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European markets higher as AI and robotics stocks rise
European markets closed higher on Monday, with the Euro Stoxx 50 up 0.90%, the DAX 0.77%, the FTSE 100 0.37% and the IBEX 35 1.58%. The euro rose 0.19% against the dollar.
The brief · US close · Monday 2 November
AMD fell 7.52% Nvidia slipped 1.26% after reports that its Brev cloud platform was breached and SSH keys potentially exposed. TSMC fell 1.85%, Broadcom 1.18% and ASML 2.54%.
Software and cloud were mixed. Microsoft dropped 2.83%, while Alphabet eased 0.30% and Meta lost 1.34%. Amazon rose 2.20%. The Nasdaq Composite fell 1.07% and the S&P 500 lost 0.51%.
Robotics was narrowly mixed: Tesla gained 1.00% and Intuitive Surgical 1.12%, while Symbotic fell 1.85%. Robotics and AI exchange-traded funds were little changed to higher, with BOTZ up 0.16% and KOID up 0.64%. Crypto weakened, with Bitcoin down 1.90% and Solana down 3.02%.
Blockchain investigators report two separate incidents involving funds moved across exchanges and blockchains
Blockchain investigators have flagged two possible cryptocurrency losses: an unidentified European entity may have lost more than $106 million from accounts at multiple exchanges, while a wallet associated with a Solana arbitrage bot may have lost about $786,000.
OpenAI announced on Monday a pilot Grid Protectors Program for its upcoming data centre in Effingham County, Georgia, promising to free up to 1,000 megawatts of power during extreme weather or emergencies. The announcement comes as opposition to large-scale data centre development spreads across the United States.
Google says it and industry partners have dismantled the XCPE botnet, which the company says infected more than 1.3 million Android TV streaming boxes, and has ended its relationship with Videostrong and revoked its licence to manufacture Android TV devices with preloaded Google apps and services. In a report published Monday, Google's Threat Intelligence Group said it attributes the botnet with high confidence to Chinese device maker Videostrong Technology Co, which it accuses of deliberately installing a persistent backdoor and selling access to criminal affiliates.
Google, working with Meta, has open-sourced TorchTPU, a native PyTorch backend for Google's tensor processing units that lets existing PyTorch workloads run on TPU hardware with minor code changes, InfoQ reports.
Readwise, the maker of a reading companion app, has launched Readwise Books, an e-book store and reading tracker that directly competes with Amazon’s Kindle and Goodreads. The app is in beta and free to use, with some AI-powered features expected to go behind a paywall later.
Mercado Bitcoin, Brazil's largest crypto exchange, suspended deposits and withdrawals on Monday after identifying a security incident in one of its systems, while blockchain security firm Hypernative flagged more than $40 million in suspicious transfers that may be linked to it. The exchange said no customer lost money and no data leaked, and has not confirmed the $40 million figure. Tether chief executive Paolo Ardoino said the stablecoin issuer had frozen more than 4.5 million USDT connected to the incident.
NVIDIA has notified customers of a security incident affecting its Brev cloud development platform, with users reporting unauthorised activity between October 4 and October 20. The company stated that SSH keys used to access customer virtual machines may have been exposed, though it found no evidence of improper use.