News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Anthropic sends top engineers to White House to lift restrictions on its most powerful AI models
Anthropic has reportedly dispatched senior technical staff to Washington as the AI company works to resolve a growing dispute with the Trump administration that resulted in restrictions on some of its most advanced AI models. According to a fresh report by Axios, Anthropic engineers have been holding discussions with White House officials in an effort to address concerns that led to the company's flagship AI models, Claude Mythos 5 and Claude Fable 5, being taken offline. Sources familiar with the matter told the publication that both sides are interested in finding a resolution and restoring normal operations. The development comes just a few days after Anthropic was forced to disable access to the two models following a federal export control order. The order reportedly required the company to prevent non-US nationals from accessing the models, leading to a sudden shutdown of services that had only recently been made available to paying Claude subscribers. Why Anthropic's AI models were taken offline The restrictions stem from concerns raised by the US government over the capabilities and security of Anthropic's latest AI systems. Mythos 5 and Fable 5 belong to the company's "Mythos-class" family of models, which are built on the same technology foundation as Claude Mythos Preview. Anthropic had previously described that earlier model as too powerful for public release because of the potential risks associated with misuse. While Mythos 5 and Fable 5 were introduced with additional safeguards intended to reduce those risks, concerns reportedly emerged shortly after launch. According to earlier reports, several companies, including Amazon, informed White House officials that they had identified ways to bypass some of the models' protections through so-called jailbreak techniques. The concerns appear to have escalated rapidly. Reports suggest that White House officials contacted Anthropic on Friday and warned that keeping the models online posed a national security risk. The company was allegedly given a short window to respond before a formal export control order was delivered. Within hours, access to the models was shut down. Another report from Semafor claimed that US officials were also examining concerns that a group linked to China may have gained access to a Mythos-class model. Anthropic, however, does not officially allow access to its AI systems from China. The latest Axios report suggests the administration was unhappy with Anthropic's initial response to complaints about potential vulnerabilities. That dissatisfaction may have contributed to the unusually aggressive action taken against the company. The situation has quickly become one of the biggest flashpoints in the AI industry, raising questions about how governments will regulate increasingly powerful artificial intelligence systems. It also highlights the growing national security concerns surrounding advanced AI models, particularly those considered capable of handling sensitive cybersecurity-related tasks. Sridhar Vembu urges India to reduce dependence on foreign AI providers The White House action has also triggered reactions from technology leaders outside the US. Zoho founder and chief scientist Sridhar Vembu called the development a major sign that access to advanced technology is increasingly becoming a matter of national security. In a post on X, Vembu wrote, "This is big: all access to Mythos and Fable AI models disabled for everyone outside America." He argued that countries can no longer assume unrestricted access to the world's most advanced technologies. According to Vembu, India should focus on building its own AI capabilities, encourage wider use of Indian and open-source AI models, and deepen domestic research efforts. He also pointed out that training frontier AI models requires enormous computing resources and access to advanced chips, both of which are becoming harder to obtain due to growing geopolitical restrictions. Vembu said the latest developments show how quickly technology and national interests are becoming intertwined. He urged Indian organisations to reduce dependence on foreign AI providers and invest in homegrown alternatives that can continue to operate regardless of global policy changes.
SpaceX's $1.75 Trillion Gamble
"Only when the tide goes out do you discover who's been swimming naked." -- Warren Buffett You've probably heard of SpaceX -- the company launching rockets, sending astronauts to space, and running the Starlink satellite internet service. Now, it's a public company. That means one can buy shares in SpaceX just like one buys shares in Apple or Amazon. But here's the weird part: SpaceX didn't apply to be listed as a spacecraft company. In its official paperwork, it called itself an AI services and infrastructure company. Why would a rocket builder do that? Because the stock market is obsessed with artificial intelligence. By slapping an AI label on itself, SpaceX attracted way more investors and demanded a much higher price. It was a clever trick -- but also a dangerous one. Initial Public Offering Let's break down some basics. An IPO (initial public offering) happens when a private company sells its shares to the general public for the first time. Until recently, SpaceX stayed private, owned only by big investors, employees, and other investors. When a company goes public, only a small portion of its total shares usually hit the market. That small portion is the "free float." Imagine a pizza with 100 slices. If the company listed only four slices for public trading, the free float was 4%. The other 96 slices stayed with founders, early investors, and employees. Why does free float matter? Because when very few shares are available to trade, even a small amount of buying or selling swings the price wildly. That makes the stock risky for everyday people. Most stock market indexes, like the S&P 500, require a free float of at least 10% before they include a company. SpaceX is listed with a free float of only 4% -- extremely low and a clear warning sign. The Quiet Rule Change Normally, a new public company has to wait at least 12 months before joining a major index like the S&P 500 or the Nasdaq-100. That waiting period protects investors -- it gives the market time to figure out the company's real value before retirement funds are forced to buy it. But as SpaceX prepared to go public, the Nasdaq exchange quietly changed its own rules. Now, a company can join the Nasdaq-100 in just 15 days, not three months. And they can join even with a free float below 10%. That meant billions of dollars from index funds were forced to buy SpaceX shares almost immediately after the IPO. Those funds include many people's retirement savings. In the U.S., a common retirement account is a 401(k) -- think of it as a workplace pension plan. American workers put part of their paycheck into a 401(k), and that money often goes into index funds that track the Nasdaq. So when Nasdaq changed its rules, it forced millions of ordinary workers to buy SpaceX shares -- whether those shares were a good deal or not. The Real Financial Picture Now let's look at SpaceX's actual financial health, not the hype. In 2025, SpaceX reported a net loss of nearly $5 billion US dollars. That means it spent about $5 billion more than it earned. Just one year earlier, the company was profitable -- so this was a huge reversal. The only part of SpaceX that makes solid money is Starlink, the satellite internet service. But most of Starlink's profit goes into a separate AI project called Grok, a chatbot that's losing billions. So why did the IPO value the company at an unbelievable $1.75 trillion? That's more than the entire economy of countries like Australia or Spain. The valuation rested almost entirely on AI hype, not on the real rocket business. The Political Payback Here's where the story gets uncomfortable. During the 2024 US presidential election, Elon Musk spent roughly $300 million supporting Donald Trump's campaign. After Trump won, the new administration handed SpaceX a massive government contract worth $4.16 billion from the US Space Force. In fact, government contracts now make up about 20% of its total revenue -- a huge boost just before the IPO. But more directly, at least ten senior officials from Trump's administration got to buy SpaceX shares at a low, private price before the public could. According to financial records, their holdings range from roughly $10 million to over $40 million each. The names include Donald Trump Jr. and others close to the president. When the IPO happened, those shares jumped in price. Those officials then sold and walked away with millions in profit. Many critics call this a pay‑to‑play deal: Musk helped Trump win, and in return, Trump's team cashed in on the SpaceX IPO. Connecting the Dots Let's put it all together. SpaceX renamed itself an AI company to ride the AI bubble -- even though its AI division is losing money. Stock market rules changed to force index funds and retirement accounts to buy SpaceX shares almost immediately. The company has a tiny free float of only 4%, which makes the stock price unstable. And the whole IPO looks like a reward to political insiders who helped Trump win. For ordinary investors -- especially people with retirement savings -- this is a trap. Why SpaceX Is Only the First SpaceX is just the opening act. OpenAI, Anthropic, and other money‑losing AI darlings now line up to follow the same playbook. They rebrand slightly, list with a microscopic free float, and benefit from the same Nasdaq rule changes. The goal: force index funds and 401(k)s to buy their shares before any real profitability exists. This isn't accidental. The AI bubble holds up the entire U.S. stock market -- tech giants like Nvidia, Microsoft, and Google tie their valuations directly to AI hype. If the bubble pops, the American economy crashes with it. So regulators and exchange operators quietly rewrite the rules to pump new AI companies into retirement funds, injecting fresh money into the bubble. They keep it inflated just a little longer. SpaceX tested the model. OpenAI perfects it. And ordinary workers pay the price when the whole thing finally deflates. The Aftermath SpaceX builds amazing rockets. But this IPO wasn't about space travel. It was about using AI hype, changed rules, and political favours to make a small group of people very rich -- at the risk of everyone else's savings. Whether you live in Abuja, London, Tokyo, or Sydney, keep your eyes open. What happens on Wall Street never stays on Wall Street.
