AI Markets: Nvidia reassures, Anthropic eyes Wall Street, SpaceX thinks big

Nvidia dispelled AI bubble fears, at least for one session, with results that beat expectations. Meanwhile, Anthropic is firming up its IPO timeline and SpaceX is announcing a new $100 billion spaceport in Louisiana.

Nvidia reassures the entire AI market with results that beat expectations

The chipmaker released quarterly results overnight from August 26 to 27 that dispel, at least for a while, the bubble fears that had been weighing on artificial intelligence for several weeks. Wall Street cheered the performance by sending the stock up nearly 9% in a single session.

Key points:

  • Revenue for the second quarter of fiscal 2027 (ended late July): $96.2 billion, up 106% year over year, above the analyst consensus (~$92.2 billion)
  • The data center segment climbs to $89 billion (+117%), but next quarter’s guidance ($108 billion) now excludes any China-related revenue
  • In a rare move for the company, Nvidia is forecasting revenue growth of about 70% for all of fiscal 2028
  • The stock jumped 8.7%, adding $442 billion in market cap in a single session and pulling the whole semiconductor sector along with it (Amkor, Intel, AMD…)

Reassuring numbers, with China set aside

Since late July, several voices had been fueling the debate over a possible AI funding bubble. The August 26 results changed the market’s tone: revenue $4 billion above expectations, driven by demand for inference compute. CFO Colette Kress specified that the $108 billion guidance for the current quarter includes “no China-related data center compute revenue,” given persistent geopolitical uncertainty over advanced chip exports. China-related shipments accounted for less than 1% of data center revenue in the quarter just ended. CEO Jensen Huang summed up the mood: “AI has reached its inflection point. Its tokens are productive and profitable. Compute is now revenue.”

Vera Rubin and the $1 trillion target: the next chapter

The real signal sent to investors is about the future: Nvidia gave a 70% growth forecast for full fiscal 2028, versus the 44-45% analysts expected — an unusual practice for a company that normally gives guidance one quarter at a time. The new Vera Rubin chip, Blackwell’s successor, is expected to account for about 20% of data center revenue as early as this quarter, which Nvidia calls the “fastest ramp in its history.” Jensen Huang even says actual demand exceeds the guidance, held back by supply constraints, particularly in memory. Donald Trump praised “incredible numbers” on his social network. For a European investor, Nvidia (Nasdaq) is not eligible for the PEA: exposure goes through a regular brokerage account or a UCITS-eligible US equity/technology ETF.

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Anthropic speeds toward Wall Street: public prospectus after Labor Day, a $30 trillion bet

OpenAI’s direct rival is sending signal after signal ahead of its listing, expected in September or October: a tighter timeline, a dizzying total addressable market, and a deliberate break from the script SpaceX followed in June.

Key points:

  • According to Reuters (August 27), Anthropic plans to publicly unveil its IPO prospectus after the US Labor Day holiday (September 7), targeting a listing in late September or October
  • The company is pitching investors a $30 trillion total addressable market to justify an IPO valuation of around $2 trillion
  • Unlike SpaceX, some early shareholders could sell shares in the IPO itself, in exchange for a longer lock-up period for other holders
  • The acquisition of chip startup MatX (about $7 billion) was considered and then dropped; on the other hand, a $45 billion deal was signed with British data center operator Nscale

A market calculation that’s already raising investor eyebrows

The $30 trillion figure doesn’t describe a conventional software market: according to Fortune, Anthropic adds up the value of all the human tasks — law, accounting, engineering — that its models could one day replace. That’s more than the annual gross domestic product of the United States ($32.5 trillion), prompting analyst Fred Hickey to call the calculation “absurd.” Anthropic’s annualized revenue run rate reached $65 billion at the end of July, up from $9 billion at the end of 2025 — real, verifiable growth, but nowhere near the total market pitched to investors. According to CNBC, the prospectus is also expected to list growing American public opposition to data centers as an explicit risk factor: a Gallup poll from May shows that 71% of Americans oppose a data center near where they live.

Securing compute without relying solely on Nvidia

Anthropic had discussed buying MatX, a startup founded by former engineers from Google’s TPU chips, to reduce its dependence on Nvidia processors. Reuters reports that the talks, valued at $7 billion, ultimately ended in a simple partnership, with no known reason for the halt. Meanwhile, Anthropic secured $45 billion in compute capacity over six years from Nscale, across about 460 megawatts in West Virginia — capacity Microsoft had initially reserved before pulling out of the project this summer. For a European investor, Anthropic isn’t listed yet: a planned Nasdaq listing would, like those of SpaceX or OpenAI, remain outside the PEA framework.

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SpaceX thinks even bigger: a $100 billion spaceport in Louisiana

Elon Musk keeps rolling out spectacular announcements to justify SpaceX’s stock market valuation, from a giant new launch site to a battle of financial projections with Morgan Stanley.

Key points:

  • On August 25, SpaceX unveiled “Starbase Louisiana” in Pecan Island: 125,000 acres, about $100 billion in targeted investment, up to several thousand Starship launches per year, with a first launch hoped for in 2029
  • Morgan Stanley projects SpaceX revenue of $3.4 trillion by 2040; Elon Musk shot back that he’s aiming for that level by 2033, a personal estimate rather than an official company target
  • On its August 26 earnings call, Nvidia named SpaceX among the very first deployers of its new Vera chip
  • SPCX stock is back above its IPO price ($135), up about 30% since early August but still nearly 38% below its June peak

A new bet on space, with local opposition already organized

The chosen site, a former ExxonMobil property in southern Louisiana, is eventually expected to host five launch complexes, in service of a goal touted by Gwynne Shotwell and Elon Musk of more than thirty launches per day by 2030, across all sites. Construction would begin in 2027. But Pecan Island residents, quoted by local station KPLC, denounce negotiations conducted behind closed doors — local officials had to sign nondisclosure agreements — and worry about a wetland that is still unspoiled. This privately funded project coincides with, but is legally separate from, the presidential memorandum Donald Trump signed on August 20, which targets more than 1,000 US launches per year by 2030 on federal land.

