News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Anthropic urges industry coordination to allow for a 'pause' in AI development if risks grow
AI company Anthropic suggests top firms pause advanced development. This is due to rapid improvements that could lead to humans losing control. Rival OpenAI believes governments should set rules. AI systems might soon build their own successors. This milestone brings benefits but also risks. Researchers also warn of AI-powered cyber threats. A pause would allow societal structures to catch up. Anthropic is proposing that the world's top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, warning the technology is improving so quickly there's a risk humans would lose control. The company behind the Claude chatbot said in a blog post Thursday that as cutting-edge AI gets increasingly faster at carrying out tasks, "it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause" its development. Anthropic said its internal research institute plans to explore the issue in collaboration with others and "take actions" to help build the systems for a credible slowdown or pause, without being more specific. Anthropic rival OpenAI argued for a different approach in a report published Wednesday, saying that "democratic governments - not private companies acting alone - must ultimately determine the rules, safeguards, and accountability mechanisms." "Our view is that decisions about the pace of AI innovation should not be left to any one lab, company, or special interest group," it said. AI models are getting faster, with rapid increases in how quickly they can carry out software tasks like coding on their own, Anthropic said in its post. Based on current trends and given enough computing power, an AI system could be able to design and develop its own successor, in what is known as "recursive self-improvement." Self-building AI would be a major technological milestone that would bring benefits in science, healthcare and other areas, Anthropic said, but it "also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems." Some tech industry figures have long warned of such a scenario. Anthropic's post comes after a different warning this week from a team of researchers at the University of Toronto who showed how AI tools could be used to create a new kind of AI "worm" that adapts its hacking strategy as it spreads from device to device and takes over a vast computing network. "I think it's really important that people understand that it's not just the biggest, most powerful language models that pose the security concerns," lead researcher Nicolas Papernot said in an interview. The authors of the Anthropic post, company co-founder Jack Clark and Marina Favaro, head of its research institute, said the pause would be used to enable "societal structures and alignment research" to keep up with AI advances. Alignment is industry shorthand for making sure the technology matches human values and intentions. The proposed coordination would let advanced AI labs verify that global rivals have actually stopped or slowed their work, "and that a bad actor could not use the auspices of a coordinated slowdown to jump ahead in secret." The company said a coordinated global mechanism is needed because without it a slowdown in AI development could let the "least cautious" players catch up and add to pressure on companies and governments as they make tough choices about AI safety. Anthropic's post comes as the company and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI race to sell shares on the stock market, in an IPO that could value Anthropic at nearly a trillion dollars. Papernot notified Canadian cybersecurity authorities prior to releasing his report, which shows how researchers developed the worm in a laboratory by using an "open-source" AI tool that is easy for software developers to cheaply access and modify. "In the past, cyber attackers would focus on targets that are very high value," he said. "Banking systems, hospitals, electricity grids, water treatment systems, schools." Papernot agreed that there should be more collaboration between companies, government agencies and academic researchers to develop countermeasures as AI-powered hacking tools supercharge the search for computer vulnerabilities. "That old laptop you have in your basement that you don't check on regularly doesn't seem like a very high-value target, but It can be used as a launch pad to attack these higher-value targets," he said. "Anything connected to the internet is now at risk because of how low the cost has become to mount these cyberattacks."
SpaceX lands major AI deal with Google after Anthropic win ahead of IPO
SpaceX said on Friday it has entered into a multi-year cloud services agreement with Alphabet's Google, locking in computing capacity as it prepares for its highly anticipated U.S. stock market debut next week. As part of the deal, Google will pay SpaceX $920 million monthly from October this year to June 2029, with capacity ramping up through September at a reduced fee, Elon Musk's space venture said in a regulatory filing. The compute capacity provided includes about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, CPUs, memory and other related components. The pact brings another high-profile customer to SpaceX, after Anthropic, strengthening its AI narrative as it targets a $75 billion raise in its upcoming initial public offering. Anthropic said in May it had reached a deal to use the full computing power of SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tennessee, which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give the Claude chatbot maker 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month. Also Read Best of BS Opinion: Can India's AI gap be a blessing in disguise? Why human credibility and authenticity, not AI scale, will define winnerspremium India's AI lag could shield it from a painful market reckoningpremium India's hidden AI winners as data-centre infrastructure demand surges Chinese, Hong Kong investors banned from SpaceX IPO on security grounds On an annual basis, SpaceX's compute access deals with Anthropic and Google are worth roughly $26 billion combined. SpaceX's disclosed compute-capacity agreements with Anthropic and Google are worth more than $70 billion in aggregate, assuming neither contract is terminated before its scheduled end date. If SpaceX does not provide access to the agreed number of GPUs by September 30, then, after a one-month grace period, "Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided, with a corresponding pro-rata reduction in the monthly fees," the company said. After December 31, either party may terminate the agreement by providing 90 days' notice. Google will retain ownership of, and all intellectual property rights in, its content, AI models and associated data. (Only the headline and picture of this report may have been reworked by the Business Standard staff; the rest of the content is auto-generated from a syndicated feed.) More From This Section Govt's cybersecurity efforts get Anthropic's Claude Mythos boostpremium NASA reverses evacuation alert order for astronauts aboard space station Anthropic urges AI labs to pause development, warns of risks Airtel Priority Postpaid exposes blind spot in net neutrality framework Ads to algos: Are IG, Snapchat and YT becoming new digital shopping malls?
