The Weekly Tycoon

SOL rose 11% in a week bitcoin slipped 0.6%. The dollar's 0.9% gain and gold's 3.2% drop came as markets priced a Fed that might hike.

1. MACRO + GEOPOLITICSWarsh puts a September hike on the table

   Fed Chair Kevin Warsh used his Jackson Hole speech on Aug 28 to say the Fed's "predominant focus right now should be on prices." He called 2% "a firm, fixed target" and said forward guidance should be "limited and circumscribed" in normal times. The backdrop: July PCE inflation ran 3.7% over 12 months, with core at 3.3%, per the BEA on Aug 26, while Q2 GDP grew just 1.5%. CME FedWatch odds of a September hike went from 35.4% to 57.5%, per Asia Economy. A hike would lift the range from 3.50% to 3.75% up to 3.75% to 4.00%. The read: the Fed is leaning tighter in a slow economy, and every risk asset now trades on the next two inflation prints.

   Go deeper · Federal Reserve · Warsh at Jackson Hole, Aug 28

2. CHIPS + ENERGYNvidia's $96.2 billion quarter, with China written down to zero

   Nvidia's fiscal Q2 revenue rose 106% to $96.2 billion, with $89.0 billion from data centers and a 75.0% gross margin. It guided Q3 to $108.0 billion, plus or minus 2%, and that outlook assumes no data center compute revenue from China. Jensen Huang's line: "AI has reached its inflection point. It's doing useful work. Its tokens are profitable." The same day, TechCrunch reported Amazon will add 2 million more Nvidia GPUs to AWS across Blackwell Ultra, Rubin and Rubin Ultra for 2027 and 2028, five months after a deal for more than 1 million. The read: the biggest buyers are ordering two years out, so the capacity builders rent in 2028 is being handed out now.

   Go deeper · NVIDIA · Q2 fiscal 2027 results, Aug 26

3. DIGITAL BUSINESSSalesforce lets Claude inside, and the SaaS scare takes a day off

   Salesforce reported Q2 revenue of $11.3 billion, up 11%, with Agentforce ARR above $1.5 billion, up more than 240%, and raised its full year guide to $46.1 billion to $46.4 billion. The bigger move was opening the door to an outside AI: a Claude plugin lets Anthropic's agents draft emails, update records and use data stored inside Salesforce, per XTB. The shares rose 12% after hours, and Marc Benioff said he sees no "SaaSpocalypse." The read: incumbents aren't fighting the agents, they're renting them shelf space. The moat is the customer data and the system of record, not the screen a person clicks on.

   Go deeper · Salesforce · Q2 fiscal 2027 results, Aug 26

4. CRYPTOSolana votes to cut its own issuance by 0.334 points, and Schwab signs on

   Solana validators passed SGP-0002 on Aug 28 with 67.001% of the vote, 0.334 points over the two-thirds bar. It doubles the disinflation rate from 15% to 30% and removes about 18.9 million SOL of projected issuance, per Solana Compass, though nothing changes until the code ships. Kraken swung it: it moved 8.9 million SOL to "against," then about 8.1 million back to "for" near the close. A day earlier, Schwab said it'll add SOL, AVAX and LINK trading for its 39 million accounts "in the coming months," and SOL ETFs took $60.91 million on Aug 27, their best day of 2026, per Mitrade. SOL rose 11% on the week while bitcoin slipped 0.6%.

   Go deeper · The Block · Schwab to add Solana, Avalanche, Chainlink, Aug 27

5. ROBOTS + FUTURE TECHFigure starts paying people to film their chores

   Figure launched Index on Aug 25, a paid app where people film everyday tasks to train robots. Figure's numbers: 264,000 downloads, 44,000 weekly active users, 16 million videos, $15 million paid to contributors, and more than $1 billion committed to data and compute over the next 12 months. Its reasoning: the data for a general purpose robot "doesn't exist on the internet," it "has to come from the real world." The same day, Waymo said it's coming to Munich, with paid rides targeted for the end of 2027. The read: robot companies now buy human video the way AI labs bought text, and that's a new paid gig a creator with a phone can see coming.

   Go deeper · Figure · Introducing Index, Aug 25

The Week Tokens Became a Currency

Three people with very different jobs said the same thing this week. On Aug 26, Jensen Huang said AI's "tokens are profitable. Now, compute is revenue." On Aug 28, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh told Jackson Hole that annualized token sales at the two leading labs run above $100 billion, "an increase of 500-plus percent from a year ago," and called AI "potentially a new factor of production." And on Aug 20, Patrick Collison, announcing Stripe's deal for OpenRouter, put it flattest: "Tokens are the central currency for companies building with AI."

When a chip CEO, a central banker and a payments founder agree on a unit, it's worth asking who mints it, who resells it and who takes a cut. This week answered all three. Nvidia mints the capacity: $96.2 billion of revenue in a quarter and a $108 billion guide. Amazon is ordering 2 million more Nvidia GPUs for 2027 and 2028, per TechCrunch, after a deal for more than 1 million just five months earlier.

The incumbents are learning to resell it. Salesforce said Agentforce ARR passed $1.5 billion, up more than 240%, and shipped a plugin that lets Anthropic's Claude agents work inside Salesforce. Its adjusted EPS of $5.90, against a $3.27 consensus, got a lift from a $2.6 billion gain on its Anthropic stake, per XTB. So a SaaS company is now part token reseller and part AI lab investor, and the market paid it 12% after hours for both.

