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🍋 The AI Race Is Going Public

🍋 The AI Race Is Going Public

Plus: Alphabet needs $80 billion to keep up in AI, Barry Diller wants to take MGM private, and a room full of billionaire heirs is paying to find meaning.

Short Squeez
June 02, 2026

Together With

"If any administration finds a way to remove Fed officials over policy differences, then future administrations will do so as well. The Fed's credibility would be lost." — Jerome Powell

Good Morning! Alphabet is raising $80B in equity, including $10B from Berkshire Hathaway, to fund its AI push. Barry Diller's People Inc. is bidding to take MGM Resorts private in a deal valuing it at ~$18B. And Ares and MetLife are clashing over the restructuring of Eagle Football, owner of Olympique Lyonnais and other clubs.

Salt & Straw, the Dwayne Johnson-backed ice cream maker, is seeking a buyer at $200M+. Strategy Inc. sold ~$2.5M of Bitcoin, its first sale since 2022. And rich kids are flocking to seminars on turning inherited wealth into purpose, $100M net worth minimum, attendees worth $7B combined.

Plus: Goldman says its top bankers are focused on AI data centers around the clock, and how optimism helps your brain stay healthy.

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SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

The AI Race Is Going Public

Anthropic confidentially filed its IPO prospectus with the SEC on Monday, beating OpenAI to the punch and teeing up one of the most consequential listings in years. The AI arms race has played out entirely in private markets for three years. It's about to hit the public ones.

Anthropic is trying to capture the moment in a crowded IPO market. OpenAI is readying its own confidential filing for a fall debut, and SpaceX filed publicly on May 20, kicks off its roadshow this week, and plans to list next week at a reported $1.75T, which would be the largest IPO ever.

Filing now gets Anthropic into the conversation before the window jams. It has the numbers to sell: revenue went from $10B annually last year to a $47B run rate as of May, it just closed a round at a $965B valuation that tops OpenAI's $852B, and Claude Code is now the default AI coding tool.

The business that three years ago was a scrappy OpenAI spinout founded by defectors is now, by private market valuation, the most valuable AI company on earth.

And Anthropic had a genuinely strange year getting here. Its models were blacklisted by the Pentagon after negotiations collapsed, defense contractors dropped it to comply, and the company sued the Trump administration to reverse the order.

Then Anthropic unveiled Claude Mythos Preview, a model so good at finding software vulnerabilities it judged it too dangerous to release, and handed it to a dozen vetted partners like Apple, Microsoft, and CrowdStrike under a defensive-security program called Project Glasswing.

On infrastructure, it reserved the entire Colossus 1 supercomputer in Memphis, the one xAI built to train Grok, for $1.25B a month through May 2029. That's over $40B, routed to the same Musk empire whose SpaceX it's now racing to the IPO line.

Takeaway: Three companies that didn't exist or weren't public a decade ago, SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic, are sprinting to the public markets at combined valuations near $4T. Anthropic took its run rate from $10B to $47B in a year, filed at nearly $1T, and is paying its roadshow rival $1.25B a month for servers. The AI boom was already the most consequential tech cycle in a generation. Now it's the IPO cycle too.

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HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

U.S. equities moved higher despite renewed Middle East tensions, with all three major indexes finishing positive
Technology stocks led gains after optimism around new AI hardware announcements boosted semiconductor shares
Energy was the only other S&P 500 sector to finish notably higher as WTI crude oil rose to around $92 per barrel
Overseas markets were mixed, with European equities lower while Asian markets gained, led by strength in South Korea
Treasury yields moved higher amid geopolitical uncertainty, with the 10-year Treasury yield rising to 4.46%

Can the Rally Continue?

Since the March lows, the S&P 500 has rallied roughly 20%, while the Nasdaq has gained nearly 30%
Strong technology earnings, resilient economic data, and easing geopolitical fears have been the main drivers behind the rebound
Seasonality trends remain constructive, with June historically producing positive returns about 61% of the time since 1970
Recent trends have been stronger, with June and July both posting favorable average returns over the last decade
While a near-term pause or consolidation would be normal after such a sharp move higher, the broader backdrop for equities remains supportive

Movers & Shakers

(+) MGM Resorts ($MGM) +16% after billionaire Barry Diller's firm IAC submitted an $18 billion all-cash bid to take MGM private at $48.30/share.
(+) IBM ($IBM) +8% because a 6-month-old video of Trump praising the company’s CEO went viral on X.
(–) GoPro ($GPRO) -12% after disclosing going-concern risk as AI-driven memory chip demand sent component costs surging.

Prediction Markets

Anthropic hit a $1 trillion market cap on the private markets last week.
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Private Dealmaking

Berkshire Hathaway agreed to buy Taylor Morrison Home, a homebuilder and financial services provider, for $6.8 billion
Motorola Solutions agreed to acquire D-Fend Solutions, an Israeli developer of anti-drone tech, for $1.5 billion
Vast, a Beijing-based 3D modeling startup, raised nearly $200 million
XCENA, a memory-centric chipmaker, raised $135 million
Fonoa, a business tax platform, raised $110 million
Mecka, a robot training startup, raised $60 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Bonfire Of The Murdochs

Description:
A behind-the-scenes look from Gabriel Sherman at the power struggles, succession battles, and personal rivalries inside the Murdoch empire. The book explores how family dynamics intersected with corporate control, shaping one of the world’s most influential media dynasties and impacting politics, news, and culture globally. Blending investigative reporting with insider access, it examines how concentrated power, legacy building, and family conflict can reshape institutions far beyond the boardroom.

Book Length: 352 pages
Release Date: September 23, 2025

Ideal For:
Readers interested in media, power dynamics, family businesses, and how corporate empires influence politics, culture, and public opinion.

The greatest battles for power are often fought inside families long before they reach the public stage.

DAILY VISUAL

Costco’s Gas Station Empire

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DAILY ACUMEN

Adjacent Move

The next opportunity in your career is almost never a dramatic leap. It is one step away from where you already are, through a door you can already see if you bother to look. People waste enormous energy chasing transformative breaks while ignoring the small, slightly uncomfortable move directly in front of them that would have actually opened the next chapter.

This is true in markets too. The best new positions are usually adjacent to the ones you already understand. The best new clients are one degree of separation from your existing ones. The best new ideas are slight modifications to ones you already had. Discontinuous leaps look exciting in retrospect and are almost never how anything actually happens in real time.

Progress is mostly the patient art of seeing the adjacent move and being willing to take it.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

6 in 10 workers say they have a toxic boss
Why social circles shrink and how to build them back up
How optimism helps your brain stay healthy
Why getting more done at work is creating more workplace pressure
How to increase your overhead press

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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