Wire
Every six hours we pick the three stories in AI and markets news with the most to measure, and write each up as a short analysis: what happened, the numbers behind it, and what it changes. The newest run is on top.
- Chips · Nvidia
W.054Nvidia’s board is investigating whether Jensen Huang was the target of a foreign intelligence effort. Megaspeed, the company at the centre of it, bought Nvidia hardware equal to about 1.4% of Nvidia’s revenue over two years, the Times reported
Nvidia’s board said on November 8 that independent directors, with outside counsel, will investigate reporting that its chief executive was targeted by a foreign intelligence effort. The reporting centres on a former executive of Megaspeed, a Singapore-based customer that bought more than $4.8 billion of Nvidia chips over two years, according to the New York Times. Nvidia reports on November 17.
Triggered by: ABC7 and 2 more
- Labs · Apple
W.055Apple’s new chief executive is pushing to speed up its AI work, Bloomberg reports. Apple’s research spending rose 32% in fiscal 2026 while its capital spending fell 29%, to about a twenty-fourth of Amazon’s
John Ternus has pressed software chief Craig Federighi to move faster on software and AI, Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman reported on November 8. Apple’s fiscal 2026 accounts show research and development up 32% to $45.8 billion while its spending on property and equipment fell 29% to $9.0 billion. Amazon’s purchases of property and equipment were $215 billion in its last twelve months.
Triggered by: 9to5Mac, on Bloomberg and 2 more
- Power · UK
W.056Britain won’t slow its data centre build, its growth minister says. Data centre projects queueing for the grid hold about 73GW, 1.6 times peak demand and 14 times what the grid operator expects by 2030
Growth minister Dan Tomlinson told the Financial Times that data centres will go ahead as essential infrastructure, though not at any cost. About 315 data centre projects with about 73GW of contracted capacity sit in Great Britain’s connection queue, Ofgem says, against peak demand of 45GW and about 2.4GW of data centres connected in 2025. The regulator wants projects of 40MW or more to put up £237,500 to £712,500 a megawatt to keep their place.
Triggered by: Financial Times and 2 more
- Data centers and power · SpaceX
W.052SpaceX is seeking a tax break for a gas plant and supercomputer at Starbase. Its first phases, about $24B, are 1.2 times its largest quarter of capital spending yet, the third
The City of Starbase will hold a hearing on December 9 on a property tax abatement and an economic development agreement for SpaceX’s proposed gas-fired power plant and super-compute facility on about 444 acres east of Brownsville. The notice puts the investment at about $24B for initial phases. SpaceX spent $19.6B on property and equipment in the third quarter and guided to $35–40B in the fourth.
Triggered by: FourWeekMBA and 2 more
- Chips · Nvidia
W.053About two dozen Chinese firms are cleared to buy or handle Nvidia’s H200, the NYT reports, two with no apparent office. H200 sales to China were under 1% of Nvidia’s data center revenue in the quarter to July
The US Commerce Department has approved roughly two dozen Chinese companies to buy or handle Nvidia’s H200 chips, the New York Times reported on November 7, citing people familiar with the approvals. Two had no apparent presence at their listed addresses, and four have ties to China’s military or to blacklisted companies, the Times reported. In May, Reuters reported 10 firms cleared for up to 75,000 chips each. Nvidia says H200 sales to China were under 1% of its data center revenue in the quarter to July.
Triggered by: New York Times and 2 more
- Power · Anthropic
W.049Anthropic agreed to pay $3.4B for 1.7 GW of gas generators a Texas developer had ordered from Caterpillar. That is about $2,000 a kilowatt, and nearly as much as Caterpillar’s power generation sales in a quarter
Anthropic bought commitments for 1.7 GW of heavy-duty gas-fired generators from OnePWR Solutions for $3.4B in late September, the Financial Times reported on November 8. OnePWR had ordered the equipment from Caterpillar about two years earlier. The FT called it the largest known single purchase of power-generation equipment by an AI lab.
