| Company | Type | Amount | Sector |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mach Industries | Series C ext. | $600mn @ $3.7bn | Defense Tech |
| Enflame | IPO | $911mn | Semiconductors |
| Payward (Kraken) | Strategic | $100mn @ $21bn | Fintech |
Anthropic picks Nasdaq for much-anticipated IPO
Positive- Anthropic has selected Nasdaq as the venue for an IPO targeted for as soon as October, according to a person familiar with the matter.
- The Claude maker is seeking to raise as much as or more than SpaceX, whose $86.3bn June listing was the largest US IPO on record.
- Anthropic is tracking annualised revenue above $65bn, more than sevenfold its run rate at the end of last year.
- The FT reports a listing valuation of $2tn or more, against the company's $965bn private mark.
- Nasdaq has hosted four of the largest US IPOs this year, including SK Hynix's $26.5bn July debut, with US listings raising $160.6bn in 2026.
Anthropic tells investors it will be profitable for second straight quarter
Positive- Anthropic has told a small group of shareholders that adjusted operating income will be positive for a second consecutive quarter, ahead of its planned listing.
- Gross margins run above 80% before revenue shared with distribution partners including Amazon and the cost of training models.
- Second-quarter revenue rose 14-fold year on year to $11.5bn, with annualised revenue hitting $65bn at the end of July, up from $9bn at the end of 2025.
- Investors forecast Anthropic will exit 2026 at $120bn of annualised revenue and close 2027 at almost triple that, according to SemiAnalysis analyst Joey Brookhart.
- Anthropic shared prospectus documents with a small investor group rather than publishing last week, and will field their questions before making them public.
Anthropic CEO outlines plan to slow AI development
Neutral- Dario Amodei called on the industry to slow the pace at which it improves model capabilities in a weekend essay, setting out three strategies for pacing the frontier.
- Anthropic is unilaterally committing to embedded third-party evaluators from organisations such as METR, giving them badges, desks and access comparable to internal risk teams.
- Sam Altman said OpenAI will match the evaluator commitment; Elon Musk posted that Dario is right.
- Amodei asked the US government for a narrow antitrust waiver so leading labs can coordinate common safety standards and limits on the rate of unchecked progress.
- Amodei cited the OpenAI-HuggingFace hack, days after Anthropic researcher Jacob Coxon resigned saying labs are gambling with our lives.
Houthis used Anthropic AI to try to build ballistic missiles
Negative- Anthropic said a cell of threat actors in northern Yemen used Claude to develop software for a guided rocket and a planned ballistic missile with a range of more than 2,000km.
- The group also worked on a missile variant incorporating a hypersonic glide vehicle, using Claude for coding, simulation and troubleshooting.
- Anthropic said its safeguards blocked many of the requests but not all of them, and that it has no evidence the actors fielded an operational weapon.
- A China-based actor used Claude to build electronic-warfare software that ranked 12 Taiwanese targets, including Patriot batteries and a command bunker.
- Russia-based actors used Claude for autonomous FPV drone swarm software and to route European dual-use goods through China and Hong Kong.
- A free alternative covering the same reporting is available via Reuters, for recipients without an FT subscription.
Trump rejects calls from tech bosses for AI slowdown
Neutral- Trump rejected calls for an AI slowdown on Sunday, saying guardrails are possible but that whoever wins AI wins and the US must keep leading China.
- Former AI tsar David Sacks told the labs to stop pretending they need anyone else's permission, calling a regulatory precondition blackmail of the public.
- House Speaker Mike Johnson ruled out a moratorium, citing China, and called for a White House meeting between tech bosses and lawmakers.
- Senator Ruben Gallego said Johnson and Trump were not meeting the moment, while Hakeem Jeffries said Republicans had abandoned their responsibility.
- Jacob Coxon, the Anthropic researcher whose resignation triggered the debate, called Amodei's proposal a substantial step but urged more engagement with China.
SoftBank gets upsized $11.9bn loan in OpenAI funding push
Neutral- SoftBank secured an $11.87bn two-year facility to fund its OpenAI investment, up from an earlier $10bn target, with commitments from around 20 banks.
- SoftBank is slated to invest close to $65bn in OpenAI by October and has already raised about $37bn this year from bonds and loans.
