OpenAI has captured the consumer frontier — and now openly argues it’s in America’s national interest to help finance its growth. Anthropic dominates the enterprise layer, raising forecasts and capitalizing on its “efficient alternative” narrative. Google is getting paid for AI, while Perplexity is paying — and fighting — for distribution.
Around them, the next wave of liquidity is forming: crypto companies are lining up IPOs, and the new “Star Wars” economy — defense satellites, missile tracking, and orbital infrastructure — is becoming one of the largest recipients of U.S. capital.
Anthropic lifts growth targets — eyes $70 billion revenue by 2028
Anthropic has raised its long-term forecast again — now projecting up to $70 billion in revenue by 2028, up from roughly $5 billion this year, according to The Information. The company expects most of that surge to come from enterprise demand for its Claude AI models sold through APIs.
Among its most optimistic scenarios, Anthropic expects to turn cash-flow positive in 2027 — three years ahead of OpenAI’s timeline. Forecasts from both companies show a stark contrast: OpenAI is expected to burn $35 billion in 2027, while Anthropic targets $3 billion in free cash flow. By 2028, that gap could widen to +$17 billion for Anthropic versus –$47 billion for OpenAI. In a more conservative case, Anthropic still sees about $3.6 billion in free cash flow on $32.5 billion in revenue.
The company’s revenue mix remains highly concentrated on business clients — over 80 % of sales through 2028 are expected to come from its API and enterprise apps. This year alone, Anthropic forecasts $3.8 billion in API-related revenue, more than double OpenAI’s $1.8 billion estimate. Its developer-focused product, Claude Code, is already nearing $1 billion in annualized sales, up from about $400 million in July.
Margins are improving fast. Anthropic expects its gross profit margin to swing from –94 % last year to ~50 % this year, and potentially 77 % by 2028 — though those figures exclude costs for non-paying users. Adjusted for all usage, margins would still climb from –109 % to 75 %, putting Anthropic within striking distance of elite enterprise-software efficiency levels.
And the capital flywheel keeps spinning: Business Insider reports Google is in early talks to deepen its stake, potentially valuing Anthropic at $350 billion+. Google already owns about 14 % after investing over $3 billion, and in October the two companies signed a cloud deal worth tens of billions, giving Anthropic access to up to 1 million TPUs — a decisive infrastructure edge for scaling Claude models.
AI market leaders took different paths this week
OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar suggested that the U.S. government should guarantee financing for AI chips — effectively treating AI infrastructure as a strategic national asset.
“We’re looking for an ecosystem of banks, private equity, maybe even governmental... the backstop, the guarantee that allows the financing to happen,” she said. “That can really drop the cost of the financing but also increase the loan-to-value, so the amount of debt you can take on top of an equity portion.”
Friar said the U.S. must move faster to grow its AI ecosystem in its race with China.
At the same time, The Information reported that OpenAI plans to raise around $90 billion in 2027 to fund its expansion. CEO Sam Altman hinted on a recent podcast that OpenAI could reach $100 billion in annual revenue by 2027, up from about $13 billion this year.
Meanwhile, Nvidia told the Financial Times that China could “win the AI race” — citing state policies and subsidies for local AI firms’ data centers.
Perplexity Pays to Play
Apple and Google are reportedly hashing out a deal where the AI provider (Google) would get paid by the AI user (Apple) to power on-device intelligence. Straightforward enough.
But Perplexity and Snap just flipped that logic: the AI provider will pay the AI user. Starting in early 2026, Perplexity’s answer engine will integrate directly into Snapchat, letting users ask questions and get conversational, verified answers. The deal: Perplexity will pay Snap $400 million over one year, in cash and equity.
That’s roughly twice Perplexity’s current ARR (~$200 million as of September 2025) — just to buy distribution. And it doesn’t include the cost of serving millions of Snap users.
