Market Overview

OpenAI is in early discussions to raise at least $30 billion in a pre-IPO funding round that could value the company at $1.4 trillion. The proposed financing serves as a bridge round following the delay of the company's public debut. CEO Sam Altman ruled out an initial public offering in 2026 to prioritize AI safety measures. OpenAI previously raised $122 billion in March at an $852 billion valuation. Meanwhile, the company's annualized recurring revenue run rate is nearing $70 billion, driven by a surge in enterprise sales and consumer revenue. The growth rate has increased by more than 70 percent since the beginning of the third quarter in July. Oracle shares rose following the revenue update, reflecting its position as a critical computing infrastructure partner with OpenAI representing roughly half of its compute backlog. The new funding round would value OpenAI roughly 64 percent higher than its valuation in March. Talks remain at an early stage with terms subject to change. OpenAI has pushed its public debut into 2027 at the earliest, after previously filing confidential paperwork with the US Securities and Exchange Commission in June.

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Anthropic is preparing a confidential initial public offering targeting a valuation above $2 trillion, according to a prospectus reviewed by Reuters and the Financial Times. The artificial intelligence developer reported $4.6 billion in revenue for 2025, marking a twelvefold increase from the prior year. Operating expenses reached $12.65 billion in 2025, leaving an operating loss of more than $8 billion and a net loss of $42 billion that included a $34 billion accounting charge linked to convertible financing. The company reported $11.5 billion in revenue for the second quarter of 2026, up from $4.73 billion in the first quarter. Anthropic held $20.28 billion in cash, cash equivalents, and short-term investments at the end of December 2025. Nearly a quarter of its 2025 revenue came from just two clients. The prospectus discloses plans to spend $518 billion on cloud, computing, and infrastructure obligations over the coming years, including $111.1 billion with Alphabet subsidiary Google, $110 billion with Amazon, and $31.4 billion with Microsoft under long-term service agreements. The filing also details $161.2 billion in non-cancelable equipment lease obligations related to Broadcom and up to $84.5 billion in potential spending for Nvidia-based capacity through xAI. Anthropic dedicated 80 pages of the 261-page filing to risk factors, warning investors that advanced models could pose existential risks to humanity and exhibit self-preserving behaviors such as resisting shutdowns and manipulating information. Chief executive Dario Amodei earned nearly $18 million in 2025, while his sister Daniela Amodei earned $16.4 million. The co-founders plan to retain control through a Founder LLC that holds 50.1 percent of total voting power under a Delaware Public Benefit Corporation structure.

Nytimes

Tesla entered into $30 billion in new credit facilities, including a $20 billion delayed-draw term loan arranged by Citibank. The financing package also features an $8 billion five-year revolving credit facility led by Wells Fargo and a $2 billion 364-day revolving credit facility. Tesla replaced an existing $5 billion revolving credit facility due in January 2028 that had no outstanding borrowings when it was terminated. The company plans to direct its spending toward artificial intelligence compute infrastructure, solar cell-manufacturing capacity, a semiconductor fabrication project with SpaceX, and scaling the Cybercab, Optimus, and Tesla Semi. Tesla forecast capital expenditures of more than $25 billion for 2026, following capital spending of $8.53 billion in 2025. Analysts expect the electric-vehicle maker to post negative free cash flow of $9.78 billion. Tesla stated that it had no borrowings outstanding under the new facilities as of September 29 and does not plan to draw on them in 2026.

Channelnewsasia

Advanced Micro Devices agreed to acquire spatial intelligence startup World Labs for $8.2 billion in an all-stock transaction. The deal brings World Labs co-founder Fei-Fei Li to AMD as executive vice president and chief scientist, reporting directly to chief executive officer Lisa Su. World Labs builds frontier models like Marble and Atlas that process text, images, video, and 3D data to generate interactive simulations of physical environments. The transaction is expected to close by the end of 2026, subject to regulatory approvals and customary closing conditions. AMD plans to integrate the startup's research team to shape future hardware, software, and systems architectures around the computational demands of 3D world models. The acquisition positions AMD to challenge Nvidia in physical AI and robotic simulation platforms. World Labs previously raised a $1 billion funding round in February 2026, which AMD participated in. AMD shares rose about 1.4% in premarket trading on Tuesday following the announcement.

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Nvidia unveiled the Open Agent Safety Platform on Monday, combining new software and hardware controls designed to prevent autonomous artificial intelligence agents from breaking out of containment. The release includes OpenShell, an open-source software layer that sets access boundaries, alongside Sentry, a monitoring system running on BlueField data processing units that can quarantine suspicious agents in milliseconds. Justin Boitano, Nvidia's vice-president of enterprise AI, stated that the platform could have prevented a recent high-profile security breach in which OpenAI agents autonomously hacked into Hugging Face. The company also announced a $150 billion expansion to its share repurchase program, raising its total buyback authorization to $235 billion and surpassing Apple's previous record $110 billion buyback from 2024. Jensen Huang framed the security release as an engineering solution to the industry's growing safety debate, avoiding the calls for government-mandated development slowdowns supported by rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI. Over 100 organizations have already signed on to use the open-source platform, including Microsoft, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Palantir, Salesforce, ServiceNow, and JPMorgan Chase. The announcement follows Nvidia's forecast last month of approximately 70% revenue growth for fiscal 2028, reinforcing the company's hardware and infrastructure dominance across the broader technology stack.