- The group will repay the $25.9bn balance of a $40bn OpenAI bridge loan on 15 September, ahead of a March 2027 maturity.
- SoftBank meets investors in New York this week to sound out a US dollar junk-bond sale of $10bn to $20bn.
- SoftBank shares fell as much as 13% on Monday, the steepest drop since 17 July, after the weekend AI safety warnings.
OpenAI's Sam Altman says it would be ill-advised to go public in 2026
Neutral- Altman said OpenAI will not list this year, telling Fortune that everything happening with safety makes this an ill-advised moment to go public.
- Asked directly whether the IPO slips past 2026, Altman replied that it would not be 2026 and that OpenAI has a lot of stuff to do.
- OpenAI filed confidentially for an IPO in June after hiring bankers and lawyers targeting a third or fourth quarter 2026 listing.
- The New York Times reported in June that the company was already leaning toward 2027 given tech-stock volatility and its own financial challenges.
- Altman said OpenAI will go public when the business is ready and when society is ready for the technology.
Revolut confirms customer data breach through fake government requests
Negative- Revolut disclosed sensitive customer data to an unauthorised third party that submitted fraudulent requests from a legitimate government agency email domain.
- Exposed data included dates of birth, addresses, phone numbers and copies of passports and driving licences, and may have included verification selfies and transaction histories.
- Revolut said a limited number of customers were affected but did not disclose the number, the market, or the agency involved.
- Researcher ZachXBT said the incident appeared targeted at high net worth users; Revolut said its systems and customer funds are unaffected.
- Revolut has more than 80mn customers across more than 30 countries and is weighing a listing at up to $200bn, against a $75bn private mark in November.
Nscale adds former OpenAI exec Fidji Simo to its board ahead of potential IPO
Positive- Nscale appointed Fidji Simo, formerly CEO of AGI deployment at OpenAI, to its board ahead of an anticipated IPO this autumn.
- Simo joins Sheryl Sandberg, Susan Decker and Nick Clegg on the board of the two-year-old UK AI data centre company.
- Nscale is reportedly seeking to raise up to $3.5bn ahead of the planned listing, according to Bloomberg.
- Simo left OpenAI in July citing health reasons and still advises the company part-time, having previously led Instacart through its 2023 IPO.
- Simo also sits on Shopify's board and spent more than a decade at Meta, including as head of the Facebook app.
Kimi-maker Moonshot AI targets $2bn in annual revenue
Neutral- Moonshot AI is targeting $2bn of annualised revenue by the end of the year, double its reported August run rate.
- K3 models generate as many as 300bn tokens a day on OpenRouter, although usage figures have declined slightly in recent months.
- The target compares with roughly $40bn at OpenAI and $65bn at Anthropic, with far lower margins because Moonshot's model weights are freely available.
- Anthropic this month accused Moonshot of routing nearly 300,000 requests from Kimi directly to Claude Opus, serving Opus in place of its own models.
- Anthropic alleged more than 23mn responses were collected from its models for use in Moonshot's training.
Musk's secretive backer builds $40bn SpaceX stake
Positive- Vy Capital, a firm with a four-person investment team and a single-page website, has amassed a $40bn SpaceX stake, about 3.4% of the company.
- The holding would be SpaceX's fifth-largest and outstrips the disclosed positions of Sequoia Capital and Andreessen Horowitz.
- Assets under management rose from $27bn at the end of last year to $50bn in June, helped by SpaceX's listing this year at about a $1.75tn valuation.
- Vy has generated a 41% gross IRR since 2014 and told investors SpaceX will exceed $10tn in five to seven years if its underwriting plays out.
- Vy is the largest outside investor in Boring Company and Neuralink, and holds a nearly $500mn Cerebras stake.
Mecka AI nears $500mn valuation in Sequoia-led deal amid rush for robot training data
Positive- Mecka AI is nearing a Sequoia-led round at a valuation of about $500mn, three months after a $60mn round led by Framework Ventures.
- The earlier round included Menlo Ventures, SV Angel and Kindred Ventures; terms of the new deal are not final.
- Mecka pays people to record everyday tasks using body sensors and smartphones, supplying human motion data to train humanoids and other robots.
- The company projected in June that it would end 2026 at a $100mn annual run rate.
