News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Interactive Brokers Earns Interest on $182 Billion of Its Clients' Idle Cash. Will Anthropic's IPO Drain It?
Interactive Brokers (NASDAQ:IBKR) ended June with $182.4 billion of uninvested client cash, up 27% year over year. Not only did the pile grow, but it was bigger still two months after the quarter closed, reaching $185.6 billion at the end of August. And until clients put that money to work, the automated global broker collects interest on it. They may soon get a big occasion to put some of it to work. Anthropic's initial public offering (IPO) prospectus could arrive as soon as this week. In late August, The Information reported that the artificial intelligence (AI) company planned to release it just after Labor Day, with a market debut following as soon as the end of this month. 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 " Investors project the Claude maker's valuation could land at about $2 trillion, CNBC has reported. They also expect the offering itself could top the largest on record -- the $85.7 billion SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) raised in its June debut. Anthropic's timing is a plan, not a scheduled event. There's no public prospectus, no price, and no share count yet. But I think the setup is worth examining, because the broker just lived through a version of it. What does a huge listing do to this business? Image source: The Motley Fool. A cash pile that pays Interactive Brokers earns money on client cash in a straightforward way. It segregates customer cash as regulators require and invests the majority of that segregated cash in short-term U.S. government securities and related instruments. Clients earn interest on qualifying U.S. dollar balances, and the company keeps a spread for itself: half a percentage point below the benchmark federal funds rate. At today's scale, net interest income is the company's biggest revenue line. It rose 23% year over year to $1.06 billion in the second quarter, helped by growing customer credit balances and a 67% jump in customer margin loans. That was more than half of the quarter's $1.9 billion of total net revenues. Notably, the growth came from bigger balances. The company's net interest margin narrowed to 1.93% from 2.07% a year earlier as interest rates declined, yet net interest income climbed anyway. In other words, the cash isn't idle from the broker's perspective. Every uninvested dollar earns the company a little interest, and clients added about $39 billion of those dollars over the past year. SpaceX's debut didn't drain the pile If a giant IPO were going to pull client cash out of the business for good, the second quarter was the test. SpaceX went public on June 12, and Interactive Brokers participated directly. "In Europe, we directly offered the SpaceX IPO to eligible U.K. and European retail clients, providing access across multiple countries," said Nancy Stuebe, the company's director of investor relations, on the July earnings call. The trading side delivered. Commission revenue hit a record $673 million in the second quarter, up 30% year over year and accelerating from 19% growth in the first quarter. But the cash pile grew anyway. Client equity climbed to $962.8 billion in August, up 35% year over year, and customers traded more too -- daily average revenue trades rose 23%. And a big reason the cash keeps pace is that new customers keep arriving. Client accounts reached 5.46 million in August, up 35% from a year earlier. Will Anthropic be a repeat? Two things would have to happen first. The offering has to arrive at all. Anthropic's June filing was a confidential draft registration statement, and the company has said the proposed offering will depend on market conditions. Interactive Brokers would also need access to the shares. The company hasn't said anything about distributing Anthropic's offering, and its SpaceX access was limited to eligible retail clients in the U.K. and Europe. I wouldn't assume a repeat until the company announces one. Still, the second quarter suggests shareholders don't need one. Heavier customer trading can lift commissions, while account growth keeps refilling the interest-earning cash pile. Ultimately, I view an Anthropic debut as a potential bonus for this business rather than a swing factor. Even at a record $673 million, commissions remain the smaller of the company's two big revenue lines. The stock, meanwhile, sits near $92 as of this writing, about 6% short of its 52-week high. And it trades at about 29 times what analysts expect it to earn next year -- arguably a rich price for a brokerage, although one attached to 28% net revenue growth and a pretax profit margin that expanded to 77% last quarter. I wouldn't buy shares because of an IPO on the horizon. The account growth that keeps refilling that cash pile matters a lot more. Should you buy stock in Interactive Brokers Group right now? Before you buy stock in Interactive Brokers Group, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Interactive Brokers Group wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $421,997!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,413,876!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 978% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 213% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of September 7, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool recommends the following options: long January 2027 $43.75 calls on Interactive Brokers Group and short January 2027 $46.25 calls on Interactive Brokers Group. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Anthropic Seeking $15 Billion in Debt Before Its IPO: Is That a Warning Sign or a Bullish Signal for AI Infrastructure Stocks?
