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The DBTech45 Brief · updated four times daily

August 24, 2026

Markets closed mixed and jittery. President Trump said tariffs on Canadian cars, parts, and steel jump to 50 percent in January, Treasury rolled out a sweeping sanctions campaign against Iran, and the Nasdaq slid ahead of Nvidia earnings Wednesday and Jackson Hole later this week. In AI, Hugging Face is reportedly shopping itself at 13 billion dollars and Nvidia is spending billions on Poolside and Perplexity. Beef is staying expensive after a record-low July for feedlot placements, Wendy's poached McDonald's marketing chief, the Red Sox finished a sweep of the Giants at Fenway, and a UNH survey found a quarter of Granite Staters are thinking about leaving the state.

Filed at 6:00 PM ETBack to archive →

On my radar

4 ranked stories
#1World & Markets

Trump says US will hike tariffs on Canadian cars, trucks, parts and steel to 50 percent starting January 2027

President Trump announced Monday that tariffs on all Canadian automotive imports, parts, and steel will rise to 50 percent on January 1, 2027, doubling the current 25 percent auto rate after US-Canada trade talks collapsed Friday night. Prime Minister Mark Carney said Canada will retaliate dollar for dollar starting September 8, with countermeasures aimed at US steel, dairy, appliances, and farm equipment. Tariffs are collected at the US border from American buyers, so the cost lands on US consumers and businesses. For a restaurant owner, Canadian retaliation on US dairy and appliances plus general trade friction can feed into food and equipment costs.

SourcesCBS NewsThe Hill
#2World & Markets

Nasdaq and S&P 500 slide as Iran sanctions and Canada tariff threats hit sentiment, Dow bucks the trend

Stocks were mixed Monday, with the Nasdaq down about 0.8 percent to 25,980 and the S&P 500 off 0.3 percent to 7,653, while the Dow rose 0.3 percent. Nvidia fell nearly 3 percent ahead of its Wednesday earnings report, the VIX rose about 5 percent to 15.85, gold climbed to around 4,710, and bitcoin bounced 1.6 percent to about 78,900. Investors are juggling Iran sanctions, the failed US-Canada trade talks, and the Fed's Jackson Hole symposium starting Thursday. For an MNQ trader, tech is the pressure point this week, with Nvidia earnings and Fed Chair Warsh's Friday speech as the two big catalysts.

SourcesTheStreetYahoo Finance
#3AI & Builders

Hugging Face reportedly in talks to be acquired for 13 billion dollars

Business Insider reported that Hugging Face is working with a bank to gauge acquisition interest at a valuation of 13 billion dollars or more, nearly triple its 2023 valuation of 4.5 billion. The company says it is close to profitability and earlier this year turned down a 500 million dollar Nvidia investment over concerns about a single dominant backer. If a cloud provider or chipmaker buys the main hub for open-source models and datasets, it could change pricing, access, and neutrality for anyone who pulls models from it, which is worth watching if your stack depends on Hugging Face.

SourcesTechCrunchYahoo Finance
#4Restaurant Business

USDA: cattle on feed up 2 percent, but July placements were the lowest on record

Friday's USDA Cattle on Feed report showed 11.1 million head in feedlots on August 1, up 2 percent from last year, but July placements fell 11 percent to the lowest July figure since records began in 1996, and marketings dropped 7 percent. Fewer cattle entering feedlots now means tighter beef supply, and continued high prices, into 2027. For a restaurant already paying record wholesale beef prices, this says burger and steak costs are not coming down soon, so keep pricing and portioning plans built around expensive beef.

SourcesDTN Progressive FarmerUSDA NASS

World & Markets

2 stories

Bessent unveils Operation Economic Outcast, a sweeping sanctions campaign to isolate Iran

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced Monday what he called an economic onslaught targeting brokers, companies, and shadow fleet vessels across the UAE, Hong Kong, China, Singapore, Switzerland, and Europe that move Iranian oil and funnel revenue to the Revolutionary Guard. The administration stopped short of immediately hitting major trading partners like China with secondary sanctions, saying countries will get time to change course. Iran has threatened to respond, including warnings about halting oil movement through the Strait of Hormuz. Any Hormuz disruption tends to hit oil first, and higher fuel costs flow through to both Nasdaq futures sentiment and restaurant delivery and food costs.

SourcesNPRAxios

AI trade in focus as Nvidia earnings loom Wednesday and oil pulls back from a two week climb

Nvidia reports Wednesday with the Street looking for roughly 2.08 dollars in adjusted EPS on about 92 billion in revenue, a key test of whether AI spending can keep supporting stretched valuations. A Bloomberg report flagged that higher memory chip prices are pushing server costs up, with some customers seeing increases over 15 percent for next year deliveries. Meanwhile Brent crude eased 1.5 percent to 93.16 and WTI fell 1.6 percent to 85.70 after two straight weekly gains tied to Iran tensions, and July PCE inflation data lands Wednesday. Nvidia is the single biggest driver of Nasdaq direction, so MNQ traders should expect volatility around Wednesday afternoon.

