Good evening and welcome to Markets Desk.
Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI as Silicon Valley's most valuable artificial intelligence startup, closing a new funding round that values the Claude maker at sixty-five billion dollars and puts it within striking distance of a trillion-dollar valuation. That is a remarkable milestone for a company founded just three years ago, and it signals that institutional capital is still moving aggressively toward frontier AI infrastructure despite elevated interest rates.
Speaking of artificial intelligence, Third Point founder Dan Loeb is pushing his hedge fund staff to lean into the technology rather than wait on the sidelines. Loeb's message is blunt — the only way to develop genuine competency is through active, daily use. His team is exchanging best practices internally, which tells you that even sophisticated capital allocators are still in an early learning curve here.
And on the hardware side, a significant setback for Jeff Bezos. Blue Origin's New Glenn rocket exploded on the launchpad during a ground test Thursday, destroying the vehicle before it ever had a chance to fly. This is a costly blow to Blue Origin's commercial ambitions and widens the operational gap between Bezos's rocket venture and SpaceX, which has largely dominated the heavy-lift launch market.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