The artificial intelligence industry is growing rapidly to meet historic adoption rates. To support this growth, data centers are being built as quickly as possible. "The race to scale AI has triggered one of the largest infrastructure build-outs in modern history," concludes a report by McKinsey & Co. Over the next three years alone, the firm projects more than $7 trillion will be deployed globally to scale data center infrastructure. 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 " "Whether a build-out is successful depends on many nuances, including the availability of capital and energy resources," McKinsey Co. warns. The world's current energy system is simply not designed to handle the massive influx of energy-intensive data center infrastructure expected in the coming years and decades. This has led to a surge in new energy projects, even for more speculative technologies like small modular nuclear reactors. The availability of capital, however, is a completely different challenge. In the first quarter of 2026 alone, more than $240 billion in venture funding went toward AI start-ups. That's larger than the entirety of 2025. And that figure doesn't account for public markets, through which hundreds of billions in additional capital have been raised. Now, Anthropic is looking to secure $15 billion in debt financing ahead of a potential IPO. Should the capital raise excite or worry investors? There are two things AI investors should keep in mind. 1. The capital intensity of AI isn't going away Many skeptics have compared the current AI boom to the dot-com bubble. And while there are many similarities, the differences are critical to understand. The biggest difference, perhaps, is that during the dot-com craze, much of the critical infrastructure had yet to be built. That is, most of the world still lacked access to high-speed internet services. There was also a lack of user access points. Today, of course, high-speed internet access is nearly ubiquitous. And billions of people have an internet access point -- commonly called a smartphone -- directly in their pockets nearly all the time. That infrastructure, however, took decades to realize. The AI boom, meanwhile, already has all that critical infrastructure in place, allowing it to grow more rapidly than the dot-com era ever could. But there still is an infrastructure gap. To realize the AI industry's full potential, a massive amount of data center infrastructure will need to be built, triggering one of the biggest infrastructure build-outs in history. Without new compute power, AI growth will stall. Investors should expect capital-intensive projects for decades to come. And with many AI divisions still losing money, sizable capital raises could be the norm through the end of the decade, perhaps longer. Image source: Getty Images 2. Access to capital could become a competitive advantage If capital is necessary to scale the required data center infrastructure, access to capital could become a key competitive advantage. This is likely why so many AI companies are now seeking to go public. SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX), of course, held a record-breaking IPO in June. Now, both OpenAI and Anthropic are looking to go public. Most big tech firms, meanwhile, are already public, allowing them to tap capital markets more easily than their private peers. Scaling compute power will be critical to scaling the capacities of AI technology. In this way, investors should expect heavy competitive advantages for two types of businesses: those that are already profitable, reducing their reliance on capital markets, and those with high valuations and easy access to capital raises, such as firms that are already public. Therefore, large, profitable, public AI companies may have the strongest competitive advantages long term. Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now? Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Space Exploration Technologies wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $421,997!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,413,876!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 978% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 213% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of September 7, 2026. Ryan Vanzo has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Anthropic Has Committed More Than $100 Billion to AWS, and Its Prospectus Could Reveal More Details About This Contract
Anthropic, the company behind the Claude artificial intelligence (AI) models, plans to publish its initial public offering (IPO) prospectus after Monday's Labor Day holiday, The Information reported late last month. A listing may follow as soon as late September or in October. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) shareholders have a more specific reason than most to open the document when it lands. On April 20, Anthropic committed to spend "more than $100 billion over the next ten years" with Amazon Web Services (AWS), Amazon's cloud computing segment. That promise is equal to about a fifth of AWS's backlog of contracted work, which reached about $496 billion in June. 