Micron's revenue quintupled. AI memory is the trade now
Micron posted $54.23 billion in quarterly revenue, the clearest sign yet that AI spending is turning into hardware profit rather than just hardware demand.
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Micron's quarter is the clearest proof yet that AI profits flow to hardware
Micron just posted $54.23 billion in quarterly revenue against $11.32 billion a year ago, a 379% jump that turned into $37.70 billion of GAAP net income, up from $3.2 billion, according to the company's earnings release. Gross margins hit 87%, a record for a memory maker, because AI data centres are eating high-bandwidth memory faster than Micron, Samsung or SK Hynix can build it. Adjusted earnings of $33.42 a share beat every analyst estimate on the board. Chipmakers get the headlines, but this quarter shows the fattest margins in the AI buildout are landing with the people who make the memory the GPUs sit next to. The risk is the one memory always carries: tight supply invites a capacity race, and capacity races end in gluts.
Google's best model is too dangerous for you to use yet
Gemini 4 Argon is only going to vetted cybersecurity partners in Google's Fairwind Program, stripped of the usual guardrails so defenders get the full offensive capability, as Google's own announcement makes clear. That's the tell on where this generation of models is heading: good enough at finding and patching vulnerabilities that Google won't let the public near it yet. Pricing undercuts the market hard, at $2 per million input tokens and $10 per million output tokens during the introductory period, roughly half what rivals charge, according to Google's pricing page. Google says Argon beat OpenAI's GPT-6 Astra on several coding and knowledge benchmarks, a claim nobody outside Mountain View has verified. Enterprise and paid-API customers get access before the general public, with no firm date attached.
A Flydubai pilot stabbed his colleague mid-flight. Passengers landed the plane
Flight FZ1073 from Dubai to Tel Aviv dropped more than 14,000 feet in under 30 seconds after one pilot allegedly attacked the other with a blade, according to Bloomberg's reconstruction of the cockpit fight. Captain Smit Machchhar, an Indian national, was stabbed but fought back, opened the cockpit door and helped passengers overpower the attacker. Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu said the pilot appeared intent on crashing the aircraft and killing everyone aboard. The plane diverted to Tabuk in Saudi Arabia; Israeli officials later said this was not being treated as a hijacking, since control was restored by qualified pilots travelling as passengers, per Reuters. No one died. Every airline running routes near Israel just got a live case study in what happens when the threat is already inside the cockpit door.
Dozens of Iranian tankers are stuck in Asian waters with nowhere to unload
US Central Command says it has directed 84 commercial vessels to turn around since the blockade began, disabling three and boarding two, according to figures cited by Reuters. More than a dozen tankers are now parked at Sri Lanka's Galle anchorage, positioned metres outside territorial waters to dodge local seizure, while the Financial Times counts 48 more loitering near the Johor transfer zone off Malaysia. Kpler data shows 86% of vessels that carried Iranian oil in the past year are themselves already under US sanctions, which means the shadow fleet is running out of clean ships to launder cargo through. The real pressure point is downstream: Chinese refiners buying discounted Iranian crude now face longer delivery times, higher insurance costs and growing exposure to secondary sanctions on the intermediaries that touch these cargoes. Washington's next move is likely to widen sanctions from vessels to the charterers, insurers and port agents that service them.
Gina Rinehart just bought Lynas a second rare-earths mountain, in Brazil
Lynas is paying A$968 million in stock for Meteoric Resources, handing Meteoric shareholders 0.0207 new Lynas shares each, a 68% premium to the last close, according to the companies' joint announcement. The prize is Caldeira in Minas Gerais, described as the largest known ionic-clay deposit carrying both light and heavy rare earths, which lifts Lynas's measured and indicated resources by roughly 79%. Lynas is already the biggest rare-earths producer outside China, running Mt Weld in Australia and processing in Malaysia; this adds a third country and a resource type its existing plants were never built to handle. Development capital alone is expected to top US$500 million, on top of the acquisition price, and Lynas hasn't settled on a processing route yet. Rinehart's backing turns this into Australia's clearest bet yet on controlling rare-earth supply outside Beijing's orbit.
Tech & AI
Factory's CEO accused his own board adviser of spying for a rival. Two hours later, the adviser confirmed he'd joined them
Matan Grinberg, Factory's chief executive, said he fired Chris Degnan as a board adviser after discovering Degnan had been in recurring talks with Cognition while sitting in on Factory's confidential strategy sessions. Degnan announced he was joining Cognition as chief revenue officer roughly two hours after Grinberg's public post, per Business Insider's reporting. Grinberg went further, alleging Cognition staff ran fake job interviews at Factory to harvest competitive intelligence. Cognition's CEO Scott Wu rejected all of it, calling Degnan an adviser to at least ten startups with a reputation for integrity, and said he'd built a sales organisation from zero to over $3 billion in scale. Neither side has produced evidence beyond public statements, and no lawsuit has been filed. Expect venture firms with stakes in both companies to start asking harder questions about what their board advisers are allowed to hear.
