News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Commentary: What retail investors need to know before jumping into Anthropic's IPO
Let's address some important questions. First, what will the growth trajectory be? There isn't much financial data available at this stage - we'll have to wait for the prospectus when it's published. What we do know is that revenues are expected to be in the region of US$100 billion this year - up from about US$10 billion in 2025. But it's worth interrogating those numbers more closely. When you develop an AI agent, you pay Anthropic monthly for "tokens" to access its system and enormous computing power. During the past year, computing costs per task have shot up - semiconductor prices and energy costs have all risen sharply and Anthropic has passed these on. But it means a chunk of that impressive revenue growth is simply programmers paying more to advance existing projects. Though not unusual for a new software company, that growth - even with my caveat - is still impressive. Some believe it will carry on for years. Certainly, the market opportunity for AI seems huge. Anthropic estimates that AI is capable of covering more than 80 per cent of tasks in fields including management, business and finance, computing, architecture, law, arts and the media, among others. The company's strength lies in its Claude coding models and developer tools that can take on this work. Don't hang your head in despair and start worrying about your job yet. The theory is fine; the practice so far is very different. What often seems to happen is that the person who has lost 80 per cent of their routine execution tasks now has to spend that time reviewing and debugging the AI tool's work, to catch all the mistakes it makes and step in where it struggles with messy real-life complexity.
Thomson Reuters Bets $40 Million on Its Own Legal AI to Curb Dependence on Anthropic
Thomson Reuters just took a calculated step away from its heavy reliance on outside AI providers. The information services giant launched Thomson-1, its first proprietary large language model. The move signals a shift in how one of the legal industry's biggest players thinks about building and owning the technology that powers its flagship products. Announced this week, the model draws from an open-source foundation developed by Alibaba. Thomson Reuters adapted it through a process its chief technology officer described as realignment. The result? A system trained on decades of the company's own authoritative legal, tax and news content. Early tests show it holding its own against some of the most advanced general-purpose models on the market. But don't mistake this for a full break from Silicon Valley's AI leaders. CoCounsel, Thomson Reuters' marquee AI assistant for lawyers, still leans primarily on Anthropic's Claude. The new model slots in for specific high-volume tasks where domain knowledge delivers a measurable edge. Joel Hron, the company's CTO, made the strategy plain. Business Insider reported Hron's analogy. "Renting a house, you still have a roof over your head, and somebody's taking care of it, and it's great. But you're not building any equity that compounds into something valuable for you long term." The company spent roughly $40 million on compute, talent and specialized training to create that equity. The numbers tell part of the story. Thomson Reuters used less than 10% of its vast proprietary corpus to train the model. Hundreds of subject-matter experts reviewed outputs. They identified failures. They refined the system to prioritize accuracy over pleasing responses. The approach stands in contrast to the race for ever-larger general models. Thomson-1, also referred to as Thomson in company materials, builds on Snowdon. That variant stems from Alibaba's Qwen model. A joint team with Imperial College London spent months adapting it. They focused on ethical safeguards, de-biasing and safety. "There's nothing that necessarily ties us to Qwen," Hron told reporters. The foundation can evolve. Performance claims come with caveats. In benchmarks released by the company in late July, Thomson competed closely with frontier systems. It matched or exceeded Claude Opus 4.8 in some legal reasoning tasks. It outperformed GPT-5.5, Claude Sonnet 5 and Gemini 3.1 Pro across a mix of evaluations. The tests covered instruction following, long context, coding and professional workflows. Yet the comparisons aren't apples to apples. Thomson benefited from test-time scaling and internal retrieval tools linked to Westlaw and Practical Law. Competing models searched the open web in some evaluations. Internal composites formed part of the mix. Still, the results impressed enough academics. One preferred Thomson's responses even when others answered correctly. Citation quality held up against the leaders. The first real test comes inside CoCounsel Legal. Thomson becomes the default for Tabular Analysis. That feature reviews up to 10,000 documents and fields as many as 100 questions about them. High-volume. Structured. Measurable accuracy. Exactly where a purpose-built model should shine. The broader CoCounsel platform, refreshed on August 20, now incorporates Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK for agentic workflows. It plans, reasons and executes across tools. Hron doesn't hide the continued partnership. Thomson Reuters expanded its deal with Anthropic in May. "Our main objective is to make Thomson the model that powers more and more of CoCounsel's capabilities over time," he said. The in-house system supplements rather than supplants. For now. This hybrid strategy reflects hard realities in professional services AI. General models hallucinate. They sycophantically please users. They lack deep context in regulated fields. Thomson trains explicitly to flag uncertainty. It avoids forcing confident answers when data runs thin. That choice reduces certain failure modes critical for lawyers and tax professionals. Retrieval remains essential. The model pulls from verified sources. Outputs link back to Westlaw, Practical Law or Checkpoint where possible. Thomson Reuters stops short of promising line-by-line traceability for every claim. "We wouldn't claim every output can be traced line by line to an exact statute or ruling," the company stated. Professionals still verify. The system simply makes that verification easier. Training on proprietary data changes the control equation. The company shapes tradeoffs between helpfulness and accuracy. It optimizes for professional caution over casual conversation. And it avoids feeding customer data to third-party labs, maintaining strict contractual prohibitions. Recent coverage highlights the nuance. The New Stack noted the $40 million investment focused on post-training and expert evaluation rather than pre-training from scratch. It also detailed how Thomson integrates with agentic systems while preserving retrieval-augmented generation. The model doesn't replace retrieval. It enhances it. The Next Web added color on the Alibaba connection and academic feedback. It quoted researchers who found Thomson's outputs preferable in quality and citation strength. The article also flagged Alibaba's recent moves toward charging heavy users of Qwen, underscoring why owning adaptations matters. Thomson Reuters published its own early benchmarking in July. CTO Joel Hron and Head of AI Research Jonathan Schwarz wrote that capable models no longer emerge solely from frontier labs. One now comes from their own organization. The piece emphasized combination: authoritative content, expert judgment, professional tools and model development. A smaller open-weight version of the model sits on Hugging Face for researchers. Commercialization beyond Thomson Reuters products remains under consideration. Customers won't buy direct access to Thomson-1 today. It lives inside the company's ecosystem, starting with legal research and document tasks. The timing feels deliberate. CoCounsel has scaled to serve hundreds of thousands of professionals. Demand for trustworthy AI in legal and tax grows as regulators tighten rules. Enterprises want options that reduce vendor lock-in and API costs that can run high at scale. Critics will note the $40 million figure pales against the billions poured into frontier labs. Success here hinges on whether domain-specific tuning plus retrieval consistently beats general models on real workflows. Early signs look promising. But benchmarks tell only part of the story. Real adoption will come from measurable productivity gains and risk reduction for law firms and corporate departments. Thomson Reuters isn't alone in this push. Other data-rich incumbents eye similar paths. The difference lies in execution. Decades of curated content. Teams of domain experts. A product portfolio already embedded in professional routines. Those assets turn training data into a durable advantage. Hron's house-buying metaphor lingers. Renting powerful models delivers immediate capability. Owning one, even if built on someone else's foundation, creates long-term optionality. The company can iterate faster on its own data. It can tune for fiduciary-grade standards. It can expand across tax, compliance and news without renegotiating every capability. CoCounsel's latest agentic features show the complementary play. Built on Claude's SDK, the system orchestrates complex legal tasks. Thomson handles the heavy lifting on document volume and structured analysis. The combination aims for something greater than either alone. Questions remain about geopolitical angles. Reliance on a Chinese open-source base, even heavily adapted, invites scrutiny in some markets. Thomson Reuters stresses the realignment process and independence going forward. Nothing locks them to Qwen. Future versions could draw from other bases or further internal development. For industry watchers, this launch marks a maturation point. Pure reliance on API calls to Anthropic, OpenAI or Google gives way to selective ownership. The $40 million bet tests whether incumbents with rich datasets can close the gap on frontier labs in narrow but valuable domains. Results so far suggest the answer leans yes for certain tasks. Thomson tops some composites on legal hardness and long-context handling. It admits when it doesn't know. It cites sources. These traits matter more to a partner at a law firm than raw benchmark scores. The road ahead involves wider rollout. More features in CoCounsel. Potential expansion to tax and regulatory products. Continued benchmarking transparency. And ongoing collaboration with Anthropic even as internal capabilities grow. Thomson Reuters has placed its chips. The house it builds won't replace every rented roof. But over time that equity could compound into a meaningful lead in professional AI. Lawyers and compliance officers will decide if the bet pays off. Their verdict will shape the next wave of enterprise AI strategy.
Amazon's $220 Billion AI Bet: How an Anthropic Partnership Powers Cloud Dominance
Amazon raised its capital spending target for next year to $220 billion. The increase of $20 billion stems largely from higher memory costs. Yet the move signals far more than inflation in components. It reflects a calculated wager on artificial intelligence infrastructure that has already begun to pay off in both revenue acceleration and paper gains from a marquee investment. The announcement came tucked inside the company's second-quarter earnings release. Revenue climbed 20 percent from a year earlier. AWS posted its fastest growth in more than four years. Operating income jumped 43 percent to $27.5 billion, with the cloud unit contributing the bulk at $16.6 billion. The Motley Fool laid out the numbers in detail the same day. But the real story sits off the operating income line. Amazon's stake in Anthropic generated massive non-operating gains. In the first quarter alone the company recorded $16.8 billion in pre-tax income from the position, according to Yahoo Finance. By the second quarter that figure had swelled further, pushing total non-operating pre-tax other income to $53.4 billion, Business Insider reported. The partnership began years earlier. Amazon first put $4 billion into the AI startup in 2023, followed by another $4 billion in late 2024. Then came the big expansion. In April 2026 the two sides agreed on an additional $5 billion immediately and up to $20 billion more tied to commercial milestones. Total committed capital reached $13 billion so far with room to climb. Bloomberg broke the terms the day they were announced. Anthropic gave something back. The startup pledged to spend more than $100 billion on AWS services over the next decade. That commitment secures up to five gigawatts of new computing capacity built around Amazon's custom Trainium and Graviton chips. "Our custom AI silicon offers high performance at significantly lower cost for customers, which is why it's in such hot demand," Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said in the official release from AboutAmazon.com. The arrangement locks in demand. It also raises the bar for everyone else. Amazon, Microsoft and Alphabet together control more than 60 percent of the cloud market. Oracle sits a distant fourth at roughly four percent. Those scale advantages compound when hyperscalers pour tens of billions into data centers that smaller players cannot match. Investors have taken notice. Amazon shares rose more than 10 percent year to date by late August and have outperformed the S&P 500. The Anthropic position alone, once carried at cost, now reflects valuations that imply a stake worth between $180 billion and $240 billion at recent marks. An eventual IPO for Anthropic, confidentially filed in June and eyed for as early as October, could crystallize even larger gains. TechCrunch captured the mutual benefits when the April deal closed. Yet the spending surge carries risks. Free cash flow collapsed in the first quarter as capital expenditures hit $44.2 billion. Memory prices have climbed. AWS must keep delivering growth fast enough to offset the outlays. So far it has. AI and chips businesses each crossed $25 billion in annualized revenue run rate. Backlog sits at $496 billion with triple-digit growth in key segments. Andy Jassy has spoken of AWS as a potential trillion-dollar revenue business over time. That target looks less fanciful when a single partner like Anthropic commits to $100 billion in spend and multiple other AI labs sign multi-gigawatt deals. "The fact that we have multi-year, multi-gigawatt commitments from the two largest AI labs in Anthropic and OpenAI, and more and more companies using Trainium is exciting and promising," Jassy noted during the earnings call, as quoted by Variety. Wall Street's reaction mixed optimism with caution. Some analysts point to the mark-to-market accounting that inflated recent profits. Strip out the $16.8 billion paper gain from the first quarter and operating results still looked strong, but the distinction matters for valuation. The Next Web highlighted exactly that tension in May. Amazon's approach differs from pure-play AI labs that burn cash without the offsetting cloud revenue. The company can pass higher costs to customers who need more powerful instances as their models scale. It can also amortize the infrastructure spend across a broad base of enterprise workloads that extend beyond generative AI. Recent X conversations reflect the same debate. One investor noted that "Amazon's Anthropic stake came with cloud compute commitments, not just cash for equity. The 2T valuation bump looks good on paper, but AMZN's real upside is AWS consumption tied to that partnership." Others flagged Anthropic's $65 billion revenue run rate as a tailwind for Amazon, Google and Nvidia. The competitive moat widens with every gigawatt added. New entrants face years of lead time and billions in upfront capital before they can offer comparable performance at competitive prices. Amazon's Trainium chips already deliver meaningful cost advantages. Expanding that advantage while locking in the largest AI developers creates a self-reinforcing cycle. Of course execution still counts. Supply chains for memory and power remain tight. Regulatory scrutiny of big tech infrastructure builds could intensify. And valuations for private AI companies have climbed fast. Anthropic's implied worth topped $965 billion in its latest round and secondary trades pushed higher still. Even so, the numbers paint a picture of a company turning massive spending into measurable returns. Revenue growth outpacing capex growth. Cloud operating margins expanding. A strategic investment that has already delivered billions in recognized gains and promises more. Jeff Bezos no longer runs day-to-day operations, but his successor's willingness to spend at this scale keeps the original vision of infrastructure dominance alive. Whether the $220 billion bet proves conservative or not will show in the quarters ahead. Demand forecasts already stretch into 2027 and 2028. If AWS continues to accelerate, that number may rise again. For now the market seems willing to underwrite the outlay. Amazon's shares reflect confidence that the infrastructure built today will anchor AI workloads for years to come.
