AI Markets: Microsoft and Alphabet, Anthropic, FCC–Starlink

Microsoft and Alphabet posted similar numbers but drew opposite reactions. Anthropic’s financing comes under scrutiny ahead of a listing that still has no price.

Microsoft and Alphabet: same bill, two opposite receptions

Both giants reported earnings on October 28. Both are pouring record sums into AI. But in after-hours trading, the market rewarded one and punished the other.

Key points:

  • Microsoft: revenue of $92.3 billion (+19%), Azure up 48%, according to the company’s release.
  • Alphabet: cloud at $30.7 billion, more than double a year ago, but negative free cash flow of $9.1 billion (Fortune).
  • After the close, Microsoft was up about 4%; Alphabet was down more than 11% (CNBC, Fortune).
  • Capacity deliveries from third-party providers ran late, which weighed on CoreWeave and Nebius.

Microsoft: cloud speeds up, but some expected capacity is missing

Microsoft’s cloud brought in $63.9 billion for the quarter (+30%). Azure, its cloud platform, grew 48%, up from 42% the previous quarter. Contracts signed but not yet billed reached $677 billion (+73%).

On the spending side, the company invested $45.2 billion (including leases), according to accounts of the call. It had been aiming for more than $50 billion. CFO Amy Hood explained that “certain third-party capacity deliveries expected in the first quarter were delayed.” Translation: data centers leased from partners didn’t arrive on time.

Sources differ on the exact period but agree on a budget of about $170 billion, slightly below the $175 billion mentioned in July. Microsoft says it will stay free cash flow positive.

For the market, the message cuts two ways. The cloud is holding up. But the companies that rent computing power to Microsoft, the “neoclouds,” are taking the hit: CoreWeave lost about 5.8% and Nebius 6.3% (Stocktwits).

Alphabet: a cloud that doubles, a bill that worries

At Google, cloud sales topped $30 billion, with a 36.2% margin. Capital expenditures for the quarter climbed to $51.4 billion, versus $24 billion a year earlier. The company is sticking with about $200 billion for 2026. Fortune reports that spending could rise toward $300 billion in 2027, with more details in the fourth quarter.

Earnings per share came in at $2.12, versus $2.87 a year earlier. An $8.7 billion accounting loss on equity holdings is partly to blame. An analyst quoted by Fortune attributes it to Alphabet’s stake in SpaceX and calls it “accounting noise”; Alphabet did not confirm this in the pages we reviewed.

Google Search grew 12%, below the 15% analysts expected. Fortune also notes that the company raised $84.8 billion in June to fund its investments.

For a European investor, both stocks can be bought through a standard brokerage account. They are not eligible for the PEA. UCITS funds tracking the Nasdaq 100 or the MSCI World hold a share of them.

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Anthropic: data center financing becomes the IPO story

Anthropic’s public IPO filing has been out since October 26. Since then, the financial press has focused less on revenue than on how the company pays for its computing power.

Key points:

  • Broadcom can lend Anthropic up to $42 billion through convertible notes, according to the prospectus cited by Reuters.
  • None of these notes had been issued as of early August, and Anthropic says it expects none before its listing.
  • A Texas campus project tied to Anthropic is seeking about $15 billion in financing (CNBC, via LetsDataScience).
  • The price and number of shares have not been set. Nothing is certain about the date.

Broadcom: supplier, landlord and lender all at once

The TPU chips Anthropic rents are designed with Broadcom. According to the prospectus, Broadcom has committed to lend up to $42 billion, roughly a third of a $125.2 billion, five-year commitment for computing capacity. The notes could convert into Anthropic shares. The proceeds would be reserved for TPU rent.

The filing itself flags “potential conflicts of interest”: Broadcom influences pricing and hardware, and therefore Anthropic’s access to compute. Conversion terms, price and the amount actually drawn are not public.

The data center link

Compute lives in buildings, and those are financed separately. Nexus Data Centers is seeking about $15 billion for a campus in Hubbard, Texas, tied to Anthropic. CNBC reports that Morgan Stanley is leading the talks and that Google would put up its credit as a guarantee. According to these sources, nothing has been finalized at this stage.

A Bloomberg headline from October 28 says banks have shelved a bond sale for a Texas data center tied to Anthropic. We were unable to read the article: the link to the Hubbard project has not been established.

Other signals from the day, based on headlines only: Senator Elizabeth Warren is raising questions about AI safety and the deal’s market risks (CFO Dive). CNBC points out that the public benefit corporation status creates unusual risks for shareholders. The Motley Fool mentions marketing starting the week of November 9.

For a European saver, access will depend on the broker. A Bloomberg headline mentions an “investors in Asia” angle. We found no details on access through a PEA. Anthropic is not an eligible security at this stage.

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SpaceX: the FCC vote that could make Starlink a rival to the carriers

On October 29, the FCC, the U.S. telecom regulator, votes on opening additional spectrum to “direct-to-device” services, meaning satellites that talk directly to phones. The three big U.S. carriers are trying to narrow its scope.

Key points:

  • The proposal would add 482 MHz of spectrum, bringing the number of eligible bands from 5 to 13 (Tech-insider).
  • AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, through their trade group CTIA, want to remove two bands, or 290 MHz out of 482.
  • This is a proposed rule: the vote opens a comment period; it does not yet authorize Starlink Mobile to transmit in these bands.
  • A Yahoo Finance headline says T-Mobile’s CEO has once again rejected a mobile network deal with SpaceX.

Why the carriers are worried

Today, a satellite operator has to lease its spectrum from mobile carriers. The proposal would remove that requirement. Instead, operators would have to show coexistence agreements or hold the terrestrial license. For SpaceX, it’s the gateway to an independent mobile service.

