Surging Treasury yields near 5% create both volatility and income opportunities for investors, as the Federal Reserve's upcoming rate decision and persistent inflation keep bond markets on edge. The benchmark 10-year Treasury touched 5% on Monday, a high not seen since October 2023, before easing to around 4.96%. Bond yields move inversely to prices, and Wells Fargo Investment Institute's Luis Alvarado warns of continued knee-jerk reactions to economic data, the Fed, and oil. The market prices 90% odds of a rate hike at the Fed's two-day policy meeting ending Wednesday, with the latest CPI showing 3.4% annual inflation, above the Fed's 2% target. Experts advise avoiding long-duration bonds due to interest rate sensitivity. BondBloxx's JoAnne Bianco recommends short- to intermediate-term bonds, including BBB-rated corporates, high yield, and emerging market debt. Schwab's Collin Martin suggests staying below six years duration, noting the Schwab 1-5 Year Corporate Bond ETF offers a 4.95% SEC yield. For floating rate exposure, the Janus Henderson AAA CLO ETF yields 4.63%. Wells Fargo advocates a diversified fixed-income approach favoring investment-grade corporates, municipal bonds (iShares National Muni Bond ETF yields 3.73%), high yield, and dollar-denominated emerging market debt. Outside fixed income, dividend stocks and REITs present opportunities. Gilman Hill Asset Management's Jenny Harrington argues that dividend stocks offer inflation-beating growth, unlike bonds, and trade at muted valuations. Real estate investment trusts and infrastructure funds are also recommended, though REITs typically underperform when rates rise.
Salesforce unveiled Koa, its first AI reasoning model built on Nvidia’s open-weight Nemotron, at Dreamforce this week, marking a major enterprise AI shift toward task-specific, cost-efficient models that keep customer data secure. Koa is post-trained by Salesforce and Nvidia to excel in sales, marketing, and customer-support tasks, offering enterprises an open-weight alternative to closed frontier models like Claude or ChatGPT. Unlike proprietary AI labs that ingest customer data, Koa uses only synthetic data mimicking customer patterns, ensuring no actual customer data leaks. It also reduces token consumption—and thus AI spending—by routing simpler tasks through an AI gateway, reserving frontier models only for complex reasoning. “We’ve built many small task-specific language models… but reasoning has always been something we relied on frontier model providers for. Until now,” said Jayesh Govindarajan, EVP of Salesforce AI. Before Koa, multi-step reasoning prompts were sent to Claude or ChatGPT via Agentforce’s AI gateway. The choice of Nemotron was driven by its sovereign American provenance, state-of-the-art performance, and clear data lineage—contrasting with Chinese open-weight models like Alibaba’s Qwen. Nvidia’s VP of Generative AI Software, Kari Ann Briski, highlighted Nemotron’s “token efficient” architecture for enterprise inference. Salesforce is not abandoning Anthropic or OpenAI; it also announced Claudeforce, a partnership allowing companies to use Claude as their AI interface while data remains in Salesforce’s secure system. Koa will be offered as an alternative within Agentforce, Salesforce’s platform for building customer-service and scheduling agents.
**Aeluma and Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies (SCAT) partner to accelerate photonics wafer production for AI datacom, leveraging non-InP substrates to bypass indium phosphide supply constraints.**
Aeluma Inc of Goleta, CA, USA, a specialist in scalable technologies for AI, mobile, defense, and quantum, has executed an agreement with Sumitomo Chemical Advanced Technologies (SCAT) of Phoenix, AZ, USA, a subsidiary of Japan’s Sumitomo Chemical Co Ltd, to accelerate development and production of photonics wafers for the AI datacom market. The partnership initially leverages existing metal-organic chemical vapor deposition (MOCVD) capabilities at SCAT’s manufacturing facility, with a path for future capacity expansion.
Aeluma’s large-diameter non-indium phosphide (non-InP) photonics platform combines best-in-class materials with mass-market microelectronics manufacturing. With InP substrates in short supply and geopolitical risks adding uncertainty, alternative approaches are needed for high-performance photonics components such as photodetectors and lasers. Traditional InP manufacturing uses 100mm substrates; while 150mm InP lines are emerging, new fabs require time and resources to qualify, and InP substrates remain expensive and scarce. Aeluma’s heterogeneous integration leverages readily available non-InP substrates, including 150mm gallium arsenide (GaAs) and 200–300mm silicon (Si).
Beyond the SCAT partnership, Aeluma complements its in-house MOCVD capabilities by working with established large-volume GaAs and Si foundries for component fabrication, eliminating dependence on new fab buildouts. SCAT produces epitaxial wafers in Phoenix for optical communications, smartphones, wireless, and automotive industries.