While GTA 6 leaker runs rampant, Discord says it hasn't been served a subpoena yet
The Grand Theft Auto 6 leaker is still at large, and Take-Two Interactive's attempts to track them down have thus far not worked out. But the story, as usual, continues. Today the latest update came from Discord's marketing director Ryan Rigney, who said that the company ahs not yet been served a subpoena, despite an Aug. 20 court filing saying that the publisher was looking for help from the chat app and Microsoft alike. Last week's court filing said it would be asking Discord for "all user accounts that are/were members communicating with the Discord server(s)" that involve "CYBERLEEK," "CINEMATICROCKSTAR," and "Surfer24k™ (+ replacement handles cyberleek_west, surwest)," as well as "Ødyssey.gg," "'! Odyssey' public brand guild (discord.gg/odyssey)," and even YouTuber/Twitch streamer "DarkViperAU editors' server (discord.gg/darkviperau)." "Discord has not yet been served with a subpoena from Take Two," Rigney said today on Twitter/X. "When we do, we'll evaluate the validity and scope before responding." The subpoenas have raised some concerns that unknowing parties could get caught in the crossfire simply for engaging with the leaker, who has been drip-feeding short video clips of the game in action for the past week ahead of its full reveal on Netflix this Thursday. They have also been heavily promoting a cryptocurrency throughout the ordeal. The same court filings have called on Microsoft to give up "all internal Microsoft business records and investigative records associated with Microsoft's internal investigation of the 'cyberleek' persona sufficient to identify the user(s), person(s) and/or entity/ies associated with that persona." The GTA 6 leaker continued today to post new video clips along with allowing people to vote on what they will leak next. Today's video showcased main character Jason at a nudist colony somewhere in Vice City. With just days to go before the game's reveal, the hunt is still on for the leaker who will likely face charges if and when they are caught.
Google's Chip Veteran Just Joined Anthropic
Anthropic has hired former Google TPU leader Amir Salek as the artificial intelligence company works towards its own in-house semiconductor business. Salek will report to Head of Compute James Bradbury and will support the development and advancement of compute infrastructure, Bloomberg reported. Prior to joining Anthropic, Salek was working as a senior managing director at Cerberus Capital Management. He also worked as a senior director of engineering at Google, where he delivered the first seven generations of TPU solutions to Google Data Centers, according to his LinkedIn profile. He also held a previous role at Nvidia, where he founded and scaled its System-on-a-chip (SoC) organization and was a chip lead at PMC-Sierra. Anthropic is building out its internal chip-design team to develop custom processors for its Claude artificial intelligence models. The company has started hiring engineers with expertise across both hardware and software. Markets Partners Group Is Cashing Out of Gong Cha After Bain's Bubble-Tea Buyout Partners Group is set to exit its investment in Gong cha after Bain Capital agreed to acquire the global tea chain from TA Associates. 2 min read Read this article The effort expands Anthropic's existing multi-chip strategy, with the company signaling that it will continue to use a mix of third-party infrastructure and accelerators. Its current ecosystem includes hardware and cloud partnerships tied to Amazon Web Services, Google, Nvidia and AMD. Trending Get a 1% Match on Your First Deposit of $1,000+ Leading AI companies are actively working to reduce their dependence on scarce Nvidia GPUs. The availability of advanced chips has become a bottleneck for training and running frontier AI models, with companies competing for limited accelerator capacity. Anthropic has deep ties with Amazon, which has invested billions of dollars in the startup and provides access to its Trainium and Inferentia chips through Amazon Web Services. In April, Amazon announced that Anthropic would spend more than $100 billion over the next 10 years on AWS Technologies. Developing a cutting-edge AI chip can cost roughly $500 million, reflecting the expense of recruiting specialized engineers, designing advanced architectures and ensuring chips can be manufactured at scale without costly production failures. Anthropic has also bought $250 million worth of chips from the U.K.-based chip company Fractile and plans to expand the current contract. Anthropic has also signed capacity deals with Riot Platforms and Volta Infra Holdings Ltd. as it continues to beef up its chip and data center capacity, Bloomberg noted. Markets Private Credit's Hidden Default Problem Has Grown Since 2022, PIMCO Says Private credit shows more signs of financial stress than headline default rates suggest, according to a new PIMCO analysis. 3 min read Read this article Market News and Data brought to you by Benzinga APIs To add Benzinga News as your preferred source on Google, click here.
😺 Anthropic's IPO could top SpaceX's record
California is trying again with SB 947, a bill that would ban employers from letting AI fire or discipline workers without a human signing off. Newsom vetoed an earlier version last October, but lawmakers reintroduced it as the "No Robo Bosses Act of 2026." The stakes are already real. At Andon Market in San Francisco, an AI agent named Luna runs hiring, scheduling, and pricing. She recently recommended firing a worker who missed 17 of 23 shifts. Humans carried it out. Only problem? Luna had written the store's attendance policy herself, then forgot it existed until someone told her to go check her memory. The AI boss is coming. It still needs a better filing system. Here's what happened in AI today: You've probably used Claude to draft an email, debug a script, or automate half your job this month. Turns out enough other people have too that Anthropic might be about to pull off the biggest stock market debut ever. Here's the deal: Anthropic's bankers have told investors the company could raise "more than $100 billion" when it goes public, according to the New York Times. That would put its value near $2 trillion, more than double the $965 billion it was worth after its last private funding round in June. Here's what happened: Why this matters: Claude Code, Anthropic's coding assistant, has become one of its most popular products and helped push the company's projected annual revenue to $47 billion. That's a five-year-old startup founded by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, both former OpenAI executives, betting its safety-focused approach to AI can out-earn (and now out-IPO) the company they left. An IPO this size would also settle an argument that's been simmering all year: whether the "safety-first" lab can actually out-compete the "move fast" one. So far, the money says yes. Our take: The hype has a couple of asterisks. Anthropic has struggled to get enough chips and servers to keep up with demand, and in March, the Trump administration cut off its Defense Department contracts entirely after Anthropic refused to give the military unrestricted access to its models (Anthropic called the move "unconstitutional retaliation"). A record-breaking IPO and a fight with your own government's biggest customer don't usually show up in the same earnings call. Anthropic's prospectus should tell us which story is closer to true. FROM OUR PARTNERS The Neuron and Alumni Ventures are giving readers early access to high-growth startup opportunities, including some of today's most exciting AI, Deep Tech, Quantum Computing, and Cybersecurity companies co-invested alongside top VC firms like Andreessen Horowitz (a16z), Bessemer, & Y Combinator. You get: Don't miss your chance before access closes. → See Current AI Deals So, apparently State Farm's outside lawyers admitted AI helped put seven nonexistent case citations into court filings. The useful lesson is much broader: drafting and verification should be separate steps. Copy this: Have a specific skill you want to learn? Request it here. FROM OUR PARTNERS A new Managed MCP Server connects Claude Code, Codex, Grok Build, and Devin to MongoDB Atlas, giving coding agents direct access to live operational data. Explore new MongoDB capabilities for the Agentic Era. *Asterisk = from our partners (only the first one!). Advertise to 700K+ readers here! New episodes air every week on Wednesdays: Spotify | Apple Podcasts | YouTube P.S: We're trying to hit 50K subscribers on YouTube this year. Click here to help! Btw: We just launched a robotics newsletter! Sign up for it here. P.S: Love the newsletter, but only want to get it once per week? Don't unsubscribe -- update your preferences here.
