Anthropic IPO Filing and Meta's $95 Billion Plan Lift AI Trade

Meta Platforms plans to raise up to a record $95 billion to fund AI infrastructure expansion — and that number, disclosed on the same day Anthropic filed its long-awaited US IPO paperwork, has flipped the mood in markets that spent October nursing AI jitters.

Anthropic, the developer of Claude, unveiled its initial public offering filing on Monday. The paperwork confirmed what everyone suspected. Eye-popping revenue growth. Check. A staggering loss. Check. And a risk factor detailing the possible end of the world as we know it. Also check.

Nothing in the filing surprised anyone, Reuters columnist Ankur Banerjee noted in his Morning Bid dispatch from Singapore. But it landed at a moment when scrutiny over huge AI spending has surged and worry over fundraising swirled through the debt-fuelled AI trade.

What else moved the money?

Meta wasn't alone. SpaceX said an affiliate of Apollo Global Management will buy AI chips and server hardware and lease them to the rockets-to-AI firm, in a deal carrying total principal payments of about $40 billion.

That lease structure matters. It's a fresh route for financing the hardware at the heart of AI compute, and it signals how creative the funding has to get when the sums run this high.

The fundraising has allayed some worry. It also feeds a sharper concern: the incredible capital AI infrastructure demands, and how quickly — if ever — it turns profitable. Just last week, the cost of insuring Meta's debt against default touched an all-time high. Lenders, in other words, are pricing real risk into the same boom equity investors are cheering.

How did chip stocks respond?

Traders put their risk-on hat on. South Korea's KOSPI, the epicentre of the AI boom in Asia, jumped 3.6% on Tuesday — its biggest one-day gain since early September.

The index is dominated by AI chip bellwethers Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix, and their weight carried the whole market higher. Perspective, though: even after that surge, the KOSPI remains on track for a 17% decline in October. One strong session hasn't erased the AI nerves that defined the month.

Asian stocks took their cues from Wall Street, where investors first cheered the Anthropic filing. The strong Tuesday start for risk assets sets the stage for what Banerjee calls a pivotal week, one where earnings from AI hyperscalers and policy decisions from major central banks will set the tone for trading through the rest of the year.

What do central banks have to do with it?

Plenty. Market watchers expect policymakers in New Zealand and Canada to hike interest rates by 25 basis points, while those in the US, euro zone and Japan hold steady but signal possible increases in December.

Investors have spent recent weeks focused on AI fear rather than inflation, shrugging off price worries and running for the safety of government bonds — especially Treasuries. That demand has pushed the yield on the 10-year note below 5%. Cautionary words from central bankers, though, could stoke inflation worry all over again.

Two further developments could shape Tuesday's session:

• October consumer confidence data for France
• Novartis earnings

For the AI supply chain, the week ahead distills to a simple question: whether hyperscaler earnings and record-breaking fundraises like Meta's $95 billion and SpaceX's $40 billion hardware lease can convince investors that the capital pouring into AI infrastructure will justify itself — before December's rate signals give them a reason to doubt it again.

(Reporting by Ankur Banerjee in Singapore; editing by Christopher Cushing.)