sales

Tonight at 20:30, we will once again welcome the U.S. July retail sales data, known for its "terrifying data" reputation. This data will directly reflect the consumption willingness and purchasing power of American residents, serving as a key barometer for determining whether the economy is experiencing a soft landing or a stall.If the data is significantly stronger than expected, it may reinforce the narrative that "the economy still has resilience," boosting the dollar and dampening interest rate cut expectations; if it is significantly weaker than expected, it may exacerbate recession concerns and further boost precious metals and risk-averse sentiment.

On August 12, the enterprise blockchain infrastructure provider Aventus announced the official launch of Aventus Cloud node sales. The program aims to allow individuals and institutions to run nodes using available computing resources, expanding participation in the Aventus network infrastructure.Founded in 2017, Aventus has provided blockchain infrastructure for enterprise applications in industries such as aviation, energy, and telecommunications, and has become a Polkadot parachain. Aventus Cloud will go live on the mainnet in April 2026, with nodes capable of processing network activity verification, and eligible operators can earn network rewards. The current price for Genesis Tranche node licenses is $1,755, with a final network plan of up to 40,000 nodes, and over 2,500 nodes are currently active.

According to the "China Securities Journal," at the online investor communication meeting for the Sci-Tech Innovation Board listing of Yushu Technology, an investor asked, what impact does the U.S. robot sales ban have? Fu Fenghua, the secretary of the board of Yushu Technology, responded that the main models currently on sale include humanoid robots G1, H2, R1, and quadruped robots Go2, B2, A2, all of which have obtained FCC certification and fall under the advanced robotic equipment mentioned in the previous announcement. Therefore, the aforementioned policy change will not affect the continued sales of the company's existing main products in the U.S. market.

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 Jinshi reports, Apple's annual sales in India have surpassed $10 billion for the first time.

According to Wall St Engine, "AI stock god" Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness fund faced liquidity pressure during the market crash in July, with behind-the-scenes details revealed.The report states that after the market rapidly cooled in mid-July, the decline in stocks held by Situational Awareness triggered margin monitoring by banks such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, leading to margin calls.Insiders said that other hedge funds began shorting related stocks after learning about its positions, creating a cycle of "price drop → margin call → forced selling → further price decline."In late July, while Leopold was hosting a wedding in Carmel, he continued negotiations with his team to maintain fund operations. On the evening of July 29, he reached a preliminary agreement with a consortium led by Greenoaks and Sequoia Capital to sell approximately $3.5 billion in Anthropic equity.However, in the early hours of July 30, before the U.S. stock market opened, Leopold changed his decision, opting to retain the private equity portfolio and instead sell publicly traded stocks. Subsequently, Citadel and Millennium entered negotiations with the fund team, and Citadel ultimately acquired most of the fund's public stock investment portfolio at a discount of more than 10% below market value before Thursday's opening.This transaction helped Situational Awareness meet margin requirements and avoid formal default. After the deal was completed, related AI and semiconductor stocks rebounded on Thursday, benefiting Citadel.As of around July 31, Situational Awareness disclosed to investors that the fund had a net loss of about 67% in July, but was still up about 80% for the year. Leopold stated that he "takes full responsibility" for the incident, and the fund has removed bank leverage, planning to continue operations and invest in the public market while adjusting its portfolio management and risk control systems.

According to Gate market data, Apple's stock price fell by 6.3% on the Tradegate trading platform due to its forecast of current quarter sales growth being below market targets.

According to Jinshi reports, Apple CEO Tim Cook stated that despite facing supply constraints and foreign exchange headwinds, Apple still achieved record sales in the third quarter.

According to Jinshi, the preliminary annualized quarter-on-quarter final sales rate for the United States in the second quarter is 2.2%, higher than the market expectation of 2% and the previous value of 1.9%.

According to Gate market data, the stock price of Musk's company fell by 11.5% in pre-market trading, mainly due to second-quarter sales not meeting market expectations.

According to Bitcoin.com, Strategy Executive Chairman Michael Saylor revealed that the company will consider market conditions in the future to repurchase STRC preferred shares (Series A perpetual preferred shares, with a par value of $100) by selling Bitcoin or MSTR stock.When the trading price of STRC is significantly below $100, the discounted repurchase can reduce future dividend expenses and has strong capital allocation appeal.

