News & Updates
The latest news and updates from companies in the WLTH portfolio.
Will Anthropic pull off a November IPO? Time is running out to file key paperwork.
If market pressures keep building, Anthropic 'could reasonably decide it is better to stay private and wait for a better opportunity,' one portfolio manager says Anthropic, which makes the Claude suite of products, is one of the pillars of the AI boom. Anthropic may be just days away from making a major step toward becoming a public company - but there's still time for things to change. The company is one of the biggest pillars of the artificial-intelligence industry, and its anticipated initial public offering is likely to reinforce that. Anthropic is reportedly seeking a valuation of as much as $2 trillion, which could result in an even more explosive IPO than SpaceX's (SPCX) $1.77 trillion debut earlier this year. According a Reuters report on Thursday, the Claude chatbot maker plans to hold its IPO in the middle of November, which means time is running out to file some important paperwork. The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission requires a company to publicly file its prospectus at least 15 days before it launches a roadshow. Jay Ritter, who leads the University of Florida's IPO Initiative, told MarketWatch that Anthropic has some time if it still wants to go public before Thanksgiving. If the company were to hold its IPO as late as Nov. 24 and start its roadshow with investors on Nov. 16, Anthropic would have until late next week to publicly file its S-1 document, he said. However, it's also possible that Anthropic decides to push back its IPO. The company was once expected to publicly unveil its IPO prospectus shortly after Labor Day, which could have set the stage for it to list later in September. Experts say it's likely, but not certain, that Anthropic will still want to make a debut now. Anthropic did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The market has become less hospitable to AI companies lately, which is one factor that could give pause to Anthropic's management team. Joe Tigay, a portfolio manager at the Rational Equity Armor Fund HDCAX, told MarketWatch that persistent inflation and high energy prices could also be cause for concern. "Historically, that combination of slowing growth and persistent inflation can be where stock markets crack. If those pressures keep building, Anthropic could reasonably decide it is better to stay private and wait for a better opportunity," Tigay told MarketWatch over email. But the market needs a successful Anthropic IPO to prove that AI has staying power, argued Jim Lebenthal, chief market strategist at Cerity Partners. He noted that the longevity and economics of the AI industry have been further called into question recently. Shares of the neocloud company CoreWeave (CRWV), for example, have dropped roughly 30% over the last two weeks on concerns about the company's ability to manage its debt. Even companies that are swimming in cash have been swept up in the downward action. Micron Technology's stock (MU) has lost 17% over the past month against the broader backdrop of fears over AI spending and financing. "It's reasonable to have questions. It's reasonable even to have doubts," Lebenthal said. "But the health of the overall equity market and the health of the U.S. economy relies vitally on the artificial-intelligence industry being successful." Of course, Anthropic's reasons for going public wouldn't be to buoy stock-market sentiment toward AI. Simply put, Anthropic needs the cash, according to Andrew Rocco, a stock strategist at Zacks Investment Research. The biggest AI companies have shown that "they're basically willing to spend as much as they can in order to capture more customers and try and be the dominant AI player," Rocco told MarketWatch. "In my view they're going to try and get this out because they do need that capital, especially since it's going to be probably harder to just raise it in the private market." Anthropic could spend as much as $750 billion on AI compute capacity in the coming years, according to the Wall Street Journal, which cited a copy of its draft IPO prospectus. The Journal also noted that Anthropic recorded a net loss of more than $80 billion in the first half of 2026 against revenue of $16.3 billion, though the loss was largely driven by accounting adjustments rather than fundamental business developments. Rocco noted that prediction markets show an 80% chance of the company going public by the end of the year. -William Gavin This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal.
Dow Jones Top Markets Headlines at 9 PM ET: SpaceX, Anthropic and Nvidia Help Snap Tech Stocks Out of Their Recent Malaise | Canada ...
