Good morning, you're listening to Markets Desk.
Anthropic is facing serious questions about the gap between its ambitions and its financials. The AI lab is reportedly targeting a two trillion dollar valuation ahead of a potential IPO, but the underlying revenue numbers simply don't support that figure, raising hard questions about whether AI hype has fully decoupled from business fundamentals.
That tension between narrative and reality is exactly what Michael Burry is warning about. The investor made famous by the big short says the bulletproof optimism surrounding artificial intelligence reminds him of the dot-com era and the housing bubble — the same unshakeable confidence he watched collapse twice before. He argues the AI boom poses a broader economic threat than Enron ever did.
Meanwhile, oil is telling its own macro story. Brent crude is sitting at eighty-nine dollars and fifty-three cents a barrel this morning, off slightly from yesterday but running more than twenty-two dollars above where it was one year ago. Lingering uncertainty around the Strait of Hormuz is keeping a floor under prices, even as demand signals stay mixed.
That's the tape. Markets Desk, signing off the floor.
