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This week’s world-famous-news-haiku-competition™ is about how OpenAI made $20 billion less than it thought. Pick a winner in today’s poll below. 👇🏻

Now, news!

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• Anthropic Revenue up 50% Ahead of IPO

• Waymo's Los Angeles Crash List Exposed

• Why Ukraine’s Starlink Just Got Throttled

• Treasuries Rally as Investors Seek Relief

• What to Read This Very Weekend

• Poll of the Day: It’s World-Famous-575™ Time

• Poll of the Day: Curioser and Curioser

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▲ 0.33% )  $DJI ( ▲ 1.08% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.57% )  $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 1.19% )  $WAYMZZX ( ▲ 0.32% )  $SPCX ( ▼ 2.33% )  $CRWV ( ▲ 5.94% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 1.84% )  $INTC ( ▼ 2.8% )  $ASML ( ▲ 0.45% )

Anthropic Revenue up 50% Ahead of IPO

In any traditional industry, announcing that your quarterly revenue jumped nearly 50% to $16.8bn while delivering your second consecutive profitable quarter would earn a standing ovation. But not in Silicon Valley’s AI hype machine, where a $965bn startup reporting $1.70 in revenue for every $1 spent on compute power somehow leaves investors tapping their watches.

Ahead of a blockbuster November IPO, Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.57% ) gathered investors in San Francisco to showcase its safety-first philosophy, 11% adjusted operating margins, and rapid growth. Yet, despite revenues rising from $11.5bn in Q2, the momentum actually slowed compared to earlier this year, when revenue more than doubled between Q1 and Q2. Throw in a brutal price war with OpenAI $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 1.19% ) and cheaper Chinese rivals, and summer expectations of topping $100bn in annualized revenue have quietly retreated to around $74bn.

Summing up the shifting mood, SemiAnalysis analyst Joey Brookhart told the Financial Times, “Now Anthropic is in a two-horse race, rather than the one-horse race in the first half of the year… coming into today investor expectations had come down.”

To make matters spicier, Anthropic has been clamping down on "distillation” — the controversial practice where rival AI labs pay handsomely to train models on Claude's outputs — materially cutting a line of business that previously accounted for 5% to 7% of its revenue.

So, to recap the investor pitch: Growth is slowing, rivals are slashing prices, compute costs are astronomical, and the product might… accidentally end human civilization. Still. Margins are up!

Waymo's Los Angeles Crash List Exposed

How do you magically drop your driverless car collision rate by 41% across Los Angeles County while still racking up 440 reported crashes? Simple: Get federal regulators to change the definition of a “crash!”

According to data published by Waymo $WAYMZZX ( ▲ 0.32% ) and analyzed by The Basin, the company's reported collision rate per million miles plunged from 9.4 down to 5.5. But before celebrating a breakthrough, check the fine print. It’s mostly thanks to a regulatory update from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration.

Under the rule change, companies no longer have to report minor fender-benders where another vehicle strikes a robotaxi — provided nobody goes to the hospital, no airbags deploy, no tow truck is needed, and damage stays under $1,000. As the agency explained, the policy was “designed to filter out minor collisions, including cases in which a driverless vehicle was stationary when another car hit it.”

And boy, are these cars stationary. Company records reveal that Waymo vehicles were stopped or parked in 269 of the 440 reported county crashes. Human drivers rear-ended motionless Waymos 123 times and sideswiped them 71 times. Amusingly, out of 62 incidents logged as "head-on crashes," Waymo's own descriptions show the robotaxi was sitting completely still in 60 of them.

Even on the injury front, out of 58 crashes where injuries were noted, Waymo’s descriptions clarify that “a passenger reported or alleged an injury in 39” — with none involving serious injury or death.

So if you’re navigating Santa Monica, Olympic, or Venice Boulevard, take heart: Those Waymos aren’t going to “crash” into you. They’re going to sit there and wait for you to crash into them.

Quote of the Day

Why Ukraine’s Starlink Just Got Throttled

Imagine defending your nation against a military invasion, only for your satellite internet connection to suddenly throttle down to dial-up speeds. Welcome to 2026 geopolitics, where high-stakes foreign policy is apparently enforced through satellite bandwidth throttling.

When military-grade Starlink $SPCX ( ▼ 2.33% ) terminals across Ukraine suddenly encountered strict usage limits, Denys Sienik, Kyiv’s top diplomat in Washington, sent a frantic early-morning warning to U.S. lawmakers this week. Ukrainian officials immediately suspected President Trump had asked Elon Musk to squeeze their connectivity. As Serhii Beskrestnov, a senior adviser to President Volodymyr Zelensky, told the Wall Street Journal, “Obviously, this action cannot be a coincidence and is connected to the current political situation.”

So, what caused the digital freeze? It turns out Ukraine’s effective drone campaign had taken 40% to 50% of Russia’s oil refining capacity offline. Trump — eager to lower U.S. gas prices through a proposed, and controversial, Russian diesel deal — grew increasingly irritated that Ukraine was using American resources to target energy infrastructure.