Triggered by: Reuters, via MarketScreener and 1 more
- Chips · Bank of America
W.050BofA’s base case has chip stocks falling around 10% more. Its main capex risk is spending holding near $1.2T a year, which it says could cut AI deployment to about 30 GW from more than 40
Bank of America laid out three scenarios for chip stocks after the Philadelphia semiconductor index fell 37% from its June peak, Investing.com reported on November 8. In its base case the index falls around 10% more and bottoms in the first quarter of 2027. The bank puts US cloud capex at about $1.2T a year and says spending that stabilises there would be roughly 20% below 2027 expectations.
Triggered by: Investing.com
- Policy · AI super PACs
W.051Anthropic-funded Public First says it spent more than $63M on 17 midterm candidates and 10 won. Leading the Future’s filings show $76M raised, 99% from four donors
AI safety advocates made gains after a $110M midterm fight with the AI industry’s super PACs, Bloomberg reported on November 7. Public First, the network Anthropic has given $40M, says it spent more than $63M backing 17 congressional candidates. Leading the Future, funded by Andreessen Horowitz’s founders and Greg and Anna Brockman, says it spent at least $54M on 48.
Triggered by: Bloomberg and 1 more
- AI credit · GPU-backed debt
W.046GPU-backed debt announced this year reached $48.4B by October 10, 47% of tracked AI infrastructure debt. Lenders charged about 6% when an investment-grade customer stood behind the chips and 8–10% otherwise
American Compute’s tracker counts $48.4B of public GPU-backed debt announced in 2026 to October 10, 7.3 times all of 2025, while debt secured on data center campuses was $22.4B against $46.1B in all of 2025. Social Capital argued on November 7 that falling GPU rents would hit lenders twice. The rent indices we found have risen this year, and the price of the loans depends mostly on who rents the chips.
Triggered by: FourWeekMBA and 2 more
- AI funding · Groq
W.047Groq is asking investors for an $8B valuation, 2.3 times its August price, as listed neoclouds fell about a fifth. Spread over the capacity it expects in 2027, that is about $40M a megawatt
Groq’s executive chairman approached investors about a new round at $8B before the new money, Bloomberg reported on November 6, citing investor documents. In August Groq raised $350M at $3.15B before the money. Its letter projects eightfold revenue growth next year and $2B of EBITDA by 2028, without giving a revenue base. Groq said in August it ran 54 MW and expected more than 200 MW in 2027.
Triggered by: Bloomberg and 1 more
- Chips · Samsung
W.048Samsung’s Texas fab could begin trial operations in December, about two years after its first target. Samsung’s share of foundry sales has fallen from 11.5% to 5.9% in two years
The Korea Herald reported on November 8, citing industry sources, that trial operations at Samsung’s first fab in Taylor, Texas could begin in mid-to-late December; Samsung says the plant will be fully operational by the end of 2026, with mass production in 2027. When Samsung chose Taylor in 2021 it estimated $17 billion and targeted operations in the second half of 2024. Its share of foundry revenue has since slipped to 5.9%, TrendForce says, against TSMC’s 72.5%.
Triggered by: The Korea Herald
- AI labs and chips · SpaceX
W.043Musk says SpaceX is on track for a yearly revenue rate above $100B in December, 1.7 times its third-quarter pace. Ron Baron put Terafab at $1T
Speaking by video at the Baron Investment Conference on November 6, Elon Musk said SpaceX is tracking to an annual revenue rate above $100B in December and guessed at more than $500B a year later. SpaceX sold $14.6B in the third quarter, a $58.3B yearly pace, and guided its first quarter of 2027 to $33–37B. Asked about Ron Baron’s $1T price for Terafab, Musk said the money would not be needed at once; its only official cost is a first phase of more than $16.8B.
Triggered by: 24/7 Wall St. and 2 more
- Chips · TSMC, Nvidia, memory
W.044SK hynix and Micron now keep about 80 cents of each sales dollar as operating profit, TSMC 59. TSMC says it is a logic foundry after a report it planned DRAM for Nvidia
The Information reported on November 6 that TSMC had begun drawing up plans to make stacked DRAM at Nvidia’s request; on November 7 TSMC said it focuses on being a dedicated logic foundry. The memory crunch explains the interest: SK hynix and Micron earned operating margins of about 80% in their latest quarters, against TSMC’s 58.7%. Micron guided to $61.5B of sales this quarter, more than TSMC’s $53.3B midpoint, and Nvidia’s supply commitments, mainly memory and manufacturing facilities, rose from $119B to $279B in a quarter.