According to Gate market data, American software companies rose in early trading, with Salesforce (CRM.N) up over 3%, Oracle (ORCL.N) up about 5%, and ServiceNow (NOW.N) up nearly 4%.

According to Jinshi reports, the S&P 500 index futures showed little change after the release of June retail sales data.

According to an analysis by Tommy, there is a significant gap in valuation and revenue conversion for Chinese open-source AI companies, with their price-to-sales ratio (P/S) far exceeding that of leading counterparts in the United States.Data shows that Zhipu, which developed the GLM 5.2 model, currently has a market value of approximately $137 billion, but its revenue for the fiscal year 2025 is about $107 million, resulting in a price-to-sales ratio as high as 1280 times; MiniMax has a market value of about $23 billion, with a price-to-sales ratio of approximately 290 times. In contrast, the valuations of leading AI laboratories in the United States are more solid, with OpenAI (valued at about $852 billion) and Anthropic (valued at about $965 billion) having price-to-sales ratios of only 34 times and 21 times, respectively.It is believed that due to overseas users' concerns about data privacy, they are unwilling to send data directly to China, resulting in the massive demand for Chinese AI companies not being converted into actual API revenue, leading to significant profit loss to overseas third-party inference service providers (such as OpenRouter, etc.). To support their current high valuations, Chinese AI companies urgently need to prove their data non-retention mechanisms and capture the market at low prices, or explore revenue-sharing and initial licensing collaborations with overseas inference platforms to expand their actual revenue scale.

CryptoQuant analyst IT Tech analysis states that the selling pressure of altcoins on spot exchanges has reached extreme levels not seen in five years, with the spot market experiencing net selling for 15 consecutive months. The cumulative trading volume of altcoins, excluding BTC and ETH, has recorded the lowest negative value since data tracking began in 2020; this indicator was close to neutral in early 2025, but then turned significantly negative again and has continued to decline since.

According to Tech in Asia, Salesforce announced the acquisition of the AI customer service product Fin for approximately $3.6 billion, with the deal expected to be completed in the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2027. Following the announcement, Salesforce's pre-market stock price rose by 1.1%.Fin is an AI customer service product that can seamlessly collaborate with existing help desk systems such as Salesforce and Zendesk. This acquisition will complement Salesforce's Agentforce platform, which already covers multiple business scenarios including sales, service, marketing, and commerce, and connects AI agents with enterprise data through Data Cloud.

According to Decrypt, the trading volume of tokenized Pokémon cards on crypto platforms is rapidly increasing. Driven by the "gacha" mechanism, it creates a trading experience similar to "opening boxes/drawing cards" by mapping physical cards to NFTs or digital certificates. Data disclosed by Messari shows that in May, approximately $230 million in transaction volume was achieved across seven blockchains including Solana, Polygon, Base, and BNB, which is about a tenfold increase compared to a year ago.In addition, the global trading card market size reached $15.8 billion in 2024 and is expected to grow to $23.5 billion by 2030, while the overall market value of NFTs is currently around $2.4 billion, indicating that on-chain collectibles are still in the early penetration stage.

According to CoinDesk, NYDIG's Global Research Director Greg Cipolaro stated that the decline in Bitcoin does not have a single cause, but is due to multiple overlapping factors. The AI sector continues to siphon funds from the crypto market, and investors are preparing for large tech IPOs such as SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, with institutions needing to raise cash or reduce existing positions.The U.S. Treasury Secretary claimed to have seized approximately $1 billion in Iranian-related crypto assets, raising concerns about government intervention in the digital asset market. Quantum computing threats have once again become a focal point, and Strategy's sale of 32 BTC, while negligible on the supply side, has a greater psychological impact.Cipolaro pointed out that on-chain indicators show that several metrics are approaching historical bottom levels, with the MVRV ratio dropping to 1.2 and the proportion of profitable supply recently falling below 50%. However, the current 53% drawdown is far lower than the previous cycle's levels of 75%-90%, and it has only been 242 days since the peak. This suggests that either institutions have fundamentally changed Bitcoin's cyclical behavior, or the market has not yet truly entered a capitulation phase.