Happy Thursday. Nvidia’s CEO might get ousted, small business owners are more confident, Mercor doubled its valuation, and home prices declined. Let's dive in!
📺 Watch: Our investor briefing on next week’s Anthropic IPO - one of the most anticipated public offerings of all time.
This issue is brought to you by Templum - Waymo investment opportunity open until 11/20.
📈 DAILY MARKETS
🤖 ANTHROPIC BRIEFING
Slava Rubin of Vincent and Jan-Erik Asplund of Sacra examine Anthropic’s upcoming IPO, weighing its rapid revenue growth and enterprise adoption against compute commitments, competitive pressure, and regulatory uncertainty. They also discuss valuation scenarios and ways investors might approach the listing, while emphasizing the risks and volatility involved.
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📰 NOTABLE NEWS
📊 Small business optimism index: NFIB’s Small Business Optimism Index was slightly down last month, dropping 0.1 points to 97.8, only slightly below the average reading of 98.0. One bright spot is that the Uncertainty Index fell 6 points last month to 84, the lowest level since last December, meaning that business owners are more confident in their decision-making.
🤖 Mercor fundraise: The AI data startup raised a $750 million funding round at a valuation of $20 billion, double its valuation from last October and 80x its valuation from September 2024, underscoring how exponential its growth has been.
🏡 Home prices decline: The median sale price for U.S. houses fell 0.4% year-over-year according to Redfin, with Austin, Seattle, and Nashville seeing the biggest declines. San Francisco remained a positive outlier, with 16.8% annual growth.
🏢 Industrial absorption climbing: Q3 saw net absorption of more than 83 million square feet of industrial space, the best quarter since 2022, which exceeded the total new supply of 71 million square feet, bringing the overall vacancy rate down.
🚀 New unicorns: There were 34 startups that surpassed $1 billion in valuation in October, the majority being AI-related, with defense, cybersecurity, and robotics companies also well-represented.
💎 Bulgari Pink diamond: A 24-carat fancy intense pink diamond sold at Christie’s in Geneva for $14.6 million, right in the middle of the expected pre-sale range.
🤖 AI CORNER
Nvidia, perhaps the most important company in the AI sector and one of the biggest companies in the world, is facing a significant crisis with its CEO and co-founder Jensen Huang. Huang is one of the most prominent executives in the world, and has been the CEO of Nvidia since its founding, becoming synonymous with the company. Huang admitted to having an extramarital affair, and the woman involved is an accused Chinese spy, which has national security ramifications as well as calls his judgment into question. News broke yesterday of a second affair, this time with an Nvidia employee who reports directly to him. This has led to reports that Nvidia’s board is working on a plan to remove Huang as CEO, an earth-shaking development in the business world and the AI industry. There are questions about who could potentially take over and if anyone can come close to replicating what Huang means to the company. Nvidia’s stock was down more than 8% in after-hours trading last night, and has dropped 11% since the reports of Huang’s affairs came out. It could be a strong buying opportunity long-term, but if Huang gets the boot, it could sink the share price even further.