Anthropic (Claude) May Be the Only $1 Trillion IPO Worth Buying
With SpaceX potentially just days away from going public, I think many investors expected OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, to be the next trillion-dollar initial public offering (IPO). However, Anthropic, the parent company of Claude, has beaten them to the punch. The company announced on June 1 that it has confidentially filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Will AI create the world's first trillionaire? Our team just released a report on the one little-known company, called an "Indispensable Monopoly" providing the critical technology Nvidia and Intel both need. Continue " This filing allows the company to go public following the SEC's review, although Anthropic made it clear that whether it actually follows through with an IPO will depend on market conditions and other factors. While many details about the company remain unknown, Anthropic could end up being the only $1 trillion IPO worth buying. These trillion-dollar IPOs will launch with sky-high valuations Interestingly, Anthropic is planning an IPO after just announcing a $65 billion series H private funding round at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. Investors might have assumed that would give the company some runway, but perhaps the company wants to take advantage of strong market conditions for AI companies to raise more money at a higher valuation. Image source: Getty Images. The $965 billion valuation officially eclipsed OpenAI, which earlier this year closed a $122 billion private funding round at an $852 billion valuation. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all promise to be game-changing companies and already have begun to change the game to an extent. But Anthropic could offer investors a more realistic valuation. SpaceX is not yet profitable and grew revenue 33% year over year in 2025 -- a massive increase for any company, but still perhaps slower than investors are looking for. With nearly $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, SpaceX, at a $1.8 trillion valuation, would be asking for a trailing-12-month revenue multiple of 100x. Now, of course, these companies aren't going to be valued on fundamentals and could define new sectors with tremendous runways. The problem is that these valuations are baking in an incredible amount of success and may not account for roadblocks that could arise. In March, OpenAI reportedly hit a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate. Reports also suggest that the company will seek an IPO valuation of $1 trillion or more. If this were to be the case, it would be asking for a 40x forward revenue multiple because revenue run rate essentially annualizes one month's number. However, media reports earlier this year suggested that the company has been struggling to hit internal revenue targets. Furthermore, the company reportedly has $600 billion of data center commitments by 2030. Finally, as recently as April, media outlets reported that OpenAI is not expected to turn a profit until at least 2030. Anthropic is further along Anthropic has come a long way since the release of AI chatbots in 2022. OpenAI once looked like it had a lead that it would never surrender. However, Anthropic has now surpassed it in terms of valuation. Tools like Claude Code have resonated incredibly well, and enterprises appear to view Anthropic as the better large language model (LLM) company. The company also appears to have been more conservative with spending commitments. CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast in February, "I think it is true we're spending somewhat less than some of the other players." Other media outlets have reported that the company expects to hit a nearly $50 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of June, up from $30 billion in April, and turn an operating profit in the current quarter. That would be quite impressive. If Anthropic targeted a $1 trillion valuation in an IPO, it would only be asking investors for a 20x forward revenue multiple, half of what OpenAI would potentially request. The path to profitability also carries significant sway. Now, it's hard to know exactly what kind of valuation Anthropic will target, given its success. People betting on Polymarket, however, are placing a 53% chance (as of June 3) that the stock closes its first day of trading at a market cap over $1.8 trillion. This isn't necessarily the IPO valuation Anthropic is looking for, but what the market would assign it after having its first chance to buy the stock. Obviously, there is still a lot we don't know, and investors will want to review the company's registration statement before making a determination. But right now, there is a chance Anthropic goes public at a valuation much more reasonable than SpaceX or OpenAI's. Where to invest $1,000 right now When our analyst team has a stock tip, it can pay to listen. After all, Stock Advisor's total average return is 968%* -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 211% for the S&P 500. They just revealed what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy right now, available when you join Stock Advisor. See the stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of June 5, 2026. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy. The views and opinions expressed herein are the views and opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of Nasdaq, Inc.
Anthropic (Claude) May Be the Only $1 Trillion IPO Worth Buying
With SpaceX potentially just days away from going public, I think many investors expected OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, to be the next trillion-dollar initial public offering (IPO). However, Anthropic, the parent company of Claude, has beaten them to the punch. The company announced on June 1 that it has confidentially filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue " This filing allows the company to go public following the SEC's review, although Anthropic made it clear that whether it actually follows through with an IPO will depend on market conditions and other factors. While many details about the company remain unknown, Anthropic could end up being the only $1 trillion IPO worth buying. These trillion-dollar IPOs will launch with sky-high valuations Interestingly, Anthropic is planning an IPO after just announcing a $65 billion series H private funding round at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. Investors might have assumed that would give the company some runway, but perhaps the company wants to take advantage of strong market conditions for AI companies to raise more money at a higher valuation. The $965 billion valuation officially eclipsed OpenAI, which earlier this year closed a $122 billion private funding round at an $852 billion valuation. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all promise to be game-changing companies and already have begun to change the game to an extent. But Anthropic could offer investors a more realistic valuation. SpaceX is not yet profitable and grew revenue 33% year over year in 2025 -- a massive increase for any company, but still perhaps slower than investors are looking for. With nearly $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, SpaceX, at a $1.8 trillion valuation, would be asking for a trailing-12-month revenue multiple of 100x. Now, of course, these companies aren't going to be valued on fundamentals and could define new sectors with tremendous runways. The problem is that these valuations are baking in an incredible amount of success and may not account for roadblocks that could arise. In March, OpenAI reportedly hit a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate. Reports also suggest that the company will seek an IPO valuation of $1 trillion or more. If this were to be the case, it would be asking for a 40x forward revenue multiple because revenue run rate essentially annualizes one month's number.
Google to buy computing from SpaceX at $920 million per month
SpaceX has secured a significant cloud-services deal with Google, agreeing to a monthly payment of $920 million for computing power through mid-2029. This agreement, covering approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs and other components, aims to meet surging customer demand for Google's AI products. Google has agreed to pay Elon Musk's SpaceX $920 million a month for computing power as part of a cloud-services deal. According to a Securities Exchange Commission (SEC) filing by SpaceX, the deal runs through mid-2029. As per the agreement, Google will pay SpaceX the monthly fee from October through June 2029, with capacity ramping up through September at a reduced cost. In case SpaceX fails to deliver the access to the 'guaranteed' Nvidia chips as part of the deal by September 30, Google has the right to terminate the contract, with a one-month grace period. SpaceX has announced the deal just days before the company's stock is expected to start trading on the Nasdaq exchange. As per the SEC filing, the Google-SpaceX compute deal covers "approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components." From the looks, the deal appears similar in length and scope to the one SpaceX announced with Anthropic in late May. As part of that Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25 billion per month through the year 2029 to rent all the available compute from its Colossus 1 data center near Memphis, Tennessee that Elon Musk's company xAI originally built for its own artificial intelligence efforts. SpaceX has not so far revealed which specific data center Google would be using. With these deals, Anthropic and Google will be paying a combined $2.17 billion per month for compute capacity to SpaceX. What SpaceX SEC filing says on Google deal "On June 5, 2026, we entered into a Cloud Service Agreement with Google with respect to access to compute capacity. The customer has agreed to pay us $920 million per month from October 2026 through June 2029, with capacity ramping up through September at a reduced fee. The compute capacity provided includes approximately 110,000 NVIDIA GPUs, CPUs, memory, and other related components. After December 31, 2026, the agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days' notice. The customer will retain ownership of, and intellectual property rights in, its content, Al models, and related data," reads SpaceX's SEC filing. Google on compute deal with Elon Musk's SpaceX In a statement, a Google representative described the deal as a result of unexpected demand for its recently launched AI products. "Google Cloud and SpaceX are long-time partners," Google said in a statement. It added, "This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected." Incidentally, Google is a longtime investor in SpaceX. Its stake in Elon Musk's company is expected to be worth more than $100 billion after the IPO. The companies are also reportedly in talks to try to build orbital data centers -- a major component of SpaceX's future plans. Google CEO Sundar Pichai too has spoken about the company's interest in Space data centers.
