印度 · 2561

Trump's 50% tariff hits Canada, and the Carney administration accelerates the reduction of economic dependence on the US

Comparatively, US President Trump's 50% tariff on some Canadian goods came into effect this week, once again intensifying trade tension between the US and Canada, pushing the Canadian government to speed up the search for alternative markets, expand domestic trade, and promote large-scale infrastructure projects to reduce dependence on the US economy. Currently, about 70% of Canada's exports go to the US, and the economies of the two countries are highly tied. The tariff measures previously imposed by the United States on the automobile, steel, aluminum, and timber sectors have put pressure on the Canadian manufacturing industry, leading to some job losses and a slowdown in economic growth. Canada's economy even contracted for two consecutive quarters this year, falling into a technical recession. The latest round of 50% tariffs involves about 20 billion US dollars of Canadian exports to the US, accounting for about 5.5% of Canada's total exports to the US, covering products such as hockey sticks and cement. Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said that Canada will take equal tariff countermeasures to protect domestic enterprises and employment. The market is concerned that Trump previously refused to renew the US-Mexico-Canada Agreement (USMCA) exemption arrangement, bringing the trade agreement into the annual review stage. Analysts believe that the removal of some trade protections by the US may lay the risk of further expanding tariff measures. Faced with trade pressure, the Carney administration is promoting economic diversification. In recent years, Canada has strengthened economic and trade cooperation with China, India, Saudi Arabia and European countries, and promoted the expansion of exports to non-US markets. According to the data, Canada's exports to non-US markets increased by 11% in 2025, reaching 33% at one point, the highest level in more than 40 years. Furthermore, Canada is strengthening its domestic economy, including reducing inter-provincial trade barriers, promoting port expansion, developing critical mineral resources, and supporting energy infrastructure construction. The government plans to invest 115 billion Canadian dollars (about 83 billion US dollars) in infrastructure funds over the next few years, and a defense budget of 82 billion Canadian dollars.

13h ago

Bank of Italy research: Stablecoin remittances have no systemic cost advantage, and on-chain links account for only a small part

Comparatively, in a research report released in July 2026, the Bank of Italy first passed the “mystery customer” empirical survey to track 200 USDC transfers across ten corridors between Italy and Argentina, Brazil, South Africa, the United Arab Emirates, and Japan. The results showed that the total cost of stablecoin remittance fluctuated greatly, with a minimum of only 0.3% and a maximum close to 9%. The average transfer on the blockchain chain accounts for only 0.4%. Most of the costs are concentrated in fiat currency withdrawal and recharge — traditional intermediary fees such as exchange transaction price differences, credit card fees, and withdrawal fees are decisive factors. Compared with traditional channels such as Wise, stablecoins have a cost advantage in some channels such as Brazil → Italy, but channels such as the UAE → Italy are more expensive and show a high degree of “channel specificity.” In terms of speed, blockchain transfers themselves only take a few minutes, but end-to-end efficiency depends entirely on the quality of traditional payment infrastructure in the destination country. Countries with instant payment systems such as Brazil (PIX), Italy (TIPS), and Argentina (Transferencias 3.0) can control the entire process within 20 minutes; countries that rely on traditional bank transfers, such as South Africa, extend the delivery time to 1 to 2 business days. The report points out that the efficiency of stablecoin remittance is determined by itself and the surrounding traditional payment infrastructure, and the two are complementary rather than alternative relationships. The report also analyzed the impact of global regulatory fragmentation: the European Union's MiCA and the US GENIUS Act represent a mature compliance framework; Japan's strict “safety priority” entry reduces nominal costs, but the process is complicated, causing users to flow out to offshore platforms; countries such as India and Turkey are in a transitional regulatory phase; prohibited countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia have failed to curb demand and instead push transactions into gray channels. This article is sponsored by GENG, Build Your Fortune on GENG (https://geng.one)

1d agoburnking

Check Point Research: Nearly 2,000 hacked WordPress websites are being used to spread malware and deploy ransomware

Comparing news, cybersecurity company Check Point Research found that the StopAndProtect ransomware operation used nearly 2,000 hacked WordPress sites to spread malware, steal data, monitor victims, and deploy ransomware. The operation was discovered in mid-May. As of July 24, the operation had invaded more than 6000 unique IP addresses, of which 1,852 were in the US and 630 each in Russia and India. Hacked websites are also used to host malware, send instructions, and store stolen files, screenshots, and activity logs. Attackers use fake CAPTCHAs to trick Windows users into running PowerShell commands, thereby stealing credentials and cryptocurrency wallet mnemonics, and spreading through networks and USB devices. The researchers collected more than 31,000 screenshots and over 700 data packages, and believed that the attackers might have mistakenly infected themselves.

