According to BlockBeats, on July 26, Anthropic investor Deedy pointed out that all startups developing next-generation AI chips are trying to break Nvidia's dominance in different ways, aiming to tackle the fundamental problem of "data movement." Six differentiated challenge paths include: eliminating DRAM (Groq, acquired by Nvidia for $20 billion), eliminating interconnect (Cerebras, listed with a market capitalization of approximately $48 billion), eliminating compute/memory separation (d-Matrix), eliminating compute-centric server architectures (Majestic), eliminating versatility (Etched, Taalas, MatX), and eliminating the $400 million lithography machine (Substrate).

The IPOs and acquisitions of Cerebras and Groq set a benchmark for the entire AI chip sector, while Etched's valuation doubled to $10.3 billion this week, a dramatic surge in just three weeks, further confirming the rapid revaluation of this sector by investors. Among the 18 major startups, the combined paper value of private companies is approximately $58 billion, and the market capitalization is approximately $48 billion, covering multiple sub-sectors including inference, training/new architectures, systems, and wafer fabs and lithography.

Each approach challenges a core assumption of NVIDIA's GPU architecture—that moving data between computing units and memory is both time-consuming and energy-intensive. Groq completely eliminates memory-level latency by replacing DRAM with SRAM, Cerebras eliminates inter-chip interconnect bottlenecks with wafer-level chips, d-Matrix performs computations directly in memory, and Etched abandons versatility to design hardware solely for the Transformer architecture. The AI chip startup ecosystem has evolved from a narrative of simply replacing GPUs to a multi-pronged attack at the architecture level. NVIDIA's acquisition of Groq demonstrates its active participation in this process, indicating its understanding that the core of the next generation of competition is no longer peak computing power, but a complete reconstruction of data movement efficiency.

According to BlockBeats, on July 25th, a futures whale named "First Set 10 Big Targets" posted an article previewing his trading plan. He stated that his previous BTC long position was entered around $64,980 and exited after triggering a stop-loss at $64,000-$64,300. The stop-loss was to guard against a further rapid drop to $63,000 if $64,000 was breached.

We will continue to monitor the situation. If the $64,000 level is not effectively broken, we will gradually buy back long positions around $64,000 next Monday and Tuesday. The new stop-loss price will be placed between $63,500 and $63,000.

On July 21st, the account "Set 10 Big Goals First" announced a profit target of $300 million for this round: In the previous round, using 150 BTC to build a position, the target was $150 million. The account had achieved a maximum profit of $120 million, but at the last moment, a misjudgment during a drop from $120,000 wiped out all profits, leaving only the principal and a slight profit. This round, using 300 BTC to build a position, the target is $300 million, and a profit of $60 million has already been achieved.

BlockBeats reported on July 25th, citing Bloomberg, that DeepSeek announced the suspension of its second round of financing and verbally notified some potential investors that it would not sign investment agreements as expected. This suspension stems in part from founder Liang Wenfeng's dissatisfaction with the leak of a four-hour internal transcript of his initial financing deal. The transcript contained 52 statements made during an investor meeting, covering DeepSeek's organizational culture, open-source logic, technology roadmap, and views on the competitive landscape. The nearly four-hour meeting transcript has recently gone viral on social media, including statements such as "the biggest gap between AI in China and the US is computing power resources." Neither DeepSeek nor Liang Wenfeng has confirmed the authenticity of the leaked transcript.

DeepSeek stated that it may still choose to resume trading at a later date and has already begun preparations for its initial public offering (IPO), which could be filed as early as this year.

DeepSeek completed its first round of external financing in June 2026, raising over 50 billion RMB (approximately 7.4 billion USD), with a post-investment valuation of approximately 50-59 billion USD. The financing employed a unique structure, with the majority of the funds going to a limited partnership managed by Liang Wenfeng. Investors in this partnership have no voting rights and are subject to a 5-year lock-up period. Liang Wenfeng himself invested approximately 20 billion RMB, making him the largest investor. Other investors included Tencent, CATL, JD.com, NetEase, and the China National AI Fund. DeepSeek subsequently initiated negotiations for a second round of financing in mid-July, targeting a valuation of approximately 71 billion USD.

According to BlockBeats, on July 25, data from Coinglass showed that the Coinbase Bitcoin premium index has been in negative premium territory for 67 consecutive days (since May 19), with the latest value being -0.0708%.

Previously, the index had been in negative premium for 40 consecutive days from January 16 to February 24 this year, setting a record for the longest "negative streak" since the index was launched, exceeding the approximately 30 consecutive days of negative premium during the "1011 crash".

The Coinbase Bitcoin Premium Index measures the difference between the price of Bitcoin on Coinbase and the average price in the global market. A negative premium usually reflects strong selling pressure in the US market, decreased investor risk appetite, increased market risk aversion, or capital outflow.

According to BlockBeats, on July 25th, an Iranian source stated that Iran's Ghoshul nuclear facility is not only solid but also "empty," rendering a US attack on Ghoshul doomed to failure. The source argued that Trump's attempt to gain political capital by attacking Ghoshul would only create disinformation and offer no real benefit. The official also indicated that Iran would respond differently, "not limited to large-scale military action."

On March 22, the United States notified Israel of its plans to escalate its attacks on Iran in the coming days, including the first use of heavy bombers since the joint U.S.-Israel military action against Iran earlier this year. The heavy bombers are expected to be used to strike Iran's underground nuclear facility at Ghoshul. President Trump has repeatedly threatened over the past week that a strike on the region "could be coming soon." Ghoshul, located near the Natanz nuclear facility in Isfahan province in central Iran, is considered one of Iran's most fortified underground nuclear facilities. (Xinhua)