Rocket company turned AI landlord: SpaceX lands US$30b Google computing deal
(New users only) It's tax relief season! Get up to RM300 when you save with Versa! Plus, enjoy an additional FREE RM10 when you sign up using code VERSAMM10 with a min. cash-in of RM100 today. T&Cs apply. WASHINGTON, June 6 -- SpaceX on Friday signed a blockbuster cloud computing agreement under which Google will pay the Elon Musk-founded rocket company US$920 million (RM3.704 billion) per month for access to a massive cluster of AI chips, according to a disclosure in its initial public offering filing. The deal, which will bolster SpaceX's finances ahead of its IPO on June 12, covers a computing infrastructure of approximately 110,000 Nvidia GPUs -- the crucial hardware needed to power Google's Gemini AI models. The filing says Google will begin paying the full monthly rate in October 2026, with a reduced fee applying during a ramp-up period until then. The agreement runs through June 2029, implying total payments of roughly US$30 billion (RM120.81 billion) over the life of the contract. The deal resembles one struck with AI giant Anthropic, in which SpaceX leased compute capacity at its Colossus data centers in Memphis, Tennessee for US$1.25 billion (RM5.034 bullion) a month. The facilities were originally built to power Musk's rival AI venture, xAI. SpaceX's IPO filing revealed that xAI last year posted an operating loss of US$6.4 billion (RM25.77 billion) on total revenue of US$3.2 billion (RM12.89 billion). "This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected," a Google Cloud spokesperson said in an email to AFP. The filing adds that after December 31, "the agreement may be terminated by either party upon 90 days' notice." The deals with Google and Anthropic come just days ahead of SpaceX's IPO, which will be the biggest in history, valuing the company at US$1.8 trillion (RM7.25 trillion). That valuation is largely based on faith that Musk can deliver on his ambitions to vastly expand his Starlink satellite business, put data centers into space using SpaceX rockets, as well as begin colonizing Mars. -- AFP
SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic: What the IPO pipeline means for portfolios - ETF Express
Richard Flax, Chief Investment Officer at Moneyfarm, writes that with the SpaceX Initial Public Offering (IPO) due to price on June 12th, and Anthropic and OpenAI waiting in the wings, his team wanted to dig into the implications for their portfolios. First, it's worth highlighting that we invest predominantly in ETFs. Those ETFs track indices, whose composition adjusts over time as companies enter or exit financial markets. As a result, we've seen a good amount of attention focused on the way that these index providers account for newly listed companies. Different index providers have followed different approaches. For instance, Standard & Poor's 500 (the stock market index tracking the performance of 500 leading companies in the United States) has historically had a stricter approach than the Nasdaq, calling for 12 months of history as a listed company and four consecutive quarters of profitability before they could be included. The Nasdaq has generally allowed companies to enter its indices much sooner. At the same time, S&P is also on the verge of softening its approach. On June 8th, it is likely to determine that a company can be included in the S&P 500 only six months after listing, regardless of whether it has shown accounting profits. SpaceX, as a reminder, is looking to sell at a valuation of around 100x forward revenue. That's a very high multiple on its current, loss-making business, whatever you think of its prospects in the future - something we highlighted a couple of weeks ago (along with many others). Let's turn back to our portfolios. Most of our US equity exposure tracks the S&P 500, while a smaller portion tracks the Nasdaq. If S&P changes its rules on June 8th, then we could see SpaceX included in that index towards the end of 2026. SpaceX is likely to be included in the Nasdaq 100 by the end of June, or in early July. In terms of its weighting in the index, there are various rules (around things like the free float - how much of the stock is available to trade), but we think that SpaceX would have a weight of around 1.5 per cent in the Nasdaq 100. The largest Nasdaq exposure in our portfolios is around 5.5% (in a 100% equity portfolio), suggesting that the weight of SpaceX in that portfolio would be around 8 basis points or 0.08 per cent of the overall portfolio. We'd argue that's not a significant direct impact, at least for now, although we would need to consider how that might change if and when SpaceX enters the S&P 500. What about indirect impacts? There are a few points to consider here. As we've noted before, investors will likely need to raise cash to invest in these new IPOs, possibly by selling other stocks. SpaceX is also not the only company looking for capital, after all. Anthropic and OpenAI also look set to launch their processes, while Alphabet (Google) recently announced that it would raise USD80 billion by selling shares to fund its investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI). It's a reminder of how much capital these companies are investing on the AI build-out. There is also a signalling issue. If executives with the deepest understanding of their companies' future prospects are choosing to sell shares, investors may reasonably ask what that implies about current valuations. And what does it mean for the equity market overall? It's a familiar question and a fair one when we consider all the enthusiasm around AI and the amount of money that companies are looking to raise and spend. But we should remember that all these listed businesses IPOed at some point. They raise cash in order to continue innovating and growing, scaling up their businesses. This is also an opportunity for public equity investors to participate in the next phase of these companies' growth. As with any IPO, the crucial question is whether the valuation being asked today is justified by the company's long-term prospects. That is the debate surrounding SpaceX, just as it was for Facebook when it listed at a USD100 billion valuation - a price that many investors considered excessive at the time. Today, it looks rather different. So where does this leave us? We're going to see a number of large companies try to raise equity capital in the coming days and months, and that raises questions about how the equity market reacts. It's an important reminder that market expectations can become elevated even if the long-term outlook proves to be robust. In the immediate term, we don't think that the SpaceX listing will have a material direct impact on our portfolios - since we expect the weight of the stock will be small overall, at least for the next few months. But the combination of increased equity issuance and high expectations means that we're monitoring these moves very closely, and we'll adjust the portfolios if we see the need to do so.
The SpaceX IPO Will Ripple Across Indexes and Funds. Here's What That Means -- and Doesn't Mean.
* FTSE Russell, Nasdaq, and S&P Dow Jones Indices have decided, through their respective consultations, what they'll do about new mega-cap companies going public. * In the most immediate terms, one thing that means is that shares of SpaceX, expected to hit markets soon, won't jump quickly into popular S&P 500 index funds. Elon Musk's rocket startup is getting the Very Important IPO treatment -- with some caveats. Major index providers, including the LSEG's FTSE Russell and the Nasdaq, have made it easier for new mega-cap stocks to land in their indexes. Those moves come ahead of expected offerings from SpaceX, as well as AI companies with massive private valuations, and they have some investors worried that the guardians of major market benchmarks were relaxing standards to stay relevant. Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, which could list next week under the symbol "SPCX," could gain fast-entry into some popular indexes, meaning buying from the funds that track those measures. Just not the S&P 500, which underpins the funds in which the great American investing public is most heavily invested. WHY THIS MATTERS TO YOU When SpaceX lands in public markets, its impact will likely be felt across a swath of investment funds, whether investors in those products wanted shares or not. S&P Dow Jones Indices, a subsidiary of S&P Global, on Thursday said it won't make the proposed changes to eligibility criteria that would have shortened the seasoning period required before companies can join the benchmark index and eased financial requirements to make room for new companies with huge market valuations. (That means SpaceX, but likely also companies like Anthropic and OpenAI.) The decision to keep unchanged rules governing the S&P 500, as well as the S&P MidCap 400, and S&P SmallCap 600, followed a committee's "review of the markets and after consideration of responses received from a wide range of market participants." Companies that want in will have to meet current profitability and public float requirements and have a listing history of at least 12 months to be considered. In other words: Size won't be the determining factor to get into the S&P. That doesn't preclude mega-cap companies from getting fast-tracked into other S&P products, such as the S&P Total Market Index and Dow Jones U.S. Total Stock Market Index, neither of which have financial viability requirements for inclusion. (Some S&P indexes will also now see relaxed requirements for float, which could also ease entry for certain companies.)