Fable 5 wake-up call; Indians chase SpaceX jackpot
Want this newsletter delivered to your inbox? Happy Monday! The Fable 5 disruption has triggered fresh calls for India to build its own AI muscle. This and more in today's ETtech Morning Dispatch. Also in the letter: ■ Househelp discount wars return ■ Indian IT eyes Europe ■ Red Hat's India play Dario Amodei, CEO, Anthropic After a US export-control directive forced Anthropic to cut off foreign users from its latest AI models, Indian founders, investors and AI leaders are sounding the alarm: India cannot keep depending on overseas AI infrastructure. Their message is clear: India needs sovereign AI capabilities of its own - just as it built the Unified Payment Interface (UPI) and Aadhaar instead of relying on imported rails. A new supply chain risk: Also Read: US ban on Anthropic's Fable 5 & Mythos 5 to put Indian IT services firms at competitive disadvantage India's big AI bet: For now, much of India's sovereign AI ambition rides on Sarvam AI, the Bengaluru startup chosen under the IndiaAI Mission to build indigenous foundation models. But the money gap is huge. Sarvam has raised $41 million so far, while OpenAI and Anthropic together have pulled in capital worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Also Read: Anthropic ban: Sarvam AI's Pratyush Kumar warns against reliance on foreign models "We can experiment with new architectures. We can build smaller models. We can build models designed specifically for Indian languages and use cases," says Aakrit Vaish, cofounder, Activate, who was also on the advisor committee of the India AI mission. Why it matters: Indian AI startups building for global markets fear being cut off from cutting-edge models, leaving them on the back foot against US rivals. Also Read: Anthropic's Fable 5 takedown triggers India Inc push for AI self-reliance Elon Musk's rocket company SpaceX has listed in the US -- and Indian investors are taking notice. Data from brokers that enable US stock investing shows a clear spike in interest. Driving the news: Trading volumes on Friday and early Saturday morning in India were up by 20-25% among both new and existing investors. Roughly one in five trades went into SpaceX shares, according to Vested Finance and IndMoney data. Also Read: Elon Musk recalls SpaceX's journey from mere 10% chance of success to the world's biggest IPO What this tells us: Also Read: SpaceX: Five key moments, from first launch to Starship megarocket Long-term view: A more enabling regulatory framework via the GIFT City route is nudging more Indians into global markets. This signals both confidence in India's own growth story and a rising appetite for new-age companies worldwide. The enthusiasm around Indian startup IPOs mirrors this broader shift. Also Read: States challenge Nasdaq, FTSE Russell for fast-tracking SpaceX (L-R) Urban Company's Abhiraj Bhal, Snabbit's Aayush Aggarwal and Pronto's Anjali Sardana India's instant househelp startups are back to spending aggressively to win customers. Urban Company, Snabbit, and Pronto ramped up discounts in May after briefly dialling back incentives in April amid a worker shortage. What's happening? The trio's combined monthly cash burn jumped about 25% month-on-month to $14-15 million in May, up from $10-12 million in April, according to industry executives. The catch: That extra spend hasn't delivered a big demand spike. Sector reset: A labour crunch had briefly choked supply, forcing companies to raise prices in some markets. As worker availability improved in May, platforms swung back to aggressive customer acquisition via discounts and offers. For example: Also Read: Optimising to win, capture market share in InstaHelp: Urban Company CEO Bhal as firm reports 57x jump in net loss Europe becomes Indian IT's fastest-growing market: Europe is emerging as the next big growth market for Indian IT services, accounting for over a third of the new delivery centres opened by top firms last fiscal, as it continues to outpace North America. Red Hat sees an opening as Indian enterprises turn to AI sovereignty: Red Hat is seeing rising demand for its open-source stack from Indian enterprises that want tighter control over AI and cloud infrastructure, amid mounting worries about tech sovereignty, data governance and vendor lock-in, a senior executive said. AI workloads push data centres to upgrade fire and cooling systems: Data centres are racing to strengthen fire safety, cooling and electrical infrastructure to protect operations from sudden failures as AI-driven loads surge, said industry executives and analysts. ■ What the SpaceX IPO reveals about Gulf money in AI (Rest of World) ■ Meta Employees Absolutely Hate Mark Zuckerberg's Plan for a Companywide AI Hackathon (Wired) ■ AI riches turn Samsung factory town into luxury hotspot (FT) Explore other editions Updated On Jun 15, 2026, 07:03 AM IST
SpaceX's IPO is a done deal. What to expect down the road. | Mint
Astera Labs, up almost 300% year to date, and Reddit both experienced significant post-IPO volatility before long-term success. With SpaceX debuting on public markets Friday and rival AI giants entering the IPO pipeline, 2026 could become one of the most consequential years for capital markets in decades. Just in the past couple of weeks, OpenAI confidentially filed for a U.S. initial public offering shortly after Anthropic did the same, setting the stage for a trio of megacap listings that may collectively command valuations in the trillions. What's less discussed is how such outsize capital requirements, whether from record-setting proceeds at SpaceX or massive new share issuance from AI lab IPOs, could draw considerable liquidity and investor attention toward these flagship offerings at the expense of other market opportunities. For investors, the most important question isn't just valuation, it's precedent. They should remember that even the most anticipated megacap IPOs often experience sharp pullbacks after their initial surge. Reddit, a communication services company that also went public in March 2024, has experienced similarly sharp swings, much like Astera Labs. The early post-IPO period was marked by heavy volatility and wide price discovery. Looking at the weekly chart, the stock opened its first two weeks with a doji followed by a bearish shooting star, which quickly set a volatile tone as the price dropped from about $75 to $37 in just five weeks. A bullish morning star formed in the last week of April 2024, helping to stabilize the decline, with subsequent lows marked by a doji in August 2024 and a bullish piercing line in April 2025. On the upside, a peak was signaled by a bearish dark cloud cover, which also coincided with the development of a rising wedge beginning in February 2025. As with many new issues, patience after the first few weeks often proves rewarding, as the initial enthusiasm and forced flows subside and a more durable trend begins to take shape. I expect SpaceX to encounter a similar path to ALAB and RDDT. An initial surge followed by a few soft weeks, but long-term success mirroring those two, both of which were much higher a year after going public.
US Shuts Anthropic's Mythos 5 And Fable 5 To The World, AI Nationalism Begins
How Anthropic's Fable 5 And Mythos 5 Ban Sparks Global Debate On Tech Sovereignty (Image credit: AI-generated) The tech world has faced a dramatic shift to Anthropic's plan this week. People across the world, including India, have suddenly lost access to Anthropic's most advanced AI models, Mythos 5 and Fable 5, after the Trump-led government ordered the tech giant to stop offering the technology to foreign nationals. This directive was issued on June 12, citing national security concerns, affecting who can use the models. This move shows how governments have started to treat powerful AI models as strategic assets rather than ordinary software.
Dow Jones Top Company Headlines at 9 PM ET: Anthropic Dispatches Staff to D.C., Racing to Resolve AI Export Restrictions | How ...
