TIMIRAOS: Cleveland Fed survey of corporate executives sees one-year-ahead CPI inflation at 3.3% (vs 3.7% in Q2). Respondents expect wage growth of 2.8% over the next year (vs 2.9% in last year’s survey) and little change in employment. R&D spending growth forecast to slow to 2.0% over the next year, down from 3.1% in last year’s survey.

Baidu CEO Robin Li said on the company earnings call that Kunlun AI chips maintained strong momentum in Q2, with robust demand and expanding cross-industry adoption. Market recognition of Kunlun's stability, efficiency and compatibility for large-scale deployment is increasing. Inference throughput and overall compute efficiency have improved, and Kunlun's scalability to support diverse, high-demand AI workloads has been enhanced. Baidu has developed and commercialized three generations of Kunlun chips and will continue product rollout, including the M100 optimized for large-scale inference and a future M300.

US API weekly crude inventories for week ended Aug 14: -328,000 barrels; prior +9.072 mln barrels.