SpaceX signs $920 million monthly cloud compute deal with Google ahead of IPO - Cryptopolitan
Both deals bolster SpaceX's financials ahead of its planned IPO targeting a $75 billion raise. SpaceX is primed to receive a whopping $920 million per month from Google, so the latter can make use of its AI cloud computing facilities, according to an SEC filing today. This gives Elon Musk's rocket, AI, and satellites company another major cloud customer weeks before its planned IPO. The agreement runs from October 2026 through June 2029 and covers roughly 110,000 Nvidia GPUs along with CPUs, memory, and related infrastructure, according to the SEC filing. Compute capacity is expected to increase gradually till September at a lower cost before reaching the full monthly rate. SpaceX AI cloud business in demand The Google deal follows a similar arrangement SpaceX struck with Anthropic in May, where the Claude chatbot maker got full access to the full computing power of SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tennessee. This facility houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and provides 300 megawatts of capacity, according to Reuters. Together, the two contracts represent more than $70 billion in total value, provided neither is terminated early before its scheduled end date. On an annual basis, both deals are also worth a total of $26 billion. SpaceX has widely mentioned a target of $75 billion in its upcoming initial public offering, and the company's revenue story and outlook can only be further strengthened by these moves to lock in long-term, high-value AI compute customers. Termination factors and terms The contract can be terminated early in specific cases and these terms have been put in to serve as protections for Google. Google can terminate the agreement after a one-month grace period if SpaceX fails to deliver the agreed number of GPUs by September 30, 2026, or accept whatever capacity SpaceX has delivered at that date for a proportionally reduced fee, according to the filing. After December 31, either side can exit the deal with 90 days' notice. The filing also stated that all intellectual property rights in content and AI models, in addition to all data processed on the infrastructure will belong to Google. GPUs upon GPUs The competition for GPU capacity has continued to grow at an alarming rate, and this deal only proves how crazy the competition has become among companies building large AI systems. Google operates its own massive data center network and custom TPU chips, and in spite of this, still has to pay nearly $1 billion a month to rent Nvidia hardware from another big tech company. For SpaceX, the AI cloud compute hardware industry represents a new revenue stream distinct from its rocket and Starlink satellite businesses. The Colossus facility in Memphis, originally built to serve Musk's own xAI venture, is now generating billions in annual revenue from outside customers.
Anthropic (Claude) May Be the Only $1 Trillion IPO Worth Buying
With SpaceX potentially just days away from going public, I think many investors expected OpenAI, the parent company of ChatGPT, to be the next trillion-dollar initial public offering (IPO). However, Anthropic, the parent company of Claude, has beaten them to the punch. The company announced on June 1 that it has confidentially filed to go public with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). This filing allows the company to go public following the SEC's review, although Anthropic made it clear that whether it actually follows through with an IPO will depend on market conditions and other factors. While many details about the company remain unknown, Anthropic could end up being the only $1 trillion IPO worth buying. These trillion-dollar IPOs will launch with sky-high valuations Interestingly, Anthropic is planning an IPO after just announcing a $65 billion series H private funding round at a post-money valuation of $965 billion. Investors might have assumed that would give the company some runway, but perhaps the company wants to take advantage of strong market conditions for AI companies to raise more money at a higher valuation. The $965 billion valuation officially eclipsed OpenAI, which earlier this year closed a $122 billion private funding round at an $852 billion valuation. SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI all promise to be game-changing companies and already have begun to change the game to an extent. But Anthropic could offer investors a more realistic valuation. SpaceX is not yet profitable and grew revenue 33% year over year in 2025 -- a massive increase for any company, but still perhaps slower than investors are looking for. With nearly $18.7 billion of revenue in 2025, SpaceX, at a $1.8 trillion valuation, would be asking for a trailing-12-month revenue multiple of 100x. Now, of course, these companies aren't going to be valued on fundamentals and could define new sectors with tremendous runways. The problem is that these valuations are baking in an incredible amount of success and may not account for roadblocks that could arise. In March, OpenAI reportedly hit a $25 billion annualized revenue run rate. Reports also suggest that the company will seek an IPO valuation of $1 trillion or more. If this were to be the case, it would be asking for a 40x forward revenue multiple because revenue run rate essentially annualizes one month's number. However, media reports earlier this year suggested that the company has been struggling to hit internal revenue targets. Furthermore, the company reportedly has $600 billion of data center commitments by 2030. Finally, as recently as April, media outlets reported that OpenAI is not expected to turn a profit until at least 2030. Anthropic is further along Anthropic has come a long way since the release of AI chatbots in 2022. OpenAI once looked like it had a lead that it would never surrender. However, Anthropic has now surpassed it in terms of valuation. Tools like Claude Code have resonated incredibly well, and enterprises appear to view Anthropic as the better large language model (LLM) company. The company also appears to have been more conservative with spending commitments. CEO Dario Amodei said on a podcast in February, "I think it is true we're spending somewhat less than some of the other players." Other media outlets have reported that the company expects to hit a nearly $50 billion annualized revenue run rate by the end of June, up from $30 billion in April, and turn an operating profit in the current quarter. That would be quite impressive. If Anthropic targeted a $1 trillion valuation in an IPO, it would only be asking investors for a 20x forward revenue multiple, half of what OpenAI would potentially request. The path to profitability also carries significant sway. Now, it's hard to know exactly what kind of valuation Anthropic will target, given its success. People betting on Polymarket, however, are placing a 53% chance (as of June 3) that the stock closes its first day of trading at a market cap over $1.8 trillion. This isn't necessarily the IPO valuation Anthropic is looking for, but what the market would assign it after having its first chance to buy the stock. Obviously, there is still a lot we don't know, and investors will want to review the company's registration statement before making a determination. But right now, there is a chance Anthropic goes public at a valuation much more reasonable than SpaceX or OpenAI's.
