Pre-market news roundup for US stocks: Anthropic plans to go public in September or early October, while Intel has expanded its stock offering fundraising scale to $20 billion.

According to a report from The Information, AI infrastructure startup Trajectory has closed a $40 million funding round, with a post-money valuation of $300 million. Sequoia Capital participated in the investment, while the specific funding round details and other investors remain undisclosed. Founded by former researchers from tech firms including Google and Apple, Trajectory specializes in helping enterprises customize open-source AI models for specific business needs, and optimizing the software toolchains that power AI Agent operations (dubbed "Agent Harness"). As the cost of using closed-source large models continues to rise, more enterprises are turning to alternatives: on one hand, reducing costs by fine-tuning and customizing open-source models; on the other, improving Agent execution frameworks to enable AI models to call tools and complete tasks more efficiently. This trend is fueling a new wave of startups focused on model adaptation and Agent infrastructure. Trajectory aims to address key challenges enterprises face when deploying AI Agents, including model performance optimization, task execution reliability, and adaptation to enterprise use cases. The company hopes to help businesses build more efficient, low-cost AI applications by offering model customization and Agent runtime infrastructure.

According to its official announcement, Bitget has released the *Statement on Improving Market Mechanisms and Maintaining Fair Trading*, announcing it will advance efforts to enhance market fairness in three key areas: 1. Establish an abnormal profit disposal and feedback mechanism: Profits generated from violations or mechanism abuse will be disposed of, with the proceeds not counted as platform revenue and earmarked for user protection. 2. Raise risk standards for new listings and existing assets, conduct dynamic monitoring of existing assets based on indicators including liquidity, depth, and volatility, and implement management measures for assets that fail to meet the standards. 3. Continuously optimize underlying mechanisms, with a focus on improving the stability of mark price pricing and dynamic risk control capabilities under extreme market conditions. The above optimization work will be rolled out in phases. For adjustments to specific trading rules or product mechanisms, the platform will issue separate notifications via official channels. Bitget emphasized that trust is rooted in adherence to rules, and it will continue to maintain a fair and orderly trading environment through mechanism optimization and transparent initiatives.

Manus has announced that the company is set to resume independent operations. To complete this transition and meet regulatory requirements in certain jurisdictions, affected users must back up their data by 7:59 AM Singapore time on August 23, and begin data recovery starting at 8:00 AM on August 25 to ensure continued normal use. Manus noted that it will notify affected users via email and in-app alerts; users who registered with Apple ID or Facebook accounts should pay close attention to in-app notifications. Affected users can back up their data multiple times before August 23, and may continue creating new data after their first backup, then perform subsequent backups. Starting at 8:00 AM on August 25, the data recovery portal will officially open, and users can resume using their previous data once the recovery is complete. During the transition period, affected users will incur no fees, and Manus will also offer rewards. For users not affected by this adjustment, no action is required—they can continue using Manus as normal, and the system will confirm their accounts are unaffected via in-app notifications. Manus stated that it understands the adjustment may cause inconvenience to affected users, and has provided detailed operation guides in its Help Center, while its customer service team will offer 24/7 support. The company added that it is preparing a series of new features designed to further expand the capabilities of its general-purpose AI agents, and expressed full confidence in its development prospects following the resumption of independent operations.

US President Trump said: "If we do not take action against Iran, it will acquire nuclear weapons. Therefore, this war is aimed at preventing Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons. However, I am frustrated with Iran’s negotiating style: the Iranians always play tricks, agreeing at the negotiating table then turning around and rejecting through the media. Iran’s economy is in chaos." When discussing oil prices, Trump stated: "Oil prices are lower than they were during Biden’s administration."

According to Fortune, River Markets announced Tuesday that it closed an $8.5 million seed round in July, led by Haun Ventures, with participation from Y Combinator, Coinbase Ventures, and other investors including Qube Research Technologies, plus angel investors from Google, NVIDIA, Novig, JPMorgan, and Citadel. The founder declined to disclose the company’s valuation for the round. The River Markets founder noted that to meet institutional demand for prediction markets at scale, the firm needs technology enabling institutions to trade across platforms and process larger orders. Since launching in May, the company has provided institutions with related software, data connectivity, and risk management tools, with its algorithm designed to mitigate price volatility from large trades. It projects the platform’s annualized trading volume will exceed hundreds of millions of dollars by the end of this year.

According to Bloomberg, Intercontinental Exchange Inc. (ICE) has begun issuing U.S. investment-grade corporate bonds, two weeks after announcing its $6 billion acquisition of MarketAxess Holdings Inc. The offering, launched on Tuesday, is split into up to five tranches with maturities ranging from three to 10 years, according to a person familiar with the matter. The person asked to remain anonymous as they are not authorized to discuss the matter publicly, adding that the initial price guidance for the longest-dated tranche is about 1.15 percentage points above U.S. Treasury yields.