Triggered by: Tom’s Hardware and 2 more
- Chips · Taiwan server makers
W.040Four Taiwan server makers sold 99% more in October than a year before. Wistron alone sold NT$403B, about $12.5B
Wistron, Wiwynn, Gigabyte and Inventec reported combined October revenue of NT$715B in monthly filings on November 4–6, nearly double October 2025. Wistron’s sales rose 118% and Gigabyte’s 137%; Wiwynn’s rose 81% but fell 4% from September. Wiwynn’s shares fell 14.4% in a week when Taiwan’s market lost 12%.
Triggered by: CNA and 2 more
- Chips · Alphabet, Qualcomm
W.041Alphabet’s $548M of Qualcomm stock came from Qualcomm’s purchase of Modular. It is 0.28% of Qualcomm
Alphabet’s quarterly holdings filing, reported on November 6, lists 2,976,982 Qualcomm shares worth $548M at September 30. Reports framed it as a bet on Qualcomm’s data center push. Qualcomm’s own July filings show two GV funds received 3,196,261 shares when Qualcomm bought Modular, the AI software startup GV backed in 2022. At the November 5 close the stake was worth about $467M.
Triggered by: Reuters, via Investing.com and 2 more
- Capital · SoftBank, OpenAI
W.042SoftBank’s default-swap price hit its highest since 2022. At OpenAI’s new $1.25T price, its ~13% of OpenAI would be worth more than SoftBank’s market value
The cost of insuring SoftBank Group’s debt for five years rose to as much as 466 basis points on November 6, the most since October 2022, as its shares fell 10.8%, to 59% below June’s record close. The same day OpenAI took $11B of a round it had hoped would bring $30B, at $1.25T. About 13% of $1.25T is $163B; SoftBank’s whole market value was about $128B.
Triggered by: Reuters, via The Star and 1 more
- Optics · Applied Optoelectronics
W.037Applied Optoelectronics’ sales rose 127%. It spent more on plant than it sold, and paid for it with $1.59B of new stock
Applied Optoelectronics reported third-quarter revenue of $269.9M, up 127% from a year earlier, and guided to $385–420M for the fourth quarter. In the first nine months of 2026 it paid $702M for plant and equipment, more than its $613M of revenue, and raised $1.59B by selling stock. Getting electrical power for its Texas expansion is taking longer than expected; the second phase is now expected to be several months late.
Triggered by: PR Newswire and 1 more
- Markets · Chip stocks
W.038US chip stocks won back 30% of Thursday’s fall on Friday. The index still lost 12% in the week, and SK hynix fell further
The PHLX Semiconductor Index rose 4.21% on November 6, recovering about 30% of the 12.25% it lost the day before, and ended the week down 12.2%, 36% below its June record. Intel and AMD won back more than half of Thursday’s losses; Nvidia about a quarter, Broadcom less than a tenth. Asian markets, which trade before New York opens, fell again on Friday: SK hynix lost 10.4% after 9.5% on Thursday, and Samsung 6.4% after 7.6%.
Triggered by: AP, via The Washington Times and 2 more
- Labs · Thinking Machines
W.039Thinking Machines is near a $5B round at $40B before the money. That is up to 450 times the run rate a source gave in September
Thinking Machines Lab, Mira Murati’s AI lab, is set to close a $5B round led by Accel at a $40B pre-money valuation, Business Insider reported late on November 5, US time, about $45B after the money by our arithmetic. That is below the $50B it discussed a year ago and 3.75 times its $12B seed valuation of July 2025. In September a person familiar with its finances put its annual revenue run rate at over $100M; Anthropic’s IPO talk is about 18 times its run rate.