Wall St Week Ahead Blockbuster SpaceX IPO set to test high-flying US stocks rally
NEW YORK, June 5 (Reuters) - The long-awaited, massive SpaceX initial public offering is expected next week, a major event for the U.S. stock market, with investors wary of possible overexuberance. Stock indexes fell on Friday as strong jobs data ignited fears of hawkish monetary policy and semiconductor shares tumbled after a torrid run. The benchmark S&P 500 (.SPX), opens new tab posted a weekly decline after nine straight weeks of gains. The S&P 500 was still up about 8% in 2026, including a 16% rebound since its late-March low for the year. "Nothing has stuck in terms of pessimism in the last two months," said Mark Hackett, chief market strategist for Nationwide. "There is just this underpinning of momentum, this insatiable appetite for tech holdings and just the technical buying spree that is really dwarfing almost all other inputs." Next week, investors will also assess fresh data on consumer and producer prices, after the jobs report fueled fears that the Federal Reserve would focus on calming inflation, potentially leading to interest rate hikes. The coming week also brings earnings reports from key companies in the technology sector, which has driven the market's recent surge despite a sour end to the week. Some investors have been bracing for a pause, if not a pullback, after the sharp rally. Risks include the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran and the potential for renewed spikes in energy prices if Middle East tensions flare. SPACEX IN SPOTLIGHT Elon Musk's SpaceX is aiming to raise $75 billion, the most ever for an IPO, in a deal that would value it at $1.75 trillion. Pricing is expected on June 11, with trading to begin on the Nasdaq the next day. The company has an unusual and diverse set of businesses, including rockets, satellite communications and AI computing. Adding in the involvement of Musk -- Tesla's (TSLA.O), opens new tab leader and the world's wealthiest man -- and SpaceX's valuation is tricky to pin down, rising to exorbitant levels by some measures. The company posted a net loss of $4.94 billion in 2025, even as revenue rose 33% to $18.67 billion. The IPO could lure significant attention from retail investors and provide another high-profile way to gain exposure to the AI trade. "We've got one of the biggest IPOs in history coming ... which I think is the focus of everybody's interest," said Jason Pride, chief of investment strategy and research at Glenmede. "The question mark surrounding it is whether it's an indication of market froth." SpaceX's debut is expected to be followed by other mega IPOs in the coming months from Anthropic and OpenAI, two of the AI leaders. Anthropic, which makes the Claude chatbot, said this week it has confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO. The SpaceX IPO is "an important benchmark," said Matt Wittmer, a portfolio manager at Allspring Global Investments, adding that "the company itself will be playing in some of those key areas that people are looking for to find new secular growth opportunities." CPI DATA DUE, ORACLE, ADOBE TOO The May Consumer Price Index, due on Wednesday, will show how surging oil and gasoline prices are influencing inflation. One concern is the extent to which higher energy prices might be affecting other CPI components, Pride said, ahead of the Federal Reserve's meeting this month. "The Federal Reserve is going to be watching this like a hawk," Pride said. "They're going to want to see those pieces continue to remain stable and not increase as a pass-through from the energy and food prices." In the wake of the spike in energy prices, futures are factoring in a greater chance the Fed raises interest rates this year rather than cuts, after markets had anticipated equity-friendly rate decreases at the start of 2026. Other economic data next week includes Thursday's report on producer prices. Quarterly reports from tech companies Oracle (ORCL.N), opens new tab and Adobe (ADBE.O), opens new tab will also be in focus. Tech has long dominated the U.S. stock market, but the sector's recent outperformance pushed it to more than 39% of the S&P 500's market capitalization this week, its highest share on record. The results will test the strength of the tech trade and the rebound in the software industry, which was hit hard to start the year on concerns about AI disruptions. Shares of Oracle are up more than 9% this year, while Adobe is down 28%. "Getting more data points from some of the AI value chain is going to be important," Wittmer said. Reporting by Lewis Krauskopf; Editing by Colin Barr and Rod Nickel Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles., opens new tab
Anthropic Calls For Pause Or Slowdown In AI Development After Pope Leo's Encyclical
Less than two weeks after Pope Leo XIV published an encyclical warning artificial intelligence (AI) companies against constructing "a new Tower of Babel," the multibillion-dollar AI company Anthropic is calling for a global pause or slowdown in development. Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark and Anthropic Institute head Marina Favaro published a blog on June 4 warning about a risk of "humans losing control over AI systems" as its own system Claude is reaching the potential to autonomously design its own successor without any human contributions. "This is called recursive self-improvement," they wrote. "We are not there yet, and recursive self-improvement is not inevitable. But it could come sooner than most institutions are prepared for." The blog post did not mention the encyclical, but a separate Anthropic co-founder, Chris Olah, met with Leo and sat alongside the pope when the encyclical Magnifica Humanitas was revealed on May 25. Anthropic has engaged in outreach to the Vatican and other religious leaders to help address ethical questions related to AI development. In the blog post, Anthropic leaders explained that its AI system is taking over a large portion of writing code that designs AI -- with its workload growing eightfold every quarter. AI will "become much more capable in coming years," they wrote, and "these trends have huge implications." "If systems are capable of fully building their own successors, the ways we secure them, monitor them, and shape their behavior all grow much more important," they wrote. Although Clark and Favaro acknowledged AI has not reached this level yet and they cannot say for certain it will, they wrote: "We do not have good intuitions for what this world would look like" if this occurs, and AI capabilities "eclipse those of humans." Anthropic's leaders wrote that AI companies should come together to either pause or slow down development "to give ourselves more time to deal with its immense implications." However, this would require global international cooperation among countries and AI companies because "if a slowdown simply lets the least cautious actors catch up technologically, it could leave everyone less safe," they wrote. "We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development to enable societal structures and alignment research to keep up with the advance of the technology," they added. Anthropic intends to engage with policymakers, researchers, and other members of the public to discuss these concerns. The company will publish a document based on what comes out of the conversations. 'Disarming' AI Charles Camosy, a moral theologian at The Catholic University of America who has worked with Anthropic on ethical questions, told EWTN News that Anthropic's statements appear in line with Leo's desire to "disarm" AI, which the pontiff explained as not halting innovation but "preventing it from dominating humanity." He said Anthropic recognizes the speed of development as "such a problem we all need to slow down here." Such a pause would allow society to "think about what AI should or should not do in the culture," he said. Camosy pointed to concerns about "outsourcing" teaching, tutoring, parenting, care for the sick, and other human interactions to AI, possibly "undermining the things that ... make our humanity magnificent." He recognized that fierce AI competition among nations and companies "creates a significant roadblock" to global cooperation for slowing everything down, but said: "I've been astonished by how many different kinds of people are interested in this encyclical." "Many people were kind of waiting for someone to fill the moral space," Camosy said and suggested the Church help lead a global movement that demands ethical AI, and he encouraged the Holy Father to consider a trip to Silicon Valley. "To many people that sounds hopefully naive," he said. "But I don't see another choice here."
