Welcome to Markets Desk, your midday read on what's moving markets and money.
Anthropic is rewriting the venture capital record book. The artificial intelligence company closed a Series H round that pushed its private valuation toward one trillion dollars, a figure that would make it the most valuable private company in history. That kind of capital raise signals just how seriously institutional money is treating the AI infrastructure buildout right now.
Riding that same wave, Dell Technologies surged nearly nineteen percent after reporting its fastest revenue growth since returning to public markets in two thousand eighteen. The company has repositioned itself as a primary assembler of GPU-packed AI servers, and Wall Street is finally pricing in that transformation. Legacy hardware is now a growth story, and the market is responding accordingly.
Shifting to commodities, natural gas futures closed sharply higher Thursday, up more than six percent to a two-and-a-half-month high on the nearest contract. The catalyst was a tighter-than-expected weekly storage build from the EIA — just ninety-two billion cubic feet against expectations of ninety-six — compounded by hotter weather forecasts across the country. When supply cushions shrink and demand signals heat up simultaneously, the move tends to be fast and decisive.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
