Anthropic Strikes $35B Lambda Deal, Figure Commits $3.5B to Nscale, Anduril and Palantir Win $192M Army Contract

Compute and defense drove the headlines this week. Anthropic locked in a $35B Lambda compute deal, Figure AI committed $3.5B to Nscale ahead of its IPO, and Anduril and Palantir landed $192M for the Army's TITAN program. Let's dive in…

THIS WEEK’S BREAKING NEWS

Anthropic's $35B Lambda deal taps Nvidia-backed cloud

Anthropic agreed to a $35B computing deal with Nvidia-backed Lambda, with Hut 8 developing the Texas data center and Nvidia holding the lease, extending a compute-buildout spree that also includes $45B with Nscale, $50B with Fluidstack, and a reported $45B with SpaceX. Lambda is separately in talks to raise up to $3B at a valuation near $12B, as Nvidia also invested $3.5B in MediaTek this week, its largest direct investment outside the US. (1)

STABLETON NEWS

Stableton surpasses USD 1 billion in assets

Our first $500 million took 7 years. The second took 10 months.

Less than 8 years ago, Stableton managed nothing at all. It was two co-founders and a belief that index investing could work for the world's most valuable private blue-chip tech companies, the same way it works in public markets.

What started as a Swiss-only offering is now expanding across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with the US planned as the next market. The team is growing, and relationships with banks, wealth managers, family offices, and institutional investors continue to deepen.

$1 billion is a starting point. Our flagship systematic funds have reached scale, and the next generation of offerings and partnerships is already taking shape.

A firm like ours is built on trust extended before the results are in. To everyone who extended it, as an investor, a partner, a distributor, a team member, or a reader: thank you.

Read the full press release below.

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

Hermeus taps Anduril autonomy for Quarterhorse drone

Hermeus will equip its Mach 3 Quarterhorse drone with Anduril's Lattice autonomy suite, with flight testing set to begin next year under a Pentagon Defense Innovation Unit-funded program. The partnership provides Anduril an "end-to-end" autonomy solution testbed on a high-speed platform, expanding its addressable market beyond the Air Force's Collaborative Combat Aircraft program, though both companies declined to disclose deal terms. (8)

Anduril and Palantir land $192M Army TITAN order

The Army awarded Palantir and Anduril a combined $192M in delivery orders for eight more TITAN targeting platforms over 18 months, pushing the AI-powered ground station system into production. Palantir received $127M for the broader system, while Anduril received $65M for hardware and vehicle integration, building on Palantir's original $178.4M 2024 prototype contract, with additional production awards expected in fiscal 2027. (9)

Anthropic nears Morgan Stanley, Goldman for $2T IPO

Anthropic is close to naming Morgan Stanley as lead left and Goldman Sachs as stabilization agent for its IPO, with a prospectus expected as soon as next week and trading possibly beginning late September or early October. Investors expect the offering to value Anthropic at $2T or more, surpassing SpaceX's $1.78T debut, though July's revenue hit a $65B annualized pace, below the most bullish $80B projections. (10)

Anthropic's IPO timeline shifts to mid-October

Anthropic's IPO marketing is now expected to begin mid-October at the earliest, completing days before U.S. midterm elections, pushing back the previously expected late-September prospectus filing. The AI lab is finalizing a $15B revolving credit facility ahead of analyst meetings, with Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Citi among the banks involved, as investors anticipate a listing potentially valued at $2T. (11)

Cerebras breaks ground on 165MW Finland data center

Cerebras began construction on a 165MW data center campus in Mikkeli, Finland, with partner Compute Nordic Finland, starting with an initial 50MW phase before scaling to 80MW and then full capacity. The €1-1.7B ($1.16-1.97B) project uses closed-loop cooling with waste-heat recovery, part of Cerebras's plan to reach 200MW in Europe by 2027, as the company reported $210M in quarterly revenue against a $450.4M net loss. (12)

Figure commits $3.5B to Nscale ahead of its IPO

Figure AI, which has raised under $2B and lacks disclosed revenue, committed $3.5B for AI compute from Nscale, with intent to scale to $6B, days before Nscale's reported IPO roadshow seeking $3B at a ~$25B valuation. Nvidia invests in both companies while supplying the underlying GPUs, and Nscale's contracted revenue jumped from $51B to $103B after the Anthropic and Figure deals, against just over $100M in actual Q2 recognized revenue. (13)

