Top stories today:

1. Microsoft quits board observer role at OpenAI, Apple won’t join
2. xAI’s Grok 2 likely out next month, building AI data center
3. Fed Chair Powell highlights “two-sided risks” on rate cuts
4. PC shipments +3% YoY to 64.9M in Q2, with Apple +21% to 5.7M
5. Anthropic launches Prompt Generator for developers

0. Data and calendar

1. Microsoft quits board observer role at OpenAI, Apple won’t join, amid antitrust probes

• OpenAI confirmed the news.

• The U.S. and the EU are probing the relationship between OpenAI and Microsoft.

2. xAI’s Grok 2 likely out next month, building AI data center with 100K NVIDIA H100s

The Oracle partnership will be phased out over time, Elon suggested, confirming media reports:

• Datacenter to cost $5B over 2 years.

• Q2 2025: when it's expected to be ready.

• Grok 3 will be trained using it.

3. Fed Chair Powell highlights “two-sided risks” on rate cuts

• “If we loosen policy too late or too little, we could hurt economic activity. If we loosen policy too much or too soon, we could undermine the progress on inflation.”

• “Likely direction” is a rate cut, not a rate hike.

The rate curve was little changed, with markets expecting a 1st rate cut in September and a 2nd one in December

5. PC shipments +3% YoY to 64.9M in Q2, with Apple +21% to 5.7M