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Author Archives: Francisca Samuel

Tamara News  /  Articles by: Francisca Samuel

Author: Francisca Samuel

Francisca Samuel is an editor at Tamara News, where she covers immigration, travel, business and technology news for readers across Africa and the Gulf.

01 Sep 2026
Duration of Status elimination

What the Duration of Status Elimination Means for Your I-94

Categories Study Abroad, Visa Updates

Duration of Status elimination for F, J, and I nonimmigrants takes effect on 15 September 2026. The change ends decades of open-ended “Duration of Status” admission for foreign students, exchange visitors, and foreign media representatives. The Department of Homeland Security published the final rule on 17 July 2026. It creates a fixed admission period with a specific expiration date on each affected traveler’s Form I-94. That replaces the flexible D/S framework, which let students remain as long as they kept full-time enrollment.

What Duration of Status elimination changes for students

Under the new rule, most F-1 students and J-1 exchange visitors will receive a specific Admit Until Date rather than an open-ended D/S notation. Admission periods are capped at up to four years for F-1 and J-1 holders, and up to 240 days for I nonimmigrants. That cap includes people already inside the United States under the old D/S framework when the rule takes effect. The change also limits how freely both graduate and undergraduate students can switch programs. It blocks foreign students who already completed a US degree from starting a second degree at the same academic level.

Duration of Status elimination

Who has to file for an extension, and when

Anyone who needs to stay in the country past their new Admit Until Date must file an extension-of-stay application with USCIS. They must also submit biometrics and demonstrate continued eligibility, well before the current authorization expires. Immigration attorneys are advising schools and exchange programs to start tracking individual expiration dates immediately. A missed extension filing under the new fixed-period system carries a harder deadline than the old D/S framework did. That older framework rarely forced a hard stop as long as a student stayed enrolled.

Why this rule is still not fully locked in

DHS has classified the rule as a “major rule” subject to congressional review under the Congressional Review Act. Congress retains a window to alter or block it, even after the 15 September effective date. DHS has said it will publish an additional Federal Register notice if that review process changes the effective date or terminates the rule outright. Universities and exchange-visitor sponsors are proceeding on the assumption the rule takes effect as scheduled. They are still watching for any congressional action that could shift the timeline again.

How many people the change actually touches

More than a million F-1 students and several hundred thousand J-1 exchange visitors were present in the United States as of the most recent government counts. Schools cite those figures in their own advising guidance. Not everyone will feel the change immediately. Students with admission periods that already carry years of runway will not need to file an extension right away. Every affected traveler now has a specific date to track, though, where before none existed.

Universities with large international enrollments say the administrative burden falls heaviest on them. That group includes many research institutions with multi-year PhD programs. Doctoral students often take five years or more to finish. That timeline runs well beyond the new four-year cap. Many of those students will need at least one extension filing before they graduate.

Designated school officials, the staff responsible for maintaining each student’s immigration record, now face a heavier compliance workload too. They must track individual Admit Until Dates across their entire enrolled population rather than a single shared D/S status. Several university systems have said they are hiring additional compliance staff specifically to manage the transition.

What happens next

International student offices across the country are updating their advising materials ahead of the 15 September effective date. They expect a wave of extension-of-stay filings in the following months, as fixed admission periods start expiring for students already well into multi-year programs. The rule adds to a string of changes affecting F and J visa holders this year. It follows a separate reduction to the F-1 grace period announced in August. Immigration attorneys expect further procedural guidance from USCIS as the first fixed-period expirations approach.

Frequently Asked Questions

When does Duration of Status elimination take effect?

The rule takes effect 15 September 2026, though it remains subject to congressional review under the Congressional Review Act.

Who is affected by the change?

F-1 students, J-1 exchange visitors, and I nonimmigrant foreign media representatives, including people already admitted under the old Duration of Status framework.

What replaces Duration of Status?

A fixed admission period with a specific Admit Until Date on the traveler’s Form I-94, capped at up to four years for F-1 and J-1 holders and up to 240 days for I nonimmigrants.

What happens if someone needs to stay longer than their new admission period?

They must file an extension-of-stay application with USCIS, submit biometrics, and demonstrate continued eligibility before their current authorization expires.

Can this rule still change before or after it takes effect?

Yes. DHS classified it as a major rule subject to congressional review, and the agency has said it will publish a further notice if that review changes the effective date or ends the rule.