Musk promptly redirected blame to the White House, writing online that “Starshield systems are owned and controlled by the U.S. government” and that usage limits are set “ultimately [by] POTUS.” A furious Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick warned, “If we start going dark on Ukraine, there will be consequences, mark my words,” while Zelensky admitted, “It’s a pity that we are losing a strong partner.”

In modern warfare, it seems that if your military strategy inconveniences global pump prices, Washington just might change your Wi-Fi password.

Song of the Day: Strongboi, ’Dizzy’

"Dizzy," the new single by Berlin-based indie-pop duo strongboi (comprising South African songstress Alice Phoebe Lou and multi-instrumentalist Ziv Yamin), has received highly positive reviews from indie tastemakers. Critics widely praise it as a masterful, funk-infused slice of alt-pop escapism. So, it’s a lot like this newsletter.

Treasuries Rally as Investors Seek Relief

When tech stocks stumble, even hotter-than-expected inflation data can’t stop investors from sprinting toward the unsexy safety of government bonds. As a result, 10-year U.S. Treasury yields plunged as much as 0.15 percentage points to 5.04% mid-week — a three-week low — while German Bunds followed suit. What makes this bond rally so remarkable is that US inflation hit 3.7% in September, a figure that would normally crush fixed-income markets. But as Ales Koutny, head of international rates at Vanguard, told the FT, “We have had significant beats in inflation, but the risk-off move has trumped all of it.”

The spark behind the panic? Growing dread over the astronomical debt underpinning the AI infrastructure rush. When neocloud provider CoreWeave $CRWV ( ▲ 5.94% ) saw its credit default swap spreads surge above 11 percentage points amid doubts over GPU rental demand, tech investors panicked. As SMBC global markets strategist Hank Calenti explained to the FT, the drop was driven by “CoreWeave concern… as the demand for renting chip access is questioned,” adding, “This is a business-model-driven sell-off. There is fear about where the weakness is in the ecosystem.”

Meanwhile, chip giants Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 1.84% ) , Intel $INTC ( ▼ 2.8% ) , and ASML $ASML ( ▲ 0.45% ) took heavy hits, while Anthropic’s slowing quarterly revenue growth added to the jitters. Marija Veitmane, head of equities strategy at State Street, captured the fragile market mood: “The minute you see some negative news it is: ‘Let’s sell everything.’”

Sounds totally sustainable to me. Don’t you think?

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What to Read This Very Weekend

My Cheddar colleague Lauren Babbage is all about the reading and streaming recs. So instead of keeping them in our Slack channel, we figured, hey, why not let the Cheddfriends in on the deal? Here are her recs for this week. Take it away, Lauren!

Happy Friday! I'm switching it up a bit this week to books I think you should read because...well...there is nothing better than waking up before the rest of your household, making a coffee, and reading while the sun comes up. Thank you (almost) daylight savings. 

Into The Blue by Emma Brodie — Hands down my favorite book of the year so far. A little Hollywood, a little love story, a little sci-fi / fantasy thrown in there. I did not read any reviews going into it and I'm so glad I didn't. Therefore, I won't say too much 🙂 It’s pure magic. I’ll be re-reading this one in the future.

Lady Tremaine by Rachel Hochauser — Ever wonder about the backstory of Cinderella's wicked stepmother? No? Me either. But this book dives into her upbringing and road to "wicked stepmother" and man, I am hooked. It's a tale of one mother's love and determination to give her daughters (and yes, stepdaughter) the beautiful life they deserve, even at the cost of her own happiness. The clever twists along the way will make you rethink the classic story of Cinderella.

OK...ONE streaming rec: Last Seen on AppleTV. A former police chief is on the hunt for his missing daughter and will literally not give up on anything or anyone. It's a complicated story about grief, what a "family" looks like, and breakdowns in a system designed to protect us. I was on the edge of my seat every episode. HIGHLY recommend bingeing this season if you have the time. AND...based in Australia, the accents alone will pull you in. *TW: Child death is a main storyline in this series. Please watch with care. 

Thanks, Lauren! And if you’ve got a streaming rec for us, readers, we’re all ears!

Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

No.

Poll of the Day: It’s World-Famous-575™ Time

Poll of the Day: Curioser and Curioser

We asked: Where would you most like to plant a secret listening device?

You answered:

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Inside RFK Jr.’s personal freezer, behind the roadkill. (56)
🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Under Sam Altman’s chair during an AGI safety meeting. (88)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Sewn directly into Drake’s most dramatic leather jacket. (11)
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Tucked behind the steering wheel of Elon Musk's Cybertruck. (114)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Hidden inside Mark Zuckerberg’s martial arts mouthguard. (9)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Stuck to the bottom of the Met Gala stairs. (58)
336 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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