>>> US After Hours Summary: APLD +8.7% after signing 210 MW lease; SIRI +4.6% hi

After Hours Summary: APLD +8.7% after signing 210 MW lease; SIRI +4.6% higher on news it will join S&P MidCap 400; MTN -5.1% and AVO -4.8% lower on earnings

After Hours Gainers:

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: ODC +1.8%

Companies trading higher in after hours in reaction to news: APLD +8.7% (signs 210 MW lease at Delta Forge 2), SIRI +4.6% (to join S&P MidCap 400), QCOM +3.8% (SRE unit, Qualcomm and UC San Diego launch edge AI collaboration), WCC +3% (to acquire Newark Engineering Group), IPSC +2.8% (presentation of new preclinical data from CNTY-813), SPRB +1.6% (long-term Tralesinidase Alfa Enzyme Replacement Therapy data in Sanfilippo Syndrome Type B), CDNS +1.6% (collaboration with Intel Foundry), HLIT +0.1% (sale of its Video Business remains on track to close in the second quarter of 2026)

After Hours Losers:

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to earnings/guidance: MTN -5.1%, AVO -4.8% (also approves $100 mln stock repurchase program)

Companies trading lower in after hours in reaction to news: IDYA -9.4% (stock offering), PRGO -3.8% (CEO resigns; names interim CEO), TNGX -2.2% (stock offering), DLTH -1.2% (maps path to double EBITDA by 2028 through new strategy), FCEL -1.1% (files mixed securities shelf offering), Q -0.8% (introduces enhanced advanced packaging materials for organic interposer applications), AAPL -0.5% (accelerates app development with new intelligence frameworks and advanced tools), GILD -0.1% (discontinuation of the Phase 3 KEYNOTE-D46/EVOKE-03 study; also topline results from two Phase 3 studies evaluating Islatravir/Lenacapavir)

FT : GSK in talks to buy cancer biotech Nuvalent for more than $9bn

GSK in talks to buy cancer biotech Nuvalent for more than $9bn
Deal would rank as one of UK drugmaker’s biggest as biotech M&A activity accelerates this year

UK pharmaceutical group GSK is in talks to buy cancer drugmaker Nuvalent for more than $9bn, in what would be the FTSE 100 company’s biggest acquisition in more than a decade.

The companies were locked in discussions late on Monday with the aim of agreeing a deal as soon as this week, according to people familiar with the matter. However, a deal was yet to be formally agreed and talks could still collapse because of last-minute hurdles, the people warned.

A potential deal could value Nuvalent at between $9bn and $10bn, the people said, a significant premium to its nearly $7bn market capitalisation at Monday’s close. GSK and Nuvalent did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The takeover talks come amid an upswing in biotech dealmaking. Nearly $211bn worth of deals were struck in the sector globally between the start of the year and early June, according to data tracker Dealogic, putting 2026 on track to be a banner year.

The move would be a bold bet by GSK chief executive Luke Miels, who took over the job from longtime boss Emma Walmsley at the start of the year, with ambitions to boost its drug pipeline and sales.

An acquisition of Nuvalent would rank as one of GSK’s biggest — second only to its asset swap with Novartis in 2014, in which it took over the Swiss drugmaker’s vaccines divisions in a deal valued at $20bn.

It would be a departure from GSK’s focus in recent years on small, bolt-on acquisitions rather than bigger transactions. Miels told investors earlier this year that he would pursue deals in the £2bn-£4bn range, which were “hiding in plain sight”.

Miels, who previously served as GSK’s chief commercial officer, was already behind the pharma group’s up to $2.1bn deal to buy food allergy drugmaker Rapt Therapeutics this February.

After languishing for years under Walmsley, GSK shares are up 26 per cent over the past year, giving it a market value of roughly £77.4bn at Monday’s close.

After offloading its oncology portfolio as part of the Novartis deal, GSK has re-entered the field through acquisitions in a bid to compete with larger cancer drugmakers such as Merck and Bristol Myers Squibb. The London-listed group views oncology as a potential growth engine as it eyes an ambitious revenue target of more than £40bn in sales by 2031.

Its recent oncology acquisitions have included its $1.9bn takeover of Sierra Oncology in 2022 and a deal to buy IDRx last year worth up to $1.1bn. GSK also struck a licensing deal with China’s Hengrui Pharma to develop 12 medicines across multiple specialisms including cancer.

Nuvalent, which is based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, is among the most coveted oncology biotechs. It is studying two targeted therapies — zidesamtinib and neladalkib — used to treat certain forms of non-small-cell lung cancer driven by various mutations in phase 3 trials.