Anthropic Dispatches Staff to D.C., Racing to Resolve AI Export Restrictions Startup is seeking a deal to end export restrictions that led to shutdown of its most powerful AI models. ---- How Edikted Built a Teen Sensation on Crop Tops and Miniskirts The fast-fashion company uses vast consumer data to produce 300 new styles a month and makes its stores feel like a party for shoppers. ---- Australia's Sigma Withdraws Interest in U.K. Retailer Boots Australia's Sigma Healthcare withdrew its interest in acquiring Boots, saying a deal for the U.K. drugstore chain wouldn't meet its strategic or capital-investment objectives. ---- Amazon CEO's Talks With U.S. Officials Triggered Crackdown on Anthropic Models Information Andy Jassy shared with the Trump administration sparked an abrupt, sweeping move to halt foreign access to the company's powerful AI tools. ---- Justice Department Clears Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery Deal The $81 billion acquisition by Paramount still requires approval from European regulators. ---- The 70-Year Marriage Between McDonald's and Coke Has Some Issues Changing consumer tastes and increasing competition challenge one of the most successful and oldest corporate partnerships ---- SpaceX, Now Worth $2.1 Trillion, Pulls Off Goldilocks Debut Elon Musk became the world's first trillionaire as investors bought into the moonshot AI vision in a remarkably smooth IPO. ---- OpenAI Investigated by Coalition of State Attorneys General The company was served with a subpoena seekingr documents covering a wide range of its activities and impact on users. ---- BlackRock Private-Credit Fund Faces 13% Redemption Requests Shareholders asked to redeem more than last quarter, though withdrawals will be capped at 5% again. ---- Jeep Owners Face Growing Recall Reality: Park Outside, in Case of Vehicle Fires The automaker's latest park-outside fire recall campaign now includes one million Jeep vehicles. ---- Chinese Connected-Car Software Ban Shows Cracks A federal push to keep adversary-linked software out of smart vehicles on U.S. roads has "meaningful gaps," cybersecurity experts say. ---- Sleep Number Files for Bankruptcy, Plans to Combine With Sleep Country Canada Mattress maker Sleep Number has filed for chapter 11 bankruptcy with a deal in hand to be acquired by Sleep Country Canada for $415 million. ---- JBS to Close Beef Plant in Pennsylvania The world's largest meatpacker, is preparing to close a beef-processing plant in Pennsylvania, the latest facility to close as a cattle shortage in the U.S. squeezes meatpacking companies. ---- Bath & Body Works' Plan to Win More Younger Consumers The company's CEO Daniel Heaf says he wants to improve products, hire more influencers, update stores and revamp digital sales. ---- A Struggling Motorcycle Brand Wants to Start a Culture War With Harley-Davidson Indian Motorcycle says its anti-DEI marketing isn't political, but some of its own riders reject the campaign (END) Dow Jones Newswires June 14, 2026 21:15 ET (01:15 GMT) Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Anthropic staff to meet White House officials next week: Report
Senior Anthropic officials are in Washington to meet White House representatives. This meeting aims to resolve a dispute that has led to the shutdown of the company's advanced AI models. The models Fable 5 and Mythos 5 were affected by a Trump administration order. Anthropic responded by disabling global access to these models. Senior Anthropic technical staff are in Washington to meet with White House officials to try resolving a dispute that has taken the company's most advanced AI models offline, Axios reported on Sunday, citing a source close to the company. Reuters could not immediately verify the report. Anthropic and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment. Anthropic's technical staff have held virtual meetings with White House officials since the Trump administration's initial outreach on Friday, the report said. The Trump administration ordered Anthropic to block any foreign nationals, whether inside or outside the U.S., from using its latest models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, the company said. In response, Anthropic said it would disable access to the models globally. The San Francisco-based AI startup, which has confidentially filed for a US initial public offering, had previously warned about the hacking capabilities of its Mythos model and held it back from wide release. Earlier this week, Anthropic rolled out a public version, called Fable, that included what it described as cybersecurity safeguards.
OpenAI Price War With Anthropic Could Reshape AI Costs, but DeepSeek Already Set the Floor - Memeburn
Enterprise AI spending is spiraling out of control, with Uber burning through its entire 2026 AI budget by April and JP Morgan analysts warning that corporate token bills are unsustainable. The biggest AI companies in the world are about to go to war over pricing, and the timing could not be more awkward. OpenAI is reportedly considering significant reductions to the token prices it charges developers and enterprises, according to the Wall Street Journal. The cuts would be a direct response to Anthropic's rapid capture of corporate customers, particularly through its breakout coding agent Claude Code. But neither company has turned a profit, both have filed confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC, and Chinese open-source alternatives already offer frontier-quality AI at a tiny fraction of the cost. The question is no longer whether AI pricing will come down. It is whether the two most valuable AI startups on Earth can survive the fall. Why OpenAI Is Considering Price Cuts Now The pressure on OpenAI is mounting from multiple directions. Anthropic's annualized revenue reportedly grew more than fivefold in under six months, jumping to an estimated $47 billion by May 2026 from roughly $9 billion at the close of 2025. The catalyst behind that explosive growth was Claude Code, the company's AI coding agent that became a must-have tool across enterprise engineering teams. The talent pipeline has followed the money, with former OpenAI founding member Andrej Karpathy joining Anthropic in late May. Q2 2026 marked Anthropic's first profitable quarter, a milestone that OpenAI has yet to reach. Meanwhile, OpenAI's own financial position tells a very different story. The company posted a negative 122% adjusted operating margin in Q1 2026, effectively spending more than double what it earned on every dollar of revenue. ChatGPT's share of global generative AI web traffic declined by nearly 24 percentage points between May 2025 and April 2026, falling to just 53.7%, according to Decrypt. For the first time, more companies tracked by the Ramp AI Index are paying for Anthropic than for OpenAI, a shift that would have been unthinkable just a year ago. Sam Altman acknowledged the tension publicly. At a recent event, he said OpenAI would find "a lot of ways we can help people get more value for less spend," according to the Wall Street Journal. The IPO Problem With Cutting Prices Both companies are heading toward the public markets at historically high valuations. OpenAI's most recent private valuation hit $852 billion in March 2026, a dramatic leap for a company that turned down a $97.4 billion acquisition offer just months earlier. Anthropic closed a record-breaking $65 billion Series H funding round in late May that pushed its valuation to $965 billion, surpassing OpenAI for the first time. Deliberately slashing the price of your core product right before going public is an unusual strategy. Wall Street typically wants to see revenue growth and a clear path to profitability, not a margin-crushing price war. The counterargument is that lower prices could accelerate adoption, lock in more developers on OpenAI's platform, and ultimately drive higher aggregate revenue through volume. But as one Bloomberg analysis warned, mutual price cuts could be devastating for both firms, given that neither has demonstrated sustainable profitability. Together, OpenAI and Anthropic are projected to spend nearly $65 billion in 2026 alone on computing, training, and operations. DeepSeek and the Open-Source Floor This is where the narrative gets uncomfortable for both Western AI labs. DeepSeek, the Chinese AI company that disrupted the industry in early 2025 with its open-source models, has already demonstrated that frontier-quality AI does not have to cost what OpenAI and Anthropic charge. The gap is so extreme that it has even spawned underground markets reselling Western AI access at steep discounts, further eroding the pricing power of U.S. labs. The official pricing difference is staggering: * DeepSeek V4 Flash costs $0.14 per million input tokens and $0.28 per million output tokens * OpenAI's GPT-5.5 costs $5 per million input tokens and $30 per million output tokens * Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7 costs $5 per million input tokens and $25 per million output tokens That makes DeepSeek roughly 36 times cheaper on input and over 100 times cheaper on output compared to GPT-5.5, according to AI Pricing Guru. For enterprises processing hundreds of millions of tokens monthly, the savings are measured in the hundreds of thousands of dollars. Open-source inference providers compound the advantage. Because Chinese labs release their model weights freely, inference providers do not pay licensing fees. As Tommy Shaughnessy of Delphi Ventures noted in a widely shared analysis, "The model is the single biggest cost an inference provider has, and they get it for free." As long as China's AI labs keep open-sourcing frontier-grade models, the floor on AI pricing will keep falling toward zero. Any margin recovery at OpenAI or Anthropic becomes what Shaughnessy called "a math problem with no clean solution." The Tokenmaxxing Hangover The price war discussion is arriving at a moment when enterprises are already in crisis over AI costs. The industry coined the term "tokenmaxxing" to describe the practice of burning through as many AI tokens as possible, often without measuring return on investment. What started as an aggressive adoption strategy has turned into a budget nightmare: * Uber burned through its entire 2026 AI coding budget by April, driven largely by Claude Code usage * Microsoft cancelled internal Claude Code licenses for employees in several product divisions, redirecting engineers to its own GitHub Copilot CLI * Amazon reportedly had employees spinning up meaningless AI tasks to inflate usage stats on internal leaderboards * One unnamed company reportedly received a Claude invoice exceeding $500 million for a single month after neglecting to configure usage caps * JP Morgan analysts published a note titled "AI Bills Are Out of Control," warning that corporate token spending was unsustainable According to J.R. Storment, executive director of the FinOps Foundation, companies started calling in April saying they were already three times over their entire 2026 token budget. In response, the Linux Foundation announced plans for a Tokenomics Foundation to bring cost discipline to AI spending. Palantir CEO Alex Karp went further, comparing the tokenmaxxing phenomenon to an addiction during his AIPCon appearance. What Happens Next The AI industry appears to be entering a new phase where pricing power, not model performance, will determine market share. Google has already moved aggressively, slashing its consumer AI Plus subscription from $7.99 to $4.99 per month. If OpenAI follows through with deep API price cuts, Anthropic will likely match them, creating exactly the kind of deflationary spiral that investors fear. For developers and enterprises, cheaper tokens would be welcome. But