Finance

The continued global appetite for artificial intelligence infrastructure drove a successful Wall Street debut for South Korean memory chip maker SK Hynix, which saw its shares jump 13% on its first day of trading. This excitement for specialized AI capacity also boosted domestic competitors and mega-cap tech stocks like Meta, which surged on reports of its own upcoming AI chip production.

The Federal Reserve kept interest rates in the range of 3.5% to 3.75% during early July, with Chairman Kevin Warsh emphasizing a data-dependent approach for the upcoming meetings. While inflation shows signs of potentially peaking near 3.9% due to lower oil prices, market expectations remain high for the Fed to hold rates steady through late July despite a resilient labor market.

U.S. power consumption is forecast to reach record highs through 2027, largely driven by the surging electricity needs of large-scale data centers. To meet this demand, the grid is projected to add over 90 GW of new capacity in 2026, primarily from solar and energy storage, even as natural gas maintains a significant 40% share of the generation mix.