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 " In other words, Amazon has already told investors how much one of its biggest cloud customers intends to spend. What no Amazon filing can show is whether the customer's own finances support it. That's what the prospectus is for. Image source: Getty Images. The contract is already in Amazon's filings April's agreement covers up to 5 gigawatts of capacity on Amazon's own silicon -- Graviton processors and Trainium2 through Trainium4 AI chips, with an option on future generations. Amazon's filings show what a deal that size does to the backlog. AWS's backlog (commitments in customer contracts with original terms longer than one year that haven't yet been recognized as revenue) had grown to about $496 billion by June 30. That was up from about $364 billion in March, and from $195 billion in the middle of 2025 -- growth of 154% year over year, including a $132 billion jump in a single quarter. And the Anthropic deal wasn't alone. The filing also discloses a $100 billion, eight-year expansion of AWS's existing $38 billion commitment from OpenAI, announced a quarter earlier. Not only is AWS's contracted future far bigger than it was a year ago, but more of it also sits years away from becoming revenue. The weighted-average remaining life of the segment's long-term contracts stretched from 4.0 years to 6.4 years over those 12 months. One half of the deal is easy to check Of course, a backlog is signed work, not guaranteed revenue. Amazon says the amount and timing of what it recognizes "will be driven by customer usage and our performance in accordance with contractual obligations." Amazon's half of that sentence looks strong. In the second quarter of 2026, AWS's revenue rose 37% year over year, to $42.2 billion -- the segment's fastest growth in 18 quarters and a $169 billion annualized pace. Segment operating income rose about 63% year over year to $16.6 billion. And the AI business inside AWS passed a $25 billion annualized revenue pace of its own, growing triple-digit percentages. The customer's half is the part I can't verify yet. Anthropic is private, and its reported growth is extraordinary. In April, the company said its annualized revenue pace had passed $30 billion, more than triple its level entering the year. And by mid-August, CNBC reported, Anthropic was telling investors the pace had reached $65 billion by the end of July. Spread evenly, the commitment works out to more than $10 billion a year, or about 6% of AWS's current annual revenue pace. That's arguably affordable if Anthropic's growth holds, and heavy if it doesn't. And Amazon isn't just supplying the capacity. Its latest quarterly filing shows the company has put another $10 billion into Anthropic this year, with up to $15 billion more available under a financing arrangement tied to compute-delivery milestones. That means Amazon's interest in Anthropic's financial health goes beyond the contract itself. What does a prospectus settle? Nearly everything the market knows about Anthropic's finances today is reported, not filed. The company's only filing on record is the confidential draft it submitted to the Securities and Exchange Commission in June. Its expected market value is a projection. People familiar with the matter told CNBC last month that the company could go public at a valuation of about $2 trillion, about double its private-market value. Its revenue pace is self-reported, and no audited numbers are public. A prospectus replaces the estimates with audited financial statements: actual revenue, actual profit or losses, and actual cash. Even more useful for Amazon shareholders, it should carry Anthropic's own accounting of its purchase commitments, the other side of the agreements that swelled AWS's backlog. At about $259 as of this writing, Amazon's stock trades at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of about 24. For a company whose cloud segment just accelerated to 37% growth, I think that's a reasonable price. But AWS has now disclosed more than $200 billion of multi-year commitments from just two private AI companies, and until those companies file, investors can only judge them by reported figures. Ultimately, Anthropic's prospectus is the first chance to check one of them. I'll be reading it closely. Don't miss this second chance at a potentially lucrative opportunity Ever feel like you missed the boat in buying the most successful stocks? Then you'll want to hear this. On rare occasions, our expert team of analysts issues a "Double Down" stock recommendation for companies that they think are about to pop. If you're worried you've already missed your chance to invest, now is the best time to buy before it's too late. And the numbers speak for themselves: * Nvidia: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2009, you'd have $598,219!* * Apple: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2008, you'd have $61,037!* * Netflix: if you invested $1,000 when we doubled down in 2004, you'd have $421,997!* Right now, we're issuing "Double Down" alerts for three incredible companies, available when you join Stock Advisor, and there may not be another chance like this anytime soon. See the 3 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of September 6, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
AMD Committed Up to $5 Billion to Anthropic, and Anthropic's IPO Prospectus Is Reportedly Days Away
When Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) announced its Anthropic partnership in late July, two commitments stood out. Anthropic agreed to deploy up to 2 gigawatts of AMD Instinct MI450 series graphics processing units (GPUs), with deployment of the first gigawatt set to begin in the first half of 2027. And AMD committed to invest up to $5 billion in the artificial intelligence (AI) company behind the Claude models. The second commitment is about to get easier to measure. Anthropic plans to publish its initial public offering (IPO) prospectus after the Labor Day holiday on Monday, with a listing as soon as late September or early October, The Information reported late last month. 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 " What does AMD hold today, then? Not a stake, at least not yet. Image source: AMD. Conditions attached AMD's press release put it carefully: The company "has committed to make a strategic equity investment of up to $5 billion in Anthropic in the future." AMD's early August quarterly filing added structure. It describes investment commitments of up to $5 billion entered after the quarter ended, "subject to certain contingencies," with the money expected to go out through fiscal year 2028. Neither company has said what the contingencies are. And no valuation for the investment has been disclosed. That shape has become standard among Anthropic's backers. Alphabet agreed in April to invest up to $40 billion -- $10 billion immediately, the remaining $30 billion contingent on performance milestones. For scale, AMD held $1.7 billion of investments in private companies at the end of the second quarter. This one commitment could grow to nearly triple that. What would a listing change? Anthropic itself has confirmed very little. The only filing on record is a confidential draft registration statement submitted in June. However, the reported figures are staggering. CNBC has reported that Anthropic is valued at close to $1 trillion in the private markets, and that investors project it could float at about a $2 trillion valuation. The growth underneath, I think, explains the excitement. Anthropic's annualized revenue run rate (a full-year projection of its recent revenue pace) topped $30 billion in April and passed $65 billion by the end of July. The company has reportedly raised at least $130 billion, and its offering is expected to surpass the June IPO of SpaceX, which raised about $86 billion, the largest on record. Every one of those figures is reported, not filed. And at the reported valuations, AMD's up-to-$5 billion would buy no more than about half of 1% of the company. Still, a listing would give whatever stake AMD may eventually hold a daily price that flows straight into its reported results. The company ended the second quarter with $425 million of net unrealized gains on marketable equity securities, mostly from holdings that went public during the quarter. AMD is helping finance a customer The part I'd watch most closely isn't the stake at all. AMD has committed money to a company that agreed to deploy its chips. AMD's OpenAI arrangement runs in the opposite direction. That deal handed OpenAI a warrant for up to 160 million AMD shares, vesting as deployment and stock-price milestones are hit. Showing what those deals feed, AMD's data center segment revenue more than doubled year over year to $6.7 billion in the second quarter, or 58% of record companywide revenue of $11.5 billion, up 50% year over year. Management guided third-quarter revenue to about $13 billion, up about 41%. That guided rate marks a deceleration, at a much larger scale. When a customer AMD helps finance commits to up to 2 gigawatts of deployments, some of the dollars moving through the system could be AMD's own. In effect, a slice of the industry's demand could end up self-financed. That, I'd argue, is the strongest reason the IPO matters to AMD shareholders. An offering that surpasses SpaceX's could pay for a chunk of the buildout with public investors' money instead of suppliers' commitments. Even more, a public Anthropic would have to show, quarter after quarter, how much revenue it's actually producing. In short, the two commitments aren't equal. The up-to-$5 billion investment is conditional, unpriced, and small next to Anthropic's reported valuations. The deployments are what can become revenue, and they aren't set to begin until 2027. Meanwhile, AMD shares trade near $474 as of this writing (about 19% below their 52-week high), at about 30 times next year's expected earnings -- a price with a lot of chip demand already baked in. I think the Anthropic deal makes that demand more likely to show up on schedule. But what AMD holds from it today is still a promise. Should you buy stock in Advanced Micro Devices right now? Before you buy stock in Advanced Micro Devices, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Advanced Micro Devices wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $421,997!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,413,876!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 978% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 213% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of September 5, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Advanced Micro Devices and Alphabet. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The Anthropic IPO May Be Right Around the Corner. Here's What Investors Need to Know.