SourcesYahoo FinanceNewsquawk

AI & Builders

4 stories

Nvidia pays 6 billion dollars to license Poolside's tech and absorb its engineers for open-weight Nemotron models

Nvidia will pay 6 billion dollars to license Poolside's Model Factory training system and invest another 1 billion at a 12 billion dollar pre-money valuation, with more than 100 Poolside engineers joining Nvidia to work on its Nemotron open-weight model family. The goal is a US open-model ecosystem that can compete with China's DeepSeek, Kimi K3, and Qwen, and Nvidia says it wants Nemotron rivaling frontier models within a year. For builders, a well-funded push for strong open-weight US models means more cheap, self-hostable options that are not locked to OpenAI or Anthropic pricing.

SourcesSilicon RepublicForbes

Nvidia in talks to invest in Perplexity at a valuation above 30 billion dollars

Nvidia is reportedly negotiating an investment in AI search company Perplexity at a valuation over 30 billion dollars, more than 50 percent above its last round. Perplexity's annualized revenue has tripled from 250 million to over 750 million dollars, driven partly by Perplexity Computer, its agent for automated tasks. The takeaway for builders is that agent products that do tasks, not just answer questions, are where the revenue and investor money are flowing right now.

SourcesThe DecoderSeeking Alpha

OpenAI is building AI agents for everything, but getting non-coders to use them is the hard part

TechCrunch looks at OpenAI's push to take the agent workflows that stuck with software engineers and sell them to every white-collar worker through ChatGPT Work, a 20 dollar per month product. Adoption inside OpenAI is fast, but the piece details how interface design and unclear workflows are stalling mainstream users who do not think in terms of delegating tasks to an autonomous system. For a builder, the gap between what agents can do and what normal users will actually use is exactly the space where small focused products win.

SourcesTechCrunch

Alibaba launches Wan3.0 video model that turns documents into 30-second videos

Alibaba officially released Wan3.0, an AI video model that generates clips up to 30 seconds at up to 1080p from text, images, audio, documents, spreadsheets, slides, and web pages. It doubles the clip length of the previous version and prices out at roughly 12 dollars per minute at top resolution, and the launch came a day after Alibaba raised 10 billion dollars in a share sale to fund AI spending. Document-to-video at usable quality and clear per-second pricing is the kind of API a solo builder can wrap into marketing or content tools today.

SourcesInvesting.comTechNode

Restaurant Business

4 stories

Wendy's hires former McDonald's CMO Tariq Hassan as chief marketing and customer growth officer

Wendy's named Tariq Hassan, until recently the U.S. chief marketing officer at McDonald's, to run marketing and customer growth. He replaces Lindsay Radkoski, and CEO Bob Wright says the chain leaned too hard on one-off promotions while same-store sales fell for six straight quarters. Watch what Wendy's does next on value deals, because when a big burger chain resets its marketing the discount wars in your market usually heat up.

SourcesNation's Restaurant News

Chipotle launches another BOGO after back-to-back record promotion days

Chipotle's August 20 back-to-school BOGO produced its biggest gross sales day ever and its highest redemption rate for any buy-one-get-one offer. It is now running a U.S. Open promotion tied to tennis player Taylor Fritz, giving out free entrees for each match he wins through September 13. The takeaway for independents is that even a premium fast-casual brand is using short, event-driven deals instead of a standing value menu to pull in strapped customers, which is a playbook a single-location restaurant can copy cheaply.

SourcesNation's Restaurant News

Starbucks sold 2 million Unicorn Frappuccinos in a record weekend

Starbucks brought back the Unicorn Frappuccino the weekend of August 15-16 and sold 2 million of them, with Saturday foot traffic running 44 percent above a normal day. CEO Brian Niccol credited store staffing and the operational fixes the chain has been making. It is more evidence that a limited-time nostalgia item can move real traffic, something a family restaurant can do with a retired menu favorite for the cost of a social post.

SourcesNation's Restaurant News

Artistry Restaurants closes four Hickory Tavern locations in the Carolinas

Artistry Restaurants, which bought the 20-unit casual dining chain Hickory Tavern last year, closed four locations in North and South Carolina, saying nearby stores were cannibalizing each other. The company says the move strengthens the brand long term and it is trying to place affected workers at other restaurants. It is another data point in the ongoing casual dining shakeout, which keeps thinning out chain competitors but also signals how tough the full-service segment is right now.