for investors evaluating IPO valuations north of $800 billion for companies that have never turned a sustained profit, the math becomes increasingly difficult. The irony, as several analysts have pointed out, is that DeepSeek proved this was coming over a year ago. The company showed the world that frontier-quality AI could be built and served for a fraction of what Western labs were charging. OpenAI and Anthropic are now fighting a pricing battle that open-source models already won. The only scenario that changes this trajectory, according to Shaughnessy's analysis, is if China's labs reverse course and go closed-source, which would remove the cost floor that open-source models have established. So far, there are no signs of that happening. FAQs Why is OpenAI considering cutting its token prices? OpenAI is weighing price reductions because Anthropic has been rapidly winning enterprise customers, particularly through its Claude Code coding agent. Anthropic's annualized revenue reportedly grew from $9 billion to $47 billion in just five months, and more companies tracked by the Ramp AI Index now pay for Anthropic than for OpenAI. The proposed cuts are a defensive move to retain market share ahead of both companies' expected IPOs. How much cheaper is DeepSeek compared to OpenAI and Anthropic? DeepSeek's models are dramatically cheaper than Western alternatives. DeepSeek V4 Flash costs approximately $0.14 per million input tokens, compared to $5 per million for both OpenAI's GPT-5.5 and Anthropic's Claude Opus 4.7. On output tokens, DeepSeek charges $0.28 per million versus $30 for GPT-5.5 and $25 for Claude Opus 4.7. This makes DeepSeek roughly 36 to 107 times cheaper depending on the token type. What is tokenmaxxing and why does it matter? Tokenmaxxing is a practice where employees and teams consume as many AI tokens as possible, frequently with no measurable productivity gain to show for it. The term gained traction in 2026 after companies including Amazon, Uber, and Meta deployed internal leaderboards that tracked token consumption as a proxy for productivity. The resulting spending explosion has pushed many enterprises to rethink their AI budgets, with some exceeding their annual token budgets within the first four months of 2026. Could an AI price war affect OpenAI's and Anthropic's IPO plans? Yes. Both companies have filed confidential IPO paperwork with the SEC, with OpenAI valued at $852 billion and Anthropic at $965 billion. A price war could compress revenue and margins at precisely the moment when public market investors expect growth and a path to profitability. OpenAI is not expected to reach profitability until approximately 2030, while Anthropic projects breakeven around 2028. Will AI token prices keep falling? Multiple factors suggest prices will continue declining. Open-source Chinese models provide frontier-quality performance at a fraction of Western pricing, and inference cost improvements driven by hardware advances are expected to reduce costs further. Gartner estimates that by 2030, inference on large models will cost AI firms nearly 90% less than in 2025. However, analysts warn that cheaper per-token prices may not translate to lower total bills, because agentic AI systems consume far more tokens per task than traditional models.
Mag 7? MANGOS? SpaceX forces name rethink on Wall Street's tech-stock moniker By Reuters
June 13 (Reuters) - SpaceX roared into markets this past week with a valuation of more than $2 trillion, surpassing two members of Wall Street's "Magnificent Seven" and raising a key question: Does the Mag 7 name still fit? And if not, what should replace it? The IPO, the biggest in U.S. history, vaulted SpaceX's value above two Mag 7 members: CEO Elon Musk's other company, Tesla, and Meta Platforms. With trillion-dollar contenders such as OpenAI and Anthropic waiting in the IPO wings, the club may soon need a name change, analysts said. With SpaceX's arrival, "it becomes very hard to keep using Mag 7 as the clean shorthand for market leadership because one of the most important companies in the world would immediately be outside the label," said Shay Boloor, chief market strategist at Futurum Equities. These groupings are not formal market categories, but shorthand labels coined by strategists, investors and the media to capture the hottest big stocks at a given moment. Such monikers have a long history, ranging from the "Nifty 50" of the 1960s and 1970s to the "Four Horsemen" of the late 1990s dot-com boom. The SpaceX IPO has set off a race to devise the next cool acronym. One sobriquet gaining traction on X is "MANGOS", which stands for Meta, Anthropic, Nvidia, Alphabet, OpenAI and SpaceX. That grouping is far from standardized, with some interpreting the "A" as Apple, currently the third most-valuable U.S.-listed firm. "We are already referring to it internally and the industry is picking up on it as well," said Aga Kuplinska, SVP of product development at Tidal Financial Group, which helps asset managers roll out ETFs. Dan Boardman-Weston, CEO at BRI Wealth Management, is going another way, suggesting "Magna Atoms" - the Magnificent Seven plus SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic. THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN RIDE The "Magnificent Seven" term was coined by BofA Global Research Chief Investment Strategist Michael Hartnett in late 2023 to describe seven heavyweight technology-related stocks: Nvidia, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Meta, Tesla and Microsoft. With an AI boom driving stock markets to record highs and the sudden appearance of new trillion-dollar companies, the leaderboard is often in a state of flux. In a May 22 note, BofA wrote about the "AI Big 10," adding Broadcom, Micron Technology and Advanced Micro Devices to the original seven, reflecting the semiconductor rally of the past year. That group accounts for more than 40% of the S&P 500's weight, according to LSEG data. The labels have evolved before - from FANG to FAANG to the Magnificent Seven - each tracking shifts in companies that led the market. FANG covered Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google. FAANG added Apple, and Magnificent Seven dropped Netflix while adding Microsoft, Nvidia and Tesla, each shift reflecting changes at the top of the market. "It's been Mag 7 for several years now. Maybe the markets are excited for something new," said Dustin Thackeray, chief investment officer at Crewe Advisors. To be sure, not everyone expects the old label to ride off into the sunset. "The Magnificent Seven label is not going away," said Dave Mazza, CEO of Roundhill Investments. "It is too embedded in how investors and the media view large-cap tech leadership. What you will likely see is additive terminology rather than replacement."
Anthropic disables top-tier AI models after US order limiting foreign access By Reuters
By Mrinmay Dey, Jeffrey Dastin and Chris Thomas June 12 (Reuters) - Anthropic said on Friday it will "abruptly disable" its most advanced AI models for all users after the U.S. government ordered it to suspend access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns. The company received the export control directive to suspend access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all foreign nationals, without being given specific details of its national security concern, Anthropic said in a statement. It is Anthropic's understanding that the government believes there is a method of bypassing, or "jailbreaking," a safeguard that would prevent Fable 5 from being used in identifying software vulnerabilities, the company said. The order comes just as a previous dispute between Trump administration officials and IPO-bound Anthropic showed signs of easing across parts of the U.S. government. Anthropic's relationship with the government ruptured this year after it refused to allow the U.S. military to use its AI models for domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons systems. The government responded by putting Anthropic on a supply chain blacklist, set to take effect later in the year. The action also marks a major escalation of U.S. efforts to halt foreign adversaries' AI capabilities. For years, U.S. export controls have focused on the chips and tools that power AI rather than on restricting foreign access to AI itself. Anthropic said the government has given it only "verbal evidence of a potential narrow, non-universal jailbreak". "We disagree that the finding of a narrow potential jailbreak should be cause for recalling a commercial model deployed to hundreds of millions of people," the company said. The government directive and Anthropic's response highlight growing tension between AI developers and regulators over how to assess risks from so-called "jailbreaks," or methods used to bypass model safeguards. As recently as Wednesday, Anthropic had called for greater U.S. oversight of AI, including the ability to block models with unacceptable risks. It said, however, the government action on Friday did not follow principles of fair and fact-based regulation. The Pentagon's chief information officer, Kirsten Davies, said in a post on X that the Defense Department supported prioritizing national security. "Some things are simply more important than revenue cycles, clickbait, and pre-IPO valuation. America First. Always," Davies said. Anthropic confidentially filed for a U.S. IPO last month, edging ahead of rival OpenAI in the race to reach public markets. SOPHISTICATED CYBERATTACKS Earlier this week, Anthropic rolled out an AI model named Claude Fable 5, representing a new tier of capability it calls "Mythos-class." The model is accompanied by guardrails barring its use in risky areas such as cybersecurity, which some users have complained are "overly broad," Anthropic said. Experts have said that Mythos models, in the wrong hands, could dramatically accelerate sophisticated cyberattacks, particularly in sectors such as banking that rely on complex, interconnected, and often decades-old technology systems. Anthropic said it had worked with the U.S. government, among others, on safety ahead of the Fable launch and that models from rival AI providers showed a similar ability to unearth minor bugs in code. "The net effect of this order is that we must abruptly disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for all our customers to ensure compliance. Access to all other Anthropic models will not be affected," Anthropic said. Anthropic said that it believed there was a "misunderstanding" and that it is working to restore access to the models as soon as possible. "If this standard was applied across the industry, we believe it would essentially halt all new model deployments for all frontier model providers," the company said. Amazon's cloud unit AWS said late on Friday that Anthropic has asked it to revoke access to the models for "all users in all regions." A U.S. official confirmed that the Commerce Department had issued an export control directive to suspend all access to Fable 5 and Mythos 5 by foreign nationals. Dean Ball, a former White House official who contributed to the AI Action Plan the administration issued in the summer of 2025, said in a post on X that the order suggests all "non-Americans" would be restricted from using Anthropic's latest models, including those based in the U.S. "This means you should expect to have to prove your citizenship to use Anthropic models," Ball said. Several key Anthropic personnel, including co-founder Chris Olah, AI researcher Andrej Karpathy and philosopher Amanda Askell, were born outside the United States. Reuters was unable to determine their citizenship status, and an Anthropic spokesperson declined to comment on whether such staff would lose AI model access.