Elon Musk's SpaceX secures $920 million monthly Google deal for cloud compute capacity- Explained | Company Business News
Google has deepened its partnership with SpaceX through a significant infrastructure deal that will see the search giant pay the rocket company $920 million each month for access to computing power spanning nearly three years. The agreement represents one of the most substantial commitments to date by a major technology firm for SpaceX's growing data centre operations, underscoring how aggressively Elon Musk's enterprise is pivoting toward artificial intelligence infrastructure as it prepares for an expected initial public offering. The contract includes provisions allowing either party to exit the arrangement after a 90-day notice period beginning in 2027, providing flexibility for both organisations as their infrastructure needs evolve. "Google Cloud and SpaceX are long-time partners. This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected." The characterisation of the deal as temporary suggests Google views the arrangement as a means of addressing immediate demand whilst it expands its own data centre infrastructure. The emphasis on "bridge capacity" indicates the company expects to reduce or eliminate its dependence on SpaceX's systems once internal capacity is scaled. Both agreements reflect what SpaceX characterised in its regulatory filing as a deliberate business model: "This structure allows us to monetise unused compute capacity in our infrastructure, while still permitting reallocation of the capacity for our own internal initiatives if needed in the future." An Anthropic spokesperson confirmed the monthly figure to Business Insider. Tom Brown, the AI laboratory's compute chief, disclosed in May that the Colossus infrastructure would be deployed for inference operations -- the computational work required for AI models to generate outputs based on user inputs. The magnitude of GPU acquisition costs has prompted SpaceX to consider manufacturing its own processors -- a move that would position the company as a direct competitor to Nvidia, which maintains overwhelming dominance in the market for high-end graphics processing units. SpaceX lists "manufacturing our own GPUs" within its disclosure of "substantial capital expenditures" the organisation intends to undertake. By selling hundreds of megawatts of computing capacity to Anthropic and now Google, SpaceX has begun to function as a competitor to Google Cloud itself. The dynamics grow more complex given that Google is engaged in discussions with SpaceX to assist with the development of orbital data centres -- a venture that could position Google as both customer and collaborator. The Google and Anthropic agreements represent the opening salvo in what SpaceX clearly intends as a much broader assault on the compute infrastructure sector. As the company prepares for what is anticipated to be a record-breaking public listing, these deals provide both immediate revenue and proof of concept that major technology firms are willing to pay premium rates for computing capacity sourced from outside the traditional cloud infrastructure providers.
Veteran investor says SpaceX, Anthropic IPO frenzy behind Bitcoin selloff
Bitcoin's decline, which began after the Oct. 10, 2025 flash crash, entered a more volatile phase this week after Strategy (Nasdaq: MSTR), the world's largest corporate holder of Bitcoin, revealed it sold Bitcoin last week for the first time in years. U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs had already recorded net outflows of $2.43 billion in May. To make situation worse, it's only been four days into June, and investors have pulled another $1.40 billion from the funds. Jeffrey Park says investors rotating capital from Bitcoin to IPOs But veteran investor and Bitwise advisor Jeffrey Park believes the recent weakness in Bitcoin runs deeper than Strategy's sale or ETF outflows. In a June 4 post on X, Park said he does not believe Bitcoin is falling because Strategy sold 32 BTC. Instead, he argued that investors are rotating capital into what he described as "the market's upcoming hot ball of money trades." According to Park, some investors are moving funds out of Bitcoin to position for high-profile IPOs, including shares of SpaceX and Anthropic. "This means in the future, the correlation breakdown will itself become the fuel," he predicted. What the investor is implying is that these IPOs are going to be hottest trades of the year and Bitcoin is paling in comparison. Trending on TheStreet Roundtable: Grayscale's research head expects SpaceX IPO to shift Bitcoin treasury dynamics Elon Musk's SpaceX is anticipated to be the largest IPO in market history. The company is reportedly seeking to raise at least $75 billion at a valuation between $1.75 trillion and $2 trillion. When the company filed the Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) on May 20 to make its public debut, it disclosed holding 18,712 Bitcoin on its balance sheet as of Dec. 31, 2025. Though Park believes these IPOs are drawing capital out of Bitcoin, Grayscale's research head Zach Pandl predicted last month that given the kind of treasury SpaceX holds, its IPO could normalize Bitcoin as a mainstream treasury asset for large, operationally complex companies. In fact, Pandl argued that the SpaceX IPO could herald the era of diversified businesses holding Bitcoin on their balance sheets. But pure-play digital asset treasuries (DATs) like Strategy could decline over time, he predicted.
SpaceX Has $30 Billion Deal to Provide Google With A.I. Computing Power
SpaceX revealed in a regulatory filing on Friday that Google will pay it $920 million a month for computing power, pumping billions of dollars into Elon Musk's rocket company as it prepares for a blockbuster initial public offering. The agreement, which starts in October and runs through June 2029, could earn SpaceX about $30 billion in total. It also helps establish SpaceX -- which owns Mr. Musk's artificial intelligence lab, xAI -- as a major infrastructure provider as companies compete in a fierce global race to dominate A.I. As part of the agreement, Google will gain access to about 110,000 A.I. chips from Nvidia, which Google said would help it meet larger-than-expected customer demand for its A.I. models. The tech giant said in April that its cloud business had contracts totaling $460 billion that had yet to be fulfilled as revenue, indicating enormous demand for its services. "Google Cloud and SpaceX are longtime partners," a Google Cloud spokesman said in a statement. "This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected." SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SpaceX reached a similar deal last month to provide Anthropic, another leading A.I. lab, with computing power. Anthropic, which is also expected to go public this year, is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion a month. SpaceX is expected to go public next week in a deal that could value the company at more than $1.7 trillion and make Mr. Musk a trillionaire. As part of that process, the company has shed more light on its financial details in recent weeks to entice investors. Mr. Musk has built a massive supercomputer in Memphis to power xAI. But the company has largely lagged behind competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. In the run-up to SpaceX's going public, Mr. Musk has increasingly leaned into A.I. He has promoted xAI's computing power as an asset, demonstrating that it can be turned into revenue through deals with Anthropic and Google. Mr. Musk has also announced details of a giant chip factory he's building in Texas. And in April, SpaceX announced a $60 billion deal to acquire the A.I. start-up Cursor, which makes a code-writing assistant. The deal with Google deepens ties between the search giant and the rocket maker. Google owns a roughly 5 percent stake in SpaceX, and has explored the possibility of using SpaceX as a launch partner as Google seeks to put data centers in space, an effort known as Project Suncatcher. Kate Conger is a technology reporter based in San Francisco. She can be reached at [email protected]. The post SpaceX Has $30 Billion Deal to Provide Google With A.I. Computing Power appeared first on New York Times.
