Good evening and welcome to Markets Desk.
The biggest story moving markets right now is the abrupt departure of Nvidia chief Jensen Huang, who has stepped down following revelations of extramarital affairs, ending a three-decade tenure at the company he built into the defining force behind the artificial intelligence boom. Nvidia's valuation, its supply chain relationships, and its strategic direction were all deeply tied to Huang personally, so investors will be watching the succession picture closely in the sessions ahead.
That story doesn't stand alone. US lawmakers are now piling pressure on commerce secretary Howard Lutnick, demanding answers on why chip sales were permitted to a company with alleged ties to Chinese intelligence. The Nvidia scandal is widening into a full congressional inquiry, putting export controls and the broader semiconductor policy framework squarely under the microscope.
Shifting to payments infrastructure, Visa and Anchorage Digital have announced they are bringing Western Union's stablecoin, USDPT, onto Visa's settlement network as a native settlement asset. This is a meaningful structural move — it signals that major card networks are no longer treating stablecoins as peripheral but as legitimate rails for real-time settlement at scale.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