Israeli AI Startup Decart Nears $7 Billion Sale to Anthropic
An Israeli artificial intelligence startup that was valued at about $4 billion only three months ago is now reportedly on the verge of being acquired for roughly $7 billion by Anthropic, the American company behind the Claude AI chatbot. The potential acquisition of Decart would be one of the largest-ever purchases of an Israeli technology company and the biggest known acquisition in Anthropic's history. The deal is reportedly approaching the signing stage, although it has not yet been finalized and could still change or fall apart. The remarkable rise of Decart illustrates both the extraordinary pace of the artificial-intelligence industry and the growing importance of a problem that is less visible to consumers than increasingly sophisticated chatbots: how to make AI systems faster, cheaper and more efficient. From $4 billion to $7 billion Decart was founded in 2023 by Israeli entrepreneurs Dean Leitersdorf and Moshe Shalev. The company initially attracted attention for its work on making generative AI operate in real time, and it subsequently developed technology designed to squeeze considerably more performance out of the computer chips used to run AI models. In May, Decart announced a $300 million funding round led by Radical Ventures. Nvidia, the world's dominant maker of AI chips, participated in the round along with investors including Adobe Ventures, Toyota Ventures, Atreides Management and others. The financing brought Decart's total funding to more than $450 million and valued the company at approximately $4 billion. That valuation now looks modest. Reports initially emerged in mid-August that Anthropic was negotiating to acquire Decart for approximately $6 billion. Reuters confirmed that the companies were in talks, while noting that the discussions were part of Anthropic's broader effort to expand its capacity as demand for its AI products grows. Within days, however, Israeli business publication Calcalist reported that the negotiations had advanced significantly and that Decart could be valued at approximately $7 billion. The companies were reportedly exchanging advanced drafts of an acquisition agreement. The increase would represent a dramatic jump from Decart's valuation in its May financing round. Why does Anthropic want Decart? The attraction appears to have less to do with a consumer-facing AI application and more to do with the enormous cost of operating artificial intelligence at scale. Companies such as Anthropic spend vast sums on the computing power required to train and operate their AI models. Every improvement that allows a model to perform the same task with fewer computing resources can potentially translate into enormous savings. Decart has developed software that is designed to optimize AI workloads and extract more performance from the hardware on which they run. The company says its systems can dramatically improve the efficiency of both AI training and inference - the process by which an already-trained model generates responses. That technology could be particularly valuable to Anthropic as usage of its Claude models continues to expand. Reuters Breakingviews noted that even relatively modest improvements in computational efficiency could be worth billions of dollars to a company operating AI systems on a massive scale. For Anthropic, reducing the amount of computing power required to deliver each AI response could improve margins while allowing the company to serve more customers without simply adding enormous amounts of additional hardware. In other words, Decart could help Anthropic get more AI out of the same machines. A second side to Decart Decart is not solely an AI-infrastructure company. It has also been developing what are known as "world models," AI systems designed to understand and generate interactive representations of environments. Unlike a conventional chatbot that primarily works with text, a world model attempts to represent how objects and environments behave and change over time. Decart describes its technology as enabling real-time, interactive environments that could have applications in robotics, autonomous vehicles, manufacturing and drones. Its work also includes real-time video and image generation and transformation. That technology could eventually become important far beyond entertainment. AI systems that can simulate physical environments could be used to train robots, test autonomous vehicles and generate synthetic environments for other forms of artificial intelligence. The combination of these capabilities - more efficient AI computing and sophisticated real-time models - helps explain why Decart has attracted attention from some of the world's biggest technology companies. Nvidia was also interested One of the more intriguing aspects of the proposed transaction is the reported competition for Decart. Nvidia, which already invested in Decart's May financing round, was reportedly interested in acquiring the Israeli company as well. According to Israeli reports, Nvidia's offer may actually have been higher than Anthropic's. Yet Decart's founders and major investor Sequoia Capital reportedly preferred Anthropic as the company's next home. That would make the decision particularly notable. Nvidia is at the center of the global AI revolution, supplying many of the chips on which today's AI systems depend. Decart's technology, meanwhile, is designed in part to make AI workloads more efficient across different types of hardware. Anthropic, by contrast, is itself one of the major competitors in the race to build increasingly capable AI models. A strategic move before an IPO The timing is also significant for Anthropic. The company is preparing for a potential public offering, and acquiring technology that could reduce the cost of operating its AI systems would give investors another reason to believe that rapidly growing AI companies can eventually achieve attractive profit margins. Reports have suggested that Anthropic is targeting a major IPO later this year. The Decart acquisition would therefore be more than a conventional startup purchase. It would give Anthropic additional expertise in the underlying technology needed to run AI at enormous scale. Reports indicate that Decart's team would join Anthropic's inference and performance organization, putting the Israeli company's engineers directly into the effort to make Claude more efficient. For Israel's technology sector, meanwhile, the prospective deal is another extraordinary example of how quickly a small Israeli startup can become strategically important to one of the world's most valuable technology companies. Decart went from emerging from stealth with a $21 million Sequoia-led seed round to raising more than $450 million in total funding, reaching a $4 billion valuation, and now potentially being sold for close to $7 billion, all in roughly three years. The deal is not done yet. But if Anthropic and Decart complete the transaction at the reported valuation, it will stand as a striking demonstration of Israel's continuing ability to produce companies with technology valuable enough to become essential components of the global AI race.
Anthropic's $2 Trillion IPO Ambition: The Math, the Hype and the Warning From SpaceX
Anthropic stands on the verge of the largest stock-market debut in history. Investors circling its planned October IPO talk openly of a $2 trillion valuation. Some models stretch toward $3 trillion. The five-year-old builder of the Claude chatbot has filed confidentially to go public. Its bankers have carried that number into recent meetings with prospective buyers. But the distance between today's reality and that price tag is enormous. Start with the numbers that already exist. In May Anthropic closed a $65 billion Series H round that set its post-money valuation at $965 billion, according to its own announcement on anthropic.com/news/series-h. That figure topped OpenAI's last reported mark and made the company the most valuable private AI developer at the time. By the end of July its annualized revenue run rate had climbed to $65 billion. The jump was seven times higher than the comparable figure a year earlier and well above the $47 billion run rate noted in May, a Yahoo Finance report from August 24, 2026 disclosed. Yet profitability remains distant. The company's projected operating margin for the second quarter stood at only 5.1 percent. Heavy spending on compute continues. Competition keeps pressure on pricing. So any path to a $2 trillion market capitalization demands that investors underwrite both explosive revenue growth and a dramatic expansion in margins at the same time. Valuation math that stretches far into the future Dr. Chan Ahn, founder and CEO of Tessera PE and a former Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan executive, ran the numbers. To support a $2 trillion valuation at a 10 percent cost of equity, a 25 percent free cash-flow margin and a 25 times terminal multiple, Anthropic would need roughly $725 billion in revenue by 2036. Raise the discount rate to 13 percent and the required revenue climbs to about $950 billion. Those projections appear in the same Yahoo Finance analysis. "You can underwrite the growth or you can underwrite the margin. Underwriting both at once is the leap being asked of public investors." Ahn's assessment cuts to the core tension. And the comparison points investors often reach for don't quite fit. Annualized consumption revenue lacks the predictability of contracted revenue at companies such as Palantir Technologies or Nebius Group. That difference matters when public-market scrutiny intensifies. Recent coverage reinforces the gap between ambition and current performance. A Fortune article published August 14, 2026 noted that Anthropic would need Amazon-level earnings to justify a $2 trillion valuation, yet it isn't generating net income. At that price tag the company would sit near Amazon's $2.86 trillion market capitalization while producing a fraction of the retail giant's profits. The piece is available at fortune.com. But revenue forecasts keep climbing. Reuters reported that Anthropic projects $190 billion to $200 billion in revenue by 2028. That figure, cited by sources familiar with the company's financials, would reduce the implied multiple on a $2 trillion valuation from roughly 43 times current annualized run rate to around 10 times the 2028 projection. The story, referenced across multiple outlets including a Motley Fool analysis updated seven days ago, shows how bankers are building a case on future scale. See the Yahoo Markets version at finance.yahoo.com. The New York Times added fresh color on August 21, 2026. Bankers have told potential investors that the IPO could raise more than $100 billion and value the company at $2 trillion. That would eclipse SpaceX's $1.77 trillion debut in June. Anthropic was valued at roughly $900 billion in a private round earlier this year before the jump to $965 billion. The Times story is at nytimes.com. So. The trajectory looks clear on paper. Enterprise demand for Claude keeps accelerating. Hyperscalers pour in capital. Yet the public market has already delivered a cautionary example. SpaceX went public at roughly its last private valuation. Shares popped 67 percent on the first day of trading before giving back those gains. The real pressure came not from insider unlocks but from earnings scrutiny and fuller disclosure requirements. Ahn points to that sequence as the more relevant precedent. Private valuations emerge from selective transactions with sophisticated buyers. Public markets must absorb broader selling and constant quarterly examination. The Forbes piece from August 14, 2026 that discusses whether AI has entered bubble territory makes the same observation, available at forbes.com. Skeptics on X, now called the platform formerly known as Twitter, piled on this week. One widely viewed thread contrasted Anthropic's projected $9 billion in revenue against Meta's $200 billion and Amazon's $800 billion while noting the AI company's valuation sits at roughly 1.5 times Meta's and 71 percent of Amazon's. The posts captured a broader debate about whether foundation-model companies can command infrastructure-level multiples before they prove lasting competitive advantages. Anthropic itself has stayed quiet on the exact IPO terms. It has not discussed a specific valuation figure in recent meetings with prospective investors, according to a CNBC report from mid-August. The focus instead remains on the underlying demand for its models and the infrastructure build-out required to meet it. Compute capacity correlates directly with revenue for labs at this scale. More chips mean more inference. More inference means higher usage fees from enterprise customers. That dynamic explains why investors tolerate the current lack of profits. They bet that Claude's safety-first architecture, constitutional AI principles and strong enterprise traction will translate into defensible market share even as competition from OpenAI, Google and others intensifies. But the timeline for margin improvement remains uncertain. Training runs grow more expensive. Inference costs must fall. Regulatory and public backlash against AI-driven job displacement adds another variable that the upcoming IPO filing is expected to flag as a risk factor. The Financial Times first broke the broad expectation of a $2 trillion or higher listing in a story that quickly circulated among investment professionals. Multiple secondary-market transactions since the May funding round have reportedly pushed implied valuations even higher in private trades. Yet translating those marks into a sustainable public-market price will test how closely Wall Street is willing to project the optimistic scenarios Anthropic's backers are modeling. By any historical standard the numbers are staggering. A company that did not exist six years ago could soon command a market capitalization larger than most sovereign economies. Its success would signal that the market believes a handful of foundation-model providers will sit at the center of global business infrastructure much like the cloud giants do today. Its failure to meet those expectations after going public would send a different signal entirely. Either outcome will shape the next chapter of AI investment. For now the roadshow has not begun. The S-1 has not been made public. But the conversation has already moved well beyond the laboratory and into the territory of trillion-dollar balance sheets, decade-long revenue forecasts and the harsh arithmetic of public-market multiples. The test comes this fall.
