Perplexity Surpasses $450M ARR, Retail Drives SpaceX IPO, Anthropic Locks in AI Compute

From agents to IPOs to chips, the AI stack is moving fast. Perplexity pushes revenue higher, SpaceX leans into retail demand, and Anthropic secures the compute needed to compete. Let’s dive in…

THIS WEEK’S BREAKING NEWS

SpaceX files for record-setting IPO

SpaceX’s IPO filing points to a potential June listing at up to $1.75T and a capital raise reportedly as high as $75B, which would eclipse prior U.S. IPO records. The setup pairs unmatched scale, including $24.4B in federal contracts since 2008 and 165 orbital flights in 2025, with real execution risk if market volatility persists. (1)

MARKET UPDATE

IPO pipeline reactivates despite geopolitical uncertainty

A wave of IPO candidates across sectors, including biotech and real estate, launched roadshows despite geopolitical tensions and recent volatility, signaling improving market confidence. With the VIX falling below 20 and analysts expecting 2026 to be the strongest IPO year since the post-pandemic slowdown, disciplined pricing and pent-up supply are driving a gradual reopening of equity capital markets. (2)

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PORTFOLIO NEWS

Anduril debuts Apache-launched loitering munition with US Army

The US Army successfully launched Anduril’s Altius 700 loitering munition from an AH-64E Apache, showing a potential 10x increase in operational range versus current missile systems (11–16 km vs. up to 160–460 km depending on variant). The test, conducted during CFWE26, indicates a shift toward stand-off warfare using autonomous systems, though reliance on datalinks and GPS introduces resilience and cost challenges. (3)

Anthropic rolls out Mythos to select partners following code breach

Anthropic launched its cyber-focused model Claude Mythos Preview to select partners, including Amazon, Apple, and Microsoft, following two recent data leaks attributed to human error. The model has identified thousands of critical zero-day vulnerabilities, including a 16-year-old flaw missed after 5 million test runs. Despite its defensive potential, sandbox escape incidents and dual-use risks prompted restricted access and ongoing US government discussions. (4)

Coreweave inks multi-year AI cloud deal with Anthropic

CoreWeave signed a multi-year agreement with Anthropic to support the development and production-scale deployment of its Claude models, with compute capacity coming online later this year. The deal expands Anthropic’s infrastructure stack and positions CoreWeave as a key AI cloud provider, now serving nine of the top ten model developers amid rising demand for high-performance AI compute. (5)

Anthropic’s chip push deepens with Google and Broadcom partnership

Anthropic committed to spending hundreds of billions on compute deals with Google and Broadcom, securing up to 5GW of capacity as annualized revenue surged from $9B to $30B. The agreements center on TPU-based infrastructure and long-term chip supply, highlighting the scale, capital intensity, and strategic urgency of securing AI compute. (6)

Applied Intuition pushes AI into mining, logistics automation

Applied Intuition showcased its “Physical AI” ambitions, targeting automation across mining, agriculture, and logistics, while highlighting the complexity of deploying AI in unpredictable real-world environments. The company emphasized the shift from bits to atoms, using partnerships with Komatsu and Isuzu as it scales deployments, including autonomous trucking routes, amid a $15B valuation and growing industrial demand. (7)

Simtheory, Ortto at center of Canva’s platform buildout

Canva acquired Simtheory and Ortto to expand into AI collaboration and marketing automation, integrating agentic workflows and customer data infrastructure into its platform. Ortto brings 11,000 customers across 190 countries, while Simtheory strengthens multi-model AI execution. The move accelerates Canva’s shift from design tool to end-to-end workflow system, ahead of a major product reveal at Canva Create. (8)

Canva’s creator economy push backed by PayPal integration

PayPal integrated Payment Links into Canva, enabling its 265 million monthly users to convert designs into checkout experiences without external storefronts. The feature supports global payments across ~200 markets and aligns with social commerce projected to exceed $1T by 2028, positioning content as a direct transaction layer within creator workflows. (9)

Lovable integrates with Databricks to unlock enterprise data

Lovable launched a Databricks connector enabling non-technical teams to build applications directly on Databricks data using natural language. The integration eliminates backend bottlenecks by allowing real-time querying without ETL or replication, positioning Lovable as an interface layer while Databricks remains the governed source of truth, accelerating internal tool development from months to hours. (10)

DBOS partners Databricks to boost AI agent reliability

DBOS, Inc. partnered with Databricks to improve reliability and observability of agentic AI workflows by integrating DBOS’s durable execution layer with Databricks’ Lakebase Postgres infrastructure. The solution enables real-time workflow checkpointing and automatic recovery, addressing failure risks in long-running AI tasks and supporting production-grade, always-on agent systems as enterprise adoption accelerates. (11)