US order cutting access to Anthropic's AI models sparks criticism
NEW YORK - The US government's order for Anthropic to withdraw its most powerful artificial intelligence models has sparked a wave of criticism from both advocates and opponents of AI regulation. On Friday evening, the San Francisco-based company announced that the US Department of Commerce had ordered it to suspend Mythos 5 and Fable 5 for "national security" reasons, without providing further details. Unlike Mythos 5, which was unrestricted and available only to a small number of partners, Fable 5 was heavily protected to prevent any major misuse, particularly for cyberattacks or the development of chemical and biological weapons. But Anthropic said an organization -- whose identity it didn't disclose -- reported to the Trump administration that it had found a way to bypass safeguards designed to prevent Fable 5 from being used for a cyberattack. Anthropic described the loophole discovered by this third party -- identified by several media outlets as Amazon -- as "narrow" and said the software vulnerabilities it exposed were "minor." The directive applied only to access by foreign nationals, but Anthropic said it was unable to distinguish among users based on nationality and was therefore forced to take its models offline. A government's outright ban on an advanced AI model developed by a domestic company is unprecedented. China blocks access to the most capable Western AI models and imposes restrictions on major domestic AI companies, but those restrictions are generally built into the models before they are released. - An 'impulsive' decision - Entrepreneur Martin Varsavsky said the implications of the order are "enormous." Any startup "making frontier models is at the mercy of the government," he commented on X. "Therefore, the order doesn't just punish Anthropic. It changes the rules for the entire industry." Researcher Gary Marcus said he saw the United States and China battling to a "tie" in the AI race -- until Friday's government announcement. "It didn't occur to me the Trump administration could trip the US efforts from behind," Marcus said. "But it just did." Some observers argue that Anthropic bears considerable responsibility for its predicament after it had warned for years about the risks associated with the most advanced AI models. On Wednesday, Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei once again called for policymakers to "activate a slow and rickety policy apparatus to deal with risks and opportunities that are going to compound surprisingly quickly from here." Several of President Trump's supporters who, until only a few weeks ago, strongly opposed AI regulation -- - much like the Trump administration itself -- - have attempted to defend the directive. Among them are influential investor Marc Andreessen and former White House AI adviser David Sacks. Others, however, including former Trump AI adviser Dean Ball, accused them of intellectual dishonesty, noting that they had fiercely criticized regulatory efforts under former president Joe Biden. The pro-regulation group Americans for Responsible Innovation argued that decisions of this magnitude should not be made "impulsively" or be subject to "political favoritism." Anthropic is currently at odds with the Trump administration, which has terminated all of its government contracts with the company. Many observers agree that AI has entered a new era requiring greater government involvement, but they strongly objected to the manner in which the action is carried out. "In a functioning administration, nobody would have ever been blindsided by an action like this," said Ben Murphy of the Institute for Progress, a think tank focused on emerging technologies. "The government simply would have just requested that Anthropic do additional testing or add more safeguards before release," he wrote on X. AI's rapid acceleration and the concentration of influence in the hands of a few companies have caught governments off guard, said Mona Sloane, a professor at the University of Virginia. That means that "it is possible that we will see" government-imposed suspensions of AI models again, she said.
Kevin O'Leary Says Trying To Pick Between OpenAI, Anthropic And SpaceX IPOs Is A Mistake: 'Buy Them All'
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Investor Kevin O'Leary said investors should avoid trying to predict a single winner among the highly anticipated IPOs of OpenAI, Anthropic and SpaceX, arguing that owning all three may be the smarter long-term bet. O'Leary Calls For Diversification As AI IPO Wave Approaches Speaking on Fox and later elaborating in a post on X, the "Shark Tank" investor said the race among leading artificial intelligence companies is too uncertain to justify betting on just one name. "Don't try and pick winners because you have no idea," O'Leary said. Instead, he suggested treating the companies as a sector-wide investment opportunity and building diversified exposure across the group. His comments come as OpenAI filed confidentially for an initial public offering, joining Anthropic and Elon Musk's SpaceX among the most closely watched potential listings on Wall Street. Why O'Leary Likes SpaceX, Anthropic And OpenAI O'Leary described SpaceX as both a bet on Musk and on Starlink, the satellite internet business that he said is already generating profits. "Buying a piece of Elon has never been a bad investment, period," he said, praising Musk's track record of executing ambitious projects. He also highlighted Anthropic's growing appeal, revealing that he rolled out Claude across his organization after allowing employees to evaluate competing AI tools. "I use it every day. I really like it," O'Leary said, adding that Anthropic currently appears to be performing strongly in the AI software race. While he did not single out OpenAI's products, O'Leary said the ChatGPT maker remains one of the most important companies in the industry and deserves consideration alongside its rivals. With companies like SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI potentially heading toward IPOs, investors are already debating which one will be the biggest winner. My view is that trying to pick a single champion is a mistake. SpaceX gives you exposure to Elon Musk and the success of... pic.twitter.com/TMbgKYGEC2 -- Kevin O'Leary aka Mr. Wonderful (@kevinolearytv) June 10, 2026 Trending: Avoid the #1 Investing Mistake: How Your 'Safe' Holdings Could Be Costing You Big Time IPO Enthusiasm Grows As Warren Raises Concerns The expected listings have generated significant investor excitement, with SpaceX reportedly valued at roughly $1.8 trillion and Anthropic near $965 billion.
