ONE BIG THING

Anthropic needs Amazon-level earnings to justify its $2 trillion valuation—and it’s nowhere near that

The awkward part of the $2 trillion Anthropic IPO is that the company reportedly isn’t making any net income yet. At valuation multiples common to large-cap companies in the Nasdaq 100, Anthropic would need to post annual profits in the neighborhood of $59 billion to $79 billion to keep pace. It is nowhere near that right now, Fortune’s Amanda Gerut reports. 

At $2 trillion, Anthropic’s valuation on the scale of Amazon's, at $2.86 trillion. Amazon’s Q2 revenues ($200.6 billion) generated $62.6 billion of net income.

Anthropic looks like a minnow next to Amazon. The Wall Street Journal reported that Anthropic’s second-quarter 2026 revenue would more than double to $10.9 billion, and the company would for the first time post an operating profit, which is not the same as net earnings.

• Very little is known about Cami Clark, Dario Amodei’s wife and one of his closest advisers. As the WSJ puts it in a must-read story today: “It’s a remarkable rise for a woman who didn’t graduate from college, had a previous brief marriage, at age 20, to a man more than 40 years older and once declared bankruptcy. Her career has included co-founding a women-focused ‘free luxury porn’ company that she unsuccessfully tried to persuade convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein to invest in.”
• Buried in OpenAI’s latest research: No correlation between AI use and revenue per employee - Fortune’s Emily Forlini
• OpenAI’s Annualized Revenue Tops $40 Billion Ahead of IPO - Bloomberg
• OpenAI Replaces Chief Revenue Officer After Just 8 Months - NYT

MORE FROM FORTUNE

Billionaire Joshua Kushner just bought the Lakers for $12.5 billion—OpenAI’s Sam Altman once said he ‘doesn’t care’ what others think - Orianna Rosa Royle

This matchmaker went viral when her $35,000 client took a date to a soft pretzel restaurant—but he wasn’t subject to the ‘bald tax’ or the ‘short tax’ - Eva Roytburg

Dating apps are swiping left on the features that made them as Gen Z looks for love in real life - Tatiana Sataua

A small Texas company’s bid to create a Greenland oil boom—and a Dr. Phil documentary—is delayed but undaunted - Jordan Blum

Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky says AI writes 60% of its code—and sustaining ‘founder mode’ is the key to winning in the age of AI - Sarah Glodek

Billionaire Home Depot cofounder Bernie Marcus’ foundation donates nearly $30 million toward stem cell research for heart attacks - Sydney Lake

Prediction markets’ reputation comes back to earth after surprise result in Wisconsin - Camila Grigera Naón

THE MARKETS

Flat is the new up

• S&P 500 futures are flat this morning. The index rose 0.65% yesterday. 
• In Europe, the Stoxx 600 was flat in early trading, and the U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.15% before lunch.
• Asia: South Korea’s KOSPI was up 2.42%. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was up 0.59%. India’s Nifty 50 was flat. China’s CSI 300 was flat. 
• Brent crude was $87 per barrel this morning.
• Bitcoin was $62.8K.

UNSOLVED MYSTERIES OF THE FED

Did Kevin Warsh, who is against forward guidance, give forward guidance to the FT?

At Macquarie, Thierry Wizman and Gareth Berry have been forensically dissecting a week-old article in The Financial Times about Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh. It reported that “people close to Warsh” and “people familiar with his thinking” (hmm!) admitted that Warsh had a rocky first 10 weeks at the central bank, as illustrated by the jump in long-term Treasury yields after Warsh failed to convince the markets he was serious about hitting the Fed’s 2% inflation target. 

The Macquarie pair believes the Fed will deliver an interest rate rise later this year, because inflation has been higher than 2% for five straight years.

“There was also an important signal last week that Warsh is taking corrective action following the July press briefing and the loss of credibility that ensued,” the analysts said in a note seen by Fortune.

The August 6 article said Warsh is “prepared to raise rates at September’s meeting if inflation readings released in coming weeks are hot, and markets ratchet up their expectations for increases in borrowing costs.” 