- Rival XDOF was reported last week to be nearing a round at a $1.2bn valuation, alongside Scale AI and Micro1 expanding beyond LLMs.
China's spy agency warns of AI risk to national security
Neutral- China's Ministry of State Security issued its first public statement on AI, detailing threats to the country's political, institutional and ideological security.
- State security minister Chen Yixin said hostile forces are abusing deepfake audio and video and intelligent troll armies to fabricate political rumours cheaply.
- The statement did not warn that AI could cause human extinction and did not ask Chinese companies to slow their work, unlike Amodei's weekend essay.
- The Global Times attacked Amodei's claim that a Chinese AI lead would endanger the US, saying his motivation was commercial interests.
- Chen flagged the risk of Chinese firms leaking sensitive information through foreign AI tools, ahead of a Trump-Xi meeting this month.
Larry Ellison cancels $7.5bn sale of Oracle stock
Positive- Oracle said on Saturday that Larry Ellison has cancelled a planned sale of 50mn shares worth around $7.5bn.
- No Oracle stock was sold under the plan and Ellison has no other plans to sell any of his holding, the company said.
- Oracle gave no reason for the change, having previously disclosed the sale plan in a regulatory filing.
- Oracle stock is down 22% since the start of the year as the company spends heavily on data centres.
- Oracle recently became one of the major owners and security partners for TikTok's US operations.
JPMorgan cut off Situational Awareness lending after AI losses
Negative- JPMorgan ended its prime brokerage lending relationship with Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness after the largest loss in hedge fund industry history.
- The fund's assets plunged 67% in July, although Aschenbrenner told investors it was still up 80% for the year.
- Situational Awareness averted near collapse by offloading most of its public-market positions to Ken Griffin's Citadel.
- Aschenbrenner is rebuilding positions in AMD, Intel, SK Hynix, Sandisk and CoreWeave, telling brokers he will run far less leverage.
- Morgan Stanley never opened a banking relationship; the fund has also banked with Goldman Sachs and Citigroup.
Texas puts a brake on its data centre boom
Negative- Governor Greg Abbott has halted all new Texas data centre approvals pending a grid-suitability audit announced in August.
- Texas has more data centre capacity under construction than any other US state, with more than $100bn raised to finance build-outs since 2024.
- Developers applying for power loads of 75MW or more must now post a $50,000 per megawatt security deposit under the Batch Zero regime.
- Projects in the state include Oracle's 1GW-plus Stargate campus in Abilene, part of a $300bn OpenAI contract, and Meta's $12bn El Paso data centre.
- Abbott called Texas the epicentre of AI development less than a year ago as Google announced a $40bn state investment; rural voter backlash has since shifted the politics.
Fusion power startups find new partners in the defence world
Positive- Laser-based fusion startup Xcimer announced a partnership with and investment from RTX Ventures, giving Raytheon's parent scope to explore its lasers for defence use.
- Denver-based Xcimer operates what it says is the largest privately owned laser system in the world, called Phoenix.
- Pacific Fusion signed a memorandum of understanding last month with the National Nuclear Security Administration on high-energy-density fusion experiments.
- Pacific Fusion broke ground on a New Mexico demonstration facility near Sandia and Los Alamos.
- Defence interest has spiked as drones reshape warfare, after mismatches such as a $3mn Patriot missile being used to shoot down a $200 consumer drone.
Cyber criminals use AI to supercharge scams, watchdog warns
Negative- FATF president Giles Thomson said fraud gangs are shifting from large satellite-visible compounds to one or two people in a basement with a very big server.
- Interpol found AI-enabled fraud is 4.5 times more profitable than traditional methods and reported a 54% rise in fraud-related reports since 2024.
- The FBI received complaints covering $893mn of AI-enabled fraud losses last year, while global fraud losses hit $442bn.
- An upcoming FATF report requested by the G20 will recommend more countries build anti-scam centres pooling tech groups, banks and regulators.
- The US scam centre strike force shut 13 Chinese-run compounds in Madagascar last week, freezing $52mn of crypto.
Global AI stocks under pressure as safety fears erupt
Negative- SoftBank fell as much as 13% and Nasdaq 100 futures pointed to a 1.2% lower open after the weekend calls to slow AI development.
- South Korea's Kospi dropped 2.4% and Japan's Nikkei 225 fell 1.1%, with Korean and Taiwanese indices up about 60% this year before the move.
