The powerful duo of U.S. President Donald Trump and multi-billionaire Elon Musk is going through a breakup phase. The once cooperative relationship, backing each other, has dramatically deteriorated in the last few weeks. Now Musk has turned his threats into reality and even launched a political party, ‘America Party.’ Although the chaos is severe, experts
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XRP has gained by around 9.6% year-to-date, as it trades at $2.27 today, July 7. During the same period, the RLUSD stablecoin has recorded a massive increase of more than 815% in its market capitalization. Following this growth, RLUSD has not only outperformed Tether’s USDT, but it is also on a trajectory to a $1
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Strategy, previously MicroStrategy, has revealed that it didn’t make any BTC purchase last week, pausing its Bitcoin accumulation after 12 consecutive weeks. The company also reported a Q2 unrealized gain on its BTC investment. Amid this development, the MSTR stock is down in premarket trading, having dropped from its last week’s close of $404. Strategy
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The release of Pi Network App Studio has drawn mixed reactions from the community. This platform enables users to create and monetize Web3 apps using Pi easily. However, many community members are disappointed because the project is still lacking advanced features. Pi Network Studio Beta Faces Backlash From Community Some pioneers are voicing frustration over
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Chinese chain Luckin Coffee opened its first two U.S. locations this week, betting that mobile-only ordering and creative flavors can lure customers away from Starbucks.
Both new Luckin stores are based in Manhattan, and at the midtown location on Wednesday, Sam Liu took a sip of her jasmine cold brew.
“I’ve never tried anything like it,” she said.
I thought I just order at the counter, but I realized everyone was standing around looking at their phone.
Luckin Customer Sam Liu, New York City
Liu said she’d hoped for more seating — the small shop has only three tables — and was initially confused by Luckin’s in-app ordering system, which means customers can’t order directly from a barista.
“I thought I just order at the counter, but I realized everyone was standing around looking at their phone,” Liu said.
Luckin is China’s largest coffee chain, with more than twice as many locations as Starbucks there. Its two New York City stores are its first foray outside Asia, where it has over 24,000 locations across the region. By comparison, there are over 17,000 Starbucks in the United States.
Its CEO, Guo Jinyi, called the U.S. “a strategically important market” for the company’s expansion in a press release heralding the two new locations Wednesday. “We are excited to introduce a diverse and unique coffee experience to American consumers.”
The company, which didn’t respond to a request for comment, has touted its ambitions to expand globally but hasn’t publicly detailed its next moves in the U.S. or other markets.
The chain has gained success overseas through creative drinks like alcohol-infused coffees and fruit lattes, along with its smartphone-centric ordering model. The app-based approach makes it easier to track inventory, send personalized appeals to consumers and serve drinks quickly, said John Zolidis, an analyst who tracks Luckin and Starbucks at the brokerage firm he founded, Quo Vadis Capital.
“Luckin was able to develop an incredible muscle with regard to product innovation, and they have been very creative in China,” he said.
Zolidis said how Luckin fares on Starbucks’ home turf will depend on its ability to differentiate its menu from other major U.S. coffee chains and smaller, independent cafes. Its American lineup already includes distinctive drinks like blood orange cold brew and coconut lattes.
“These orange drinks, or one of their most successful, a coconut cloud latte — that’s how you get trial [customers] from the U.S.,” Zolidis said.
Luckin faced financial troubles during the pandemic. It was delisted from Nasdaq in 2020 after its stock plunged following an internal investigation that found an executive had falsified revenue reports. The company filed for bankruptcy in the U.S. the following year but emerged from proceedings in 2022 and its sales have soared since, reaching $4.7 billion worldwide in fiscal year 2024, a 38.4% increase from 2023.
Luckin was able to develop an incredible muscle with regard to product innovation, and they have been very creative in China.
John Zolidis, Founder, Quo Vadis Capital
Starbucks, by contrast, is struggling in both the U.S. and China. Its same-store sales in the U.S. declined 2% and its sales in China 8% in fiscal year 2024, and it reported in April that its quarterly profit was half of what it pulled in for the same period last year. The Seattle-based chain is reportedly looking to partially sell its business in China while revamping its U.S. strategy to focus on customer experience and human connection, in contrast with Luckin’s model.
“We veered away from, I think, owning the idea of the ‘third place,’ the coffeehouse experience, making sure that the customer was front and center,” Starbucks CEO Brian Niccol told NBC News in June.
A Starbucks spokesperson declined to comment.