This year has been a major one for initial public offerings, even producing the biggest IPO on record: the Space Exploration Technologies operation. Including the exercise of an overallotment option, SpaceX raised more than $85 billion and entered the market with a trillion-dollar valuation. Now, all eyes are focused on the next IPO, one that could be even larger than that of SpaceX. I'm talking about the upcoming Anthropic market debut. The artificial intelligence (AI) lab, maker of the famous AI assistant Claude, confidentially filed a draft registration statement with regulators in June. And news reports suggest an IPO may be right around the corner. Here's what investors need to know. 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 " Image source: Getty Images. Why IPOs spark excitement So, first, a quick look at why the launch of companies involved in AI -- from SpaceX to AI chip designer Cerebras Systems -- has sparked excitement and drawn investors' attention. It's important to note that IPOs generally garner attention as they present new investing opportunities. On top of this, the AI market, heading toward a value of $3 trillion in just a few years, according to analysts, represents a massive growth opportunity. Publicly traded AI leaders such as Nvidia and Amazon have seen revenue skyrocket in recent years, so investors are eager to get in on the next new AI story. Now, let's consider Anthropic and what you as an investor need to know. The company is the maker of the Claude AI assistant, the popular Claude Code coding tool, and other AI-driven products, and these are in high demand. TechCrunch, citing an Anthropic spokesperson, reported that Claude paid subscriptions have more than doubled in 2026. In May, Anthropic raised $65 billion in Series H funding, pushing its valuation to $965 billion. At the time, the company said its revenue run rate had surpassed $47 billion. AI labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI have been key players in the AI story, calling for a ramp-up in AI infrastructure from cloud partners such as Amazon Web Services (AWS). This increase in compute results in higher revenue for them -- more compute allows Anthropic and OpenAI to supercharge the performance of their large language models and serve more customers. Anthropic's confidential filing In recent months, investors have been looking to the IPO plans of each company, and Anthropic became the first to file, confidentially, with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In a confidential filing, a company provides financial data to regulators but doesn't yet release these details to the public. Anthropic hasn't offered an update on its plans, but The Information recently reported that a prospectus would be made public after the Labor Day holiday and that a market debut is planned for late this month or early next month. The publication cited people familiar with the situation. According to the report, Anthropic expects to surpass the size of SpaceX's IPO. And several publications have said that Anthropic is targeting a valuation of $2 trillion. The Information also said that Anthropic may allow existing shareholders to sell shares during the IPO. The positive is that this broadens the pool of available shares; the negative is that cash from those sales goes to the respective shareholders, not the company. And if key insiders sell, potential investors may view this as a lack of confidence in the future. These elements offer us clues about what to expect, but it's important to review Anthropic's prospectus when it becomes available to confirm these and other details. Investors should focus on financial information, including revenue from Claude, gross margin, and the status of existing contracts. Investors should also pay close attention to what the company considers potential risks. This will help you determine whether an investment in this IPO stock is right for you -- an aggressive investor may make a different decision than a cautious investor. So, right now, if you're interested in possibly participating in the Anthropic IPO, the best thing you can do is stay tuned for the official filing -- which may be just ahead -- and examine it carefully. 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 983%* -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% 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 September 3, 2026. Adria Cimino has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon and Nvidia. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Sundar Pichai Says Alphabet Can't Build AI Capacity Fast Enough, and Anthropic Has Secured 5 Gigawatts of It.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) said something striking on its second-quarterearnings callin July. Even after committing to as much as $205 billion of capital spending this year, the company still can't build artificial intelligence (AI) computing capacity as fast as customers want it. "[W]e continue to be supply constrained -- a sign of momentum and rapid adoption," CEO Sundar Pichai said in his remarks on the quarter. 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 " Yet Alphabet has agreed to hand multi-gigawatt blocks of that scarce capacity to a fast-growing outside customer: Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models. And a look at Alphabet's underlying business performance shows why the company is racing to sell its capacity to major customers like Anthropic -- even if it's scarce. Image source: Alphabet Inc. Selling scarce capacity is a great business Google Cloud, the segment that sells cloud computing to outside customers, grew revenue 82% year over year to $24.8 billion in the second quarter. That was up from 63% growth in the first quarter. The profit is growing even faster than the revenue. Google Cloud's operating income more than tripled year over year, from $2.8 billion to $8.8 billion -- after reaching $6.6 billion in the first quarter. The segment's operating margin came in at about 36%, versus about 21% in the year-ago quarter and 33% in the first quarter of this year. And the contracted work keeps piling up. Pichai said cloud backlog (future revenue from signed contracts) grew to about $514 billion in the second quarter, up from $462 billion at the end of the first quarter. That backlog is now more than four times the revenue Alphabet's entire business produced last quarter. How much of it is Anthropic? Alphabet doesn't break out the number, but the disclosed pieces -- even if they lack financial