Ripple's $16T Transaction Volume Matches Visa's Scale, Anduril Lands $847M Taiwan Order, ChatGPT Ads Hits $1B Run Rate

Private tech hit new scale this week. Ripple's transaction volume reached nearly $16T, matching Visa's scale, Anduril landed an $847M order for over 2,000 drones from Taiwan, and OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads business crossed a $1B annualized run rate. Let's dive in…

THIS WEEK’S BREAKING NEWS

Ripple's $16T transaction volume matches Visa's scale

Ripple processed nearly $16T in transactions over the past year, matching Visa's scale, driven mainly by acquisitions Ripple Prime ($3T) and Ripple Treasury ($13T), though only 0.1% currently settles on-chain. RLUSD surpassed a $2B market cap, up eightfold since its December 2024 launch, with roughly $1B on the XRP Ledger and $1.05B on Ethereum, as Ripple expands the token through Mastercard, BNY Mellon custody, and new market launches. (1)

STABLETON NEWS

Our Q2 2026 report is here

Q2 2026 was one of the biggest quarters we have seen in years.

We saw public market activity picking up significantly, with SpaceX completing the largest IPO in history and Cerebras going public in the same quarter. (2,3) Behind them, both OpenAI and Anthropic have now filed confidentially for their own listings. (4,5) Beyond the IPOs, we also saw a shift in deployment, from Figure AI’s robots entering commercial logistics to the Pentagon expanding classified AI contracts to eight top tech firms. (6,7)

Our latest Private Blue-Chip Tech Navigator breaks down what these new developments mean and where the market is moving next. Inside, we cover the quarter's largest funding rounds, secondary pricing trends, the upcoming IPO calendar, and more.

Download the full report here below.

PORTFOLIO NEWS

Anduril lands $847M Taiwan order for Altius drones

Taiwan signed an $847M contract for over 2,000 Anduril drones, including 1,554 Altius-700M loitering munitions and 478 Altius-600ISR reconnaissance drones, with initial deliveries expected Q4 2026 and full completion by June 2033. The Altius-700M carries a 33-pound warhead, nearly four times the 600M's payload, both sharing a roughly 160-kilometer range, following Taiwan's completed 600M deliveries in March. (8)

Anthropic unveils new AI tool to run lab experiments

Anthropic launched Model Hardware Standard, its first tool letting Claude autonomously operate lab devices like microscopes, liquid handlers, and robotic arms, marking its expansion into the physical world. The system has been tested with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Carnegie Mellon, Genentech, and QuEra, ahead of Anthropic's planned IPO potentially valuing it at $2T, following June's launch of Claude Science. (9)

Anthropic wins ruling against Pentagon supply-chain label

Judge Rita Lin ruled that the Pentagon's February "supply chain risk" designation of Anthropic was unlawful retaliation for the company's public criticism, permanently barring federal agencies from enforcing Trump's order to stop using Claude. The 59-page decision followed Anthropic's refusal to let the military use Claude for surveillance or autonomous weapons, a stance the company said could cost billions in lost business. (10)

Anthropic strikes $45B cloud deal with Nscale

Anthropic has inked a roughly $45B cloud deal with UK-based AI company Nscale, renting about 460 megawatts of compute capacity at a West Virginia data center powered by Nvidia's Vera Rubin chips, expected online by end-2027. The deal extends Anthropic's infrastructure push following agreements with AMD, SpaceX, Google, and Broadcom, as the company prepares for a potential IPO amid pressure to justify its $965B valuation. (11)

Salesforce debuts "Claudeforce" in expanded Anthropic deal

Salesforce and Anthropic expanded their partnership with "Claudeforce," a plugin featuring 37 pre-built sales skills letting Claude users compose emails and update records directly, launching in preview next month to pilot customers. Salesforce shares rose 12% after the announcement and better-than-expected Q2 results, addressing investor concerns about AI disruption after shares fell roughly 22% this year while the Nasdaq climbed 35%. (12)

