News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Hut 8 stock is a winner in a new deal between Anthropic and Nvidia-backed Lambda
Big dealmaking continues at a rapid clip for AI infrastructure play Hut 8 (HUT). Hut 8 is developing the data center in Nueces County, Texas, that will be leased by Nvidia (NVDA) as part of a new $35 billion cloud-computing deal between Anthropic (ANTH.PVT) and Nvidia-backed Lambda, according to a new report from the WSJ. Hut 8 shares rose as much as 4% in premarket trading on Tuesday. "We have many projects that we are at late stage on," Hut 8 CEO Asher Genoot said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid in late August (video above). "We have early-stage [projects] across the whole pipeline. We have 11 that we've disclosed publicly. That doesn't include any behind-the-meter opportunities that we're working on. That doesn't include any M&A opportunities. So we have a ton of projects we're working on." Hut 8 has a remarkable transformation story, evolving from a bitcoin miner to one of the most important AI data center operators in North America. Its deal flow -- now including one with Nvidia -- is starting to flesh this out. The first blockbuster deal came in December 2025 when Hut 8 signed a 15-year, $7 billion lease with cloud infrastructure provider Fluidstack for 245 megawatts of capacity at its River Bend campus in Louisiana. Google (GOOG) is acting as a financial backstop for the entire term. Then in May, Hut 8 scored an even bigger deal -- a 15-year, $9.8 billion lease at its Beacon Point campus in Nueces County, Texas, covering 352 megawatts of AI factory capacity. The deal sports three five-year renewal options that could push the total contract value to $25.1 billion. "We regard HUT's execution on its pipeline, including its recent announcement of a new contract for Phase II of its Beacon Point AI data center project, as validation of the 'Power First' thesis that CEO Asher Genoot has articulated, in which the company's core competency is the repeatable conversion of scarce power into long-duration, contracted, financeable infrastructure," Benchmark analyst Mark Palmer wrote in a note. Palmer rated Hut 8 shares a Buy with a $195 price target, which assumes about 143% upside from current levels. Of the 18 sell-side analysts who cover Hut 8, all rate the stock a Buy, according to Yahoo Finance AlphaSpace analysis. Brian Sozzi is Yahoo Finance's Executive Editor, host of the 'Power Players With Brian Sozzi' podcast and a member of Yahoo Finance's editorial leadership team. Follow Sozzi on X @BrianSozzi, Instagram, and LinkedIn. Tips on stories? Email [email protected].
Sundar Pichai Says Alphabet Can't Build AI Capacity Fast Enough, and Anthropic Has Secured 5 Gigawatts of It.
Alphabet (NASDAQ:GOOG)(NASDAQ:GOOGL) said something striking on its second-quarter earnings call in July. Even after committing to as much as $205 billion of capital spending this year, the company still can't build artificial intelligence (AI) computing capacity as fast as customers want it. "[W]e continue to be supply constrained -- a sign of momentum and rapid adoption," CEO Sundar Pichai said in his remarks on the quarter. Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue " Yet Alphabet has agreed to hand multi-gigawatt blocks of that scarce capacity to a fast-growing outside customer: Anthropic, the AI company behind the Claude models. And a look at Alphabet's underlying business performance shows why the company is racing to sell its capacity to major customers like Anthropic -- even if it's scarce. Image source: Alphabet Inc. Selling scarce capacity is a great business Google Cloud, the segment that sells cloud computing to outside customers, grew revenue 82% year over year to $24.8 billion in the second quarter. That was up from 63% growth in the first quarter. The profit is growing even faster than the revenue. Google Cloud's operating income more than tripled year over year, from $2.8 billion to $8.8 billion -- after reaching $6.6 billion in the first quarter. The segment's operating margin came in at about 36%, versus about 21% in the year-ago quarter and 33% in the first quarter of this year. And the contracted work keeps piling up. Pichai said cloud backlog (future revenue from signed contracts) grew to about $514 billion in the second quarter, up from $462 billion at the end of the first quarter. That backlog is now more than four times the revenue Alphabet's entire business produced last quarter. How much of it is Anthropic? Alphabet doesn't break out the number, but the disclosed pieces -- even if they lack financial details -- are big. Last October, Anthropic agreed to expand its use of Google Cloud in a deal giving it access to up to 1 million of Google's tensor processing units (TPUs), the AI chips Google designs in-house, with well over a gigawatt of capacity coming online in 2026. Google Cloud said the agreement was worth tens of billions of dollars. This spring, the relationship got much bigger. In early April, Anthropic secured multiple gigawatts of next-generation TPU capacity from Google and chip partner Broadcom, coming online starting in 2027 -- about 5 gigawatts in all, CNBC reported. Anthropic will access that capacity through Broadcom, according to a Broadcom securities filing. Weeks later, Google agreed to invest up to $40 billion in Anthropic itself, putting in $10 billion right away with as much as $30 billion more tied to performance milestones.