Anthropic Suspension Controversy
The sudden suspension of Anthropic's newest AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, marks a turning point in the global technology race. Only days after launch, the US government ordered Anthropic to block access to the models for foreign nationals, citing national security concerns. Anthropic responded by disabling the models globally, arguing that selective enforcement was practically impossible. To subscribe please click here
Morning Wrap: ASX 200 to rise as S&P 500 climbs on SpaceX debut and US-Iran announce peace deal
Major US benchmarks closed higher and near session highs as Iran peace hopes and SpaceX's debut buoyed risk appetite Strong breadth with all sectors (except Healthcare) higher, Equal-weight S&P 500 (+0.91%) outperformed the cap-weighted benchmark by 41 bps SpaceX's record listing reopens the mega-IPO window, with former Nasdaq chief Robert Greifeld predicting OpenAI and Anthropic could follow with public debuts this year (YF) Chip and AI names were mixed, with pressure on ASML, Super Micro and Marvell, while Schwab strategists noted nearly half of 2026 US earnings growth is concentrated in tech (SCFR) Big stock swings signal choppy markets, driven by AI jitters and major IPOs influencing index movements (WSJ) Global banks limit hedge funds' leveraged bets on SK Hynix and Samsung amid concerns after rally and recent volatility(BBG) US bank stocks hit record high on Iran deal momentum, upcoming IPOs (BBG)
.jpg)
SpaceX Bars China and Hong Kong Investors From Its Record IPO, Citing US Export Rules
The exclusion ties to ITAR defense rules, and analysts call it a sign of US-China decoupling. SpaceX, Elon Musk's space company, has excluded investors from mainland China and Hong Kong from what is set to be the largest IPO in history -- a rare restriction that several analysts read as a sign that the separation between the U.S. and China is spreading from trade into capital markets. The company is listing today on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX, priced at $135 a share for a valuation near $1.75 trillion, with lead banks including Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citi. Underwriters were instructed not to accept orders from investors in mainland China and Hong Kong, including private-banking clients, citing regulatory and compliance risks. The move -- first reported by Bloomberg and Reuters on June 5 as SpaceX began its roadshow, and followed up by the New York Times on June 11 -- is described as the first known instance of investors from those regions being effectively shut out of a major U.S. IPO. What ITAR Is, and Why It Forces the Issue The stated driver is U.S. export control. SpaceX's rockets and satellites fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations, or ITAR -- the U.S. rules that govern sensitive defense and aerospace technology and classify items like its Falcon and Starship rockets alongside military hardware. Because ITAR can impose strict compliance obligations and penalties around who gains access to controlled technology and the companies that build it, the underwriters' simplest way to manage that risk is to screen orders by jurisdiction and reject those from mainland China and Hong Kong. Users in those regions trying to reach SpaceX's website have reportedly been met with an "Error 1009" block. The restriction also fits a broader U.S. push, on national-security grounds, to tighten investment and technology transfer to China across advanced sectors including AI, aerospace, and semiconductors. It is worth noting the barrier is not entirely one-directional. Foreign investment is itself tightly restricted or off-limits in China's own space sector, which is closely regulated by the country's military -- so neither country currently grants the other open access to its most sensitive aerospace assets. How Beijing and Chinese Analysts See It From the other side, the curbs have drawn pushback. China Daily, a state-run outlet, reported that Chinese experts called the restrictions "baseless," describing them as a case of "capital decoupling" in which the U.S. is extending national-security concerns from physical technology into the capital markets themselves. Those experts argued the curbs could raise fundraising costs for U.S. companies that lose Asian capital, while urging Chinese firms to take note of the trend without pulling back from global markets. The framing of the moment as "decoupling" is contested and depends heavily on who is describing it; what is not in dispute is that a large pool of Asian capital has been formally locked out of a marquee listing. Why This Looks Like a Template, Not a One-Off The pattern extends beyond SpaceX. OpenAI, which filed confidentially for its own listing this month and is targeting a valuation of up to $1 trillion, is among the strategic-technology firms expected to face similar restrictions on Chinese capital when it reaches public markets; Anthropic, which filed on June 1, sits in a comparable position. Because all three have defense or national-security exposure through government work, observers expect the SpaceX approach -- underwriters screening out Chinese and Hong Kong orders -- to recur. A former White House technology-policy official told the New York Times the move is a clear signal that the U.S.-China split is underway not just in trade, but in technology and capital. The Access Gap Becomes Its Own Market Shut out of direct participation, Chinese investors have been chasing the listing by proxy. Reporting describes a scramble into Chinese aerospace firms and potential SpaceX subcontractors such as satellite-antenna makers, commercial-space ETFs, and offshore brokerage accounts -- and, more strikingly, into crypto-based instruments built to mimic exposure. These products are typically tokenized stakes in special-purpose vehicles, or tokens that simply track a company's value without conferring shares or voting rights. To buy them, many investors first convert renminbi into stablecoins such as USDT, a step that itself runs against Beijing's ban on converting fiat currency into crypto, then purchase the tokens on offshore platforms. The result is that the access gap itself becomes a market opportunity, with intermediaries selling synthetic exposure to the very deal those buyers cannot legally join. For SpaceX, the exclusion is a calculated trade-off rather than an existential one: U.S., European, Japanese, Korean, and other Asian capital remains fully accessible, and the offering has been reported as heavily oversubscribed. But as the first major U.S. listing to draw the line this explicitly -- with OpenAI and Anthropic lined up behind it -- the deal may be remembered less for its record size than for what it signals about how strategic American technology will go public in an era of restricted investment. Frequently Asked Questions Why are Chinese investors barred from the SpaceX IPO? SpaceX's underwriters instructed banks not to accept orders from investors in mainland China and Hong Kong, citing U.S. export-control compliance. Because SpaceX's rockets and satellites fall under the International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR), screening out investors from those jurisdictions is a way to limit the legal risk those defense-technology rules create. What is ITAR? The International Traffic in Arms Regulations are U.S. rules that govern the export and handling of defense and aerospace technology, classifying items such as rockets and certain satellites alongside military hardware. Companies subject to ITAR face strict compliance obligations, which is why SpaceX's banks moved to restrict who could buy into the offering. How big is the SpaceX IPO? SpaceX is listing on Nasdaq under the ticker SPCX at $135 per share, valuing the company near $1.75 trillion and raising roughly $75 billion -- which would make it the largest initial public offering in history, surpassing Saudi Aramco's 2019 record. Some analysts, including Morningstar, have argued the valuation runs well ahead of the company's fundamentals. Are other companies expected to restrict Chinese investors too? Possibly. OpenAI and Anthropic have both filed confidentially for IPOs and, like SpaceX, have national-security exposure through government work. Observers expect that strategic-technology listings of this kind may apply similar underwriter restrictions on Chinese and Hong Kong capital, which is why the SpaceX deal is being viewed as a potential template.
With smooth SpaceX debut, Wall Street sets new template for mega IPOs By Reuters
By Anirban Sen, Nivedita Balu and Saeed Azhar NEW YORK, June 12 (Reuters) - A collective sigh of relief swept across Wall Street after trading for SpaceX's landmark Nasdaq launch went smoothly, setting a new template for the trading firms and exchanges that are bracing for the giant IPOs of OpenAI and Anthropic later this year. SpaceX's record-breaking debut on Friday dwarfed the previous largest flotation on U.S. exchanges by nearly three times. The sheer size of the launch had worried market participants who had lingering bad memories from the disastrous stock market debut of Facebook in 2012. However, trading systems at the banks underwriting the IPO, exchanges, market makers, clearinghouses, and other market infrastructure firms held up to the challenge of processing millions of client orders. "People go back to the Facebook ... days and 'was this going to turn into one of those companies,' but I honestly think the banks in the U.S. did a fantastic job, the SpaceX crew did a fantastic job telling the story when they did their rounds. And as you can see it went extremely smoothly," said Jeff Parks, CEO of Canadian investment firm Stack Capital Group. Nearly a third of Stack's portfolio is SpaceX, in which the company began investing in 2021. He was referring to the turbulence that surrounded Facebook's ill-fated IPO, when technical problems turned a landmark listing into one of Wall Street's most notorious trading fiascos. It left investors and brokers in limbo for hours and ultimately cost market makers hundreds of millions of dollars. According to Citadel Securities, the largest U.S. retail market maker, SpaceX's debut generated the highest retail order activity for an IPO auction ever. A Citadel Securities spokesperson said the firm handled the majority of the retail orders for SpaceX. Morgan Stanley, the so-called "stabilization agent" for the glitzy market debut, had the key role in managing SpaceX's market opening. The bank had to ensure an orderly rollout even as it grappled with unprecedented investor demand. A stabilization agent typically buys up shares in the open market to shore up stocks that witness steep declines on opening day. One of the lead underwriters advising SpaceX, who requested anonymity as the matter is confidential, said the IPO was a monumental event for the exchanges and the banks and crucial to get right. Trading platform Charles Schwab said it has seen well over a million orders in SpaceX in the first few hours of trading, which is a significant figure in comparison to past IPOs, according to a spokesperson for the company. Reuters reported on Thursday that Wall Street traders, brokers and exchanges had been stress-testing their trading systems for several weeks leading up to the blockbuster IPO. SpaceX shares "are not going up in huge blocks, but they're bleeding higher, and a lot of that is due to a little bit more of a boring and softer opening print than a lot of folks expected," said Mike Dickson, head of research & quantitative strategies at Horizon Investments. "I'm a little surprised there's not more volatility, given a lot of the oversubscription headlines." SMOOTH ROLLOUT Past trading debuts for large IPOs have often faced delays because exchanges must match enormous volumes of buy and sell orders before determining an opening price. For SpaceX, the stock started trading shortly before noon on Friday. That was relatively early compared to the recent IPOs of Cerebras Systems and Quantinuum, which opened later in the afternoon on their respective debut days. Barring some issues with early trading on Robinhood on Friday, Wall Street largely skirted the technical glitches that hampered Facebook's rollout in 2012 - much to the relief of Nasdaq, the market makers, and investors. "We all worked really well together. We did a lot of preparation with our banking partners," said Nasdaq CEO Adena Friedman in an interview with CNBC on Friday. "We made sure that we were talking to all of the firms throughout the process of preparing for this, and it came off really flawlessly."
