Highlights for the morning: crypto market falls, changes at Apple, AI bets rise

Bitcoin has gone below $90,000 for the first time in seven months, reflecting a general decline in risk appetite and a wave of sell-offs among institutional players. Databricks is in talks for a new round at a valuation of over $130 billion, despite fears of a bubble around artificial intelligence. On these and other topics - in our review of key events for the morning of November 18.

The price of bitcoin fell below $90,000 for the first time in seven months, losing almost 30% of its October peak and completely erasing the 2025 growth, Yahoo Finance reports. The cryptocurrency's sell-off was reinforced by doubts about a December rate cut in the US and nervousness in global markets, where a correction is beginning after a long rally. Institutional players and public companies have started to exit positions, increasing pressure on the market, analysts said.

The sell-off has affected the crypto sector as a whole, with shares of miners and the Coinbase exchange falling, and ether losing about 40% from its August high. Traders fear that the failure of crypto assets could foreshadow a broader downturn, as has happened before.

Apple designer Abidur Chowdhury, who played a key role in the creation of the iPhone Air and appeared in its launch video, has left the company for an AI startup, Bloomberg writes. His departure caused a notable backlash within Apple, as he was considered one of the team's rising figures. Chowdhury joined Apple more than six years ago, in 2019, when iconic design director Jony Ive was leaving the company, the agency recalls.

Chowdhury's departure was part of an ongoing restructuring of Apple's design division. The team has undergone an almost complete overhaul, and this year it also saw the departure of Chief Operating Officer Jeff Williams, who oversaw the design division. After his departure, the design division was reassigned directly to CEO Tim Cook.

Databricks is discussing a new round of capital raising at a valuation of more than $130 billion - up 30% from September, underscoring continued investor interest in the AI tool developer despite worries about an inflating bubble, Bloomberg reports. The company intends to target hiring and M&A deals, though no final agreements have been finalized. The talks come amid a series of investor exits from Nvidia - from Peter Thiel's fund to SoftBank - and growing skepticism about the sustainability of an industry with trillions invested with no clear path to profitability.

Still, investors continue to fight for a stake in AI startups. Databricks remains one of the biggest players in cloud-based data software and AI applications, competing with Snowflake, Oracle, Microsoft and AWS, the agency notes.

Arm said processors on its architecture will now be able to work directly with Nvidia's AI chips via NVLink Fusion technology, CNBC reports. This will make it easier for large cloud companies - like Amazon, Google and Microsoft - to build their own servers more easily by combining Arm processors and Nvidia's powerful GPUs, rather than depending on off-the-shelf solutions. Nvidia is thus making its technology open to different CPUs, not just the ones it produces itself.

Arm in turn does not produce processors, but sells licenses and ready-made designs. Now the custom Neoverse chips will get a protocol that speeds up data exchange with GPUs. This is important because today's AI servers are built around Nvidia gas pedals, which connect up to eight GPUs per CPU, the channel explains. Against this backdrop, the market is becoming increasingly competitive: cloud giants are developing their Arm-CPUs, Nvidia is investing in Intel, and SoftBank - the owner of Arm - is leaving Nvidia and supporting the OpenAI Stargate project.

- The broad Japanese Topix index collapsed by 2.7%. Benchmark Nikkei 225 - by 2.9%.

- Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index was down 1.9 percent, while mainland China's CSI 300 Index was down 0.8 percent.

- In South Korea, the Kospi index collapsed 3.2 percent and the Kosdaq fell 2.6 percent.

- Australia's S&P/ASX 200 was down 1.9 percent.

- Nasdaq 100 futures were down 0.7 percent, the S&P 500 was down 0.5 percent and the Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 0.4 percent.

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