Anthropic's IPO Filing Lifted AI Stocks From New York To Seoul

Brian CurcioPublished October 27, 2026

Anthropic publicly filed for an initial public offering on Monday, and AI-linked shares rose in the United States, Europe and Asia. The Federal Reserve's two-day policy meeting opens today, with the decision due Wednesday afternoon and a hold widely expected. Abroad, China's factory profits and South Korea's third-quarter growth both pointed back to the same source of demand: companies buying the hardware that AI runs on.

Fast Facts

Meta said it would look to raise up to $95 billion to help fund its artificial-intelligence infrastructure, the same build it created a new class of non-voting shares to help pay for last week (Read More)
A group of banks and Blackstone is lining up $63 billion to buy AI computing equipment from Broadcom and lease it to Anthropic (Read More)
DoorDash is in advanced talks to acquire Instacart in a deal that could value Instacart at around $17 billion and close as soon as this week, The Wall Street Journal reported (Read More)
Twenty-one million UnitedHealthcare members are getting access to the insurer's AI agent, which it is rolling out after what it called significant success with an earlier version (Read More)
Self-driving excavators pulled in $600 million of new funding for Bedrock Robotics, valuing the company at $4.1 billion (Read More)
The S&P 500 has barely moved since June, and a UBS team argues options traders are part of the reason (Read More)

Global News

HSBC reported third-quarter pretax profit up 32% to $9.6 billion and announced a share buyback, meaning it will buy some of its own shares back from investors, though its shares fell (Read More)
French consumer confidence sank to a 13-year low after nationwide protests and a sell-off in government bonds that drove France's borrowing cost to a 24-year high last week (Read More)
Jio Platforms drew orders for 22.2 times the shares on offer in its 30,213-crore-rupee IPO ahead of an expected debut in India on October 28 (Read More)
Novartis raised its guidance, meaning its own forecast for the year, even as recent drug-trial setbacks hit third-quarter profit (Read More)

Anthropic's IPO Filing Lifted AI Stocks in the U.S., Europe and Asia

Anthropic publicly filed for an initial public offering (an IPO) on Monday, October 26, and plans to list under the ticker "ANT." An IPO filing is the paperwork a company submits to sell shares to the public for the first time. It is not the listing itself. Going in, markets carried a worry about a possible AI bubble, meaning prices for AI-linked companies running ahead of what those businesses can earn.

The reaction crossed three regions. U.S. stocks rose Monday as the filing stemmed that anxiety, with tech shares leading, ahead of big-tech earnings and a Federal Reserve policy statement later in the week. European chip stocks rose the day after the filing. Then came the Tuesday Asia session. The Economic Times reported that Japan's Nikkei rose nearly 2%, snapping a three-session losing streak, as Advantest, SoftBank and Tokyo Electron gained, and that South Korean shares rose 4.39% as Samsung Electronics and SK Hynix gained on AI-chip optimism.

Why would one company's paperwork move chipmakers in Tokyo and Seoul? AI companies need huge numbers of specialized chips to build and run their software, so chipmakers' sales depend on that building continuing. A public filing is a signal that the AI build-out has a path to raising money from the public, and that eased the bubble worry. When fear of a bubble shrinks, traders pay more for the companies that supply the build-out. Now look at the other side of the same session. The Economic Times reported that Indian IT services stocks, including TCS and Infosys, fell up to 3%. These firms earn money by selling people's time and software work to clients. The reports do not say why they fell. The contrast is still worth holding onto, because the same piece of news does not push every company in the same direction.

Keep the caveat in view. A filing is paperwork, and it discloses the company's finances so that buyers can examine them. Monday's and Tuesday's moves are sentiment about the AI build-out, a shared mood among traders, not a result. Nothing has been priced or sold yet, and pricing is the later step where a company and its banks set the figure buyers actually pay for each share.

Sources: WSJ · Economic Times · Forbes

Fed Meeting Opens With a Hold Widely Expected, and Gold Edges Lower Ahead of It

The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed group that sets interest rates, meets Tuesday and Wednesday under Chair Kevin Warsh. The decision is due Wednesday: the statement is expected at 2:00 p.m. ET and the press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET. A hold is widely expected, meaning the committee would leave its benchmark short-term interest rate where it is. The Wall Street Journal reports that there is a case for raising rates, but that officials' calls for patience and the approaching midterms make a surprise increase hard to pull off. Gold prices fell slightly as investors waited for cues on rates. The Economic Times points to two questions that outlast Wednesday: whether an increase comes in December, and how far officials disagree among themselves.