Related Coverage

Sources

01 Sep 2026
AI chip interconnect bottleneck

The Real AI Chip Bottleneck Isn’t the Chip — It’s the Wires

Categories Tech

The AI chip interconnect bottleneck took center stage as SEMICON Taiwan 2026 opened in Taipei on 31 August. The event drew more than 100,000 semiconductor professionals from 65 countries to International Semiconductor Week. SEMI’s Terry Tsao delivered the conference’s central message, and it was blunt. Moving data between AI chips can now consume more energy than the computation itself. That shifts the industry’s hardest problem from individual chip performance to system-level architecture.

Why the AI chip interconnect bottleneck changes the conversation

For years, chipmakers competed primarily on transistor density and raw compute throughput. SEMICON Taiwan’s 2026 agenda reflects a shift toward a different metric entirely. The new focus is how efficiently data moves between thousands of chips working together inside a single AI training cluster. AI models have grown, and so has the number of chips that must communicate constantly during training. The wiring and interconnect standards linking them have not kept pace with compute gains. That gap creates exactly the kind of bottleneck Tsao described.

AI chip interconnect bottleneck

Who is racing to solve the wiring problem

Nvidia has staked much of its roadmap on faster interconnect standards to keep pace with the chips it sells. Its GPU Technology Conference earlier this year saw Jensen Huang announce roughly $1 trillion in expected orders for its Blackwell and Vera Rubin chip generations through 2027. Those orders depend partly on solving the same data-movement problem SEMICON Taiwan highlighted. Component suppliers focused on optical and copper interconnect technology have seen renewed investor interest as a result. Faster, more energy-efficient connections between chips could unlock compute gains that raw chip design alone cannot deliver.

The regulatory backdrop shaping who can compete

The interconnect race is unfolding alongside tightening US export controls on advanced AI chips and the semiconductors that power them. The Commerce Department has signaled further regulatory action on chips and AI is coming. The Department has separately signed letters of intent worth $874 million with seven companies to strengthen the domestic compute supply chain. Those two threads are tighter export rules abroad and new incentives at home. Together they are pushing US-based chip and interconnect makers to treat domestic manufacturing capacity as a competitive necessity, not a cost center.

Taiwan’s own chipmakers face a delicate balance in this environment. They supply both US and Chinese customers. Interconnect standards adopted at events like SEMICON Taiwan increasingly carry geopolitical weight alongside their technical merits. TSMC and other Taiwanese suppliers have avoided taking public positions on which standard should win out. They prefer to support multiple approaches until the market settles on a default, a stance that lets them keep selling into both American and Chinese supply chains without picking a side.

How this affects AI training timelines industry-wide

Data-center operators say interconnect limits already stretch some training runs longer than the chips themselves would require. A cluster with thousands of top-tier chips gains little if those chips spend significant time waiting on data transfers rather than computing. That waiting time translates directly into higher costs. Labs still pay for chip time regardless of utilization. Several cloud providers have begun advertising interconnect specifications alongside raw chip counts for the first time this year. Industry analysts say the shift reflects customer demand for clearer efficiency metrics. Buyers increasingly ask about bandwidth between chips before they ask about raw chip counts, according to several vendors present at the conference.

Smaller AI labs without the scale to negotiate custom interconnect solutions face a particular disadvantage. They typically rely on off-the-shelf networking gear that larger labs have already moved past. That gap can leave them paying similar chip costs for meaningfully worse effective performance. Several smaller labs have started pooling compute purchases specifically to negotiate better interconnect terms, mimicking a strategy large cloud providers pioneered years earlier. Industry groups say more such consortiums are likely to form if interconnect costs keep rising faster than raw chip prices.

What happens next

International Semiconductor Week runs through the rest of the week in Taipei. More technical sessions are expected to detail specific interconnect standards vying to become the industry default. Whichever approach gains traction will shape how quickly AI labs can actually deploy the chips they are paying for. That includes labs racing to fund new compute capacity, like DeepSeek.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the AI chip interconnect bottleneck?

It refers to the energy and speed limits of moving data between AI chips working together in a cluster, which industry leaders now say can consume more energy than the chips’ own computation.

What is SEMICON Taiwan 2026?

It is International Semiconductor Week’s flagship event, held in Taipei starting 31 August 2026 and drawing more than 100,000 semiconductor professionals from 65 countries.

Why does this matter for Nvidia and its rivals?

Nvidia’s roadmap depends on faster interconnect standards to support roughly $1 trillion in expected orders for its Blackwell and Vera Rubin chips through 2027.

How do US export controls factor in?

Tightening restrictions on advanced AI chips are pushing chipmakers to treat domestic manufacturing and interconnect capacity as strategically necessary, alongside new federal incentives for the compute supply chain.

