☕️ Microsoft pushes buyouts to fund AI

Hi there, this is your daily ☕️ Finpresso.

In today's newsletter:

💼 Microsoft pushes buyouts to fund AI efficiency

💰 Meta sells $35B in stock for AI buildout

📈 Anthropic files for its first IPO

🏦 Ripple wins US approval for national trust bank

📌 Broadcom lands $63B to finance Anthropic's chips

Plus: 🌍 9 macro stories, 🏢 10 corporate stories, and 📑 6 research & reports.

📊 Before The Bell

• Microsoft is offering voluntary buyouts to about 60,000 employees, more than a quarter of its global workforce, as it cuts costs and reshapes operations around artificial intelligence.
• The time-limited offer covers staff at vice-president level and below in the US, Canada, India and the UK, with standard severance-style pay, continued stock vesting and until early December to decide; the 60,000 are eligible workers, not confirmed cuts.
• The move sits against Microsoft's heavy AI spending, roughly $175 billion projected for 2026, even as it posted $90 billion in quarterly revenue; next earnings land tomorrow.

• Meta began selling about $35 billion of new stock yesterday to help pay for its AI infrastructure, with a planned follow-on program that could push total fundraising toward $95 billion.
• The sale splits into roughly $22.5 billion of common shares and $12.5 billion of convertible preferred stock, with Nvidia, AMD and Broadcom each flagging nonbinding interest in buying up to $5 billion of the common stock combined.
• Meta expects $135 billion to $145 billion in 2026 capital spending, funded by cash flow, debt, partnerships and equity; it generated $97 billion in operating cash flow over the first three quarters and held about $82 billion in cash and securities.

• Anthropic has filed to sell shares to the public for the first time, with an initial public offering that could come as early as November, the company said yesterday.
• The Claude maker has pledged to commit 5% of its shares to a new Anthropic Public Benefit Fund for donations to nonprofits or to people harmed by AI, though shareholders must approve it after the IPO completes.
• Critics, including the Institute for Policy Studies, argue such nonprofit pledges can generate public goodwill without guaranteeing companies act in the public interest, noting public benefit corporations remain lightly regulated by the federal government.

• Ripple has secured final approval from the US Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to open Ripple National Trust Bank, a federally supervised trust bank, completing a process that began with conditional approval in December 2025.
• The bank will hold and manage the reserves backing Ripple's RLUSD stablecoin, which has a market value of about $2.6 billion, placing the token under both federal and New York state supervision.
• The crypto trust charters remain contested: Senator Elizabeth Warren says they breach the National Bank Act, and the Independent Community Bankers of America has sued the OCC, arguing the charters let crypto firms skip bank capital rules and FDIC insurance.

• Bank of America, Blackstone, Citigroup and Morgan Stanley have committed $63 billion to finance Broadcom's AI chips and networking gear for Anthropic, a deal some lenders had reportedly considered abandoning in recent weeks.
• A new special-purpose vehicle will buy Broadcom's AI accelerators and networking products, then lease them to Anthropic, with deliveries starting in 2027; Broadcom is backing the senior debt against losses if Anthropic defaults.
• The financing nearly collapsed over rising rates and AI funding risk until CEO Hock Tan's weekend talks secured higher interest rates and stronger guarantees; Anthropic filed yesterday for a Nasdaq IPO targeting a $1.5 trillion-to-$2 trillion valuation.

🌍 Macro News

• Appeals court overturned Fed's 21-cent debit swipe-fee cap. LINK
• ESM issued €1 billion blockchain bonds, settling on Eurosystem's Pontes platform. LINK
• EU prepares restrictions on Chinese imports to protect manufacturers and narrow deficit. LINK
• EU lawmakers back fund taking stakes to expand domestic rare-earth mining. LINK
• China's September profits rose 14.4%, fastest since June, as AI manufacturing boomed. LINK
• Yuan held near four-year high as central bank curbed pace of gains. LINK
• Oil fell as US-Iran diplomacy raised hopes of easing Middle East tensions. LINK
• Russian diesel output rose as refiners responded to Moscow's export quotas. LINK
• India says US hasn't pressured it to reduce Russian crude purchases. LINK

🏢 Corporate News

• FTC ordered Anthropic executives to testify in consumer-harm investigation. LINK
• BlackRock, SBI and Startale explore linking tokenized funds with yen stablecoin. LINK
• Aviva and Ripple put Sterling Liquidity Fund shares on XRP Ledger. LINK
• Intel agreed to buy Israeli quantum software startup Classiq for $2.3 billion. LINK
• UK regulators investigate Revolut's rapid product approvals and associated risks. LINK
• Apollo nears deal for almost 10% of Mubadala Capital. LINK
• EQT's Range Resources takeover creates gas producer valued above $50 billion. LINK
• HSBC will repurchase up to $1 billion in shares by year-end. LINK
• Verizon raised outlook and agreed to supply AWS dark fiber for AI. LINK
• Bedrock Robotics raised $600 million at a $4.1 billion valuation. LINK

📈 Stocks

📑 Research & Reports

• Build 10 finance tools without an engineer: walks through building your own models and internal tools using AI. From Aleph. Download the free playbook
• AI may shorten KYC checks, but governance concerns limit broader bank adoption. LINK
• Bernstein favors crypto-adjacent revenue drivers, keeping Coinbase, Robinhood, Circle Outperform. LINK
• Euro-area banks tightened lending standards as loan demand weakened across sectors. LINK
• IEA warns concentrated clean-energy supply chains threaten global energy transition. LINK
• Asia may need $1 trillion yearly energy investment to strengthen security. LINK
• Circle shares fell after Mizuho warned AI assistants threaten USDC revenue. LINK

📅 Market Calendar

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