Finance

YouTube said it has added Amazon.com Inc. as a new affiliate partner in its YouTube Shopping program. Creators can now tag Amazon products directly in videos and livestreams to send shoppers to Amazon and earn a share of sales. The move is part of YouTube’s broader effort to build out ecommerce by turning the platform’s 110 million hours of daily shopping-related viewing into a more direct monetization channel for creators.

Strategy spent $635.2 million to buy back its STRC preferred shares and set up a $1 billion support fund aimed at a $100 target price for the security. STRC traded near $97.34, still below that target. Strive’s SATA preferred stock offers a 13% annual dividend versus STRC’s 12%, intensifying competition for preferred-share investors. Strategy also resumed Bitcoin purchases after a two-month pause, buying 4,603 BTC for $369.7 million.

Amazon Pharmacy has partnered with healthcare AI platform Solv to show patients real-time prescription delivery options and pricing during online appointment booking, including same-day delivery in more than 3,100 U.S. cities. The coverage is expected to expand to 4,500 cities by the end of the year, with further growth planned. The integration embeds Amazon’s medication delivery choice directly into the care scheduling workflow to make filling prescriptions more convenient.

Samsung Electronics is developing an eight-layer stacked HBM4E memory chip at Nvidia’s request, aiming for transfer speeds of 17 to 18Gbps—about 20% higher than its current samples. The chip is slated for Nvidia’s custom memory platform, NVHBM, and is expected to be integrated into the Rubin Ultra AI GPU launching next year. The eight-layer design highlights a shift in AI chip development from capacity expansion toward balancing bandwidth, power consumption and yield. If the product passes validation, it could help Samsung narrow its gap with SK Hynix in high-end HBM.

Sony CEO Hiroki Totoki said the PS5 is now in the latter half of its lifecycle and that expanding hardware sales is no longer the top priority. Instead, Sony is focused on turning PS Plus’s 125 million monthly active users into recurring revenue. He noted that Sony has sold more than 95 million PS5 consoles, but said the company is concentrating on monetizing its existing user base.

Apple said Tim Cook will step down as chief executive officer, with John Ternus set to take over the role. Ternus previously served as senior vice president of Hardware Engineering. Cook will remain at the company as executive chairman, marking a major leadership transition for Apple.

Surging demand from AI servers is soaking up DRAM and NAND memory, triggering a global shortage and sharp price increases for chips used in consumer electronics. A 16GB RAM chip that once cost as little as $4.76 is now close to $60 as of June, according to the WA Data Science Innovation Hub (WADSIH). Samsung has already raised prices for phones and tablets, with higher-storage versions up to $115 more expensive, while Valve priced its Steam Machine at $US1,049 ($1,511) in June, well above earlier industry estimates.

Novartis has stopped development of its CAR-T therapy rap-cel across multiple indications after side effects were observed during testing. Bristol Myers Squibb has also voluntarily paused its zola-cel program over safety concerns. Results published in February reported one case of IEC-HS in a Phase 1 study of zola-cel. Kyverna Therapeutics could file for approval in stiff person syndrome by year-end and is enrolling patients for a pivotal myasthenia gravis study.

Strategy, formerly MicroStrategy, resumed Bitcoin purchases after a 10-week pause, buying 4,603 BTC for $369.7 million at an average price of $80,318 per token. The company said its holdings rose to 845,050 BTC, acquired for a combined $63.73 billion at an average cost of $75,412. Over the same period, it raised about $602.8 million in net proceeds from share sales and used $151.8 million to repurchase roughly 1.56 million shares of its STRC preferred stock.

Strategy bought 4,603 bitcoin for $370 million, its first increase since mid-June, paying an average $80,318 per coin. The purchase was funded by $602 million in net proceeds from sales of MSTR common stock. The company used part of the proceeds to boost its USD cash reserve and repurchase STRC preferred stock. Strategy now holds 845,050 bitcoin at a total cost of $63.3 billion.