E231: Tether's $500B valuation; OpenAI-Nvidia $100B AI powerhouse deal; Stripe buyback at $106.7B; TikTok US valuation at only $14B!; Fermi's $13B IPO for AI data center energy; 1X robotics' $10B+ valuation; Anthropic for Microsoft AI Copilot; Databricks-

0:00Aaron Dillon here, Managing Director of AG Dillon & Co. Here is the pre-IPO stock market update for September 26, 2025. Crypto giant Tether Holdings is pursuing a staggering$500 billion valuation through a major private placement fundraising round, aiming to raise between$15 billion and$20 billion in exchange for roughly 3 % stake in the company, as confirmed by CEO Paolo Ardenio. excuse me i probably said that name wrong with proceeds earmarked to scale operations across stable coins ai commodity trading energy communications and media by several orders of magnitude the move builds on tether's dominance in stable coin market where it's usd tether usdt token recently surpassed 172 billion dollar market capitalization more than double that of the rival's USDC at$74 billion.

0:54OpenAI and NVIDIA sealed a landmark$100 billion partnership. NVIDIA's phased investments will start with a$10 billion tranche at OpenAI's$500 billion valuation and expected to close within a month, followed by nine additional$10 billion rounds tied to new capacity milestones. OpenAI will buy four to five million GPUs from NVIDIA to power a 10 gigawatt data centers. The first phase will go online in the second half of 2026. Overall server spending plans to balloon to a trillion dollars across U.S. and international sites, like a Central Park-sized complex in Abilene, Texas, requiring over 13 times the computing power of OpenAI's initial facility.

1:36This deal was negotiated through last-minute virtual calls and in-person meetings in London, in San Francisco and Washington amid President Trump's UK visit. The deal complements OpenAI's$300 billion five-year Oracle agreement starting in 2027. OpenAI has accumulated 700 million weekly active users since its ChatGPT's 2022 launch, and NVIDIA's stock saw a$170 billion market cap pop to nearly$4.5 trillion post-announcement. OpenAI has a$529 billion secondary market valuation that's up 5.8 % versus the August 2025 round. Stripe, the online payments company, is in advanced talks for a flexible stock buyback from venture capital investors at$106.7 billion valuation, its latest 409A figure.

2:21Stripe had a post-pandemic peak of$95 billion that dipped to$50 billion in 2023 amid market headwinds. Sequoia Capital invested$861 million via secondary purchase of Stripe shares from its limited partners at a$70 billion valuation in September of 2024. Stripe has a$118.5 billion secondary market valuation. That's up 29.5 % versus its February 2025 round. President Donald Trump signed an executive order formalizing a potential divesture of TikTok's U.S. operations from Chinese parent ByteDance under a 2024 law mandating separation or a nationwide ban. The deal values the standalone U.S. app at$14 billion, well below the previous estimates of$40 billion, despite its 170 million active users generating north of$10 billion annually in revenue.

3:11This is a strikingly low 1.4x price to sales multiple. And as comparison, Meta has a 10x price to sales and Alphabet's at 8x. Experts are calling the deal the most undervalued tech acquisition of the decade and daylight robbery that reflects only a third of its true value. Oracle, Silver Lake, and Abu Dhabi-based MGX are discussing a 45 % stake in the restructured U.S. entity plus board seats. The executive order requires completion of the transaction with 120 days pending Beijing's approval. Fermi, Rick Perry's energy-focused real estate investment trust confidentially filed for an IPO targeting$13 billion valuation and up to$550 million raise.

3:56The company is selling 25 million shares priced between $18 and$22 each. Pricing data is September 30, and NASDAQ trading to commence on October 1st under the ticker FERM, aiming to capitalize on surging demand for data center and AI infrastructure power needs in the broader energy sector. 1X Technologies, a humanoid robotics company, is targeting a billion dollars in new funding at a valuation potentially exceeding $10 billion. A competitor figure AI recently closed a$1 billion capital raise at a$39 billion valuation. One X developed safe AI-powered humanoid robots like the soft-sided Neo Gamma launched in February 2025 for home tax and the wheeled Eve since 2018 for hospital use.

4:44Both robots use OpenAI voice models and One X's Redwood AI for autonomous operation. Neo Gamma is to be deployed in several hundred U.S. homes by late 2025 this year, focusing on domestic assistance, elder care and logistics while prioritizing safety with soft designs and 99.95 % uptime. One X differentiates itself from competitors like Tesla's Optimus, Figure AI and Unitry's 1G by targeting immediate household use, leveraging real world trials. One X has previously raised capital from OpenAI and EQT ventures. Microsoft has expanded its AI ecosystem by partnering with Anthropic to integrate its cloud models into the Copilot Workspace Assistant.

5:30The addition now allows business users to toggle between OpenAI and Anthropic options for tasks like digital research and custom AI tool building, enhancing Copilot's flexibility. Anthropic has a$207.3 billion secondary market valuation. That's up 13.3 % versus its August 2025 round. Databricks, the AI data management and analytics company, and OpenAI inked a multi-year$100 million pact to jointly sell AI agent services to enterprise clients, streamlining builds of autonomous agents using OpenAI's flagship models and customer data on Databricks' platform. The tie-up addresses adoption hurdles from agents sub-100 % reliability, marking a key step in monetizing AI workloads.

6:16Databricks has a$102 billion secondary market valuation. Excuse me. That's up 2 % versus August 2025 round. CoreWeave, the recently IPO-ed AI data center cloud provider, announced a$6.5 billion expansion of its cloud infrastructure agreement with OpenAI to fuel training of next-generation AI models. adding to prior PACs,$11.9 billion initial deal in March of 2025 and$4 billion add-on in May for a cumulative$22.4 billion in commitments. CoreWeave has a$60 billion market cap in the public markets as of September 26th. That's a 2 ,246 % return since in Series B in April of 2023, just 2.5 years ago.

7:05Okay, that's it for me this week. Thanks, and see you guys next week.