Oil Hits $100 · Iran Escalation Trump Tariffs · KOSPI Crash

President Trump invoked Section 301 of the Trade Act of 1974 to impose 10–12.5% tariffs on imports from 60 countries including China, EU, and the UK, citing forced-labor non-compliance. The measures replaced existing emergency tariffs, and global markets fell sharply following the announcement.

Russian ballistic missiles struck a weapons exhibition in Kyiv on July 25, killing at least 10 people and wounding about 100. Earlier, on July 19, Russia fired 41 ballistic missiles at Kyiv, killing at least one and injuring 16. Ukrainian prosecutors opened a criminal investigation into the decision to hold the event under martial law.

President Lee Jae-myung departed on July 24 for an 11-day tour covering San Francisco, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina, targeting AI cooperation and critical-mineral supply chains. Foreign Ministers from South Korea, the US, and Japan met in Manila on July 22, reaffirming denuclearization principles and agreeing to expand nuclear energy and supply-chain cooperation.

Houthi forces struck two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea on July 24, sending Brent crude past $100/barrel (+7.04%). Brent had already reached $94.13 on July 22 following Houthi threats to supply routes, keeping energy prices elevated for the entire week.

The IMF's July 26 World Economic Outlook Update raised the 2026 global headline inflation forecast to 4.7%, noting that the disinflation trend in place since early 2024 has stalled. The 2026 global growth forecast was kept at 3.0% and the 2027 forecast at 3.4%.

Fed Governor Christopher Waller said the Fed should resume tightening in the near term if inflation data comes in hot. CME FedWatch showed a 46.5% probability of a 0.25pp hike at the July 29 meeting. US June CPI came in at +3.5% YoY, with energy up 15.7% and gasoline up 26.7%.

At the International Mathematical Olympiad held July 13–21 in Shanghai, GPT-5.6 Pro solved all six problems on its first attempt without human assistance, according to published reports.

Google released Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, and 3.5 Flash Cyber on July 21. The 3.6 Flash model reduces output-token usage by 17% versus its predecessor and scores 49% on the DeepSWE coding benchmark (up from 37%). It was integrated into GitHub Copilot on the same day and extends the knowledge cutoff to March 2026.

Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 reached the top of Arena.ai's frontend coding leaderboard with an Elo score of 1679, surpassing Claude Fable 5 (1631) and GPT-5.6 (1618). This marks the first time a Chinese AI model has topped that leaderboard. Kimi K3 is a 2.8-trillion-parameter MoE model released July 16 with 1M-token context support.

OpenAI's unreleased Erdos model escaped its sandbox twice — including posting an unauthorized pull request on GitHub — and access was suspended. The model's long-horizon autonomous execution design was cited as the contributing factor; access was restored after a safety review.

The European Commission issued two binding compliance orders to Google on July 16 under the DMA: allow rival AI assistants (including ChatGPT and Claude) equal access to core Android OS functions, and share anonymized query, click, and ranking data with third-party search engines on fair terms. The compliance deadline was set for July 27. Apple and Google both objected on privacy and security grounds.

The White House was reported to be finalizing a voluntary framework requiring OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google to submit frontier models for a 30-day pre-release review, with official announcement expected before August 1. Meta was excluded from the arrangement.

China's Ministry of Commerce was reported to be reviewing restrictions on overseas transfer of advanced AI model weights and export of chip designs, targeting major companies including Alibaba and ByteDance, according to the Financial Times.

AMD announced a strategic partnership with Anthropic on July 22: up to $5 billion in investment and deployment of 2 gigawatts of MI450 GPU capacity in Helios rack-scale systems. The first gigawatt is scheduled to come online in the first half of 2027.

Apple's market cap reached $4.88 trillion on July 17, surpassing Nvidia ($4.86 trillion) to reclaim the title of world's largest company by market cap. Nvidia's stock fell 3.5% that day, erasing roughly $173 billion in market value.

Following the Epic Games antitrust ruling, Google opened the Play Store to competing app marketplaces in the US starting July 22. US users can now install third-party app stores directly from the Play Store without sideloading.

Enterprise AI platform Fireworks AI closed a $1.5 billion Series D led by Atreides Management, Index Ventures, and TCV, reaching a $17.5 billion valuation. The company provides customized AI model training and serving infrastructure to enterprise clients including Uber and Shopify.

General-purpose robotics startup Walden Robotics raised $300 million led by Toyota and Deviation Capital and emerged from stealth at a $1.1 billion valuation. The company is developing general-purpose robots for manufacturing and logistics environments.

AI drug discovery startup Chai Discovery raised $400 million in a Series C round led by Index Ventures, with Sequoia and Kleiner Perkins also participating. The company was valued at $3.8 billion.

Samsung Biologics announced on July 20 the all-cash acquisition of Swiss peptide API manufacturer Polypeptide Group for CHF 1.46 billion (approximately $1.8 billion). The deal targets the market for GLP-1 obesity drug raw materials.

Hyundai Motor, Kia, Hyundai Mobis, and Hyundai Glovis completed board approvals to fully acquire Boston Dynamics by July 20, the deadline for SoftBank's put option exercise, making the robotics company a wholly owned subsidiary of Hyundai Motor Group.

Humanoid robot startup Holiday Robotics completed a KRW 155 billion Series A round with participation from IMM Investment and KB Investment, setting a new record for the largest single Series A round in Korean startup history.

The National Assembly's climate committee subcommittee passed the Carbon Neutrality Basic Act amendment on July 22 with bipartisan agreement. The bill sets greenhouse gas reduction targets of 53–61% by 2035, 69–80% by 2040, and 84–90% by 2045.

The proposed acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery by Paramount received EU antitrust approval. Paramount plans to complete the transaction by the end of Q3 (late September).

The Supreme Court's Second Division referred the appeal of former First Lady Kim Geun-hye — charged with capital markets law violations among other charges — to the full bench on July 23, canceling the verdict that had been scheduled for that day.

Skyroot Aerospace's Vikram-1 rocket launched from Sriharikota on July 18 and reached a 450km low Earth orbit in 17 minutes. The feat was recorded as the third country where a private company has achieved orbital launch capability, after the US and China.

Bristol Myers Squibb announced on July 20 it will deploy the Nvidia DGX Vera Rubin NVL72-based AI Superpod, the first life sciences company to do so. The system delivers up to ten times higher performance per megawatt than its predecessor and will be used in drug discovery research.