The US Food and Drug Administration is set to make a decision about approving the drugs to treat patients who have already tried other treatments later this year. Analysts at Jefferies estimated Nuvalent’s wider pipeline, which includes medicines targeting several mutations that cause lung cancer, could yield $5bn to $7bn in peak sales.

However, at a recent cancer conference, Nuvalent faced a setback over the use of neladalkib as a frontline therapy, with early-stage clinical data causing its shares to fall. Shares in Nuvalent are up 16 per cent over the past year.

The Information : Goldman, JPMorgan Explore Trading Compute Futures as AI Financ

Goldman, JPMorgan Explore Trading Compute Futures as AI Financing Hedge

The Takeaway
  • Contracts could help lenders manage risks of GPU-backed financing
  • StoneX, DRW plan to trade compute futures once they launch
  • Crypto-focused trading firms FalconX, Wintermute are also interested

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are exploring ways to trade on the cost of computing power, according to people familiar with the matter. That includes trading futures contracts tied to rental prices for graphics processing units, among the scarcest resources of the AI boom, which exchanges plan to list later this year.

The discussions show how the hundreds of billions of dollars pouring into data centers and chips are reshaping financial markets. For banks financing the AI buildout, futures could provide a way to manage the risk of a compute glut down the road and help their clients hedge their own compute needs.

The banks’ exploration is still early and they may not move forward immediately, while the compute trading market is nascent and could face regulatory questions. But the idea is not entirely foreign to big banks, which already trade power and other commodities related to AI infrastructure. Compute trading could be a natural next step, some market participants say.

More broadly, firms including exchanges and data providers are racing to transform GPU rental pricing into a formal financial market. The goal is to make a major cost of AI infrastructure behave more like a commodity, with prices that can be tracked and hedged, as short-term costs swing and longer-term supply and demand remain difficult to match up.

“There is so much money flowing through it that everyone wants protection for themselves in a downside scenario,” said Warren Hosseinion, head of capital markets at Compute Labs, which is raising money to buy GPUs and rent them out on behalf of clients. “They’re incentivized to get this out in the quickest and most compliant manner possible.”

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan declined to comment.

Big traditional market operators CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange have both announced plans to offer contracts later this year, pending regulatory approval from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission.

The market is also drawing startups including Architect Financial Technologies, founded by former Jane Street, Citadel Securities and FTX.US executive Brett Harrison, which is building a compute futures exchange it plans to launch in the third quarter, also pending regulatory approval.

Compute futures would resemble existing commodity futures, letting AI companies that rent or sell GPU capacity bet on whether rental prices will rise or fall. Such futures will likely also attract speculators like hedge funds looking to wager on where the market is headed.

The exchanges developing compute contracts haven’t yet outlined exact contract lengths, though mature futures markets often offer trading on prices months ahead. The trades would be settled in cash, meaning traders pay or receive money based on where prices land, and no actual hardware capacity changes hands.

Beyond the exchanges, building an active market would also require brokers and trading firms. That would help clients trade the contracts and keep activity moving, a role some firms are already positioning themselves to play.

That includes Chicago-based trading firm DRW, which already has a team that trades spot compute, meaning access to servers for a period of time, and has agreed to be a trading partner for CME’s compute futures. DRW expects to be active in the futures market once it launches, betting that the increasing capital being spent to secure capacity is creating a new trading opportunity.

“As spending on compute continues to grow, market participants need better tools to manage risk, improve planning certainty and support long-term investment,” said Don Wilson, DRW’s founder and CEO.

Others are also preparing to bring customers into the market. StoneX, a brokerage that helps clients set up and clear futures contracts, said it plans to provide clients access to compute futures. Crypto prime broker FalconX and crypto trading firm Wintermute also said they plan to trade the contracts, reflecting the interest from firms already accustomed to volatile digital assets.

The plans of these firms have not been previously reported.

“We’ve seen interest from miners,” large companies that supply compute, as well as crypto-native funds interested in the speculative aspect, said Ravi Doshi, global co-head of markets at FalconX.

The compute futures could provide financial protection for a variety of firms involved in the AI buildout. Wall Street banks, for instance, may want protection against falling GPU rental prices or values, which could hurt the worth of their AI infrastructure loans, leases or related collateral. By taking a short futures position, a bank could make money if compute prices decline, helping offset losses elsewhere.