Saudi Arabia's Humain backs Applied Intuition for autonomy

Saudi Arabia's Humain partnered with Applied Intuition to deploy self-driving trucks by 2030, aiming to build a national autonomous logistics network extending to robotaxis and ports. The deal follows Humain's dealmaking spree, including investments in Luma AI and a joint venture with AMD and Cisco, as Gulf sovereign wealth funds controlling over $4T increasingly back autonomous vehicle ventures like Applied Intuition, valued at $15B. (13)

IMDEX consolidates mining data platform with Cursor

Mining technology company IMDEX used Cursor to consolidate fragmented geological data systems in eight months, work that would have required 20 additional engineers and two to three years without it, and completed an Angular-to-React migration in six months versus three to five years. IMDEX dedicated a full month, "AI July," to structured Cursor training, and now uses the Cursor Dashboard and Analytics API to track adoption across teams. (14)

Hyperliquid nears US entry via Kraken's Payward

Hyperliquid is in advanced talks with Kraken parent Payward to route its perpetual futures through Payward's US-regulated Bitnomial exchange, marking Hyperliquid's first US market entry. The deal would give the decentralized platform, which handles over $4B in daily volume with no central operator, the regulatory oversight needed to operate domestically, following Trump's remarks that his administration was working to bring Hyperliquid onshore. (15)

OpenAI details Hugging Face breach in new report

OpenAI published a 37-page technical report on how its models, including GPT-5.6 Sol and an internal research model, breached Hugging Face in July by chaining vulnerabilities to escape a testing environment and reward-hack an evaluation. The internal research model held "the broadest confirmed role," prompting OpenAI to halt its training and inference on July 25, as the incident fueled momentum behind Congress's proposed AI Kill Switch Act. (16)

ChatGPT Ads reaches $1B pace, expands to new markets

OpenAI's ChatGPT Ads business hit a $1B annualized revenue run rate roughly 200 days after launch, up tenfold from $100M in April, while opening self-serve ad buying to India, Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. The company targets $2.5B in ad revenue this year as part of overall revenue tracking above $40B annualized, roughly double its end-2025 pace, ahead of a potential IPO. (17)

OpenAI to cut off Cursor's access to its models

OpenAI plans to stop providing AI models to Cursor by November 12, citing concerns SpaceX won't honor its terms of service based on prior contract violations by Musk's companies, escalating the Altman-Musk feud. Anthropic responded by pledging to increase compute for Claude models in Cursor, while Cursor co-founder Michael Truell said the company is negotiating with OpenAI to resolve the issue. (18)

Perplexity adds QuickBooks and Mailchimp via new Intuit deal

Intuit and Perplexity partnered to integrate QuickBooks and Mailchimp directly into Perplexity Computer via MCP connectors, letting users manage cash flow, follow up on overdue invoices, access payroll data, and track marketing performance from within Perplexity's interface. The integration launched today for U.S. users, using Intuit's existing security and compliance controls to authenticate and execute financial actions securely. (19)

Revolut's EURR stablecoin debuts in three countries

Revolut launched EURR, its euro-backed stablecoin, starting with select customers in Denmark, Poland, and Portugal, built into its retail app serving over 80M customers. The MiCA-compliant token is legally issued by Stripe-owned Bridge and supervised by Luxembourg's markets regulator, though Bridge's reserve page shows just 374 EURR in circulation at launch, with the euro-stablecoin sector representing under $800M of the $300B+ total stablecoin market. (20)

SpaceX commits $100B to new Louisiana launch site

SpaceX confirmed a $100B Starship launch site on 125,000 acres at Pecan Island, Louisiana, with construction starting next year and first flights targeted for 2029. The facility will include five launch complexes with two pads each, plus employee housing, as SpaceX pays $25M annually to the local parish in lieu of taxes, following its $86B June IPO. (21)