A decision that has not happened can still move prices, because prices are built from expectations. Traders adjust beforehand, so what matters Wednesday is the gap between what was expected and what arrives. If nearly everyone already believes rates will stay put, that belief is in today's prices. The 2-year Treasury yield, the return investors demand for lending to the government for two years, tracks where they think short-term rates are heading. At the prior session's close on Monday, October 26, the 2-year yield was 4.68%, down 1 basis point (a hundredth of a percentage point) from Friday. The 10-year yield was 5.00% at that same close, unchanged from Friday's close and 32 basis points above the 2-year. Gold pays no interest, so its appeal shifts with expectations for rates, which is why it can slip on a meeting day.

Those yields reach households through the price of borrowing. A lender setting the rate on a 30-year mortgage starts from what the U.S. government pays to borrow for ten years, the rate lenders treat as the safe baseline for long loans, then adds a margin for the risk that a household is not the government. Shorter-term rates work the same way one rung down, feeding into car loans and credit cards. So the 10-year at 5.00% on Monday's close is the starting point under every long loan rate quoted this week, which is how a meeting no household sits in reaches a monthly payment.

Sources: WSJ · Economic Times · Federal Reserve · Rapunzl on the case for a rate rise

AI Hardware Demand Is Now Showing Up in China's Factory Profits and Korea's Growth

Two Asian economic releases pointed to the same source of strength. China's industrial profits, which measure what the country's factories actually earn, rose 14.4% in September from a year earlier, supported by strong gains in electronics and high-tech manufacturing linked to AI and digital-infrastructure spending. Al Jazeera reported that South Korea's economy, Asia's fourth largest, grew 3.4% in the third quarter from a year earlier, faster than forecasters expected, on strong semiconductor demand. That is GDP, which measures the total value of what an economy produces. Both are readings on past periods, not this morning's data.

Here is why it matters. AI spending in the United States is paid to companies that make physical things, and a lot of those things are made in Asia. So a build-out financed in New York shows up as factory profit in China and as economic growth in Korea. Think of ordering a custom bike online: the money leaves your account in one place, but the wages are earned wherever the bike gets built, and show up in that country's figures, not yours. The reports tie each result to that demand. What they report is what happened in those periods; they do not say how long it lasts.

Sources: WSJ · Investing.com · Al Jazeera

What To Watch

Every company figure below is analysts' average forecast for the quarter, not a result.

Reporting today:

Visa (V), after close. Analysts' average estimate for earnings per share, the profit a company makes on each share outstanding, is $3.43 against $2.98 a year ago
Coca-Cola (KO), before open, estimate $0.87 against $0.82
Boeing (BA), before open, estimate of a $0.21 loss per share against a $7.47 loss a year ago
S&P Global (SPGI), before open, estimate $4.43 against $4.73
Freeport-McMoRan (FCX), before open, estimate $0.80 against $0.50

The Fed, today and tomorrow:

The Federal Open Market Committee is meeting Tuesday and Wednesday, and the statement is expected Wednesday at 2:00 p.m. ET with a press conference at 2:30 p.m. ET. No decision comes on day one; the statement arrives at the end of day two.

Later this week:

Alphabet (GOOGL) and Microsoft (MSFT) are expected to report after Wednesday's close, with estimates of $2.94 and $4.71 against $2.87 and $4.13 a year ago. KLA, ServiceNow and T-Mobile are also expected after Wednesday's close, and GE Vernova before the open. Jio Platforms is expected to begin trading in India the same day.

Amazon (AMZN) and Intel (INTC) are expected to report after Thursday's close, with estimates of $2.01 and $0.28. Eli Lilly, Mastercard, Merck and Caterpillar are expected before Thursday's open. The Bureau of Economic Analysis is scheduled to release third-quarter GDP and its Personal Income and Outlays report the same morning.

ExxonMobil, Chevron and AbbVie are expected to report before Friday's open.

The Classroom Takeaway

This week's rally in AI shares came from a filing, which is paperwork rather than a result, and the gap between news and numbers is where most market lessons live. News changes what people expect a company will earn; results change what it actually earned, and the two can disagree for months. Watching that gap close or widen is something a student can do in a stock market simulator without any money at stake.