“That's not specific enough to be a representation of the Fed's reaction function, but it does sound specific enough to suggest that it was an intentional disclosure intended to do damage control, rather than an attempt on the part of the Fed's ‘hawks’ to justify their views,” the analysts said. “Of course, if the FT disclosure was planted by Warsh, it also exposed another mistake—i.e., his willingness to offer guidance only as ‘damage control’ after market pricing reflected confusion over his original lack of a policy outlook.”

AI’S DOWNSIDE SURPRISES

Three-quarters of every AI dollar leaves the country

Don’t tell the president, but three-quarters of every dollar invested in AI ends up spent on imports to the U.S., according to a research paper from Jessica Rindels and David Mericle at Goldman Sachs. The bank estimates that $600 billion will be spent building out AI services this year, the equivalent of 2% of GDP. However, because most AI equipment needs to be imported, the dollars spent on it end up in foreign countries—which is negative for GDP. When that spending is minused out, AI only adds 0.5% to GDP, as this chart shows:

AI is driving inflation, too

And that’s not all. AI is driving inflation, not curing it, according to Bank of America. Some economists—including Fed Chairman Kevin Warsh—are hoping that AI will make workers so much more productive it will lower prices across the economy in much the same way that adding extra workers to the labor market would.

But in July’s CPI inflation number, core goods rose 0.2%, driven in part by a 1.4% increase in electronic goods.

“The AI investment boom is inflationary in the near-term,” BofA’s Stephen Juneau said in an email. 

“AI is not only raising input costs for electronics, but also driving a positive wealth effect that is supporting consumer demand. The disinflationary effects of AI that Chair Warsh has been touting will have to wait a little longer.”

CHART OF THE DAY

The U.S. deficit was getting better—until it suddenly got worse

The U.S. Treasury reported a budget deficit of $432 billion for July, much larger than in the same month last year when it was only $291 billion. Fiscal year-to-date, the total deficit is $1.799 trillion—at this point last year it was “only” $1.629 trillion. As this chart from Nancy Vanden Houten at Oxford Economics shows, the 2026 fiscal year was shaping up to have smaller deficits than 2025, until very recently. What happened? “Tax cuts, tariff refunds, and increased defense spending boost the deficit,” she said. Her second chart shows that spending versus revenue went in opposite directions:

NUMBER OF THE DAY: New founders who start at the bottom

1 in 4

The share of new businesses whose founders come from low-income households, according to Bank of America. That’s up from one in five in 2020. Why the improvement? “As AI becomes embedded in certain tasks, founders may be finding it easier to launch and manage businesses with fewer resources, potentially lowering some of the traditional barriers to entry,” according to BofA’s Liz Everett Krisberg and David Tinsley.

THE FRONT PAGES TODAY

JPMorgan debanked Polymarket over regulatory concerns - FT

U.S. to use economic tactics on Iran ‘that have never been seen’; Navy works to relieve troubled carrier USS Abraham Lincoln - CNBC

House Democrats rage over GOP stock trading "set-up" - Axios

How Trump and Musk Rekindled a Relationship That Seemed Beyond Repair - WSJ

Trump Gives Green Light to U.S. Companies to Aim Hacks at Cybercriminals - NYT

Meet the 17-year-olds behind the finance world’s favorite Gen Z newsletter - NY Post

ONE MORE THING

Insider trading, but make it a subscription

When asked about Trump Media & Technology Group’s plan to feed the president’s social media posts in advance to Wall Street firms willing to pay for a head-start on his market-moving statements, Gian Luca Clementi of the NYU Stern School of Business told us: “I’ll be blunt … This is insider trading by definition.” It might also be unconstitutional—and the White House has already been sued over it.

Yet more than 10 companies have signed up for the service, most of them high-frequency trading firms, paying between $60,000 and $100,000 per month. That sounds like a lot—until you realize that back in April, when Trump posted he would pause planned strikes on Iranian infrastructure, it led to a $1.5 trillion stock market rally. Fortune’s Sasha Rogelberg reports.

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