Good afternoon and welcome to Markets Desk.
Nvidia's Jensen Huang is deep into a charm offensive in South Korea, making the rounds from boardrooms to television talk shows in Seoul. The visit underscores just how critical Samsung and SK Hynix have become to Nvidia's supply chain, and how seriously Huang is treating those relationships as AI infrastructure demand continues to accelerate globally.
Shifting to agricultural commodities, corn futures are extending what can only be described as a sustained breakdown, with contracts falling another eight to nine cents at midday. The national cash corn average now sits at three dollars and eighty-eight cents, and while USDA did report a private export sale of one hundred fifteen thousand metric tons, it has done little to arrest the selling pressure that has defined this market for weeks.
And on the AI front, a notable signal out of China — Tencent's chief AI scientist, who came over from OpenAI, is now publicly declaring a pursuit of artificial general intelligence. That language, coming from inside one of China's largest technology firms, suggests Beijing's AI ecosystem may be converging toward the same frontier ambitions driving American labs, with talent flows accelerating that alignment.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