SpaceX, Anthropic and Nvidia Help Snap Tech Stocks Out of Their Recent Malaise Bullish signals from three different links of the AI chain helped the Nasdaq Composite undo most of Friday's selloff. Canada to Provide Steel, Auto Sectors With Billions to Ease Trade Crunch It is Canada's latest dollop of federal aid for companies that have faced financial strain since President Trump imposed hefty tariffs on foreign-made metals and automotives. Diplomats Race to Head Off Escalation With Iran Efforts to revive talks come as the U.S. sends more warships to the region and Israel plans for possible attacks. The Real Energy Bottleneck Isn't Crude-It's Fuel, Says Kuwait CEO The biggest bottleneck to the global trade of energy is no longer crude oil, according to the head of Kuwait's state oil company. The Trump Administration Wants More Tax Charges. It's Going to Be Tough. The Justice Department has told its overworked fraud prosecutors to look for tax charges wherever they can, but law enforcement is already straining. U.S. Crude Oil Stockpiles Fall More Than Expected Commercial crude oil stocks decreased by 3.1 million barrels last week. Analysts had expected crude stocks to be down by 300,000 barrels. NYSE Just Extended Options Trading Hours. It's Only the Beginning. The New York Stock Exchange said plans to open up options trading for roughly two hours before the market's typical 9:30 a.m. ET opening bell and then again for 15 minutes after the 4 p.m. ET closing bell. Healthcare Stocks Are Rallying, and Flashing a Warning for the Rest of the Market The sector is trading at a premium as investors seek safety from AI jitters. Soaring Energy Prices Spur U.K. to Approve Controversial Gas Field The decision brings an end to an approvals process that had stalled on climate concerns, and primes operations to kick off within weeks. Oil Futures End Mixed as Traders Weigh Supply Recovery Against Shipping Risks Oil prices settled mixed as optimism about a recovery in Middle East oil exports was offset by continued threats against shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and attacks targeting Saudi Arabia. U.K. Inflation Jumps Again, Strengthening Case for Rate Hike Inflation rose further above the Bank of England's target as policymakers prepare for a meeting that is expected to yield a first rate increase since the start of the Iran war. U.K. Government on Track to Cut Borrowing Ahead of Budget The government cut borrowing in the first six months of its fiscal year-but at a slower pace than planned-underlining the challenges posed by rising prices and interest payments.
Which Funds Have the Largest Stakes in Anthropic and OpenAI Ahead of Their IPOs?
The next potential trillion-dollar IPOs could already be in these funds. Following SpaceX's historic blastoff as the largest IPO on record, two more private market giants may soon make their way to public markets: artificial intelligence leaders Anthropic and OpenAI. Let's take a look at funds that have already invested in them. SpaceX reached a nearly $2 trillion valuation after its IPO. Top generative AI model companies Anthropic and OpenAI have both been valued at around $1 trillion, based mostly on private funding rounds, and are targeting IPO valuations of $2 trillion and $1.5 trillion, respectively. Anthropic officially filed for an IPO in early October and is expected to raise $100 billion at a $2 trillion valuation on its expected November launch. Details of its IPO prospectus are beginning to leak out. If those projections are accurate, both firms' IPOs would be bigger than SpaceX's. The two AI leaders have attracted enormous investor interest through multiple private funding rounds. OpenAI has raised nearly $200 billion, while Anthropic has secured roughly $130 billion. Major public technology companies, including Amazon.com AMZN, Alphabet GOOGL, and Microsoft MSFT, have been among their early investors. Some mutual funds have invested in private companies for years, but the potential scale of these offerings is unprecedented. Here are the active equity open-end mutual funds with the largest stakes in the companies and others with decent helpings, as of their most recently disclosed portfolios. Several asset managers have invested an estimated $6 billion in Anthropic, led by American Funds parent Capital Group, which had $10 billion invested. Fidelity ranks second with roughly $5 billion in the company, making the fund families Anthropic's largest mutual fund shareholders. While OpenAI has raised more capital in private markets, asset managers have been less active in investing in the company. In total, mutual fund firms have invested an estimated $3.5 billion in OpenAI, or roughly one-fourth of what they invested in Anthropic. Capital Group and Fidelity again lead the way, with $1.7 billion and $1.1 billion invested, respectively. The figures likely understate industrywide exposure. For example, T. Rowe Price does not disclose individual private company investments in its mutual funds to Morningstar, meaning its true stakes in both OpenAI and Anthropic are likely larger than what is shown here. For example, as of June 2026, T. Rowe Price Blue Chip Growth TRBCX invested 0.37% of its assets in Anthropic and roughly 0.69% of assets in OpenAI. Most funds maintain relatively small allocations to these companies. Among the 10 largest funds with exposure to Anthropic by assets under management, all are managed by either Fidelity or Capital Group. American Funds Growth Fund of America AGTHX and American Funds Fundamental Investors ANCFX rank as the two largest fund shareholders. While most positions represent a modest share of portfolio assets, a handful of funds have made more meaningful commitments. Fidelity Select Technology FSPTX and BlackRock Technology Opportunities BGSAX each allocate more than 2.5% of assets to Anthropic. Tema Photonics & Optical ETF LAZR stands out with an allocation exceeding 9%, making it one of the most concentrated publicly disclosed bets on the company. Two of the largest mutual funds, American Funds Growth Fund of America and Fidelity Contrafund FCNTX, top the list of funds invested in OpenAI ranked by market value. A handful of funds have taken more concentrated positions. ARK Blockchain & Fintech Innovation ETF ARKF and ARK Next Generation Internet ETF ARKW each allocate more than 3% of assets to OpenAI. Overall, more than 50 funds report investments in OpenAI, though position sizes vary significantly across portfolios. It's important to know what you own. A fund's exposure to private holdings like Anthropic or OpenAI -- or lack thereof -- tells you something about the strategy's risk profile, process, and manager. Whether or not a fund owns the latest hot IPO should not be the primary reason for buying or selling it. You should evaluate an equity fund on its manager, approach, parent company, and the role it plays in a long-term portfolio, not just on how well it's situated for the next record-breaking public offering. Chasing IPOs with funds can easily backfire.