Obesity drugs are about to be judged on what you lose, not how much
Regeneron said its myostatin-blocking drug trevogrumab preserved more than 70% of the muscle loss seen with Novo Nordisk's semaglutide alone, measured by thigh-muscle MRI over 52 weeks, according to data the company released on September 30. Up to 40% of weight lost on GLP-1 drugs can be lean muscle rather than fat, by some trial estimates, which matters enormously for older patients and anyone staying on these drugs for years rather than months. Viking Therapeutics has a rival approach: its enobosarm compound reportedly achieved full average preservation of lean mass in patients aged 60-plus taking semaglutide, while still producing a 58% bigger drop in fat mass than placebo. Neither drug is approved for this use. The commercial logic is clean though: a muscle-sparing add-on doesn't compete with Ozempic or Wegovy, it rides alongside them and extends how long patients stay on treatment.
AI agents are getting your credit card. Nobody's agreed who's liable when it goes wrong
OpenAI, Google and a wave of startups are racing to put agents in charge of booking, buying and paying on your behalf, turning the browser into something an AI operates rather than something you click through yourself. The commercial fight isn't really about convenience. It's about who owns the payment rail and the liability the moment an agent books the wrong flight or pays the wrong invoice. Card networks and banks haven't settled dispute rules for transactions a human never actually authorised in real time. Whoever wins the standard for agent-initiated payment captures the fee on every transaction that flows through it afterwards.
Markets & Economy
The RBA says private credit is too small to matter. Bathla's lenders disagree
Australia's central bank used its half-yearly Financial Stability Review to say private credit poses no system-wide risk, even after Sydney developer Bathla Group collapsed owing roughly A$3.4 billion across 219 projects, according to figures reported by the ABC. The RBA's logic rests on scale: private credit is under 2% of total financial-system assets, spread across 40-plus non-bank lenders including PAG, Centuria Bass and La Trobe Financial rather than concentrated in a bank balance sheet. That math works for systemic risk and says nothing about the individual funds holding the bag. PAG alone is exposed for more than A$300 million; administrators have already found over A$730 million in potentially overstated receivables on Bathla's books. The RBA's own report flags opaque fund practices as the real investor risk, which is the part of this story that doesn't go away just because the banking system is fine.
Thai bonds just had their worst month since March, and oil's the trigger
Foreign investors pulled a net $635 million out of Thai bonds in September, the biggest monthly outflow in six months, as US 10-year Treasury yields pushed toward 5% and oil prices climbed, according to Bloomberg's data. Higher oil raises Thailand's import bill and complicates the Bank of Thailand's room to cut rates, which is exactly the combination that makes holding Thai duration less attractive when Washington paper yields more. The 30-year Treasury hit 5.62%, its highest since June 2002. This is a sharper reversal than it looks: the Asian Development Bank had flagged Thailand as an inflow magnet just weeks earlier on hopes of political stability and an export rebound. Thailand's debt office is already leaning on shorter-term borrowing to dodge the higher long-end yields, a bet that only pays off if rates fall before the rollover comes due.
India's currency defence worked too well. Now it's fighting its own inflation plan
The RBI pulled in $136.4 billion through its FCNR deposit swap facility by August 31, helping push reserves up by a record $44.9 billion in a single week to $785.7 billion, according to Reuters. The problem: every dollar swapped hands banks rupees, and the resulting liquidity surplus, roughly ₹11.16 trillion, pushed overnight rates below the RBI's own 5.25% policy rate. That's a central bank's nightmare: a policy rate that no longer reflects what money actually costs to borrow overnight. The RBI has already drained close to $20 billion of surplus liquidity through swaps, bond sales and reverse repos to claw back control, and sold at least $8 billion defending the rupee in a single week in early September. A reserve-building exercise meant to protect against external shocks has turned into the thing undermining the inflation fight it was supposed to support.
Australia's mortgage market is drying up. CBA is quietly becoming a business bank instead
Mortgage applications fell 20% at Westpac and 15% at CBA and NAB this year, hit by higher rates and new negative-gearing tax rules, as Reuters reported in August. CBA's answer has been to pour capital into business lending instead: corporate loans grew 12% over the year, 1.3 times system growth, and now generate about two-fifths of adjusted earnings from just a quarter of the loan book, according to the bank's own results. That's a materially better return than fighting for mortgage share in a market where margins are already razor thin. Fitch warns the flip side is credit risk: business borrowers are far more exposed to economic swings than prime mortgage holders, and impaired-loan ratios are expected to rise over the next 12 months. The banks making this pivot fastest, Westpac posted 39% business-loan growth over three years, are the same ones betting Australia's housing slowdown lasts long enough to make the trade worth it.
