Meta Connect: Waiting on fresh Muse signals; QCOM rolls out two flagship chips | Daily News Recap

0923 | Dolphin Research Focus

🐬 Macro / Sector

1. OpenAI and Anthropic rolled out lower-priced models, kicking off an AI price war. Anthropic launched Claude Opus 5.5 with ~40% lower cost and ~30% faster speed, while OpenAI introduced GPT-6 Sol and Luna with API pricing 50% below GPT-5.6. The price cuts are driven by Chinese open-weight models grabbing share, pushing frontier models into a value-for-money race. This benefits app-layer players and developers but intensifies cash burn for Big Tech, further squeezing room for smaller model vendors.

🐬 Single Stocks

1. $Meta Platforms(META.US)

Meta Connect 2026 kicks off Sept 23–24 ET, showcasing updates across AI agents, hardware, and ecosystem. The event centers on consumer AI agents and ecosystem monetization, building on the earlier hype around the Muse product. It should reinforce expectations for C-end AI app rollout and could keep sentiment recovering across consumer AI and compute hardware globally. We will track product launches and monetization progress post-event.

3. $Qualcomm(QCOM.US)

At Snapdragon Summit, Qualcomm unveiled Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 6 and Snapdragon 8 Elite Extreme Gen 6 built on 2nm, with a focus on on-device AI compute for Android flagships. The dual-flagship strategy shores up its high-end chip moat. This is positive for on-device AI and the smartphone supply chain upgrade cycle. Watch OEM rollout cadence.

4. $Shopify (SHOP.US)

Meta partnered with Shopify to bring Shopify's AI shopping and checkout into the Muse consumer AI agent, enabling end-to-end ordering within Muse. This fills a key gap in Muse's e-comm monetization path and offers a template for consumer agents to monetize. SHOP jumped over 7% overnight, though actual conversion remains to be validated by data.

5. $TENCENT(00700.HK)

Tencent Cloud launched DataBuddy, a native agent data + AI workbench for enterprises that uses agents to handle the full data lifecycle across development, governance, and analytics. This rounds out Tencent Cloud's data agent product lineup, targeting enterprise digitalization needs. Focus will be on paid conversion among public-sector and enterprise clients.

6. $Apple(AAPL.US)

The new Mac mini and Mac Studio start shipping on Tue local time, with hardware capable of running AI tasks locally, reducing the need to buy cloud tokens to call models. Apple is doubling down on on-device AI, substituting some cloud compute with one-off hardware spend and strengthening hardware differentiation.

🐬 Top Gainers by Sector

A-share: Security & alarm services; real estate services; life science tools & services.

HK: Residential builders; investment services & holding companies; sports venues and other leisure facilities.

US: Tires & rubber; silver; copper.

🐬 Watchlist for Tomorrow

1) US Q2 current account balance (US$100 mn).

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