“SCAT is an ideal partner to pair with Aeluma’s in-house MOCVD, capable of producing wafers of any size, including 150mm, 200mm, and 300mm substrates,” said Aeluma founder & CEO Jonathan Klamkin. “We have been working with SCAT for several years. This new agreement aims to strengthen our relationship and set the stage for accelerated development, qualification, production, and future potential expansion.”
SCAT president & executive officer Dr Ken Campman noted, “Demand for epitaxial wafers for photodetectors and lasers has grown significantly, but InP substrate supply is limiting development. Aeluma’s technology is a promising solution for the datacom market and may impact other markets as well.”
Ceva and LG Electronics have partnered to remove a key barrier to ultra-wideband (UWB) adoption by integrating a complete radio, baseband, and software stack into a production system-on-chip (SoC), targeting semiconductor companies seeking precise ranging, positioning, and sensing for automotive, industrial, and consumer devices. Their joint platform combines Ceva-Waves UWB baseband intellectual property and software with an RF front end developed by LG Electronics’ SoC Center, designed for TSMC’s 22-nanometer process. This silicon-ready solution reduces interface validation, physical-design work, and performance tuning compared to sourcing radio and baseband separately, addressing challenges like precise timestamping, interference, multipath reflections, and non-line-of-sight conditions while keeping power and area low for battery-powered devices. Ceva’s next-generation architecture supports IEEE 802.15.4ab, improving extended-range and non-line-of-sight ranging, interference resilience, new channels, and UWB radar sensing—expanding UWB beyond phone-assisted item finding and vehicle digital keys to secure passive entry, occupant detection, factory tool tracking, and spatially aware smart-home controls. The business model licenses Ceva’s IP, allowing customers to embed UWB in differentiated SoCs alongside processors and security engines, with LG contributing RF expertise and process-specific implementation. A major U.S. semiconductor supplier has already adopted the solution, providing early commercial validation. ABI Research expects annual UWB device shipments to rise from 597 million in 2026 to nearly 1.18 billion by 2030, and this validated RF-to-software platform can help supply meet demand, increase competition, and bring precise spatial awareness to more edge devices.
Kioxia Corp. and Sandisk Corp. announced a planned investment of over $31 billion (approximately 5 trillion yen) through 2032 to expand NAND flash memory production in Japan, contingent on government support, reinforcing their decades-long joint venture to meet surging AI and data-driven demand. The investment, which builds on more than $50 billion (9 trillion yen) already invested in Japan over the past 25 years, will fund infrastructure buildout at the Yokkaichi and Kitakami plants, along with related technology. Both companies committed to multi-year bit growth and stable supply of innovative flash memory, essential for AI-driven societies. “This joint investment further strengthens our longstanding partnership with Sandisk and underscores Kioxia’s strong commitment to contributing to the advancement of an AI-driven society,” said Hiroo Ota, president and CEO of Kioxia. David Goeckeler, chairman and CEO of Sandisk, noted the investments align with business strategy and financial guidance, ensuring support for customer demands while exemplifying US-Japan economic collaboration. The plan aligns with Japan’s economic policy goals under the Takaichi administration, supporting advanced semiconductor manufacturing. In January, Kioxia and Sandisk extended their joint venture framework at the Yokkaichi Plant through December 2034. The partnership, spanning over 25 years, collaborates on development and manufacturing of flash-based memory wafers, leveraging AI-enabled smart manufacturing to ensure stable production of advanced 3D flash memory.
IBC 2026: SNS Validates EVO Shared Storage for Avid Media Composer 2026.8 EVO customers can confidently move to Media Composer 2026.8 Enterprise and continue collaborative post-production workflows with shared projects and bin locking This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on September 15, 2026 at 2:01 pm Studio Network Solutions (SNS) confirmed EVO shared storage compatibility with Avid Media Composer 2026.8 Enterprise, including support for collaborative shared projects and bin locking.“Video editing platforms change constantly, and we’re always raising our compatibility standards so customers get the best workflow no matter which app they use for editing. We tested EVO with Media Composer 2026.8 Enterprise through the beta and public release, and we can say with confidence: EVO is compatible,” said Ryan Stoutenborough, president, SNS. “At Avid, we believe production teams should have the freedom to choose what works best for them. In addition to supporting Avid NEXIS collaboration, Media Composer Enterprise 2026.8 expands support for additional shared storage platforms, like SNS EVO, enabling greater flexibility across different editing environments. We’re grateful to partners like SNS for testing these workflows ahead of release, to ensure a reliable collaboration experience. For EVO users, 2026.8 makes it easier than ever to collaborate while using the tools they already rely on,” said Rich Camp, principal product manager, media composer, Avid. Creative teams upgrading to Media Composer Enterprise for collaborative bin locking and project sharing may be eligible for an exclusive discount from SNS on a new EVO system. SNS has been showcased the validated EVO and Media Composer 2026.8 workflow at IBC 2026, along with its full lineup of storage, MAM, cloud, AI, review, and archive solutions.
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