Related Coverage

Sources

01 Sep 2026
DeepSeek funding round

Inside the DeepSeek Funding Round That Could Precede a 2027 IPO

Categories Tech

A DeepSeek funding round worth roughly 50 billion yuan, about $7.4 billion, is nearing a close. Sources cited by China Money Network put the pre-money valuation near $74 billion. DeepSeek is the Chinese AI lab that rattled US markets in January 2026. Its model matched Western systems at a fraction of the training cost. DeepSeek is using this raise to fund about 1 gigawatt of new compute capacity, ahead of a planned initial public offering.

What the DeepSeek funding round is actually paying for

The bulk of the new capital is earmarked for compute infrastructure, not research headcount. That reflects how much of the competitive pressure in frontier AI now comes from access to chips and data-center capacity, rather than algorithmic breakthroughs alone. DeepSeek is racing rivals including Alibaba’s Qwen, Tencent’s Hy4, and Zhipu’s GLM for both compute and engineering talent. Sources familiar with the round say the financing is intended to close by the end of August. That would position DeepSeek to file for an IPO before the end of 2026, with a public debut targeted for 2027 on Shanghai’s Star Market.

DeepSeek funding round

Image credit: Feliciagrace-bytesrack / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 4.0)

Why this funding round matters beyond DeepSeek

DeepSeek’s January 2026 model release briefly wiped more than $500 billion from AI-linked US equities. It demonstrated that competitive AI systems no longer required the enormous training budgets US labs had assumed were necessary. This new funding round suggests the opposite lesson is now taking hold inside DeepSeek itself. Staying competitive at the frontier still requires massive, sustained capital, even for a lab that built its reputation on efficiency. That shift has implications for every AI lab claiming a cost advantage. It implies efficiency gains buy time rather than permanently lower capital requirements.

The chip-supply backdrop shaping the round

DeepSeek’s fundraising lands against a backdrop of tightening US export controls on advanced AI chips. The Commerce Department has signaled further regulatory action on chips and AI is coming. Chinese AI labs have had to route around restrictions on the most advanced Nvidia and AMD chips. A war chest of this size gives DeepSeek more room to secure whatever compute capacity remains available to it. That capacity could come through domestic chipmakers or through channels that comply with existing export rules.

Analysts tracking China’s AI sector say the round also signals confidence from domestic investors that Beijing will keep backing frontier AI development despite the external pressure. That confidence matters as much as the capital itself, since it shapes whether other Chinese labs can raise on similar terms.

How investors are pricing DeepSeek against its global rivals

A $74 billion valuation puts DeepSeek well below OpenAI and Anthropic on paper. It still ranks among the most valuable AI labs outside the United States. Private investors backing the round are betting that DeepSeek can keep its cost advantage even as it spends more on infrastructure. That bet carries real risk. Training costs across the industry have climbed as models grow larger. DeepSeek’s efficiency edge could narrow if rivals adopt similar techniques.

Domestic Chinese funds make up a large share of the round, according to people familiar with the terms. That matters for a specific reason. It reduces DeepSeek’s exposure to foreign capital controls and export-linked investment restrictions. Those restrictions have complicated fundraising for other Chinese tech companies this year.

Some investors involved in the round declined to comment publicly, citing the sensitivity of ongoing negotiations. That reticence is typical for pre-IPO rounds of this size, where terms often shift until the final signing. Bankers advising on the deal have also stayed quiet about the exact investor list. That silence is standard practice ahead of a Shanghai listing, where regulators scrutinize pre-IPO ownership disclosures closely and expect confidentiality until filings become public.

What happens next

Investors will be watching whether the round closes at the reported terms by DeepSeek’s end-of-August target. They will also watch whether an IPO filing follows on the timeline sources have described. A successful Shanghai listing would give Chinese investors direct exposure to one of the country’s most closely watched AI companies. It would also test whether public markets value DeepSeek’s efficiency reputation as highly as private investors currently do.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much is DeepSeek raising in this funding round?

Reports put the round at roughly 50 billion yuan, about $7.4 billion, at a pre-money valuation near $74 billion.

What will DeepSeek use the money for?

The company plans to use most of the capital to build roughly 1 gigawatt of new compute capacity, according to sources familiar with the round.

Is DeepSeek planning an IPO?

Yes. Sources say DeepSeek could file for an IPO by the end of 2026, with a public debut targeted for 2027 on Shanghai’s Star Market.

How does this relate to DeepSeek's January 2026 model release?

That release showed DeepSeek could match Western AI systems at a fraction of the training cost, briefly erasing over $500 billion from AI-linked US stocks. This funding round suggests staying competitive still requires large, sustained capital investment.

