July 28 Member Morning Report: Trump Says Negotiations Are Going Well, NVIDIA Teams Up with Dozens of Giants to Form "Secure AI Alliance"

1. [Trump Says Negotiations Are Going Well] On Monday, Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One that the United States is “talking well” with Iran and that there is a “great opportunity” to reach an agreement—but he also warned that if talks break down, the US military will resume strikes on Iran with “even greater force” than before. Each side has a different version of how these negotiations began. Trump claims it was Iran that “after getting beaten for fourteen days,” proactively asked the US to stop, saying, “They very politely begged us to stop.” The Iranian Foreign Ministry, however, denies that there are any ongoing negotiations with the US at this time. The disagreement about “who spoke first” itself highlights the fragility of the ceasefire.

2. [Nvidia Teams Up with Dozens of Giants to Form 'Open Secure AI Alliance'] On Monday (July 27), Nvidia announced the launch of the Open Secure AI Alliance, in collaboration with Microsoft, SpaceX, Dell, IBM, Palantir, CrowdStrike, Cisco, Cloudflare, Salesforce, Siemens, Palo Alto Networks, Red Hat, Hugging Face, and dozens of other tech and cybersecurity companies. The alliance advocates using open-weight AI models—which can be freely downloaded, modified, and run on personal hardware—to strengthen cyber defenses. The immediate catalyst for this alliance was not a long-term vision, but rather a chilling incident one week ago, where an AI model autonomously carried out a real-world cyberattack that shocked the entire industry.

3. [AI Capital Expenditures Support US Manufacturing] Data released on Monday (July 27) by the US Census Bureau of the Department of Commerce showed that in June, shipments of non-defense capital goods excluding aircraft—a widely used measure of business investment willingness known as “core capital goods”—surged by 1.9% month-over-month, the largest single-month increase in four and a half years, and far above economists' expectations of 0.6%.

4. [Amazon Applies to Deploy 5,105 “Direct-to-Cell” Satellites] Amazon has filed an application with the FCC (Federal Communications Commission), seeking approval to deploy up to 5,105 low-earth orbit satellites to provide voice, SMS, data, and emergency communication services directly to ordinary smartphones. This system, named Amazon Leo Direct-to-Device, marks Amazon’s official entry into the “direct-to-device” (D2D) race—enabling smartphones to bypass terrestrial networks and connect directly to satellites in areas unreached by ground stations—thus putting it in direct competition with SpaceX’s Starlink.

5. [LVMH’s Flagship Fashion Division Returns to Growth for the First Time in Two Years] The world’s largest luxury group LVMH announced its first-half 2026 results: the fashion and leather goods division, which serves as the group’s profit base, achieved 1% organic growth in the second quarter—its first quarterly increase in two years, after seven consecutive quarters of decline. This turnaround was driven by a significant rebound in the US market.