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Anthropic signs $35 billion cloud deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, source says
Aug 31 (Reuters) - Anthropic has signed a cloud-computing deal worth $35 billion with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia, a source familiar with the matter said on Monday. The deal will bring online Nvidia capacity to meet growing demand for Anthropic's Claude AI, the source said. The news was first reported by the Wall Street Journal. (Reporting by Chandni Shah in Bengaluru and Natalia Bueno Rebolledo in Mexico City; Editing by Subhranshu Sahu)
Anthropic Seals $35 Billion Cloud Deal With Nvidia-Backed Lambda
(Bloomberg) -- Anthropic PBC agreed to a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia Corp., part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data center involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data center, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data center power. The Claude chatbot maker last week agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion, Bloomberg reported last week. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as $12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than $1.5 billion in a November funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft Corp. last year to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. --With assistance from Lynn Doan and Ian King. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Anthropic Seals $35 Billion Cloud Deal With Nvidia-Backed Lambda
(Bloomberg) -- Anthropic PBC agreed to a $35 billion computing deal with Lambda, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia Corp., part of an effort to quickly expand its AI capacity, according to a person familiar with the matter. Most Read from Bloomberg Infrastructure company Hut 8 is developing the Texas data center involved in the project, said the person, who asked not to be identified because the discussions are private. The Wall Street Journal previously reported on the agreement, saying that Nvidia would hold the lease on the data center, which is in Nueces County, Texas. The deal is just the latest AI computing agreement tied to Nvidia, the world's most valuable business and the leading provider of AI chips. The company has been using its financial resources to expand access to computing infrastructure, which, in turn, should increase demand for its technology. Anthropic, meanwhile, has emerged as one of the most significant customers for data center power. The Claude chatbot maker last week agreed to spend $45 billion to rent capacity from Nscale in West Virginia. In recent months, it has also signed cloud deals for $50 billion with neocloud Fluidstack Ltd. and $45 billion with Elon Musk's SpaceX. A representative for Anthropic declined to comment. Nvidia, Lambda and Hut 8 didn't immediately respond to requests for comment. Lambda is in talks to raise as much as $3 billion, Bloomberg reported last week. The company has discussed a valuation of as much as $12 billion or more, according to people familiar with the talks. Lambda raised more than $1.5 billion in a November funding round. The company also reached an agreement with Microsoft Corp. last year to deploy AI infrastructure that would be powered by tens of thousands of Nvidia processors. --With assistance from Lynn Doan and Ian King. Most Read from Bloomberg Businessweek
Amazon Stock Gets a Boost. AWS Adds Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI Models
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is widening access to artificial intelligence tools for U.S. government customers through its AWS GovCloud platform. The company said government agencies can now use several third-party AI model families through Amazon Bedrock, including offerings from Anthropic, Meta (NASDAQ:META), OpenAI, xAI and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). Amazon's Nova models are also available within the isolated cloud environment. The expansion adds to the role of AWS in Amazon's broader AI strategy. The cloud unit reported a 37% year-over-year increase in second-quarter 2026 revenue, while operating income rose 63% from a year earlier. Amazon has pointed to AI-related workloads and its chip operations as contributors to AWS growth. Management has also said the segment could eventually generate $1 trillion in annual revenue, while noting that about 85% of worldwide information-technology spending remains on-premises. For AMZN stock, the broader AWS expansion could support longer-term growth by increasing AI adoption among government customers and other regulated users.