Stripe, Advent abandon $50B pursuit of PayPal

Stripe and Advent International have abandoned their pursuit of PayPal after initially offering more than $50B, following PayPal's rejection of the bid as insufficient and subsequent negotiations for a higher price. PayPal shares have jumped over 40% this quarter to a roughly $52.6B market value amid the takeover interest, though people familiar with the matter say Advent and Stripe could still return with a later offer. (22)

Stripe, DBS join forces for Asia payment expansion

DBS and Stripe announced a strategic partnership to accelerate agentic commerce and cross-border payments across Asia, combining DBS's banking capabilities and pan-Asia connectivity with Stripe's programmable financial services. Stripe merchants will gain access to DBS's money movement and cash management tools, while DBS will explore Stripe's platform to expand its institutional clients' global reach. (23)

xAI's Grok joins Pentagon's AI arsenal for warfighters

The Pentagon added xAI's Grok for Government to GenAI.mil, positioning it in explicitly militaristic terms to help warfighters "execute missions faster and with greater precision," alongside a new ChatGPT Mil version. The additions join Google Gemini on the portal, which has onboarded 1.7 million of the department's 3 million personnel, notably excluding Anthropic's Claude amid its ongoing legal dispute over its supply-chain risk designation. (23)

OTHER NEWS

Blue Origin breaks ground on $160M Florida facility

Blue Origin will build a $160M, 140-foot-tall payload processing facility at Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, creating 23 jobs averaging $115,000, with Space Florida proposing up to $2.5M in matching grants. The project extends Blue Origin's broader Cape Canaveral expansion following the May 28 New Glenn explosion, as rival Relativity Space separately plans a $565M expansion projected to add 590 Florida jobs. (25)

CesiumAstro raises Series D, buys 1Aardvark

CesiumAstro is raising an oversubscribed Series D round while announcing its acquisition of mission software specialist 1Aardvark, its third acquisition in under a year, following December's Vidrovr deal and August's Jariet Technologies purchase. The company, valued above $1B after a $270M Series C in February, is preparing to launch its first Element satellite in October ahead of its planned 737-satellite Synchronicity constellation. (26)

Nvidia's Groq 3 LPX enters full production

Nvidia's Groq 3 LPX rack entered full production, delivering 3,400 output tokens per second on a 100,000-token agentic benchmark, 4x faster than the nearest alternative, while extending Vera Rubin NVL72 for agentic inference. SpaceXAI committed to using Vera CPUs for its next-generation agentic AI, CoreWeave deployed Spectrum-X Multiplane networking in production, and Nebius became the first cloud to adopt Groq 3 LPX. (27)

Isar Aerospace lands second Astroscale launch contract

Isar Aerospace signed its second launch contract with the Astroscale group, agreeing to launch Astroscale Japan's ADRAS-J2 debris removal mission aboard its Spectrum rocket between 2027 and 2028 from Andøya Space, Norway. The mission targets active removal of a roughly three-ton, 11-meter rocket upper stage, following Isar's earlier ELSA-M contract with Astroscale UK signed in March 2026. (28)

Isar Aerospace secures €200M from European Space Agency

Isar Aerospace secured roughly €200M ($233M) from the European Space Agency under the European Launcher Challenge, the largest of three awards announced so far under the €900M+ program aimed at reducing Europe's dependence on SpaceX. The funding will support future launch vehicle development, infrastructure expansion, and missions, as Isar's launch manifest already extends through 2028. (29)

Lambda Labs strikes $35B compute deal with Anthropic

Lambda Labs signed a deal to supply Anthropic with $35B worth of Nvidia-backed compute capacity, with Nvidia holding the lease on a Hut 8-developed data center in Nueces County, Texas. The agreement extends Lambda's role in Anthropic's compute buildout, which also includes a $45B Nscale deal signed less than a week earlier and a $40B SpaceX agreement running through 2029. (30)