2d ago

Prosus plans to invest $100 million in Indian fintech company Navi to complete the first round of institutional financing

Comparing news, according to Bloomberg, Prosus NV plans to invest $100 million in Indian fintech company Navi Ltd. This is Navi's first introduction of institutional capital. This round of investment requires regulatory approval, including from the Competition Commission of India, before it can be completed. Navi is headquartered in Bengaluru, and its business covers payments, credit, insurance and mutual funds. Its UPI payment application ranked fourth in India by size in the fiscal year ending March; Navi Finserv's asset management scale has surpassed about 130 billion rupees.

3d ago

Risk of exposing the lifeblood of global trade: 27 key shipping ports carry most of trade flows, the Hormuz crisis is a wake-up call

Comparing news, the latest report from the Oxford Institute of Economics shows that global trade is highly dependent on 27 key shipping entry points, and serious disruptions at any one point could have an impact on energy, commodity transportation, and the global economy. The report points out that the conflict between the US and Iran, which has continued for nearly six months, has caused shipping in the Strait of Hormuz to be blocked. The strait is a core channel for global energy transportation, and about one-fifth of the world's oil supply passes through here. As the risk of attacks on commercial ships increased, the slowdown in shipping drove up international oil prices, US gasoline prices surpassed $4 per gallon, and further increased inflationary pressure. In addition to the Strait of Hormuz, global trade is also highly concentrated at key points such as the Malacca Strait, the Taiwan Strait, the Suez Canal, the Strait of Gibraltar, and the Panama Canal. Among them, Asia has the most dense network of trade channels in the world. The Malacca Strait connects the Indian Ocean and the Pacific Ocean and is an important channel for global energy and commodity transportation; the Taiwan Strait carries about a quarter of global trade flows. The report warns that geopolitical conflict is one of the biggest risks facing global trade. Some countries may use critical waterways as a tool for political games, and climate change is increasing shipping risks. For example, the Panama Canal has lowered water levels due to droughts and the effects of El Niño, limiting ships' cargo capacity and driving up transportation costs. The Oxford Institute of Economics said that the degree of risk at different entry points depends on whether alternative routes exist. The Strait of Hormuz is particularly risky due to the lack of effective alternative routes; while some waterways can be circumvented, longer transportation distances will increase fuel, labor, and operating costs, and drive up global freight rates. As geopolitical conflicts, extreme weather, and supply chain fragility rise, the global trading system's reliance on key shipping nodes is becoming a new source of economic risk.