Meanwhile, regional banks, especially West Coast ones, have clients such as AI startups that don’t have enough GPU capacity currently. Those banks could buy futures to help their clients hedge, said Carmen Li, CEO of pricing data provider Silicon Data and GPU marketplace Compute Exchange. “We are heavily engaged with all the banks,” Li said, without commenting on any specific banks.

Cloud providers such as CoreWeave that rent GPU capacity may also have a use for the market. They face uncertainty over what they can charge when their existing contracts expire, and a short position could protect them if future rental prices fall.

Benchmarking Challenges

Still, the emerging compute market faces hurdles that could slow any broader rollout. For a futures market to take off, there typically needs to be a reliable price benchmark, which determines who pays what in settling contracts. And to make the contracts useful to compute renters or sellers, the benchmark needs to be a good approximation of real-world costs.

But compute pricing is inherently difficult to standardize. Rental rates can vary even for the same type of GPU, depending on hardware configurations, electricity costs and other factors, while major compute deals are often negotiated privately, making real-world pricing data hard to gather. To address that, exchanges are lining up independent data providers, with CME saying it will use Silicon Data, whereas Intercontinental Exchange plans to use data from Ornn.

That complexity also presents a potential regulatory hurdle—before exchanges can list compute futures, the CFTC is expected to examine factors including the reliability of benchmarks and whether there are enough safeguards to prevent traders from gaming the index, industry participants say. The CFTC didn’t respond to a request for comment.

While U.S. exchanges are still working through that process, similar products are already appearing in offshore markets. Prediction market Polymarket and crypto exchange Lighter have recently listed compute futures contracts. Polymarket, for example, allows users to bet on where rental prices for Nvidia H100 GPUs will be at the end of June, using Ornn’s index as the benchmark.

9to5 : The new Siri won’t be available on iPhones in the EU, due to Digital Mark

The brand new iOS 27 Siri AI experiences will not be coming to users in the European Union at the same time as everyone else. In a company press release that directly blames the Digital Markets Act, Apple says iPhone and iPad users in the EU will have to wait longer for Siri AI.

However, Siri AI will be launching on Mac, Apple Vision Pro and Apple Watch in the EU, as those platforms are not subject to the same gatekeeper requirements …

Impacted features include the new Siri, updated writing tools, Siri mode in the Camera app, and more.

As of right now, Apple does not have a timeline as to when it will be able to launch these features in the EU.

Siri AI necessitates deep access to user data and system functionality. The EU will not let Apple launch these features until it is possible for third-party AI providers to also offer similar functionality. While Apple can ensure that Siri handles user data in a privacy-preserving way, it cannot guarantee the same for other companies looking to integrate.

Apple says it has been negotiating with EU regulators over the last several months to try and find a solution, but to no avail. The company says it even developed a new layer called ‘Trusted System Agent’ to coordinate access to such sensitive data, but the EU rejected the proposals.

As such, it is currently at an impasse. Here’s what Apple SVP Craig Federighi said on the matter:
“We’re deeply disappointed that our EU users won’t have Siri AI on iPhone or iPad when we share our new software releases later this year,” said Craig Federighi, Apple’s senior vice president of Software Engineering. “Our hope is to eventually bring Siri AI to the EU, and we will continue to engage with EU regulators on a path forward. However, their refusal to engage constructively on solutions that preserve privacy and security means we do not currently have a timeline for Siri AI’s availability on iOS and iPadOS in the EU.”

Hopefully, the dispute can be resolved over the coming months and EU customers will get access to the same cool new Siri features that the rest of the world will enjoy.

WSJ : The 24-Year-Old AI Wiz Who Counts Jane Street as an Investor

The 24-Year-Old AI Wiz Who Counts Jane Street as an Investor
Leopold Aschenbrenner has attracted a cult following online, with fans dissecting his every move

  • Leopold Aschenbrenner’s AI-focused hedge fund, Situational Awareness, has grown to over $20 billion in assets under management.
  • Situational Awareness gained about 270% after fees this year through May and is up over 1,000% after fees since inception.
  • Jane Street, a quant-trading firm, is an investor in Situational Awareness and has co-invested in AI startups MatX and Fluidstack.

Leopold Aschenbrenner’s forecasts about the future of artificial intelligence earned him a cult following on the internet, where his investment firm’s routine regulatory filings are studied like scripture.

The parabolic performance of his hedge fund has given the 24-year-old Aschenbrenner a fan club on Wall Street, too.

Aschenbrenner had no professional investing experience when he launched his AI-focused firm, Situational Awareness, less than two years ago, with a few hundred million dollars.

Prescient stock picks and whooshes of inflows have vaulted its assets under management to more than $20 billion, according to people familiar with the matter, approaching the size of Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square and Dan Loeb’s Third Point.