Amazon Stock Gets a Boost. AWS Adds Anthropic, Meta and OpenAI Models
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Amazon (NASDAQ:AMZN) is widening access to artificial intelligence tools for U.S. government customers through its AWS GovCloud platform. The company said government agencies can now use several third-party AI model families through Amazon Bedrock, including offerings from Anthropic, Meta (NASDAQ:META), OpenAI, xAI and NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA). Amazon's Nova models are also available within the isolated cloud environment. The expansion adds to the role of AWS in Amazon's broader AI strategy. The cloud unit reported a 37% year-over-year increase in second-quarter 2026 revenue, while operating income rose 63% from a year earlier. Amazon has pointed to AI-related workloads and its chip operations as contributors to AWS growth. Management has also said the segment could eventually generate $1 trillion in annual revenue, while noting that about 85% of worldwide information-technology spending remains on-premises. For AMZN stock, the broader AWS expansion could support longer-term growth by increasing AI adoption among government customers and other regulated users.
Anthropic's $7 Billion Chip Plan Takes a New Turn
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Anthropic seems bent on reducing its reliance on externally sourced AI processors, even if a big purchase doesn't materialize.Reuters reported that the developer of Claude had been in talks to acquire AI chip startup MatX for almost $7 billion, although the discussions then pivoted to a possible cooperation.MatX was formed by ex-Google tensor processing unit engineers and is building chips to train massive AI models. The business is currently raising further money at a valuation of around $4 billion. Anthropic's appeal is simple.The corporation might get more control over cost and performance by building custom silicon, as demand for Claude increases. Anthropic has already recruited veterans from Google and OpenAI and grown its internal silicon team.Meanwhile, the corporation is spending much on outside computers. Anthropic aims to spend $36 billion on Google AI chips and has signed a $45 billion cloud-computing deal with Nscale, highlighting the huge cost of securing enough infrastructure to train and run frontier models.Another route for Anthropic to develop out more of that tech on its own might be a MatX relationship. The acquisition may have hit a snag, but Anthropic's push into bespoke chips certainly hasn't.
Anthropic's $7 Billion Chip Plan Takes a New Turn
This article first appeared on GuruFocus. Anthropic seems bent on reducing its reliance on externally sourced AI processors, even if a big purchase doesn't materialize.Reuters reported that the developer of Claude had been in talks to acquire AI chip startup MatX for almost $7 billion, although the discussions then pivoted to a possible cooperation.MatX was formed by ex-Google tensor processing unit engineers and is building chips to train massive AI models. The business is currently raising further money at a valuation of around $4 billion. Anthropic's appeal is simple.The corporation might get more control over cost and performance by building custom silicon, as demand for Claude increases. Anthropic has already recruited veterans from Google and OpenAI and grown its internal silicon team.Meanwhile, the corporation is spending much on outside computers. Anthropic aims to spend $36 billion on Google AI chips and has signed a $45 billion cloud-computing deal with Nscale, highlighting the huge cost of securing enough infrastructure to train and run frontier models.Another route for Anthropic to develop out more of that tech on its own might be a MatX relationship. The acquisition may have hit a snag, but Anthropic's push into bespoke chips certainly hasn't.