SpaceX IPO: Indians queue up to invest more in US stocks
SpaceX's blockbuster initial public offering has ignited significant interest among Indian investors in US stocks, with trading volumes on platforms like Vested Finance and IndMoney surging by 20-25%. SpaceX raised $75 billion in its IPO at a valuation of over $1.7 trillion. The euphoria around the public listing of Elon Musk's SpaceX has piqued the interest of Indian investors in US stocks, with stockbroking platforms offering international stocks reporting a 20-25% surge in trading volumes. More than a fifth of the trading volumes since SpaceX's listing on Friday were for buying shares of Musk's rocket company, platforms such as Vested Finance and IndMoney said. "About 20% of trading volumes yesterday was just SpaceX, even though it listed mid-way into the US markets," Nikhil Behl, chief executive officer, stocks, at IndMoney, said on Sunday. The participation was broad-based across both new and existing investors, he added. Also Read: Elon Musk recalls SpaceX's journey from mere 10% chance of success to the world's biggest IPO SpaceX raised $75 billion in its initial public offering (IPO) at a valuation of over $1.7 trillion. The company shares opened at $150 per share and at its peak achieved a valuation of more than $2 trillion. Vested said 25% of all the users who traded in international stocks on the platform since late on Friday traded in SpaceX stocks while 15% of the total trading volume was for SpaceX shares. Overall trading volume was up 22%, it said in a statement. While the SpaceX IPO made Musk the world's first trillionaire, the euphoria around it is prompting several Indian investors to consider overseas investments, trade insiders said. Also Read: SpaceX: Five key moments, from first launch to Starship megarocket "A lot of new investors joined these platforms building up to the IPO of this company," a top executive at a domestic broking firm said. "Overall, the number of new investors joining the platform would go up significantly by the end of this month." The platforms are yet to compile their numbers in real terms, but the industry expects the momentum to continue for the entire week as there is a lot of chatter around SpaceX listing among Indian traders who wanted to grab a share of the pie. The enthusiasm in SpaceX is reflective of the larger trend around many AI companies, space-tech firms and other new-generation startups raising billions of dollars and peaking their valuations in the US. Also Read: States challenge Nasdaq, FTSE Russell for fast-tracking SpaceX Companies like Stripe, OpenAI, Anthropic and Databricks are all expected to go public over the next few years, which could drive more investor interest in the coming years, industry insiders feel. As per regulatory norms, Indians are allowed to ship $200,000 out of the country in a year under the liberalised remittance scheme (LRS). According to the Reserve Bank of India, in March 2026, under LRS Indians invested $440 million into global equity and debt investments. This number was up 43% from $306 million in March 2025. This comes at a time when regulations have also become friendly for buying shares of US-listed companies through the Gift City route. Platforms like Vested Finance and IndMoney, through the Global Access Provider (GAP) licence, have set up entities in Gift City, offering international investment opportunities for Indians. Founded in 2015, Mumbai-based Vested specialises in international stocks, exchange-traded funds and private market investments. As of April 2026, Vested said it has facilitated over Rs 25,000 crore in trading volume. Tiger Global and Steadview-backed IndMoney was co-founded in 2018 by Ashish Kashyap who was previously the founder of GoIbibo. Behl of Gurgaon-based IndMoney believes that the enthusiasm has not peaked yet and through the coming week, volumes in international trades will continue to be high.
Trump admin says Anthropic's 'recklessness' triggered export controls on latest AI models
AI giant Anthropic announces the public release of its Claude Fable 5 model, emphasizing new safety measures to prevent misuse. FOX Business' Madison Alworth reports industry leaders acknowledge its superior power compared to existing AI models. A senior Trump administration official tells FOX Business that Anthropic's "recklessness" in responding to issues with the company's latest artificial intelligence release led to export controls. The official says there are ongoing talks about fixing the vulnerabilities with the company's Fable 5, but claims the administration's interactions with Anthropic created a lack of trust. The official believes the experience damaged Anthropic's relationship with the government over its unwillingness to address the concerns. The export controls imposed by the Commerce Department forced the company to pull down its latest release. Anthropic received a letter from the Commerce Department saying its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 models were banned for use by any foreign national "inside or outside the United States," due to national security concerns. A source familiar with calls to Anthropic says the company brushed off the federal government's initial concerns. A source close to the company disputes that, adding it was not presented with any details and never refused to fix issues. ANTHROPIC FILES CONFIDENTIALLY FOR IPO After a flurry of phone calls on Friday, the official familiar with the outreach tells FOX Business the company claimed Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei was at a wellness retreat and could not be reached about the concerns. A source close to Anthropic denies there was a retreat, says the company's executives were not hard to reach and claims they were in touch with the White House within 15 minutes. Still, the senior administration official says Anthropic's reaction to potential issues led to the export controls, adding the government says the company did not take the request to fix issues seriously enough, given the expectations set before the Fable 5 rollout. The feeling within the Commerce Department, Treasury Department, and White House is that Anthropic could have avoided the drastic step of export controls by engaging on a deeper level. Multiple sources say the government made it clear to Anthropic that this release would be the first test case for the new executive order signed regarding AI guardrails. A Washington, D.C., tech policy expert tells FOX Business this is "government messaging 101" - that if a company is leading the conversation on AI safety, then appears reluctant to address any safety concerns, the administration will take a tough stance. AI LEADERS ARGUE SOFTWARE WILL ADAPT - NOT DIE - BUT VALUATIONS ARE STRETCHED Administration officials say the concerns were realized last week when Amazon AI experts were able to orchestrate a "jailbreak" on Fable 5 after it was released on June 9 alongside Mythos 5, the latter of which was only released to a limited group. Anthropic said the cyberattacking abilities of the new models were constrained, but Amazon and five other companies testing the release found a workaround in Fable 5 that opened the full cyber abilities of Anthropic's more advanced model. FOX Business reached out to Amazon for comment. Under its leadership, the Trump administration has taken an all-of-government approach to making sure new AI models meet national security standards. The export controls originated in the Commerce Department, but the Treasury Department is being increasingly looped in due to its knowledge of computer power and markets. A former Trump administration official tells FOX Business that President Donald Trump is business-friendly to a point, adding that if a company is slow to address issues, the president will force it to make the necessary changes. The former administration official expressed concern that the export controls will not be easily removed if Anthropic continues to brush off the issues being raised at the highest levels of government. AMERICA CAN'T COMPETE WITH CHINA IN AI WITHOUT THESE WORKERS, META'S PRESIDENT SAYS In a statement on June 12, Anthropic said, "We reviewed a demonstration of this specific technique being used to identify a small number of previously known, minor vulnerabilities. These vulnerabilities all appear relatively simple, and we have found that other publicly-available models are able to discover them as well without requiring a bypass." A source close to Anthropic says there were no details in the initial call with government officials, just a request to pull down the Fable 5 model within 90 minutes. The source adds that Amodei and other senior staff have been engaged from the beginning, there was no refusal to fix an issue and the company remains eager to resolve any concerns. GET FOX BUSINESS ON THE GO BY CLICKING HERE FOX Business has also learned Anthropic senior technical staff are in Washington, D.C., to meet with White House officials. Another source tells FOX Business virtual meetings have been held every day since the administration's initial outreach about the vulnerabilities.
