Brent oil prices jumped almost 5% today, climbing to more than $98 a barrel and pushing Germany's 10-year bund yield above 3.2% for the first time since 2011. This surge in energy costs followed claims by Iran-aligned Houthis that they struck two Saudi oil tankers, threatening a second chokepoint on global oil supplies. The U.S. military, meanwhile, carried out a new round of strikes on Iran, marking a twelfth successive night of American attacks in the region.
Capital's New Frontier: AI Profits
Asian markets gained overnight, with Seoul's KOSPI surging more than 4%. This rally was led by chipmakers SK Hynix and Samsung, which saw respective gains of 4.8% and 3.7%. Tokyo's Nikkei and Hong Kong's Hang Seng also ticked higher, reflecting a broader trend where semiconductor and infrastructure companies are positioned to extract value early in the AI investment cycle.
Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) is set to launch new AI hardware today, aiming to capture market share from Nvidia in the rapidly expanding data center chip sector. AMD's new offerings include its first-generation server racks, Helios, and the Venice central processing unit for data centers. This move intensifies the competition for control over the infrastructure of artificial intelligence.
AMD announced plans this week to sell up to two gigawatts of its Instinct MI450 chips to AI lab Anthropic beginning in the first half of next year. This deal also includes an investment of as much as $5 billion in the Claude maker. Nine months ago, AMD secured a multiyear deal with OpenAI, projected to bring in tens of billions of dollars in annual revenue, granting the ChatGPT creator the option to buy up to roughly 10% of the chipmaker.
Nvidia, a dominant player, released technical details about its Vera CPU, designed to maximize AI agent work with given electricity when combined with its Rubin graphics processing unit. Hundreds of executives and engineers gathered at the Moscone West convention center on Wednesday to absorb technical presentations and network, according to a Reuters witness. AMD displayed its Helios data center rack alongside booths from cloud computing providers like Vultr and TensorWave, both operating data centers with AMD hardware.
Imperialism's Price and the State's Hand
While chipmakers accumulate massive contracts, Wall Street futures pointed lower today after earnings from Alphabet and Tesla, the first two of the "Magnificent Seven" megacap companies to report this season, failed to impress. Dow futures were down about 0.27%, S&P 500 futures fell about 0.27%, and Nasdaq-100 futures dropped about 0.28%. Concerns over the heavy outlays required for AI infrastructure resurfaced, highlighting the internal contradictions of capital accumulation even within the tech sector.
In Europe, the European Central Bank (ECB) held rates steady at 2.25% after lifting them in June of the same year. The ECB warned that "Uncertainty remains high and the full inflationary impact of the energy shock has yet to play out." It added that the Governing Council is "closely monitoring the intensity and duration of the shock, as well as its indirect and second-round effects." This stance signals the state's role in managing the system's contradictions, with markets anticipating a four-in-five chance of another rate hike in September if energy prices remain elevated. Morgan Stanley analysts affirmed this, stating, "We maintain our call for another rate hike in September, if energy prices remain elevated."
The rising oil prices, fueled by military actions and threats to shipping lanes, directly contribute to this inflationary pressure. The U.S. military's sustained strikes on Iran, now in their twelfth successive night, and the Houthi attacks on Saudi tankers underscore how imperial competition for resources and strategic control directly translates into higher costs for working people globally, while benefiting oil capital and the military-industrial complex.