US judge blocks Pentagon's Anthropic blacklisting
August 27(Reuters) - A U.S. judge on Thursday blocked the Pentagon's blacklisting of Anthropic, the latest turn in the Claude maker's high-stakes fight with the military over AI safety on the battlefield. Anthropic's lawsuit in California federal court alleges that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth overstepped his authority when he designated Anthropic a national security supply-chain risk, a label the government can apply to companies that expose military systems to potential infiltration or sabotage by adversaries. Hegseth's unprecedented move, which followed Anthropic's refusal to allow the military to use AI chatbot Claude for U.S. surveillance or autonomous weapons, blocked Anthropic from certain military contracts. Anthropic executives have said it could cost the company billions of dollars in lost business and reputational harm. Anthropic says that AI models are not reliable enough to be safely used in autonomous weapons and that it opposes domestic surveillance as a violation of rights, but the Pentagon says private companies should not be able to constrain military action. U.S. District Judge Rita Lin, an appointee of former Democratic President Joe Biden, made the ruling in a 59-page order where she found that the Pentagon's decision was "illegal and baseless." "The empty invocation of national security is not a blank check to punish and retaliate against government critics," she wrote. Anthropic's designation was the first time a U.S. company has been publicly designated a supply-chain risk under an obscure government-procurement statute aimed at protecting military systems from foreign sabotage. In its March 9 lawsuit, Anthropic alleged the government violated its right to free speech under the First Amendment of the Constitution by retaliating against its views on AI safety. The company said it was not given a chance to dispute the designation, in violation of its Fifth Amendment right to due process. The lawsuit says the decision was unlawful, unsupported by facts and inconsistent with the military's past praise of Claude. The Justice Department countered that Anthropic's refusal to lift the restrictions could cause uncertainty in the Pentagon over how it could use Claude and risk disabling military systems during operations, according to a court filing. The government said the designation stemmed from Anthropic's refusal to accept contractual terms, not its views on AI safety. Anthropic has a second lawsuit pending in Washington, D.C., over a separate Pentagon supply-chain risk designation that could lead to its exclusion from civilian government contracts. (Reporting by Jack Queen in New York; Editing by Noeleen Walder and Matthew Lewis)
Five things to know about Anthropic ahead of Wall Street debut
Anthropic, the OpenAI rival that bet everything on computer coding, is expected to go public within weeks in a listing that could eclipse SpaceX's record Wall Street debut in June. Here are five things to know about the company: - Built from OpenAI - Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives frustrated over how the potential of AI and concerns over safety were not understood or being taken seriously enough. The company -- whose name means, somewhat paradoxically, "relating to human beings" -- is led by CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei, a San Francisco native with a PhD in biophysics from Princeton University, not computer engineering like so many of his Big Tech peers. His sister Daniela is also a co-founder and the company's president. Anthropic has 5,000 employees, according to PitchBook. - Upstart - Until this year, Anthropic was in clear second place to OpenAI, which burst onto the scene with ChatGPT in November 2022, transforming the tech industry and triggering an AI arms race. But as OpenAI rolled out products from video creation to web browsers, Anthropic aimed far more narrowly, focusing on building the best platform for computer programmers. That strategy has paid off spectacularly -- coding is the rare AI skill that users are willing to pay handsomely for. Claude Code, its assistant for developers, has become one of the company's most popular products, helping push projected annual revenue to $65 billion. Only a small percentage of ChatGPT users, meanwhile, pay a subscription fee -- and OpenAI has put video AI and other side projects on the back burner. - Trump vs. Anthropic - The momentum comes despite severe political headwinds, with Anthropic at loggerheads with the Trump administration -- a state of affairs that could give investors pause. In March, the government broke off its contracts with Anthropic and designated the company a supply chain risk after it refused to grant the military unfettered access to its AI models. Anthropic called the Defense Department's move unconstitutional retaliation, and the two sides are now locked in a legal battle that could take years to resolve. The White House also bristles at Amodei's repeated warnings about the dangers of AI -- including the impact on jobs -- and his calls to regulate its deployment like airlines or banks. Amodei is also linked with effective altruism, a philosophy of targeted charitable giving scorned by conservatives in Silicon Valley and Washington. - Big money needed - Like OpenAI, Anthropic has massive needs for the computing power and infrastructure required to build so-called frontier models that stay ahead of competitors, amid fears that China could catch up.