details -- are big. Last October, Anthropic agreed to expand its use of Google Cloud in a deal giving it access to up to 1 million of Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), the AI chips Google designs in-house, with well over a gigawatt of capacity coming online in 2026. Google Cloud said the agreement was worth tens of billions of dollars. This spring, the relationship got much bigger. In early April, Anthropic secured multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity from Google and chip partner Broadcom, coming online starting in 2027 -- about 5 gigawatts in all, CNBC reported. Anthropic will access that capacity through Broadcom, according to a Broadcom securities filing. Weeks later, Google agreed to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic itself, putting in $10 billion right away with as much as $30 billion more tied to performance milestones. Worth noting from that Broadcom filing, though, is that Anthropic's use of the expanded capacity "is dependent on Anthropic's continued commercial success." That is the honest risk in this arrangement. To be fair, Anthropic said in April that its run rate revenue (its recent revenue pace, annualized) had surpassed $30 billion, up from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. Growth like that is extraordinary. But it means a meaningful slice of Alphabet's contracted future rests on one young AI developer growing into its commitments, and Alphabet is now an investor in that developer on top of being its supplier. The build-out still has to be paid for Of course, Alphabet has to build all of this capacity before anyone can rent it. The company raised its 2026 capital expenditures guidance in July to $195 billion to $205 billion. In the second quarter, capital spending of $44.9 billion exceeded the $39.1 billion of cash its operations produced. And the funding has gone well beyond cash on hand. Alphabet collected $49.6 billion from stock sales in June and issued senior notes (a form of debt) for another $20.3 billion of proceeds during the quarter. In other words, the company is financing enormous capacity ahead of the revenue it will carry, and pre-selling chunks of it profitably. What's in it for Alphabet? Probably more of the incredible momentum it's already seeing: Faster cloud revenue growth, a segment margin up from about 21% to about 36% in a year, and a $514 billion pile of signed contracts. So, there's a lot to like here. The supply constraint Pichai described is another way of saying Alphabet has pricing power, and the Anthropic agreements convert that scarcity into contracted revenue years into the future -- something that should help an already thriving cloud business over the long haul. And shares trade near $339 as of this writing, at about 23 times next year's expected earnings, which is arguably a reasonable price for a company growing total revenue by 24% (with an explosive cloud business underneath). Should you buy stock in Alphabet right now? Before you buy stock in Alphabet, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Alphabet wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $440,710!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,335,252!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 978% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 213% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of August 31, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet and Broadcom. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
The One Line in Anthropic's S-1 That Amazon Investors Should Read First
New reports indicate that artificial intelligence (AI) lab Anthropic could file its S-1 by the end of the month. Below, I'll detail why Anthropic's public debut carries outsize implications for major backers like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), whose growth is intertwined with the start-up's trajectory. Image source: The Motley Fool. 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 " Reviewing Anthropic's funding and IPO ambitions Reports from Bloomberg suggest Anthropic is aiming for an initial public offering (IPO) that matches or exceeds Space Exploration Technologies' record raise from earlier this summer. Anthropic has already raised roughly $133 billion to date, most recently in a $65 billion Series H round that valued it at $965 billion. This near-trillion-dollar figure reflects Anthropic's explosive growth, with recent quarterly revenue surpassing $11.5 billion and an annualized run rate approaching $65 billion. Why Amazon investors should pay attention to Anthropic's IPO Amazon investors have good reason to monitor the Anthropic offering. Amazon has already invested $13 billion in Anthropic, with commitments for up to an additional $20 billion contingent on commercial milestones. Beyond simple equity ownership, the partnership between Amazon and Anthropic runs deep through AWS. Anthropic uses Amazon's custom silicon for training and inference, including a massive deployment under Project Rainier that utilizes over 1 million Amazon Trainium chips, complemented by its Graviton processors. Anthropic's Claude models power a number of features on Amazon Bedrock for more than 100,000 customers. Meanwhile, the company has pledged more than $100 billion in AWS spending over the next 10 years to secure up to 5 gigawatts of capacity. Assessing Amazon's upside Anthropic's S-1 will provide more precise disclosure around Amazon's ownership. With exact percentages known, investors can better model the position's value. Accurate knowledge of the value of Amazon's stake can help improve forecasts of AWS' revenue acceleration and operating margin expansion driven by Anthropic's compute demands. In turn, I think a fundamental rerating in Amazon stock could follow as investors gain a deeper understanding of Anthropic's influence on Amazon's position in the AI infrastructure supercycle. Should you buy stock in Amazon right now? Before you buy stock in Amazon, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Amazon wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $429,223!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,317,883!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 965% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of August 24, 2026. Adam Spatacco has positions in Amazon. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Amazon. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Anthropic Has a $65 Billion Run Rate. Buy These Stocks to Profit From It.