LSEG partners with Kraken's Payward on tokenized shares

LSEG plans to launch tokenized UK shares and partner with Kraken parent Payward to list xStocks on its upcoming LSE 24 platform in 2027, pending regulatory approval. The move follows LSEG's blockchain settlement service announcement in February and comes amid pressure from activist investor Elliott Management, as rival Deutsche Boerse separately took a $200M, 1.5% stake in Kraken in April. (14)

Kraken parent Payward delays IPO to Q2 2027

Kraken parent Payward has delayed its IPO to Q2 2027 at the earliest, extending a hold placed in March amid weak crypto market conditions, joining Grayscale, Consensys, and Ledger in postponing listings. Payward confidentially filed its S-1 in November 2025 after raising $800M at a $20B valuation, and has since posted $508M in Q2 adjusted revenue while continuing acquisitions including Bitnomial, Reap, and Magic Labs. (15)

OpenAI launches GPT-6 Astra, claims AGI milestone

OpenAI launched GPT-6 Astra, claiming it's state of the art at computer use, coding, and math, rolling out first to Daybreak enterprise clients before ChatGPT Plus, Pro, Business, and Enterprise subscribers. President Greg Brockman said the model may mark the start of the AGI era, while chief scientist Jakub Pachocki warned that monitoring model alignment is growing harder and could constrain future scaling ahead of OpenAI's planned IPO. (16)

Ramp joins AWS Marketplace with new AI finance tools

Ramp signed a strategic collaboration agreement with AWS, becoming available on AWS Marketplace to give customers a faster path to adopting its AI-powered finance platform, including expense management, bill payments, and AI Token Spend Management for tracking LLM API costs. The partnership embeds Ramp's AI agents for continuous, auditable automation of expense coding, policy enforcement, and invoice processing across enterprise finance operations. (17)

Revolut wins conditional U.S. banking license approval

Revolut received conditional approval from the U.S. OCC for a national bank charter, a major step toward launching a fully fledged American bank in Stamford, Connecticut, by the first half of 2027. The fintech will inject roughly $95M in capital, hire around 160 employees, and plans to offer checking accounts, installment loans, credit cards, and a stablecoin, following recent French and UK banking licenses. (18)

Ripple shifts $1.36M in RLUSD toward Ethereum

Ripple rebalanced $1.36M in RLUSD from the XRP Ledger to Ethereum via coordinated burn-and-mint transactions, extending Ethereum's growing lead in RLUSD supply to 57.3% ($1.38B) versus XRPL's 42.7% ($1.03B). The move comes as total RLUSD circulation reached $2.396B as of September 3, alongside a scheduled 1B XRP token unlock and record XRPL network activity in August. (19)

Grok Bot's "Haggle Bot" saves over $100K in procurement

SpaceXAI built "Haggle Bot" on Grok Bot to autonomously audit vendor spend across roughly 125 vendors, identifying over $100,000 in savings, including $14,220 and $85,662 from unused SaaS seats and a 58% reduction on a $14,629 tech order by shopping across Amazon, Costco, Uline, and Walmart. The bot handles research and negotiation autonomously but requires human approval before spending money or sending vendor communications. (20)

OTHER NEWS

Blue Origin wins $700M NASA Mars orbiter deal

NASA awarded Blue Origin a $700M contract to build a Mars Telecommunications Orbiter, launching in just over two years as part of NASA's Mars Telecommunications Network. Built on Blue Origin's Blue Ring spacecraft platform with hybrid solar-electric and chemical propulsion, the orbiter will provide continuous, high-speed Earth-Mars communications, with Blue Ring vehicles already in production at a rate of four per year in Huntsville, Alabama. (21)

ByteDance secures $29.6B loan, Asia's second-largest this year

ByteDance secured a $29.6B loan, upsized from an initial $20B target after strong bank demand, marking Asia's second-largest dollar-denominated loan this year behind SoftBank's $40B March bridge loan. The three-year facility, extendable to five, carries a 68 basis point margin over SOFR, ByteDance's lowest yet, as the company weighs boosting AI capex to as much as $70B this year. (22)

Crusoe raises $3B, signs $13B Jane Street deal

Crusoe raised $3B at a $30B valuation, up sharply from $10B just 10 months earlier, co-led by Atreides Management and Valor Equity Partners with Mubadala Capital participating. The round follows a $13B, five-year cloud deal to supply Jane Street with GPUs and AI infrastructure, as Crusoe separately explores a potential IPO with Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. (23)

