Anthropic has filed to go public in what could be the largest stock market debut on record, with reports pointing to a valuation of up to $2 trillion and a listing in mid-November. The Claude maker was valued at $965 billion in May after raising $65 billion, and its annualised revenue has climbed from about $9 billion at the end of 2025. The filing lands after a punishing month for technology shares, when Intel fell roughly 29% in a day, Alphabet lost about $500 billion in market value and the Nasdaq-100 shed close to $1.4 trillion in October. Investors are now asking whether AI spending can produce returns fast enough.
Binance says it will cover customer losses after an attacker moved about $6.36 billion out of its wallets across ten blockchains on 29 October, the largest crypto theft on record and roughly four times the Bybit hack of 2025. The exchange suspended withdrawals on several networks and later said around $3 billion had been located and frozen across exchanges, while Tether and Circle froze about $2.38 billion. Blockchain analytics firms have linked the attack to a North Korea-associated group. Binance co-CEO Richard Teng said the investigation had not yet identified the attackers.
Wall Street ended October with a sharp sell-off and a monthly loss for the two technology-heavy indexes. The Dow Jones Industrial Average fell 572 points, or 1.09%, to 51,770 on Friday, while the Nasdaq Composite dropped about 2.5% and the S&P 500 lost 1.3%. For the month the Dow gained 1.5%, but the Nasdaq fell 5.2%, its worst month since March 2025, and the S&P 500 slipped 1.2%. Intel posted its steepest one-day decline in more than four decades. Bitcoin also fell after Binance disclosed a $6.3 billion hack, the largest theft of its kind.
Alphabet's market value fell by about $500bn after the company revealed that its AI-generated search summaries were affecting advertising revenue. Google shares hit a six-month low, spooking investors who had priced in steady growth from search ads. The drop came as United States technology stocks fell sharply, with AI-related spending across the industry approaching $1tn and Intel shares continuing to slide. The Nasdaq opened at its lowest level in more than two months. The sell-off reflects growing doubt about how quickly AI infrastructure spending will turn into profit.
Microsoft and Alphabet both reported strong cloud growth for the latest quarter, but investors reacted in opposite directions to the cost of building AI infrastructure. Microsoft posted fiscal first-quarter revenue of $92.3 billion, up 19 percent, with Azure growing 48 percent and Microsoft Cloud at $63.9 billion. Capital spending reached $39.4 billion, below the roughly $50 billion analysts expected, and management guided full-year capital expenditure to about $175 billion. Alphabet reported revenue of $127.6 billion, up 25 percent, with Google Cloud up 103 percent to $30.7 billion and capital spending of $51.4 billion, yet its shares fell as software and cybersecurity stocks sank.
Brent crude traded near $114 a barrel on Wednesday after touching above $117 twice in the past week, the highest level since April. Prices are up about 77 percent on the year as Iranian attacks on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz keep a war premium in the market. October has been the worst month for attacks on shipping in and around the strait since tracking began in 2017. The waterway carried about a fifth of world energy supplies before the conflict began in February. Hints of renewed talks pulled a few dollars out of the price, and Russia is raising diesel output under new export quotas.
Consumer goods companies told investors this week that commodity and fuel costs linked to the war with Iran will keep pushing prices up into next year. Procter & Gamble put the hit at about $1 billion and guided to flat-to-3% adjusted earnings growth, after reporting quarterly core earnings of $2 a share against estimates of $1.88 and net profit of $3.04 billion. Unilever said it will raise prices again, and Nestle has issued similar warnings. US consumer prices show the pattern: energy costs are up 20.4% over twelve months and gasoline 34.2%, with freight, packaging and fertiliser adding to the bill for food and household goods.
Anthropic published its IPO filing on Monday, setting up what could be the largest stock market debut in history. The maker of the Claude chatbot reported a net loss of $80.7bn for the first half of 2026, after a $42bn loss for all of 2025. Revenue for the quarter ended 30 June grew 1,368% from a year earlier, while cloud costs rose 300%. The company has raised about $141bn and holds $112.4bn in cash, and warned it may need more money sooner than expected. It plans to list on Nasdaq under the ticker ANT, with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley leading a debut expected in mid-November at a valuation above $2 trillion.
Audi plans to invest about $4 billion in its first US assembly plant, at the Middle Georgia Mega Site near Macon, with roughly 4,500 jobs and capacity for up to 200,000 vehicles a year. President Donald Trump announced the project at a rally in Perry, Georgia, 10 days before the midterm elections, and put the figure at $4.2 billion. Audi said construction begins in 2027 with production in the early 2030s; Trump said work could start next month. The plant will build the Q7, Q8 and Q9 SUVs. Audi imports every vehicle it sells in the US and faces 25% tariffs on them.
Barclays will cut about 5,000 jobs this year, roughly 5 percent of its global workforce, as it puts more artificial intelligence into operational and functional work. The bank said 1,000 posts have already closed and another 4,000 will go by the end of 2026. Most of the losses fall in UK retail banking, though the investment bank is also affected. Barclays is the latest lender to tie job reductions directly to automation, after Standard Chartered announced more than 7,000 cuts in May. The announcement lands at an awkward moment for the wider economy, with US consumer sentiment near a record low and borrowing costs still elevated.