Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving and why.
SoftBank surged more than sixteen percent in Tokyo today, and the catalyst was clear: Nvidia's latest earnings signaled that AI infrastructure spending is accelerating, not plateauing. SoftBank's deep stake in Arm Holdings, whose chip architecture underpins the very servers Nvidia powers, makes it a direct proxy for that momentum.
Reinforcing that broader AI trade, Japan's export data for April came in sharply ahead of expectations — up nearly fifteen percent year over year against a Reuters forecast of just over nine percent. Semiconductor shipments drove the outperformance, a reminder that the hardware backbone of the AI buildout is generating real, measurable trade flows across the Pacific.
And on the software side of AI, Anthropic is reportedly on track to post its first profitable quarter, beating both OpenAI and Elon Musk's xAI to that milestone. For an industry that has burned capital at a remarkable pace, a path to profitability at one of the leading labs changes the conversation around sustainability and valuation in ways investors will be pricing carefully.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