Triggered by: Business Insider, via DNYUZ and 1 more
- AI labs · Anthropic
W.034Talk of Anthropic’s IPO value fell to $1.2–1.3T. That is about 18 times its third-quarter sales, annualized
Some prospective investors in Anthropic’s IPO are discussing a valuation of $1.2T to $1.3T, Bloomberg reported on November 6, down from $1.4–1.5T told to bankers after the October briefing and as much as $2T in early October. The midpoint is 30% above May’s $965B private round, and 18.4 times Anthropic’s third-quarter revenue of $16.96B annualized. A raise of up to $100B, as reported, would be 7–8% of the company at that price.
Triggered by: Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance and 1 more
- Chips · Microchip
W.035Microchip’s sales rose 42% in a year. Its chief executive says data centers, a sixth of them, are in a bubble
Microchip’s net sales were $1.62B in the September quarter, up 42% from a year earlier and 67% above their low in March 2025. Data center sales were over $250M, up about 56%, chief executive Steve Sanghi said on the call, where he also said the market is in a bubble. The company guided gross margin down to 64–65% from 66.5%, which included about $53M of one-time revenue at full margin. Its shares fell 8% to 10% on Friday as chip stocks rose.
Triggered by: Microchip and 2 more
- Cloud · Microsoft, Oracle
W.036Microsoft is letting a 2023 Oracle rental lapse. Oracle’s $664B backlog is 22 years of its cloud infrastructure sales at today’s pace
Microsoft declined to renew a 2023 deal to rent AI capacity from Oracle and has been switching it off, Bloomberg reported on November 6; neither company has given its value. It is the fifth Microsoft pullback from rented or leased capacity reported since June. Oracle’s contracted backlog was $664B at August 31, 22 times its latest quarter’s $7.4B of cloud infrastructure revenue annualized. Its shares fell during the day but closed up 0.8% at $116.10, 53% below their June 1 close.
Triggered by: Bloomberg and 2 more
- Power · Vistra
W.032Vistra’s first 2027 guidance puts EBITDA 11% above 2026. Its Texas hedges realize $12.84 a megawatt-hour over the hub price
Vistra’s third-quarter adjusted EBITDA from ongoing operations rose 50% to $2.38B, and its Texas segment earned $1.23B of it. Its first guidance for 2027 is $7.7B to $8.5B, 11% above the new 2026 midpoint, with about 98% of 2027 generation already hedged. In Texas those hedges realize $51.34 a megawatt-hour, $12.84 above the hub price; in the East they realize $8.66 below it. The second half of its Comanche Peak nuclear plant is still not contracted.
Triggered by: Vistra, PR Newswire and 1 more
- Data centers · TeraWulf
W.033TeraWulf’s lease revenue nearly doubled in a quarter, to $63M. It spent $852M building more in the same three months
TeraWulf’s high-performance computing lease revenue rose 97% from the second quarter to $63.0M, 83% of its sales; bitcoin mining was 17%. Capital spending in the quarter was about $852M, 11 times revenue. 102 MW of critical IT load was earning rent at Lake Mariner at September 30, about an eighth of the roughly 839 MW it has under lease. Management told analysts it expects about $700M of annualized leasing revenue on exiting the first quarter of 2027.
Triggered by: TeraWulf, GlobeNewswire and 1 more
- Credit · CoreWeave
W.029CoreWeave’s default-swap price hit a record as its bonds traded near 80 cents. Its latest quarterly filing shows $10.6B of debt due by the end of 2027
The cost of insuring CoreWeave’s debt against default rose to a record 1,267.9 basis points, Reuters reported on November 6, as AI credit sold off after the US midterms. Its four dollar high-yield notes, $7.75B of face value, traded at 80 to 83 cents in a table published on November 3, about $6.2B at those prices. Its 10-Q for the quarter to June lists $35.6B of debt principal, $10.6B of it due from July 2026 through 2027. The same day, a $500M package of data center loans went up for auction, and Apple sold $7.5B of bonds into about $31B of orders.
