Welcome to Markets Desk, here's what's moving the needle this hour.
Chinese AI startup Manus has closed a five hundred million dollar funding round, its first since Beijing forced Meta to unwind a roughly two billion dollar acquisition of the company. The fresh capital positions Manus to accelerate development of its AI agent platform, though the forced divestiture underscores how geopolitical friction continues reshaping the global tech investment landscape.
Shifting to the public markets, Alphabet is drawing attention as a value play in the AI space, trading at a forward price-to-earnings ratio of under twenty-three — a figure that looks compelling for a company generating its scale of earnings across search, cloud, and AI infrastructure. For investors with modest capital to deploy, the Street is pointing to that valuation gap as a rare entry point.
And in biotech, argenx is pulling the plug on its Phase Three UNITY study of efgartigimod in Sjögren's disease, after an independent data monitoring committee concluded the trial cannot meet its primary endpoint. The discontinuation is a meaningful setback for the company's pipeline ambitions, and investors will be watching closely for any guidance on how argenx reallocates resources toward its remaining clinical programs.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