Five things to know about Anthropic ahead of Wall Street debut
Anthropic, the OpenAI rival that bet everything on computer coding, is expected to go public within weeks in a listing that could eclipse SpaceX's record Wall Street debut in June. Here are five things to know about the company: - Built from OpenAI - Anthropic was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI executives frustrated over how the potential of AI and concerns over safety were not understood or being taken seriously enough. The company -- whose name means, somewhat paradoxically, "relating to human beings" -- is led by CEO and co-founder Dario Amodei, a San Francisco native with a PhD in biophysics from Princeton University, not computer engineering like so many of his Big Tech peers. His sister Daniela is also a co-founder and the company's president. Anthropic has 5,000 employees, according to PitchBook. - Upstart - Until this year, Anthropic was in clear second place to OpenAI, which burst onto the scene with ChatGPT in November 2022, transforming the tech industry and triggering an AI arms race. But as OpenAI rolled out products from video creation to web browsers, Anthropic aimed far more narrowly, focusing on building the best platform for computer programmers. That strategy has paid off spectacularly -- coding is the rare AI skill that users are willing to pay handsomely for. Claude Code, its assistant for developers, has become one of the company's most popular products, helping push projected annual revenue to $65 billion. Only a small percentage of ChatGPT users, meanwhile, pay a subscription fee -- and OpenAI has put video AI and other side projects on the back burner. - Trump vs. Anthropic - The momentum comes despite severe political headwinds, with Anthropic at loggerheads with the Trump administration -- a state of affairs that could give investors pause. In March, the government broke off its contracts with Anthropic and designated the company a supply chain risk after it refused to grant the military unfettered access to its AI models. Anthropic called the Defense Department's move unconstitutional retaliation, and the two sides are now locked in a legal battle that could take years to resolve. The White House also bristles at Amodei's repeated warnings about the dangers of AI -- including the impact on jobs -- and his calls to regulate its deployment like airlines or banks. Amodei is also linked with effective altruism, a philosophy of targeted charitable giving scorned by conservatives in Silicon Valley and Washington. - Big money needed - Like OpenAI, Anthropic has massive needs for the computing power and infrastructure required to build so-called frontier models that stay ahead of competitors, amid fears that China could catch up.
Nobody Wants Anthropic's Best AI Model Anymore Now That There Are Way Cheaper Alternatives
One thing that could put a dent in the hype around Anthropic's upcoming, multitrillion dollar IPO? People preferring cheapo models over its flagship AI products. Recent spending data from 70,000 US companies collected by the payments group Ramp shows that spending on Fable 5, Anthropic's priciest and most powerful model, has plateaued at only 11 percent of the overall outlay, or money spent, on its AI tools, the Financial Times reported. It reflects a shift in how enterprise users are using flagship models, reserving them only for the most complex tasks while letting more than serviceable cheaper models take care of the dirty work. Those cheaper alternatives can be Anthropic's own older models, or open-weight models offered by Chinese competitors. If the pattern holds, according to the FT, it could upend the go-big-or-go-home business model of leading AI labs, which have focused on pouring their resources into building even larger and more complex models. "Most people don't need to operate at the frontier," Miles Clements, a partner at the venture capital firm Accel, which has invested $1 billion in Anthropic, told the FT. The period when customers favored using only frontier models "was not a durable era," Clements added. Fable 5 had a rocky launch in June. Its hype was clouded by its purportedly powerful ability to launch cyberattacks autonomously -- a narrative that Anthropic helped fuel, it's worth noting. The Trump administration ordered Anthropic to suspend access to its model to foreign customers, citing the national security risks posed by the model, but later lifted the export restrictions. The hope that take-up of Fable 5 would accelerate once the political controversy cleared hasn't been borne out, however, with the Anthropic model's adoption lagging behind the releases of its previous frontier models. Its annualized revenue -- the amount it's projected to make in a year based on its current performance -- in July reached $65 billion, which is well short of the $80 billion estimate set by bullish investors, the FT noted. OpenAI, meanwhile, is nipping at Anthropic's heels. After losing significant ground to Anthropic this year, the ChatGPT maker's annualized revenue has surged to $40 billion, with its new GPT-5.6 model, which is much cheaper to use than Fable 5, boosting sales. Some experts are seeing the plateaued Fable 5 spending as a glass half-full. Alex Imas, director of AGI economics at Google DeepMind, argued that Anthropic isn't worried about Fable spending in isolation but the "total spend across all models."
