AI Markets: Kimi K3 sinks chip stocks, Apple hits $5 trillion

A Chinese model rattles AI chip stocks while Apple clears the symbolic $5 trillion mark. Between the US ban on Chinese humanoid robots and SpaceX stock still under pressure, this week confirms that the tech-and-markets battle is also being fought on geopolitical ground.

Washington bans Chinese humanoid robots, Nvidia caught in the crossfire

The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) on Tuesday banned imports of new Chinese-made humanoid and quadruped robots, citing critical security flaws. Unitree, the showcase of Chinese robotics and a brand-new Nvidia partner, finds itself on the front line of this latest trade offensive.

Key points:

  • The FCC adds Unitree to its “Covered List,” the national security blacklist that blocks the radio certification required to import, sell or market a new wireless device in the United States.
  • The stated reason: a Bluetooth flaw nicknamed “UniPwn,” which reportedly gives full remote access to Unitree’s Go2, B2, G1 and H1 robots and spreads on its own from one device to another, with no human intervention.
  • Just in June, Nvidia had picked the Unitree H2 Plus chassis as the reference platform for its Isaac GR00T robotics ecosystem.
  • The move comes barely a week after Unitree’s commercial launch in Europe, a first for a Chinese humanoid in a Western market.

A blacklist aimed at China’s robotics champion

Since May 2025, US lawmakers from both parties had been pushing to put Unitree on national security lists, pointing to its alleged ties to institutions affiliated with the Chinese military. Senators Rick Scott and Tom Cotton had even introduced a bill, the “Blocking CCP Spy Tech Act,” naming the company directly. Now it’s done: the FCC is blocking new Unitree models, and more broadly foreign humanoid or quadruped robots, from entering the country, just like certain power inverters used in renewable energy grids.

In practice, the blacklist doesn’t ban robots already deployed in the US (some are used in labs at MIT, Princeton and Carnegie Mellon), but it cuts off the American market to any new model. That’s an awkward spot for Nvidia, which had introduced Unitree in June as the hardware partner for its reference robotics platform at its GTC conference in Taipei.

An open road for Western humanoids, limited access for European investors

From a market standpoint, the measure looks like disguised protection for American contenders in humanoid robotics (Tesla and its Optimus, but also startups like Figure and Apptronik) at the very moment China, through Unitree, Agibot and UBTech, dominates this emerging market. Unitree itself was preparing an IPO on Shanghai’s STAR Market, approved in early July.

For a European investor, direct exposure to Unitree is off the table anyway: the company isn’t listed in the West and, if it does go public, will be listed on a Chinese exchange that isn’t eligible for the PEA. Most indirect exposure comes through UCITS-replicated thematic robotics ETFs, whose weightings could shift if the underlying indexes trim Chinese stocks under regulatory pressure. Humanoid robotics remains an early-stage, politically sensitive bet, where Washington’s decisions carry as much weight as technological breakthroughs.

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SpaceX hits bottom, Washington already betting on a Tesla merger

SpaceX stock hit another all-time low this week, weighed down by its upcoming quarterly report and the end of the lock-up period. Six US lawmakers also disclosed buying shares, while bets keep piling up on a possible tie-up with Tesla.

Key points:

  • On Monday, July 27, SpaceX (SPCX) briefly fell below $110 intraday, more than 20% under its $135 IPO price, before closing around $113.50; the stock has lost more than 33% in a month.
  • Six US representatives (or their family members) reported buying between $83,000 and $245,000 worth of SpaceX shares in the six days after the IPO, and several of them sit on committees tied to defense or federal contracts.
  • Prediction market Kalshi puts the odds of a Tesla-SpaceX merger by May 2027 at around 50%; RBC Capital raised its Tesla price target to $500, factoring in a buyout scenario.
  • The federal aviation regulator (FAA), for its part, wants to speed up launch approvals for SpaceX and Blue Origin by loosening some environmental rules.

Earnings and lock-up expiry, two deadlines weighing on the stock

Since going public on June 12, SpaceX stock has lost nearly half its value from its mid-June peak. Two upcoming deadlines are feeding investor jitters: the company’s very first quarterly results as a public company, on August 4, and the lock-up expiry two days later, which will let early shareholders and employees sell up to 911.5 million shares, nearly four times the float currently available on the market. Some analysts, such as those at Motley Fool, expect more pressure on the stock after that date, a scenario that remains an opinion, not a certainty. Bucking the gloom, the FAA said it wants to simplify environmental procedures to speed up launch approvals for SpaceX and Blue Origin, a more favorable medium-term signal for the launch business.

A Tesla-SpaceX merger? A bet, not a fact

A notable development this week: six US representatives, several of whom sit on the Armed Services Committee that oversees SpaceX’s military launch contracts, bought shares in the company right after its IPO. The practice is legal as long as it’s disclosed, but it fuels criticism over conflicts of interest, although CNBC found no evidence that nonpublic information was used. Meanwhile, speculation about a Tesla-SpaceX tie-up keeps growing: on the Kalshi betting platform, the odds of a merger before May 2027 hover around 50%, and RBC Capital built a premium tied to a SpaceX buyout scenario into its Tesla price target, while noting that this hypothesis rests on unconfirmed press reports. For a European investor, SpaceX is only accessible through a standard brokerage account, outside the PEA, with a level of volatility that illustrates the risks of a recent and still thinly traded IPO.

