Fed Walks Into Fire | Bond Volatility Returns | Anthropic Takes Lead

Stocks ended mixed as fresh wholesale inflation data added to concerns that price pressures from energy and the Iran conflict are spreading through the economy. 

The Dow slid into the close while the Nasdaq extended gains, powered by continued strength in broader chip leadership. 

Rising yields and a firm 10-year above 4.4% signaled tighter financial conditions, but AI-linked names largely ignored the macro drag. Most sectors finished lower, showing how narrow the rally has become into the final stretch.

The market is splitting between macro pain and AI strength, with chips doing all the heavy lifting.

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OpenAI has been the default enterprise AI name for three years. That just changed. For the first time, more businesses are choosing Anthropic over OpenAI, and the gap is widening fast.

Spending data from Ramp showed 34.4 percent using Anthropic versus 32.3 percent using OpenAI in April. Anthropic grew 3.8 percent month over month. OpenAI fell 2.9 percent. On private stock markets, Anthropic trades overtook OpenAI in volume. 

The revenue numbers are extraordinary. Anthropic hit a $30 billion annualized revenue run-rate in April, up from $9 billion at end of 2025. It is on track to reach $50 billion by June.

What's Moving

All of this is arriving while Sam Altman is under oath in Oakland disclosing billion-dollar personal conflicts. Both stories are running simultaneously and pointing in the same direction.

The Reversal

OpenAI's board almost merged Anthropic into itself in 2023. The company it nearly absorbed is now outpacing it. That is the competitive landscape heading into both IPOs.

Producer prices measure what companies pay before passing costs to consumers. When they rise sharply, consumer prices follow within months. This morning's print showed a 6 percent annual increase, the largest since December 2022, and 1.4 percent monthly against a 0.5 percent estimate.

That miss was nearly triple consensus. Services prices jumped 1.2 percent monthly, the worst reading since March 2022. Two-thirds came from trade services, which is where tariff costs show up. That component is not caused by the war and does not ease when the strait reopens.

Rate hike odds for year-end jumped to 39 percent after the print.

Warsh chairs his first Fed meeting tomorrow with CPI at 3.8 percent and PPI at 6 percent on his desk at the same time.

The Pipeline

Producer prices lead consumer prices by one to three months. The 6 percent print is not just a current reading. It is a signal of where consumer inflation could be heading next.

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Every quarter, each Fed official submits a rate projection called a dot. The dots get compiled and published after the meeting. They are among the most closely read signals the Fed sends.

Tomorrow is Warsh's first meeting. He has to decide whether to submit a projection or withhold one. Neither is clean.

A mainstream dot signals independence from Trump's rate-cut expectations. A dovish dot favoring cuts looks political given yesterday's 6 percent PPI. No submission preserves flexibility but becomes the headline itself.

The departing governor who held the most dovish projections on the committee is also leaving. The overall dot plot shifts hawkish by default regardless of what Warsh does.

The Bind

Every option carries a cost. His handling of the dot plot question in his first press conference sets his credibility for everything that follows in 2026.

When Anduril was founded in 2017, venture capital did not invest seriously in defense. CEO Brian Schimpf said so himself when announcing the latest raise. The Iran war changed that permanently.

Anduril raised $5 billion, doubling its valuation from $30.5 billion to $61 billion. It holds a 10-year U.S. Army contract with a $20 billion ceiling. And recently, joined the team building space interceptors for Trump's $185 billion Golden Dome missile defense system.

The Pentagon also confirmed a containerized munitions program covering over 10,000 missiles through 2027, with Anduril as a named partner. The Joint Chiefs chairman testified this week that FY2027 funds over $26 billion in multi-year munitions contracts. Leidos (LDOS) is among the named partners alongside Anduril in the containerized munitions program.

These are not one-off deals. They are multi-year demand signals that underwrite Anduril's valuation at a level the private markets just confirmed with real capital.

The Repricing

The war compressed a decade of defense urgency into three months. Anduril's $61 billion valuation is what private markets decided that urgency is worth.

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SpaceX's entire valuation premium above its pre-AI level rests on one idea. That space-based computing eventually becomes cost-competitive with ground-based data centers. That thesis just received its most credible commercial endorsement yet.

Google (GOOGL) is reportedly in talks with SpaceX to launch orbital data centers as part of Project Suncatcher, an initiative to build data centerspowered by orbital solar collection.

SpaceX holds more than half of all global orbital launches. Its Starship rocket is designed to cut the cost of reaching orbit by up to 90 percent versus current alternatives. Commercial-scale Starship operations are the key requirement for orbital compute to become economically viable.

Last week, Anthropic expressed interest in space-based compute through its Colossus 1 deal. Google's talks would be the second named customer for the vision, and by far the larger one.

The Validation

SpaceX's IPO prospectus named orbital data centers as a core market. Anthropic was the first named customer. Google would be the anchor. Two named customers before a single share is sold changes the IPO story entirely.

The week's biggest stories converged on the same question.

Anthropic is outpacing OpenAI while Altman testifies about conflicts. PPI hit 6 percent the morning before Warsh's first meeting. Google may launch data centers in space. Defense doubled its private valuation in a single round.

Every major position from 2025 is being stress-tested at once.