Isar Aerospace becomes first European firm to reach orbit

Isar Aerospace became the first European commercial space company to reach orbit and deploy payloads, successfully launching its Spectrum rocket on its second flight, "Onward and Upward," from Andøya Space, Norway. The mission carried satellites selected through the German Space Agency's Microlauncher Competition, as Isar Aerospace continues building a Nova Scotia launch site and a production facility capable of manufacturing up to 40 launch vehicles annually. (24)

Samsung leads Mistral's $3.5B round at new valuation

Mistral raised €3B ($3.5B) led by Samsung, alongside the Scaleup Europe Fund and PSG Equity, reaching a post-money valuation above €21B, up from €11.7B a year earlier. CEO Arthur Mensch said the funding will build out Mistral's own data centers, aiming to grow owned compute roughly 100% over five years, with annual recurring revenue expected to exceed the $1B target set earlier this year. (25)

Replit opens first international office in London

Replit opened its first international office in London's King's Cross Knowledge Quarter, marking its European hub as the company plans to double headcount and investment there over the coming year. The 2016-founded platform, used by over 60M users and 85% of the Fortune 500, counts PwC, Ernst & Young, and Mercedes-Benz among its European enterprise customers, and will partner with The Lord Mayor's Appeal to train 100 disadvantaged young Londoners in coding skills. (26)

VAST Data, CrowdStrike expand AI security partnership

VAST Data and CrowdStrike expanded their partnership, integrating CrowdStrike's Falcon security platform with the VAST AI Operating System to protect enterprise data feeding AI models and agents. The Falcon sensor integration is now generally available, while ties to Falcon Next-Gen SIEM and Falcon Guardian, which detects prompt injection and jailbreak attempts, remain in private preview, building on their original February partnership. (27)

CHART OF THE WEEK

The secondary market keeps outgrowing itself

Public listings still dominate exit value, but secondaries are one of the few categories still growing every single quarter.

Most of that volume trades directly between buyers and sellers, not through GP-led vehicles, and it's concentrated in a handful of names. OpenAI and Anthropic are both preparing IPOs at trillion-dollar valuations and will keep driving volume until they list. SpaceX already made that jump.

That concentration cuts two ways. A few companies' timelines can move the whole market. But it also means the liquidity is flowing straight through the private blue-chip leaders investors most want exposure to.

The Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy targets exactly those leaders, giving investors direct exposure to where secondary demand concentrates most.

THE UNTOLD UNICORN STORY

Figure AI: Creating the future of human-robot collaboration

Brett Adcock, Founder & CEO of Figure AI. (28)

Figure AI is redefining the future of work through humanoid robotics. Founded in 2022, the company’s mission is to build general-purpose robots that can think, move, and assist in the real world.

At the heart of Figure’s progress is Helix, an AI system that combines vision, language, and action. It allows robots to interpret complex commands, understand their surroundings, and operate safely alongside people. Backed by partners such as OpenAI, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and BMW, Figure is rapidly advancing from research to large-scale deployment. Their vision is ambitious: create machines that complement human labor, performing useful tasks across industries from manufacturing to logistic. (29)

Fun Fact: Figure 01 learned to make coffee by watching just 10 hours of video footage of humans doing it. In a demonstration at Figure's San Francisco headquarters, when asked to make coffee, the robot responded autonomously operated a Keurig machine, all while self-correcting its own mistakes in real time.

Did you know? Figure AI 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 - The Wall Street Journal, 2 - NPR, 3 - CNBC, 4 - The Guardian, 5 - Bloomberg, 6 - Figure AI, 7 - The Guardian, 8 - Breaking Defense, 9 - DefenseScoop, 10 - Financial Times, 11 - Reuters, 12 - Data Center Dynamics, 13 - Forbes, 14 - Reuters, 15 - CoinDesk, 16 - WIRED, 17 - PR Newswire, 18 - Reuters, 19 - BigGo Finance, 20 - xAI, 21 - SpaceNews, 22 - Bloomberg, 23 - TechCrunch, 24 - Isar Aerospace, 25 - CNBC, 26 - PR Newswire, 27 - HPC Wire, 28 - AP News, 29 - CNBC