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Kimi K3: the Chinese model shaking America’s chip giants

An open-source AI model from China has once again sent tech stocks into a panic, reviving memories of the DeepSeek shock of January 2025. Washington is already accusing its developer of cheating.

Key points:

  • Kimi K3, a 2.8-trillion-parameter open model from Chinese startup Moonshot AI, claims performance close to GPT-5.6 and Claude Fable 5 at a fraction of the price ($3 versus $10 per million input tokens).
  • The US PHLX Semiconductor Index (SOX) fell about 10% in the week of its launch, its worst weekly performance since April 2025; Nvidia, Broadcom, AMD, Arm, Intel and Micron all declined.
  • The White House accuses Moonshot AI of mass “distillation” of Anthropic’s Claude model and of using Nvidia GB300 (Blackwell) chips obtained through Thailand, in violation of export restrictions; the international scientific community disputes these accusations.
  • Moonshot AI is still aiming for a Hong Kong IPO within six months, targeting a valuation above $30 billion.

A new “DeepSeek moment” for AI markets

In mid-July, Moonshot AI released Kimi K3, an “open weight” model that anyone can download and host, rather than rent through a closed API. According to Moonshot, its “mixture of experts” architecture lets it compete with the best closed American models on coding and long-form reasoning, at a much lower price. The news immediately revived a fear that had taken hold since DeepSeek in January 2025: that nearly free AI could undermine the profitability of the hundreds of billions of dollars the cloud giants are spending on chips and data centers. The result: the US PHLX Semiconductor Index lost about 10% over the week, the Taiwanese and Japanese markets fell more than 6% and 4% respectively, and the Nasdaq posted its worst session of the week. That said, the move had multiple causes, amplified by disappointing results from Netflix and TSMC and by geopolitical tensions in the Middle East.

Cheating accusations, IPO in the works

Washington was quick to respond: a White House official publicly accused Moonshot AI of running an “industrial-scale distillation” operation on Anthropic’s Claude model to build Kimi K3, and of gaining access, through Thailand, to Nvidia GB300 chips that are banned from export to China. AI researchers around the world, however, found these accusations poorly supported. Despite the controversy, Moonshot AI is moving ahead with its own IPO timeline: the startup, whose annualized revenue jumped from $200 million to $300 million between April and June 2026, is preparing a Hong Kong listing within six months, with a target valuation above $30 billion. For a European investor, the episode is a reminder that exposure to AI chips (through Nvidia, AMD or UCITS semiconductor ETFs) remains vulnerable to any Chinese breakthrough that challenges the narrative of unlimited infrastructure spending.

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Apple nears $5 trillion and is back on top of the world

While AI-linked stocks slide, Apple is climbing: the company briefly topped $5 trillion in market value this week, taking back from Nvidia its title as the world’s largest listed company.

Key points:

  • On Tuesday, July 28, Apple’s market cap crossed the $5 trillion threshold intraday, after touching $4.9 trillion a little earlier in the session.
  • That makes Apple only the second company in history to reach this milestone, after Nvidia, which crossed it in late October 2025.
  • Apple stock reportedly jumped about 19% over the past month and 25% since the start of the year, compared with nearly flat gains for Nvidia over the same recent period, according to CNBC.
  • Apple reports quarterly earnings on July 30, Tim Cook’s last report as CEO before John Ternus officially succeeds him on September 1.

The reward for not chasing AI chips

The contrast is striking: just as Kimi K3 and fears of overinvestment are rattling Nvidia, AMD and memory makers (see above), Apple is benefiting from investors rotating into tech stocks less exposed to the data center race. The Cupertino company, long criticized for supposedly lagging in AI, is now seen by part of the market as a more measured bet: its revenue comes from selling hardware and services, not from massive infrastructure spending with still-uncertain returns. Nvidia paved the way by crossing the $5 trillion mark in late October 2025; Apple becomes the second member of this very exclusive club, driven by demand for its products rather than by the generative AI story.

A real-world test for Tim Cook’s succession

This market peak comes at a particularly symbolic moment: the July 30 earnings release will be Tim Cook’s last as CEO before he officially hands over to John Ternus, currently head of hardware engineering, on September 1, a transition announced in April and unanimously approved by the board. The market will mostly be watching for signals on iPhone demand and services margins rather than a detailed AI roadmap. For a European investor, Apple remains a US stock outside the PEA, but it’s widely accessible through UCITS-replicated US equity or tech ETFs, where it already ranks among the heaviest weightings.

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Edition prepared by our monitoring agent (data and sources as of Wednesday, July 29, 2026), reviewed in line with our editorial policy. General information, not investment advice: investing carries a risk of capital loss.