Information Technology · Monday, 14 September 2026

01 Briefing what happened

Anthropic picked the Nasdaq for its share sale. In Asia on Monday, AI shares fell after its boss asked the industry to slow down.

Information Technology 15 sources

Anthropic, the company behind the Claude AI models, will list its shares on the Nasdaq, possibly in October, after filing at a value of $965 billion. On Monday SoftBank fell as much as 13.2% in Tokyo, after Anthropic's boss asked AI companies over the weekend to slow down.

13.2%

the most SoftBank's shares fell in Tokyo on Monday

SoftBank is an investor in OpenAI, Anthropic's chief rival [3][5]

$965bn

Anthropic's value when it filed in confidence to list

CNBC says it could seek a $2 trillion value when it lists [1][2]

$65bn

Anthropic's yearly revenue rate in July

about seven times what it was a year earlier [1]

15 days

how long before its investor pitch Anthropic's accounts must be public, at least

on an October timetable, those first checkable numbers are due within weeks [2]

The lead story — what happened

Anthropic, the US company that makes the Claude AI models, has picked the Nasdaq stock exchange in New York for its first sale of shares to the public. [1]
It filed its plans in confidence in June, at a value of $965 billion, and is widely expected to list as soon as next month. [1][2]
The rules require Anthropic to publish its accounts at least 15 days before it starts pitching the shares to investors. [2]
Until then, every figure for Anthropic's value has come from people briefing reporters, not from a company document. [2]
On Saturday, Anthropic's chief executive, Dario Amodei, published an essay asking AI companies to slow how fast their most advanced models improve. [5]
OpenAI's chief executive, Sam Altman, said the same day that OpenAI will likely not list its shares this year, partly because of safety concerns. [5]
On Sunday the Financial Times reported that Anthropic told shareholders its adjusted operating income will be positive for a second quarter in a row. [4] Reuters could not verify the report. [4]
Anthropic's yearly revenue rate reached $65 billion in July, about seven times the year before, CNBC reported. [1]
When trading opened in Tokyo on Monday, shares in SoftBank, a Japanese investment group that owns part of OpenAI, fell as much as 13.2%. [3]
Kioxia, a Japanese maker of memory chips, fell 9.8% at the open, and in South Korea SK Hynix fell 5.3%. [3]
Gil Luria, an analyst at the US investment firm D.A. Davidson, called what Anthropic and OpenAI are doing a 'ladder pull', meaning the leaders shutting smaller rivals out. [1]
Bloomberg reported that demand for chips, energy and computing power still outstrips supply, so any fall in chip shares may prove short-lived. [6]

Who is involved

Anthropic

the US company behind the Claude AI models; it picked the Nasdaq for its first public share sale
Dario Amodei

Anthropic's chief executive; on Saturday he asked AI companies to slow how fast their models improve
Sam Altman

chief executive of OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT; he said OpenAI will likely not list its shares this year
SoftBank

a Japanese investment group that owns part of OpenAI; its shares fell as much as 13.2% on Monday
Nasdaq

a New York stock exchange that listed SpaceX earlier this year; only companies listed there can join its Nasdaq 100 index

How it unfolded

June Anthropic files in confidence to list, at a $965bn value [1][2]
July Anthropic's yearly revenue rate reaches $65bn [1]
Sat Amodei asks AI companies to slow down; Altman says OpenAI will likely not list this year [5]
Sun the FT reports a second quarter of positive adjusted operating income at Anthropic [4]
Mon SoftBank falls as much as 13.2% in Tokyo; SK Hynix falls 5.3% [3]
Next month the earliest expected date for Anthropic's listing [1][2]

Where this points

The next thing that can be checked is Anthropic's accounts, which must be public at least 15 days before its investor pitch and should show whether the reported profit is real. [2][4]

What is pushing on the whole day

The bar and the word are our reading of how hard each one is pushing today. The arrow is where it is heading. The evidence is in the stories below.