Triggered by: Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance and 2 more
- Data centers · Google
W.030Google put $17B on its Wyoming campus. AEP plans to invest about $5.7M a megawatt in the 702 MW fuel-cell plant meant to power it
Google said on November 5 it will make a long-term, $17B investment in its first Wyoming data center, near Cheyenne, more than any other state commitment it has made since late 2025 except Texas’s $40B. Part of the power comes from a 702 MW natural-gas fuel-cell plant with carbon capture in which AEP plans to invest about $4B, about $5.7M per megawatt, using Bloom Energy fuel cells; AEP expects it fully running by the end of 2028. The utility, Black Hills, has lined up about 2.7 GW of resources for the campus. Google gave no figure for the data center’s own load or capture rate.
Triggered by: Google and 2 more
- Power · Cummins
W.031Cummins’ power generation sales rose 22% on data center demand. Fewer pickup engines lowered its forecast for the year
Cummins’ Power Systems segment sold $1.56B of power generation equipment in the quarter to September, up 21.6% on a year earlier and 83% above the first quarter of 2024, which the company attributed particularly to data center demand. The segment’s EBITDA margin rose 2.5 points to 25.4%. Cummins still cut its 2026 revenue growth forecast to about 10%, the bottom of its earlier 10% to 13% range, because it expects to ship fewer pickup truck engines. Management said large generator orders now run into the second half of 2028.
Triggered by: Cummins 8-K and 1 more
- Markets · Chip stocks
W.026Chip stocks had their worst day since March 2020. Memory makers fell about twice as far as Nvidia
The PHLX Semiconductor Index fell 12.25% on November 5, its worst day since March 2020, as investors sold AI infrastructure stocks after the US midterm elections. SanDisk fell 22.3%, Micron 17.5% and Lam Research 16.4%; Nvidia fell 9.3%, about $447B of market value on its share count. The index closed 38% below its June record. Taiwan’s market fell 4.5% the next day, and Korea’s main index hit a circuit breaker.
Triggered by: CNN, via KSL and 2 more
- Chips · Lam Research
W.027Lam’s $25B buyback is 11% of its value after a 16% fall, and five years of last year’s free cash flow
Lam Research authorized up to $25B of share repurchases after the close on November 5, the day its shares fell 16.4% to $185.20 in the chip selloff. That is 2.5 times its 2024 authorization and about 11% of its market value at the close. It is also about five years of the $4.89B of free cash flow Lam generated in its fiscal year to June, though Lam generated $3.24B in the September quarter alone. Lam had about $3.0B left under its old program and $7.4B of cash.
Triggered by: Lam Research, 8-K and 1 more
- Earnings · Cloudflare
W.028Cloudflare’s growth reached 39%, its fastest in at least two years. Its CEO says it isn’t concentrated in AI
Cloudflare’s revenue rose 39% to $782.5M in the quarter to September, beating the top of its own guidance by $45.5M, and it raised its 2026 forecast for the third time, to about $2.96B. Year-on-year growth has risen in five of the last seven quarters, from 27% at the end of 2024. Chief executive Matthew Prince said the growth is not concentrated in AI companies; the largest AI deal named on the call was an $11M one-year commitment. The non-GAAP gross margin fell 2.9 points to 72.4%; the company pointed to its lower-margin developer platform.
Triggered by: Cloudflare, via StockTitan and 1 more
- Optics · Coherent
W.023Coherent spent $776M on capacity in a quarter, a third of its sales, as it signed a $20B deal that ramps in 2028
Coherent’s sales rose 50% to $2.37B in its quarter to September, with datacenter and communications products 82% of the total. Its capital spending rose to $776M, seven times a year earlier, and cash from operations was negative, so operating cash flow less capex came to −$868M. It also disclosed an optics agreement valued at about $20B over five years, with revenue ramping in early 2028. The shares fell about 14% on November 5.
