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According to a report by Reuters, influenced by multiple factors such as the tense Sino-U.S. relations, China's push for domestic software alternatives, and U.S. export controls, Microsoft has closed at least 15 branches and joint ventures in China over the past five years, executing a strategic contraction. In 2023, the company internally considered exiting the Chinese market, as some executives believed that "the geopolitical risks outweighed the limited economic returns," but ultimately did not proceed with the exit. Microsoft disclosed in 2024 that its business in China accounted for only about 1.5% of its global revenue.The report states that Microsoft's final decision to remain in China was primarily due to the establishment of a profitable path—providing Azure cloud and AI services to Chinese companies like ByteDance and Shein, helping them operate compliantly in overseas markets. Additionally, the company believes that retaining its business in China remains strategically significant for acquiring engineering talent. However, analysts question the sustainability of this AI business model: the service relies on third-party models like OpenAI, and Chinese companies are increasingly adopting domestic alternatives like Kimi, which offer comparable performance at lower costs.Microsoft's research and development presence in China is also contracting. Its predecessor, Microsoft Research Asia, has successively established new labs in Vancouver, Singapore, and Tokyo. In 2024, the company offered job opportunities to 1,000 top engineers to relocate to the U.S. and three other countries, but only about one-third accepted, with most senior engineers moving to domestic universities and tech companies. A Microsoft spokesperson responded that the company will continue to commit to the Chinese market but did not comment on specific decision details. ByteDance and Shein did not respond to related inquiries.

The proposed soft fork BIP-54 (Consensus Cleanup) specification for Bitcoin was completed in May 2026, aimed at fixing four consensus rule boundary issues without adding new Bitcoin features. Wang Chun, co-founder of the digital asset mining pool F2pool, stated that they do not support BIP-54 and mentioned that if the proposal obtains the required majority through the standard BIP-9 process, F2pool will upgrade its mining nodes but will not issue a support signal in advance.BIP-54 has been tested in the Signet-based testing environment Bitcoin Inquisition, and the mining pools MARA and ViaBTC have voluntarily produced compatible coinbase transactions; the formal activation parameters have not yet been determined, and the mainnet voting is still incomplete. Previously, BIP-110, which attempted to restrict certain non-financial data in Bitcoin transactions, did not receive enough support from miners and stalled around block height 961635; BIP-54 does not involve restricting general script functionality.

According to Thrive Holdings, the AI investment platform Thrive Holdings announced the completion of a $2 billion financing round, with the company's valuation reaching $12 billion, with participation from SoftBank, D1 Capital Partners, and Altimeter Capital.Thrive Holdings was founded in 2025 by Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner. Unlike traditional investment firms, it does not directly invest in AI large model research and development companies, but primarily acquires traditional service companies and integrates AI technology into business processes to achieve efficiency improvements. Its goal is to build platforms and products that bring cutting-edge artificial intelligence into key industries that millions of businesses and individuals rely on daily. The company had previously secured approximately $1 billion in initial funding.

According to Bloomberg, the foreign exchange reserves of U.S. stocks held by the Swiss National Bank grew by more than 10% in the second quarter, reaching the highest level on record. As of June 30, the bank held shares in over 2,300 U.S. listed companies, with a total value of $191.4 billion.The top three holdings are Nvidia, Apple, and Microsoft. In addition, the Swiss National Bank also holds shares worth $716.6 million in defense software company Palantir, although activist investors have called for the sale of some holdings, the bank has refused.

Microsoft plans to publicly release its next-generation Maia 300 AI chip this fall (possibly as early as September). To meet delivery demands for 2027, Microsoft has engaged with TSMC to secure manufacturing capacity for over 300,000 units of the chip.

According to Gate market data, Microsoft’s stock rose 0.93% in pre-market trading.

According to The Information, Microsoft's self-developed artificial intelligence chip project has shown signs of recovery after experiencing a slow start.

Microsoft Threat Intelligence posted on the X platform that a cluster of compromised websites has been found using ClickFix and EtherHiding technologies to spread malware, with attacks targeting thousands of enterprise and consumer devices worldwide every day.Attackers inject Base64 encoded JavaScript to connect to the BNB Smart Chain RPC gateway, obtaining the next stage instructions stored by smart contracts. Since the contract content can only be modified by the deployer's wallet, traditional takedown methods are difficult to counter. The attack deceives users into opening a run dialog box with fake verification codes, pasting clipboard content, and executing commands from the attacker, while also involving the abuse of various system tools such as conhost, cmd, PowerShell, and mshta, as well as command obfuscation techniques. Successful execution may lead to credential exposure, persistence establishment, lateral movement, and even ransomware attacks.Microsoft recommends that enterprises enable Defender's multi-layer protection, restrict command line tools, enable PowerShell script logging, and remind users not to paste commands from unknown sources into the run window or terminal for execution.

According to Jinshi reports, SoftBank Group signed a loan agreement worth $10 billion in August 2026, using OpenAI shares as collateral.

