Dear Trader,
For most of the last decade, Akamai was the company that made websites load faster. Nobody ever brought it up at the bar. Then Anthropic signed an $11.6 billion deal with it Thursday afternoon, and the stock added as much as 20% before dinner.
Meta's having a week of its own. Shares climbed about 16% after the launch of Muse, its AI agent, and now sit a few bucks shy of a record close. Hans Albrecht wrote about Muse on Tuesday, back when Amazon was blocking it from shopping on its site.
AI companies keep writing enormous checks, and the stocks on the receiving end move in hours. I want to know who gets the next one.
That's why you should tune in when Mark Sebastian goes live today at 10 AM ET.
He's bringing Hans on to hash out where the AI money heads next and whether there's a trade before the headline hits.
They'll also run through all three stories below, oil included.
This link adds State of the Market to your calendar.
The Daily News Breakdown
SNEAKER: Anthropic just signed an $11.6 billion, seven-year cloud deal with Akamai Technologies (AKAM), and the stock jumped as much as 20% after hours Thursday. That stacks on top of $2.8 billion in cloud commitments Akamai already booked this year.
Anthropic also walks away with a warrant (the right to buy stock later at a locked-in price) on up to about 5% of Akamai at $111.33 a share. Roughly 2% vests with this deal, and the rest unlocks if Anthropic spends up to another $9 billion. So the customer earns a piece of the landlord just by paying rent.
Akamai has to front the cash, though: about $5.5 billion in buildout costs, with $1.7 billion hitting this year to lock down parts like memory.
SIGN: Meta Platforms (META) ran about 16% this week on Muse, its AI agent, and now sits roughly $10 below its August 2025 record close. KeyBanc's Justin Patterson raised his target to $900. He figures the stock trades at 21 to 23 times forward earnings (what you pay for each dollar of next year's expected profit), right around its historical norm.
Investors have short memories. Meta sank more than 8% in April after raising its AI spending forecast and dropped another 8% on a July quarter one analyst called barely passable.
Toss in a 47-state social media addiction settlement in August and the $73 billion metaverse bonfire. Every time shareholders panic, Zuckerberg cuts costs and pivots, and the stock climbs back out.
SIREN: Oil slipped early Friday as traders leaned into talk of a US-Iran truce, even with Houthi missiles flying at Saudi Arabia. Brent (the global benchmark) fell 74 cents to $105.85, and WTI (the US benchmark) dropped 81 cents to $93.80. Both had jumped as much as 5% on Thursday.
Negotiators in New York are reportedly working on a phased exit from the war: Iran reopens the Strait of Hormuz, and Washington lifts its blockade. Iran's president told Fox News the timing's up to America, which is a diplomatic way of saying "your move."
Saudi Arabia shot down six Houthi ballistic missiles aimed at Taif and the Yanbu export hub. Since the war started in February, about a fifth of the world's oil and gas shipments have been choked off.