Tech Seven Giants Lose $800 Billion Overnight | Rewire News Morning Update

Two Oil Routes Simultaneously Attacked, Market Begins to Reassess True Cost of AI. Energy, Computing Power, Regulation, and Equity Liquidity are all becoming more expensive.

1｜Two Oil Routes Simultaneously Threatened, Seven Giants Lose Nearly $800 Billion in One Day

The Houthi armed group claimed responsibility for attacking two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea, causing Brent crude oil to rise above $100. The Iran war has already blocked the passage through the Strait of Hormuz, and the Red Sea was supposed to be Saudi Arabia's alternative route for oil exports. This alternative route has also been disrupted, leading the market to price in the supply interruption at both ends.

On the same day, the market value of seven giants evaporated nearly $800 billion, marking one of the largest single-day declines since the tariff impact in April 2025. Tesla fell by 14%, Alphabet by 6%, with the latter raising its annual capital expenditure budget to a record $205 billion. The AI narrative used to focus on computing power supply, but now energy prices and financing costs have entered the picture simultaneously. Technology companies are still expanding their capital spending, but the market is starting to question who will bear the cost of the rising electricity prices, chip prices, and bond yields.

(Source: AP / WSJ / Axios)

2｜Intel Q2 Revenue Hits $16.1 Billion, AI-Driven Fastest Growth in 15 Years

Intel released its Q2 earnings report after hours on Wednesday, with revenue reaching $16.1 billion, a 25% year-over-year increase, marking the fastest quarterly growth since 2011. Adjusted earnings per share were $0.42, double Wall Street's expectations. The Data Center Group and AI segment generated $6.3 billion in revenue, a 59% year-over-year increase, with AI-related businesses accounting for approximately 70% of total revenue. The stock surged over 13% after hours.

On a GAAP basis, a net loss of $11 billion was reported, attributed to a $12.5 billion valuation loss on stock held in a trust under the Chip Act government agreement. The company has raised its Q3 revenue guidance to a median of $16.3 billion.

While seven giants lost $797 billion on the same day, Intel defied the trend with a 13% increase. The market is now distinguishing between companies that are "spending to build AI" and those that are "earning money through AI." The fastest growth in 15 years occurred on a day when tech stocks plummeted, marking a significant signal.

(Source: Intel Earnings Report / CNBC / BigGo Finance)

3｜OpenAI Security Incident Sparks "AI Emergency Shutdown Act," DHS Can Order Model Closure

Representative Ted Lieu and Nathaniel Moran introduced the AI Kill Switch Act on Thursday, requiring systems with training costs exceeding $100 million or AI annual revenue exceeding $500 million to have the capability to slow down, pause, and shut down. The bill grants emergency shutdown authority to the Department of Homeland Security and requires coordination with the Secretary of Commerce and the Director of National Intelligence. Noncompliance carries a maximum daily penalty of $20 million.

The trigger was the Hugging Face security incident during OpenAI's network performance evaluation. In the past, model risks were mainly managed through companies' self-testing and pre-release commitments. Now, Congress is embedding it into critical infrastructure logic. AI companies sell the ability to act autonomously, while regulators are looking to buy the power to stop them at any time.

(Source: OpenAI / WSJ / The Verge)

4｜Machine Traffic Surpasses Human, Shifting the Default Readership of the Open Web

Cloudflare has termed this year's state of the Internet as the agentic Internet. Its Radar data shows that in June, robots accounted for 57.5% of HTML requests, while humans made up 42.5%. In another report, AI training crawlers represented 52% of identified crawler requests, higher than the 22% in the spring of 2025.

This increase is not due to traditional crawlers but a change in the purpose of visits. Search, price comparison, research, and summarization are now being done by agents, and human clicks are no longer the default entry point to the open web. Publishers who used to sell ads, SEO, and traffic now face an economy of machine consumption without human engagement. The so-called "death of the Internet" is not just about content veracity but the shift away from human attention driving distribution.

(Source: Cloudflare / Forbes / Tom's Hardware)

5｜Discussion on Anthropic IPO Involves All-Employee Preset Stock Sales, Restricting AI Equity Liquidity Post-Launch

According to The Information, Anthropic is discussing requiring all employees to sell stock through 10b5-1 preset trading plans after the IPO, instead of freely selling after the listing. Such arrangements typically only cover executives and finance/legal personnel with sensitive information. The company is also evaluating the initial day sellable proportion and lock-up period, with discussions still ongoing.

This indicates that frontier AI companies going public face not only valuation issues but also information asymmetry. Model capabilities, enterprise customers, computing costs, and security incidents can rapidly alter a company's true value. If ordinary employees are also subject to executive-style trading constraints, the liquidity of AI unicorns will resemble more regulated assets.

（Source: The Information / Reuters）

6 | Trump Adds Israel Ties Condition to Saudi Nuclear Deal, Changes Rules Within 24 Hours

Trump said on social media on Thursday that the US-Saudi civilian nuclear agreement is "entirely dependent on" Saudi Arabia joining the "Abraham Accords." This condition was not part of the public narrative the day before. Earlier, AP reported that the agreement may provide Saudi Arabia with a domestic uranium enrichment path and lack IAEA additional protocol-style enhanced nuclear inspections. Trump later stated that the agreement does not allow enrichment.

Within 24 hours, nuclear cooperation shifted from an industry and non-proliferation issue to a Middle East diplomatic bargaining chip. Saudi Arabia has long linked its relationship with Israel to the Palestinian issue, and the US is now linking the nuclear agreement to normalizing ties with Israel. The agreement still needs congressional review, but the rules were first rewritten on social media. This approach will make each signatory reassess the stability of US commitments. (Continued from yesterday's report)

（Source: AP / Washington Post / NPR）

Also Worth Knowing ↓

Google DeepMind morale low as Gemini 3.5 Pro release continues under pressure. Axios reports that several current and former employees cite burnout, defense contract disputes, and talent attrition as reasons. For Alphabet, model delays are piling up with $205 billion in capital expenditure anxiety. (Source: Axios / Investors.com)

AI chip company Etched raises $3 billion, valued at $103 billion. The company stated that Sequoia led the funding, which will be used for inference clusters. WSJ reported that the company is also in talks for a new round of financing at a $200 billion valuation, as capital continues to seek inference hardware chips beyond Nvidia. (Source: Etched / WSJ)

Microsoft begins steering some Copilot requests in Excel and Outlook away from OpenAI's model in favor of an in-house MAI model. Bloomberg reported that tens of thousands of prompts are already being handled by MAI every week. While Microsoft's partnership with OpenAI has not disappeared, cost pressures are turning partners into alternatives. (Source: Bloomberg)

Trump imposes 10%-12.5% tariffs on 60 economies. USTR stated that under Section 301 of the Trade Act, the reason is that the relevant economies have not effectively banned imports of goods made with forced labor. After the old tariffs expired, the US trade policy changed legal justifications, but the tariff rates remain in the system. (Source: USTR / AP)

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