TLDR

• Qualcomm confirmed its acquisition of AI infrastructure software provider Modular, with the transaction reportedly valued at approximately $4 billion according to Bloomberg.
• The acquisition brings software capabilities that enable AI model deployment across various hardware platforms, supporting Qualcomm’s data center ambitions.
• Modular’s valuation has surged significantly from $1.6 billion following a $250 million funding round completed nine months prior.
• Shares of QCOM gained 1.1% in premarket hours following an 8% decline Tuesday, with the stock posting 57% gains over the last three-month period.
• The acquisition announcement coincided with Qualcomm’s investor day Wednesday, where the company planned to reveal a major data center chip partnership and unveil next-gen processor details.

Qualcomm (QCOM) announced its agreement to purchase Modular, a company specializing in AI infrastructure software, in a transaction that Bloomberg sources estimate at roughly $4 billion. The chipmaker has not publicly disclosed the official acquisition price.

QUALCOMM Incorporated, QCOM

Shares of QCOM advanced 1.1% during premarket Wednesday trading, rebounding from an 8% slide in the previous session. The semiconductor company’s stock has surged 57% during the past three-month timeframe.

Established in 2022, Modular has secured $380 million in total capital, with its most recent financing being a $250 million investment round completed in September 2025. The company carried a $1.6 billion valuation following that funding round — meaning the reported $4 billion purchase price represents more than a 2.5-fold increase in less than twelve months.

Qualcomm indicated the transaction should finalize during the latter half of 2026.

Modular’s technology provides software infrastructure that allows developers and enterprises to deploy AI models with optimized performance across diverse hardware architectures. This cross-platform compatibility represents a strategic asset for Qualcomm’s broader objectives.

“The acquisition is expected to strengthen Qualcomm Technologies’ ability to deliver a more optimized AI compute layer across a broad range of platforms and use cases,” Qualcomm said in a statement.

The company added that it “deepens the software foundation for Qualcomm Technologies’ data center strategy.”

The chipmaker has intensified its data center expansion efforts as part of a strategy to diversify beyond the smartphone chip sector, which experiences significant market fluctuations.

What Analysts Are Saying

Patrick Moorhead, an analyst at Moor Insights & Strategy, provided commentary on the transaction, highlighting the difference between Qualcomm‘s existing strengths and Modular’s complementary capabilities.

“Qualcomm is very good at edge enabling software, but that’s not the same as data center software capability,” Moorhead said. “Strategically, this could help to better answer the data center question.”

The observation holds merit. While Qualcomm has established strong AI chip positioning in edge computing applications — including smartphones, personal computers, and automotive systems — the data center segment presents distinct challenges, and Modular’s technology addresses that capability gap.

Investor Day in Focus

Qualcomm’s investor day also took place Wednesday, an event drawing significant market attention as analysts anticipated the company would identify a major data center chip client.

Information regarding Qualcomm’s upcoming processor architecture was also expected to be shared, further heightening investor attention surrounding the stock.

In separate reporting, The Information indicated that Qualcomm is pursuing discussions to acquire AI chip developer Tenstorrent in a transaction estimated between $8 billion and $10 billion. Neither company has confirmed those negotiations.

Qualcomm has not publicly revealed the financial terms of the Modular acquisition, and company representatives declined to provide pricing details when approached by Barron’s.

• KuCoin Pay expands crypto payments to Bangladesh, Mexico, and Zambia.
• Platform links stablecoins with local banks and mobile money rails.
• KuCoin targets real-world crypto use in high-growth emerging markets.

KuCoin Pay, the cryptocurrency payment platform developed by KuCoin, has expanded its transfer-based payment capabilities across Bangladesh, Mexico, and Zambia.

The move aims to connect digital assets with widely used local payment systems in high-growth markets.

The rollout integrates cryptocurrencies and stablecoins with established banking and payment networks across the three markets.

These include the bKash and Nagad mobile payment platforms in Bangladesh, SPEI-compatible bank transfer routes in Mexico, and mobile money services offered by MTN Group and Airtel Africa in Zambia.

The expansion reflects the growing role of local bank transfers and mobile money services in emerging economies, where consumers increasingly rely on these systems for salary payments, remittances, merchant transactions, and peer-to-peer transfers.

