Iran announces that a temporary route understanding has been reached for the Strait of Hormuz, which is limited to merchant vessels only.

According to Bitget market data, South Korea’s KOSPI index opened 0.53% higher. Samsung Electronics rose 1.36%, and SK Hynix gained 1.32%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 index opened down 342.29 points, a 0.52% decline.

Sources from Pakistan’s military and Iran’s security services told Russia’s Sputnik News that the United States and Iran have reached a consensus on ceasefire agreement terms, including freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. The sources stated: “A consensus has been reached on the ceasefire agreement, which includes a clause on freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz.” The two sides are expected to make relevant announcements in the coming days. Per the Islamabad Memorandum, negotiations and a round of technical meetings will be initiated.

According to Nikkei News, Japan is preparing to build a blockchain-based payment infrastructure to enable instant settlement for stock and Japanese government bond transactions. The Financial Services Agency (FSA), Ministry of Finance, Bank of Japan, and relevant financial institutions will launch a research group this summer, with the development plan to be finalized as early as early 2027. The plan will cover blockchain design, division of responsibilities among institutions, and a future roadmap. If formally approved, the system is expected to be built within a few years, go operational as early as the early 2030s, and may further expand to cross-border remittance services. Currently, cash settlement for Japanese stock transactions takes two days after execution, while government bond transactions settle the next day. The real-time settlement system will eliminate the time gap between transactions and fund settlement, allowing investors to reinvest proceeds almost immediately after selling their assets.

According to BIT (bit.com) market data, US stocks closed higher: the Dow Jones Industrial Average rose 0.3%, the S&P 500 gained 0.32%, and the Nasdaq climbed 0.66%. Nvidia snapped its seven-day losing streak, surging over 2%. Sectors including storage, optical communications, and cryptocurrencies rallied. For the storage and semiconductor sectors: Intel (INTC) rose 0.25%; Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) jumped 4.91%; Micron Technology (MU) gained 2.48%; SanDisk (SNDK) fell 0.83%; Seagate Technology (STX) climbed 3.4%; Western Digital (WDC) rose 3.53%; SK Hynix ADR advanced 2.68%. The optical communications sector: Lumentum (LITE) surged over 6%; Applied Optoelectronics (AAOI) jumped more than 5%; Coherent (COHR) gained over 4%. Crypto-related stocks: Circle (CRCL) rose over 4%; Coinbase (COIN) climbed more than 4%; Strategy advanced over 3%.

Beating AI Insight News Brief: OpenAI has released the first batch of test data for its first custom inference chip Jalape?o, claiming its performance surpasses NVIDIA’s GB300. The chip has reached the Pareto optimal frontier across three publicly available external models: GPT-OSS 120B, DeepSeek R1 670B, and Kimi K2.5 1T. Compared to current best commercial systems, Jalape?o’s peak AI output per watt is 1.5 to 1.9 times higher, end-to-end latency is 1.7 to 3.6 times lower, and its advantage expands to 2.1 to 4.1 times in high-interaction agent scenarios. Jalape?o has a rated power of 700 watts, with measured continuous power not exceeding 550 watts. OpenAI emphasized that under agent workloads, real costs should be measured by "AI workload completed per unit of power consumption" rather than individual chip performance. Jalape?o took only 9 months from design to tape-out, with AI deeply involved in circuit optimization and verification. Leveraging Codex and GPT-Astra, the team optimized three open-weight models not originally planned for the project to high performance in just two months; AI-generated implementations of some modules were 1.5 to 1.8 times faster than human-written ones. OpenAI plans to deploy Jalape?o to its own computing infrastructure by the end of the year, while continuing to use external accelerators like NVIDIA at scale. This is the first generation in a multi-generation chip roadmap; Gen 2 is already in deep development, and Gen 3 is taking shape.

After Canadian Prime Minister Carney announced reciprocal retaliatory measures against the new tariffs imposed by the U.S., the Trump administration is discussing additional trade sanctions on Canada. A White House official disclosed that the U.S.’s further escalation measures targeting its northern neighbor could include tariff hikes and other trade actions, with the U.S. government expected to respond to Canada’s latest moves. The official pointed out that President Trump has a range of tools to resolve this dispute if U.S.-Canada trade negotiations collapse. Canada announced yesterday that it will levy tariffs of 15% to 50% on roughly $20 billion worth of U.S. goods, and will raise tariffs on U.S. steel products from 25% to 50%. The Canadian government said that starting September 8, it will impose retaliatory tariffs of 15%, 25% or 50% on around 700 products.