Amjad Masad, CEO and co-founder of Replit, joins the Disrupt Stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026
The AI boom has made it possible for a significantly wider range of people to dip into development, create code, and launch software for the first time. There are pros and cons to this, even for established developers who are being pushed to use it to produce work faster. Replit sits at the center of this evolution, and when its CEO and co-founder, Amjad Masad, takes center stage at TechCrunch Disrupt 2026, he'll speak about the future of programming and the wide-ranging implications of a world in which ideas can be easily turned into products. Join the audience to watch our wide-ranging discussion with Masad at San Francisco's Moscone West from October 13-15. You'll also catch the rest of our excellent Disrupt lineup across six stages that address the most pressing questions facing the startup community, including, most critically, how do you build a sustainable company in the AI era? Get your tickets now during our special promotional pricing extension -- get up to $300 off your ticket until 11:59 p.m. PT Tuesday, August 25. Why Replit is joining the Disrupt Stage Replit's rise has been explosive, mirroring the broader ascent of AI and the companies furthering its proliferation. Though Masad founded the company a decade ago, the past 18 months have marked the biggest changes, with the company's current run-rate tracking toward a billion dollars annually, compared with just $2.8 million in reported revenue in 2024. But this conversation is about much more than Replit's revenue. Masad's conversation will dive into his perspective about the future of programming, entrepreneurship, and how Replit ensures that its service is doing more than helping users prototype their ideas -- it helps fully flesh them out, too. Investors are convinced of Replit's value to both nontechnical users and professional coders. They assigned the company a $9 billion valuation earlier this year, a mere six months after the company was assigned a $3 billion valuation. Of course, the question is whether it can keep that momentum going -- or whether its growth in 2026 will look quaint a year from now because it's growing even faster. If you're interested in building within the AI era, you can count on many sessions, in addition to Masad's, across our other stages: * Builders Stage, which will be chock-full of VCs and corporate development pros who'll dive deep, providing the kinds of insights every founder needs to have. * AI Stage, where we'll examine the presumed SaaSpocalypse, career opportunities, emerging security challenges, and more. * Smart Systems Stage, for those working on the vital infrastructure underpinning this era and for those who need to learn more about it. * Real World AI Stage, where we'll explore the sundry ways that new technologies are beginning to impact the physical world around us. To hear it first and in person, join the more than 10,000 founders, investors, and technologists who are heading to San Francisco for Disrupt 2026 on October 13-15. Grab your ticket today to make sure you get the best available price. Learn more about Disrupt 2026
Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, Surpasses $200 Million in AUM
Assets in the Fund have doubled since April, with the $200 million milestone arriving less than two weeks after JEDI announced it was the first ETF with indirect exposure to Shield AI, the privately held autonomy company behind the Hivemind AI pilot and the V-BAT aircraft. MIAMI, Aug. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Defiance ETFs today announced that the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) has surpassed $200 million in assets under management as of August 21, 2026, less than eleven months after the Fund's September 25, 2025 launch. The milestone comes less than two weeks after Defiance announced that JEDI had become the first ETF to provide indirect exposure to Shield AI (SHAI.PVT), the privately held defense autonomy company, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle. Accelerating Adoption JEDI crossed $100 million in assets on April 20, 2026, less than seven months after launch. Four months later, those assets have doubled. The mandate has grown along with them. A supplement to the Fund's prospectus dated July 27, 2026 added a secondary investment objective: with respect to up to 15% of the Fund's net assets, from time to time and at the Adviser's discretion, the Fund seeks to provide exposure to companies that would have qualified for inclusion in the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index except that their securities are not publicly traded. On August 11, 2026, Defiance announced that JEDI had put that mandate to work, bringing Shield AI exposure into the portfolio. JEDI targets the companies rebuilding modern defense around drones, autonomous systems, and AI-driven capabilities across land, sea, air, and space. All of it sits in an ETF structure, with full holdings published daily and shares tradable throughout the trading day. "Crossing $200 million in under a year tells us the thesis is landing," said Sylvia Jablonski, Chief Investment Officer of Defiance ETFs. "Modern warfare is undergoing a paradigm shift around drones, autonomy, and software, and investors increasingly want that entire stack in a single ticker. Bringing Shield AI into the fund was about completing that picture, because the companies defining this category are not all public yet. Shareholders should not have to wait for an IPO to hold one of the companies at the forefront of autonomy in defense, and this milestone tells us they agree." The Shield AI Exposure The Fund holds its Shield AI exposure indirectly, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle sponsored by an unaffiliated third party that holds Shield AI securities. As of August 20, 2026, the position represented approximately 2.44% of the Fund's net assets. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Diego, Shield AI builds autonomy software and aircraft for defense applications. The company's Hivemind AI pilot enables aircraft to operate in environments where GPS and communications links are jammed or denied, and the company has described Hivemind as continuously deployed in real-world operational environments since 2018. In June 2026, the U.S. Air Force awarded Shield AI a production contract to implement Hivemind as mission autonomy software for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The company's MQ-35 V-BAT, a vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft system requiring no runway or launch infrastructure, has been procured by the U.S. Coast Guard and allied militaries including the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. In March 2026, Shield AI announced a $2 billion raise at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation, led by Advent International with participation from the Strategic Investment Group of JPMorganChase's Security and Resiliency Initiative and funds managed by Blackstone. About Defiance ETFs Defiance ETFs is a leading issuer of thematic, income, and leveraged exchange-traded funds with more than $12 billion in assets under management. Founded in 2018, Defiance has established itself as a first mover in select thematic categories including AI infrastructure, quantum computing, and drone and modern warfare technology. For more information, visit www.defianceetfs.com. * As of August 7, 2026, based on a review of SEC EDGAR filings, publicly available ETF issuer holdings disclosures, and U.S. and non-U.S. exchange listings, Defiance ETFs has identified no other exchange-traded fund that holds or has held securities of Shield AI, Inc., a privately held defense technology company, and accordingly believes the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) is the first ETF to hold Shield AI. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES Shield AI is not affiliated with, and does not sponsor, endorse, or promote, Defiance ETFs or the Fund. References to Shield AI are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Fund holdings are subject to change and should not be considered investment advice. The Fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other important information about the investment company. Please read carefully before investing. A hard copy of the prospectuses can be requested by calling 833.333.9383. Defiance ETFs LLC is the Fund's investment adviser. The Fund's sub-adviser is Penserra Capital Management LLC. Investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. As an ETF, the Fund may trade at a premium or discount to NAV. Shares of any ETF are bought and sold at market price (not NAV) and are not individually redeemed from the Fund. A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk. Private Company / Privately Offered Securities Risk: Securities of private companies are not traded on an exchange and are typically issued without registration under the Securities Act of 1933. Such investments are subject to significant risks, including illiquidity risk, valuation risk, limited disclosure and lack of certain regulatory protections available to investors in publicly traded securities, exit strategy risk, and the risk of total loss. Private companies may have limited operating histories, unproven business models, and limited access to capital. Investment Selection Risk (Private Sleeve): The Fund's investments in privately issued securities are selected by the Adviser in its discretion and are not selected by reference to the Index. Those selection decisions may underperform the Index, other relevant benchmarks, or alternative investments the Adviser could have selected. Sponsor Dependence Risk: The Fund depends on the SPV sponsor for administration of the SPV, transmission of information rights, the conduct of the SPV's relationship with the underlying issuer, and implementation of any liquidity event. The SPV sponsor may have interests that diverge from those of the Fund. Liquidity Risk: The Fund's SPV interest is not traded on any public market, is not redeemable on demand at the option of the Fund, and may be transferred only with the consent of the SPV sponsor. The Fund's ability to monetize the investment generally depends on the occurrence of a qualifying liquidity event at the underlying issuer. There is no assurance that any such liquidity event will occur within any particular time frame, on any particular terms, or at all. Illiquid Investments Risk: The Fund may invest up to 15% of its net assets in illiquid investments. Illiquid investments may be difficult or impossible to sell at the time or price desired, may be sold at a substantial discount to carrying value, and may adversely affect the Fund's ability to meet redemption requests. Valuation Risk: Private company securities are fair valued in accordance with procedures adopted pursuant to Rule 2a-5 under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Fair valuations involve subjective judgments, and the value at which an investment is ultimately realized may differ, potentially materially, from the most recent fair value determination. Premium/Discount Risk: The Fund's SPV interest does not have an observable market price during the trading day and is reflected in the Fund's daily net asset value at fair value. As a result, Fund shares may trade at a premium or discount to net asset value to a greater extent, and with greater volatility, than has historically been the case for the Fund. Tracking Error / Index Divergence Risk: Because the Fund holds an investment that is not a component of the Index, the Fund's performance is expected to diverge from the performance of the Index. The magnitude of this divergence may be material. Concentration Risk: A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk than a more diversified portfolio. Foreign Securities Risk: Investments in foreign securities involve certain risks including risk of loss due to foreign currency fluctuations or to political or economic instability. This risk is magnified in emerging markets. Small/Mid-Cap Risk: Small and mid-cap companies are subject to greater and more unpredictable price changes than securities of large-cap companies. Aerospace and Defense Companies Risk: Aerospace and defense companies rely heavily on government demand and contracts, making them sensitive to regulation, budget changes, and spending policies that can significantly affect industry performance. Drone Companies Risk: Drone companies face risks from changing business cycles, rapid technological change, and government regulation, and may have limited product lines or financial resources. Securities of smaller drone companies tend to be more volatile than those of companies that do not rely heavily on technology. Non-Diversification Risk: The Fund may invest a larger portion of its assets in fewer issuers than a diversified fund, increasing exposure to the risks of individual companies. New Fund Risk: The Fund is a recently organized investment company with limited operating history, so prospective investors have a limited track record on which to base their investment decisions. Effective April 30, 2026, the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index methodology was updated to expand the list of eligible capability areas, change constituent weighting to a liquidity-momentum factor, and permit between-rebalance additions of high-exposure IPOs and companies pivoting to modern warfare technology. Performance shown for periods prior to April 30, 2026 reflects the Index's prior methodology and may not be representative of results under the current methodology. The 'BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index' is the exclusive property of BITA GmbH. BITA® is a trademark of BITA GmbH and has been licensed for use for certain purposes by Defiance ETFs LLC. Products based on the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by BITA GmbH, and BITA GmbH makes no representation regarding the advisability of trading in such product(s). It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Diversification does not ensure a profit nor protect against loss in a declining market. Commissions may be charged on trades. Distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC. Media Contact: Brenda Hentschel [email protected] 201.705.3758 Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, Surpasses $200 Million in AUM