Companies selling shares to pay for AI Building↑

Anthropic picked the Nasdaq for a share sale widely expected next month. [1] Z.ai, a Chinese AI company, plans to raise about $5 billion, two months after raising $4 billion. [7] Ligent, a Chinese maker of optical parts used in data centres, wants $723 million from a Hong Kong listing. [8]

The US government against Huawei High→

A US government bank will lend nearly $100 million to Africell, an American-owned phone company in Africa, to buy American and allied network gear. [9] Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, went on trial in a New York federal court on Wednesday. [10]

Doubts about what AI is worth Building↑

SoftBank, an investor in OpenAI, fell as much as 13.2% in Tokyo on Monday. [3] Gartner, a research firm, forecasts that nearly a third of workers laid off because of AI will need rehiring by 2029. [13] The investor Jim Chanos argues that firms renting out AI computers cannot earn enough to cover the cost of the money they raise. [14]

The rest of the day

9 more stories on this beat.

Each with its own sources. None of these is a link to the story above.

02
Z.ai raises money again, and its shares fall

Z.ai, a Beijing company that makes the GLM family of AI models, said it will raise about $5 billion. [7][3] About $2 billion is to come from new shares priced at HK$714 each, 10% below where the shares closed on Friday. [7] The other $3 billion is to come from bonds that can later be swapped for shares. [7] Z.ai raised about $4 billion in July. [7] Its shares fell as much as 10.5% in Hong Kong on Monday. [3]

Why it matters — Z.ai says the money pays for new models and the computers to train and run them. [7] Its rival MiniMax, also listed in Hong Kong, fell 5.4% in the same Monday sell-off of AI shares. [3]
03
Huawei goes on trial in New York

Huawei, the Chinese telecoms giant, went on trial in a federal court in Brooklyn, New York, with opening statements on Wednesday. [10] US prosecutors accuse it of stealing trade secrets from six companies, including Motorola Solutions and T-Mobile. [10] The case began with the 2018 arrest in Canada of Meng Wanzhou, Huawei's finance chief. [10] The US Justice Department said she defrauded banks to get around sanctions on Iran. [10] She made a deal in 2021 and returned to China. [10]

Why it matters — The trial could last four months, and former Huawei employees are expected to testify. [10] Huawei has been effectively barred from selling its products in the US since 2019. [10]
04
US lends Africell $100m to keep Huawei out

The US Export-Import Bank, a government lender, will lend nearly $100 million to Africell, Reuters reported on Friday. [9] Africell is Africa's only American-owned telecoms firm, with 15 million customers in Angola, Gambia, the Democratic Republic of Congo and Sierra Leone. [9] A draft press release says the money is for network technology from American and allied suppliers. [9] Huawei holds about 52% of Africa's market for 5G network equipment, according to Counterpoint Research. [9]

Why it matters — The US government has sanctioned Huawei over claims that it could spy on users, which Huawei denies. [9] The loan follows a 2025 Trump order telling US agencies to promote American technology abroad. [9]
05
A Reuters column likens AI cloud firms to the 2000 telecom bust

A Reuters Breakingviews column compared neoclouds, independent companies that rent out AI computers, to the upstart telecoms firms of the late 1990s. [14] North American telecoms firms spent nearly $500 billion on internet networks by 2002, about half of it by upstarts. [14] When investors stopped funding them in mid-2000, their shares collapsed and several went bust. [14] CoreWeave, the biggest neocloud, had $72 billion of liabilities at the end of June, up 56% since January. [14]

Why it matters — Nscale, Lambda and SB Energy are preparing stock market listings, and Nvidia has invested in several neoclouds, much as equipment makers once lent to the telecom upstarts. [14] It is one column's argument, and IREN's co-chief executive says this boom is fundamentally different. [14]
06
Gartner says many AI layoffs will need rehiring

Gartner, a global research firm, forecasts that by 2029 nearly a third of employees laid off because of AI will need to be rehired. [13] It says hiring them back will often cost significantly more. [13] Its reasoning is that the number of workers worldwide is flat or falling, so recruiting and training will get dearer. [13] It also predicts that by 2027 three-quarters of firms chasing AI cost savings will be overtaken by rivals that reinvest them. [13]