Zolidis said that whereas Starbucks aims in both the U.S. and China to appeal to customers looking for higher-end coffee served in an inviting setting, Luckin has successfully positioned itself as the “everyman’s coffee” in China, with low prices and small, grab-and-go storefronts.
After taking the train in from Hoboken, New Jersey, to check out the new one in midtown, Samantha Coy said the trip was worth it. She had enjoyed Luckin in China previously and was eager to order one of its fruit drinks.
“I’m surprised Starbucks hasn’t tried to bring that over to the U.S.,” Coy said. “I hope they stay open.”
Zolidis said he thinks Luckin is well-positioned to gain a foothold in America.
“They’ve been able to operate and grow incredibly quickly in the Chinese market, much faster than I would have thought possible, and they’ve been able to sustain it and develop a strong financial model so they can fund their expansion in the U.S.,” Zolidis said. “They wouldn’t be coming here to try it if they didn’t think they had a shot of owning part of the market.”
The stock markets had a dynamic start to the third quarter, pushing indices to new highs after earlier tariff concerns.
On Monday (June 30), markets generally saw strong gains, with the S&P 500 (INDEXSP:INX) and Nasdaq Composite (INDEXNASDAQ:.IXIC) reaching new record highs in the US while the S&P/TSX Composite Index (INDEXTSI:OSPTX) climbed higher after a last-minute policy reversal to rescind a planned digital services tax targeting US tech firms.
Tuesday (July 1), Canadian markets were closed for Canada Day. As for US markets, following two consecutive days of highs, the S&P and Nasdaq declined on Tuesday (July 1) after a renewed feud between Tesla (NASDAQ:TSLA) CEO Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump sent Tesla shares down by over 5 percent.
However, tech stocks boosted the performance of both Canadian and US markets on Wednesday (July 2) and Thursday (July 3) after export restrictions to China were lifted and the US labor market reported better-than-expected unemployment data.
US markets were closed on Friday (July 4) for a holiday, while Canadian markets ended the day slightly positive.
Last weekend, reports surfaced that Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) has hired four additional researchers from OpenAI, bringing the total number of high-profile AI talent poached from other tech labs to 13, according to a tweet from former Scale AI CEO Alexandr Wang, who was recently recruited as Meta’s Chief AI Officer.
Then, in an internal memo to employees on Monday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg unveiled the company was restructuring its AI division under the name Meta Superintelligence Labs. According to the memo, which was reviewed by Bloomberg, the new division will be led by Wang and one of its commitments is ‘developing AI ‘superintelligence’ or systems that can complete tasks as well as or even better than humans.’
Meta has reportedly offered researchers contracts and signing bonuses worth up to US$100 million; however, Chief Technology Officer Andrew Bosworth has pushed back on those reports, claiming the figures are inflated.
Helen Toner, a former OpenAI board member and director of strategy at Georgetown’s Center for Security and Emerging Technology, told Bloomberg TV’s Haslinda Amin on Thursday that Meta’s bid to become an AI leader would be “difficult” considering its track record of internal dysfunction and questions around the return on its massive talent spending.
“Meta has started to get a reputation of having a little bit of a dysfunctional AI team, not really having its organizational structure set up in a way that really lets them succeed and innovate. And what I think we’re seeing here is CEO Mark Zuckerberg really stepping in and saying, well, we have to do something differently. We need a big new push, we need a big new effort,’ she said.
‘I think (Meta is) really trying to start something new, to pour enormous amounts of financial resources into that. So the question (to watch) is six months from now, 12 months from now, is that paying off for them?’
Apple (NASDAQ:AAPL) is reportedly in active discussions with Anthropic and OpenAI to integrate their foundation models into an overhauled version of its voice assistant Siri, a significant pivot from the company’s in-house approach to AI. According to people familiar with the discussions who spoke to Bloomberg, Apple has asked both companies to train versions of their models that could be tested on Apple’s infrastructure, the publication reported Monday.
Apple announced plans to release a new version of its voice assistant at its Worldwide Developers Conference in 2024. The release was slated for 2026, but the company has run into multiple engineering snags and delays, and ultimately replaced John Giannandrea with Mike Rockwell as the new Siri chief executive.
Rockwell and software engineering head Craig Federighi launched an evaluation, instructing staff to assess Siri’s performance using third-party tech, including Anthropic’s Claude, OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Alphabet’s (NASDAQ:GOOGL) Gemini.
