Tempus AI Bags $1.1B Contract Value, TSMC Rebounds with AI Pricing Power: Wall Street Takes Notice

AI’s financial plates shifted today. Tempus AI jumped on a $1.1B revelation. TSMC drew a rare chorus of analyst upgrades, powered by AI-fueled demand. Meanwhile, China’s chip stocks kept ripping, Web3 AI tokens danced around hype cycles, and venture capital smelled opportunity in vertical AI plays. Let’s break it down.

📈 AI Market Movers & Trends

Tempus AI isn’t just a genomics platform anymore… it’s officially Big Money. The company disclosed a record $1.1 billion in total contracted value as of January 2026, and Wall Street reacted like this news was underpriced. Shares spiked over 28% by close, obliterating skepticism around Tempus’ hybrid business model of clinical and molecular data monetization. Even better? Much of that value stems from AI driven diagnostics partnerships with pharmaceutical giants, signaling some teeth behind the ever trendy “AI + healthcare” buzz.

Over in Taiwan, TSMC got something rare: real praise from analysts. After several quarters of cautious commentary, the chip titan is now basking in bullish upgrades driven by its sharpened pricing power. The key catalyst: increased demand for cutting edge AI chips in the 3nm and 5nm range. One analyst note cited “persistent wafer demand buoyed by US hyperscalers and sovereign AI buildouts.”

Translation… the AI compute party is still standing… and TSMC is the bartender.

Markets in Asia echoed the sentiment. Chinese AI and chipmaking stocks extended their rally following a surge in IPO activity. Local reports point to an influx of institutional capital chasing "national champions" in semiconductors and applied AI. Add the Nikkei’s breakout to all time highs, and you’ve got a cocktail of macro tailwinds for AI exposed equities… especially in Asia and emerging markets.

The broader read? AI isn’t just software anymore. Hardware, data, and global infrastructure are commanding serious multiples again. If you’re an investor ignoring semis or vertical AI (like Tempus), you’re not reading the score.

💸 Funding Watch

Capital keeps flooding into AI… but it’s starting to look smarter, more verticalized, and less frothy than last year’s spray-and-pray phase.

Sources close to the matter tell us that several unannounced rounds are set to close in AI for manufacturing startups, particularly those leveraging edge AI for predictive factory ops. That fits into the rising appetite for “non-obvious AI”… applications beyond chatbots and copilots. One upcoming $35M Series B (under embargo, for now) is rumored to include participation from Sequoia and BMW’s venture arm… a combo that screams industrial AI is having a moment.

Also, hearing ripples from Europe: at least three Nordic AI startups in the legaltech and biopharma tooling space are fielding term sheets above $15M premoney… higher than comparable 2025 averages. Expect an arms race in foundation models trained on specialized, proprietary datasets. Investors are waking up to the fact that horizontal LLMs may not eat every vertical after all.

Elsewhere, whispers around Palantir making strategic minority investments in AI-centric defense startups are starting to firm up. Could a government aligned AI M&A spree be coming? Don’t be surprised if sovereign-backed venture arms (think Mubadala, In-Q-Tel) start throwing elbows for dual use AI infrastructure firms.

One caveat… almost no buzz around generalist consumer AI apps this week… a cooling trend we've noticed since Q4. B2B is the new darling. The race to build niche, revenue generating AI tools that plug into ops and workflows is heating up fast. If you’re pitching another AI writing assistant, God help you.

🪙 Crypto Moves

AI tokens are still swinging like caffeinated day traders, but under the volatility lies a directional hint… consolidation around AI infrastructure protocols, not gimmicky dApps or meme chained chatbots.

Start with the Artificial Superintelligence Alliance ($FET)… it saw a 12% surge today, bouncing off fresh partnership rumors with an unnamed cloud provider (likely a Layer 2). While the project’s token ecosystem remains fragmented post-merger (Ocean, Fetch, and SingularityNET still figuring out tokenomic glue), momentum is clearly favoring interoperable AI compute networks. FET bulls argue it’s becoming the middleware layer for decentralized AI models. Possible… but needs more enterprise traction to stick.

Not all projects are surviving the shakeout. The AgentLisa token… a hyped AI narrative play last quarter… cratered over 90% after devs apparently ghosted following a failed v2 launch. It’s a cautionary tale… traders are finally demanding more than a GPT frontend slapped on a blockchain. Over 11.6 million crypto projects failed in 2025, and most circling the drain had “AI” in their tagline. Tough times for low effort cash grabs wearing AI drag.

Meanwhile, infra-focused plays like Bitplay.io are expanding their crypto rails to support AI app payment flows… positioning themselves as Stripe for AI in Web3. It’s a smart angle. As usage fees, microtransactions, and compute credits become decentralizable primitives, expect real intersections between crypto rails and AI model delivery.

The high level trade? Bet on tokens that are building the pipes… not the parrots. If 2023 was “buy the narrative,” 2026 is shaping up as “buy the infrastructure.”

📊 Stay tuned for tomorrow’s MarketPulse