Bitcoin punched above 79,000 today as the dollar weakened on a surging yen, before settling back around 77,500. Nvidia is reportedly in talks to invest in Perplexity at a 30 billion dollar valuation, and separately confirmed a 12.9 billion dollar acquisition of Hugging Face. Capital B raised another 7.6 million euros from Adam Back to keep stacking Bitcoin. Japan's FSA wants to exempt trust-based stablecoins from a tax filing rule built for family trusts. And Standard Chartered just became the first major global bank to offer spot Bitcoin and Ether trading to institutions in the UAE. Let's get into it.
Nvidia is negotiating a multi-billion dollar equity investment in Perplexity that would value the search startup at over 30 billion dollars. That's up from about 20 billion a year ago. And here's the number that matters: Perplexity's annualized revenue reportedly jumped from under 250 million at the start of 2026 to over 750 million by August. Tripled in eight months.
The driver is Perplexity Computer, the AI agent product they launched in February that autonomously handles multi-step tasks for professionals. That's what's pulling in over 100 million monthly active users and, more importantly, burning enormous amounts of compute.
Which is exactly why Nvidia cares. Perplexity is already running agent queries on Nvidia's Vera CPUs, uses CoreWeave for cloud compute, and is part of Nvidia's Nemotron Coalition. This deal isn't really about the equity return. It's about locking in a compute customer that scales with every agent query. Every time a Perplexity user says "book this, research that, summarize the other thing," Nvidia sells more chips.
Now, some skepticism is warranted. That 750 million revenue figure may be conflated with Microsoft Azure commitments. Some analysts peg the real ARR closer to 450 to 500 million. Even at the higher number, you're looking at roughly a 40 times revenue multiple. At the lower number, closer to 60 times. Aggressive by any standard.
And there's a structural risk sitting underneath all this. Perplexity doesn't own its core intelligence. It routes between OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and xAI models, and fine-tunes Meta's Llama for its Sonar model. If any of those providers raise prices or restrict access, Perplexity's margins get squeezed.
The bigger picture though: Nvidia isn't just selling chips anymore. Between this deal, the 12.9 billion dollar Hugging Face acquisition, and their existing stakes across the AI stack, they're becoming the house that owns the casino, the tables, and half the players. Perplexity is targeting an IPO in 2028. This round may be one of the last private ones.
Two stories this week that show where AI in education is actually going, and they're very different from each other.
First, Google and Khan Academy are rolling out expanded Khanmigo features for the 2026 school year, built on Gemini. The upgrade adds interactive diagrams in math and science that students can actually manipulate, and a Practice My Knowledge tool that lets teachers generate, edit, and approve AI-drafted questions before students ever see them. The framing is important: Gemini drafts, teachers approve. Six Google engineers spent six months on this via a Google.org fellowship. Discovery Education launched a similar Google Classroom integration this week, surfacing district-licensed content through a Gemini chat interface. Both approaches keep teachers firmly in the loop.
Then there's Lakewood Ranch Preparatory Academy in Florida, which is piloting something called the Ethos AI Experiential Academy. Fifth graders spend about 90 minutes a day on iPads with an AI Socratic tutor as their primary instructor. Teachers intervene only when needed. The AI is described as the "course master." Students are explicitly told they're training the bot.
That's a real spectrum. On one end, AI as a teacher's assistant with humans in charge. On the other, AI as the primary instructional interface with humans as backup. And this isn't theoretical. It's happening now, in real classrooms, with 10 and 11 year olds.
Meanwhile, Tsinghua University released OpenMAIC, an open-source multi-agent classroom platform for studying how AI agents behave in shared environments. Different problem, but same underlying trend: the classroom is becoming a laboratory for figuring out what humans and AI agents do together.
The interesting question isn't whether AI belongs in education. That fight is over. The question is which model produces better outcomes: teacher-mediated AI, or AI-mediated teaching. We're about to find out, whether we want to or not.
Capital B, the French Bitcoin treasury company listed on Euronext Growth, just raised another 7.6 million euros directly from Adam Back. That's 13.18 million new shares at 58 cents each, with four warrants attached to every share. The proceeds should let them buy roughly 376 more Bitcoin, bringing potential holdings to 3,521 BTC.
This follows a 21 million euro round last month, also led by Back alongside asset manager TOBAM. After this placement, Adam Back's stake climbs to about 17.77% of ordinary shares. If he exercises all his warrants, he could push toward 27.8%. The CEO of Blockstream is quietly building a controlling position in one of Europe's larger publicly listed Bitcoin treasuries.
Now, the honest read here: there's real dilution risk for existing shareholders. Those warrants, if fully exercised, could bring in another 49 million euros but also flood the cap table. A 10-for-1 reverse stock split is planned to clean up the share count. The strategy is straightforward though: maximize Bitcoin per fully diluted share, even if that means aggressive dilution today to accumulate faster.
Zoom out and this is happening at a rough moment for treasury companies. Hyperscale Data just wound down its Michigan Bitcoin mining operation and its BTC holdings fell 79% since late July to just 215 coins as it pivots to AI infrastructure. Japan-listed Remixpoint sold its Dogecoin below cost to concentrate holdings into Bitcoin. The trend is clear: the serious players are consolidating into Bitcoin-only, the tourists are getting flushed out.
On the venture side, Truth Ventures' Varun Datta made a sharp point this week: crypto VCs are hiding in later-stage deals, calling it discipline when it's really just consensus. 57% of last quarter's capital went to proven companies. The founding-stage gap, he argues, is where returns actually live. Capital B isn't a startup, but Adam Back writing personal checks into a public Bitcoin treasury has more conviction in it than most Series C rounds.
Japan's Financial Services Agency just filed a tax reform request that sounds boring but is actually one of the more interesting regulatory moves this year. They want to exempt trust-based stablecoins from a mandatory tax filing requirement, starting fiscal year 2027.
Here's the problem they're solving. Under current Japanese law, trustees have to file paperwork with tax authorities every time a trust beneficiary changes. That rule was written for family trusts, where beneficiaries change maybe once in a generation. But if you structure a stablecoin as a specified trust beneficiary right, which is exactly what SBI's JPYSC does, then every single on-chain transfer legally changes the beneficiary. Every transaction. On a public blockchain. Filed with tax authorities.
It's not just burdensome. It's structurally impossible at any real scale.
So the FSA is asking for a blanket exemption. Not a threshold, not a partial fix. Just remove the filing requirement entirely for trust-based stablecoins. Their argument: these tokens are used for frequent everyday transactions and holders don't earn income just from holding them. Treat them like payment infrastructure, not investment products.
This matters for a few reasons. First, it signals Japan is serious about actually making stablecoins usable, not just legal on paper. Second, it fits into a broader pattern following Japan's 2026 revision of the Financial Instruments and Exchange Act, which reclassified crypto assets as financial assets. Third, and this is the interesting part, Japan is figuring out something the US is still fumbling with: that legalizing an instrument and operationalizing it are completely different problems.
Meanwhile the contrast with Australia is stark. Australia is threatening unlicensed crypto firms with fines up to 10% of annual turnover as its September 30 deadline approaches. Thailand just imposed strict new rules on private wallets and offshore transfers, requiring licensed operators to verify some self-hosted wallets. Different jurisdictions, wildly different postures. Japan's approach, quietly removing friction rather than adding compliance theater, is going to age better.
One prediction to close on. Nvidia owning equity across the AI stack, Adam Back quietly controlling European Bitcoin treasuries, Japan writing tax code for on-chain reality. The infrastructure layer is being claimed right now, by people who understand it, while everyone else argues about interfaces.