Why it matters — Oracle's workforce shrank by 21,000 over the past year, and its annual report said using AI has led to cuts. [13] Gartner's numbers are a forecast, not a count, and the cost of hiring back would fall on the firms that cut. [13]
07
PitchBook names ASML as Europe's likeliest $1tn company

PitchBook, a company that collects data on markets, said on Friday that no European company is yet worth $1 trillion. [15] Its research named ASML, the Dutch maker of the machines that print patterns onto advanced chips, as the likeliest to get there first. [15] Based on past growth, which it says guarantees nothing, it put that between 2028 and 2031. [15] Its closest rival could be Arm, the British chip designer listed on the Nasdaq. [15]

Why it matters — PitchBook blames stock markets and rules that are split between Europe's countries, and a lean among Europe's biggest companies towards health care, consumer goods and energy rather than technology. [15] Only four European companies had more than $100 billion of revenue in the year to 20 August. [15]
08
Ligent asks Hong Kong for $723m

Ligent Technologies, a Chinese maker of optical equipment, filed on Monday to raise about $723 million by listing in Hong Kong. [8] It makes optical transceivers and optical chips used in data centres, cloud computing and telecoms networks. [8] A transceiver turns electrical signals into light so data can travel down fibre cables. It is offering 172 million shares at HK$32.96 each, which would value it at about $4.13 billion. [8]

Why it matters — Ligent is controlled by Hisense, a Chinese technology conglomerate, and its shares are due to start trading on 22 September. [8] The prospectus says the money will pay for research and more production capacity. [8]
09
Four countries will share one quantum computer

Finland, Czechia, Norway and Poland will jointly own a quantum computer made by IQM, the company said on 10 September. [11] It is funded through the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking, the EU body that pays for shared supercomputers. [11] It will be installed at CSC, Finland's IT centre for science, in three steps: a 150-qubit machine in 2027, an upgrade in 2028 and a newer machine in 2029. [11]

Why it matters — After the last step it should run up to 9 logical qubits, which are groups of physical qubits that correct each other's errors and so work more reliably. [11] IQM calls it Europe's first such machine, and that is the maker's own claim about a computer three years away. [11]
10
VodafoneZiggo sells its phone masts

VodafoneZiggo, the Dutch phone and cable company, agreed to sell its mobile towers to three investment funds, the buyers said on 8 September. [12] They are DigitalBridge, an American investor in towers and data centres, with L&G, a British financial group, and TD Asset Management, part of Canada's TD Bank. [12] The masts will join DigitalBridge's Belgian tower company, making one business with more than 6,600 sites. [12]

Why it matters — VodafoneZiggo and Telenet stay on as the main customers using the masts. [12] The deal needs regulators' approval, is due to close in early 2027, and no price was published. [12]

02 Lesson why it matters

When AI is paid for by selling shares, a falling price means less money

Building AI costs more than most AI companies earn, so they sell shares to pay for it, and each share raises less when prices fall.

The twist

A company that pays for building by selling shares gets less money for every share when its price falls. So a weekend of worry about AI can make the next data centre harder to pay for.

How it works

Building AI models, chips and data centres costs more than most AI companies earn
So they raise the money by selling new shares or bonds to outside investors
Investors pay today's price only because they expect much bigger sales later
When doubt about those sales appears, the share price falls
A lower price means each new share sold brings in less money for the building

The same force, elsewhere today

Where this chain is also running, in today's other stories.

Z.ai's second raise in two months

It needed money again, priced its new shares 10% below Friday's close, and its shares fell as much as 10.5% the same day.
Ligent's Hong Kong listing

A maker of data-centre parts is selling 172 million shares to pay for research and more production, at a price set before trading begins.
The column on AI cloud firms

Nscale, Lambda and SB Energy are preparing share sales because Nvidia's chips are so expensive that these firms are short of cash.