7d ago
Clark, the mysterious woman behind the $13 trillion IPO

Clark, the mysterious woman behind the $13 trillion IPO

When Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi invited global AI leaders to meet in New Delhi earlier this year, each executive was only allowed to carry one entourage. Most people brought colleagues, while Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei brought his wife Cami Clark. Clark doesn't have any official position at Anthropic, yet he almost never misses her husband's important occasions — whether it's a front row seat at the Davos Forum or an Allen & Co. investor party in Sun Valley. According to people familiar with the matter, she is Amodei's most important strategic advisor and emotional pillar, while also managing the family's personal investment strategies and assisting in screening external investment invitations. More importantly, it was she who brought former Google CEO Eric Schmidt into Anthropic's early investor camp, laying an important foundation for the company's start. Clark's existence is under unprecedented scrutiny, as soon as Anthropic hit an IPO worth over 2 trillion US dollars (about 13.49 trillion yuan) this fall. The Wall Street Journal and The Information have recently released in-depth reports to restore the twists and turns of the “First Lady of Anthropic” from a Reno blue-collar family to the core of the world's hottest AI company — including a little-known past: she tried to raise funds from registered sex offender Epstein to seek investment in her adult film company. There is an alarming gap between the influence of Clark, a deliberately hidden “shadow advisor”, and his online presence. According to Wall Street Journal analysis and a source familiar with the matter, information about Clark on the Internet is extremely scarce, and some people have taken the initiative to delete related records. Her personal website has gone offline, her LinkedIn homepage has disappeared, and Instagram has stopped being updated. Amodei's Wikipedia page did not state that she was married until this summer, and she hasn't listed her wife's name yet. When I Google “Dario Amodei's wife,” a picture of her sister, Anthropic co-founder Daniela Amodei, often pops up. Even Anthropic's own AI chatbot, Claude, can only answer when asked about related questions: “Dario Amodei's marital status doesn't seem to have been clearly confirmed. “But in the real world, Clark's presence is very different. She accompanied her husband to high-profile events such as Davos, New Delhi, and Sun Valley, and made up for Amodei's lack of restrained personality with her outgoing social style. According to people familiar with the matter, she will take the initiative to discuss with politicians and potential investors before introducing them to her husband. At the Sun Valley conference in July of this year, she had lunch with Ivanka Trump and chatted with Jared Kushner — previously Amodei had approached Kushner to seek investment. A person who met the couple said that although the two have been together for over ten years, they “felt as close as a newlywed couple” when they saw them at an event recently. From Reno to Silicon Valley: A Winding Entrepreneurial Road Clark was born in Reno, Nevada in 1979 and grew up in a blue-collar family. According to a person familiar with her, she began working part-time at the plumber's union with her grandmother and aunt when she was 14 years old. After high school, she went to the San Francisco Bay Area to study architecture at the California Institute of the Arts, then worked in business development at high-end office furniture company Herman Miller, thus gaining her first window into the technology industry. In 1999, Clark, who was only 20, married 64-year-old Reno architect Waldemar Eklof III and divorced three years later. Since then, she has traveled between San Francisco, New York, and Los Angeles. Her San Francisco apartment was foreclosed by the bank in 2007 and filed for bankruptcy in 2009. However, she never stopped trying to start a business. Around 2009, Clark and Michelle Capocefalo co-founded Eddice, an adult film company targeting women, under the slogan “intellectually promising”...

8d ago华尔街见闻#AI #Anthropic #Dario Amodei

Accel raises $3.5 billion to set up four funds to invest in early-stage global AI startups

In comparison, global venture capital firm Accel announced that it has raised $3.5 billion in new funds to make early-stage investments around the world. A total of four funds have been raised this time, including a global expansion fund of US$1.35 billion for large-scale early round and subsequent investments; the US fund and the European and Israeli fund are all US$800 million, and the Indian fund is US$550 million. Accel partner Harry Nelis said that the company raised more capital faster in the early stages of establishment than before, which presents opportunities for investors, while the scale of risk still exists. Accel has invested in AI companies such as Anthropic, Cursor, and Perplexity.

10d ago#financing

Asian companies raised more than US$83 billion in July, and Morgan Stanley is optimistic about the capital market in the second half of the year

Comparing news, Bloomberg data shows that Asian companies raised more than 83 billion US dollars in July through IPOs, targeted increases, and bulk transactions, setting a record in a single month in history. Among them, South Korean chip giant SK Hynix raised 265 billion US dollars through the US listing, making it the largest financing project. Asian equity financing activity remained active in August, with the Indian government selling shares of state-owned insurance giant LIC to raise $3.3 billion. Cathy Zhang, head of ECM at Morgan Stanley Asia Pacific, said: “We are still optimistic about capital market prospects in the second half of this year, particularly in Hong Kong, mainland China, and Taiwan.” She expects a number of deals worth more than $1 billion to be launched in the next few months, mainly in the consumer internet, industrial technology, and AI-related fields.

14d ago
India: The world's first country to be shorted by artificial intelligence?

India: The world's first country to be shorted by artificial intelligence?