Meanwhile, Perplexity is fighting on another front. Amazon has sued the company for allegedly disguising its AI agents as Chrome browsers to bypass access blocks — a potential violation of the Computer Fraud and Abuse Act. Cloudflare has also criticized Perplexity for ignoring internet protocols.
Perplexity fired back in a blog post titled “Bullying Is Not Innovation,” accusing Amazon of trying to suppress user autonomy. The startup claims it’s “fighting for the rights of users” to shop through AI assistants.
Amazon’s motives aren’t hard to guess. The company makes tens of billions from marketplace ads — a revenue stream threatened if consumers start shopping through agents instead of browsing. Amazon may also fear being blamed for bot-driven order mistakes.
Over the summer, Amazon quietly updated its site code to block AI agents from Google, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Perplexity. At the same time, it’s building its own agentic shopping tools — including Buy For Me, which can make purchases on other sites, and Rufus, its on-site product advisor.
As CEO Andy Jassy put it last week, most AI shopping agents “aren’t good yet” — but Amazon plans to eventually partner with external agents once the experience improves.
Wall Street moves deeper into secondaries
As October ended, Morgan Stanley quietly acquired EquityZen. An investment bank built on taking companies public bought a marketplace for trading private-company shares.
Now Charles Schwab plans to acquire Forge Global, another major secondary platform. Two of the biggest names in finance are buying their way into the private-market plumbing — the infrastructure that moves equity long before the IPO window opens.
These marketplaces give startup employees and early investors a path to turn equity into liquidity when companies delay listings. But their growing institutionalization goes further: it strengthens the capital feedback loop that connects limited partners, venture funds, and startups — keeping money circulating through the ecosystem even as exit timelines stretch.
SpaceX lands $2B defense contract
SpaceX has been awarded $2 billion to build satellites for the U.S. government under President Trump’s new “Golden Dome” missile-defense initiative.
The satellites will form part of a global network designed to track missiles and aircraft in real time, with eventual capability to intercept threats launched from anywhere in the world. The program’s total budget is estimated at $175 billion, according to legislation Trump signed earlier this year — though SpaceX’s involvement hadn’t been disclosed until now.
For SpaceX, it’s another step in its quiet evolution from launch provider to strategic defense contractor — extending Starlink’s dual-use infrastructure into the heart of U.S. national security planning.
Not only SpaceX: defense money is reshaping space tech
Sierra Space is seeking about $300 million in new funding as it pivots from building a commercial space shuttle to a more lucrative opportunity — national defense. The company is positioning itself to ride the boom in U.S. military spending tied to the Space Force and President Trump’s proposed “Golden Dome” missile-defense network.
It’s part of a broader realignment. A growing number of space startups are downplaying their commercial ambitions — rockets, stations, satellites — to focus instead on defense and surveillance contracts.
Sierra expects defense work to push revenue above $800 million this year, up from $500 million in 2024 — making it larger than several newly public peers like Voyager, which built a commercial space station, and Firefly Aerospace, which landed a module on the Moon earlier this year.
The Trump administration has leaned into this narrative, citing security threats from China and Russia and the need to harden U.S. assets in orbit. That policy tailwind has driven a record wave of private investment into defense-oriented space tech:
- Apex Space raised $200 million in September to expand its missile-tracking satellite business.
- Impulse Space and Stoke Space raised $300 million and $510 million, respectively, both anchored by defense contracts.
- Voyager Technologies now gets two-thirds of its revenue from defense work, up from half last year.
- Rocket Lab and Firefly Aerospace have made acquisitions to deepen their military portfolios.
The space race is becoming a defense race, and national security budgets — not tourism or telecom — are driving the next round of growth.
Ripple raises $500M at $40B valuation
Ripple has secured a $500 million strategic round led by Fortress and Citadel Securities, valuing the crypto-payments firm at $40 billion.
The company operates both as a cross-border payments network and as the issuer of RLUSD, its U.S.-dollar stablecoin. It’s also the force behind XRP, the world’s fourth-largest crypto token, now trading at a $138 billion market cap.