Assets in the Fund have doubled since April, with the $200 million milestone arriving less than two weeks after JEDI announced it was the first ETF with indirect exposure to Shield AI, the privately held autonomy company behind the Hivemind AI pilot and the V-BAT aircraft. MIAMI, Aug. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Defiance ETFs today announced that the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) has surpassed $200 million in assets under management as of August 21, 2026, less than eleven months after the Fund's September 25, 2025 launch. The milestone comes less than two weeks after Defiance announced that JEDI had become the first ETF to provide indirect exposure to Shield AI (SHAI.PVT), the privately held defense autonomy company, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle. Accelerating Adoption JEDI crossed $100 million in assets on April 20, 2026, less than seven months after launch. Four months later, those assets have doubled. The mandate has grown along with them. A supplement to the Fund's prospectus dated July 27, 2026 added a secondary investment objective: with respect to up to 15% of the Fund's net assets, from time to time and at the Adviser's discretion, the Fund seeks to provide exposure to companies that would have qualified for inclusion in the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index except that their securities are not publicly traded. On August 11, 2026, Defiance announced that JEDI had put that mandate to work, bringing Shield AI exposure into the portfolio. JEDI targets the companies rebuilding modern defense around drones, autonomous systems, and AI-driven capabilities across land, sea, air, and space. All of it sits in an ETF structure, with full holdings published daily and shares tradable throughout the trading day. "Crossing $200 million in under a year tells us the thesis is landing," said Sylvia Jablonski, Chief Investment Officer of Defiance ETFs. "Modern warfare is undergoing a paradigm shift around drones, autonomy, and software, and investors increasingly want that entire stack in a single ticker. Bringing Shield AI into the fund was about completing that picture, because the companies defining this category are not all public yet. Shareholders should not have to wait for an IPO to hold one of the companies at the forefront of autonomy in defense, and this milestone tells us they agree." The Shield AI Exposure The Fund holds its Shield AI exposure indirectly, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle sponsored by an unaffiliated third party that holds Shield AI securities. As of August 20, 2026, the position represented approximately 2.44% of the Fund's net assets. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Diego, Shield AI builds autonomy software and aircraft for defense applications. The company's Hivemind AI pilot enables aircraft to operate in environments where GPS and communications links are jammed or denied, and the company has described Hivemind as continuously deployed in real-world operational environments since 2018. In June 2026, the U.S. Air Force awarded Shield AI a production contract to implement Hivemind as mission autonomy software for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The company's MQ-35 V-BAT, a vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft system requiring no runway or launch infrastructure, has been procured by the U.S. Coast Guard and allied militaries including the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. In March 2026, Shield AI announced a $2 billion raise at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation, led by Advent International with participation from the Strategic Investment Group of JPMorganChase's Security and Resiliency Initiative and funds managed by Blackstone. About Defiance ETFs Defiance ETFs is a leading issuer of thematic, income, and leveraged exchange-traded funds with more than $12 billion in assets under management. Founded in 2018, Defiance has established itself as a first mover in select thematic categories including AI infrastructure, quantum computing, and drone and modern warfare technology. For more information, visit www.defianceetfs.com. * As of August 7, 2026, based on a review of SEC EDGAR filings, publicly available ETF issuer holdings disclosures, and U.S. and non-U.S. exchange listings, Defiance ETFs has identified no other exchange-traded fund that holds or has held securities of Shield AI, Inc., a privately held defense technology company, and accordingly believes the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) is the first ETF to hold Shield AI. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES Shield AI is not affiliated with, and does not sponsor, endorse, or promote, Defiance ETFs or the Fund. References to Shield AI are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Fund holdings are subject to change and should not be considered investment advice. The Fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other important information about the investment company. Please read carefully before investing. A hard copy of the prospectuses can be requested by calling 833.333.9383. Defiance ETFs LLC is the Fund's investment adviser. The Fund's sub-adviser is Penserra Capital Management LLC. Investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. As an ETF, the Fund may trade at a premium or discount to NAV. Shares of any ETF are bought and sold at market price (not NAV) and are not individually redeemed from the Fund. A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk. Private Company / Privately Offered Securities Risk: Securities of private companies are not traded on an exchange and are typically issued without registration under the Securities Act of 1933. Such investments are subject to significant risks, including illiquidity risk, valuation risk, limited disclosure and lack of certain regulatory protections available to investors in publicly traded securities, exit strategy risk, and the risk of total loss. Private companies may have limited operating histories, unproven business models, and limited access to capital. Investment Selection Risk (Private Sleeve): The Fund's investments in privately issued securities are selected by the Adviser in its discretion and are not selected by reference to the Index. Those selection decisions may underperform the Index, other relevant benchmarks, or alternative investments the Adviser could have selected. Sponsor Dependence Risk: The Fund depends on the SPV sponsor for administration of the SPV, transmission of information rights, the conduct of the SPV's relationship with the underlying issuer, and implementation of any liquidity event. The SPV sponsor may have interests that diverge from those of the Fund. Liquidity Risk: The Fund's SPV interest is not traded on any public market, is not redeemable on demand at the option of the Fund, and may be transferred only with the consent of the SPV sponsor. The Fund's ability to monetize the investment generally depends on the occurrence of a qualifying liquidity event at the underlying issuer. There is no assurance that any such liquidity event will occur within any particular time frame, on any particular terms, or at all. Illiquid Investments Risk: The Fund may invest up to 15% of its net assets in illiquid investments. Illiquid investments may be difficult or impossible to sell at the time or price desired, may be sold at a substantial discount to carrying value, and may adversely affect the Fund's ability to meet redemption requests. Valuation Risk: Private company securities are fair valued in accordance with procedures adopted pursuant to Rule 2a-5 under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Fair valuations involve subjective judgments, and the value at which an investment is ultimately realized may differ, potentially materially, from the most recent fair value determination. Premium/Discount Risk: The Fund's SPV interest does not have an observable market price during the trading day and is reflected in the Fund's daily net asset value at fair value. As a result, Fund shares may trade at a premium or discount to net asset value to a greater extent, and with greater volatility, than has historically been the case for the Fund. Tracking Error / Index Divergence Risk: Because the Fund holds an investment that is not a component of the Index, the Fund's performance is expected to diverge from the performance of the Index. The magnitude of this divergence may be material. Concentration Risk: A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk than a more diversified portfolio. Foreign Securities Risk: Investments in foreign securities involve certain risks including risk of loss due to foreign currency fluctuations or to political or economic instability. This risk is magnified in emerging markets. Small/Mid-Cap Risk: Small and mid-cap companies are subject to greater and more unpredictable price changes than securities of large-cap companies. Aerospace and Defense Companies Risk: Aerospace and defense companies rely heavily on government demand and contracts, making them sensitive to regulation, budget changes, and spending policies that can significantly affect industry performance. Drone Companies Risk: Drone companies face risks from changing business cycles, rapid technological change, and government regulation, and may have limited product lines or financial resources. Securities of smaller drone companies tend to be more volatile than those of companies that do not rely heavily on technology. Non-Diversification Risk: The Fund may invest a larger portion of its assets in fewer issuers than a diversified fund, increasing exposure to the risks of individual companies. New Fund Risk: The Fund is a recently organized investment company with limited operating history, so prospective investors have a limited track record on which to base their investment decisions. Effective April 30, 2026, the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index methodology was updated to expand the list of eligible capability areas, change constituent weighting to a liquidity-momentum factor, and permit between-rebalance additions of high-exposure IPOs and companies pivoting to modern warfare technology. Performance shown for periods prior to April 30, 2026 reflects the Index's prior methodology and may not be representative of results under the current methodology. The 'BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index' is the exclusive property of BITA GmbH. BITA® is a trademark of BITA GmbH and has been licensed for use for certain purposes by Defiance ETFs LLC. Products based on the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by BITA GmbH, and BITA GmbH makes no representation regarding the advisability of trading in such product(s). It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Diversification does not ensure a profit nor protect against loss in a declining market. Commissions may be charged on trades. Distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC. Media Contact: Brenda Hentschel [email protected] 201.705.3758 Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
Polymarket Trump Impeachment Odds Explained
Disclaimer: Crypto is a high-risk asset class. This article is provided for informational purposes and does not constitute investment advice. You could lose all of your capital. Prediction Market Polymarket traders price a House impeachment of Donald Trump before his term ends at roughly 68%, against a fraction of that, around 2%, for the same outcome landing before December 31, 2026. That 33x spread between two contracts asking a nearly identical question is the real story: it's not a prediction that impeachment is coming, it's a market pricing the calendar and congressional arithmetic separately from the politics. The Contract Split: Two Clocks, One President Polymarket's "Will Trump be impeached before his term ends?" market resolves "Yes" if the House passes at least one article of impeachment by simple majority any time before January 20, 2029. As of its last update on August 24, 2026, that contract was trading around 68%, on roughly $94,463 in cumulative volume since the market opened on March 19, 2026. A separate, shorter-dated contract asks the same question but caps the window at December 31, 2026, before the newly elected House even takes its committee assignments. That contract has traded at a premium of closer to 2%, according to Polymarket pricing referenced in Washington Examiner coverage of the market. Same event, same officeholder, wildly different implied probability, because the two contracts are betting on different Congresses. Why the Math Changes After the Midterms Republicans currently hold narrow majorities in both chambers, and a GOP-controlled House has no institutional incentive to advance articles of impeachment against a Republican president absent a major break within the party. That's the entire explanation for the 2% price: it's a bet that this specific Congress will act before its term expires, and the base rate for that is close to zero. The 68% figure prices in something structurally different, the 2026 midterms. If Democrats retake the House, they gain subpoena power, Judiciary Committee control, and the ability to schedule a floor vote on their own terms, none of which exists under the current majority. Forecasters tracking generic ballot trends have generally shown Democrats favored or competitive to flip the chamber, and Polymarket's long-dated contract is effectively a compounded bet: probability of a Democratic House multiplied by the probability that a Democratic majority actually brings articles to a vote sometime in the roughly two years of runway that follow. Prediction markets have increasingly become the fastest-moving gauge for exactly this kind of time-bound political risk. The same dynamic played out in Kalshi's government shutdown odds market, where prices fluctuated in lockstep with the legislative calendar rather than with sentiment alone. The mechanism is identical here: traders aren't voting on whether Trump deserves impeachment, they're pricing the sequence of procedural gates that would have to open first. Impeachment Is Not Removal, And Markets Know It Both Polymarket contracts resolve on House passage alone. Neither requires a Senate trial, conviction, or removal from office to settle "Yes." That distinction matters enormously for how these odds should be read, and it's grounded directly in constitutional mechanics rather than market convention. Per the Congressional Research Service's report on House impeachment procedure, the House impeaches by a simple majority vote adopting articles, effectively a formal accusation, comparable to a criminal indictment. Removal is an entirely separate Senate proceeding requiring a two-thirds vote of senators present to convict, and disqualification from future office requires only a majority vote as a distinct, additional step. The CRS report notes the House has impeached three presidents, Andrew Johnson in 1868, Bill Clinton in 1998, and Trump himself in both 2019 and 2021, and in every case, the Senate declined to convict. A 68% price on House impeachment therefore says nothing about the far higher bar of Senate removal, which is a structurally separate market question entirely. When the Calendar Changes the Odds, Prediction Market Kalshi Lets Traders Price the Trump And Political Path Directly The Trump impeachment markets show why political probabilities can swing dramatically without anyone changing their underlying view of the politician involved. What changes is the path: elections, congressional control, committee power, deadlines, and the number of procedural steps still left. Kalshi gives traders a way to take positions directly on those kinds of political outcomes. Rather than trying to translate a House flip, impeachment vote, or government funding fight into a stock, Bitcoin, or bond trade, users can focus on the event itself and the exact conditions required for the contract to settle. That distinction matters when two similar-looking questions can carry wildly different probabilities simply because one has months to resolve and the other has years. For traders already thinking in terms of congressional arithmetic and timing, Kalshi turns that thesis into a market of its own. Eligible new users who join Kalshi through CryptoNews can also receive $25 through our referral link.
Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, Surpasses $200 Million in AUM
Assets in the Fund have doubled since April, with the $200 million milestone arriving less than two weeks after JEDI announced it was the first ETF with indirect exposure to Shield AI, the privately held autonomy company behind the Hivemind AI pilot and the V-BAT aircraft. MIAMI, Aug. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Defiance ETFs today announced that the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) has surpassed $200 million in assets under management as of August 21, 2026, less than eleven months after the Fund's September 25, 2025 launch. The milestone comes less than two weeks after Defiance announced that JEDI had become the first ETF to provide indirect exposure to Shield AI (SHAI.PVT), the privately held defense autonomy company, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle. Accelerating Adoption JEDI crossed $100 million in assets on April 20, 2026, less than seven months after launch. Four months later, those assets have doubled. The mandate has grown along with them. A supplement to the Fund's prospectus dated July 27, 2026 added a secondary investment objective: with respect to up to 15% of the Fund's net assets, from time to time and at the Adviser's discretion, the Fund seeks to provide exposure to companies that would have qualified for inclusion in the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index except that their securities are not publicly traded. On August 11, 2026, Defiance announced that JEDI had put that mandate to work, bringing Shield AI exposure into the portfolio. JEDI targets the companies rebuilding modern defense around drones, autonomous systems, and AI-driven capabilities across land, sea, air, and space. All of it sits in an ETF structure, with full holdings published daily and shares tradable throughout the trading day. "Crossing $200 million in under a year tells us the thesis is landing," said Sylvia Jablonski, Chief Investment Officer of Defiance ETFs. "Modern warfare is undergoing a paradigm shift around drones, autonomy, and software, and investors increasingly want that entire stack in a single ticker. Bringing Shield AI into the fund was about completing that picture, because the companies defining this category are not all public yet. Shareholders should not have to wait for an IPO to hold one of the companies at the forefront of autonomy in defense, and this milestone tells us they agree." The Shield AI Exposure The Fund holds its Shield AI exposure indirectly, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle sponsored by an unaffiliated third party that holds Shield AI securities. As of August 20, 2026, the position represented approximately 2.44% of the Fund's net assets. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Diego, Shield AI builds autonomy software and aircraft for defense applications. The company's Hivemind AI pilot enables aircraft to operate in environments where GPS and communications links are jammed or denied, and the company has described Hivemind as continuously deployed in real-world operational environments since 2018. In June 2026, the U.S. Air Force awarded Shield AI a production contract to implement Hivemind as mission autonomy software for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The company's MQ-35 V-BAT, a vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft system requiring no runway or launch infrastructure, has been procured by the U.S. Coast Guard and allied militaries including the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. In March 2026, Shield AI announced a $2 billion raise at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation, led by Advent International with participation from the Strategic Investment Group of JPMorganChase's Security and Resiliency Initiative and funds managed by Blackstone. About Defiance ETFs Defiance ETFs is a leading issuer of thematic, income, and leveraged exchange-traded funds with more than $12 billion in assets under management. Founded in 2018, Defiance has established itself as a first mover in select thematic categories including AI infrastructure, quantum computing, and drone and modern warfare technology. For more information, visit www.defianceetfs.com. * As of August 7, 2026, based on a review of SEC EDGAR filings, publicly available ETF issuer holdings disclosures, and U.S. and non-U.S. exchange listings, Defiance ETFs has identified no other exchange-traded fund that holds or has held securities of Shield AI, Inc., a privately held defense technology company, and accordingly believes the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) is the first ETF to hold Shield AI. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES Shield AI is not affiliated with, and does not sponsor, endorse, or promote, Defiance ETFs or the Fund. References to Shield AI are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Fund holdings are subject to change and should not be considered investment advice. The Fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other important information about the investment company. Please read carefully before investing. A hard copy of the prospectuses can be requested by calling 833.333.9383. Defiance ETFs LLC is the Fund's investment adviser. The Fund's sub-adviser is Penserra Capital Management LLC. Investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. As an ETF, the Fund may trade at a premium or discount to NAV. Shares of any ETF are bought and sold at market price (not NAV) and are not individually redeemed from the Fund. A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk. Private Company / Privately Offered Securities Risk: Securities of private companies are not traded on an exchange and are typically issued without registration under the Securities Act of 1933. Such investments are subject to significant risks, including illiquidity risk, valuation risk, limited disclosure and lack of certain regulatory protections available to investors in publicly traded securities, exit strategy risk, and the risk of total loss. Private companies may have limited operating histories, unproven business models, and limited access to capital. Investment Selection Risk (Private Sleeve): The Fund's investments in privately issued securities are selected by the Adviser in its discretion and are not selected by reference to the Index. Those selection decisions may underperform the Index, other relevant benchmarks, or alternative investments the Adviser could have selected. Sponsor Dependence Risk: The Fund depends on the SPV sponsor for administration of the SPV, transmission of information rights, the conduct of the SPV's relationship with the underlying issuer, and implementation of any liquidity event. The SPV sponsor may have interests that diverge from those of the Fund. Liquidity Risk: The Fund's SPV interest is not traded on any public market, is not redeemable on demand at the option of the Fund, and may be transferred only with the consent of the SPV sponsor. The Fund's ability to monetize the investment generally depends on the occurrence of a qualifying liquidity event at the underlying issuer. There is no assurance that any such liquidity event will occur within any particular time frame, on any particular terms, or at all. Illiquid Investments Risk: The Fund may invest up to 15% of its net assets in illiquid investments. Illiquid investments may be difficult or impossible to sell at the time or price desired, may be sold at a substantial discount to carrying value, and may adversely affect the Fund's ability to meet redemption requests. Valuation Risk: Private company securities are fair valued in accordance with procedures adopted pursuant to Rule 2a-5 under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Fair valuations involve subjective judgments, and the value at which an investment is ultimately realized may differ, potentially materially, from the most recent fair value determination. Premium/Discount Risk: The Fund's SPV interest does not have an observable market price during the trading day and is reflected in the Fund's daily net asset value at fair value. As a result, Fund shares may trade at a premium or discount to net asset value to a greater extent, and with greater volatility, than has historically been the case for the Fund. Tracking Error / Index Divergence Risk: Because the Fund holds an investment that is not a component of the Index, the Fund's performance is expected to diverge from the performance of the Index. The magnitude of this divergence may be material. Concentration Risk: A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk than a more diversified portfolio. Foreign Securities Risk: Investments in foreign securities involve certain risks including risk of loss due to foreign currency fluctuations or to political or economic instability. This risk is magnified in emerging markets. Small/Mid-Cap Risk: Small and mid-cap companies are subject to greater and more unpredictable price changes than securities of large-cap companies. Aerospace and Defense Companies Risk: Aerospace and defense companies rely heavily on government demand and contracts, making them sensitive to regulation, budget changes, and spending policies that can significantly affect industry performance. Drone Companies Risk: Drone companies face risks from changing business cycles, rapid technological change, and government regulation, and may have limited product lines or financial resources. Securities of smaller drone companies tend to be more volatile than those of companies that do not rely heavily on technology. Non-Diversification Risk: The Fund may invest a larger portion of its assets in fewer issuers than a diversified fund, increasing exposure to the risks of individual companies. New Fund Risk: The Fund is a recently organized investment company with limited operating history, so prospective investors have a limited track record on which to base their investment decisions. Effective April 30, 2026, the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index methodology was updated to expand the list of eligible capability areas, change constituent weighting to a liquidity-momentum factor, and permit between-rebalance additions of high-exposure IPOs and companies pivoting to modern warfare technology. Performance shown for periods prior to April 30, 2026 reflects the Index's prior methodology and may not be representative of results under the current methodology. The 'BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index' is the exclusive property of BITA GmbH. BITA® is a trademark of BITA GmbH and has been licensed for use for certain purposes by Defiance ETFs LLC. Products based on the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by BITA GmbH, and BITA GmbH makes no representation regarding the advisability of trading in such product(s). It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Diversification does not ensure a profit nor protect against loss in a declining market. Commissions may be charged on trades. Distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC. Media Contact: Brenda Hentschel [email protected] 201.705.3758 Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
5 things to know about Round Hill's Suno and Anthropic lawsuits: model weights, extraction tools, and a $75M number
Round Hill Music filed two copyright complaints last week, one against Suno and data-scraping firm Bright Data, the other against Anthropic. Both are in the US District Court for the Northern District of California. MBW reported the headline terms: statutory damages of up to USD $150,000 per work, a total Round Hill says would run to hundreds of millions and could approach or exceed $1 billion in each case, and a stated intention to take both to trial. The Suno filing runs to 24 pages, the Anthropic one to 26. Here is what else is in them. Both prayers ask the court to order the defendants to deliver every unauthorized copy of Round Hill's works for impoundment or destruction, citing 17 U.S.C. § 503. The filings define that to cover "copies retained in training datasets, internal repositories, model weights, and server infrastructure," wording that reaches the trained models, not just the source files behind them. Each Round Hill complaint also asks for a complete accounting of training data, scraping activity, and datasets involving the works. The DMCA counts stack on top of the per-work figure: under § 1203, up to $2,500 for each act of circumvention and up to $25,000 for each removal of copyright management information. For comparison, Anthropic's $1.5 billion settlement with book authors in September 2025 committed it to destroying the original files it torrented from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror, and copies originating from them - but not the models themselves. Anthropic certified that no commercially released model had been trained on those datasets. Both Round Hill complaints rest on Bartz v. Anthropic, the authors' case in the same district. Each quotes Judge William Alsup's June 2025 ruling: "There is no carveout, however, from the Copyright Act for AI companies." The Suno filing applies that holding to a company that was not a party to it, alleging "Suno has engaged in the exact same conduct" in retaining unlicensed copies indefinitely. The Anthropic complaint sources its piracy account to the same case, citing torrenting from Library Genesis and Pirate Library Mirror (PiLiMi), and quotes what it says was a co-founder's message to colleagues once PiLiMi could be torrented: "[J]ust in time!" It further alleges that Concord II, the publishers' second suit filed on January 28, 2026, revealed that Anthropic "had concealed its torrenting during discovery in Concord I," a claim the publishers first raised in August 2025. Anthropic released a human-feedback training dataset, hh-rlhf, on Hugging Face in 2022. Round Hill alleges the dataset shows Claude returning copyrighted lyrics during testing, including a response to a Disney songs prompt that quoted from Let It Go. In a second example, the complaint says, a user asked Claude to build a short story from the lyrics to Eleanor Rigby, and the model did so - while the response logged as rejected instead pointed the user to an article on writing from song lyrics. "Anthropic deliberately trained Claude to commit copyright infringement," the complaint says of that exchange. Neither song is a Round Hill work. Both are cited to argue Claude reproduces copyrighted lyrics generally. In its section arguing fair use does not apply, the filing reproduces an exchange on X over Moonshot AI's alleged distillation of Anthropic's Fable model. Michael Kratsios, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, wrote that "large-scale, covert industrial distillation aimed at stealing proprietary U.S. technology and undermining American research is unacceptable." Sarah Heck, Anthropic's head of public policy, replied: "Illicit, adversarial distillation is IP theft and industrial espionage that supports adversary military and intelligence capabilities." The Anthropic complaint alleges the company tested at least three text-extraction programs before ingesting data: Readability, Newspaper and jusText. It claims jusText was ruled out because it left copyright notices and ownership details intact, which the filing says Anthropic treated as "boilerplate" and "useless junk." Newspaper was selected instead, according to Round Hill, for its ability to strip that information. Round Hill makes the same argument about page