According to Ed Zitron's citation of Microsoft's latest financial report and Bloomberg analysis, OpenAI contributed $24.1 billion in revenue to Microsoft for the fiscal year ending June 2026, accounting for more than 70% of Microsoft's AI business revenue for that fiscal year, and approximately 7.26% of Microsoft's total revenue of $331.8 billion for FY26. Bloomberg estimates OpenAI's contribution to be around 70%, based on Microsoft's previously disclosed 123% annual growth rate in AI business and an annualized AI revenue scale of about $34 billion.The report points out that Microsoft has accumulated approximately $261.3 billion in capital expenditures since early 2022, with analysts believing that a significant portion of this expenditure serves a single client, OpenAI. Ed Zitron commented that Microsoft "has invested in AI for nearly four years, and aside from a company that requires infinite resources to maintain its computing bill, there is almost nothing to show for it." Previously, in a report on August 4, Ed Zitron cited analysts estimating that OpenAI and Anthropic together account for more than 70% of the AI revenue of the three major cloud providers: Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. Microsoft also disclosed in its financial report that as of June 30, accounts receivable from OpenAI amounted to $6 billion.

According to Bitcoin Magazine, the BIP-110 soft fork is about to enter a critical activation phase. The proposal will enter the mandatory signaling phase around August 9, corresponding to block height 961,632, and is expected to lock in at block 963,648 by the end of August, with new transaction rules activated at block 965,664 in early September. BIP-110 adopts a 55% signaling threshold, and its restrictions will be enforced for 52,416 blocks (approximately one year).BIP-110 mainly restricts transaction features such as large data pushes, oversized output scripts, undefined witness versions, and Taproot annexes, but exempts UTXOs created before activation, maintaining compatibility for standard currency use. Analysis indicates that most businesses do not need to take action—businesses that act as value storage or process transactions through third-party payment providers are essentially unaffected. Businesses running their own full nodes can choose whether to switch to BIP-110 nodes. The core risk to be aware of is chain forking. If a fork occurs, miners should choose the branch expected to prevail or pause and wait; exchanges and custodians should increase confirmation requirements, monitor dual chains, and delay final settlements to prevent double spending and false confirmation risks. If there is no fork, no special actions are required.

According to Jinshi reports, SoftBank expects artificial intelligence and cloud business to achieve a 30% annual growth before the fiscal year 2027.

As the US stock technology sector experiences strong buying, the three major indices have collectively risen. According to data from the Gate platform, Microsoft (MSFT) is currently priced at $487.66, with an intraday increase of 4.85%; Amazon (AMZN) is currently priced at $284.02, with an increase of 4.58%. Boosted by strong spot price increases, the trading and position sizes of related stock derivatives on the Gate platform have rapidly climbed. The latest data from Coinglass shows that the 24-hour contract trading volume for Gate MSFT reached $12.3705 million, surging by 211.64%; the 24-hour contract trading volume for Gate AMZNX reached $4.9566 million, soaring by 163.68%. Both trading increases rank among the top in similar stock derivatives on centralized exchanges (CEX).

According to Fortune, the software-driven mining startup Mariana Minerals has completed a $310 million Series B funding round, led by Khosla Ventures, with participation from Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Breakthrough Energy Ventures, Greenoaks, BHP Ventures, and Mitsubishi Corporation. To date, the company has raised a total of $400 million, with a valuation of $1.5 billion.Mariana was co-founded in 2024 by Turner Caldwell, a former member of the Tesla factory design and construction team, and is headquartered in San Francisco, aiming to reshape the traditional mining industry with software technology. The company currently operates two mines: Copper One in Utah (copper mine, targeting an annual refined copper production of 50,000 tons) and Lithium One in Texas (lithium mine, expected to commence commercial production in 2027).

According to Gate market data, Microsoft's intraday increase expanded to over 5%, with a cumulative rise of more than 25% over three days.

According to Goldman Sachs, it will include Applied Materials (AMAT.O), Delta Air Lines (DAL.N), Microsoft (MSFT.O), and United Parcel Service (UPS.N) in the list of stocks to buy with confidence. It will remove Broadcom (AVGO.O), Dick's Sporting Goods (DKS.N), Johnson & Johnson (JNJ.N), and ServiceNow from that list.

The core subsidiary of Japan's SoftBank Group, SB Payment Service (SBPS), announced an agreement with a fund under Blackstone Group to acquire shares of SP.LINKS (formerly Sony Payment Services) parent company. After the transaction is completed, SP.LINKS will become a subsidiary of SBPS.Both parties stated that they will combine SP.LINKS' accumulated strengths in payment infrastructure and service capabilities with SBPS' advantages in payment services and business fundamentals to further enhance the competitiveness of the payment agency business, addressing market changes brought about by the proliferation of cashless payments, the development of e-commerce, and digital technologies such as AI.

According to Jinshi reports, Abdullah Bandar Al-Etabi, an assistant professor of international affairs at Qatar University, stated that it is still too early to judge the direction of the situation following Trump's latest statement regarding Iran. Both sides have not shown any signs of easing their respective positions, and Iran has not softened its stance on the issue of the Strait of Hormuz, with the threat of a broader conflict still present.However, the latest developments have bought more time for diplomacy.

Binance founder Zhao Changpeng reposted on the X platform about a user being attacked by a Coldcard wallet and stated that software will always have vulnerabilities; the key is how the team behind it addresses the issues.Zhao Changpeng added that Trust Wallet also faced a similar problem years ago, where the use of a non-truly random pseudorandom number generator led to a loss of about 12 million dollars, but the team ultimately covered the users' losses.Previously, a suspected third wave of attacks targeting Coldcard-generated addresses has emerged, with attackers again transferring about 207.7294 BTC. Data shows that the scale of observed Coldcard-related attacks has expanded to about 1,367.05 BTC, involving approximately 4,585 addresses, valued at about 88.6 million dollars at current prices.