Triggered by: Coherent and 2 more
- Chips · Nvidia
W.024About 600,000 Nvidia H200s are waiting in Hong Kong, 30 times the 20,000 the FT reported ByteDance and Tencent had received
About 600,000 Nvidia H200 chips are stored in Hong Kong awaiting Beijing’s approval to enter mainland China, Reuters reported on November 5. ByteDance and Tencent had each received about 10,000 in recent weeks, the FT reported in August. At the roughly $27,000 a chip Reuters reported in January, the stockpile is worth about $16B; an eight-chip H200 server was offered in China for more than 6 million yuan, about three times a year earlier. Nvidia’s outlook assumes no data center compute revenue from China.
Triggered by: Reuters, via Investing.com and 1 more
- Power · Bloom Energy
W.025NTT’s 900 MW is Bloom’s largest deal outside the US, and 45% of the yearly factory capacity it targeted for the end of 2026
NTT DATA agreed on November 5 to deploy 900 MW of Bloom Energy fuel cells at data centers worldwide, with shipments from 2027, three weeks after AEP said it plans to invest about $4B in 702 MW of Bloom fuel cells for Google in Wyoming. Bloom said a year ago it would double its factory capacity to 2 GW a year by the end of 2026. Its quarterly sales have more than tripled since early 2025, to $1.24B, and it has raised its 2026 guidance three times, to $4.4B–$4.6B. The shares were down about 14% at midday on the day of the NTT deal.
Triggered by: Business Wire, via Yahoo Finance and 1 more
- Power and policy · US data centers
W.020Governors who back a data center pause will run states with 41% of the US pipeline
Nine states will have a governor or governor-elect who has promised or already imposed a pause on new data centers, and they hold 158.6 GW, or 41%, of planned US capacity, Cleanview counted; voters sided with limits in at least 36 of 41 local measures. On Wednesday Microsoft rose 6.7% and Amazon 6.1% while the companies that build and power data centers fell 9% to 15%. On Thursday the S&P 500 fell about 4.3% and the Nasdaq about 5.5%, leaving both below their closes on election day.
Triggered by: Cleanview and 2 more
- Neoclouds · IREN
W.021IREN’s AI cloud revenue nearly tripled. Its $4B run-rate target slipped to January, and net debt reached $4.4B
IREN’s AI cloud revenue rose to $200M in the September quarter from $71M, and its total revenue to $228M. It spent $4.82B on data centers and hardware, and net debt rose to $4.43B from $216M at the end of June. It now targets more than $4B of annualized run-rate revenue by January 31, 2027, which may extend to the end of February, instead of December 31, and has $6B of its remaining $15B of FY27 capex still to fund.
Triggered by: IREN, via GlobeNewswire and 1 more
- Servers · Hon Hai
W.022Hon Hai sold NT$1.31T in October, 46% more than a year ago. Its cloud business dipped from September
Hon Hai’s October sales were about NT$1.31 trillion, up 45.7% from a year earlier and 12.7% from September, its second month above NT$1 trillion. Its cloud and networking segment, which holds its AI servers, slipped from September, which the company put partly down to customers moving to a consignment model. If the about 30% quarterly growth analysts expect, per Bloomberg, is on a year earlier, November and December would average about NT$1.04 trillion, 20% below October.
Triggered by: Bloomberg, via The Edge Malaysia and 2 more
- Data centers · Core Scientific
W.018Core Scientific’s colocation revenue rose 58% in a quarter. Its debt has quadrupled since December
Core Scientific’s third-quarter colocation revenue was $215.4M, up 58% from the second quarter, with 485 MW billing at September 30. Capital spending reached $985M in the quarter, long-term debt stood at $4.30B against $1.06B at the end of 2025, and a $1.03B gain on warrants and contingent value rights, with a $106.5M tax benefit, took an operating profit of $72M to net income of $1.18B.
Triggered by: Core Scientific, via Business Wire
- Neoclouds · Nscale
W.019Microsoft passed on Nscale’s Texas option. Only 2.5% of the value of Nscale’s $103B of contracts is active
Microsoft declined an option that would have more than doubled its Texas contract with Nscale, the Financial Times reported. Nscale’s IPO filing puts its active and contracted total contract value at $103.4B, of which $2.6B is active. Microsoft’s statements of work are worth up to about $43.8B and Anthropic’s agreements up to approximately $44.6B. In the first half of 2026 Nscale had $140.6M of revenue and a $1.02B net loss.