Indian AI startups confront new risks after Anthropic pulls Fable 5 | Mint
Summary Most Indian AI startups build applications on top of foreign AI models, making them vulnerable to policy shifts and access restrictions. New Delhi: The abrupt withdrawal of Anthropic's advanced artificial intelligence (AI) model Fable 5 has rattled Indian startups that rely on foreign large language models (LLMs), raising concerns that access to critical AI infrastructure could be disrupted by decisions beyond their control. Fable 5 was withdrawn for foreign nationals after the US government directed Anthropic to suspend access to the model, citing national security concerns, although the company disputed the severity of the issue. Industry executives said it was the first known instance of an AI model being subjected to export controls, which had previously been focused on graphic processing units (GPUs) and advanced semiconductor chips. The incident has sharpened concerns among Indian AI startups about their reliance on foreign AI providers, highlighting the risks, founders say, of building businesses around models that can be restricted or withdrawn with little warning. Also Read | The AI price war is here, piling pressure on OpenAI and Anthropic The concern is particularly relevant in India. In February, Irina Ghose, managing director of India at Anthropic, said the country had become Claude's second-largest market globally. "Many founders, and even legacy institutions, are making a critical strategic error by treating AI wrappers as standard SaaS businesses," said Abhivardhan, managing partner at Indic Pacific, a law and policy research firm. Many AI startups build products on top of foundation models such as Anthropic's Claude, OpenAI's GPT and Google's Gemini rather than developing their own models. "In traditional SaaS (software-as-a-service), you own your software. In an API (application programming interface)-dependent wrapper model, you are entirely at the mercy of the model provider. If a provider suddenly changes its policies, degrades performance, or if a model such as Fable 5 faces a sudden usage ban, the dependent business could face immediate disruption, or even collapse," said Abhivardhan. Immediate fallout The disruption was immediate for some users. Suvrankar Datta, group lead at the Centre for Responsible Autonomous Systems in Healthcare (CRASH Lab) and faculty fellow at the Koita Centre for Digital Health, Ashoka University, said his team had planned to evaluate Fable against medical benchmarks it had developed. "We had already evaluated Opus 4.8 (Anthropic's flagship AI model), and we were planning to evaluate Fable against the medical benchmarks we had created. Now, of course, we no longer have access to it. Everything stopped. Our entire plan changed. We are no longer going to build benchmark tables or workflows around Fable. Instead, we're moving back to Opus 4.8 completely," he said. Aryan Grover, founder and chief executive officer (CEO) of VetoAI Technologies, a legal tech startup that builds AI agents for legal professionals, said the restrictions could leave Indian startups at a disadvantage if access to leading models becomes uneven across geographies. "What I envision is that once they sort things out domestically, they'll relaunch it for US nationals while keeping the rest of the world excluded. Since Fable is much better than Opus, it puts my team and me at an inherent disadvantage. There will be teams in the US building with Fable, while teams like ours won't have access to it," he said. Also Read | Spacetech firms dominate first disbursals under ₹1-tn innovation fund Founders say the brief disruption offered a glimpse of what could happen if access to a critical model were cut off for longer periods. "A blessing in disguise around the usage of Fable was, it was banned only after three days. It was only three days this time, but imagine if it had been a month. People would have built workflows around it. They would have assembled teams, assigned budgets, and become dependent on it. The consequences would have been much worse," said Akshat Jain, founder of stealth-mode real estate technology startup Stay. "When even the most safety-conscious AI labs must pull back their advanced systems due to vulnerability and jailbreak risks, it underscores that frontier AI deployment remains fundamentally bound to rigorous, unresolved security challenges. Irrespective of this specific incident, these events serve as a powerful catalyst for a much larger geopolitical shift," said Ganesh Gopalan, CEO and co-founder of Gnani.ai, a voice-first agentic AI startup selected by the IndiaAI Mission to build homegrown LLMs. "The fact that access to elite, centralized AI models can be disrupted overnight due to vulnerability findings or sudden regulatory shifts highlights a glaring vulnerability for businesses and nation-states alike. For security, strategic autonomy and operational continuity, countries and corporations across the world cannot rely solely on third-party, foreign-controlled AI stacks," Gopalan added. Some founders argue that open-source AI models could provide a hedge against sudden restrictions imposed by proprietary AI providers. Models such as Meta's Llama and Alibaba's Qwen can be downloaded and deployed independently, giving companies greater control over their AI infrastructure. Aditya Verma, co-founder and chief growth officer at Astroyogi, believes open source is part of the answer, but not the entire solution. "The whole point of open source is that anyone can use it, so it should be a way out. But the reality is that the most advanced proprietary models are still ahead in several areas. That's why we don't depend on a single model. We route different tasks to different providers and keep switching between them based on what works best. There's no point putting all your dependencies on one large LLM provider," he said. Seeking alternatives The episode is now prompting some startups to reassess how much they rely on any single model provider. "We use all available LLMs, but our philosophy is to build smaller private models so that we do not have to depend entirely on foreign or expensive models. We have been following this approach for the past year. Even though this may be a one-off case in the US, the possibility that it could happen again is something we should think about as a country," said Yatharth Garg, co-founder of NeuralEDGE.in, an AI consulting firm that aims to help businesses become AI native. Also Read | Ather taps govt's ₹1-tn innovation fund to counter rivals' incentive advantage Some founders are also considering reducing their dependence on Anthropic, citing previous scrutiny of the company by US authorities. Earlier this year, the Pentagon reportedly designated the company an "unacceptable supply chain risk." "My team and I are going to have a long discussion about this. One of the things we're exploring is whether we can shift more of our workloads to open-source models and reduce our dependence on Anthropic specifically. Because if this becomes a recurring trend, we need alternatives," said Grover. Beyond Anthropic Industry executives say the larger lesson extends beyond any one model provider. Instead, the episode has renewed debate over India's dependence on foreign AI infrastructure and the need to build more domestic AI capabilities. This is concerning as most Indian AI startups operate at the application layer rather than the infrastructure layer. According to the report 100 Top AI Start-ups in India, released by venture platform Activate, global diaspora network Indiaspora and consulting firm Zinnov, 47% of Indian AI startups operate at the application layer, compared with just 13% at the infrastructure layer. Because application-layer startups build on existing AI models rather than developing their own, many depend on foreign providers for core AI capabilities. The challenge is compounded by a funding gap. In 2025, Indian AI startups raised $860.2 million, compared with $129.1 billion in the US and $1.2 billion in China. "A nation that runs its AI economy on borrowed foundations risks exposure, and this dependency is unhealthy for long-term security. Sovereign capability is beyond just one national LLM. It is a full stack of frontier, small, and vertical models trained on how Indians actually live, work, and speak," said Pranav Pai, managing partner at 3one4 Capital, an early-stage deep-tech venture capital firm.
Use of AI for Iran school bombing doesn't violate Anthropic's 'red lines' - CEO -- RT World News
The use of AI in the US strike on a girls' elementary school in Iran that killed nearly 160 people, mostly children, did not violate Anthropic's 'red lines,' CEO Dario Amodei has said. US forces struck the school in Minab with a Tomahawk missile on the first day of the war on Iran in February. The institution was reportedly targeted based on outdated data used by Palantir's analysis and surveillance software, which incorporates Anthropic's Claude AI. In an interview with Bloomberg published on Wednesday, Amodei was asked whether his firm's AI had played a role in the deadly attack. "We don't know exactly how these models were used... and what you're talking about is a use case that doesn't even violate our red lines," he said. While AI assists the military, "a human made that final call," he added, stressing that Anthropic opposes entirely autonomous weapons and decision-making systems. The US military has admitted to actively using Palantir - named after the elven scrying orbs corrupted by Sauron in Tolkien's 'Lord of the Rings' - to pick targets in the war on Iran. Last month, the Pentagon announced that it had inked deals with top US AI companies, including Google, Amazon Web Services, SpaceX, OpenAI, NVIDIA and Microsoft. Just weeks earlier, Palantir CEO Alex Karp proclaimed a "new era" of AI-enabled US military supremacy. According to Google whistleblower and Palantir insider Zach Vorhies, AI giants' defense of surveillance and the use of AI in warfare is a "catch-22." "It's like, 'hey, look, if we... get very accurate data of your country, then we won't bomb a school for girls,'" he told RT on Thursday, while discussing reports that data secretly harvested from Pokemon Go players over many years was likely used to enhance US military mapping capabilities. "The way that they're framing this in that if they don't have good information, they're just going to have collateral damage," Vorhies said, warning that US AI giants are pushing to be increasingly deregulated in pursuit of a military advantage.