Stripe wants the toll booth. OpenRouter routes requests across more than 400 models from more than 80 providers, and it was valued at $1.3 billion in May, per Channel Insider. Stripe didn't disclose a price. Owning the router means owning the spot where a builder's AI spend gets split between models. Stripe already owns the spot where the customer's money comes in. Now it sits on both sides of the margin.

The second-order read: if tokens are a currency, they live inside the dollar economy, and the dollar just got a hawkish chair. In the same speech, Warsh said the Fed's "predominant focus right now should be on prices," with PCE inflation at 3.7%. Money is getting more expensive while AI keeps getting sold in larger volume. That squeezes businesses whose main cost is debt or paid ads, and it favors the ones whose main input is tokens and whose output is software.

There's a catch under the currency, and it's concentration. Nvidia's own 10-Q shows five direct customers hold 70% of its receivables, which is on the Signal Board below. A currency with a few big issuers and a few big buyers is powerful, and it's also fragile. One large buyer slowing down moves the price of capacity for everyone renting it.

Why it mattersThe unit of value in AI moved from seats to tokens this week, and whoever mints, meters and routes them is starting to look like a bank.

Sources · NVIDIA · Q2 fiscal 2027 results, Aug 26 · Federal Reserve · Warsh at Jackson Hole, Aug 28 · Channel Insider · Stripe to acquire OpenRouter, Aug 20 · Salesforce · Q2 fiscal 2027 results, Aug 26 · XTB · Salesforce shares surge after earnings, Aug 27 · TechCrunch · Amazon triples its Nvidia order, Aug 26

1. Strategy raised $2 billion during the rally and bought zero bitcoin

   The Aug 24 8-K shows Strategy sold 18,261,118 shares of its stock from Aug 17 to Aug 23 for about $2.0 billion net, while bitcoin ran toward $80,000. It bought no bitcoin. Holdings stayed at 840,447 BTC at an average cost of $75,385. Instead it bought back $136.4 million of its STRC preferred and set up a new $1.59 billion "USD Cash" pool, separate from its $5.10 billion USD Reserve, for "general Bitcoin Treasury Company purposes." Earlier in August it sold 1,690 BTC to fund STRC buybacks, per Cointelegraph. Why it's worth watching: the largest corporate holder is building a dollar pile of about $6.7 billion, which suggests servicing its preferred stock now comes before adding coin.

   Go deeper · SEC · Strategy 8-K, Aug 24

2. Nvidia's 10-Q: $279 billion of commitments, and five customers with 70% of receivables

   The earnings release had the headline. The 10-Q had the bet. Supply commitments rose from $119 billion last quarter to $279 billion as of July 26, "primarily memory and manufacturing facilities," though some "may be cancelable, rescheduled, or adjustable." The same filing shows five direct customers held 22%, 14%, 13%, 11% and 10% of accounts receivable. That's 70% in five names. Why it's worth watching: Nvidia is locking up memory and fab capacity years ahead, and its demand sits with a handful of buyers. If one of them slows, the whole chain feels it, and smaller buyers compete for whatever capacity is left.

   Go deeper · SEC · NVIDIA 10-Q, quarter ended July 26

3. The 2-year jumped 11.8 basis points on Warsh, and the 30-year barely moved

   On Aug 28 the 2-year Treasury yield rose 11.8 basis points to 4.348%, its biggest one-day rise since March, while the 30-year rose 1.6 basis points to 5.20%, per Asia Economy. Three days earlier, the Treasury sold $69 billion of 2-year notes at 4.204%, so those buyers were about 14 basis points underwater by Friday. The 30-year had touched 5.34%, a 19-year high, before the Treasury's Aug 19 buyback news, per Kitco. Why it's worth watching: the short end is pricing the Fed and the long end is pricing the Treasury, and the first buybacks of at least $4 billion start Sept 9. A flatter curve says the bond market believes both of them.

   Go deeper · Asia Economy · Wall Street after Warsh, Aug 29

Q. What does a Fed rate hike actually do to an online business?

Start with the mechanics. The Fed's range sits at 3.50% to 3.75%. A September hike would make it 3.75% to 4.00%, and futures put the odds near 57% after Warsh spoke, per Asia Economy. The short end of the curve moves first: the 2-year yield jumped 11.8 basis points on Friday. Card rates, business loans and the yield on idle cash all key off that end.

For a digital business, three things follow. Buyers get careful: SaaS and agency budgets get a second look when money costs more, so sales cycles stretch. Paid acquisition gets harder to justify, because a customer who pays you back in 18 months is worth less when safe cash pays a real yield. And financed growth gets pricier, while a business that runs on its own cash flow barely notices.

The flip side is real too. Cash sitting in the business earns more. And the biggest input for many AI products, tokens, isn't priced by the Fed at all. Nvidia's guide, Amazon's GPU order and Salesforce's agent numbers all landed in the same week as a hawkish Fed chair. A hike changes what money costs. It doesn't change what intelligence costs.

So the useful question isn't "will they hike?" It's "what's my payback period, and who's funding it?" Short payback, low debt and token-based costs feel a hike least. Long payback funded by debt or ad spend feels it most.

Sources · Federal Reserve · Warsh at Jackson Hole, Aug 28 · Asia Economy · Wall Street after Warsh, Aug 29