyer this time was OpenAI itself, not Thrive Capital or SoftBank like in past rounds, per people familiar with the matter. The deal valued OpenAI at $852 billion, unchanged from its $122 billion funding round in March - Bloomberg

LEOPOLD ASCHENBRENNER'S SITUATIONAL AWARENESS INVESTED $500 MILLION INTO SOURCE FOUNDRY Source Foundry is building machines to manufacture cutting-edge AI chips, aiming to challenge ASML's dominance in lithography equipment. ASML's machines are the size of a school bus and can cost more than $400 million each. The $500 million bet includes a fresh $400 million infusion this week. Sequoia backed the startup previously, at a recent valuation of $5 billion - WSJ

NSCALE'S REVENUE WENT FROM $33 MILLION FOR ALL OF 2025 TO OVER $100 MILLION IN A SINGLE QUARTER. NOW IT'S HEADED FOR A US IPO Nscale is telling prospective investors it has about $51 billion in total contracted revenue ahead of a potential US IPO as soon as September, per people familiar with the matter. The company is building toward 10 gigawatts of AI computing power, on top of 831 megawatts already active or contracted. For scale, a single gigawatt can power roughly 750,000 US homes at any given time. Data center sites include Norway and West Virginia. Chip count: roughly 25,000 GPUs active, about 289,000 active and contracted as of Q2 2026, mostly NVIDIA $NVDA Blackwell chips currently, with about 194,000 NVIDIA Vera Rubin GPUs already contracted for the future - Bloomberg

HOT TOPIC IS ABOUT TO CHANGE HANDS FOR $350 MILLION. SYCAMORE PARTNERS BOUGHT IT FOR ALMOST DOUBLE THAT IN 2013 Sycamore Partners is in advanced talks to sell Hot Topic to Spencer Spirit Holdings, the parent of Spencer's and Spirit Halloween. Sycamore took Hot Topic private for about $600 million in 2013. An announcement could come as soon as Tuesday, though nothing is finalized and details could still change.

WESTINGHOUSE, WHICH POWERS MORE THAN HALF THE WORLD'S NUCLEAR REACTORS, JUST FILED CONFIDENTIALLY FOR A US IPO The company filed confidentially... Share count and price range haven't been determined yet, subject to market conditions. Westinghouse is jointly owned by Brookfield Renewable Partners and Cameco $CCJ, after Cameco agreed to buy a 49% stake at roughly an $8 billion valuation in a deal completed in 2023. Westinghouse's nuclear technology is used by 57% of the world's 417 nuclear reactors, and the company has a pipeline of up to 91 opportunities for its latest-generation reactor, per Cameco's own earnings release - Bloomberg

JERSEY MIKE'S IPO IS OVER 10X OVERSUBSCRIBED. The sandwich chain's IPO has attracted investor demand for more than 10 times the available shares ahead of Wednesday's pricing, The offering consists of about 43.5 million shares priced at $21 to $25 each, targeting up to $1.09 billion raised. Of those shares, roughly 29.7 million, more than two-thirds of the deal, are being sold by existing backers including Blackstone $BX and the Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, not the company itself. At the top of the range, Jersey Mike's would be valued at nearly $8 billion - Bloomberg

CXMT is now a public company ... CXMT is the largest Chinese maker of memory chips CXMT was up 466% in its first day of trading as a public company in China 🇨🇳 and is now worth around $500 Billion CXMT is now one of the largest public Chinese companies

ANDURIL COULD BE WORTH $100 BILLION. IT WAS VALUED AT $61 BILLION JUST TWO MONTHS AGO Anduril Industries is reportedly in early talks with investors about a new round that could value the defense tech company around $100 billion, per Reuters, Nothing is finalized. One structure under discussion would require investors to commit to a second, higher-valuation round within a year, contingent on Anduril hitting specific financial targets

THE BORING COMPANY IS RAISING AT A $20 BILLION VALUATION, NEARLY 4X ITS LAST ROUND Elon Musk's tunneling startup is in talks to raise ~$4B at a valuation of ~$20 billion That's up from a $5.7 billion valuation after its 2022 round, which raised $675 million - WSJ

IN 16 DAYS, $116B OF SPACEX STOCK BECOMES SELLABLE FOR THE FIRST TIME On August 6, restrictions lift on as many as 911.5 million insider shares, per Bloomberg, two days after the company's first earnings report. And that is only the opening wave. The schedule: - Tradeable shares today: around 639 million - August 6: up to 911.5M insider shares unlock - Early December: float hits 5.33 billion, per the IPO prospectus - Musk, holding roughly 60%, stays locked up just past the one-year mark The bears are already positioned: - About 30% of the current float is sold short, per S3 Partners - Those bets are up roughly $7B on paper - Stock sits 37% below its June 16 closing high, near $119.85, after a seven-session slide erased $425B One wrinkle: an extra 455.8 million shares unlock right after earnings if the stock holds $175.50 in five of the ten days through the report. That is 46% above Monday's close, out of reach unless the tape turns violently. Early backers win either way: the company was valued near $400B a year ago, before the xAI deal pushed it to $1T.

ANTHROPIC IS REPORTEDLY PLANNING IPO INVESTOR MEETINGS IN THE COMING WEEKS The report comes from Bloomberg, citing people familiar. No timing, valuation, offering size or exchange details have been reported. Early investor meetings are typically used to gauge institutional demand before formal offering terms are set.

SK Hynix will begin trading under its long term ticker $SKHY starting tomorrow Search for SKHY in your brokerage from now on instead of SKHYV For the traders out there The leveraged and inverse SK Hynix ETFs will begin trading on Tuesday at 4AM ET Search on Tuesday for $SKHX which will be the 2x Long SK Hynix ETF and search for $SKHZ which will be the 1x Short SK Hynix ETF The options chain should then begin on Wednesday the earliest. With SK Hynix being a foreign company the options chain may be delayed. Disclosure: Leverage Shares is a Partner of the page. This post is for informational purposes only, not investment advice. Leveraged and Inverse ETFs are made for traders who know what they’re doing not long term investors

SILICON VALLEY INVESTORS ARE STARTING TO PUSH BACK ON THE IDEA THAT ROBOTS NEED TO LOOK HUMAN Per Business Insider, some are arguing the humanoid-first thesis has it backwards, and that robot design should start with the job it needs to do rather than the human body, which is exactly the split our partner @JarsyInc laid out this week: humanoid vs task-first. The companies are already sorting into camps. Agility's Digit and Figure AI are going humanoid for warehouse and logistics work. Genesis AI's Eno and Sunday's Memo are task-first wheeled robots, one for manufacturers and labs, one for clearing tables and loading dishwashers at home. Apptronik sits in between: CEO Jeff Cardenas told BI he sees the biggest long-term upside in legged humanoids, but the wheeled version of its Apollo robot could deploy sooner because it poses fewer safety challenges. That is the whole debate in one line. Humanoids may offer broader flexibility long-term, but task-first designs may reach real commercial deployment first.