Integration with local financial infrastructure

KuCoin Pay said its platform is designed to integrate digital assets with familiar financial systems, reducing the complexity often associated with moving cryptocurrencies into everyday financial activity.

The company noted that its technology supports localized payment routing through deep integration with local banking and payment rails.

Rather than requiring users to navigate complex backend processes, the platform identifies appropriate payment routes through a unified technical interface.

According to the company, this approach allows digital asset transactions to function more like traditional e-wallets, mobile money services, or local bank transfer tools.

By connecting cryptocurrencies and stablecoins with existing financial infrastructure, KuCoin Pay aims to make digital assets more practical for real-world use cases while reducing friction and simplifying the transfer process.

Focus on practical crypto applications

KuCoin executives said payments represent one of the most important pathways for digital assets to gain broader utility within the real economy.

“Crypto is emerging as a new asset class with growing relevance in the real economy, and payments are one of the most important ways for this value to reach users,” said Alicia Kao, Managing Director of KuCoin.

“Through KuCoin Pay, we are building trusted and localized connections between digital assets and existing banking, mobile money and transfer rails. By integrating crypto with the financial systems people already use, we are helping digital assets move beyond holding and trading into practical financial activity, while supporting more inclusive and future-ready financial ecosystems in high-growth markets.”

The company said the expansion is intended to improve accessibility to digital assets by enabling users to interact with cryptocurrencies through payment systems they already use in their daily lives.

Further expansion planned

Looking ahead, KuCoin Pay said it plans to continue expanding compatibility with local banking and payment systems in additional markets.

The company also intends to improve technical response speeds and broaden practical cryptocurrency payment applications across supported regions worldwide.

The latest expansion underscores a broader industry trend toward integrating digital assets with existing financial infrastructure, particularly in emerging markets where mobile money and local transfer networks play an increasingly central role in everyday commerce and financial inclusion.

“Binance.US has a CEO, Binance.com has two co-CEOs,” he said. “They almost never talk to each other. Actually, I don’t think they ever talk to each other. So, yes, two independent teams. Binance.US does license the product and technology from Binance Global, but they have a licensing agreement.”

CZ can’t see himself running the U.S. business, he said, adding that he did not think he was the best candidate to run a U.S. platform. “It needs to be somebody local; it needs to be somebody who’s on the ground,” he said.

The other companies CZ is heavily invested in — Giggle Academy and YZi Labs — are similarly independent, he said.

This independence extends to CZ’s personal life, he said. Yi He, one of Binance’s co-CEOs, is CZ’s partner, and the two share a home in the United Arab Emirates. Despite this, CZ said they do not talk about Binance at home, and the two keep their respective work lives separate.

“To be very frank, even when I was CEO of the company, she had a lot of strategic input into the company,” he said. “She was probably giving me more instructions even when I was CEO. So now, [after] stepping down, she’s running it. Our conversations at the max would be like ‘oh two days ago the bitcoin price dropped because of this policy,’ but we don’t even talk about that anymore.”

Market operator Cboe Global Markets has entered the prediction markets business with the launch of Cboe Predicts, a platform debuting with binary contracts tied to the S&P 500.

The contracts are now available through Interactive Brokers and are expected to launch at Charles Schwab and other retail brokerage platforms in the coming months, according to a Tuesday press release.

The contracts allow traders to take “yes” or “no” positions on whether the S&P 500 will close above or below a specified price level.

Cboe is the latest traditional finance firm to expand into prediction markets as investor interest in outcome-based contracts grows. The launch comes days after reports that Charles Schwab was seeking to enter the sector through a partnership with Cboe that would offer customers similar S&P 500-linked contracts.

Contracts tied to the S&P 500’s daily closing price are already available on prediction market platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi.

Cboe launches XSP Binary Options in prediction markets offering. Source: Cboe

Traders seek more binary event contracts

Cboe’s customers are showing more demand for shorter-dated, outcome-based trading opportunities, which led to the debut of the prediction market offering, according to JJ Kinahan, head of retail expansion and alternative investment products at Cboe. 

Cboe’s new contracts are security options that will trade within the same regulatory framework as US-listed options, providing “institutional-grade liquidity” and transparency, Cboe said.