Salesforce's $5 Billion Anthropic Bet Is Bigger Than Most Investors Realize - Memeburn
Claude AI is now embedded directly inside Salesforce's CRM workflows, not offered as a separate tool Salesforce has officially committed $5 billion to the AI company Anthropic. By putting this powerful AI directly inside the tools businesses use every day, they are changing how companies handle their data. Here's what this move means for the future of business and what it signals for investors in 2026. What Actually Happened Salesforce did not acquire its $5 billion position in a single transaction. Instead, the company invested capital over several private funding rounds, beginning in 2023. This early move let Salesforce grab a significant stake, long before Anthropic's valuation climbed to where it is now. Anthropic was founded by former OpenAI researchers who prioritize building safe and reliable AI. Because of this focus, the company has become a top partner for large technology firms that need dependable AI for their business customers. In February 2026, Salesforce integrated Claude AI directly into its core software. While this initially caused a 4% jump in the stock price, investors remain cautious about whether it will lead to long-term success. By June 2026, Salesforce officially confirmed a total $5 billion investment in Anthropic, signaling that it is making this AI technology the foundation of its future business strategy. This move makes it clear that Salesforce is building its future entirely around Anthropic's AI technology. Why the CEO Says Investors Have It Wrong Salesforce's stock performance has been challenged in 2026. Fears that autonomous agents could independently handle customer interactions have led investors to worry that traditional CRM software may soon become redundant. Salesforce leadership has challenged this perspective. They argue that enterprise AI efficacy is inseparable from existing business systems. They contend that AI requires access to verified customer histories and internal business data to function reliably. In this view, Salesforce is not being replaced. Rather, it serves as the necessary environment for AI to operate with corporate-grade accuracy. The long-term hypothesis is that AI will enhance the utility of these platforms. This allows Salesforce to justify premium pricing as it automates complex, manual workflows. What This Means If You're an Enterprise Customer For enterprise buyers, this investment provides long-term stability. It proves that AI is a central part of Salesforce's future rather than just an experiment. By backing Anthropic, Salesforce ensures its tools stay modern and reliable. This protects your company from the risk of relying on outdated or unsupported software. For organizations, this integration changes how they get work done. Because AI is built directly into your CRM, employees can write drafts and analyze customer data without leaving their daily workspace. Everything happens where they already work, making tasks faster and much easier to manage. They can do this without navigating away from their primary tools. The advantage of this native approach is reduced friction in adoption. By utilizing existing infrastructure, firms may avoid the overhead of additional software licenses. They may also avoid separate security protocols. However, implementation is not without complexity. Enterprise buyers must still evaluate whether the output quality justifies the integration. Internal teams will need to manage the transition from manual processes to AI-assisted workflows. For management, the goal is to create a more unified environment. Success depends on how well these tools address specific business use cases. The Bigger Race for AI Partners Salesforce is navigating a competitive landscape. Tech giants are aggressively aligning with AI labs to bridge the "buy-versus-build" gap. Developing foundational models requires massive capital expenditure in compute and data engineering. This prompts companies to partner rather than build from scratch. This trend is visible across the industry: * Microsoft and OpenAI: A foundational partnership that integrated GPT models across the Azure and Office ecosystems. * Google and Gemini: A vertical integration strategy. Google develops its proprietary models to enhance its suite of business and productivity applications. * Salesforce and Anthropic: A focused partnership emphasizing safety and reliability. These qualities are often prioritized in enterprise procurement over the more experimental nature of some consumer-grade models. Software companies are investing in these labs to ensure their platforms remain competitive. AI integration is now a standard requirement for enterprise software buyers. The Numbers You Actually Need Salesforce's $5 billion investment serves as a strategic commitment to its long-term product vision. Valuation figures for private companies like Anthropic fluctuate based on deal timing. This level of investment indicates Salesforce's role as a major stakeholder in the AI ecosystem. Market sentiment toward Salesforce remains divided. Although the stock saw a 9,6% jump recently, it remains down overall for the year. This indicates that investors are interested in the AI vision. However, they are increasingly focused on seeing this strategy translate into tangible revenue growth and improved margins. What to Watch Next The ultimate success of this $5 billion bet rests on a few critical factors. First, Salesforce needs its customers to actually use the new AI features. If businesses don't turn them on or find them useful, the investment will not generate a return. Second, Salesforce must decide if it will keep pouring more money into Anthropic as the startup grows. Third, this AI strategy needs to be successful enough to improve Salesforce's stock performance, which has struggled lately. At the same time, Salesforce faces intense competition. Rivals like Microsoft, Oracle, and SAP are not standing still. They are all racing to build their own AI tools for businesses because this market is incredibly valuable. None of these companies are going to let Salesforce win without a fierce fight. Salesforce has made its big move. The real test now is whether it can turn this vision into actual profits.
SpaceX lands Google AI compute deal after Anthropic pact ahead of IPO
The pact brings another high-profile customer to SpaceX, after Anthropic, strengthening its AI narrative as it targets a $75 billion raise in its upcoming initial public offering. SpaceX said on Friday it has entered into a multi-year cloud services agreement with Alphabet's Google, locking in computing capacity as it prepares for its highly anticipated U.S. stock market debut next week. As part of the deal, Google will pay SpaceX $920 million monthly from October this year to June 2029, with capacity ramping up through September at a reduced fee, Elon Musk's space venture said in a regulatory filing. The compute capacity provided includes about 110,000 Nvidia GPUs, CPUs, memory and other related components. The pact brings another high-profile customer to SpaceX, after Anthropic, strengthening its AI narrative as it targets a $75 billion raise in its upcoming initial public offering. Anthropic said in May it had reached a deal to use the full computing power of SpaceX's Colossus 1 facility in Memphis, Tennessee, which houses more than 220,000 Nvidia processors and will give the Claude chatbot maker 300 megawatts of new capacity within a month. On an annual basis, SpaceX's compute access deals with Anthropic and Google are worth roughly $26 billion combined. SpaceX's disclosed compute-capacity agreements with Anthropic and Google are worth more than $70 billion in aggregate, assuming neither contract is terminated before its scheduled end date. If SpaceX does not provide access to the agreed number of GPUs by September 30, then, after a one-month grace period, "Google may immediately terminate the agreement or accept the number of GPUs provided, with a corresponding pro-rata reduction in the monthly fees," the company said. After December 31, either party may terminate the agreement by providing 90 days' notice. Google will retain ownership of, and all intellectual property rights in, its content, AI models and associated data.
