#FinanceDaily Anthropic S-1; $SPCX launch; Steel; $AMD Wld Lab $GS $BA

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David D. Tawil
@DavidDTawilSep 30, 2026

The Spaces covered a wide sweep of market, technology, energy, and industrial developments. The host David opened with a markets run-through and IPO chatter, then moved to breadth risks under the index surface as Nikaski warned of mega-cap concentration and small/mid-cap hemorrhaging. A major segment dissected Reuters’ leaked Anthropic S-1: Brandon detailed 2025 revenue (~$4.6B), large non-cash charges inflating a headline net loss, ~$8B operating loss driven by compute, customer concentration risks, and PBC governance with extensive risk disclosures. David highlighted ~$518B in spending commitments and ~$20B cash. The room debated AI price pressure, OpenAI’s model delay, and whether regulatory capture or even nationalization is on the table. Carlo unpacked Coinbase’s CFTC-cleared USDC-based derivatives clearing and Citi-Circle ties, while noting an allegation that may spur legal discovery. Justin recapped SpaceX Starship Flight 14’s successful orbital mission and a planned $15B Indian-backed steel mill in Iowa, with Ravi emphasizing jobs and reshoring optics. Energy analyst Anas discussed diesel tightness, tax policy, SPR dynamics, and Canada LNG’s route advantages. Dave Levinson closed with a strong-dollar/liquidity lens, and David wrapped on Vail Resorts’ pass sales and weather risk.

Daily Markets, Crypto, AI, SpaceX, Steel, Energy, Macro: Full Session Notes

Who spoke and on what

  • David (host, markets): Ran the agenda, market wrap, news items; moderated debates on Anthropic, macro, energy, SpaceX, and the Iowa steel announcement; wrapped with Vail Resorts.
  • Brandon (AI/tech): Deep dive on the leaked Anthropic S-1; timing, numbers, governance, customer concentration, and narrative; added context on OpenAI, compute procurement, and investment takeaways.
  • Carlo (crypto): Bitcoin/Ethereum setup; Zcash and NEAR-linked flows; main focus on Coinbase’s CFTC DCO approval and the stablecoin clearing implications; Citi–Circle tie-up.
  • David Koski (markets breadth; spelling as heard): Rotations and under-the-hood weakness versus index strength; small/mid-cap pain and mega-cap concentration.
  • Eric (AI/price competition): Emphasized price pressure from Chinese models and xAI’s infra strategy; implications for IPO performance and potential pursuit of government support.
  • Dave Levinson (macro): Yield curve, dollar strength, liquidity, AI narrative, and implications for gold/silver and risk assets; long-cycle perspective on USD.
  • Dr. Anas Alhajji (energy): Oil price/backwardation; diesel shortage policy ideas; fuel-tax politics; SPR dynamics; Canadian LNG strategic math; EV road-tax logic.
  • Justin (SpaceX & Iowa): Starship Flight 14 achievements; Iowa steel mill details, sourcing, local political/process nuance.
  • Ravi (India–US business): Indian sponsor background (Ruia family/Essar lineage), scale and jobs of the Iowa steel project, reshoring narrative, supply-chain and Midwest manufacturing context.

Note: A lyrical/poetic cold open preceded the session; no market content there.

Market snapshot and day’s news (David)

  • “Seesaw” tone: After red earlier in the week, pre-market was firm with equities and gold higher; crypto up; bond-market stress contained even as oil wasn’t off much.
  • Headlines:
    • Goldman Sachs succession: Board discussing David Solomon’s succession; likely successor COO John Waldron; transition could be as soon as “next year” (speaker context placed the calendar in 2026, implying 2027).
    • Jefferies (JEF): Beat on earnings with record IB revenue, stock pulled back; lingering concerns over negative headlines around the firm.
    • Oura (smart ring) IPO: Scrapped/postponed despite being reported 4x oversubscribed; cited “market conditions.” Host questioned the logic given broadly constructive markets; flagged strategic risk if Big Tech “throws $1B at rings.”
    • AI risks lunch: Featuring Dario Amodei (Anthropic) and Alex Karp (Palantir); Sam Altman/Elon Musk not on the public list.
    • AMD: Buying “World Labs” (speaker characterization) for $8B+; described as a two-year-old 3D space simulation models maker.
    • US import ban: On certain Canadian goods (motorcycles, alcoholic beverages, whey products) took effect.

Under the hood: market breadth and rotations (David Koski)

  • Index-level strength masks substantial internal weakness:
    • Consumer bellwethers and staples lagging: McDonald’s, Costco, Home Depot, Walmart, Lowe’s, Kraft Heinz, General Mills, Boston Scientific (examples cited).
    • Industrials “look like crap”; financials rolling over; XLY at 15-year relative-strength lows.
    • RSP (equal-weight S&P) down, indicating breadth deterioration; capital crowding into a narrow set of mega-caps.
    • Small/mid-caps (Russell 2000 ~5% of total market cap) showing “hemorrhaging.”
    • Historical context: Leadership churns over cycles (Nifty Fifty-era examples); concentration risk not sustainable indefinitely.

Crypto: posture, microstructure, and policy

  • Carlo’s read:
    • BTC resilient vs gold/silver; ETH (corrected to ~$2,700s) steady; Zcash trending as a privacy coin with a BTC-adjacent narrative; NEAR-related ETF activity seen as expanding distribution.
    • Coinbase: CFTC approved Coinbase Clearing LLC as a Derivatives Clearing Organization (DCO). Key implications:
      • Clearing built on stablecoin (USDC) collateral—instant settlement, low fees, 24/7 vs fiat-based clearing houses with banking-hour constraints.
      • Strengthens Coinbase’s “everything financial app” ambition; bullish for Coinbase, Circle, and USDC; raises competitive pressure on traditional clearing.
    • Citi–Circle: Collaboration signals ongoing bank capitulation to stablecoins and deeper integration into tradfi rails.
  • Host’s caveat: Ari Paul (BlockTower) alleged Coinbase concealed >$1B in hacking losses historically; potential lawsuit could surface details. Context around BlockTower/ARCA combination undercovered; facts remain alleged.

Anthropic’s leaked S-1: facts, framing, and fault lines

  • Timing (Brandon): Reuters leak coincided with Dario’s first meeting with President Trump, OpenAI’s Dev Day, and scheduled government briefings—timing possibly as meaningful as the content.
  • What Reuters-reported 2025 figures show (per speakers; S-1 not yet on EDGAR):
    • Target IPO valuation: “Over $2T” discussed; potential raise “as much as $100B” (among the largest IPOs historically).
    • 2025 revenue: ~ $4.6B (about 12x 2024) with rapid post-2025 acceleration; internal talk of a ~$64–65B ARR recently, with aspiration toward ~$100B ARR by year-end.
    • Operating loss (2025): ~ $8B; majority ($7.3B) compute and infrastructure.
    • Headline net loss of $42B includes a ~$34B one-time non-cash accounting impact related to private financing instruments and valuation step-ups—dilutive but not cash burn. Brandon argued the $34B headline is misleading if treated as cash loss.
    • Customer concentration: ~24–25% of revenue from two customers (not named; inferred by speakers as likely Meta and Cursor); contracts reportedly not long-term, creating material churn risk as firms in-house capabilities.
  • Additional host-cited figures:
    • 2025 revenue up ~$386M YoY (context suggests this was a point on incremental growth vs rising losses; data awaits official S-1).
    • Operating loss doubled YoY.
    • Unfunded spending commitments: ~$518B with ~$20B cash on hand (if accurate, this dwarfs cash; would demand substantial external funding or revised commitments).
  • Governance and structure:
    • Public Benefit Corporation (PBC); pursuit of 50.1% voting control via a new entity held by seven cofounders—explicitly enabling decisions (e.g., withholding a frontier model) based on safety charter over short-term shareholder value.
    • Founders pledged to donate ~80% of their economic benefit to charities—altruistic framing and unusual for a mega-IPO.
    • Risk section extraordinary in length: ~80 pages dedicated to risks vs ~48 on business model; includes language that capabilities could cause “catastrophic damage to humanity.” Unprecedented in tone and scope for an S-1.
  • Competing narratives and strategic context:
    • Price pressure and infra: Eric highlighted Chinese models and xAI’s rapid infra build as structural price compressants. Elon/xAI targeting cost-competitiveness by owning server farms.
    • Jensen/NVIDIA signal (Levinson): NVDA set “peak second derivative,” slower growth pace, large buybacks—narrative may need to cool to sustain economics.
    • OpenAI delay: Discussion that OpenAI delayed release of its next-gen model (e.g., “GPT 6.1/Astra” per speakers). Safety rhetoric vs economic incentives debated.
    • Regulatory capture vs safety: Brandon contends public “doomerism” often masks aims for regulatory capture/favorable policy; also floated that active government dialog could be shaping release cadence.
    • Nationalization debate: Brandon raised that the tech is perceived as national-security asset/concern; Levinson countered nationalization typically occurs near insolvency, not at peak valuations; host moved the room forward pending official S-1.
  • Investor takeaways (speaker consensus/nuances):
    • 2025 figures cannot be linearly extrapolated to 2026+ given massive growth since; nevertheless, customer concentration, compute intensity, and obligations are material risks.
    • The PBC+super-vote structure fundamentally alters governance vs typical IPOs; safety-first charter can overrule profit-maximizing choices.
    • Investors should expect heightened political/regulatory interplay, controversial risk-language, and rapidly evolving unit economics as model cost/performance curves shift.

