Market Midday: Stocks Rise, Anthropic IPO Details Emerge, Microsoft Offers Buyouts • 10/26/26

0:00See NBC Business News Update Market Midday. I'm Jessica Ettinger. Wall Street's in the green this afternoon. Anthropic, the maker of the Claude AI model, has revealed its initial public offering documents. A lot of investors excited about that. The Dow's up 134 points this afternoon. Cisco shares leading it higher. They're up 3%. The S &P 500 index is up 58 points. The Nasdaq up 263 points. That's 1%. Most of the big chipmaker names are in the green this afternoon. Micron up 3%. NVIDIA up 2%. Intel up 4%. Cerebris Systems is in the red, down 7 tenths of 1%. Anthropics IPO documents revealed. As AI investors comb through, the ticker symbol will be ANT.

0:50A-N-T. It'll likely issue shares before Thanksgiving. Here's a take from CNBC's Mike Santoli. The valuation is always this crazy triangulation of some point in the future when it's going to justify it. SpaceX has held its valuation, even though it wasn't really there in the business when it came public. You know,$1.5 to$2 trillion, whatever we're going to be talking about for Anthropic. Met is$1.6 trillion. It has a quarter of a trillion dollars in revenue this year. It does$75 billion in net income. You're not going to get anything like that. And so you have this leap of faith type effect. Full coverage of Anthropics IPO initial public offering documents at CNBC, CNBC.com and the CNBC app on your phone.

1:35Here come the pre-Christmas job cuts. Microsoft offering voluntary buyouts to 60 ,000 employees. It comes as this company has been looking to cut costs and really try to reshape its workforce around AI. They're calling this a voluntary exit offer. They say in this blog post, workers will receive benefits that are similar to a standard severance package. It does follow the buyout offer to retirement age employees that we saw back in July from Microsoft. At the time, more than 30 percent of those employees that were eligible did accept. CNBC's Kate Rooney. Facebook and Instagram parent Meta announcing a$95 billion stock offering to fund its artificial intelligence expansion.

2:20Shares were higher in early trading. chipmakers NVIDIA and AMD are interested in buying up some of those shares, according to a statement by Meta. The beleaguered neocloud stocks have been dealt a blow by Elon Musk, posting on social media that more than 200 of these companies face guppy-level death. A take from CNBC's Andrew Ross-Orkin and Allianz economist Mohamed El-Erian. So I say he's right. You saw the first phase of a typical innovation, everybody rushing in, everybody providing funding to anything that had an AI labeled attached to it. How quickly, though, do you think this is going to impact these companies?

2:57He's absolutely right in saying two things matter. One is earnings potential and two is balance sheet. Those with little earning potential and weak balance sheets are going to feel it first. That's a normal part of the innovation cycle. I don't know any innovation cycle that doesn't start with overfunding. and then the funders become much more discriminant. And that's a good thing. Musk's post sent shares of Corweave, Nebbias and more deep into the red. The Powerball jackpot tonight, inching toward three quarters of a billion dollars. Tonight, it's 687 million dollars. I'm Jessica Ettinger, CNBC.

3:41From gas prices to housing prices, from government spending to consumer spending, from the AI boom to the data center backlash. How will this election hit your pocketbook and your portfolio? Continuing coverage, the economy election, CNBC. Introducing Fidelity Trader Plus, the next generation of advanced trading from Fidelity. Customize your tools and charts and access them seamlessly across desktop, web, and mobile. For faster trades, anywhere you go. Try the all new Fidelity Trader Plus. Learn more about our most powerful trading platform yet at fidelity.com slash trader plus. Investing involves risk, including risk of loss.

4:21Fidelity Brokerage Services, LLC. Member NYSE SIPC.