SpaceX Has $30 Billion Deal to Provide Google With A.I. Computing Power
Elon Musk's rocket company said Google would pay it $920 million a month, as it prepared for its initial public offering. SpaceX revealed in a regulatory filing on Friday that Google will pay it $920 million a month for computing power, pumping billions of dollars into Elon Musk's rocket company as it prepares for a blockbuster initial public offering. The agreement, which starts in October and runs through June 2029, could earn SpaceX about $30 billion in total. It also helps establish SpaceX -- which owns Mr. Musk's artificial intelligence lab, xAI -- as a major infrastructure provider as companies compete in a fierce global race to dominate A.I. As part of the agreement, Google will gain access to about 110,000 A.I. chips from Nvidia, which Google said would help it meet larger-than-expected customer demand for its A.I. models. The tech giant said in April that its cloud business had contracts totaling $460 billion that had yet to be fulfilled as revenue, indicating enormous demand for its services. "Google Cloud and SpaceX are longtime partners," a Google Cloud spokesman said in a statement. "This is a short-term, timely agreement to ensure we have bridge capacity to meet surging customer demand for our agent platform, Gemini Enterprise, which has been even higher than we expected." SpaceX did not immediately respond to a request for comment. SpaceX reached a similar deal last month to provide Anthropic, another leading A.I. lab, with computing power. Anthropic, which is also expected to go public this year, is paying SpaceX $1.25 billion a month. SpaceX is expected to go public next week in a deal that could value the company at more than $1.7 trillion and make Mr. Musk a trillionaire. As part of that process, the company has shed more light on its financial details in recent weeks to entice investors. Mr. Musk has built a massive supercomputer in Memphis to power xAI. But the company has largely lagged behind competitors like OpenAI, Anthropic and Google. In the run-up to SpaceX's going public, Mr. Musk has increasingly leaned into A.I. He has promoted xAI's computing power as an asset, demonstrating that it can be turned into revenue through deals with Anthropic and Google. Mr. Musk has also announced details of a giant chip factory he's building in Texas. And in April, SpaceX announced a $60 billion deal to acquire the A.I. start-up Cursor, which makes a code-writing assistant. The deal with Google deepens ties between the search giant and the rocket maker. Google owns a roughly 5 percent stake in SpaceX, and has explored the possibility of using SpaceX as a launch partner as Google seeks to put data centers in space, an effort known as Project Suncatcher.
SpaceX and Anthropic are about to go public -- and your 401(k) may be forced to buy in
Two of the most valuable companies in history are about to go public, and because of their sheer size, they may fundamentally alter what sits inside millions of Americans' retirement accounts. With SpaceX's IPO also sparking index providers to change the rules on how stocks are added to major stock market indexes (like Nasdaq or the S&P 500), you may soon feel the effects of the IPO much faster than you would have otherwise. Index funds are usually the backbone of most 401(k)s, and because they're obligated to buy whatever is in the index, changing the rules may be the mechanism that forces one's exposure to a new IPO, such as SpaceX's, and eventually Anthropic's. But simply because SpaceX and Anthropic are so enormous at their debut (SpaceX at $1.77 trillion as of Wednesday and Anthropic expected at nearly $1 trillion), index providers can't necessarily leave them out. So they've shortened or even eliminated the seasoning period, meaning your 401(K) will reflect their presence in the stock market that much sooner. While market bulls eagerly await their opportunity to purchase stocks the second they become available, others warn that the safeguards were in place for a reason, and without them, there could be a serious threat to people's retirement nest eggs. "We put in place guardrails after the dot-com bubble for a reason," Elizabeth Wilkins, the President and CEO of the Roosevelt Institute the Roosevelt Institute, told Fortune. "Because we remembered that there's real downside risk to tying retiree savings to the fortunes of not only corporate America generally, but specifically the tech sector." A major IPO filing Anthropic, which confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC on Monday, was most recently valued at $965 billion following a $65 billion fundraising round in late May that even topped rival OpenAI. Elon Musk's SpaceX, meanwhile, launched its roadshow this week, at a valuation of $1.77 trillion, which would make it one of the most valuable companies on earth essentially overnight. Companies of that magnitude are impossible for index providers to ignore, which, in turn, recognizing they cannot afford to leave two near-trillion-dollar companies sitting on the sidelines, are already rewriting the rules to pull them in faster. Several major stock market index providers, including Nasdaq and FTSE Russell, have recently changed or adopted fast-entry rules that could allow companies like SpaceX to be added to major indexes much sooner than they typically would, after as few as five trading days under FTSE Russell's new standard, or 15 under Nasdaq's. Even S&P Dow Jones Indices has reportedly been weighing similar changes. The practical consequence is that the funds that track those indexes may be forced to buy shares in both companies shortly after their debuts, meaning ordinary retirement savers could end up with significant exposure to both whether they chose it or not.
Anthropic urges industry coordination to allow for a 'pause' in AI development if risks grow
Anthropic is proposing that the world's top artificial intelligence companies come up with a coordinated way to pause development of advanced AI systems, warning the technology is improving so quickly there's a risk humans would lose control. The company behind the Claude chatbot said in a blog post Thursday that as cutting-edge AI gets increasingly faster at carrying out tasks, "it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause" its development. Anthropic said its internal research institute plans to explore the issue in collaboration with others and "take actions" to help build the systems for a credible slowdown or pause, without being more specific. Anthropic rival OpenAI argued for a different approach in a report published Wednesday, saying that "democratic governments -- not private companies acting alone -- must ultimately determine the rules, safeguards, and accountability mechanisms." "Our view is that decisions about the pace of AI innovation should not be left to any one lab, company, or special interest group," it said. AI models are getting faster, with rapid increases in how quickly they can carry out software tasks like coding on their own, Anthropic said in its post. Based on current trends and given enough computing power, an AI system could be able to design and develop its own successor, in what is known as "recursive self-improvement." Self-building AI would be a major technological milestone that would bring benefits in science, healthcare and other areas, Anthropic said, but it "also might increase the risks of humans losing control over AI systems." Some tech industry figures have long warned of such a scenario. Anthropic's post comes after a different warning this week from a team of researchers at the University of Toronto who showed how AI tools could be used to create a new kind of AI "worm" that adapts its hacking strategy as it spreads from device to device and takes over a vast computing network. "I think it's really important that people understand that it's not just the biggest, most powerful language models that pose the security concerns," lead researcher Nicolas Papernot said in an interview. The authors of the Anthropic post, company co-founder Jack Clark and Marina Favaro, head of its research institute, said the pause would be used to enable "societal structures and alignment research" to keep up with AI advances. Alignment is industry shorthand for making sure the technology matches human values and intentions. The proposed coordination would let advanced AI labs verify that global rivals have actually stopped or slowed their work, "and that a bad actor could not use the auspices of a coordinated slowdown to jump ahead in secret." The company said a coordinated global mechanism is needed because without it a slowdown in AI development could let the "least cautious" players catch up and add to pressure on companies and governments as they make tough choices about AI safety. Anthropic's post comes as the company and ChatGPT-maker OpenAI race to sell shares on the stock market, in an IPO that could value Anthropic at nearly a trillion dollars. Papernot notified Canadian cybersecurity authorities prior to releasing his report, which shows how researchers developed the worm in a laboratory by using an "open-source" AI tool that is easy for software developers to cheaply access and modify. "In the past, cyber attackers would focus on targets that are very high value," he said. "Banking systems, hospitals, electricity grids, water treatment systems, schools." Papernot agreed that there should be more collaboration between companies, government agencies and academic researchers to develop countermeasures as AI-powered hacking tools supercharge the search for computer vulnerabilities. "That old laptop you have in your basement that you don't check on regularly doesn't seem like a very high-value target, but It can be used as a launch pad to attack these higher-value targets," he said. "Anything connected to the internet is now at risk because of how low the cost has become to mount these cyberattacks."
