Good morning. Here’s what happened overnight and what you need to know today.
1.
War footing: The US announced a third troop death in two days and pressed on with strikes against Iran, as tit-for-tat attacks pushed both sides closer to all-out war. A service member was killed in Iraq on Saturday during a controlled detonation of a downed Iranian drone, US Central Command said. That came after two US soldiers died in an Iranian strike on a base in Jordan on Friday. The deaths brought the US toll to 17 since the US and Israel launched the war on 28 February. Central Command said its latest strikes targeted Iran’s Revolutionary Guard to punish the forces behind the Jordan attack and degrade Iran’s ability to threaten shipping in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran retaliated across the region, striking a Kuwaiti power and water desalination plant again and prompting air-defence interceptions in Bahrain and Jordan. Israel warned that missiles fired toward the Jordanian port of Aqaba could spill into Israeli territory. The New York Times reported Washington is sending more warplanes to the region, including F-16s and F-35s. Brent crude rose near USD88 on Friday. (NYT)(Bloomberg)(Reuters)(AP)
2.
Moon shot: Bloomberg reported China’s Moonshot AI told investors it’s preparing to list in as early as six months, tapping capital markets after its Kimi K3 model upended perceptions of China’s AI capabilities and sent tech stocks reeling. According to the report, the Chinese startup distributed a shareholder resolution seeking its backers’ blessing on a Hong Kong listing, and is wrapping a fundraising round that may value the three-year-old company at more than USD30 billion. Moonshot judged the time was right after annual recurring revenue hit USD300 million in June, Bloomberg said. Demand for the 2.8 trillion parameter open-weight model surged so much the company paused new subscriptions to prioritise compute, with daily sales up at least six times since launch. The Kimi K3 release coincided with an address by Xi Jinping casting China as the champion of an open approach to AI, triggering immediate losses in the Nasdaq on Friday, as investors sold US chipmakers including Nvidia and Intel. Meanwhile, Alibaba previewed its next-generation Qwen3.8 Max model, which the company said ranks second only to Anthropic’s Claude Fable 5.(Bloomberg)(Alibaba)(NYT)
