Start the clock on Anthropic's IPO... Booming demand for Intel's share sale... Nvidia lines up $500 billion in loans for its customers... 'Creative' financing brings back memories of past bubbles... How a SaaSpocalypse victim has positioned itself for new highs...
Another huge IPO is on the way...
It has been about two months since SpaceX (SPCX) went public. And shares have been extremely volatile since... The stock surged more than 25% in the first two days of trading before falling 46% to an all-time low last week.
But since then, shares have taken off once again. SpaceX is up about 26%. Put it all together and the stock is right back where it started. Today, it's about 1% below its IPO price of $135 per share.
And investors will soon have another hot IPO to invest in...
The Wall Street Journal reports that AI startup Anthropic hopes to go public as early as next month, or possibly in early October. That would likely place it ahead of its chief competitor OpenAI, which filed to go public but is reportedly pushing its own IPO to next year.
Not only is Anthropic going to beat OpenAI to the public markets, but it's also winning the AI race. Anthropic is running at an annual revenue run rate of more than $47 billion as of the end of May, according to the WSJ. That's nearly double OpenAI's $25 billion run rate.
Now, Anthropic isn't the only AI company moving to snap up investors' dollars. In the past few months, we've highlighted growing AI debt and massive share sales. And yesterday, AI companies went after hundreds of billions of dollars in new capital.
First, Intel raised money to meet AI demand for chips...
Like other companies we've seen, chipmaker Intel (INTC) raised $15 billion yesterday by offering new shares. And the company saw incredible demand. Intel's $15 billion share offering drew more than $100 billion in demand.
So Intel did what many companies may do after seeing that – announced it was raising another $5 billion through even more shares.
Once again, this money is going to the AI build-out. In its most recent quarterly earnings report, Intel increased its projected capital expenditures ("capex") for this year to more than $20 billion. And it warned of even higher capex in 2027.
Intel covered this year's capex in just one share offering. For as long as AI-focused investors are eager to hand over their cash, we expect Intel – and other companies looking to raise cash – to continue taking advantage.
Nvidia is also raising money from the AI boom...
While Intel is putting cash into its own capex, fellow chipmaker Nvidia (NVDA) has a more complicated arrangement.
Yesterday, Nvidia announced a partnership with six investment institutions – Apollo Global Management, BlackRock, Blackstone, Brookfield Asset Management, KKR, and Goldman Sachs – to fund Nvidia's customers.
Put simply, Nvidia is serving as a middleman to line up financing for data centers and other AI infrastructure. That means more money for companies looking to buy Nvidia chips.
Altogether, the partnerships arrange more than $500 billion in funding through several smaller loans. And Nvidia may back up to 25% of any debt deal made under the partnership, CEO Jensen Huang posted on X.
In this same article, Huang said this is not one of the "circular financing" deals that investors have raised questions about. Nvidia is not lending the money to its customers and is bringing in outside capital.
Still, there's a red flag in Nvidia lining up deals – and potentially using its own computing power as collateral – for companies to get money to buy Nvidia chips. It's not technically a circular deal, but the concern is still the same.
Nvidia's huge success depends on its customers spending big on AI chips. And they're counting on Nvidia for their spending money.
At the end of the day, AI spending is still headed higher...
As our colleague Mike Barrett explained in last week's issue of Select Value Opportunities, the AI-infrastructure build-out is massive, no matter which way you look at it.
From Mike...
[Hyperscalers'] collective AI spending spree is expected to approach $1 trillion over the next 12 months ("NTM"). And it's now the primary U.S. economic engine. Much of the capital is being used to build AI data-center campuses, which cover millions of square feet.
That's just among the several larger "hyperscalers." Now you can add another $500 billion from smaller companies.
This all brings up parallels to previous bubbles...
As we highlighted last month, credit-ratings agencies and investors alike are getting skittish over the huge AI price tag. Debt from two of the largest spenders – Oracle (ORCL) and CoreWeave (CRWV) – is either rated as junk bonds or is close to being downgraded to "junk" territory.
So now companies may not be able to get funding – or funding at an attractive rate – from public markets.
And when companies have to get creative, it's a sign that capital isn't as readily available.
This new $500 billion in funding – arranged by Nvidia for its customers that may not have otherwise gotten funds (and backed by its computing power) – may just be the latest creative way companies are securing funding before the well dries up.
That may not be what eventually pricks the AI bubble. But it will amplify the downside in a lot of the AI ecosystem when it does eventually turn.
Let's close today with a sector that has put SaaSpocalypse fears to bed...
Earlier this year, investors panicked about AI replacing software – crushing shares of software companies whether they were seriously at risk of AI disruption or not.
From its high last September to its SaaSpocalypse low in February, the iShares Expanded Tech-Software Sector Fund (IGV) lost about 35% of its value. But those fears have subsided in recent months, and IGV has rallied more than 35%.
