AI Markets: Anthropic opens its books, Unitree and Microsoft

Anthropic has published its IPO filing: revenue is soaring, alongside a record accounting loss. Elsewhere, Unitree is running hot, TSMC may raise prices and Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts.

Anthropic opens its books: $16.3 billion in revenue, an $80.7 billion loss

Anthropic made its IPO filing public on October 26. It shows exploding revenue and a record net loss that is almost entirely an accounting item.

The key points:

  • Revenue for the first half of 2026: $16.3 billion, up from $1.16 billion a year earlier (per Fortune and TheWrap, citing the filing submitted to the SEC).
  • Net loss: $80.7 billion, of which roughly $72.4 billion comes from an accounting charge tied to the rising value of convertible notes.
  • Operating loss: $693 million (versus $2.1 billion a year earlier). Excluding stock-based compensation and a few other items, the company says it made a $1.6 billion profit.
  • Planned listing on the Nasdaq under the ticker “ANT.” The price and the number of shares have not been set yet.

What the numbers say

The $80.7 billion loss grabs the headlines, but most of it is an accounting effect. When Anthropic’s valuation goes up, the convertible notes it issued earlier become more expensive to repay in stock. Accounting rules require that to be booked as a loss, even though not a single dollar leaves the bank. In fact, operating cash flow for the half was positive: $3.9 billion (Fortune).

The filing also breaks down compute efficiency. In the second quarter, Anthropic spent $5.6 billion on compute to generate $11.6 billion in revenue, or $2.08 of revenue per dollar of compute (Fortune). It’s one of the figures investors watch most closely: it tells you whether growth is paying for its own machines.

The risks it highlights

The risk factors section runs about 94 pages out of more than 300. The top five customers account for roughly 25% of revenue over nine months, and nearly half of revenue flows through the cloud marketplaces of Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Anthropic also estimates that 5% to 7% of its revenue for the year came from customers who later violated its usage policies.

On governance, a special Class F share gives the seven cofounders 50.1% of voting rights. Each has pledged to give 80% of their shares to philanthropic causes. Fortune points to a listing during Thanksgiving week, and press reports mention a target valuation of $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion: those are media reports, not figures from the filing.

Tech → Stock market

For a European investor, access will go through a broker that offers the Nasdaq. A US company is generally not eligible for the PEA: only a regular brokerage account (compte-titres ordinaire) applies. None of this is a recommendation: the numbers describe a company, not a price.

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Anthropic and its $518 billion in compute: what the filing changes for SpaceX

Anthropic’s filing puts numbers on its compute commitments. The supplier the market watches most closely is SpaceX, already public, whose AI business rents computing power to Anthropic.

The key points:

  • Anthropic plans at least $518 billion in infrastructure spending over ten years with six partners (investinglive, citing Reuters).
  • Amazon: at least $110 billion between May 2026 and April 2036, regardless of actual usage (SEC filing).
  • Google: $111.1 billion and Microsoft: $31.4 billion, according to figures reported by Reuters.
  • SpaceX: up to $120.5 billion according to CryptoBriefing, which cites the filing. I could not verify this figure in the text of the filing.

What has changed since our last edition

We had reported a contract with SpaceX worth about $1.25 billion a month for the Colossus site. Anthropic’s filing gives a broader picture. According to CryptoBriefing, payments would reach about $3.1 billion a month once all capacity is delivered, which is expected in December 2026. The contracts cover Nvidia chips through 2029.

The key point is duration. According to the same source, the initial non-cancellable periods end in January and March 2027. After that, either party can terminate with 90 days’ notice. With Amazon, by contrast, the commitment is non-cancellable, barring an uncorrected material breach by Amazon (SEC filing). So the flexibility varies from one supplier to the next.

Tech → Stock market

For SpaceX, a tenant this size carries a lot of weight. The company has already said its AI unit out-earned Starlink in the third quarter. But a 90-day exit clause means that revenue depends on Anthropic’s health, which is itself tied to the success of its IPO. The concentration risk runs both ways.

For Europeans, SpaceX and Anthropic will both be US stocks: neither is eligible for the PEA. ETFs that hold SpaceX through the Nasdaq-100 offer indirect exposure, but these moves remain facts to follow, not signals.

Next up: Anthropic’s pricing, then the capacity actually delivered to Colossus by December.

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Unitree: up 65% in seven sessions, then a warning from the company itself

Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree soared after a double upgrade from JPMorgan. Right after, the company issued a warning about its own valuation.

The key points:

  • The stock gained more than 65% in seven sessions, hitting an intraday high of 737.5 yuan on October 26 (Caixin).
  • JPMorgan moved from “underweight” to “overweight,” with a price target of 995 yuan for December 2027.
  • Unitree warns that its price-to-earnings ratio stands at 465.2, versus an average of 38.5 for its sector.
  • The lockup on shares held by pre-IPO shareholders expires in August 2027.

