Finance Brief: Google Launches Gemini 4 Argon; Micron Q4 Revenue Up 379% YoY

The October 1, 2026 morning brief roundup covered several developments from September 30 and recent days. China's official September manufacturing PMI was 50.1 and non-manufacturing PMI was 50.2, both rising into expansion territory; the RatingDog manufacturing PMI rose to 52.1, a five-month high, while the services PMI accelerated for a second consecutive month.^[6]

In macro, after a statistical revision, the core PCE price index, the Fed's preferred inflation gauge, rose 3% year over year in August, below expectations; Goldman Sachs pushed back its expected timing of a Fed rate hike from October to December. U.S. consumer spending in August grew at the fastest pace in more than a year. The final estimate of U.S. second-quarter real GDP annualized quarter-over-quarter growth was revised up to 2.2%, with consumption and AI investment as the main supports; ADP employment rose by 90,000 in September, above expectations and reversing a three-month slowdown. The Fed approved stress-test reform by a 6-1 vote, halving capital requirement volatility; the lone dissenting vote warned that resilience would be undermined.^[6]

In markets, after the PCE data, the three major U.S. stock indexes all opened higher but closed mixed, with the S&P and Dow falling for a third straight day while the Nasdaq rebounded; in September, the Dow fell for the first time in six months, the S&P declined, and the Nasdaq rose for a second straight month; in the third quarter, the S&P and Nasdaq rose for a second straight quarter, while the Dow fell for a second straight quarter. Meta fell nearly 2% but gained nearly 27% in September, its largest monthly gain in nearly four years; in the third quarter, Microsoft rose nearly 40%, the best performer among the "Magnificent Seven." The PCE data failed to sustainably curb the Treasury selloff, with the Treasury yield curve steepening and long-term yields continuing to hit multi-year highs.^[6]

In corporate news, on September 30 Google officially launched its flagship AI model Gemini 4 Argon, ranking first or tied for first on 13 of 18 benchmarks, with particular strength in knowledge work and long-context reasoning; the model is currently available only to select companies and organizations focused on cybersecurity defense. Google said it will release it more broadly only after defenders have a chance to patch system vulnerabilities and fix flaws uncovered by the model. Gemini 4 Argon's output token cap was greatly increased from 64,000 to 1 million. The evidence headline said its promotional-period price is only one-fifth that of competitors.^[1]

On benchmarks, Argon scored 68.9% on the Vals Index, ahead of Opus 5.5's 67.0%; it scored 65.4% on Vals Finance Agent v2, about 6.5 percentage points ahead of Fable 5.1; on Harvey's Legal Agent Benchmark, it scored 19.6%, about three times Fable 5.1's score. In coding, Argon ranked first on DeepSWE v1.1 with 77.9%, but trailed Astra's 65.5% on FrontierSWE v2 with 55.0%, and trailed Opus 5.5's 66.4% on Terminal-bench 4.0 with 57.4%. Google said Argon includes new safeguards that can catch the model when it oversteps and performs tasks beyond user expectations, and can terminate its activity when the model oversteps.^[1]

Micron Technology reported fiscal 2026 fourth-quarter results: revenue for the quarter ended September 3 was $54.229 billion, up 31% quarter over quarter and up 379% year over year, above the market expectation of $51.49 billion; on a non-GAAP basis, net income was $38.398 billion and adjusted earnings per share were $33.42, up 33% quarter over quarter; gross margin was 87.0%, up 2.1 percentage points from the previous quarter. The company expects fiscal 2027 first-quarter revenue of $61.5 billion, plus or minus $1.5 billion, versus market expectations of $57.02 billion; non-GAAP adjusted EPS of $38.15, plus or minus $1, versus market expectations of $35.40. However, first-quarter gross margin guidance is about 86.25%, below the fourth quarter's 87% and analysts' expectation of 86.7%.^[3]

Micron CEO Sanjay Mehrotra said industry demand has further strengthened since the last earnings report, and the company expects memory and storage supply-demand conditions in 2027 and 2028 to be significantly tighter than in 2026. Fourth-quarter core data center business revenue was $18.002 billion, up 56% quarter over quarter, accounting for 33% of total revenue, with a gross margin of 90%, up 2.9 percentage points from the previous quarter. DRAM revenue was $39.8 billion, up 343% year over year, accounting for 73% of total revenue; NAND revenue was $14.1 billion, up 526% year over year and up 42% quarter over quarter. The company said it has completed most of its HBM bit supply agreements for 2027, with prices significantly higher than in 2026.^[3]

