OpenAI early on Aug. 14 previewed a new "Ultrafast Mode" for its flagship GPT-5.6 Sol model in partnership with AI chip company Cerebras. The new service tier raises output speed to as much as 750 tokens per second, up from roughly 53 tokens per second in the current Standard mode, a gain of as much as 14x with no quality reduction, according to the companies. OpenAI said the mode will launch first through its API and is already in limited preview for selected customers. Cerebras also shared benchmark results showing GPT-5.6 Sol Ultrafast completing Humanity's Last Exam, a 2,500-question benchmark, in 11 hours and 11 minutes. Claude Fable 5 took 78 hours and 27 minutes on the same test, with the companies saying accuracy was similar while Sol ran at nearly seven times the speed. OpenAI highlighted use cases in legal drafting, financial modeling, engineering reports, incident response, research, customer support and commerce. The speedup is tied to Cerebras' wafer-scale hardware design, including its WSE-3 chip and a pipelined multi-wafer setup intended to reduce memory bandwidth bottlenecks during large-model inference.

Cerebras Systems reported strong top-line growth for the second quarter of 2026, but investors focused on a sharp decline in hardware revenue that raised new questions about the consistency of its core chip business. The company posted GAAP revenue of $180.1 million, up 74% year over year, while non-GAAP core revenue reached $210 million, up 103%. Hardware revenue fell 23% to $54.1 million from $70.3 million a year earlier, while cloud computing and other services surged to $126.0 million, up 281%, making cloud the company’s largest revenue stream for the quarter. Cerebras raised both third-quarter and full-year guidance. It expects third-quarter core revenue of $214 million to $216 million, above the $212 million consensus, with core gross margin of 38% to 40%. Full-year 2026 core revenue is now projected at $880 million to $890 million, up from prior guidance of $855 million to $865 million. Still, the market reaction was negative. Shares fell as much as 17% after hours, after closing Wednesday up 11.6%. The earnings release also highlighted the company’s strategic shift toward AI inference services. Cerebras said its systems can support OpenAI’s GPT-5.6 Sol at 750 tokens per second, and that it is working with AMD on a disaggregated inference offering expected to enter production in the fourth quarter of 2026, with Amazon Bedrock integration planned for the first quarter of 2027.

Taiwan’s Financial Supervisory Commission said it has instructed the Taiwan Stock Exchange to build an official dashboard for margin trading data after a dispute over whether market information had been withheld during July’s sharp stock-market swings. Securities and Futures Bureau Deputy Director-General Huang Chung-hao said on Aug. 4 that the capital market operates on the principles of safety, transparency, and fairness, and that there is “disclosure, not concealment” when it comes to important information. The planned dashboard is expected to include margin loan balances, whole-account maintenance ratios, and the share of short selling through securities lending, with a target launch before the end of the third quarter. The controversy stemmed from conflicting maintenance-ratio readings published by different sources. While the TWSE said the whole-market whole-account collateral maintenance ratio was about 175% on July 27, some market platforms showed figures closer to 143%, reflecting different calculation methods. The FSC said it respects privately compiled data, but the gap drew attention because 130% is the broker margin-call threshold and 166.7% is the initial maintenance ratio for 60% margin financing. On the banking side, Deputy Director-General Wang Yun-chung said banks will also begin reporting personal revolving finance loan data tied to four major categories of borrowing, with September data potentially reported as early as October.

On March 2, the crypto market cap fell 1.1% to $2.37T. BTC and ETH posted slight gains while WAR skyrocketed 108%. The Fear & Greed Index dropped to 10 (extreme fear). Poland's WSE approved crypto ETPs amid geopolitical tensions.

Cerebras began trading on Nasdaq after pricing its IPO at $185 per share, raising about $5.55 billion. Indicative opening pricing briefly reached $390 before trading.

Taiwan's financial regulator has agreed to evaluate a reform that would replace the current 1,000-share trading lot with a single-share unit, pledging a written report within one month. The change aims to align with global standards.

Cerebras Systems surged 68% on its Nasdaq debut, hitting a $95B market cap. The AI chip maker's Series G included Donald Trump Jr.'s 1789 Capital, and a subsequent Pentagon contract sparked ethics concerns.

Cerebras Systems plans a $4 billion IPO targeting a $40 billion valuation, with underwriters already seeing over $10 billion in subscription interest. The surge in AI chip demand fuels semiconductor market enthusiasm.