☕️ Gas prices push US inflation back up

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

📈 US inflation jumps to 3.7% on energy costs

⚖️ OpenAI sued by 8 states over ChatGPT safety

🛰️ Ukraine says Starlink speeds capped on front line

🏢 TSMC profit hits record on AI demand

🚀 Anthropic revenue surged 45% to $16.8B last quarter

Plus: 🌍 11 macro stories, 🏢 9 corporate stories, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• U.S. inflation reaccelerated in September, with consumer prices up 3.7% from a year earlier versus 3.4% in August, raising the odds of another Federal Reserve rate hike and squeezing Republicans ahead of the midterms.
• The jump was driven by energy: gasoline prices spiked 9.1% on the month as the Middle East war disrupted supplies, while airline fares climbed 22% over the year as jet fuel costs rose.
• Markets now put the chance of a rate hike at the Fed's meeting later this month at 44%, double Tuesday's level, sending the policy-sensitive two-year Treasury yield up 12 basis points.

• Eight US states, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho and Montana, sued OpenAI yesterday, alleging ChatGPT is an unsafe product that has harmed children and misled parents about its risks.
• Each state filed separately in its own courts, with Iowa's attorney general accusing OpenAI of giving dangerous medical advice and coaching users toward suicide while marketing the chatbot as safe; Florida brought a similar suit in June.
• OpenAI says it has built age-specific protections many rivals lack, pointing to parental controls and a teens-only version launched in August, and is pushing for industry-wide policy as it faces several wrongful-death cases.

• Ukraine said SpaceX capped the speed of Starlink terminals used by its forces starting Tuesday night, the Wall Street Journal reported, the first such throttling the country has faced since SpaceX acknowledged limiting Starlink usage during the war in 2023.
• A Zelensky adviser said the limit hit terminals "operating in motion" with no warning, disrupting military missions; Ukraine's drone crews rely on the service for video feeds and targeting under a Pentagon-handled StarShield contract.
• Elon Musk said SpaceX was not behind the latest restriction, while Senator Thom Tillis pressed the company for clarity on X; the dispute lands as Starlink, with more than 10 million subscribers worldwide, moves to challenge legacy wireless carriers.

• TSMC posted a record third-quarter net profit of $23.59 billion, up 69% from a year earlier, as demand for its AI processors beat Wall Street's expectations.
• The world's largest contract chipmaker makes chips for customers including Nvidia and Apple, and its quarterly profit topped analysts' consensus estimate of about T$746.3 billion.
• The result underscores how spending on AI hardware continues to drive the chip supply chain, with TSMC sitting at the center of production for the industry's biggest players.

• Anthropic's third-quarter revenue rose 45% from the prior quarter to $16.8 billion, according to an investor who attended a pre-IPO meeting with the company's leadership in San Francisco on Wednesday.
• That caps a steep climb that has seen quarterly revenue more than triple since the start of the year, as Anthropic chases a valuation above $2 trillion and tries to persuade investors its growth can eventually outpace the costs of building AI.
• The listing, likely pushed past the November midterm elections, is an early test of investor appetite for heavily unprofitable AI firms, a concern sharpened by Anthropic's commitment of hundreds of billions of dollars in future cloud and computing spending.

🌍 Macro News

• Bowman says Fed can assess rate hike effects before raising again. LINK
• Pill questions bets on four UK rate hikes over the next year. LINK
• UK economy grew 0.1% in August, slightly beating forecasts before Budget. LINK
• China factory prices rose fastest in four years as fuel costs climbed. LINK
• China exports surged 36.3%, lifting monthly trade surplus to record $133.5 billion. LINK
• Solidigm conditions planned US chip factory on expanded equipment exports to China. LINK
• China says rare-earth licenses for Europe will continue despite any US truce. LINK
• Ukraine to resume strikes on Russian energy sites after Moscow broke ceasefire. LINK
• EU regulators classify USDC significant token, bringing stablecoin under joint supervision. LINK
• FSB urges firms to maintain tighter human oversight of autonomous AI agents. LINK
• Japan will invest up to $21 billion in two GlobalFoundries chip plants. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• Jio Platforms seeks up to $3.2 billion in India's largest-ever IPO. LINK
• Modal raises $750 million at $15.75 billion valuation to expand AI infrastructure. LINK
• Kraken parent Payward agrees to acquire Lithuania's Saldo Bank, pending approvals. LINK
• Fairfax buys 60.7% controlling stake in IDBI Bank for nearly $6 billion. LINK
• BlackRock shares rise as third-quarter profit and revenue beat forecasts. LINK
• Polygon closes Coinme acquisition, enabling licensed dollar-to-crypto swaps across 48 states. LINK
• OpenAI may countersue Apple over alleged transfer of confidential device files. LINK
• Report says nine largest US banks let political pressures influence banking access. LINK
• Lufthansa buys 44.9% of TAP in deal valuing airline at €2.55 billion. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• 10 stocks set to soar in 2026: lists the names MarketBeat expects to outperform, with the thesis for each, in a free report. Get the free list
• AI agents made 138 million crypto payments using Coinbase's x402 protocol. LINK
• Standard Chartered now expects stablecoin market to reach $2 trillion by 2030. LINK
• Advertisers increasingly expect ChatGPT to gain ad budgets, challenging Google Search. LINK
• AI goods' record import share has barely narrowed America's current-account deficit. LINK
• US businesses show little stablecoin interest despite new federal regulatory framework. LINK
• Thirty-eight companies joined Crunchbase's unicorn board, adding $71 billion in value. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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