The carriers say 300 million users depend on the 2.5 GHz and 3.45 GHz bands, and that satellite operations there would be technically unworkable. Those are their arguments, not established facts. On October 23, SpaceX asked to add the 902-928 MHz band.

The market connection

SpaceX stock (SPCX) slipped overnight, according to Yahoo Finance, after T-Mobile’s rejection. The financial press also sees SpaceX as a new factor in telecom earnings (Broadband Breakfast).

Reminder: in late October, media outlets reported that SpaceX was in talks to access tens of thousands of cell towers. Nothing has been signed or confirmed. We won’t revisit that point here.

What to watch: the outcome of the vote, the number of bands actually kept and the length of the comment period. For Europeans, SpaceX trades in dollars through a brokerage account; it is not eligible for the PEA.

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OpenAI and Google’s TPUs: a test of Nvidia’s dominance

According to The Information, OpenAI plans to buy TPU chips from Google rather than just renting them. Neither company has confirmed. The market shrugged.

Key points:

  • The report dates from October 27 and relies on a single anonymous person.
  • Price, number of chips and timeline are unknown.
  • Nvidia traded around $218 on October 28, about 9% below its record of $239.24 on October 6.
  • Jensen Huang had said OpenAI committed to about $600 billion in Nvidia servers through 2030.

Rent, then buy: what changes

In June 2025, the press reported that OpenAI was testing TPUs rented through Google’s cloud. Buying chips changes the nature of the relationship: OpenAI would own them. A small purchase would mostly be a strategic signal. A multi-gigawatt deployment would be much harder for Nvidia to ignore, according to the analyses being circulated.

Another study, cited by The Decoder, estimates that OpenAI got roughly a 30% discount on its Nvidia chips by threatening to switch to TPUs. That figure comes from a single firm and is unconfirmed.

The bridge to the markets

For Nvidia, the risk isn’t mainly losing sales tomorrow. It’s that its biggest customers build credible alternatives. That could weigh on its pricing over time.

For Alphabet, sales of TPU systems already contribute to cloud revenue (see our analysis of today’s earnings). Oracle also plans to offer TPUs. Even so, Alphabet stock is falling because of its spending.

Nvidia trades through a brokerage account, not a PEA. On the UCITS side, semiconductor and Nasdaq 100 ETFs provide indirect exposure to both companies.

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Unitree: first earnings since the IPO, sales up, profit down

The Chinese humanoid robot maker released its first results on October 28 since listing on the Shanghai Stock Exchange (STAR Market) in August. The stock had gained 65% in seven sessions before the announcement, and the company itself had issued a warning about the share price.

Key points:

  • Third quarter: revenue of 665 million yuan, up 69.93%.
  • Net profit of 113 million yuan, down 17.37%.
  • Over nine months: sales of 1.817 billion yuan (+55.71%).
  • Research spending is exploding: +249.6% for the quarter.

Sales rising, margins slipping

For the quarter, research and development reached 127 million yuan, about 19% of sales. Selling expenses are also weighing: 12.65% of revenue over nine months, versus 6.51% a year earlier.

Over nine months, net profit is up 270% to 387 million yuan. The gap with the quarter comes from a one-time stock-based compensation charge last year. Excluding non-recurring items, profit fell 18.78% to 349 million yuan.

Finimize reports that the quarter’s profit came in well below the analyst forecast of 224 million yuan. Unitree attributes its trajectory to its investments in embodied AI, meaning robots that act in the real world.

What it says about the sector

The question for investors is simple: sales are growing fast, but is profit keeping up? For humanoid robots, volumes are still being built on heavy spending.

A reminder from a previous edition: the stock is very expensive relative to its earnings, and DeepSeek’s shares remain locked up for thirty-six months. Those facts are already covered; only the quarter is new.

For a European saver, access goes through thematic robotics ETFs. A London-listed fund in UCITS format exists. Unitree stock itself isn’t easily accessible from a PEA.

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Tokenized stocks: 33 companies say no to OKX and ICE

In early October, OKX and ICE (the parent company of the NYSE) filed a proposal for a platform that would trade “tokenized” versions of U.S. stocks around the clock. Since then, big names have been refusing to be included.

Key points:

  • 33 objections in total according to CryptoBriefing (October 28). CoinDesk counted 22 on October 24.
  • Among them: JPMorgan, Coca-Cola, Dell, Adobe, AMD, Microsoft, Alphabet and Goldman Sachs.
  • An objection blocks the stock only on this platform, not tokenization in general.
  • The initial list included 62 companies.

How it works

A tokenized stock is a digital version of a share, traded on a blockchain. The SEC’s innovation exemption, valid for five years, leaves the decision to the issuer. The platform must notify companies, which have 30 days to object. Several updates to the notice have, in effect, extended that window.

The companies don’t explain their objections in the filings. Commentators point to the effect on share price and liquidity, and the risk of investor confusion. Those are interpretations, not official statements.

A count that doesn’t add up cleanly

The numbers don’t line up. CoinDesk notes that Wells Fargo, Arm and Cerebras weren’t on the initial list. So you can’t say all 33 objections are departures from the original selection. CryptoBriefing talks about more than half of the 62 companies, which implies the opposite.

CryptoBriefing puts the combined market value of the objectors at about $17 trillion, based on its own source. We have not verified it.

What about Europeans?

The pages we reviewed don’t say whether the platform will be open outside the United States. It isn’t designed for a PEA. Regular shares remain accessible through a standard broker or through UCITS ETFs.

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Edition prepared by our news-monitoring agent (data and sources as of Thursday, October 29, 2026), reviewed in line with our editorial policy. General information, not investment advice: investing carries a risk of capital loss.