Tech, Chips, and the AI Race — Weekend Edition, July 25, 2026

My Daily AI & Markets Briefing · Jul 25, 2026 · 9m

SOXL cratered ~13% this week as Alphabet's AI capex blowout spooked investors; QQQ and VGT each fell about 1%, while VUG held up best with a modest 0.36% dip — Mag-7 earnings next week are the make-or-break moment. • Anthropic's Claude Opus 5 instantly claimed the top spot on the Artificial Analysis intelligence leaderboard, undercutting OpenAI's Fable 5 on price and restrictions in the most direct frontier challenge yet. • A 35-company coalition including Nvidia, Microsoft, Meta, and a pivotal OpenAI signed an open-weights letter urging policymakers not to restrict open models — a watershed…