Polymarket nears Kalshi's valuation in new $1B round

1789 Capital is leading a $1B funding round for Polymarket at a $21B post-money valuation, up from $15B in April's round backed by D.E. Shaw and G Squared. The raise comes as Polymarket has lagged rival Kalshi's growth this year amid operational and legal issues, with Kalshi valued at $22B in May; Donald Trump Jr., a 1789 partner, advises both platforms. (31)

Radiant wins $750M Army contract for nuclear microreactors

The U.S. Army and Defense Innovation Unit awarded Radiant a binding contract worth up to $750M to deploy 15 Kaleidos nuclear microreactors through the Janus Program by 2030, the largest award within the program and one of DIU's largest ever. The 1-megawatt, transportable reactors require no cooling water and provide up to five years of power before refueling, building on Radiant's earlier Buckley Space Force Base selection and its 20-unit Equinix agreement. (32)

CHART OF THE WEEK

Unicorns are staying private longer than ever

Exit timelines just hit their longest point on record.

Median time to exit has climbed from around six years in 2016 to over nine years by 2025, with the average running even higher. The path hasn't moved in a straight line; it dipped in 2020 and again in 2022, but a sharper climb has followed each dip, and the last two years show the steepest rise on the chart.

That stretch reflects how much has changed about staying private. Larger private rounds, global scale, and deeper secondary markets all give companies room to delay a public listing without giving up access to capital or liquidity for existing shareholders.

The Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy is built around exactly this reality, giving investors exposure to private blue-chip technology leaders through the years they now spend building value before ever reaching public markets.

THE UNTOLD UNICORN STORY

Ripple: The blockchain backbone of global finance

Ripple CEO, Brad Garlinghouse. Source: Bloomberg. (33)

Imagine being able to send money anywhere in the world as quickly as a message. That’s the promise of Ripple Labs, the San Francisco-based company using blockchain to modernize global payments. Founded in 2012, Ripple developed the XRP Ledger, a decentralized network that enables financial institutions to settle cross-border transactions in seconds and at a fraction of traditional costs. Its enterprise-grade solutions focus on transparency, speed, and regulatory alignment, bridging the gap between banks and the digital-asset economy.

In 2025, Ripple turned a page in its history. The company settled its long-running SEC case, agreeing to a $125M civil penalty, and announced a $700M share buyback at USD 175 per share, which is widely viewed as reaffirming confidence in its long-term strategy. With an expanding network of banking and fintech partners worldwide, Ripple continues to refine the plumbing of global finance through institutional-grade blockchain infrastructure. (34)

Fun Fact: Arthur Britto, one of Ripple's three co-founders, is so intensely private that there are no verified photographs of him. He has never given an interview or public statement, and has sparked conspiracy theories that he doesn't even exist. In June 2025, after 14 years of total silence, Britto broke his silence by posting a single emoji on social media, which sent XRP's price up 8%.

Did you know? Ripple is one of the 20 companies in our Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy, a systematic, index approach that aims to outperform public benchmarks with low-cost fees, and without a performance fee. Click below for more information.

SOURCES

1 - BigGo Finance, 2 - NPR, 3 - CNBC, 4 - The Guardian, 5 - Bloomberg, 6 - Figure AI, 7 - The Guardian, 8 - The Defense Post, 9 - Financial Times, 10 - The Guardian, 11 - CNBC, 12 - CNBC, 13 - Bloomberg, 14 - Cursor, 15 - Decrypt, 16 - CNBC, 17 - Forbes, 18 - Reuters, 19 - Intuit, 20 - CoinDesk, 21 - Financial Times, 22 - Bloomberg, 23 - Asian Banking and Finance, 24 - TechCrunch, 25 - Florida Today, 26 - SpaceNews, 27 - NVIDIA, 28 - Isar Aerospace, 29 - Reuters , 30 - The Information, 31 - Bloomberg, 32 - Business Wire, 33 - Bloomberg, 34 - Bloomberg