layout, saying Bright Data's Scraping Browser renders pages without headers and footers, where copyright management information typically sits: "Making the deliberate choice to exclude headers and footers is identical to making the deliberate choice to remove CMI." Both Round Hill complaints cite Stevens v. CoreLogic for the double scienter standard: removal must be intentional, and the defendant must have known, or had reasonable grounds to know, it would induce, enable, facilitate or conceal infringement. They also cite an October 2025 Concord ruling holding similar allegations sufficient at the pleading stage. The $1 billion figure in both complaints is a projection, contingent on Round Hill amending its exhibits to cover thousands more works. The contributory infringement count against Bright Data carries the only fixed arithmetic in either filing: 500 works at $150,000 each, for $75,000,000. Round Hill also turns Bright Data's own litigation record against it, citing X Corp. v. Bright Data, in which the same court rejected its jurisdictional challenge. The complaint puts Bright Data past $300 million in 2025 revenue, growing 50% year-over-year, citing a report by Asymmetrix that calls the figure annualized recurring revenue. The filing alleges the services Bright Data provided to Suno "are only good for copyright infringement." It also draws on the hacked Suno source code reported by 404 Media on July 15, including a dataset logged as youtube_music holding over two million music clips and 113,879 hours of audio - roughly thirteen years. The Suno complaint quotes co-founder and CEO Mikey Shulman, citing a video produced with Oracle, as saying: "Our models are taught to just continue a piece of music." Round Hill sets that against Suno's marketing of itself as generating songs from whole cloth. The same filing alleges Suno's guardrails are porous, claiming a prompt naming Reba McEntire is blocked while a misspelling of her name is not. Both complaints name ElevenLabs, Musical AI, Symphonic, Soundverse, GEMA through PLAI, GCX/Rightsify , and Troveo as evidence of a functioning licensing market they say the defendants bypassed. But PLAI launched on July 23, under a month before these filings, and GEMA says it is built for tools that help creators make music, with generative AI licensing the separate subject of its own Suno case, which GEMA won at first instance on July 31. The Anthropic filing treats each model release as a fresh act of copying, naming Fable 5 and Mythos 5 (both June 9, 2026), Sonnet 5 (June 30, 2026) and Opus 5 (July 24, 2026). Exhibit A in each case lists 500 musical compositions, not sound recordings, though Round Hill asserts rights in 16,873 recordings and calls the exhibit a bellwether it will amend to cover both. MBW has contacted Suno, Anthropic and Bright Data for comment. None of the allegations has been tested in court.Music Business Worldwide
Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, Surpasses $200 Million in AUM
Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, Surpasses $200 Million in AUM Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, Surpasses $200 Million in AUM Get the latest news delivered to your inbox Sign up for The Manila Times newsletters By signing up with an email address, I acknowledge that I have read and agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy. Advertisement Assets in the Fund have doubled since April, with the $200 million milestone arriving less than two weeks after JEDI announced it was the first ETF with indirect exposure to Shield AI, the privately held autonomy company behind the Hivemind AI pilot and the V-BAT aircraft. MIAMI, Aug. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Defiance ETFs today announced that the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) has surpassed $200 million in assets under management as of August 21, 2026, less than eleven months after the Fund's September 25, 2025 launch. The milestone comes less than two weeks after Defiance announced that JEDI had become the first ETF to provide indirect exposure to Shield AI (SHAI.PVT), the privately held defense autonomy company, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle. Accelerating Adoption Advertisement JEDI crossed $100 million in assets on April 20, 2026, less than seven months after launch. Four months later, those assets have doubled. The mandate has grown along with them. A supplement to the Fund's prospectus dated July 27, 2026 added a secondary investment objective: with respect to up to 15% of the Fund's net assets, from time to time and at the Adviser's discretion, the Fund seeks to provide exposure to companies that would have qualified for inclusion in the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index except that their securities are not publicly traded. On August 11, 2026, Defiance announced that JEDI had put that mandate to work, bringing Shield AI exposure into the portfolio. JEDI targets the companies rebuilding modern defense around drones, autonomous systems, and AI-driven capabilities across land, sea, air, and space. All of it sits in an ETF structure, with full holdings published daily and shares tradable throughout the trading day. "Crossing $200 million in under a year tells us the thesis is landing," said Sylvia Jablonski, Chief Investment Officer of Defiance ETFs. "Modern warfare is undergoing a paradigm shift around drones, autonomy, and software, and investors increasingly want that entire stack in a single ticker. Bringing Shield AI into the fund was about completing that picture, because the companies defining this category are not all public yet. Shareholders should not have to wait for an IPO to hold one of the companies at the forefront of autonomy in defense, and this milestone tells us they agree." The Shield AI Exposure Advertisement The Fund holds its Shield AI exposure indirectly, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle sponsored by an unaffiliated third party that holds Shield AI securities. As of August 20, 2026, the position represented approximately 2.44% of the Fund's net assets. Founded in 2015 and headquartered in San Diego, Shield AI builds autonomy software and aircraft for defense applications. The company's Hivemind AI pilot enables aircraft to operate in environments where GPS and communications links are jammed or denied, and the company has described Hivemind as continuously deployed in real-world operational environments since 2018. In June 2026, the U.S. Air Force awarded Shield AI a production contract to implement Hivemind as mission autonomy software for the Collaborative Combat Aircraft program. The company's MQ-35 V-BAT, a vertical takeoff and landing unmanned aircraft system requiring no runway or launch infrastructure, has been procured by the U.S. Coast Guard and allied militaries including the Netherlands Ministry of Defence. In March 2026, Shield AI announced a $2 billion raise at a $12.7 billion post-money valuation, led by Advent International with participation from the Strategic Investment Group of JPMorganChase's Security and Resiliency Initiative and funds managed by Blackstone. About Defiance ETFs Defiance ETFs is a leading issuer of thematic, income, and leveraged exchange-traded funds with more than $12 billion in assets under management. Founded in 2018, Defiance has established itself as a first mover in select thematic categories including AI infrastructure, quantum computing, and drone and modern warfare technology. For more information, visit www.defianceetfs.com. Advertisement * As of August 7, 2026, based on a review of SEC EDGAR filings, publicly available ETF issuer holdings disclosures, and U.S. and non-U.S. exchange listings, Defiance ETFs has identified no other exchange-traded fund that holds or has held securities of Shield AI, Inc., a privately held defense technology company, and accordingly believes the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) is the first ETF to hold Shield AI. IMPORTANT DISCLOSURES Shield AI is not affiliated with, and does not sponsor, endorse, or promote, Defiance ETFs or the Fund. References to Shield AI are not a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Fund holdings are subject to change and should not be considered investment advice. The Fund's investment objectives, risks, charges, and expenses must be considered carefully before investing. The prospectus and summary prospectus contain this and other important information about the investment company. Please read carefully before investing. A hard copy of the prospectuses can be requested by calling 833.333.9383. Advertisement Defiance ETFs LLC is the Fund's investment adviser. The Fund's sub-adviser is Penserra Capital Management LLC. Investing involves risk. Principal loss is possible. As an ETF, the Fund may trade at a premium or discount to NAV. Shares of any ETF are bought and sold at market price (not NAV) and are not individually redeemed from the Fund. A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk. Private Company / Privately Offered Securities Risk: Securities of private companies are not traded on an exchange and are typically issued without registration under the Securities Act of 1933. Such investments are subject to significant risks, including illiquidity risk, valuation risk, limited disclosure and lack of certain regulatory protections available to investors in publicly traded securities, exit strategy risk, and the risk of total loss. Private companies may have limited operating histories, unproven business models, and limited access to capital. Investment Selection Risk (Private Sleeve): The Fund's investments in privately issued securities are selected by the Adviser in its discretion and are not selected by reference to the Index. Those selection decisions may underperform the Index, other relevant benchmarks, or alternative investments the Adviser could have selected. Advertisement Sponsor Dependence Risk: The Fund depends on the SPV sponsor for administration of the SPV, transmission of information rights, the conduct of the SPV's relationship with the underlying issuer, and implementation of any liquidity event. The SPV sponsor may have interests that diverge from those of the Fund. Liquidity Risk: The Fund's SPV interest is not traded on any public market, is not redeemable on demand at the option of the Fund, and may be transferred only with the consent of the SPV sponsor. The Fund's ability to monetize the investment generally depends on the occurrence of a qualifying liquidity event at the underlying issuer. There is no assurance that any such liquidity event will occur within any particular time frame, on any particular terms, or at all. Illiquid Investments Risk: The Fund may invest up to 15% of its net assets in illiquid investments. Illiquid investments may be difficult or impossible to sell at the time or price desired, may be sold at a substantial discount to carrying value, and may adversely affect the Fund's ability to meet redemption requests. Valuation Risk: Private company securities are fair valued in accordance with procedures adopted pursuant to Rule 2a-5 under the Investment Company Act of 1940. Fair valuations involve subjective judgments, and the value at which an investment is ultimately realized may differ, potentially materially, from the most recent fair value determination. Premium/Discount Risk: The Fund's SPV interest does not have an observable market price during the trading day and is reflected in the Fund's daily net asset value at fair value. As a result, Fund shares may trade at a premium or discount to net asset value to a greater extent, and with greater volatility, than has historically been the case for the Fund. Tracking Error / Index Divergence Risk: Because the Fund holds an investment that is not a component of the Index, the Fund's performance is expected to diverge from the performance of the Index. The magnitude of this divergence may be material. Concentration Risk: A portfolio concentrated in a single industry or country may be subject to a higher degree of risk than a more diversified portfolio. Foreign Securities Risk: Investments in foreign securities involve certain risks including risk of loss due to foreign currency fluctuations or to political or economic instability. This risk is magnified in emerging markets. Small/Mid-Cap Risk: Small and mid-cap companies are subject to greater and more unpredictable price changes than securities of large-cap companies. Aerospace and Defense Companies Risk: Aerospace and defense companies rely heavily on government demand and contracts, making them sensitive to regulation, budget changes, and spending policies that can significantly affect industry performance. Drone Companies Risk: Drone companies face risks from changing business cycles, rapid technological change, and government regulation, and may have limited product lines or financial resources. Securities of smaller drone companies tend to be more volatile than those of companies that do not rely heavily on technology. Non-Diversification Risk: The Fund may invest a larger portion of its assets in fewer issuers than a diversified fund, increasing exposure to the risks of individual companies. New Fund Risk: The Fund is a recently organized investment company with limited operating history, so prospective investors have a limited track record on which to base their investment decisions. Effective April 30, 2026, the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index methodology was updated to expand the list of eligible capability areas, change constituent weighting to a liquidity-momentum factor, and permit between-rebalance additions of high-exposure IPOs and companies pivoting to modern warfare technology. Performance shown for periods prior to April 30, 2026 reflects the Index's prior methodology and may not be representative of results under the current methodology. The 'BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index' is the exclusive property of BITA GmbH. BITA® is a trademark of BITA GmbH and has been licensed for use for certain purposes by Defiance ETFs LLC. Products based on the BITA Drone & Modern Warfare Select Index are not sponsored, endorsed, sold or promoted by BITA GmbH, and BITA GmbH makes no representation regarding the advisability of trading in such product(s). It is not possible to invest directly in an index. Diversification does not ensure a profit nor protect against loss in a declining market. Commissions may be charged on trades. Distributed by Foreside Fund Services, LLC. Media Contact: Brenda Hentschel [email protected] 201.705.3758 Photos accompanying this announcement are available at
Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (JEDI), The First ETF Providing Exposure to Shield AI, ...
Assets in the Fund have doubled since April, with the $200 million milestone arriving less than two weeks after JEDI announced it was the first ETF with indirect exposure to Shield AI, the privately held autonomy company behind the Hivemind AI pilot and the V-BAT aircraft. MIAMI, Aug. 24, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Defiance ETFs today announced that the Defiance Drone & Modern Warfare ETF (NYSE: JEDI) has surpassed $200 million in assets under management as of August 21, 2026, less than eleven months after the Fund's September 25, 2025 launch. The milestone comes less than two weeks after Defiance announced that JEDI had become the first ETF to provide indirect exposure to Shield AI (SHAI.PVT), the privately held defense autonomy company, through an interest in a single-asset special purpose vehicle.