Anthropic, the owner and operator of the popular Claude chatbot, has an annualized revenue run rate of $65 billion, multiple media outlets just confirmed. That's about seven times what it was at the end of last year. The company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public later this year through an initial public offering (IPO) that could value it at $2 trillion or more. But because the AI firm is not yet public, there aren't many ways for retail investors to buy a direct stake in it. 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 " There is an indirect way to get some exposure to Anthropic, however. That's by owning the stocks of companies that have invested heavily in its pre-IPO shares. Image source: Getty Images. That group starts with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). The company's $33 billion investment in Anthropic gave it an impressive 21% stake. Google's parent company, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG), holds a 15% stake in Anthropic and can't invest more because the two are major competitors in the large language model space. (Alphabet owns Gemini AI). Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has a $5 billion stake in the AI firm. Finally, Zoom Communications (NASDAQ: ZM) has a more modest $1.3 billion stake in it. Like everything else those companies own, their stakes in Anthropic are ultimately owned by their shareholders. So their investors should see a major benefit if Anthropic's IPO brings it a valuation of $2 trillion or more. Several tech firms booked big gains from their SpaceX stakes There's a recent precedent for this. In the second quarter of this year, two major technology firms had the biggest positive impact on overall S&P 500 earnings due to their stakes in other firms. Alphabet reported earnings per share of $9.11, more than three times Wall Street's expectations, driven by $98 billion in unrealized stock gains primarily from its ownership stake in Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), which went public that quarter. Similarly, Amazon reported $53.4 billion in income from a revaluation of its investment in Anthropic (pre-IPO companies are officially revalued during each new capital-raising round). Amazon shares soared following the release of its second-quarter results. If Anthropic stages a blockbuster IPO, that investment would be revalued significantly higher again. Neither Amazon nor Alphabet shares have had a particularly great 2026, however. After soaring in 2025, both stocks have delivered much more modest gains this year, mostly due to investors' concerns that their massive investments in AI infrastructure will not produce significant returns on investment. Salesforce's share price is down 22% year to date, as investors fear that AI tools could render the company's software obsolete. It's not clear what the future holds for any of these companies, of course. AI technologies are already proving to be a seriously disruptive force -- both positive and negative -- for many industries. 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 965%* -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% 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 August 24, 2026. Matthew Benjamin has positions in Alphabet. The Motley Fool has positions in and recommends Alphabet, Amazon, Salesforce, and Zoom Communications. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.
Anthropic's Investors Want a $2 Trillion IPO. The Last Record-Setting IPO Has Made Its Buyers Nothing in Two Months.