Source: Qin Shuo's Circle of Friends In the first half of 2026, an impactful new label appeared in the Indian stock market — “the first country in the world to be shorted by artificial intelligence.” This assertion is not without foundation. The Nifty IT Index, which has long been regarded as a weather vane for India's technology industry, fell sharply in the first half of the year. Software service leaders Tata Consulting Services, Infosys, and Wepro are generally under valuation pressure. Meanwhile, international capital continues to withdraw from the Indian market. According to Reuters data, in the first half of 2026, foreign investors sold approximately $29 billion of Indian stocks on a net basis. After entering July, although the Nifty IT Index rebounded 16.7%, and the net inflow of foreign capital surpassed 1.6 billion US dollars, this round of market was largely due to sector rotation after global capital withdrew from crowded AI hardware transactions, which is not enough proof that India's software industry has escaped trouble. A large country with a population of 1.4 billion and many industries will of course not be easily “shorted” by a technology. India also has huge industries such as banking, pharmaceuticals, energy, electricity, communications, and consumption. Software outsourcing did not lose orders or lose value overnight. What has really been repriced by the market is India's most successful and internationally competitive growth model over the past 30 years. India has built itself as a “world office” with English-speaking talent, the number of engineers, and wages significantly lower than those in Europe and the US. Now that artificial intelligence has begun to enter the fields of programming, testing, operation and maintenance, customer service, and data processing on a large scale, India has suddenly discovered that what was once its proudest cost advantage may also become the part most easily replaced by technology. “AI shorting India” is inevitably exaggerated, but it accurately captures an even more important issue. When a country places too much hope for growth, employment, and the middle class on the same industrial circuit, a technological paradigm shift may evolve from industry shocks to development anxiety at the national level. Human arbitrage has been a huge software industry in India for a long time. The National Association of Software and Service Enterprises of India predicts that in the 2025-2026 fiscal year, India's IT industry revenue will reach US$315 billion, an increase of 6.1% over the previous year, and the number of employees will increase to 5.95 million. According to data released by the Indian government, IT and related services revenue for the 2024-2025 fiscal year was US$283 billion, and there are also more than 1,700 global competency centers across the country, employing about 1.9 million people. As a result, it is inaccurate to describe India's software industry as completely collapsing. It is still growing, has a large number of international customers, and has decades of project management capabilities, customer relationships, and industry experience. The transformation of core systems of financial institutions, databases of multinational enterprises, government information platforms, and highly complex legacy systems cannot all be completed with just a few AI agents. However, the capital market is more concerned about future growth prospects. The real problem with software outsourcing in India is that “revenue growth” and “manpower growth” are being decoupled. Their pattern in the past was very clear. European and American companies hand over standardized development, testing, operation and maintenance, data entry, and customer service to India. Indian companies charge according to the number of engineers invested and working hours. The more people a project requires, the bigger the bill the service provider can pay. The most direct way for an enterprise to increase revenue is to recruit more engineers and then undertake more projects. Although “selling people” doesn't sound decent, it is an underlying mechanism for the expansion of India's software services industry. Generative artificial intelligence breaks this cycle. Coding, debugging, and documentation work that used to require dozens of junior programmers can now be completed by a small number of senior engineers using AI tools; software testing, data collation, and customer Q&A, which originally relied on a large number of manual tasks, are also increasingly being taken over by automated systems. Customers are beginning to shift from buying hours to buying results, and are no longer willing to pay for a huge offshore team for a long time. The impact of this change is very special. Even if the order amount does not drop immediately, the number of people required for the same order may be drastically reduced. AI has improved delivery efficiency while simultaneously reducing billable labor hours. For product-based companies such as Microsoft and Google, increased efficiency usually means increased profits; for Indian outsourcers that charge per hour, increased efficiency may first mean shrinking bills. Technological advances have created a conflict of interest within the business model here. Of course, software companies in India can also use AI, but the more effectively they use AI, the faster traditional human outsourcing business shrinks. If they refuse to use it, they will also be defeated by European and American consulting firms and new service providers that use AI. Businesses must choose between weakening their old business and losing their future competitiveness. Therefore, the target of market shorting is mainly the old valuation logic of software outsourcing in India. This...

16d agoWendy#AI #India