Over the past two days the AI industry moved on two fronts at once: violent swings in US AI equities, while compute upstream — memory and optical — cashed in on demand, and funding plus open-source releases kept coming. Twelve items in today's brief.
Nvidia slips below $5 trillion. Nvidia fell 3.3% on October 30, dragging its market cap under the $5T mark; Intel plunged nearly 30% the same day and the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index sank 6% (Sina Finance / Jintdata).
Meta plans a $97.5B raise. Meta intends to raise $97.5 billion for AI infrastructure, with its circular-financing model drawing growing scrutiny (Sina Finance).
Microsoft returns to the investment-grade bond market. Microsoft issued its first US senior bonds since 2017 — read as AI capex entering its debt-financing phase (Moomoo).
Xiaomi open-sources an 0.8B OCR model. Xiaomi released an 0.8B-parameter OCR model emphasizing small size and three core capabilities (Fenghuang Tech).
Micron breaks ground in Hiroshima. Micron's $9.3 billion expansion in Hiroshima broke ground, with HBM shipments expected in H2 2028 (Cailianshe).
Changfei's profit surges. Pulled by smart-computing-center demand, optical fiber maker Changfei posted 139.42% revenue growth and 1,741.52% net-profit growth for the first three quarters (Wallstreetcn).
Hunan plans token factories. Hunan aims to build 10 token factories and host 20,000 OPCs by 2030 (New Hunan).
Cognition eyes $40B valuation. AI coding startup Cognition is reportedly raising a new round at up to a $40 billion valuation (Cailianshe).
FuriosaAI closes $620M Series D. Korean AI chip startup FuriosaAI completed a $620 million Series D round (EET-China).
China's agriculture ministry debunks "AI shrimp farming." No such investment projects or funds exist; the ministry's financing project library is free of charge (Sina Finance).
01.AI raises, relocates to Hangzhou. 01.AI closed a nine-figure-yuan round and is moving its headquarters to DeepSeek's home city (Zhidx).
Micro-N Core raises 1B+ yuan. AI inference chip firm Micro-N Core completed a C2 round exceeding 1 billion yuan (Donews/动点科技).
Capital keeps betting through the volatility: doubts swirl around financing models even as memory, optics and inference chips deliver earnings — the AI infrastructure bill keeps growing, and the window to prove returns keeps narrowing.