Dow Jones Top Company Headlines at 9 PM ET: Anthropic to Commit 5% of Its Shares to New 'Public Benefit' Fund | How ...
Anthropic to Commit 5% of Its Shares to New 'Public Benefit' Fund The fund could send distributions directly to populations affected by AI labor disruption. How Lego Is Getting More Adults to Tinker With Their Toy Bricks Marketing chief Julia Goldin says Lego is creating buildings sets around passions that cross demographic boundaries, such as gaming and Formula One. AI Agents Trading Stocks While You Sleep? Charles Schwab's CEO Is Skeptical Schwab CEO Rick Wurster is betting some money and investing needs require a human touch. Ford Wants to Make Fun Cars Again in Europe-if Drivers Can Wait Until 2028 The automaker is leaning into its racing heritage in the region as Chinese competition craters its sales. How Coke Loosened Pepsi's Grip on KFC's Soda Fountains Former PepsiCo-owned chain switched sides after a secret showdown, replete with taste tests and discussions over strategy. Tesla's Flying Roadster and the SpaceX Halo Tesla's impressive flying Roadster isn't about building cars at all. It's about this. 'Street Fighter' Kicks Its Way to Top of Busy Movie Weekend SoftBank in Early Talks to Buy Allied Universal The deal, if completed, could value the business at around $18 billion. The Holdouts Working Around New York City's Airbnb Crackdown A crackdown on short-term rentals drastically reduced the business. Here's how the hangers-on are making it work. It's Too Late for Small Fixes at Pepsi The problem may be bigger than a few weak brands. Pepsi needs to stop tinkering and consider more fundamental changes. What Tesla's Flying Roadster Really Means for the Global Auto Race Elon Musk's latest vision for the company's sports car has more to do with China than cold-gas rocket thrusters. Hermès Is Targeting a New Emerging Market: The American Suburbs The French brand is analyzing Zip Code data to zero in on pockets of growing U.S. affluence.
Dow Jones Top Company Headlines at 9 PM ET: YouTube is Looking to Expand Into Audiobooks | Anthropic's ...
YouTube is Looking to Expand Into Audiobooks The Alphabet-owned streamer is working on a feature for audiobooks, a bid to compete with offerings from Spotify and Audible. ---- Anthropic's Quarterly Revenue Jumped 45% to Nearly $17 Billion The artificial-intelligence giant met with public-market investors Wednesday ahead of its planned IPO next month. ---- Apple Joins Nvidia in the $5 Trillion Valuation Club To power the iPhone maker's next phase, Chief Executive John Ternus needs to raise its AI game. ---- OpenAI Alleges Ex-Employee Took Confidential Files to Apple The files included detailed images of an unreleased device, a new legal filing claims. ---- Charles Schwab Earnings to Spotlight Success at Asset Gathering Wall Street analysts expect the company to post strong third-quarter earnings growth. ---- Saudi Airlines Rush to Save Scores of Planes From a War Zone Deadly Houthi missile strikes have airlines racing to move billions worth of planes to safety. ---- TSMC Earnings Will Surge but Terafab and Texas Talks Are in Focus Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing is forecast to report booming profit but the real intrigue comes in its talks with Elon Musk over his Terafab project. ---- Germany's Lufthansa Beats Air France-KLM to Take $1.3 Billion Stake in Portugal's Flag Carrier Deutsche Lufthansa won a bid to take a 49.9% stake in Portuguese airline TAP, bringing to a close a contest between Lufthansa and Air France-KLM for the acquisition of the stake. ---- Berkshire Hathaway Builds 4% Stake in Bending Spoons The Milan-based company said Berkshire made a fresh investment of $330 million after plowing $600 million into its July IPO. ---- Fairfax Financial Buying Majority Stake in India's IDBI Bank Canada's Fairfax Financial is positioning itself in India's fast-growing financial services industry with the acquisition of a majority stake in IDBI Bank for about $5.43 billion. ---- Debanking Probe Finds JPMorgan, Banks Cut Off MAGA Sellers and Democrat Groups An investigation by a Trump regulator detailed examples of businesses and individuals getting shut out by the nation's biggest banks. ---- GlobalFoundries to Build Two Chip Plants With Up to $21 Billion Funding The chip manufacturer plans to build two chip plants in New