Wall Street argues over the growth trajectory

The debate over SpaceX’s valuation illustrates the uncertainties specific to young publicly traded space tech companies: Morgan Stanley maintains its buy rating, betting on $3.4 trillion in revenue in 2040, while Musk touts a personal target seven years sooner. None of these figures is an official company forecast. More concretely: on its earnings call, Nvidia confirmed deliveries of its Vera chip to “SpaceX AI,” alongside Oracle and Amazon, and expects a space-optimized Vera Rubin system to fly aboard SpaceX’s first Starmind satellite in the fourth quarter of 2027. According to analyst Gene Munster, SpaceX already accounts for about 5% of Nvidia’s quarterly revenue. For a European investor, SpaceX (Nasdaq) remains outside the PEA framework, accessible only through a regular brokerage account.

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Humanoid robots: Optimus starts production, China runs into reality

Tesla has officially started manufacturing Optimus at its Fremont factory, while in China the stock market frenzy for humanoid robotics is starting to collide with the very real limits of the technology.

Key points:

  • Optimus entered production on August 27 in Fremont, on lines freed up by the end of the Model S/X; no production rate was disclosed, with Musk calling the robot the “hardest product to industrialize” Tesla has ever made
  • Timing coincidence: Tesla quietly ended its Solar Roof program, deemed unprofitable, the same week
  • At the World Robot Conference in Beijing, an analyst quoted by Reuters estimated that 50 to 70% of the humanoid robots produced in China this year will only be used to collect data, not to do real work
  • Unitree stock, which went public on August 19 with a 629% intraday jump, has already lost about a quarter of its value since that peak

Fremont: a real start, but no proof of output

The very first robots off the Fremont line will be sent to an internal “Optimus Academy” to train in Tesla’s own factories, not to customers. Musk says that “everything about this robot is new” — about 10,000 unique parts and a supply chain built from scratch — and warns of a “flat and long” ramp, declining to give a volume target for 2026. Mass production is being pushed to the Giga Texas plant, with a long-term goal of one million robots per year. Tesla has raised its 2026 capital spending budget above $25 billion, a good chunk of it earmarked for Optimus, which Musk presents as the source of 80% of the group’s future value — a claim that remains, at this stage, the CEO’s opinion rather than a verifiable fact.

In China, the gap between money raised and real usefulness

The actual cost of making an industrial humanoid robot in China: between 300,000 and 500,000 yuan, versus the 160,000 yuan that Guotai Securities analysts set as the threshold for a two-year payback — against an annual factory worker’s wage of about 80,000 yuan. According to data cited by Notebookcheck, humanoid robots currently run at only about 20% of human productivity in real-world use. At Unitree, about 75% of revenue reportedly comes from universities and training centers rather than industrial uses, which didn’t stop its IPO from being oversubscribed several thousand times, before a sharp pullback in the share price. For a European investor, exposure to this sector remains possible through UCITS ETFs dedicated to robotics, but with the caution warranted by a market narrative that is clearly running ahead of real-world uses.

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Who pays AI’s electric bill? Georgia approves OpenAI’s XXL contract

Georgia’s electricity regulator has approved the deal between Georgia Power and OpenAI to power a giant data center, without lifting the secrecy around the contract’s contents — much to the dismay of local advocacy groups.

Key points:

  • The contract tying Georgia Power to OpenAI for the “Project Camellia” site (3.2 gigawatts, Effingham County) was approved on August 27 by the regulator’s technical staff, without a vote by the five elected commissioners
  • OpenAI commits to paying all dedicated infrastructure costs and to providing up to 1,000 megawatts of demand flexibility during peak periods
  • Georgia Power projects about $950 million a year in additional revenue from large data center contracts, with $180 in annual savings promised to the average residential customer starting in 2029
  • Groups such as the Sierra Club and the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy denounce a process that remains opaque; next step on September 14, when the county reviews the site plan

A secret contract, public promises

The document, submitted unsigned by Georgia Power on July 15, was initially made public fully redacted, treated as a trade secret. Facing citizen mobilization, Georgia Power and the regulator released a letter on August 27 summarizing the broad outlines of the deal — without lifting confidentiality on the contract itself. Sierra Club Georgia spokesperson Hannah Baker denounced a “reckless rush” carried out without real democratic oversight, while Maggie Shober of the Southern Alliance for Clean Energy welcomed “a step toward more transparency,” though she considers it still insufficient on the precise calculation of costs and safeguards.

Construction moves ahead, and so does the opposition

The project’s regional impact report was published on August 26, and the Effingham County board is set to review the preliminary site plan on September 14. The investment figure announced by OpenAI has climbed beyond $30 billion, up from the $20 billion mentioned in July, and the company is highlighting a closed-loop cooling system to limit its water use — an argument aimed at addressing fears already voiced by nearly a thousand residents at a public meeting in late July. This local standoff illustrates a broader issue for any investor following the AI supply chain: the real cost of electricity and the social acceptability of data centers weigh directly on the timelines and margins of infrastructure projects, well before a giant like OpenAI even considers going public itself.

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Edition prepared by our monitoring agent (data and sources as of Friday, August 28, 2026), reviewed in line with our editorial policy. General information, not investment advice: investing involves a risk of capital loss.