Related Coverage

Sources

01 Sep 2026
Salesforce Anthropic stake gain

How a Salesforce Anthropic Stake Gain Drove Its Best Day in Years

Categories Business

A Salesforce Anthropic stake gain of $2.6 billion helped push Salesforce stock up roughly 22% in a single trading session. That marks the software company’s second-best day ever, behind only August 2020. Salesforce reported second-quarter adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share against a $3.27 estimate. Revenue of $11.35 billion narrowly topped forecasts of $11.32 billion. Net income jumped 87% year over year to $3.53 billion.

Why the Salesforce Anthropic stake gain moved the stock so much

Roughly $2.53 of Salesforce’s $5.90 per-share profit came directly from investment gains, not core software sales, according to The Motley Fool. The single biggest driver was Salesforce’s stake in Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models. Salesforce’s strategic investment portfolio now values that stake at about $5.1 billion. Anthropic represented roughly 22% of the portfolio at the end of January. It had grown to about 45% by the end of July. Anthropic’s own funding round in May valued the AI company at $965 billion, which explains most of that jump.

Salesforce Anthropic stake gain

Image credit: BalticServers.com / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0)

The Claudeforce partnership behind the numbers

Salesforce and Anthropic also announced Claudeforce alongside the earnings release. The plugin embeds Salesforce customer data, workflows, and business logic directly into Claude for sales teams. The product ties Salesforce’s core customer-relationship-management business to Anthropic’s AI models, going beyond the investment stake alone. That gives Salesforce a commercial reason to keep deepening the partnership, rather than simply holding the position for its paper value.

What this means for Salesforce chief executive Marc Benioff

The earnings beat and stock jump mark a turnaround moment for Benioff. He had faced skeptics questioning whether Salesforce’s AI strategy could translate into revenue, not just investment gains. CNBC’s coverage described Benioff as “getting his mojo back” as Salesforce lifted its AI-driven growth outlook alongside the results. Investors had grown impatient with software companies that talked about AI without showing it in product revenue. Here, the AI story showed up in investment returns tied to genuine AI-sector growth instead.

How rivals are reacting to the Salesforce Anthropic stake gain

Competing enterprise software vendors have spent much of the past year building their own AI partnerships. Few can point to an investment stake that has appreciated as sharply as Salesforce’s Anthropic position. Rivals with in-house AI models, rather than external stakes, do not get the same investment-gain boost on their income statements. That holds true even when their AI products perform well commercially. The distinction matters to investors trying to separate genuine AI product revenue from balance-sheet gains tied to a single portfolio holding. Several analysts flagged the mix on Salesforce’s earnings call. They see it as a reason to watch subscription growth closely next quarter, rather than count on investment gains repeating.

The tech sector’s broader earnings season has been uneven. Some companies have reported layoffs alongside AI investment, even as others post gains tied to AI partnerships. That contrast has made Salesforce’s results a reference point for whether AI spending is starting to show up as revenue across the wider software industry, rather than remaining a cost center.

What the earnings beat means for enterprise software pricing

Salesforce has been raising prices on parts of its core platform. It is bundling in AI features as it does so, a strategy several rivals are watching closely. Claudeforce could drive measurable productivity gains for sales teams. If it does, other software vendors may feel pressure to strike similar external AI partnerships rather than build everything in-house. That would mark a shift from the past two years. Most large software companies insisted on owning their AI stack end to end during that stretch. Analysts pressed Salesforce executives on pricing specifically during the earnings call. They asked whether Claudeforce would be bundled into existing subscriptions or sold as a premium add-on.

Salesforce has not yet detailed final pricing for the new integration. Executives said only that broader availability would follow a limited rollout to existing enterprise customers in the coming months.

What happens next

Salesforce’s next test will be whether Claudeforce adoption translates into subscription revenue, rather than remaining a headline-grabbing integration. Investors will also watch whether Anthropic’s valuation, and by extension Salesforce’s stake, holds up if the broader AI funding environment cools. For now, the earnings beat has bought Salesforce’s leadership team more room to keep investing in the partnership. It also buys them room to avoid answering questions about the AI strategy falling behind competitors.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much did Salesforce gain from its Anthropic stake?

Salesforce reported a $2.6 billion gain on strategic investments in its second quarter, with Anthropic as the largest single contributor to that portfolio value.

What was Salesforce's overall Q2 earnings performance?

Salesforce posted adjusted earnings of $5.90 per share against a $3.27 estimate, with revenue of $11.35 billion and net income up 87% year over year to $3.53 billion.

What is Claudeforce?

Claudeforce is a plugin announced alongside the earnings that embeds Salesforce customer data, workflows, and business logic into Anthropic’s Claude for sales teams.

How much of Salesforce's investment portfolio is Anthropic now?