SpaceX: Starship Flight 14 (Justin)

  • First mission with successful orbital insertion, stage separation, and splashdowns for both stages.
  • Deployed 26 operational Starlink V3 satellites; lost one engine on ascent yet completed mission—resilience noted.
  • Market reaction: Surprisingly muted despite historic milestone.

Steel in Iowa: $15B Missabe Metallics project (Justin, Ravi)

  • Proposed $15B steel mill in Lee County, SE Iowa—touted as the largest in the US.
  • Process status:
    • Land approached via “mystery buyers”; local economic dev. replied with boilerplate: “no comment until officially committed,” implying not yet finalized but progressing.
    • Clarified distinction from eminent domain (hot local topic re: CO2 pipelines); here, land sales are voluntary.
  • Sponsor background and scale (Ravi):
    • Ties to the Ruia brothers/Essar steel lineage; global track in steel (Saudi, Canada, etc.).
    • Investment expanded from $10B to $15B; projected 1,750 plant jobs and 5,000–6,000 construction jobs; cited ~$95B total economic output.
    • Inputs: Iron ore to be sourced from Minnesota—potential mining/jobs pull-through.
    • Strategic rationale: Fits US reshoring/manufacturing revival narrative; positive India–US business optics; could catalyze further Indian capital inflows.
  • Midwest manufacturing concentration (Justin):
    • Locating near a dense manufacturing hub amplifies supply-chain advantages. Noted companies in region: Rockwell Collins, Kinze Manufacturing, John Deere, Flexsteel, Musco Lighting, Emerson, among others.

Energy and fuels (Dr. Anas Alhajji)

  • Oil pricing and structure:
    • Highly volatile; Brent November around ~$103.80 intraday (as heard), December ~$96; steep backwardation persists.
    • “Crisis” is in refined products, particularly diesel, not crude per se.
  • Diesel and taxes:
    • Texas and possibly the White House considering allowing dyed/off-road “red diesel” (tax-exempt farm diesel) on roads to alleviate shortages—policy would be unconventional and controversial.
    • Gas/diesel tax holidays: Consumer savings are trivial (on order of 1–2 cups of coffee per month). Fuel taxes fund roads/bridges; removing them likely harms infrastructure and disproportionately benefits higher-income multi-vehicle households. Anas opposes politically timed tax cuts.
    • Ohio vs Michigan example: Earmarking fuel taxes (Ohio) correlates with better road quality vs general-fund diversion (Michigan).
  • SPR dynamics:
    • Weekly drawdowns fell from ~9–10M bbl/wk to ~0.3–0.4M; puzzling given high prices and profitable borrow/return arbitrage.
    • If firms aren’t borrowing, a proposed additional 30M bbl pre-election release (on top of 172M) may be a headline with limited real uptake.
  • Canadian LNG expansion:
    • Shell-led consortium backs a ~$23B Phase 2 for LNG Canada. Western Canada to East Asia logistics:
      • Sail times: ~8–10 days to China vs ~13 (Qatar) and ~37 (US Gulf around Africa); fewer chokepoints (no Hormuz/Malacca), making it potentially among the most profitable and secure LNG lanes.
  • EV road taxation:
    • Maryland exploring new EV taxes to fund roads. In 2017, Anas predicted states would tax EVs to replace lost fuel-tax revenue; resistance at the time, now materializing. EVs reduce growth in oil demand rather than total demand—a distinction often missed in policy debates.