Databricks at core of Tata Power's shift to AI-led energy systems

Tata Power adopted Databricks across its enterprise to build a unified data and AI platform supporting grid optimisation, renewable forecasting, and customer analytics. The rollout includes Databricks’ Genie AI agent for natural language data access, enabling near real-time insights and operational efficiency as Tata Power scales digital infrastructure to support energy transition and decentralized energy participation. (12)

Epic Games pivots to Disney partnership after Fortnite struggles

Epic Games is restructuring after layoffs of 1,000 employees and multiple failed Fortnite initiatives, shutting down underperforming modes while pivoting toward its $1.5B partnership with The Walt Disney Company. Despite mixed internal feedback on upcoming titles, Epic is betting on Disney-driven content to revive engagement, leveraging Fortnite’s scale as a distribution engine amid slower growth and execution challenges. (13)

OpenAI unveils framework to combat AI-enabled exploitation

OpenAI introduced a Child Safety Blueprint to address AI-enabled child sexual exploitation, focusing on modernizing laws for AI-generated abuse material, improving reporting coordination, and embedding safety-by-design into AI systems. Developed with partners like NCMEC and U.S. attorneys general, the framework aims to strengthen detection, accelerate enforcement, and establish industry-wide standards as AI risks scale. (14)

OpenAI pauses UK AI project citing regulatory concerns

OpenAI paused its U.K. Stargate infrastructure project, citing high energy costs and regulatory uncertainty, despite plans to deploy up to 8,000 GPUs initially and scale to 31,000. The halt underscores structural barriers to AI infrastructure in the U.K., particularly grid access and copyright policy debates, even as OpenAI maintains discussions with partners and continues local investment. (15)

OpenAI opens London office after pausing UK project

OpenAI signed a lease for an 88,500 sq ft London office with capacity for 500+ staff, reinforcing the city as its largest research hub outside the U.S. The expansion follows a pause of its U.K. Stargate project due to energy costs and regulation, highlighting infrastructure constraints even as U.K. AI funding reaches $6.7B year-to-date. (16)

Paris headquarters anchors Revolut’s European push

Perplexity has expanded Perplexity Computer with tax modules that can draft U.S. federal returns on IRS forms, review accountant-prepared filings, and build custom tracking tools for complex tax workflows. The system is grounded in IRS materials and updated for new laws and forms, with the company citing one test where it found a 67% understatement in overtime-related deductions on an attorney-prepared 2025 return. (17)

Revolut rolls out AI Assistant for daily financial tasks

Revolut launched AIR, an AI-powered assistant embedded in its UK app, enabling users to manage spending, budgeting, payments, and card controls through conversational commands. The rollout aligns with rising adoption of AI-driven financial workflows and builds on Revolut’s $6B revenue and $2.3B profit, signaling a shift toward AI-native banking interfaces. (18)

Rippling hires Parandekar as SVP to scale global platform

Rippling appointed Sonia Parandekar as SVP of Engineering and Bengaluru site lead to scale its global product expansion. With over 1,000 employees in India and plans to reach 2,000, the hub has become its largest engineering base outside the U.S., supporting platform growth across HR, IT, and finance as Rippling deepens its global infrastructure and innovation capacity. (19)

SpaceX pressures banks to buy Grok for IPO roles

SpaceX is reportedly requiring banks competing for its IPO mandate to purchase Grok subscriptions, with some committing tens of millions, signaling unusual leverage in deal structuring. The move highlights how the scale of a potential record-breaking IPO is reshaping traditional Wall Street dynamics, where advisory mandates increasingly intertwine with commercial alignment and strategic concession. (20)

SpaceX plans retail-heavy IPO as valuation hits $2T

SpaceX plans to allocate up to 30% of its IPO shares to retail investors and host a 1,500-person event as it targets a $75B raise at a $2T valuation. The move departs from traditional institutional-led IPOs, leveraging Elon Musk’s following to drive demand, while valuation debates center on Starlink revenues and the uncertain contribution of xAI. (21)

SpaceX posts $5B loss as xAI spending surges

SpaceX reported a nearly $5B loss on $18.5B revenue, driven largely by heavy investment in xAI, including ~$13B in capex for chips and data centers. While core space and Starlink operations generated ~$8B in EBITDA, the combined entity underscores that IPO investors will fund AI expansion alongside a dominant but capital-intensive space business. (22)

