Infrastructure
A tidal wave of token costs threatens landfall
Budgeting for AI was never “easy,” but as financial firms rely more heavily on agents, soaring token usage is forcing them to rethink the economics of modern enterprise AI.
Tale of two halves: Agentic AI and the coming capital markets reckoning
Firms that have built robust rails will be better placed to scale agents safely and improve productivity. Those that don’t will learn a hard lesson, says Andrew Morgan.
AI won’t stay in its risk category
For the first time, JP Morgan filed a form 10-K listing AI as a standalone risk factor—a sign of how banks are rethinking previously defined risk categories and their overall risk profile.
Can Canada follow in the US’s footsteps in overnight trading?
Canadian marketplaces and trading venues are in a race to see who can first authorize overnight equities trading, but not everyone is convinced of its value.
From the CIO seat: What it takes to build a super-connector bank
Markets are now more interconnected than ever, exacerbating some challenges. To help, there are three things firms should focus on, writes Gareth Hughes of Standard Chartered.
‘Vibe coding is burning us out’
Vibe coding is rapidly spreading throughout the capital markets, and some are unhappy about it, while others believe the genie is out of the bottle. Engineers spoken to for this story share some choice words—and several expletives—about this new form of…
Paxos wins temporary approval for blockchain clearing push
Blockchain infrastructure company will have a period of 18 months to “ramp up” readiness for operations, per the SEC’s approval letter.
DTCC dives into public cloud
The clearing house has begun migrating its equities clearing and settlement systems to AWS, while its tokenization systems have migrated to Microsoft Azure ahead of their launch this fall.
Solving the last line of latency
Repurposed copper cables and hollow-core fiber can optimize latency even for firms who feel they’ve hit a ceiling, writes Vahan Sardaryan in this guest column.
The infrastructure gap: Capital markets operations 2026
When institutional adoption outpaces operational reality
FactSet’s vectorization service aims to improve agent accuracy
FactSet chief AI officer Kate Stepp discusses the importance of having AI-ready data in the agentic era.
Hitting the Great Wall: Details scarce on China’s Xinchuang initiative
In a quest to learn more about China’s Xinchuang initiative, Wei-Shen finds trying to get information feels like running into a wall over and over again.
Capital markets’ demand for Google’s chips buoys cloud business
Google will begin delivering its TPUs to a select group of clients in their own datacenters later this year.
What firms get wrong when changing investment operations technology
Without operating redesign, governance, and clear accountability, modernization can amplify risk instead of reducing it, writes Patrick Conroy.
The road to alpha is paved with hardware
Fully hardware-based systems are the natural evolution of capital markets infrastructure
The race to ‘financialize’ GPU compute set to ratchet up
The Waters Wrap: Anthony looks at two companies aiming to bring efficiency and transparency to the GPU compute market.
Blue water rafting: How RBC’s AI Group is navigating the AI rapids
After forming its new AI Group, RBC is building a governance layer to help minimize risks posed by agentic AI.
Taking tokenization from pilot to playbook
IMD Wrap: Firms eager to use tokens should find specific use cases that bring immediate value, rather than try everything at once, Wei-Shen writes.
SFC lifts lid on new Hong Kong FIC trading platform
Regulator sheds light on venue that could rival Bloomberg, Tradeweb in CNH market
24X National Exchange faces uphill battle in exemption fight
The Waters Wrap: 24X wants exemption from the requirement that the SIP be operational during overnight hours for its overnight session to proceed. Nyela explains why that’s asking a lot.
AI is coming for complexity … and trading depends on it
While AI may be able to recreate interfaces, the value is in messaging networks, low-latency data, and unique information flows.