Situational Awareness has gained about 270% after fees this year through May and is up more than 1,000% after fees since inception, one of the people said. One of the fund’s most successful bets is a stake in Anthropic that today accounts for about one-fifth of its assets, the person said.

Its investors now include Jane Street, the savvy quant-trading firm that ranks among Wall Street’s most profitable, some of the people said. Jane Street’s investment in Situational Awareness is particularly notable because the firm rarely allocates capital to outside money managers.

In each market mania, new celebrity stock pickers get anointed, from Ryan Jacob and his Internet Fund during the dot-com era to Cathie Wood and her ARK Innovation ETF during the pandemic rally of 2020. No portfolio manager picking the winners from AI’s advances across the economy gets attention quite like Aschenbrenner, despite the fact that he eschews public appearances and rarely posts on X.

Like other investors managing at least $100 million, Situational Awareness is required to file once-a-quarter snapshots, with a lag, of its portfolio of long positions in U.S. stocks and options. Aschenbrenner’s filings are treated as blockbuster events on social media, with devotees counting down the days until the next release. Autopilot, the trading app attached to the viral Nancy Pelosi stock tracker, rolled out an option that lets users copy Aschenbrenner’s disclosed trades in March.

News in May that Situational Awareness took a stake in T1 Energy helped send shares in the solar manufacturer up 23% in a day when it recorded its second-highest trading volume ever. TBPN, the hit tech-industry talk show, opened its May 18 episode with a roughly two-minute discussion on the verdict in the Elon Musk-OpenAI trial, followed by a conversation on Situational Awareness’s latest disclosure over five times longer. (News Corp, owner of The Wall Street Journal, has a content-licensing partnership with OpenAI.)

“We have not seen this level of attention on a hedge fund’s filings in a very long time,” said TBPN co-host John Coogan.

The commentary about Aschenbrenner can sound breathless. Podcaster Tim Ferriss called him the “Nostradamus of AI” and “as close to clairvoyant as you could possibly be” for his hit rate on AI predictions. A temporary panic flared up in May when many observers misread options activity on a filing and concluded Aschenbrenner turned bearish. “The Best AI Investor Just Shorted the Entire Market” is how one podcast put it in the title of an episode that racked up over 100,000 views on YouTube.

A native of Germany, Aschenbrenner graduated from Columbia University as the 2021 class valedictorian and briefly worked as a researcher at OpenAI. He rose to prominence with a 2024 essay, called “Situational Awareness: The Decade Ahead,” that foresaw the path of AI’s development by “counting the OOMs,” or the orders of magnitude by which computing power, algorithmic efficiencies and model fixes are expected to improve each year. Michael Dell, Ivanka Trump and many others shared the 165-page paper with their online followers.

Later that year, Aschenbrenner launched his hedge-fund firm, which he described as a “brain trust on AI,” with Carl Shulman, another AI intellectual who once worked at Peter Thiel’s macro hedge fund. Early backers included Stripe co-founders Patrick and John Collison, as well as Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman, who are both currently helping lead Meta Platform’s AI efforts.

Situational Awareness lost money in early 2025 after the release of a low-cost AI model from Chinese startup DeepSeek prompted a selloff in Nvidia and other AI-adjacent stocks. It quickly recovered when demand for AI tools accelerated and sparked a rally in chip makers, manufacturers of power equipment and other providers of AI infrastructure. Situational Awareness ended 2025 up about 200%, one of the people said.

Hedge funds’ U.S. regulatory disclosures omit foreign stocks and ownership of private companies, categories that include some of Situational Awareness’s most profitable positions including Anthropic. It first invested in SK Hynix in November 2024, riding the run-up in Korean memory-chip maker over the past year that placed it into the trillion-dollar club. (The stock has given back some gains in recent days.)

The firm first invested in Anthropic in a February 2025 funding round that valued it at $61.5 billion. Now, Anthropic is valued at $965 billion.

Jane Street has invested alongside Situational Awareness in venture deals in addition to allocating to its hedge fund. The two firms were the lead investors in a February round for MatX, an upstart AI chip maker, and are investing in a new round for Fluidstack, a provider of AI cloud computing.

As Aschenbrenner’s firm expanded, it added more senior Wall Street veterans to its ranks of young AI researchers. Niki Webster, who spent nearly a decade at Goldman’s prime-brokerage division, is now the firm’s head of investor relations. Sven Khatri, who did stints at Citadel and Goldman, recently joined to head treasury strategy.