York using up to $20 billion in funding from Japan and money from the CHIPS Act as the U.S. Commerce Department plans to take a 4% stake in the company. ---- American Electric Power to Invest $4 Billion in Fuel Cell Project American Electric Power plans to invest about $4 billion in a Wyoming fuel cell generation project to meet growing energy demand from Alphabet's Google. ---- Netflix Eliminates About 1,000 Jobs in Biggest Cuts Since 2022 The job cuts affect 6% of its staff and come as the company struggles with slowing growth. ---- Bank of America Settlement Charge Hits Profit, Morgan Stanley Profit Climbs Bank of America reported a lower third-quarter profit, mostly tied to a regulatory settlement charge, while Morgan Stanley's overall profit and revenue climbed. (END) Dow Jones Newswires October 14, 2026 21:15 ET (01:15 GMT) Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Anthropic's slowing growth could be the AI trade's latest red flag
Anthropic's revenue growth appears to be cooling as the company prepares for its public debut, further stoking investors' AI jitters Anthropic generated $16.8 billion in third-quarter revenue, according to the Financial Times. The artificial-intelligence trade, already under pressure from the threat of rising inflation and interest rates, may have just received another blow. Reported new details about Anthropic's financial status ahead of its public listing are adding to the growing skepticism of the AI trade's economics. During an invite-only investor day on Wednesday, the artificial-intelligence company behind Claude shared that it generated $16.8 billion in revenue in the quarter that ended Sept. 30, up 50% from the previous quarter, according to a Financial Times report that cited people familiar with the matter. Anthropic also reportedly said that it's been profitable on an adjusted basis for the past two quarters, and cash-flow positive for the past quarter. The company did not immediately respond to a MarketWatch request for comment. While the numbers might seem impressive, they might not be enough to satisfy the sky-high expectations investors have priced into the AI boom. Between the first and second quarter, Anthropic's revenue grew roughly 140% - which means that the company's growth has decelerated since the beginning of the year. In a Tuesday note prior to the investor day, Jefferies desk-based analyst Jeffrey Favuzza wrote that Wall Street was likely anticipating an annual revenue run rate of least $80 billion, with the hope that it would surpass $105 billion by year-end. In August, Reuters reported that Anthropic's annual revenue run rate topped $65 billion. Anthropic's reported growth deceleration comes as the company plans to spend over $500 billion on chips and infrastructure over the next decade, according to a Reuters story from last month. Meanwhile, shares of memory-chip makers like Samsung (KR:005930) and SK Hynix (SKHY) are experiencing a sharp downturn, weighing down South Korea's KOSPI Composite Index KR:180721. The KOSPI index has fallen over 16% in the past five trading sessions. Samsung and SK Hynix shares are both sharply lower in Korean trading early Thursday morning. Memory stocks saw an aggressive run-up in May and June as soaring demand for high-bandwidth memory in data centers boosted chip makers' pricing power. However, the "Big Three" chip makers - Samsung, SK Hynix and Micron (MU) - are facing a threat from Chinese memory provider ChangXin Memory Technologies CXMT (CN:688825), which announced plans earlier this week to roll out next-generation memory architecture by year-end. The new 4F(2) technology would allow CXMT to pack 30% to 50% more memory cells per wafer, lowering costs and threatening to undercut rivals. While concerns over CXMT could definitely play a part in this week's tech selloff, Favuzza said that Anthropic's investor day was likely the biggest source of uncertainty in the market. Also: Chip stocks suffer worst stretch in 16 months as AI fatigue grips the market -Christine Ji This content was created by MarketWatch, which is operated by Dow Jones & Co. MarketWatch is published independently from Dow Jones Newswires and The Wall Street Journal. (END) Dow Jones Newswires 10-14-26 2107ET Copyright (c) 2026 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Do AI Labs Like Anthropic and OpenAI Have Economic Moats?