Where you've seen this

Internet cable builders around 2000

they sold shares and borrowed to lay fibre, and when investors stopped buying, the building stopped and several went bust

Drug companies before a medicine is approved

they sell shares for years to pay for trials, and a bad trial result makes the next sale much harder

New electric car makers

they sell shares to pay for factories before they sell many cars, so a falling price can delay a factory

The catch

This bites hardest on companies that lose money. A company that already makes a profit, as Anthropic reportedly now does, can keep building from its own earnings even when its shares fall.

And the whole of it

If Anthropic joins the Nasdaq 100 index, funds that follow the index will buy its shares without anyone choosing to. People whose savings sit in those funds would then gain when Anthropic's price rises. They would also lose when it falls.

03 Truth what's really going on

What is really going on

Anthropic's boss asked AI companies on Saturday to slow down, and Anthropic is still preparing to sell shares on the Nasdaq as soon as next month. [5][1] On Monday investors sold SoftBank, Kioxia and SK Hynix, and Z.ai priced new shares at 10% less than they closed at on Friday. [3][7]

Why it works on us — A call to slow down sounds like a company giving something up, so it is easy to miss that analysts quoted by CNBC think strict safety rules could favour the biggest labs over smaller rivals. [1]

Who gains

Nasdaq — It won the Anthropic listing after SpaceX, and only companies listed on it can join the Nasdaq 100 index, which draws in money from funds that follow the index. [2]
Anthropic and OpenAI — A Gartner analyst told CNBC that strict safety rules could favour them if smaller competitors cannot afford the testing and security they require. [1]
American and allied makers of network equipment — Africell's nearly $100 million US loan is meant to buy their gear, in a region where Huawei holds about 52% of the 5G equipment market. [9]
DigitalBridge, L&G and TD Asset Management — They get more than 6,600 tower sites across Belgium and the Netherlands, with VodafoneZiggo and Telenet as the main customers. [12]
IQM — It sold a quantum computer to four countries with EU funding behind it, and the order includes upgrades through 2029. [11]

Who pays

SoftBank's shareholders — Their shares fell as much as 13.2% on Monday after AI company bosses called for a slowdown. [3]
Z.ai's existing shareholders — New shares are priced 10% below Friday's closing level, so each existing share owns a smaller part of the company. [7] The shares fell as much as 10.5% on Monday. [3]
Huawei — It faces a trial that could last four months, on top of being effectively barred from selling in the US since 2019. [10]
Workers cut because of AI — Oracle's workforce shrank by 21,000 in a year, with its annual report linking cuts to using AI. [13]
Smaller AI companies — Analysts told CNBC they may not be able to afford the safety checks that strict rules would demand of every lab. [1]

What nobody knows yet

Open questions from across today’s stories — ours included.

01

Whether Anthropic is really making a profit.

The Financial Times cited people familiar with the matter, Reuters could not verify it, and the first numbers anyone can check come only when Anthropic publishes its accounts before its investor pitch. [4][2]
02

How much Anthropic will try to raise, and at what value.

It filed at $965 billion, CNBC says it could seek $2 trillion, and The Next Web discusses a $100 billion raise, but none of these figures comes from a published company document. [1][2]
03

Whether any AI lab will actually build its models more slowly.

Amodei said a speed limit would be very difficult and he does not know if it is possible. [5] Gil Luria noted the companies are not saying they will stop training models or buying computing power. [1]
04

Whether Monday's fall in AI shares lasts.

Bloomberg reported that demand for chips and computing still outstrips supply, so the fall may be short-lived, but that is a reading of the market, not a result. [6]
05

What the US and Chinese governments will say to each other about AI safety.

Two people briefed on the plans told Reuters talks are expected this month, and no date or agenda has been made public. [3]
06

Whether Huawei stole the trade secrets it is charged with taking.

Opening statements were only on Wednesday, the trial could last four months, and no verdict has been given. [10]
07

Whether Gartner's rehiring forecast comes true.

It is a prediction for 2029, and nobody has counted how many workers laid off because of AI have been hired back. [13]
08

What VodafoneZiggo was paid for its towers.

The announcement of the sale gives no price, and the deal still needs regulators' approval. [12]