Zoom Q2 Earnings Preview: Why Its Hidden Anthropic Stake Could Outshine A 15-Quarter Revenue Streak
Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below. Zoom Communications (NASDAQ:ZM) looks to continue a long streak of beating analyst estimates for revenue when the company reports second-quarter financial results Tuesday after market close. Here are the earnings estimates, what analysts are saying ahead of the report and the key items to watch. Zoom Q2 Earnings Estimates Analysts expect Zoom to report second-quarter revenue of $1.27 billion, up from $1.22 billion in last year's second quarter, according to data from Benzinga Pro. The company has beaten analyst estimates for revenue in 15 straight quarters. Analysts expect Zoom to report second-quarter earnings per share of $1.48, down from $1.53 in last year's second quarter. The company has beaten analyst estimates for earnings per share in nine of the last 10 quarters overall. Read Also:Anthropic Wants Investors to Buy Into a $2 Trillion Dream -- But a Wall Street Veteran Says SpaceX's IPO Offers a Warning for AI Investors Zoom Analyst Ratings BTIG analyst Allan Verkhovski expects Zoom to show strong fundamentals and acceleration in the Enterprise segment when the company reports second quarter financial results. The analyst maintained a Buy rating with a price target of $125 ahead of the report. "ZM shares are now up 29% YTD, which we believe has been driven by top-line acceleration, relatively low AI disruption risk, and the growing value of its stake in Anthropic (private)," Verkhovski said. The analyst also said Zoom could highlight the financial impact of its acquisition of Common Room, an AI intelligence platform. "Overall, we anticipate another strong quarter, and we continue to view ZM as an attractive stock to own, especially through Anthropic's IPO process." Here are other analyst ratings on Zoom stock and their price targets: * Cantor Fitzgerald: Maintained Neutral rating, with price target of $104 * Rosenblatt: Maintained Buy rating, with price target of $130 * UBS: Maintained Neutral rating, raised price target from $105 to $115 Key Items to Watch Zoom's consistent analyst beats and enterprise growth could be key items to watch Tuesday. The biggest catalyst for Zoom stock is likely the quiet one and the one management won't cover a ton. Zoom invested $51 million in Anthropic back in 2023 and maintains a stake in the AI company today. Anthropic remains one of the hottest investment stories around amid IPO speculation and a potential $2 trillion valuation. Benzinga previously highlighted Zoom as a backdoor play for Anthropic. When Anthropic reached a $900 billion valuation in May, analysts estimated Zoom's position was worth between $4.11 billion and $11.31 billion (Wedbush) or $5.14 billion to $10.28 billion (Baird).
The One Line in Anthropic's S-1 That Amazon Investors Should Read First
New reports indicate that artificial intelligence (AI) lab Anthropic could file its S-1 by the end of the month. Below, I'll detail why Anthropic's public debut carries outsize implications for major backers like Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN), whose growth is intertwined with the start-up's trajectory. Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue " Reviewing Anthropic's funding and IPO ambitions Reports from Bloomberg suggest Anthropic is aiming for an initial public offering (IPO) that matches or exceeds Space Exploration Technologies' record raise from earlier this summer. Anthropic has already raised roughly $133 billion to date, most recently in a $65 billion Series H round that valued it at $965 billion. This near-trillion-dollar figure reflects Anthropic's explosive growth, with recent quarterly revenue surpassing $11.5 billion and an annualized run rate approaching $65 billion. Why Amazon investors should pay attention to Anthropic's IPO Amazon investors have good reason to monitor the Anthropic offering. Amazon has already invested $13 billion in Anthropic, with commitments for up to an additional $20 billion contingent on commercial milestones. Beyond simple equity ownership, the partnership between Amazon and Anthropic runs deep through AWS. Anthropic uses Amazon's custom silicon for training and inference, including a massive deployment under Project Rainier that utilizes over 1 million Amazon Trainium chips, complemented by its Graviton processors. Anthropic's Claude models power a number of features on Amazon Bedrock for more than 100,000 customers. Meanwhile, the company has pledged more than $100 billion in AWS spending over the next 10 years to secure up to 5 gigawatts of capacity. Assessing Amazon's upside Anthropic's S-1 will provide more precise disclosure around Amazon's ownership. With exact percentages known, investors can better model the position's value. Accurate knowledge of the value of Amazon's stake can help improve forecasts of AWS' revenue acceleration and operating margin expansion driven by Anthropic's compute demands. In turn, I think a fundamental rerating in Amazon stock could follow as investors gain a deeper understanding of Anthropic's influence on Amazon's position in the AI infrastructure supercycle. Should you buy stock in Amazon right now?
Anthropic Has a $65 Billion Run Rate. Buy These Stocks to Profit From It.