Anthropic grew from about 22% of Salesforce’s strategic investment portfolio in January to about 45% by the end of July, following Anthropic’s own funding round in May.

Related Coverage

Sources

01 Sep 2026
ECB September rate decision

Traders Are Betting Big on the ECB September Rate Decision

Categories Business

The ECB September rate decision is scheduled for 10 September 2026. Traders are pricing in a real chance of another hike. Renewed Middle East hostilities keep pushing energy costs higher across the eurozone. The European Central Bank’s Governing Council meets over two days at the Deutsche Bundesbank. The rate announcement and President’s press conference are both set for the afternoon of 10 September.

Why the ECB September rate decision is a closer call than usual

The ECB raised its deposit rate from 2% to 2.25% in June, its first increase in nearly three years. The Iran war had pushed oil prices sharply higher. Eurozone inflation has since eased slightly, dropping to 2.8% from 3.2% the previous month. But the renewed exchange of strikes between the US and Iran on 31 August has reintroduced the same energy-price pressure that forced the June hike. Eurosystem staff projections put average 2026 inflation at 3.0%, still well above the ECB’s 2% target.

ECB September rate decision

What a hike would mean beyond the eurozone

A further ECB move would land just as the Federal Reserve and the Bank of England weigh their own next steps. The Fed left rates unchanged at 3.50%-3.75% for a fifth straight meeting in July. Three policymakers dissented in favor of a hike. The Bank of England’s own decision follows a week later, on 17 September. Coordinated tightening across major central banks tends to strengthen currencies against emerging-market peers. It also raises borrowing costs for companies financing in euros or sterling. Those effects show up in corporate earnings well before they show up in headline inflation data. Currency traders are already positioning for a stronger euro if the ECB moves first. That would be an unusual sequence, since the Fed has led most rate cycles in the past.

The Middle East link driving the ECB September rate decision

Energy markets have effectively become a proxy for Middle East risk this year. Every escalation between the US and Iran has fed directly into oil futures. That includes the strikes on Jordan and the UAE on 31 August. The ECB has explicitly cited an “Iran war energy shock” in its policy communications since June. That direct link between a regional military conflict and a European interest-rate decision is unusual, even by the standards of past oil shocks. It means the 10 September outcome may hinge as much on developments in the Strait of Hormuz as on eurozone data released in the coming days. Bond markets have already started to reflect that link. Eurozone yields tick up each time the Iran-US conflict escalates.

What eurozone businesses are watching most closely

Manufacturers that import energy-intensive inputs have flagged the September decision as the one most likely to affect their cost base for the rest of the year. A rate hike would raise borrowing costs. Energy prices are already climbing at the same time. Export-heavy firms face a different risk. A stronger euro following a hike could make eurozone goods less competitive. Global demand growth is already slowing, which compounds that risk. Banks, by contrast, tend to benefit from higher rates through wider lending margins. That is part of why eurozone bank shares have outperformed the broader market since the June hike.

Mortgage borrowers on variable-rate loans are the group most directly exposed to whatever the Governing Council decides on 10 September. That exposure is concentrated more heavily in some eurozone countries than others. Spain and the Netherlands still favor variable-rate mortgages more than France or Germany does. Consumer groups there have already begun warning households to prepare for higher monthly payments if the ECB moves again.

What happens next

Markets will get a clearer read within the next week. Pre-meeting commentary from Governing Council members typically picks up in the days before a decision. A hike would mark the ECB’s second increase of the year. A hold would suggest policymakers are betting the recent easing in headline inflation outweighs the risk from renewed Middle East hostilities. Either way, the Bank of England’s 17 September decision will offer an immediate second data point on how seriously other major central banks are treating the same energy shock. Traders will also be watching whether the Federal Reserve signals anything new at its own next meeting, since a three-bank tightening cycle would be a bigger story than any single decision on its own.

Frequently Asked Questions

When is the ECB September rate decision?

The Governing Council meets 9-10 September 2026, with the rate announcement and press conference on the afternoon of 10 September.

What is the ECB's current deposit rate?

The ECB raised its deposit rate to 2.25% in June 2026, its first hike in nearly three years, and has held policy discussions open to a further increase since.

Why are Middle East tensions relevant to a European rate decision?

The ECB has explicitly linked recent inflation pressure to an energy shock from the Iran war, since oil price spikes tied to Middle East hostilities feed directly into eurozone inflation.

How does this compare to the Fed and Bank of England?

The Fed held rates steady in July with three dissenting votes favoring a hike, and the Bank of England’s next decision follows on 17 September, a week after the ECB’s.

Related Coverage

Sources

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