Morningstar is rolling out coverage of artificial intelligence labs ahead of Anthropic's expected IPO. A key question will be whether the companies have economic moats -- sustainable competitive advantages that will help them outpace competitors. In the first part of a three-part series, based on our full research report, we study whether companies such as Anthropic and OpenAI have moats. In the almost four years since the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT, our technology equity research team has heard one alarmingly simple concern time and again: If every large language model can write the same email, summarize the same earnings, and generate a coherent block of code, can the firms building these LLMs really earn outsized profits? We began hearing this question in 2024 and 2025, concerning whether public cloud vendors -- such as Amazon AMZN, Microsoft MSFT, and Alphabet GOOG/GOOGL, which have each poured billions into partnerships with Anthropic and OpenAI -- could earn reasonable returns on their large AI-related expenditures. In 2026, with investors eyeing potential IPOs in the AI lab space, the question is aimed more at labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI, as investors try to figure out whether they are on a fast track to commodification or building durable businesses. If the labs cannot earn profits, the concern spreads well beyond Anthropic and OpenAI. The spending commitments rippling across chips, power, and data centers rest on the assumption that AI can be monetized at attractive returns. This effectively makes the question of commodification about the durability of the entire trade. Morningstar's View We're on the more bullish side, as we think leading AI labs are building moats. We do not view these moats as fully formed yet. That said, early usage data, product development, and partnerships indicate leading labs will be able to extract economic returns from developing and running cutting-edge LLMs, staving off threats of commodification. Specifically, we see two moat sources forming: a network effect driven by data and product improvements, and a structural cost advantage built on growing training costs and gigawatt-scale compute discounts. Network Effects: We See the Flywheel Beginning to Spin We see the network effect forming around the model businesses as a data-and-product flywheel -- an indirect network effect in which the company uses data to improve the product for everyone. The AI labs' emerging network effects serve as a feedback loop that they can use to iterate faster on both their model and tool development. The network effect we observe at the leading labs runs through a six-station flywheel, with early adoption of coding products a clear demonstration of this dynamic. We expect this dynamic to ripple across other model use cases and personas as adoption of this technology broadens. Structural Cost Advantages We've seen Anthropic and OpenAI use algorithmic advancements, custom silicon, and multiyear compute deals to quantitatively reduce their cost to serve these LLMs, putting them at a clear cost advantage over other firms. Our core thesis on AI lab unit economics is that inference demand (end users leveraging existing models to generate code, text, and answers to questions) is scaling exponentially, with a significantly steeper curve than the training and research costs required to build the initial models. As both inference and training and research costs continue to scale, the gap between the two curves widens, and that is where this industry's profits will be found. The scalability and amortization of these three distinct costs -- training, research, and inference -- are key to understanding these firms' longer-term margin trajectories. The structure and time scale of these cost centers point to the central asymmetry of the model business. Training and research are lumpy, front-loaded, and generation-bound, while inference is smooth and usage-linked. Over the past few years, we've seen AI labs focus the vast majority of their resources on training and research as they've been building core models and the ecosystem to leverage them from scratch. Meanwhile, inference scaling only kicked off in earnest in 2025-26. This inference scaling relied on investments in training and research that made the models and relevant tools useful enough for companies and users to deploy. So, as investors, the real question about AI lab economics is not whether a lab loses or makes money during training and research (they lose money), but rather what the company's economics look like as inference becomes a larger part of the overall compute pie, and how much can inference scale relative to training. Longer-term margins in the model business are driven by inference rather than training. Investors who are over-indexed on high training budgets will continue to miss the fundamental strength of these businesses. As more compute comes online, a disproportionate share will be earmarked for inference, further skewing these businesses' margin profiles upward. Stated differently, while the initial margins are negative (dominated by training), the incremental margins are closer to 80% (the margin profile of pure inference), and as these companies mature and inference becomes a larger proportion of the overall compute budget, we will shift closer and closer to that 80% mark. The transition is happening right now. Anthropic reached operating profitability (not gross profitability, mind you) in the first quarter of 2026, posting 5% operating margins on $11 billion in quarterly sales. The firm achieved this milestone as its compute mix shift skewed more toward inference. We'd also note that the firm's path to operating profitability in the first quarter of 2026 was much faster than the bears' model, which assumed these labs would remain unprofitable indefinitely. More About Morningstar's Economic Moat Ratings The economic moat rating is a structural feature that Morningstar believes positions a firm to earn durable excess profits over a long period of time, with excess profits defined as returns on invested capital above our estimate of a firm's cost of capital. Narrow-moat companies are those that we believe are more likely than not to achieve normalized excess returns for at least the next 10 years. Wide-moat companies are those that we believe will earn excess returns for 10 years, with excess returns more likely than not to remain for at least 20 years. Firms without moats are more susceptible to competition. Morningstar has identified five sources of economic moats: intangible assets, switching costs, network effects, cost advantages, and efficient scale.