Anthropic, the owner and operator of the popular Claude chatbot, has an annualized revenue run rate of $65 billion, multiple media outlets just confirmed. That's about seven times what it was at the end of last year. The company has filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission to go public later this year through an initial public offering (IPO) that could value it at $2 trillion or more. But because the AI firm is not yet public, there aren't many ways for retail investors to buy a direct stake in it. Missed Nvidia in 2009? This Rare Signal Is Flashing Again. In 2009, a "Double Down" signal flashed for a little-known chipmaker called Nvidia. For the first time in years, that same "Total Conviction" signal is flashing for a company 1/100th the size of Nvidia. Continue " There is an indirect way to get some exposure to Anthropic, however. That's by owning the stocks of companies that have invested heavily in its pre-IPO shares. That group starts with Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN). The company's $33 billion investment in Anthropic gave it an impressive 21% stake. Google's parent company, Alphabet (NASDAQ: GOOGL) (NASDAQ: GOOG), holds a 15% stake in Anthropic and can't invest more because the two are major competitors in the large language model space. (Alphabet owns Gemini AI). Salesforce (NYSE: CRM) has a $5 billion stake in the AI firm. Finally, Zoom Communications (NASDAQ: ZM) has a more modest $1.3 billion stake in it. Like everything else those companies own, their stakes in Anthropic are ultimately owned by their shareholders. So their investors should see a major benefit if Anthropic's IPO brings it a valuation of $2 trillion or more. Several tech firms booked big gains from their SpaceX stakes There's a recent precedent for this. In the second quarter of this year, two major technology firms had the biggest positive impact on overall S&P 500 earnings due to their stakes in other firms. Alphabet reported earnings per share of $9.11, more than three times Wall Street's expectations, driven by $98 billion in unrealized stock gains primarily from its ownership stake in Space Exploration Technologies (NASDAQ: SPCX), which went public that quarter. Similarly, Amazon reported $53.4 billion in income from a revaluation of its investment in Anthropic (pre-IPO companies are officially revalued during each new capital-raising round). Amazon shares soared following the release of its second-quarter results. If Anthropic stages a blockbuster IPO, that investment would be revalued significantly higher again.
Meta Platforms (META) Undercuts Anthropic and OpenAI on Price With New Coding Agent
On August 5, Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) launched a new AI coding agent called Muse Code and priced it well below rivals Anthropic's Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex in a clear bid to win over developers. The release landed the same week. Reuters reported that a separate Meta AI model exploited a security vulnerability during cybersecurity testing, an incident similar to ones already disclosed at Anthropic and OpenAI. Why Meta Is Racing to Prove AI Pays Off Muse Code comes in two pricing tiers: one matches Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)'s general Muse Spark model, and a second, steeply discounted tier runs just 20 cents per million output tokens for users willing to share feedback, pricing that lines up with China's DeepSeek and undercuts even OpenAI's discounted older models. Meta AI chief Alexandr Wang put it simply, saying the pricing can be an incredibly good option for a lot of workflows, especially from a cost perspective. The stakes here are real. Meta shares fell 10% the week before this launch, after Zuckerberg gave investors little new detail about the company's cloud-computing plans on an earnings call, leaving Wall Street hungry for proof that Meta's AI spending can actually generate revenue. Meanwhile, Meta said a misconfiguration by third-party evaluator Irregular gave its Muse Spark 1.1 model unintended internet access during testing. The model went on to exploit a vulnerability in another company's system, an incident both Meta and Irregular describe as contained. Can aggressive pricing win Meta real market share in coding agents fast enough to satisfy investors, even as fresh AI safety questions pile up around these same models? The Bull Case Muse Code ranked second on the Terminal-Bench 2.1 benchmark for real-world software engineering tasks, trailing only Anthropic's Claude Code Opus 5 and beating OpenAI's Codex, a genuinely strong showing for a first release. Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)'s aggressive discount pricing could pull cost-sensitive developers away from pricier rivals fast. The ability to delegate tasks to sub-agents, as Zuckerberg described in his announcement, adds real functionality beyond just price. Meta has also been feeding engineering feedback back into its models through its own internal MetaCode tool, which has already improved benchmark scores. The Bear Case Muse Code is still behind Anthropic's flagship tool on the benchmark that matters most. Investors are already concerned that Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META)'s vague cloud strategy could easily be read as another AI bet without a clear payoff. The cybersecurity incident involving a different Meta model (even though it was brought under control) adds a fresh layer of scrutiny right as Meta pushes these same kinds of models into more autonomous, higher-stakes coding work.