SourcesNation's Restaurant News

Sports & Betting

5 stories

Red Sox rally past Giants 5-4 to finish sweep, close homestand 5-1

Boston came back to beat San Francisco 5-4 at Fenway on Sunday, completing a three game sweep and a 5-1 homestand. Nick Sogard sparked the comeback with a 415 foot homer over the Green Monster, Jake Bennett struck out six over seven innings, and Aroldis Chapman locked down his 29th save. For bettors, the Sox keep printing at home and their playoff odds keep tightening as the schedule shortens.

SourcesESPNCBS Sports

AL wild card check: Red Sox sitting comfortably at 71-59, chaos below them

Heading into the week, the Yankees and Red Sox have real breathing room atop the AL wild card standings, with Boston in the second spot at 71-59. The drama is at the cut line, where Cleveland and Texas enter Monday with identical 65-66 records. Futures bettors should note Boston's playoff odds are now heavily priced in, while the third wild card is a coin flip market that moves almost nightly.

SourcesYahoo Sports

Pritchard opens up on the Jaylen Brown trade as Celtics reset around Tatum

Payton Pritchard spoke publicly about the trade that sent Jaylen Brown to Philadelphia for Paul George and draft picks, saying it always hurts to lose a teammate but the team has to move on. Pritchard is coming off a career year and figures to take on more ballhandling next to a healthy Jayson Tatum, who returns from his Achilles recovery. Boston's win total and title odds have been repriced all summer around this new core.

SourcesYahoo Sports

Titans erase 13 point deficit, beat defending champ Seahawks 19-16 in preseason

Tennessee came back from down 13 to beat Seattle 19-16 on Sunday night, with D'Ernest Johnson scoring the go ahead touchdown and Joey Slye kicking four field goals including a 55 yarder. Robert Saleh's Titans are 2-0 in the preseason while Seattle rested starters and got sloppy, drawing 14 flags for 129 yards. Seattle also lost rookie safety Bud Clark to a broken ankle and guard Mason Richman to what the team called a long term injury, both worth watching for Seahawks season lines.

SourcesESPNFOX Sports

DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics ask regulators for uniform prediction market rules

Executives from DraftKings, FanDuel and Fanatics told federal regulators that prediction markets need clear, uniform standards for consumer protection, market integrity and advertising as the products expand. DraftKings CEO Jason Robins argued the rules should be identical whether customers access markets directly through an exchange or through a broker. The big books pushing for federal guardrails signals they see prediction markets as a core product line, not a side experiment.

SourcesCoversFront Office Sports

Nashua & New Hampshire

5 stories

Two-alarm fire heavily damages Lynde Street home in Nashua, everyone gets out safely

Nashua Fire Rescue was dispatched just before 4 a.m. Saturday to 5 Lynde Street, where flames from a garage area under the house were climbing the front wall of an occupied single-family home. A second alarm brought every city fire company plus mutual aid from Merrimack, Hudson, Manchester and Massachusetts towns. All occupants escaped and one firefighter hurt an ankle, but the home was heavily damaged. A reminder for local families to check smoke detectors, this one started while people were asleep.

SourcesNashua TelegraphNashua Ink Link

UNH survey: a quarter of Granite Staters are thinking about leaving the state

A new University of New Hampshire survey finds about 24 percent of residents are considering moving out of NH within five years, citing cost of living, the political climate, the environment and family ties. Younger and unmarried people are the most likely to go, and income and education made little difference. For a Nashua business owner, that is your future workforce and customer base talking about leaving, and housing costs are a big part of why.

SourcesNHPR

Judge tosses most of Rye Harbor seafood shack's lawsuit against state port officials

The father-daughter owners of Rye Harbor Lobster Pound sued the Pease Development Authority, claiming officials retaliated against their booming pandemic-era business with a 10 percent concessions fee on sales, removed free parking, and discouraged lobstermen from supplying them. A judge dismissed nearly all of it, letting only a single emotional distress claim proceed. Worth watching for any NH restaurant owner operating on leased or public property, the court largely backed the state's authority to charge concession fees and control crowds.

SourcesNHPR

Ayotte stays quiet as five New England governors oppose merger involving Seabrook's owner

Governors of the five other New England states signed a letter opposing the proposed NextEra-Dominion merger, which would create the world's largest regulated utility and put both of the region's active nuclear plants, including Seabrook Station, under one owner. They call NextEra's past conduct anticompetitive. Governor Ayotte has not joined them. Consolidation of the region's power supply matters to anyone in NH paying electric bills, and restaurant electric bills are not small.

SourcesNHPR

New NH law lets tiny homes count as regular houses statewide

Governor Ayotte signed a law classifying tiny homes and yurts of 600 square feet or less as legitimate single-family homes or accessory dwelling units anywhere in the state, no municipal variance required. Builders say the units run roughly 100,000 to 200,000 dollars versus a 580,000 dollar median NH home price. More attainable housing in southern NH could help local employers, including restaurants, hold onto staff who are getting priced out.

SourcesNHPR