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Good morning.
The same technology Anthropic’s founder warned might kill will at least enrich the ones who make it through. The company will place at least 5% of its shares, worth roughly $48 billion based on Anthropic’s private market valuation, in a “public benefit fund” intended to address the impacts of artificial intelligence. The company, which develops the chatbot Claude, did not offer specifics, though said it would consider distributing the fund through “large donations” to nonprofits or direct payments to “specific populations” like people who lose their jobs to AI. It also didn’t rule out “bolder approaches.”
On Monday, SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, whose firm develops rival chatbot Grok at its xAI subsidiary, ran with his own competing, bold philanthropic initiative. “Next year, I will give one of my SpaceX shares to every kid in America,” he tweeted. Musk owns roughly 4.8 billion SpaceX shares and giving one to each of the 73 million under-18s in the US would mean giving away about $10 billion in current share value, or $148 per kid. That’s 0.148% of a four-year, in-state college degree taken care of. Or 25% of an entry-level PlayStation 5.
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MARKETS
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Stock data as of market close on October 19, 2026.
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Photo via Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call/Newscom
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When JPMorgan Chase last year announced a massive plan to finance and invest in US economic and national security projects and companies, CEO Jamie Dimon made clear its ambitions were “100% commercial.”
This was no philanthropy or political whim. While in the national interest, the bankers running the initiative still pledge allegiance to FV=PV(1+i)n , the formula for future value of an investment. On Monday, JPMorgan announced that the financing and equity investments in critical US industries is off and running at a brisk pace.
Putting billions directly into startups is both a departure and a return to form for JPMorgan, which these days typically stays in its advisor-lender lane. In 2014, the bank bowed out of taking direct stakes in growth companies when it spun off private equity unit One Equity Partners.
All it took to convince CEO Jamie Dimon to get back in the game was an alarming, generational outbreak of global macro risks to national security, among them wars in Ukraine and the Middle East and US overreliance on China for critical minerals. And so, last year, he announced a $1.5 trillion, 10-year plan to provide traditional financing to industries critical to economic and national security. On Monday, JPMorgan said this Security and Resiliency Initiative had financed $230 billion worth of projects in its first year.
Within the larger initiative, the bank is directly investing $10 billion in US-based startups. The rationale is these bets will have less speculative exposure than most venture capital, even if they are riskier than corporate lending, because of the strategic areas where the companies operate. JPMorgan also poached Todd Combs, one of Warren Buffett’s top portfolio managers, from Berkshire Hathaway in January to oversee the investments. Ten months later, at least half of the initial commitment has been deployed. The deals that have been made public paint a clear picture:
- In August, JPMorgan was the co-lead in a $1.4 billion funding round for Hadrian, which builds automated defense, aerospace and maritime factories where robots outnumber humans by as much as 10-to-1 and which says it can make rocket and jet parts 10 times faster than legacy manufacturers. The market opportunity is pretty obvious: The US defense industrial base is struggling to keep up with demand, already facing a $900 billion backlog.
- The bank also took part in a $1 billion August funding round for Castelion, a company that manufactures low-cost, long-range hypersonic missiles called Blackbeard. The opportunity, once again, is conspicuous: Independent defense assessments have found the US military is facing a shortage of advanced long-range offensive missiles that, along with interceptor shortages, will take years to replenish.
  The Agony and the Antimony: One of the very first investments the Security and Resiliency Initiative made after launching last year was in Perpetua Resources, which is developing the Stibnite Gold Project in Idaho to mine gold, silver and antimony. Antimony is a crucial, irreplaceable component in military hardware, and the US relies on China for two thirds of its antimony oxide supply, according to the U.S. Geological Survey. Beijing has not hesitated to use this in trade standoffs, putting the defense supply chain at risk.
Written by Sean Craig
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Closing the books in under 24 hours used to be a pipe dream …
… then AI tools emerged. Now it’s a real goal for CFOs.
But these tools are at the mercy of the data behind them. Trust AI with your numbers and you’re banking on that data being correct, with no gaps in what it pulled. If either falls short, you could brief the board on numbers that may not be 100% accurate.
In this on-demand webinar, Oracle NetSuite’s Tom Kelly shows how NetSuite’s AI tools help you iron out these creases, without sacrificing more hours. You’ll learn to:
- Spot data gaps fast and see which to fix first.
- Catch errors as they happen, not at month-end.
- Stop bad entries before they reach your reports.
Watch the free session before your next close.*
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Photo via Lev Radin/ZUMAPRESS/Newscom
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The chip stocks were down last week as investors lost confidence in AI companies with soaring debts (ahem, CoreWeave). But by Monday, some investors shook off their doubts and bought the dip.