- Memory names were hit hardest: Kioxia down more than 6%, SK Hynix off 4.3%, Samsung down 2.5% and TSMC off 0.8%.
- Chinese AI start-ups Z.AI and MiniMax slipped 7.4% and 6.1% in Hong Kong.
- BNY senior strategist Wee Khoon Chong called Amodei's weekend announcement the ultimate shock for the sector.
TechCrunch Mobility: Lyft has entered the robotaxi chat
Positive- Waymo robotaxis landed on the Lyft app in Nashville this week, Lyft's first commercial robotaxi service with no human operator.
- Lyft handles vehicle readiness, maintenance and depot operations through its wholly owned Flexdrive subsidiary.
- Lyft sold its Level 5 autonomous unit to Toyota's Woven Planet for $550mn in 2021 after four years of in-house development.
- Lyft's 2026 AV focus has been Waymo in Nashville and Baidu in London, where commercial service has not yet launched.
- Growth EVP Jeremy Bird said 2027 will bring more diversification of Lyft's robotaxi partnerships.
| Company | Sector | Last round | Post-money valuation | Δ vs prior round | Last updated |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sample CoExample | Fintech | Series D | $4.2bn | ▲ +38% | Illustrative |
| Revolut | Fintech | — connect feed | — | — | — |
| Anthropic | Artificial Intelligence | — | — | — | — |
| Monzo | Fintech | — | — | — | — |
| Bolt | Consumer Internet | — | — | — | — |
| Neo4j | Artificial Intelligence | — | — | — | — |
| OakNorth | Fintech | — | — | — | — |
This table shows the intended layout only. Real marks need a data source — PitchBook, Crunchbase, or your own cap-table records — and a refresh cadence. The highlighted row shows a fully populated example.
Pulled by hand this session from Polymarket's public gamma-api and Kalshi's site — not yet wired to auto-refresh. Every tile links straight to its real market page. Re-pull on request; ask about scheduling it once you're ready.
| Company | Deal type | Amount | Valuation | Lead / investors | Sector | Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mach Industries | Series C ext. | $600mn | $3.7bn | Ribbit, Infinite, Bedrock, Sequoia | Defense Tech | 10 Sep |
| Enflame | IPO | $911mn | +188% debut | Shanghai Star Market | Semiconductors | 11 Sep |
| Payward (Kraken) | Strategic investment | $100mn | $21bn | Nasdaq Ventures | Fintech / Crypto | 10 Sep |
| AirTrunk | Debt financing | S$2bn (~$1.6bn) | — | Bank syndicate (Blackstone-backed) | Data Centre Infra | 10 Sep |
| Miro | M&A (acquired) | $1.36bn | −92% vs 2021 | Bending Spoons | SaaS / Collaboration | 10 Sep |
| Proxima Fusion | Capex / facility | €140mn | — | Lower Saxony + private | Fusion Energy | 10 Sep |
These six rows are real, pulled directly from today's news scan. A dedicated feed (PitchBook/Crunchbase/Dealroom) would widen coverage beyond what surfaces in the daily digest and backfill history.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
One-pager not built yet. Anthropic is the pilot — once the template's agreed, this extends to every portfolio company.
Anthropic's one-pager mirrors Dimitri's sample layout (sources rail, morning brief, financials, compute commitments, prediction markets, voices, benchmarks, Alanda view) — every figure on it is an illustrative placeholder pending the real integrations. Company names above are pulled from alandacapital.com.
| Company | Theme | Rank | 7-day trend |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sample CoExample | Artificial Intelligence | 2 | ▲ +1 |
| Anthropic | Artificial Intelligence | — | — |
| Lovable | Artificial Intelligence | — | — |
| Legora | Artificial Intelligence | — | — |
| Cursor | Artificial Intelligence | — | — |
| Revolut | Fintech | — | — |
| Monzo | Fintech | — | — |
| OakNorth | Fintech | — | — |
| Mach Industries | Automation/Robotics | — | — |
| Bolt | Consumer Internet | — | — |
| Getir | Consumer Internet | — | — |
Themes match Alanda's four investment categories. Ranking needs a defined methodology (funding velocity, hiring, sentiment, usage growth) plus a data source before real ranks and trends can populate here.