OTHER NEWS

ByteDance valuation tops $600B in share sale talks

ByteDance is seeking a valuation above $600B in a proposed $900M secondary share sale, up from an initial $550B target following strong investor demand. The deal, still under negotiation, signals renewed momentum despite prior political headwinds, with pricing potentially rising further as multiple buyers engage in the transaction. (23)

Natural speech generation advances with ByteDance model

ByteDance introduced Seeduplex, a voice generation model focused on low-latency, natural speech with enhanced tone control, emotional expression, and multilingual capabilities. Designed for assistants, content, and customer service, the model will be integrated across ByteDance’s ecosystem, reflecting intensifying competition in scalable, multimodal AI voice systems. (24)

Celonis and Oracle deepen collaboration on AI modernization

Celonis expanded its collaboration with Oracle to deploy its Process Intelligence platform on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure, enabling enterprises to optimize end-to-end processes and scale AI adoption. The integration combines OCI’s infrastructure with Celonis’ “intelligence layer,” supporting automation, ERP migration, and real-time process insights across finance and supply chain workflows. (25)

Plaid’s network fuels Perplexity’s revamped financial interface

Perplexity AI expanded its integration with Plaid, enabling users to connect bank accounts, credit cards, and loans across 12,000+ institutions for real-time financial insights. Plaid’s infrastructure underpins the data layer, positioning it at the center of AI-driven financial aggregation, while Perplexity builds the interface, raising stakes around data access, control, and distribution (26)

Accenture partners with Replit on enterprise AI coding

Accenture invested in Replit and formed a strategic partnership to scale AI-driven software development across enterprises. The collaboration focuses on applying agentic “vibe coding” workflows to accelerate application creation, reducing traditional development friction and enabling faster transition from idea to production within large-scale enterprise environments. (27)

CHART OF THE WEEK

The resurgence of startup tender offers in 2025 signals a shift in how private companies manage liquidity. After a prolonged slowdown in 2022 and 2023, tender activity has rebounded sharply, exceeding prior cycle peaks. This reflects renewed confidence in private valuations and a more mature secondary market capable of absorbing liquidity events at scale. For companies staying private longer, tenders are becoming a standard tool to manage employee equity, align incentives, and maintain cap table stability without relying on public market timing.

This normalization reinforces the importance of systematic exposure to late-stage private companies where liquidity events occur regularly but selectively. The Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy is focused on established private technology leaders that generate recurring secondary activity and institutional-quality liquidity. As tenders become embedded in private market mechanics, disciplined strategies positioned around these companies are better suited to navigate valuation cycles and liquidity management over the long term.

THE UNTOLD UNICORN STORY

Deel: Breaking borders, one paycheck at a time

Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang, Founders of Deel. (28)

Deel almost didn't exist. One to two weeks before Y Combinator Demo Day in 2019, the company's original idea was failing. Alex Bouaziz and Shuo Wang had built an escrow platform to help freelancers get paid automatically upon completing work, but as Bouaziz later admitted, the concept wasn't resonating. In desperation, they pivoted, interviewed companies to uncover the real pain point, and discovered it: the nightmare of hiring and paying people across borders. They scrambled to Demo Day with 290 contractors and $5,000 in monthly revenue. (29)

Three weeks after closing their seed round, COVID hit, and the entire world went remote. Suddenly, every company needed what Deel was building. They grew from $1 million to $100 million in annual recurring revenue in just 20 months, making Deel one of the fastest-growing SaaS companies in history. Today, Deel is valued at $17.3 billion and powers payroll and HR for over 35,000 companies in 150+ countries. (30)

Fun Fact: Deel surpassed $1B in annual recurring revenue in Q1 2025, just over six years after launch. That's faster than Stripe, Salesforce, Palantir, and Square, and the company did it while being 100% remote with employees in over 100 countries. (30)

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SOURCES

1 - Financial Times, 2 - Reuters, 3 - Calibre Defence, 4 - Financial Times, 5 - Coreweave, 6 - Business Insider, 7 - The Information, 8 - Business Wire, 9 - PR Newswire, 10 - Databricks, 11 - PR Newswire, 12 - PR Newswire, 13 - Bloomberg, 14 - OpenAI, 15 - CNBC, 16 - CNBC, 17 - Bloomberg, 18 - PYMNTS, 19 - Business Newswire, 20 - Financial Times, 21 - The Guardian, 22- The Information, 23 - Tech in Asia, 24 - Pandaily, 25 - Business Wire, 26 - PYMNTS, 27 - Accenture, 28 - INC, 29 - Backscoop, 30 - TechCrunch, 31 - Business Wire