On September 30, chip design software maker Synopsys announced at an investor summit a multi-year strategic partnership with OpenAI; the two will jointly develop an AI model for the chip business, GPT-Synopsys. OpenAI will pay Synopsys tool licensing subscription fees, and the two will share revenue based on chip design improvement results when customers use the product. After the news was announced, Synopsys shares rose more than 7% intraday, and although the gain narrowed late in the session, the stock still closed up 4.78%.^[4]

GPT-Synopsys will run on OpenAI's own infrastructure and will be deeply integrated with Synopsys.ai and the Autopilot agent platform. The two said leading semiconductor customers are already participating in early technical collaboration; customer design data will be protected by enterprise-grade security, will not be used for model training, and will be encrypted throughout transmission and storage. Synopsys CEO Sassine Ghazi said the partnership will not cannibalize existing business but will bring incremental value; GPT-Synopsys outputs will still need to be reviewed by Synopsys' traditional computational verification tools.^[4]

In politics and policy, on September 30, U.S. President Trump posted on social media demanding that Powell immediately resign as a Federal Reserve governor, and threatened that if he refused to resign, the U.S. government would sue him on grounds of corruption or dereliction of duty. Trump also announced the same day that he had instructed Attorney General Todd Blanche to study the inspector general's report and "make a judgment on subsequent handling."^[2]

The Federal Reserve's Office of Inspector General released a report on Wednesday saying it found no reasonable basis to conclude there were federal criminal violations requiring referral to the Attorney General, but it listed multiple management failures: failure to implement recommendations to set a cost cap, failure to require acquisition of construction cost estimates, and failure to establish a guaranteed maximum price mechanism by July of this year, four years after the project began and after contract bidding was completed. The project's original budget was $1.3 billion in 2020, and actual costs have now climbed to $2.4 billion. Current Fed Chair Warsh said he would implement all recommendations, the General Services Administration will serve as the project executor, and the Fed will also hire an independent auditor to comprehensively review confirmed costs.^[2]

Powell stayed on as a Fed governor after his second term as chair ended in May this year, and his governor term will run through January 2028. The Federal Reserve Act provides that the president may remove a governor only "for cause." Mark Spindel, founder of Potomac River Capital and a Fed research scholar, said the developments clearly show that the White House's intention to reshape the Fed's decision-making layer has not changed.^[2]

Trump also announced the same day that South Korea plans to invest up to $200 billion in the United States, with funds going to energy and infrastructure projects and other areas, of which about $54 billion will be used for the long-planned Alaska LNG project. This is the formal announcement of the first batch of large strategic investment projects under last year's U.S.-South Korea trade agreement framework; South Korea has pledged to invest $350 billion in the United States, of which $150 billion is for shipbuilding and $200 billion for strategic investment.^[5]

In addition to Alaska LNG, the investments include building eight large nuclear power plants and a 6-gigawatt gas-fired power generation facility in Texas. The Alaska LNG project plans to transport natural gas from Alaska's North Slope via an approximately 807-mile pipeline to liquefaction facilities in the south, then export it to Asian markets; the White House said designed gas transmission capacity is about 3.9 billion cubic feet per day, with LNG annual capacity of up to 20 million tons. Developer Glenfarne had previously secured commitments of 13 million tons per year but still needs another 3 million tons to complete financing; Japan's JERA and Tokyo Gas had previously signed preliminary agreements to purchase a combined 2 million tons per year of Alaska LNG. Concerns have already emerged in South Korea about the commercial viability and fiscal risks of the related investments.^[5]

Other highlights include: Qiushi magazine on October 1 published an important article by the General Secretary of the CPC Central Committee titled "Strengthening Inclusive, Basic, and Safety-Net Livelihood Development." U.S. regulator the FTC was reported to be stepping up investigations into AI giants including Anthropic and OpenAI; DeepSeek open-sourced an Ascend version of its "AI toolbox," benchmarked against Nvidia's CUDA, with performance approaching the hardware limit; Eli Lilly trials showed a combination therapy achieved up to 23% weight loss, far exceeding monotherapy efficacy; Russia extended its diesel export ban to the end of October; Iran said it had received the U.S. response to a proposal, with reports saying U.S.-Iran negotiation differences have narrowed to "order of implementation"; a passenger plane flying from the UAE to Israel made an unusual diversion en route, and Israel's defense minister said the aircraft experienced an "attempted terrorist attack."^[6]