What has changed since our last edition

We had covered the JPMorgan upgrade. What’s new is the company’s reaction. After the October 26 session, it issued a volatility alert on the stock: the cumulative price deviation over three sessions reached 30.5%. It also acknowledges obstacles to commercializing its robots (Caixin).

The day’s flows were mixed. Two institutional seats were net buyers of 249 million yuan, while the five largest sellers unloaded 816 million yuan, including brokers linked to CICC, Goldman Sachs and GF Securities (Caixin). Founder Wang Xingxing says the company produces tens of thousands of robots a year and sees potential demand of 10 million units: that’s his estimate, not a verified figure.

Tech → Stock market

Unitree listed on Shanghai’s STAR Market on August 19 at 150.80 yuan and opened at 1,100 yuan. The stock has swung widely since. DeepSeek, a shareholder, agreed to a 36-month lockup, longer than the usual 12 months.

A useful contrast: on October 21, Tesla confirmed it had started “early production” of Optimus in Fremont, targeting a pace of 20,000 robots a week at least a year from now, with external deliveries around late 2027 (call transcript). The ramp will be “a bit chaotic,” according to Elon Musk. Both companies are selling the same promise: robots built at mass scale, but in both cases the volumes have yet to be proven.

For a European investor, Unitree is listed in Shanghai: as a Chinese company, it can’t go in a PEA. Thematic robotics ETFs exist in Europe, but that’s a topic to look at separately.

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TSMC: advanced packaging for AI chips could cost 10% to 20% more

According to a Taiwanese newspaper, TSMC is getting ready to raise its advanced packaging prices. This is a press report that TSMC has not confirmed.

The key points:

  • According to the Commercial Times, as relayed by Investing.com on October 27, TSMC is preparing to raise its advanced packaging prices.
  • Foundries and outsourced assembly and test providers are preparing increases of 10% to 20% on the CoWoS process.
  • Equipment lead times are stretching from 3-6 months to 6-8 months.
  • Effective date and affected customers: not specified.

Why packaging matters

CoWoS is the technique that puts the compute chip and its memory together on a single wafer. High-end AI chips need it. It’s a well-known bottleneck: when demand outstrips capacity, prices go up.

Demand no longer comes only from GPUs. According to the same article, server processors and custom chips (ASICs) use it too, and the longer testing required for AI chips is eating into capacity. Analysts quoted by the paper put CoWoS capacity at more than 130,000 wafers a month in 2026 and 200,000 in 2027.

What has changed since our last edition

We had covered a 5% to 10% increase in base prices for 2027, plus the premium on high-performance computing. This time, it’s a different step in the chain: assembly. Foundries would be affected just like their subcontractors, which points to an industry-wide move rather than an isolated case.

Tech → Stock market

Higher packaging costs get passed on to customers: Nvidia, AMD, the makers of in-house chips. They can either absorb the increase in their margins or pass it along. No official figure can tell us which yet.

For Europeans, TSMC is available through its US ADR or via UCITS semiconductor ETFs. The stock is also listed in Taiwan. What to watch: confirmation from TSMC or its customers, and next quarter’s margins.

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Microsoft offers voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees

On October 26, Microsoft announced a voluntary buyout offer for about 60,000 people, or 27% of its workforce. The company says it wants to keep costs in check while it pours billions into AI.

The key points:

  • About 60,000 employees are eligible, in the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada and India (Fortune).
  • A response is due the first week of December; departures would take place on December 31.
  • In the United States, minimum severance is eight weeks’ pay, with continued stock vesting, health coverage and transition support.
  • Microsoft reports quarterly earnings on Wednesday, October 28.

An offer, not a layoff

This is a voluntary buyout: no one is required to leave. Microsoft points to other companies that ran similar programs, with acceptance rates of 3% to 5% (Fortune). If the same rate applied, that would mean between 1,800 and 3,000 departures: that math is ours, not Microsoft’s. Chief People Officer Amy Coleman talks about moving faster and simplifying the organization.

A comparable program, the first in the company’s history, had already targeted long-tenured employees in the United States in the spring. This new wave is much broader.

Tech → Stock market

The backdrop is investment. Microsoft’s capital expenditures hit $41 billion for the quarter ended in June, with $145.3 billion expected for fiscal 2026 (Fortune). The stock had gained about 25% in six months before the announcement, which has drawn no reported market reaction so far.

On Wednesday, investors will be watching capital spending and Azure cloud growth. The buyout offer will likely come up, especially its restructuring costs. Nothing is a given: these are things to watch, not forecasts.

Microsoft is a US company, not eligible for the PEA. It is held in many UCITS global ETFs.

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Edition prepared by our monitoring agent (data and sources as of Tuesday, October 27, 2026), reviewed in line with our editorial policy. General information, not investment advice: investing carries a risk of capital loss.