The new valuation marks a sharp climb from $28 billion in June, when Ripple offered to buy back shares from employees and early investors. Over the past few years, the company has repurchased more than 25 % of its equity, tightening its cap table ahead of what looks like a new institutional expansion phase.
Kraken gears up for IPO with $20B valuation
Kraken, one of the crypto market’s oldest exchanges, is reportedly raising new funding at a $20 billion valuation — up from $15 billion after its $500 million round in August.
The jump comes as Kraken prepares for a public listing next year, a move that could reframe how investors price crypto infrastructure companies.
At that valuation, Kraken would trade at roughly the same multiple as Coinbase, despite generating only a quarter of its revenue. In 2024, Kraken booked about $1.5 billion, compared with Coinbase’s $6.6 billion — showing how much of the premium now reflects IPO anticipation.
ConsenSys could be the next big crypto-listing
The Ethereum infrastructure firm behind MetaMask is preparing for an IPO—with both JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs tapped to lead the offering.
While the company hasn’t confirmed a date, the IPO could happen as early as 2026. For the crypto/infra space, this would be a milestone listing: not just an exchange or token platform, but a foundational builder in the Ethereum ecosystem stepping into public markets.
Animoca Brands to merge with Currenc Group for Nasdaq sprint
Hong Kong-based Animoca Brands has entered into a non-binding term sheet with Singapore-based fintech company Currenc Group, aiming for a reverse merger that would list Animoca (via Currenc) on the Nasdaq.
Under the proposed structure: Animoca shareholders would own about 95% of the combined entity and Currenc existing shareholders around 5 %. The merged company would operate under the Animoca Brands name and is expected to close in 2026.
Animoca brings a broad digital-assets portfolio (over 600 companies across Web3, gaming, blockchain infrastructure), while Currenc contributes a fintech-AI payments platform — the merger signals a push to build a publicly-listed digital-assets conglomerate with tokenization, blockchain services, AI and gaming under the same roof.
Recent AI and Infrastructure Deals
Microsoft has tapped Lambda for compute worth billions of dollars, contracting the “neocloud” provider to deliver AI infrastructure powered by tens of thousands of NVIDIA GPUs.
Hippocratic AI, which develops AI software for clinical and healthcare tasks, raised $126 million at a $3.5 billion valuation in a Series C round led by Avenir Growth.
Decagon, a startup developing AI tools for automating customer service, is in discussions to raise new funding at a $4–5 billion valuation, according to two people familiar with the matter. The talks come just five months after Decagon’s last financing, which valued it at $1.5 billion.
Crusoe, a startup building a large data center in Texas for Oracle and OpenAI, is arranging an employee share sale that values the company at around $13 billion. The deal involves roughly $120 million worth of shares and represents a 30% premium to Crusoe’s most recent equity round.
Google has received U.S. government approval to acquire Wiz for $32 billion. The deal, announced in March, is expected to close in early 2026.
Armis raised $435 million in a pre-IPO round at a $6.1 billion valuation after rejecting acquisition offers. The company expects to go public in late 2026 or early 2027, according to CEO Yevgeny Dibrov.
Brex is launching a suite of agentic AI products powered by Anthropic’s Claude models to help finance teams manage expense reimbursements and travel spending. CEO Pedro Franceschi said finance is a “verifiable industry,” making it easier for AI to handle structured, rule-based tasks like categorizing expenses under GAAP. Brex built a new codebase for these systems — 80% written by AI, primarily using Claude Code and Cursor.
Human Interest, a retirement-savings platform, raised $100 million at a $3 billion valuation. The company continues to expand beyond its small-business base, targeting larger employers and institutional distribution.
PhysicsX, a U.K.-based AI startup focused on physics simulation and engineering design, will raise up to $100 million from Nvidia, part of Nvidia’s broader investment effort across European AI startups.