Highlights for the morning: bitcoin breaks records, xAI co-founder leaves, DeepSeek in trouble

Bitcoin rose to a new record price, topping $124,000. Chinese startup DeepSeek postponed the launch of its R2 model due to failed attempts to train it on Huawei Ascend chips, highlighting the technological gap between Chinese processors and Nvidia. Igor Babushkin, co-founder of xAI, left Elon Musk's company to launch his own fund, Babuschkin Ventures, to invest in secure AI. In turn, the crypto exchange Bullish successfully held an IPO, ending the first day of trading with a growth of almost 90% and a capitalization of over $10 billion. About these and other topics - in our review of key events on the morning of August 14.

Bitcoin has surpassed $124,000, hitting an all-time high amid rising institutional demand, inflows into spot ETFs and positive policies from Donald Trump's administration for the cryptosphere, Yahoo Finance reports.

Since the beginning of the year, the largest cryptocurrency by capitalization has risen 31% and 60% since its April lows. The US President signed an executive order to explore the possibility of including cryptocurrencies in pension 401(k)-plans, which could significantly expand access for retail investors, the publication specifies.

The rate hike is also supported by expectations of a Fed rate cut in September and the appointment of the head of the regulator focused on a soft monetary policy.

Ethereum in turn rose more than 6% to $4700, approaching its 2021 record. Fundstrat does not rule out the possibility that Ethereum could rise to $10,000 or even stronger by the end of the year.

Cisco reported quarterly earnings and revenue slightly above analysts' expectations: adjusted earnings per share were $0.99 on revenue of $14.67 billion, up 7.6% from a year earlier, CNBC reported. Net income rose to $2.82 billion. The outlook for the next quarter and the entire fiscal 2026 was also above consensus.

Revenue from network solutions in the quarter reached $7.63 bln (+12%), and from the security segment - $1.95 bln (+9%), which is below analysts' expectations. The company is actively increasing its presence in the AI area: it participates in projects with BlackRock, Microsoft, OpenAI and SoftBank, develops switches and routers for AI loads, and plans sovereign infrastructure projects.

AI infrastructure orders from web companies totaled $800 million in the quarter and exceeded $2 billion for the full fiscal 2025 - double the target level. About $1 billion of the orders are related to GPU interconnect networks. CEO Chuck Robbins emphasized that AI is not a temporary trend, but a growing segment with multimillion-dollar enterprise demand.

Crypto exchange operator Bullish (BLSH) ended its first day of trading at $70 per share - nearly 90% above its IPO price ($37) and with a capitalization of over $10 billion, despite falling more than 20% from its starting trading price of $90, Yahoo Finance reports. The stock climbed as high as $118 (+215%) during the day, with trading halted several times due to volatility. The IPO raised $1.1 billion for the company with 30 million shares offered, and interest in the $200 million purchase was expressed by BlackRock and Ark Invest.

Bullish operates a crypto exchange and owns the CoinDesk publication. The company previously tried to go public via SPAC in 2021 with a $9 billion valuation, but the deal fell through due to regulatory risks. The new offering coincided with the revitalization of the IPO market: in 2025, there have already been 133 offerings over $50 million, which is 58% more than a year ago.

CEO Thomas Farley said the digital asset industry is entering a phase of institutional growth, and Bullish's model - focused on compliance and institutional clients - is proven and ready to take center stage in the market.

Chinese startup DeepSeek has postponed the launch of its R2 model after unsuccessful attempts to train it on Huawei Ascend processors, which authorities recommended instead of Nvidia systems, the Financial Times reports. Technical problems - ranging from instability to slow inter-chip communication - occurred during training, causing the developers to revert to Nvidia for training, leaving Huawei only for inferencing (answering queries). Despite the help of Huawei engineers, a successful training run on the Ascend could not be achieved.

The delay, which stretched from Ma to recent weeks, cost DeepSeek time and competitive position. In addition to chips, the project has also been delayed by lengthy data partitioning. Founder Liang Wenfeng is unhappy with the progress and insists on refining the model to strengthen the company's leadership, the newspaper points out.

The situation highlights the technological lag of Chinese chips in AI training tasks and difficulties in implementing the import substitution policy, the publication notes. At the same time, experts believe that Huawei will be able to adapt its solutions in the future, although for now the leading models are still being trained by Nvidia.

Igor Babushkin, co-founder of Elon Musk-founded xAI, has announced his departure and the launch of Babuschkin Ventures, which will support AI security research and invest in startups working on "AI and agent-based systems that unlock the mysteries of the universe and benefit humanity," CNBC reports. Babushkin, who previously worked at Google DeepMind and OpenAI, highlighted xAI's key achievements, including the creation of the Memphis supercomputer and the rapid release of the models underlying the Grok chatbot.

During its tenure, xAI has faced criticism over Memphis' use of gas turbines that degrade air quality, as well as repeated Grok scandals. In both cases, the company apologized, attributing the incidents to errors in system prompts and code updates. The EU recently requested a meeting with xAI to discuss the problems with Grok and the X social network.

Babushkin emphasized that the idea of creating xAI was initially linked to Musk's and his own concerns about using powerful AI systems for good. He plans to continue working in this direction already within his new company.

- Japan's broad Topix index was falling 1.1 percent.

- The benchmark Nikkei 225 slipped 1.4 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index was little changed, while the Kosdaq small-company index was up 0.1%.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was up 0.7 percent.

- Futures on the S&P 500, Nasdaq 100 and Dow Jones Industrial Average were down slightly, about 0.1 percent each.

This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor