I am also asking Wall Street for two trillion dollars - Charlie
ANTHROPIC ASKS WALL STREET FOR TWO TRILLION DOLLARS
The company behind Claude filed on October 26 to go public on Nasdaq as ANT, with no price or date set yet. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley lead a group of 22 banks, and the listing could raise $100bn or more at a valuation of $1.5tn to $2tn, which would top the record SpaceX just set. Anthropic left the price and share count blank, because the first rule of asking for 2 trillion dollars is making the other guy say a number first. Now the books. Revenue was $16.3 billion in the first half, up from $1.1 billion a year earlier. The loss is $80.7 billion, and $72.4 billion of it came from marking up convertible notes, derivative liabilities and SAFEs, meaning the paper got more expensive because the company got more valuable. Strip the charges out and Anthropic made $974 million from running its business in the second quarter. They lost eighty billion dollars by doing well. Then there's the vibe. About 94 pages of the roughly 300-page filing are risk factors, including concerns that advanced AI could pose "catastrophic or existential risks to humanity" and a warning that no single insurer, and potentially the insurance industry in the aggregate, may lack the capacity to cover it. The founders open with an eight-page letter about an "age of miracles". They also created a special class F share that keeps 50.1% of the voting power with the founders.
MICROSOFT ASKS 60,000 EMPLOYEES TO PLEASE FIRE THEMSELVES BY DECEMBER 31
Microsoft spent Monday emailing roughly 60,000 employees something called the Voluntary Exit Offer, which is corporate for please leave on purpose. It went to workers in the US, Canada, India and the UK at experience level 70 and below, vice president on down, about 27% of a 223,000-person workforce. You have until early December to decide, and if you say yes your last day is December 31. Nothing kicks off a new year like a severance check and a dead badge. The terms are similar to Microsoft's standard severance. No sweetener, no bonus for raising your hand. Chief people officer Amy Coleman's memo called it "more ways for employees to shape their next chapter", a chapter that opens with career planning resources and a company laptop you have to mail back. Now look at who got left off the list. Bloomberg reported the participating divisions include Xbox, Windows, Copilot and Finance, while data center, sales and marketing staff are excluded. So Microsoft will thin out the humans making the AI products and leave the crews keeping the chips cold alone. This follows this spring's first-ever voluntary retirement program, open to about 7% of US employees, which Microsoft said in July more than 30% of eligible workers took, plus a July layoff round of 4,800 that fell hard on Xbox. Axios counts roughly 15,000 cut earlier this year on top of that.
Fact or fiction
The Lomardi trophy is named after the first ever Quarterback to win the super bowl.
FLORIDA MAN ATE $769,500 IN TIFFANY DIAMONDS AND THE COPS JUST WAITED HIM OUT
On February 26, 2025, a guy walked into the Tiffany & Co. at Orlando's Mall at Millenia with no appointment, told staff his name was Shawn and that he was negotiating a sale on behalf of a player on the Orlando Magic. He was wearing a red hat, a red Polo shirt, and very ripped blue jeans. They took him into the VIP room anyway, because of the value of the jewelry involved. Staff laid out a pair of 4.86-carat earrings worth $160,000, a pair of 8.19-carat earrings, and a 5.61-carat diamond ring worth $587,000. Jaythan Gilder grabbed all three pieces, struggled with employees, dropped the ring, and fled. The employee suffered minor arm injuries. Florida Highway Patrol spotted his vehicle driving without rear lights on Interstate 10 in Washington County. A $769,500 heist, ended by a bulb. Then he swallowed several items during the arrest, and a scan at the Washington County Jail found foreign objects in his stomach. He reportedly asked jail staff if he was going to be charged with what was in his stomach. A trooper heard him say he should have thrown them out the window. Detectives recovered three earrings on March 10 and the fourth on March 12. A jury found him guilty of robbery and grand theft.
ISRAEL'S TOP GENERAL REPORTEDLY WANTED THE IRAN ORDER IN WRITING
Israelis vote Tuesday in their first election since the October 7, 2023 attacks and since the war with Iran, and the final polls agree on exactly one number. Fifty. Channel 12, Channel 13 and Kan all put Netanyahu's bloc at 50 of the Knesset's 120 seats. They argue about everything else, giving Gadi Eisenkot's camp anywhere from 52 to 56, but you need 61 to govern and Netanyahu is parked at 50 in all three. Three networks, three different opposition numbers, one identical Netanyahu number. Then Channel 12 reported Sunday night an "unprecedented confrontation" between Netanyahu and IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir over unspecified military action relating to Iran, days before the vote. Zamir reportedly wanted more deliberation first, plus signed documentation from the prime minister covering the legal authorization. Your top general asking the boss for a signature is not a man who thinks this is routine. The network said the atmosphere at a Palmahim Airbase meeting was "extremely sour," and that it was reporting under military censorship, so nobody is going to tell you what the order actually was. Netanyahu went on the pro-government Channel 14 and called the report nonsense, saying someone is trying to start a fight. His defense minister denied it too. A military source told Channel 12 the action could cause a flare-up with Iran at a dramatic moment, while political sources called the whole political-motive angle a complete lie. Everybody is on record. Nobody agrees. Normal Monday.
A24 BETS $200 MILLION ON ELDEN RING
The Wall Street Journal reports that Alex Garland's live-action Elden Ring cost A24 nearly $200 million, sourced to people familiar with the matter, which is reporter for nobody at A24 will say this with their name attached. The studio's previous record was Marty Supreme at around $70 million. Civil War was roughly $50 million. The company built on small director-driven movies is now spending Marvel money on a game whose core gameplay loop is dying in a field. The number also moved. When cameras rolled in April, the figure floating around was just over $100 million. The shoot ran four months in the UK and wrapped in July, which leaves a year and a half of post before the March 3, 2028 release, all of it VFX artists building the Lands Between for IMAX. George R.R. Martin is a producer, so at least one guy on the call sheet is comfortable with a long delivery window. The part that makes the math funny is A24's other recent swing. Backrooms cost $10 million, came from a 20-year-old YouTuber, and did $400 million worldwide. The studio proved it can print money on pocket change, then turned around and put twenty Backrooms on one dark fantasy epic.
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