Macro: USD, yields, liquidity, and AI as a capital magnet (Dave Levinson)

  • Equities risk premium near 25-year lows signals investors treating equities as quasi risk-free despite macro uncertainty.
  • 2022 USD peak aligned with the Fed signaling deceleration (not just the hikes themselves). BTC (levered inverse USD) and gold bottomed around then.
  • Long-cycle USD framework: After a multi-decade downtrend into 2008, the USD has been in a longer bull phase; near-term technicals (e.g., quarterly golden cross) suggest renewed dollar strength.
  • Implications:
    • Stronger USD and weaker curves imply deteriorating global liquidity.
    • Expect pressure on gold (<$2,000) and silver (<$30) if USD rises.
    • AI narratives concentrated vast information/capital flows into a narrow trade; as balance returns, capital can redistribute toward bonds and other assets.

Single-name: Vail Resorts (MTN) (David)

  • Summer quarter unsurprising; key datapoint is forward demand: season pass sales (through Sept 18) down ~12% YoY.
  • Expect potentially deeper drop in the next quarter’s pass cohort (less-devoted buyers more price/weather-sensitive).
  • Weather risk: Early Rockies dustings noted; El Niño “super cycle” but overall warm pattern expected—watch Halloween/Thanksgiving into Christmas. If snow falters by mid-November, stock at risk.

Additional AI/IPO notes (Brandon)

  • AI capex unlikely to slow; likely to multiply even as pricing pressure rises—winners may be those with the best cost curves and earliest compute procurement.
  • Oura IPO postponement reiterated as “market conditions.”
  • Anthropic IPO timing: Expected post-midterms; perceived aim to align with a more favorable policy environment. Past donations mostly to Democrats and to nonprofits advocating AI slowdown—political optics will be part of the investment calculus.
  • OpenAI vs Anthropic compute:
    • OpenAI reportedly secured compute earlier and cheaper; Anthropic playing catch-up at higher prices.
    • Claim surfaced that Anthropic is paying ~$15B/yr to SpaceX for compute (speaker assertion).

Closing levels (as cited by host)

  • Futures marginally green: Nasdaq +0.3%; S&P up slightly.
  • Gold ~4,190.
  • DXY ~101.35 (USD strength “in earnest”).
  • Crypto: BTC ~40,845; ETH ~2,735.

Key takeaways

  • Index highs belie weak breadth; capital herding into a handful of mega-caps, with small/mid-caps and cyclicals under strain.
  • Coinbase’s DCO approval is a structural step forward for stablecoin-based market plumbing; expect pressure on legacy fiat clearing.
  • Anthropic’s leaked S-1 frames a high-velocity, high-burn, high-obligation story with unprecedented risk disclosure and atypical PBC governance; customer concentration and compute economics are pivotal; 2026+ growth may look very different from 2025 prints.
  • Macro headwinds: A strengthening dollar, tight curves, and ebbing liquidity challenge risk assets; gold/silver vulnerable if USD trend persists.
  • Energy policy trade-offs (diesel, taxes, SPR) lean complex and politically charged; Canadian LNG’s structural advantages are significant.
  • SpaceX continues to notch historic execution; markets remain nonchalant.
  • US industrial revival narrative gets a tangible boost via the proposed $15B Iowa steel mill, pairing India–US capital ties with Midwest supply-chain depth.