One area of software has broken through to new highs. AI means we'll need more of it, not less. Like the rest of software, cybersecurity stocks entered a bear market because of the SaaSpocalypse.
The Amplify Cybersecurity Fund (HACK) fell more than 20% between October 8 and February 23. But since then, it has soared 70% to a fresh all-time high.
Cybersecurity-software companies aren't becoming victims of AI. They're rolling out their own AI products to plug into their cybersecurity offerings. After an industry conference this week, analysts at Cantor Fitzgerald wrote that, "AI has moved from being a cybersecurity feature to a key pillar," according to CNBC.
For Palo Alto Networks, it's paying off...
In the December issue of the True Innovations Report, senior analyst John Engel noted two acquisitions that Palo Alto Networks (PANW) has made to strengthen its AI business. First, there was the $3.4 billion deal to buy Chronosphere, a fast-growing cloud-observability company.
From John...
AI agents often make decisions or handle data without human oversight. To protect the companies that use the agents from cyberattack, Palo Alto needs to see what the autonomous systems are doing, what data they're accessing, and whether their behavior suddenly changes.
Chronosphere gives Palo Alto better real-time visibility into these activities, which makes it easier to catch mistakes or stop attacks before they spread.
And it also bought identity-management software company CyberArk Software for $25 billion. Putting these two acquisitions together sets Palo Alto up in a great spot. More from John...
If the company can connect Chronosphere's visibility tools with CyberArk's identity-management technology, it will have the two most important pieces needed to control and secure AI agents.
In short, Palo Alto Networks is building a platform that helps organizations see their data clearly, control who has access to it, and identify threats earlier and more accurately. That is exactly what companies need as more of their work moves into the cloud.
Since the SaaSpocalypse bottom on February 24, Palo Alto's shares are up more than 170% and are sitting just off an all-time high.
Today, True Innovations Report subscribers who followed this advice are up nearly 700% in a little more than six years. And it currently ranks as the ninth highest-returning open recommendation across all of Stansberry Research. Congrats to John and the rest of the True Innovations team on this great call!
New 52-week highs (as of 8/10/26): Amgen (AMGN), Alpha Architect 1-3 Month Box Fund (BOXX), Berkshire Hathaway (BRK-B), Maplebear (CART), Pacer U.S. Cash Cows 100 Fund (COWZ), Dexcom (DXCM), Cambria Foreign Shareholder Yield Fund (FYLD), GCM Grosvenor (GCMG), Garmin (GRMN), Helmerich & Payne (HP), iShares Biotechnology Fund (IBB), VanEck Morningstar Wide Moat Fund (MOAT), Marathon Petroleum (MPC), Cloudflare (NET), NewMarket (NEU), Palo Alto Networks (PANW), State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Value Fund (SPYV), Twist Bioscience (TWST), Valero Energy (VLO), State Street Health Care Select Sector SPDR Fund (XLV), and Zebra Technologies (ZBRA).
In today's mailbag, thoughts on the still-closed Strait of Hormuz, which we covered in yesterday's Digest... and more feedback on Dan Ferris' Friday essay... Do you have a comment or question? As always, e-mail us at feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
"Sorry, but I'm just not buying the Trump narrative that there is plenty of oil, and the closure of the Strait of Hormuz is not an issue. I've listened to plenty of very smart economists who are saying that we are in deep trouble with oil. It's a simple case of supply and demand. You cannot simply remove 20 million barrels of oil per day from the supply chain and not expect any effect. The oil from Venezuela is only at best 1M barrels per day." – Subscriber Jeff S.
"Thank you, Dan, for your insight in your recent articles about investor's reaction to risk. As a longtime subscriber to Stansberry Research who slowly acquired enough capital to recover from a managed investing decline in the Dot Com bust, you and other members of Stansberry Research guided me as I swore I would never participate in another investment management corporation. I would assume that responsibility.
"There is a learning curve. As a child of the 50s who huddled under desks or in the school hallways as part of the Civil Defense's monthly drills, I believed the worst might happen. But, it might not happen. The food, water, and medical supplies stored in the basement were an indication that readiness was the best option.
"This initial framework was the support later responses were built upon. Hard work, readiness to follow-up on advantages or the repair of deficiencies were the fabric of success. The ability to measure what was achievable with the available resources was critical. Never investing in what you couldn't afford to lose kept the speculative urges in place. Letting your winners run, reinforced trust in the long-term plan. Understanding what my goals and interests were helped me to avoid opportunities (that were attractive) but didn't support my goals. Admitting that my confusion about an investment was a better reason to avoid it, than trusting in something I didn't understand. These were the additional things I learned about myself as I learned to become a better investor. Could we say 'Investor, know thyself?'
"I still have stocks you recommended years ago and I still prepare and resist predicting. Thanks again." – Subscriber Steve B.
All the best,
Nick Koziol
Baltimore, Maryland
August 11, 2026