The Nasdaq gained nearly 2% Monday morning, putting it on track to reverse its 4.5% fall last week. Last week, CoreWeave shares plummeted more than 25% as concerns about its $50 billion debt load mounted — concerns that were stirred up when tech investor and “All-In” podcaster Chamath Palihapitiya posted about CoreWeave’s balance sheet on X and Elon Musk commented “Yikes.”
But analysts think investors overreacted last week and that AI companies, even ones with piles of debt on their balance sheets, still have room to grow.
Picking On Picks and Shovels
Companies like CoreWeave are taking on debt to build the foundational infrastructure needed to scale AI — in CoreWeave’s case, that means data centers. Investors have grown increasingly concerned about that massive build being met with enough demand to make sure companies can turn scrappy financing now into sustained revenue later.
While fears hit a fever pitch last week, they cooled this week as analysts voiced expectations that AI-infrastructure plays are back on track after hitting a normal speedbump:
- Barclays analysts wrote that CoreWeave’s debt situation isn’t a signal of the health of AI CapEx, while Goldman Sachs upgraded CoreWeave from “neutral” to “buy.” CoreWeave’s CEO, in a note obtained by CNBC, chalked up the investor pullback to a market misunderstanding of the new technology it’s building. JPMorgan didn’t change its rating on CoreWeave but did write in a note that the perceived risk was overdone.
- JPMorgan upgraded a different kind of AI stock, Intel, to “neutral” from “underweight,” after the company’s shares tumbled last week in the larger AI rout. The move signals an expectation for AI demand to continue boosting sales for hardware makers. Intel rose more than 3% Monday, while chipmaking peers including AMD and Micron also bounced back.
VIP Clients: Some of the concerns about infrastructural companies are because they’re heavily dependent on a handful of hyperscalers. A major one, Meta, reports tomorrow. Updates on the popularity of its Muse AI agent could help build investor confidence about the continued demand for AI — especially from average consumers, not just enterprise clients. Analysts have pinned Meta’s expected AI cash burn for next year at around $200 billion. AI infrastructure companies count on the continued spending of companies like Meta, but investors will also want to know how and when the hyperscalers themselves start seeing sizable returns on their investments. SpaceX and Tesla also report earnings this week, and investors will be listening for news about Grok-maker xAI as well as any futuristic AI-related plans — from robotaxis to the Optimus bot.
Written by Jamie Wilde
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After a blowout earnings report, Cleveland-Cliffs cued Bachman-Turner Overdrive’s You Ain’t Seen Nothing Yet.
On Monday, the steelmaking giant announced an adjusted earnings outlook for 2027 of $4 billion, well exceeding the roughly $2.6 billion consensus expectation on Wall Street, according to FactSet data. The trade war turned out to be very, very good for the company.
Steeling Home
The $4 billion outlook doesn’t just trounce expectations, it would also handily beat the $1.7 billion in adjusted earnings the company expects this year, if its fourth-quarter projections prove accurate, and would make 2025’s meager $37 million in adjusted earnings look like a rounding error.
CEO Lourenco Goncalves on Monday credited current trade policy for the boost. “Imports remain approximately 35%-40% below the level that existed before the implementation of Section 232,” Goncalves said on a call with investors after the report. He was referring to the 50% tariffs on steel and derivative products imposed by the White House last year citing national security. That’s bolstered the market for domestic players, and, in its latest quarter, Cleveland-Cliffs is striking while the proverbial iron (and literal steel) is hot:
- Sales volume in the third quarter reached nearly 4.2 million net tons of steel products, up from 4 million a year ago, at an average selling price of $1,177 per net ton, up from $1,032 a year ago.
- That pushed total revenue to $5.6 billion, up 18% year over year and marking the company’s best quarter since the first quarter of 2024. Adjusted earnings, meanwhile, came in at $612 million.
I-80 W, I-75 N: Shares of the company soared more than 16% on Monday following the strong results. Still, Goncalves said there’s room to grow … if the company’s neighbors across Lake Erie and up the Detroit River start playing ball. The CEO called it a “slap in the face” that General Motors manufactures its popular Chevy Trax crossover SUV in South Korea, and bemoaned Ford’s “annoying” design choice to give its F-150 pickup truck an aluminum body. “I hope that the buyers of trucks understand an aluminum vehicle is not a steel vehicle,” Goncalves said, continuing his Billy Bob Thornton moment.
Written by Brian Boyle
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- Less Interested: US homebuilder sentiment fell to a 14-year low as 30-year mortgage rates remain well above 7%.
- Crime of Fashion: Vinted, the popular vintage clothing app, has had to purge listings by suspected French rioters trying to sell fashion items looted during civil unrest.
- Future Proof: A New Podcast from Semafor Technology Featuring the Builders, Founders, and Operators Shaping the Future of AI. In the latest episode, Ioannis Antonoglu explains why it could take decades before AI becomes fully integrated into the economy. Watch now.**
**Partner
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