AnalytixInsight

Last week, Dow Jones rose 0.1% and hit a record close, S&P 500 rose 0.2%, and Nasdaq composite was up 0.1%. That said, 10-year Treasury yield spiked 23 basis points to 3.98%, for its biggest weekly gain in nearly a year, two-year yield, which is more closely tied to Fed policy, shot up the most in two years by 37 basis points, to 3.93%. U.S. startups raised US$37.5 billion in the three months ended in September, up 8% y/y. OpenAI completed a US$6.6 billion raise, that values the company at US$157 billion post-money. The company also secured a US$4 billion revolving credit line. OpenAI also told employees Wednesday it plans to allow them to sell some of their stock through a tender offer. Cerebras, which designs chips for training and running AImodels, disclosed in its IPO that it lost US$127 million last year on US$78 million in revenue. Shein is hosting informal roadshows in London and New York in preparation for the company’s IPO on the London Stock Exchange. Accenture will train 30,000 employees on Nvidia’s full stack of AI technologies and start a new business group dedicated to AI. Google is considering nuclear power to feed its energy-hungry AI data centers. Kalshi, a prediction market startup, went live with its betting market that allows U.S. users to bet on who will win the November presidential election. In Canada, Toronto-based, Koho Financial raised a $190 million round of debt and equity funding as it continues its efforts to secure a Schedule 1 banking licence. Sophic Client, upsized its bought deal to $45 million from $25 million, the stock is trading above deal price, which bodes well. Sophic Client, Clear Blue Technologies closed a Convertible Debenture financing, raising $2.2 million. Sophic Client, Plurilock signed a US$19.3 million contract with a S&P 500 semiconductor company, and also announced nearly US$2 million of Critical Services contracts. Sophic Client, American Aires expects to receive mass media exposure through upcoming appearance on Military Makeover with Montel.

Cerebras Systems, is targeting raising US$750 million to US$1 billion in an IPO, potentially valuing the company between US$7 to US$8 billion. Fintech Chime has reportedly hired Morgan Stanley to lead its IPO. Cyberecurity startup Wiz is reportedly in share sale talks at up to a US$20 billion valuation. Anthropic is discussing a new funding round aiming for a valuation between US$30 to US$40 billion, projecting US$1 billion in annualized revenue for this year. OpenAI is raising up to US$6.5 billion in its latest funding round, which could value the company at US$150 billion. Apple is reportedly no longer participating in the round. Hours after OpenAI’s CTO announced her departure, two more research leaders at the ChatGPT maker said they also planned to leave. New data from payments group Stripe suggests AI groups are making revenues at an unprecedented rate, scaling to over US$30 million in annualised revenue in 20 months — 5x faster than SaaS companies. Nvidia shares climbed as much as 5% on Tuesday as Barron’s reported CEO Jensen Huang is done with planned sales of stock. In Canada, Lightspeed is reportedly exploring a sale. Propel Holdings announced a $95.9 million acquisition of UK-based QuidMarket to expand its online lending platform. Propel is funding this with a $100 million equity offering led by Canaccord Genuity Corp. and Scotia Capital Inc. Kneat announced a $35 million bought deal led by Cormark Securities. Scribenote, an AI startup from Kitchener-Waterloo, raised $8.2 million in seed funding led by Andreessen Horowitz (a16z). Sophic Capital, Client Intermap in partnership with CACI has been selected by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (“NGA”) as one of 10 qualified vendors for the Luno A program. The Luno A contract, valued at up to $290 million over five years, marks a substantial increase from the initial EIM budget of $29 million. Sophic Client, Intermap Technologies was selected by the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) for the Luno A program, a US$290 million contract over five years, to leverage AI-driven geospatial intelligence for real-time insights. Sophic Client, Kraken Robotics received $3 million in orders for its AI-enabled synthetic aperture sonar systems for naval use, indicating increased demand in mine countermeasure operations.

Last week, following the Fed’s 50 bps rate cut, Dow Jones rose 1.6%, S&P 500 gained 1.4%, and Nasdaq Composite was up 1.5%. Chipmaker Qualcomm has been considering a full takeover of Intel. Intel’s shares have fallen 60% this year. WSJ notes that a deal between Qualcomm and Intel has a high chance of being stopped. One possible way to close the deal would be for Qualcomm to sell assets or parts of Intel to other buyers. Earlier in the week, Intel was said to separate its foundry business, and struck a networking chip deal with AWS. OpenAI’s latest US$6.5 billion funding round is oversubscribed. Microsoft and BlackRock said Tuesday they are planning a US$30 billion fund to develop data centers and power plants to power artificial intelligence. The fund would be one of the largest of its kind. Constellation Energy struck a deal to provide Microsoft with nuclear power for the next two decades by bringing part of the Three Mile Island nuclear plant back into service by 2028. Playtika will acquire mobile game maker SuperPlay for up to US$1.95 billion. Flutter Entertainment agreed to buy Playtech’s Italian gambling business for an enterprise value of €2.3 billion. Google earlier this year offered to sell a key part of its advertising technology empire—an ad exchange that helps ad buyers transact with sellers of ad space, including Google—to win over website publishers and end their legal attacks over Google’s dominance, Reuters reported. Snap, on Tuesday announced a new generation of its augmented reality glasses Spectacles. The new Spectacles overlay augmented reality filters over objects in the real world and operate via voice commands and hand gestures. EssilorLuxottica extended its partnership with Meta Platforms to develop smart eyewear for another decade.