Triggered by: Financial Times and 2 more
- Chips · AMD
W.015AMD’s purchase commitments rose 61% in a quarter, to $48.8B
AMD’s third-quarter 10-Q puts its unconditional purchase commitments at $48.8B on September 26, up from $30.3B in June; the amount due in 2027 roughly quadrupled to $22.2B. The filing also books a $1.1B loss on the warrants AMD gave OpenAI and Meta, lists $13.3B of data center leases not yet started, and prices the Taalas deal at about $2.9B.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- Chips · Arm
W.016Arm’s licensing grew 50% and carried the quarter. Royalties grew 8%
Arm’s fiscal second-quarter revenue rose 27% to $1.44B, its best second quarter. Licensing rose 50% to $773M while royalties rose 8% to $670M, down from 22% growth the quarter before and below their June-quarter level; Arm said data center royalties doubled. Revenue from related parties, which Arm does not name in its letter (SoftBank is its controlling shareholder), was $424M, 29% of the total. Arm guided to $1.54B for the December quarter.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- Capital · SpaceX
W.017SpaceX’s $40B chip lease is as large as all its debt, and its rent can’t pause
Goldman Sachs and Apollo are in talks to sell pieces of the about $40B financing behind SpaceX’s lease of Nvidia Rubin chips, Bloomberg reported. The debt and a $7B prepayment fund about $47.3B of equipment, so lenders cover 85% of its cost. The lease is about the size of SpaceX’s $39.0B of debt and finance leases at September 30, and at about 1/20 of cost a quarter, principal alone would run about $8B a year once all of it is delivered.
Triggered by: Bloomberg, via Yahoo Finance and 2 more
- Data centers · TeraWulf
W.013Google’s backstop for Anthropic’s $19B TeraWulf lease starts once the halls are built
TeraWulf leases about 401MW in Kentucky to Anthropic for about $19B over 20 years. On November 4 Google signed three agreements to backstop certain of Anthropic’s lease obligations, each effective only when the last data hall under its lease commences. Google’s earlier backstops of Fluidstack leases at TeraWulf and Cipher covered 14–48% of contract value; this one, like Hut 8’s, has no disclosed amount.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- Chips · Qualcomm
W.014Qualcomm’s handset sales fell 26%. Its $5B data center year starts above $650M
Qualcomm’s fiscal fourth-quarter revenue fell 8% to $10.32B, as handset chip sales dropped 26% and automotive rose 89%. Its first-quarter guidance, the first to include data center, calls for more than $650M from that business. Qualcomm reiterated a $5B data center target for fiscal 2027; at $650M in the first quarter, the other three would need about $4.35B, or $1.45B each.
Triggered by: Qualcomm (8-K, exhibit 99.1) and 2 more
- Data centers · Riot Platforms
W.010Riot’s $28B Corsicana tenant is Anthropic, its 10-Q says
Riot Platforms has leased its whole 910MW Corsicana campus for 15 years, for about $28B of rent over the initial term. The release calls the tenant a “Frontier AI Lab”; the 10-Q filed the same morning names Anthropic PBC. At full deployment the lease’s average rent, about $1.8B a year, is about 2.5 times Riot’s current revenue run rate.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- Capital · Meta
W.011Meta sold $52.5B of stock and bonds in nine days, at wider spreads than April
Meta sold $25B of stock for forward delivery and $12.5B of mandatory convertible preferred on October 26, then $15B of bonds on November 3. On November 4 it opened its first euro bond sale, seeking up to €9B, and drew about €53B of orders, a record for a euro corporate deal according to Bloomberg. The new dollar bonds priced 57 to 88 basis points wider over Treasuries than the same maturities in April.
Triggered by: Reuters, via Investing.com and 2 more
- Power · Talen Energy
W.012Talen guides 2027 EBITDA up 26%, with no new data center deal in it
Talen Energy’s first 2027 guidance puts adjusted EBITDA at $2.5–2.85B, about 26% above 2026 at the midpoints. Its slides build the midpoint from $2.26B of energy margin and $1.25B of PJM capacity revenue, less costs, after $510M of hedge settlements. Talen says its outlook through 2029 assumes no additional large-load deals.