According to Bloomberg’s sources, the team found Anthropic’s technology most promising for Siri, leading Apple’s vice president of corporate development to open discussions with Anthropic.
Bloomberg’s sources maintain that the development of an in-house model is still active, and Apple hasn’t made a final decision on using third-party models.
Apple shares closed up 6.24 percent for the week.
Apple’s share price performance, June 30 to July 3, 2025.
OpenAI will rent roughly 4.5 gigawatts of computing power from Oracle (NYSE:ORCL) as part of the Stargate Project, according to sources for Bloomberg. The news follows a US$30 billion single cloud deal announced on Monday with an unnamed customer.
The Stargate energy deal is reportedly a component of that larger contract.
Sources added that Oracle will develop multiple data centers in the US, considering sites in Texas, Michigan, Wisconsin and Wyoming, and that the company will expand its recently built center in Abilene, Texas, to accommodate about two gigawatts of power capacity.
This collaboration underscores the escalating demand for high-performance computing necessary to train and operate advanced AI models. OpenAI, a leader in AI research and development, requires immense computational resources to fuel its projects, including large language models and other sophisticated AI applications.
The Stargate initiative positions Oracle as a crucial enabler of this next generation of AI innovation, solidifying its role in the evolving cloud and AI ecosystem. The long-term implications of this partnership could see a significant shift in how AI companies acquire and manage their computational infrastructure, potentially paving the way for more dedicated and extensive cloud partnerships in the future.
Oracle’s share price performance, July 1 to July 3, 2025.
CoreWeave (NASDAQ:CRWV) said it has received the first AI server system built around NVIDIA’s (NASDAQ:NVDA) ultra-powerful GB300 Grace Blackwell AI chip.
The server is deployed within Dell’s (NYSE:DELL) integrated rack-scale system — a turnkey AI infrastructure platform combining compute, networking and cooling — and features 72 of Nvidia’s GB200 chips.
CoreWeave said it will install the cutting-edge hardware in the US and roll out more servers over time. The company will offer the server as part of its AI cloud platform, allowing clients like OpenAI to train and deploy massive, next-generation AI models with faster speeds and greater efficiency.
In the announcement, CoreWeave claimed the NVIDIA GB300 NVL72 significantly boosts AI reasoning performance, offering a 10 times improvement in user responsiveness and five times better throughput per watt than the Hopper server. This translates to an increase of fifty times in reasoning model inference output, enabling faster, more complex AI models.
License requirements for design software sales in China were lifted this week as part of a trade deal between the US and China.
On July 2, the US Commerce Department told Synopsys (NASDAQ:SNPS), Cadence Design Systems (NASDAQ:CDNS) and Siemens (XETR:SIE), three of the world’s leading design software providers, that they would no longer need to seek government licenses to conduct business in China.
Official announcements from the companies confirmed they would be resuming business with Chinese counterparts, sending each of their stock prices up between 3 and 6 percent.
The US government restricted sales of electronic design automation (EDA) tools to China in late May as a response to China’s decision to limit shipments of essential rare earth minerals. Last week, the two countries reached a trade agreement that would re-allow shipments of EDA software after Beijing speeds up approvals of critical mineral exports to the US.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.
With the Satoshi-era Bitcoin whale waking up after 14 years of dormancy and moving over 80,000 Bitcoins worth $8 billion, speculation is ripe that Bitcoin evangelist Roger Ver is behind these transfers. Market speculators also believe that the whale is active once again following his recent release from prison. Amid this massive whale moment, BTC
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Rich Dad Poor Dad author Robert Kiyosaki has a message for market speculators predicting a Bitcoin crash. His message came as bulls have struggled to drive the BTC price past the $109,500 resistance, with traders showing little interest at this point. Furthermore, expectations of a BTC crash to $90,000 are on the rise. Robert Kiyosaki
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Crypto regulations are coming to the US House of Representatives in two weeks. The goal is to finally provide legal clarity for digital assets and blockchain-based payments in the United States. Congressman Says Key Crypto Regulations Will Clarify Digital Assets and Stablecoin Oversight While speaking during a recent Fox News interview, shared on X, Congressman
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Indian users of Bybit will now pay GST (Goods and Services Tax) on a range of cryptocurrency transactions. Bybit’s announcement complies with India’s crypto tax rules as the international exchange seeks to deepen its ties in the country. Bybit Imposed 18% GST Burden On Users According to an official announcement, cryptocurrency exchange Bybit says Indian
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