Business & Strategy
BMW's US sales record is making Audi and Volvo chase bigger SUVs
BMW sold 388,897 vehicles in the US in 2025, up 4.7% to a record, built heavily on X3 through X7 models assembled at its Spartanburg, South Carolina plant, which also shields it from the 25% German-import tariff that's hammering Audi, according to BMW's own sales reporting. Audi's US sales fell 16% in 2025 and another 17% in the first half of 2026; Volvo's dropped 32% in the first quarter, every single model down. Both brands are now looking at supersized, US-specific SUVs to chase the margin BMW is already banking, per coverage of the strategy shift. The tell here isn't demand, it's geography: BMW builds in America, its rivals mostly ship from Europe, and tariffs just made that difference worth tens of thousands of units a year. Whichever brand localises production fastest wins the next three years of this fight, not whichever builds the biggest badge.
Arc'teryx is now bigger than most of its parent company's other brands combined
The brand grew from roughly $500 million in revenue in 2020 to over $2 billion in 2024, then grew more than 30% again last year, according to Amer Sports' own shareholder letter. A $900 jacket built from more than 150 components sourced across 35-plus suppliers is the product; the price is the point, functioning as a status signal independent of whether the buyer has ever touched a mountain. Direct-to-consumer sales now make up 55% of parent Amer Sports' quarterly revenue, up nearly 40% year on year, which means Arc'teryx is increasingly selling to you directly rather than through a wholesaler who might discount it. Greater China revenue for Amer Sports hit roughly $1.9 billion in 2025, up 43%, with Arc'teryx doing most of the work. The brand reportedly exited around 40% of its wholesale distribution to protect that pricing power, a trade-off that only holds if scarcity survives 25 to 30 new stores a year.
AirAsia's Indonesian arm has negative equity of Rp12.18 trillion and no trading floor to fix it on
The Indonesia Stock Exchange suspended CMPP shares from July 1 after PT AirAsia Indonesia reported negative equity of roughly Rp12.18 trillion, and the company is now weighing a rights issue, a private placement, or converting shareholder debt into perpetual instruments, according to its own disclosures. None of those options has a disclosed price, size or timetable yet. The parent group isn't exactly flush either: AirAsia Group is targeting up to $1 billion from international debt markets against RM954 million in cash and a RM831 million second-quarter net loss. Whatever structure the Indonesian unit lands on will tell you whether controlling shareholders are willing to actually inject fresh capital or just rearrange the liabilities on paper to get the stock trading again.
Policy & Regulation
Hegseth wants to cut 800 generals and build a four-star command for drones
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth told roughly 600 troops at Quantico he's doubling the Pentagon's planned officer cuts from 10% to 20%, affecting about 800 general and flag officer positions by January 1, 2027, according to reporting on the address. The headline creation is AUTOWARCOM, a new four-star combatant command for autonomous systems, drones and AI, with authorities Hegseth says will match existing geographic commands. He's also launching Project Meridian, a 120-day review of future warfare reportedly involving Elon Musk, Anduril's Palmer Luckey and Newt Gingrich. Musk's involvement is the awkward part: SpaceX is already a major Pentagon contractor, and nothing in the reporting addresses recusal or procurement firewalls. A new military base is also coming, the first in roughly 40 years, alongside a push for installations to generate their own power independent of civilian grids.
Man City's own sponsor is threatening to sue the Premier League
Etihad Airways says it's seeking legal advice against the Premier League over how it communicated findings from the independent commission examining Manchester City's alleged financial-rule breaches, even though Etihad wasn't named in the redacted published decision, according to the airline's own statement. Its complaint is procedural: the league never contacted Etihad during the investigation, so the airline had no chance to check facts or respond before leaks and coverage attached its name to the story anyway. No claim has been filed. What this actually threatens is every sports governing body's playbook for publishing investigation findings: if sponsors can sue over reputational fallout from a redacted ruling that doesn't name them, expect every future disclosure to come wrapped in far more legal caution, and far less transparency.
Quick Hits
ElevenLabs doubles its valuation to $22bn
The UK-linked voice-AI firm's valuation jump puts it ahead of several better-known British tech names, a reminder that the AI funding boom hasn't slowed just because the headline models get all the attention.
Reddit is killing RSS feeds and public API access
The company says AI bots scraping its content forced the move, which also cuts off every third-party tool and researcher who relied on open access, not just the bots it's targeting.
Inflation is accelerating across the eurozone's biggest economies
Germany, France and Italy all printed hotter prices than expected, narrowing the ECB's room to cut rates further this year.
US stocks rose as traders dialled back rate-hike bets after the PCE print
Softer inflation data gave markets room to price out tightening risk, pushing major indices higher into the new quarter.
Condé Nast CEO Roger Lynch is leaving to run Mattel
The move hands the toy maker a media and licensing operator just as it leans harder into content and franchise strategy beyond the toy aisle.