Triggered by: Talen Energy (GlobeNewswire) and 2 more
- Capital · Hyperscalers
W.007Big Tech’s leases that haven’t started yet rose $213B in a quarter
Leases that Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle have signed but not yet started reached $1.30T in their latest filings, up $213B in one quarter. That is 2.4 times the $547B of debt on their balance sheets. Microsoft’s were ten times its debt at September 30. Nikkei counts $3.2T once purchase commitments are added.
Triggered by: Nikkei Asia and 1 more
- Chips · Astera Labs
W.008Astera Labs guides to $740M, a quarter worth nearly twice its 2024
Astera Labs’ third-quarter revenue rose 154% to $584.9M, and it guides to $730–750M for the fourth. Its Scorpio switches became the largest product line, at more than $1B annualized. The cost is margin: non-GAAP gross margin has fallen four points this year, to 72.4%, and the guide holds it near 72%.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 1 more
- Power · Drax
W.009Drax’s £20B data centre is seven times Drax, and mostly conditional
Drax has signed an agreement to develop a partnership with Brookfield and its AI infrastructure company Radiant for a data centre at Drax Power Station. Brookfield estimates the investment, chips included, could exceed £20B, about seven times Drax’s market value. Only the first 100MW, an initial £2.5B, has a target operating date: Q1 2028, subject to planning, a tenant and investment decisions.
Triggered by: Drax Group (RNS) and 2 more
- Chips · AMD
W.004AMD guides to $17B, a 27% jump in one quarter
AMD’s third-quarter revenue rose 45% to $13.38B, and Data Center nearly doubled to $8.55B, 64% of the total. For the fourth quarter it guides to about $17B, plus or minus 3%: $3.6B more than it has ever sold in a quarter, and above the $16.2B analysts expected. Inventory rose to $11.46B, and free cash flow fell to $554M.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- AI infrastructure · Super Micro
W.005Super Micro’s sales quadrupled. Its cash went the other way
Super Micro sold $19.95B of servers in the September quarter, four times a year earlier, and raised its fiscal 2027 range to $72–82B. Operating cash flow was −$434M: inventory and receivables rose $5.7B in three months. Its own guidance has the second half of the year below the first.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- AI networking · Arista
W.006Arista’s revenue jumped 20% in a quarter. Its deferred revenue didn’t
Arista’s third-quarter revenue rose 58.5% to $3.66B, and it guides to $3.9–4.0B next. Deferred revenue, billed but not yet recognized, fell $26M to $6.84B: its first quarterly decline after eleven straight rises. Purchase commitments, per the call, rose to $11.4B.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- AI labs · Anthropic
W.001Half of Anthropic’s Q3 compute bill went on short-term capacity
Anthropic’s amended S-1: Q3 revenue rose 47% to $16.96B, compute 77% to $9.86B, $5.0B of it short-term at a premium. A $974M operating profit became a $567M loss, and the commitment total the October filing left blank is now $895.4B.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR and 2 more
- AI infrastructure · Oracle
W.002Oracle paid twice February’s spreads to finish its funding
Five days after capping new outside money for fiscal 2027–30 at $20B, Oracle sold all of it: $10B of stock at $116 and $10B of bonds at 7.0–8.65%, spreads 145–175bp wider than in February at the same maturities. In June it had said it didn’t expect to issue more debt this calendar year. The cap doesn’t count $288B of data-center leases signed but not yet started.
Triggered by: SEC EDGAR, prospectus supplement and 2 more
- Chips · Optics
W.003Marvell’s $115B offer for Lumentum is now worth $78B
Marvell pays a fixed 4.5 of its shares for each Lumentum share. Marvell has fallen 32% since the deal leaked, so the offer, $1,132 a share at the prices it was announced on, was worth $771 at Monday’s close: 16% below Lumentum’s price before the news. Lumentum closed 11% under even that.
Triggered by: SEC filing, via StockTitan and 2 more