Morning Roundup: Oil Is Driving the Market, Revolut’s New License, and Chinese Chips

The drop in oil prices has reignited investors’ appetite for risk—they have resumed buying shares of chipmakers and other tech companies that had fallen in price. Revolut has received its first license in the Asia-Pacific region and is launching new products in Australia. China is considering tightening export controls on artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies. Read about these and other topics in our roundup of key events as of the morning of July 21.

Oil, not artificial intelligence, is driving global markets, according to Reuters. Investors are trying to make sense of conflicting signals: on the one hand, the escalation of attacks between the U.S. and Iran in a war that has been going on for five months; on the other, hopes for imminent mediation in the escalating conflict in the Middle East.

On Tuesday, Brent futures retreated from their monthly high amid expectations of an imminent resolution. The decline in oil prices boosted investor sentiment, prompting them to resume buying shares of Asian chipmakers that had fallen in price: South Korea’s Kospi index soared nearly 5% on the day, although it is still down 19% since the beginning of July. Meanwhile, European stock futures slipped 0.3%, reflecting the fragility of trader sentiment: the recent escalation of hostilities has reignited inflation fears, which have pushed up bond yields and strengthened the U.S. dollar.

British fintech company Revolut plans to invest 400 million Australian dollars (about $280 million) to challenge Australia’s “Big Four” banks—Commonwealth Bank, National Australia Bank, Westpac, and ANZ Group— according to the Financial Times.

The company, valued at $75 billion, launched savings and loan products for Australian customers on Tuesday after the regulator granted it an unrestricted banking license. This is Revolut’s first license in the Asia-Pacific region and only its second outside the UK and Europe, following Mexico. Revolut has also applied for a full banking license in New Zealand.

In Australia, the company already has 1.2 million retail and corporate customers who use the app for services such as currency exchange and trading. Revolut founder and CEO Nikolay Storonsky has called full-scale expansion in the country a “long-term strategic priority.”

Matthew Wilson, an analyst at Jarden Investment Group, noted that Revolut “is well-positioned” to challenge Australian banks in the lending and savings segments, building on its successful track record in countries such as Ireland.

China is considering tightening export controls on artificial intelligence and semiconductor technologies, according to the Financial Times. According to the publication, China’s Ministry of Commerce is discussing with major companies in the AI and chip manufacturing sectors restrictions on the transfer of data used to train models, as well as technologies for designing advanced microchips, to foreign countries.

The new measures may be included in the next revision of the list of technologies prohibited or restricted for export. According to the FT, Beijing is also exploring the possibility of restricting the overseas production of advanced chips based on designs by Chinese companies and the acquisition by foreign investors of strategic Chinese AI developments.

U.S. President Donald Trump has signed three executive orders imposing 50 percent tariffs on a wide range of Canadian goods in response to Canada’s restrictions on U.S. automobiles, alcohol, and dairy products, according to Yahoo Finance. The measures could affect everything from wine and hockey sticks to cement—and will even apply to goods that were previously imported into the U.S. duty-free under the trade agreement between the U.S., Canada, and Mexico. The tariffs will take effect in 30 days unless the parties reach an agreement.

However, oil, potash fertilizers, fish, critical minerals, and goods already subject to separate tariffs for national security reasons—including steel and certain auto parts—are exempt from the new tariffs. The White House stated that it is prepared to continue negotiations with Canada until the measures take effect.

A federal court in San Francisco has approved a $1.5 billion settlement between Anthropic and a group of authors in a copyright infringement lawsuit, Reuters reports. The writers accused the company of using pirated copies of books to train its AI model, Claude. This is the largest known settlement in a copyright infringement case in the United States.

The court had previously ruled that training AI on books falls under the fair use doctrine; however, Anthropic violated the law by retaining more than 7 million pirated books in its library. The court rejected the objections of some of the authors, deeming the settlement amount fair; meanwhile, more than 91% of the participants have already requested their payments.

Beijing-based startup Jijia Vision (GigaAI), which develops AI models for predicting the behavior of people and objects (world models), is in talks to launch an IPO in Hong Kong as early as this year, according to Bloomberg. The company is also wrapping up a new round of funding that could value it at $3 billion, making it the most valuable Chinese startup in this sector.

Founded in 2023, GigaAI develops models for autonomous vehicles and humanoid robots, and its clients include China FAW, JD.com, and EMS. The company aims to become the world’s first publicly traded developer of world models, as it prepares for its IPO alongside other Chinese AI startups, including DeepSeek, Moonshot AI, and 01.ai.

— Japan's broad-based Topix index rose 2.1%, while the Nikkei 225 rose 2.8%.

— Hong Kong's Hang Seng Index rose 2.8%, while mainland China's CSI 300 Index remained virtually unchanged.

— In South Korea, the KOSPI index rose 4.6%, while the KOSDAQ rose 0.3%.

— Australia's S&P/ASX 200 remained virtually unchanged.

— Nasdaq Composite futures rose 1%, S&P 500 futures rose 0.4%, and Dow Jones Industrial Average futures rose 0.3%.

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