ASML raised its full-year 2026 net revenue guidance to €43–45 billion ($49–51 billion), up from a prior range of €36–40 billion, after reporting Q2 2026 revenue of €9.33 billion and net income of €2.92 billion, both ahead of analyst estimates. The Dutch lithography equipment maker also announced plans to expand EUV and DUV manufacturing capacity by 30% in 2027 and 2028, citing accelerating demand from AI chip producers. ASML shares rose 3.7% to €1,613 on the news, bringing year-to-date gains to approximately 75%. Chinese customers are expected to account for roughly 20% of 2026 sales.
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Japan's parliament passed a law amendment on July 15, 2026, formally designating cryptocurrencies as financial assets, moving them out of the Payment Services Act framework and into a different regulatory regime. The change introduces insider trading rules and harsher penalties for unregistered trading activity. The legislation is expected to take effect within one year, with the overhaul intended to address the growing user bases of domestic crypto exchanges.
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OpenAI researcher Miles Wang is in talks to raise approximately $200 million at a $2 billion valuation for a new AI drug discovery startup, with Lightspeed in discussions to lead the round, according to TechCrunch (July 14, 2026). Wang, who joined OpenAI in 2024 after leaving Harvard, is expected to be joined by several other OpenAI researchers. The fundraise comes on the same day Chai Discovery announced a $400 million raise at a $3.8 billion valuation, and follows Isomorphic Labs' $2.1 billion Series B closed in May 2026, underscoring sustained investor appetite for AI-enabled drug discovery platforms.
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An analysis of 1,259 ArXiv papers published over a single seven-day period reveals a concentrated surge in research at the intersection of artificial intelligence and robotics: 44 papers on AI agents, 33 on reinforcement learning, 46 on robotic manipulation, and 13 on humanoid systems appeared simultaneously, with shared topics such as sim-to-real transfer and foundation models bridging both domains. The parallel output across AI/ML (533 papers total) and robotics (508 papers total) suggests the two fields are converging around a common technical stack, with implications for companies developing both software agents and physical hardware platforms.
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