Anthropic is contemplating a public offering, according to the Financial Times, shortly following a succession of cautions from prominent central bank officials and other figures regarding an inflated AI market and excessive cash in various investment sectors.
Concurrently, NEC Director Kevin Hassett has become President Donald Trump's preferred choice to succeed U.S. Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell in the coming year, suggesting additional reductions in interest rates during 2026 and consequently, fresh infusions of more affordable capital into the economy.
And Big Short investor Michael Burry repeated his warning that stocks were in a bubble on a podcast with author Michael Lewis.
Anthropic, currently in discussions for a fresh round of venture capital investment that would appraise the artificial intelligence firm at $300 billion, has engaged the legal practice Wilson Sonsini of California to guide them regarding initial public offering matters, according to the FT, with the intention of becoming a publicly traded entity in 2026. The organization refuted any assertions of having formulated such intentions.
TL;DR
- Anthropic is preparing for a potential 2026 IPO, seeking $300 billion valuation.
- Concerns about an inflated AI market and excessive cash are widespread among financial experts.
- OpenAI's ChatGPT subscription growth is decelerating, while Anthropic and Perplexity show strong gains.
- Investors like Michael Burry warn of a tech stock bubble, comparing it to the dot-com era.
An initial public offering would furnish the firm with a substantial new pool of funds to contend with Sam Altman's OpenAI. Research recently disclosed by Deutsche Bank analysts Adrian Cox and Stefan Abrudan suggests certain vulnerabilities within OpenAI's operations. Data derived from transaction records via dbDataInsights indicates a deceleration in the expansion of consumer subscriptions for OpenAI's ChatGPT.
“The value of OpenAI subscriptions in the major European markets declined slightly in June and has been little changed since then … Unlike in the past two years, the pace of growth has not increased long after the annual summer slowdown, suggesting that the subscription model may be saturating,” they said.
Concurrently, the increase in subscription worth has soared for Anthropic and Perplexity—despite both of these extensive language models possessing fewer patrons, according to Deutsche Bank's figures.
“The new data also show that the value of OpenAI subscriptions has increased 18% this year, compared with a near sevenfold increase in Anthropic’s Claude and 46% gain in Perplexity from much smaller bases,” the pair wrote.
And Anthropic has an easier pathway to profitability than OpenAI, Deutsche Bank said:
Should Anthropic decide to pursue an initial public offering, it would enter a market rife with concerns regarding potential market inflation. The Bank of England warned on Tuesday indicated that “many risky asset valuations remain materially stretched, particularly for technology companies focused on Artificial Intelligence (AI). Equity valuations in the U.S. Are close to the most stretched they have been since the dot-com bubble, and in the U.K. Since the global financial crisis (GFC). This heightens the risk of a sharp correction.”
UK pension plans have been subtly shifting their investments from American technology stocks for this particular cause, the FT reported.
This came after comments made by Raghuram Rajan, the former Governor of the Reserve Bank of India, during a Clifford Capital Investor Day event held in Singapore. “We are in a period where there’s ample credit, and the Fed is cutting,” Bloomberg quoted him as saying. “That is the time when the risks build up more. So this is a time to be really more careful.” Rajan currently holds a position as a finance professor at the University of Chicago.
And Bank for International Settlements General Manager Pablo Hernández de Cos warned in a speech suggested that an excessive amount of liquidity was being provided to non-bank financial entities for leveraged transactions involving government debt. While he didn't directly connect this to stock market activity, it aligned with the notion that asset markets are flooded with an abundance of inexpensive funds.
“In recent years, hedge funds have been able to borrow amounts equal to or higher than the market value of the collateral provided—that is, without any discount, or haircut, protecting the cash lender from market risk,” he said. “Around 70% of bilateral repos [a short-term borrowing tool based on a repurchase agreement] taken out by hedge funds in U.S. Dollars and 50% in bilateral repos in euros are offered at zero haircut, meaning that creditors are not imposing any constraint on leverage using government bonds.”
Burry, the investor who correctly called the 2008 financial crisis, appeared on a podcast with Michael Lewis, author of The Big Short, to describe why he closed his investment fund. He thinks there is a bubble in tech stocks and wants to short the market, but he has clients who want to be long on stocks. “I think that we’re in a bad situation in the stock market. I think the stock market could be in for a number of bad years. And I think it could be a longer bear market more akin to 2000,” Burry said. “This bubble looks an awful lot like the dot-com bubble.”
In Washington, D.C., Trump indicated he had chosen a successor for The Fed’s Powell. Financial markets understood this to suggest the Fed would probably keep lowering rates, thereby injecting further funds into markets already close to their peak levels. The CME FedWatch instrument—which tracks wagers on Fed fund futures—assigned a 90% probability of a 0.25% reduction occurring in December and a 40% likelihood of an additional decrease being implemented in March 2026.
Here’s a snapshot of the markets ahead of the opening bell in New York this morning:
- S&P 500 futures were up 0.12% this morning. The last session closed up 0.25%.
- STOXX Europe 600 was up 0.14% in early trading.
- The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.19% in early trading.
- Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 1.14%.
- China’s CSI 300 was down 0.51%.
- The South Korea KOSPI was up 1.04%.
- India’s NIFTY 50 is down 0.18%.
- Bitcoin rose to $92.8K.