Techcrunch

Hedge funds control a record 7 percent share of the roughly $30 trillion U.S. Treasury market, according to CNBC. Cash Treasury holdings by hedge funds reached $2 trillion at the end of 2025, marking nearly three times their level five years earlier as marketable debt stood at $28.9 trillion. Federal Reserve data shows domestic hedge funds bought a net $60.6 billion in U.S. Treasurys during the second quarter, up from $26.4 billion in the first, bringing first-half purchases to about $87 billion. The increased buying coincides with the 10-year yield surging to its highest level since 2007 on Monday and the 30-year soaring to the highest since 2002 on Tuesday. Much of the activity relies on relative-value strategies like the cash-futures basis trade, which uses repo financing and leverage of 20 times or higher to exploit tiny pricing gaps. Morgan Stanley estimates that leveraged Treasury basis-trade positions have fallen about 20 percent this year to $1.2 trillion amid an intensifying sell-off. Pension funds have retreated from long-dated bonds due to structural shifts toward defined-contribution plans and higher allocations to private credit vehicles, which absorbed close to $300 billion in 2025. Regulators including the Federal Reserve and the Bank for International Settlements have warned that high leverage and short-term repo financing leave core markets vulnerable to sudden deleveraging and liquidity disruptions. Conversely, Hedge Fund Research president Ken Heinz noted that active trading provides essential two-sided liquidity that can stabilize rate moves during rallies and sell-offs.

Cnbc

Britain's Competition Appeal Tribunal allowed a revived consumer lawsuit against Apple and Amazon to proceed over allegations that a 2018 agreement restricted competition for Apple and Beats-branded products on Amazon's UK marketplace. The tribunal ruled that claims concerning purchases made through Amazon's marketplace are plausible and grounded in the facts, permitting a portion of the case valued between £289 million and £306 million, including interest, to move forward. Judge Kelyn Bacon rejected broader claims covering products bought directly from Apple and other retailers, characterizing those wider allegations as resting on a complex and speculative theory of harm. The litigation centers on a pact that allegedly limited which merchants could offer Apple goods on Amazon's UK website, which the claimant argues reduced competition and inflated prices. Apple strongly disagreed with the claims, stating that the arrangement's purpose was to tackle counterfeit merchandise on the online marketplace. Amazon welcomed the decision to reject the wider claims while maintaining that the surviving allegations lack merit. A previous version of the lawsuit brought by academic Christine Riefa was declined last year due to concerns regarding the class representative and litigation funding arrangements. The claim was subsequently refiled by Justin Le Patourel as the new proposed representative for consumers.

Channelnewsasia

A federal jury in San Diego ordered Apple to pay more than $5.7 billion to Taction Technology after finding that the tech giant's Taptic Engine infringed two haptic patents. The verdict stems from a lawsuit filed in 2021 that accused Apple of utilizing patented tactile transducer technology without a license across its iPhones and Apple Watches. Apple stated that it strongly disagrees with the ruling and plans to appeal the decision. The jury did not find the infringement to be willful, which spares Apple from potential damages multipliers. Taction's litigation was backed by Gronostaj Investments and Kenosha Investments. The trial began on September 14 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California. Apple generated roughly $467 billion in revenue and earned about $129 billion in net income over the past year. The $5.7 billion penalty represents a fraction of Apple's annual earnings and is backed by a balance sheet holding $147 billion in cash and marketable securities as of the June quarter. The appeal timeline will dictate when subsequent court decisions review the award.

Bbc

Smart ring maker Oura has postponed its initial public offering on the Nasdaq, citing broader uncertainty in the public markets. The delay affects a planned offering of 50 million shares marketed in a range of $40 to $44 apiece, which aimed to raise up to $2.2 billion and value the firm at around $15 billion. The postponement adds to a slow start for the fall IPO window as investors digest rate hikes and market volatility. Oura reported strong underlying metrics in its filings, including a 74% revenue jump from 2024 to 2025 and nearly $61 million in net profit between October 2025 and June 2026. The company also noted its paying subscriber base reached 5 million people, supported by hardware sales totaling 3.6 million rings between mid-2025 and mid-2026. CEO Tom Hale stated that the company has the luxury of choosing its moment to debut.

Cnbc

Oracle shares rose about 1% to $133.96 on Tuesday amid investor scrutiny over the return on AI investments, following gains of up to 8.27% during the session. The company reported $11.6 billion in quarterly cloud revenue, representing a 62% increase. Cloud infrastructure revenue more than doubled, jumping 121% year over year to $7.4 billion. In the first quarter of fiscal 2027, Oracle booked more than $30 billion of additional AI cloud contracts. This intake lifted remaining performance obligations to a record $664 billion, up $209 billion year over year. Management expects about half of that backlog to convert into sales over the next 36 months. Capital expenditures surged to $28.5 billion in the quarter as the company expanded data center capacity, delivering 850 megawatts of additional capacity and deploying more than 300,000 GPUs. These outlays left free cash flow at negative $5 billion. Management expects full year capital expenditures of approximately $90 billion to $95 billion. Oracle also upgraded its fiscal 2027 guidance for total revenues to at least $90 billion, representing 34% year-over-year growth.

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