Perplexity's revenue tripled to $750 million ahead of Nvidia's $30 billion talks
The deal would add Perplexity to Nvidia's investments in its own customers. Nvidia has started discussions to invest in Perplexity's next funding round at a valuation of over $30 billion, according to a report from The Information. The deal would boost the valuation of the AI search startup by more than 50% in a year. It would also provide another Nvidia-backed customer with fresh capital. The talks surfaced on Sunday, sourced to people familiar with the discussions. Perplexity revenue triples while its valuation climbs past $30B The proposed round would value Perplexity at more than $30 billion, up from its $20 billion valuation last September. That is an increase of more than 50% in about a year. Nvidia is pondering whether to join. Both Nvidia and Perplexity declined to comment or did not respond to requests for comment. Perplexity's investors include Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and Japan's SoftBank Group. The company's annualized revenue has grown to over $750 million from less than $250 million at the beginning of the year, tripling in about eight months. Perplexity Computer sells to professionals to automate tasks on their machines. The growing demand for AI search and autonomous agents is feeding investors' appetite. Perplexity is aiming to go public in 2028, a timeline CEO Aravind Srinivas detailed in a June interview. The company would move ahead regardless of how the market treats the planned listings of OpenAI and Anthropic, he said. Regulators flag Nvidia's habit of funding its own customers Nvidia has invested in companies that are also its customers or suppliers. The list includes cloud providers CoreWeave and Nebius and AI data firm Mercor, which is reported to be in talks with Nvidia at a valuation of $20 billion. Critics call the arrangement circular financing. The supplier funds the buyer, the buyer spends that money again on the supplier's products, and demand can look stronger than it is. In its 2026 Annual Report, the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) listed circular financing as one of the three greatest risks to global financial stability. As Cryptopolitan has reported, the Bank of England (BOE) has warned that the speed of AI investment is unprecedented in history. Chips are "productive, they're long-lived, they're fungible, they're flexible," CEO Jensen Huang said of the financing program. The company guarantees up to 25% of its chips' residual value if resale falls short at the end of a Earlier this year, Perplexity agreed to run workloads on Microsoft's Azure for $750 million. The company inked that deal while fighting Amazon in court over shopping features in its AI tools, Cryptopolitan earlier reported. Amazon Web Services would continue to be the company's preferred cloud provider, a Perplexity spokesperson said at the time. Nvidia shares fell 2.16% to $210.09 in Monday afternoon trading, down from Friday's $214.72 close.
Kalshi and Polymarket bets on clinical trials criticized as 'ghastly'
As a soon-to-be seventh grader, Joshua Pederson's son is not exactly brimming with enthusiasm when he talks about the upcoming school year. "The thing I'm looking forward to most in seventh grade is lunch, and the thing I'm looking forward to least is everything else," said the 12-year-old. Art is his passion, but he doesn't take classes. He likes teaching himself. "I like drawing scary stuff and robots," he said. "Because I think scary stuff and robots are cool." Two years ago, his parents, who live in Boston, noticed a lump around his ribs that quickly spiraled into a nightmare scenario: It was cancer. Pederson asked that his son's name be withheld to discuss details of his medical condition. After months of grueling chemotherapy and radiation, he was declared cancer-free last summer. Months later, however, the cancer returned. So Pederson entered his son into a clinical trial for a novel treatment. That's around the time Pederson read the news that prediction market sites Kalshi and Polymarket have begun allowing people to bet on the outcomes of clinical trials and whether the Food and Drug Administration will approve new medications. "What seemed to be missed in the CEO statements was the fact that there were going to be patients on the other side of these bets," said Pederson, who is a humanities professor at Boston University. Bettors will make or lose money based on the success or failure of a clinical trial, a situation Pederson views as horrific. "A clinical trial failing is a more sanitized euphemism for, people are going to suffer, people are going to die, people are going to have one fewer clinical option available to them in one of the most difficult medical situations of their entire life," he said. Researchers fear 'undermining trial integrity' Billions of dollars are traded every week on the lightly regulated prediction market sites, where users bet on everything from movie reviews to elections to conflicts in the Middle East. Clinical trials are just the latest area where the industry's rapid growth is raising ethical questions. Kalshi claims such bets will provide a new source of information about which drugs will get approved, and what clinical trials will show promising results, which the company says can help investors decide what new drugs to fund. "If you want to ban profiting from the failure of clinical trials, you would start with the stock market, where the financial incentive for this type of profit is orders of magnitude larger," said Kalshi spokesman Jack Such, pointing to stock market short sellers who have profited from clinical trial failures. "While Kalshi and the stock market are the same in this regard, they do differ in one important way: the stock market doesn't give any valuable information to researchers," Such said. Drug trial researchers, though, are far from convinced. David Tsai, who runs clinical trials at a biotech company in the San Francisco Bay Area, started an online petition pushing for such betting to be banned, making the case that betting on drug trials "threatens the very foundation of trust and integrity in biotechnology." Tsai is concerned that the prospect of betting provides those involved with a clinical trial a reason to tamper with the results for a prediction market payout. "If we were running a trial for an oncology drug that requires an infusion, a pharmacist who had placed a bet saying that it's gonna work well, or doesn't work well, could obviously adjust the infusion rate, could adjust the source temperature of the drug," he said. "They could change any number of variables that could obviously have a direct impact [on] how the trial and the data and the patient safety would come out." Another skeptic is Nicholas Zaorsky, a professor of radiation oncology at the Mayo Clinic in Jacksonville, Fla., who has helped run clinical trials and agrees that prediction markets can interfere with the advancement of life-saving drugs. "Prediction markets can be valuable in some settings because they aggregate information, but clinical trials are fundamentally different: investigators, coordinators, and sometimes even participants can directly influence aspects of the outcomes being wagered on," Zaorsky said. "That creates financial incentives that risk undermining trial integrity." Patient's father: People betting on trials are 'distanced from the real cost' Kalshi has tapped its own experts, including Anne Wojcicki, the founder of genetic testing company 23andMe, to vouch for the markets as a way of staying ahead of medical breakthroughs and for making clinical trials more accessible. "Most patients don't know about the choices available in clinical trials or which programs are most promising. The opportunity to have an open, transparent dataset about trial probabilities is extremely promising and empowering for people," a white paper sponsored by Kalshi stated. On Kalshi, users can currently bet on whether a weight-loss medication and a breast cancer treatment will be approved by federal regulators and on what date. Polymarket, which declined to comment, is taking wagers on the approval of cancer treatments and whether the U.S. will allow Chinese peptides to be sold to Americans. The possibility of insider trading, Kalshi argues, will be minimized by company safeguards verifying employment and tools to surveil for unusual market activity. Indeed, prediction markets have helped identify insider traders in other markets, from President Trump's teleprompter operator to former Congressman George Santos to a special forces soldier who was betting based on military intelligence about the toppling of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro. Given just how many people can be involved with clinical trials, Tsai thinks it might not be so easy to preemptively catch every bad actor. Pederson is also skeptical. He argues the markets obscure the patients at the center of clinical trials, who have the most at stake from their outcomes. "One of the things that has struck me about these platforms is that they're flashy and they're gamified in such a way that you're often kind of distanced from the real cost," he said. Kalshi says it is offering bets on late-stage clinical trials where participants have already been chosen. And it says it won't allow betting on markets where all trial subjects are minors. But that could change. If it does, Pederson says wondering whether researchers in a trial could be motivated by prediction market profits will add to his anxieties -- and to the burden his son is already carrying. "The weight on him and what he's being asked to do, and what he's being asked to endure, is already so much," Pederson said. He hopes that Kalshi and Polymarket will stop letting speculators place bets that clinical trials won't succeed. Bettors, he argues, should not be rooting for an experimental medicine to fail just to earn a buck. "It's a dark idea," he said. "It's quite ghastly."
Cerebras Systems (CBRS) Revenue Surges: Why Did CBRS Stock Crash, and What About AMD?
On August 12, 2026, Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS) shares tumbled about 14% in extended trading, even after the AI chipmaker's second-quarter revenue rose 74.3% year over year and it raised its full-year guidance for the second time since going public in May 2026. Why This Matters Cerebras positioned itself as a genuine Nvidia challenger at its May 2026 IPO. This quarter's mixed results, a revenue miss paired with a smaller-than-expected loss, test how investors read a business leaning more on cloud revenue than chip sales. That raises the real question: is Cerebras becoming a cloud-services company that happens to make chips, rather than the chip challenger investors bought into? The Bull Case: Cerebras Total second-quarter revenue rose 74.3% year over year to $180.1 million, though that missed the $194.2 million analysts expected, according to LSEG. The adjusted loss narrowed sharply to 5 cents a share, well inside the 17 cents analysts modeled and below the $40.5 million adjusted loss posted a year earlier. CEO Andrew Feldman said AI demand is "through the roof," as fast-inference pricing lifts margins. Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS) raised its full-year core revenue guidance to $880 million to $890 million, up from $855 million to $865 million, and lifted its annual adjusted gross margin target to 41% to 43% from 38% to 41%. The firm ended the quarter with $25.4 billion in remaining performance obligations. OpenAI can now use Cerebras chips for its latest model. Despite the post-earnings slide, shares closed that day at $262.06, still up 42% from the $185 IPO price. The Bear Case: Cerebras The headline number is still unattractive: Cerebras posted a GAAP net loss of $450.5 million for the quarter, compared with a $309.5 million profit a year earlier. Even though most of that swing came from $386.6 million in stock-based compensation costs rather than the underlying business. Hardware sales, including its core AI chips, actually declined to $54.1 million from $70.3 million a year earlier, which means more of Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS)'s growth now comes from renting back its own systems to cloud customers than from selling chips outright. Gross margin fell to 40.6% from 46.5% in the prior quarter for the same reason. Morgan Stanley analysts said "execution remains the key debate" given the scale and speed of the capacity buildout required. Both Citi and Mizuho trimmed their price targets after the results.
Cerebras Systems (CBRS) Revenue Surges: Why Did CBRS Stock Crash, and What About AMD?
On August 12, 2026, Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS) shares tumbled about 14% in extended trading, even after the AI chipmaker's second-quarter revenue rose 74.3% year over year and it raised its full-year guidance for the second time since going public in May 2026. Why This Matters Cerebras positioned itself as a genuine Nvidia challenger at its May 2026 IPO. This quarter's mixed results, a revenue miss paired with a smaller-than-expected loss, test how investors read a business leaning more on cloud revenue than chip sales. That raises the real question: is Cerebras becoming a cloud-services company that happens to make chips, rather than the chip challenger investors bought into? The Bull Case: Cerebras Total second-quarter revenue rose 74.3% year over year to $180.1 million, though that missed the $194.2 million analysts expected, according to LSEG. The adjusted loss narrowed sharply to 5 cents a share, well inside the 17 cents analysts modeled and below the $40.5 million adjusted loss posted a year earlier. CEO Andrew Feldman said AI demand is "through the roof," as fast-inference pricing lifts margins. Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS) raised its full-year core revenue guidance to $880 million to $890 million, up from $855 million to $865 million, and lifted its annual adjusted gross margin target to 41% to 43% from 38% to 41%. The firm ended the quarter with $25.4 billion in remaining performance obligations. OpenAI can now use Cerebras chips for its latest model. Despite the post-earnings slide, shares closed that day at $262.06, still up 42% from the $185 IPO price. The Bear Case: Cerebras The headline number is still unattractive: Cerebras posted a GAAP net loss of $450.5 million for the quarter, compared with a $309.5 million profit a year earlier. Even though most of that swing came from $386.6 million in stock-based compensation costs rather than the underlying business. Hardware sales, including its core AI chips, actually declined to $54.1 million from $70.3 million a year earlier, which means more of Cerebras Systems Inc. (NASDAQ:CBRS)'s growth now comes from renting back its own systems to cloud customers than from selling chips outright. Gross margin fell to 40.6% from 46.5% in the prior quarter for the same reason. Morgan Stanley analysts said "execution remains the key debate" given the scale and speed of the capacity buildout required. Both Citi and Mizuho trimmed their price targets after the results.