ABMedia reported that flight deal expert Brian N recently appeared on the YouTube channel "Shiqi 77" to break down how travelers can improve their odds of finding cheaper airfares. His main point was blunt: the widely repeated claim that browsing in incognito mode leads to lower ticket prices does not hold up in practice. Instead, he said travelers should focus on how booking systems work and make better use of fare comparison tools. Brian N highlighted three advanced functions on Google Flights that he sees as especially useful today. The service can now show prices from airline websites and online travel agencies on one page, let users compare as many as five departure points and five destination options, and even generate travel suggestions from plain-language prompts tied to budget and trip style. For long-haul routes involving European, U.S., and Latin American carriers such as Norwegian Air and LATAM, he said language switching on airline websites may reveal price gaps. He also suggested using parallel browser windows, VPN-based region and language changes, and local-currency checks at checkout. For Taiwan carriers including China Airlines and EVA Air, he said such gaps are less common, adding that travel fairs, off-season travel in March and November, and buying tickets one by one before choosing seats can be more practical ways to save.

Protos revisited 32 public predictions about non-fungible tokens and argued that most of the grand claims made during the sector’s boom years have not held up. The review spans insurance, real estate, ticketing, gaming, social media, digital identity, music, retail, and the metaverse, citing comments from Kevin O’Leary, Mark Cuban, Brian Armstrong, Mark Zuckerberg, Justin Sun, Tyler Winklevoss, and others. According to the piece, even many high-profile corporate and celebrity NFT efforts were later shut down, removed, sold, or quietly abandoned. Protos also contrasts old market forecasts with current figures, noting that CoinGecko places NFT market capitalization at roughly $1.7 billion, far below Stephanie Wissink’s projection that it would exceed $80 billion by 2025. In gaming, the article highlights Michael Wagner’s claim that Star Atlas could attract billions of users, while saying the latest economic report for SAGE: Starbased showed 2,000 monthly active users when that metric stopped being tracked. One of the few examples Protos presents as relatively successful is Pudgy Penguins, where CEO Luca Netz said he would turn a failed project into a brand known inside and outside the NFT market; the report says the brand has since placed derivative toys in major stores and improved its standing in NFT rankings.

Morgan Stanley said in an Aug. 16 software note that reported talks between Silver Lake and Workday may be sending a broader valuation signal across software. Workday, a global leader in human capital management and financial management software with a market capitalization of about $50 billion, could become one of the largest software take-private deals in recent years if a transaction is completed. According to Morgan Stanley analyst Adam Wood, even with a 30% to 40% takeover premium, the valuation would still be only about 5x 2027 sales and roughly 16x 2027 free cash flow, both below historical averages. The bank argued that this matters beyond a single company. It said software take-private activity has been sparse over the past year as tighter credit and ongoing debate around AI weighed on confidence. Morgan Stanley also pointed to a separate trend in AI pricing, saying open-weight models are pressuring token prices but may not destroy returns for hyperscalers, which could still generate about 20% to 60% ROIC on owned compute under lower-price assumptions. Investor sentiment in software remains divided, based on a survey of more than 150 investors, though bullish respondents still outnumbered bearish ones. The report also highlighted concerns over Netcompany’s cash flow quality and examined SpaceX’s $60 billion all-stock acquisition of Cursor as another signal in software and AI infrastructure valuation.

Wall Street is no longer grading the AI trade on demand headlines alone. The focus has moved deeper into cash flow, capital intensity and the pace at which AI spending turns into revenue and returns. That shift was visible on Aug. 10, when NVIDIA unveiled a plan to work with Apollo, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield, Goldman Sachs and KKR on an independent compute financing platform intended to mobilize more than $500 billion of third-party capital for AI infrastructure. The stock still fell 2.86% that day, with more than $70 billion in market value erased. Recent earnings reactions tell the same story. Alphabet reported 24% revenue growth and 82% growth in Google Cloud revenue, yet its shares fell 7.13% after results as free cash flow turned negative for the first time in a quarter since listing. Microsoft, by contrast, posted 18% revenue growth, stronger operating cash flow, $19.6 billion in free cash flow, 43% Azure revenue growth and a larger backlog, and its shares rose more than 15%. Meta, Apple, Micron, SanDisk and Western Digital added more evidence that investors are no longer rewarding AI spending automatically. They are asking which companies can fund the buildout, how quickly those investments convert into sales and cash, and whether future returns can justify the scale of capital being committed.

Morgan Stanley said in a recent report that capital expenditure forecasts for hyperscalers still face upward pressure, with combined 2027 capex for Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Meta and SpaceX projected to reach $1.15 trillion. That figure is 20% above what the market had expected in July and implies 47% year-over-year growth. The bank argued that the bigger weak spot in current estimates is not 2027, where consensus has already moved higher, but 2028, where the market is still penciling in only 11% growth. The report ties that view to expanding AI infrastructure demand. Morgan Stanley said a more diverse model ecosystem, including closed-source models, open-weight models and hybrid deployments, is increasing computing and storage needs rather than reducing them. It cited data showing 60% of enterprises already use open-weight models in parts of their tech stack, and pointed to examples from Wix and Thomson Reuters to argue that cheaper inference has widened adoption instead of curbing demand. Morgan Stanley also said the capex trend is starting to show up beyond the largest cloud providers. The firm referenced signals from companies including IONOS and SAP, saying AI infrastructure spending is now feeding into software demand, reseller expectations and broader supply-chain visibility.

A federal court in New York dismissed all remaining state-law claims against Uniswap Labs and CEO Hayden Adams, saying building decentralized infrastructure alone does not amount to fraud.

US lawmakers are closing in on a stablecoin yield proposal, while the SEC and CFTC have issued a joint framework that classifies Bitcoin, Ether, XRP, and Solana as digital commodities.

A federal judge in New York dismissed the remaining claims against Uniswap Labs and founder Hayden Adams, ruling that developers are not liable simply because third parties misuse open-source code. UNI rose 6% to $3.92 after the decision.