Anthropic's backers reportedly want the artificial intelligence (AI) company to go public in October at a valuation of $2 trillion or more. The Financial Times reported the figure this month, citing the company's investors. Anthropic itself has confirmed far less. It filed a confidential draft registration statement on June 1, and it hasn't publicly set a valuation, a date, an exchange, or a ticker. Bloomberg reported Thursday that the company expects to match or beat the size of SpaceX's record raise, and could file publicly as soon as the end of this month. 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 " A $2 trillion debut would be the largest initial public offering (IPO) ever, and the company it would take the record from is barely two months into public life. SpaceX (NASDAQ:SPCX) priced the current largest IPO on record in June, at a valuation of about $1.77 trillion. That makes SpaceX a timely case study. Anyone weighing whether to chase the next record listing can look at exactly what the market did with the last one. Image source: Getty Images. A $2 trillion ask The reported appetite for Anthropic rests on explosive growth. Preliminary figures the company shared with prospective investors put second-quarter revenue above $11.5 billion, more than double the first quarter's $4.73 billion, according to documents seen by Bloomberg News. Investors who spoke to the Financial Times expect annualized revenue of $100 billion to $120 billion by the end of the year. Days before filing, Anthropic raised $65 billion at a $965 billion valuation. In other words, its backers are now discussing a price about double what they paid in late May. Worth noting, too: According to the same reporting, Anthropic's own senior executives haven't fixed a valuation target, even privately. The $2 trillion figure belongs to the investors, not the company. Up 67%, down 22%, back to even SpaceX sold 555,555,555 shares at $135 apiece on June 11, raising $75 billion at the offer in the largest IPO on record -- and about $86 billion in all, once its underwriters exercised their option to buy 83.3 million more shares. Trading began the next day, and the first public trade came at $150. The 10 weeks since gave buyers the full range of outcomes. Shares ran as high as $225.64, a 67% gain from the offer price. They then fell as low as $104.83, which is 22% below it. As of this writing, the stock sits within a few percent of $135 -- about 40% below its high, and almost exactly where it started. So the investors who got shares at the offer price have made essentially nothing in two months. And anyone who bought at the opening trade is down about 9%. The sellers set the record The business performed the whole time, which is what makes the return so instructive. SpaceX grew second-quarter revenue 92% year over year to $7.81 billion, and its AI segment's revenue more than tripled year over year to $2.6 billion. The company signed $14.1 billion of cloud computing contracts during the quarter, narrowed its net loss to $541 million from $1 billion a year earlier, and ended June with $47.5 billion in backlog. Growth like that usually moves a stock. Across the full 10 weeks, on net, it hasn't moved this one -- because the offer price had already charged for it. Even today, SpaceX trades at about 57 times revenue, annualizing its second-quarter figure. The sellers, in short, set a record price precisely because the growth story was at full strength -- and the buyers have spent two months waiting for the story to catch up to what they paid. Anthropic's math could work out better. If revenue lands where its backers project, a $2 trillion valuation would be about 18 times the annualized revenue they expect by December. That is a lower price against hoped-for sales than SpaceX commanded. But it still assumes annualized revenue grows another 50% or more from the $65 billion annualized run rate the company reported for late July. And it prices that assumption in before the company has reported a single quarter in public. Of course, SpaceX's two months prove nothing about the next two years, and a business that keeps doubling can outgrow any starting price eventually. But I think the two-month record is worth taking at face value. The largest IPO ever delivered a 67% surge, a 53% collapse from that peak, and, for the investor who simply bought and held from the start, a return of about zero -- all while the business nearly doubled its revenue year over year. A record-setting price means the growth is charged upfront. Two months in, that is exactly how it has traded. Should you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies right now? Before you buy stock in Space Exploration Technologies, consider this: The Motley Fool Stock Advisor analyst team just identified what they believe are the 10 best stocks for investors to buy now... and Space Exploration Technologies wasn't one of them. The 10 stocks that made the cut could produce monster returns in the coming years. Consider when Netflix made this list on December 17, 2004... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $429,223!* Or when Nvidia made this list on April 15, 2005... if you invested $1,000 at the time of our recommendation, you'd have $1,318,055!* Now, it's worth noting Stock Advisor's total average return is 965% -- a market-crushing outperformance compared to 212% for the S&P 500. Don't miss the latest top 10 list, available with Stock Advisor, and join an investing community built by individual investors for individual investors. See the 10 stocks " *Stock Advisor returns as of August 22, 2026. Daniel Sparks and his clients do not have positions in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has no position in any of the stocks mentioned. The Motley Fool has a disclosure policy.