Related: Kalshi adds India to growing list of restricted jurisdictions

Meanwhile, prediction market platforms have drawn increased regulatory scrutiny over political betting and sports-related event contracts.

Kentucky was the latest state to sue five prediction market platforms, including Kalshi and Polymarket, accusing them of “operating unlicensed and illegal sports betting and gambling platforms,” as Cointelegraph reported on Thursday.

In January, US lawmakers proposed legislation aimed at restricting political prediction market trading by government officials after a Polymarket user netted over $400,000 on a contract related to the removal of then-Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro, fueling insider trading concerns.

Magazine: Should users be allowed to bet on war and death in prediction markets? 

A vulnerability in Cardano-based wallet SecondFi allowed attackers to drain user funds, resulting in major losses.

SecondFi on Wednesday confirmed it had identified the root cause of the exploit and is now engaging with Cardano ecosystem platforms and blockchain investigators to address the issue.

The company also said it triggered emergency measures that secured roughly 129 million ADA, which is being transferred to an independent third-party custodian and held for affected users pending verification.

The platform on Tuesday estimated that around 16 million ADA, or $2.4 million, was affected across 374 addresses.

Cardano founder Charles Hoskinson said SecondFi is not an Input Output Global product and stressed that there is no ownership, control, or business relationship between the wallet and IOG.

SecondFi traces exploit to an address-level issue

SecondFi has not released a comprehensive post-mortem as of publication, but has issued multiple statements confirming a security breach caused by a vulnerability in its Cardano web wallet generation software.

It said the root cause of the incident was an issue at the address level that affects users when they sign transactions.

Source: SecondFi

“SecondFi’s wallet software exposed the private keys it generated,” Mitchell Amador, CEO of security company Immunefi, told Cointelegraph.

Amador said that while the blockchain remained secure, the code that generates the keys is the “part nobody audits like a contract.” He added that attackers have increasingly shifted focus toward infrastructure that creates or stores crypto keys rather than blockchain protocols.

Related: AI models led to a ‘vulnerability apocalypse’ in crypto security: Immunefi CEO

“Recovery to another platform or wallet does not mitigate the risk,” SecondFi said, advising users not to restore their recovery phrases into new Cardano wallets. The guidance differed from recommendations by some community members, who urged users to migrate affected wallets and move funds to newly created addresses.

“We didn’t write the code,” says Hoskinson

SecondFi is a self-custodial platform built on Cardano that rebranded from the Yoroi wallet in April 2026. Yoroi was developed by Emurgo, which describes itself as the “for-profit arm of Cardano,” and was launched as the first open-source light wallet for the Cardano blockchain.

Hoskinson said IOG’s incident response team has been in contact with SecondFi since Monday and that the platform requested an independent security audit.

Source: Charles Hoskinson

In a Tuesday video posted on X, Hoskinson stressed that IOG “is not Emurgo,” adding that the company has no influence over Emurgo and cannot speak on its behalf regarding the exploit.

“We didn’t write the code and we’re not connected to it,” he said.

Magazine: Japanese pension fund tips 1% in crypto, G7 urges action on NK hackers: Asia Express

Kendrick compared Aave to an automated, blockchain-based bank that operates without employees or discretionary decision-making. At its peak in October 2025, the protocol held roughly $75 billion in deposits, a level the analyst said would have ranked it among the 30 largest banks in the U.S.

Looking ahead, Kendrick expects the value of tokenized assets actively used within DeFi applications to increase 37-fold by the end of the decade. Because Aave’s revenue model is tied closely to lending activity and deposits, the bank anticipates the protocol’s growth to translate relatively directly into gains for the AAVE token.

The report also pointed to the potential restart of Aave’s token buyback program as a further catalyst. The protocol’s Horizon initiative, which is designed to support lending against tokenized real-world assets in a permissioned environment, could help attract traditional financial institutions and accelerate adoption.

Despite recent market weakness across digital assets, the broader backdrop for crypto prices is improving and Aave is expected to be among the beneficiaries as capital returns to DeFi, the report added.

Aave was 5.6% higher over the last 24 hours, trading around $76.

Read more: DeFi shaken by $292 million hack, but showing resilience, Standard Chartered says