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Anthropic’s IPO filing shows how much it depends on its rivals
Anthropic says it relies more and more on Google, Amazon and Microsoft to sell its AI to customers (Bloomberg). Europe weighs a €10bn plan to fly its own astronauts
European governments are deciding whether to fund independent crew and cargo launches before the 15 December European Space Agency summit in Rome, according to Euronews.
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Transcript
JOHN: Welcome to The Gist. It is Monday, October 26th, 2026. I am John.
MARY: And I am Mary. We are here to give you the news, cut the noise, and figure out who is really pulling the levers today.
JOHN: Let us start with The Gist View. Anthropic is the company behind the Claude AI assistant. They just filed for an IPO. That is an Initial Public Offering, meaning they are selling shares to the public.
MARY: But the real story is where that investor money goes. Anthropic listed three main ways they reach customers: Google, Amazon, and Microsoft. Those three are rivals. But they are also Anthropic’s biggest investors and its main suppliers of computing power.
JOHN: Follow the money here. Amazon already put eight billion dollars into Anthropic. Microsoft has a deal to sell Anthropic thirty billion dollars worth of cloud computing space by November 2025.
MARY: So, when Anthropic raises money from the public, a huge chunk of it flows right back to Google, Amazon, and Microsoft to pay computing bills. The cloud providers hold all the cards. They control Anthropic’s route to the customer.
JOHN: Exactly. And that gives the tech giants leverage over Anthropic’s pricing. They will take a commission on every AI sale. That commission determines if Anthropic actually makes a profit.
MARY: It reminds us of a company called Zynga back in 2011. Zynga made massive games, but they sold almost all of them through Facebook. Facebook owned the digital toll booth. By late 2012, Zynga’s stock had crashed.
JOHN: Right now, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft sell the digital shovels. They do not care which AI model wins the gold rush. Google sells its own Gemini AI. Amazon sells its Nova models. Microsoft sells ChatGPT. They just need Anthropic alive and buying server space.
MARY: Let us move to the Global Overview. Verizon just had a great quarter. They added 406,000 monthly phone lines. It was their best third quarter in five years. But Wall Street did not care. Verizon shares actually fell 2.8 percent.
JOHN: Why the drop? One word: Starlink. SpaceX is launching a Starlink Mobile service. It beams satellite internet directly to regular cell phones.
MARY: Investors are looking ahead. If a satellite company can bypass traditional cell towers, Verizon loses its pricing power. The stock market is pricing in that future threat, rather than celebrating today’s new subscribers.
JOHN: Next, a look at labor and your wallet. The Wall Street Journal opinion page highlights a shift in immigration enforcement. Tougher border rules mean fewer available workers in farming, construction, and food service.
MARY: It is simple supply and demand. Fewer workers means businesses have to offer higher wages to hire people. And businesses do not just absorb those costs. They pass them straight onto the consumer. American shoppers are the ones who will ultimately pay for tighter border security at the grocery checkout.
JOHN: Up in the sky, NASA is making noise by staying quiet. Test pilot Mike Lippert just flew the X-59 for an hour. The X-59 is an experimental aircraft designed to fly faster than sound without making a massive sonic boom.
MARY: Regulators currently ban commercial supersonic flight over land because the noise shatters windows and disrupts cities. NASA is gathering flight data. If they can prove the plane is quiet enough, regulators might lift the ban. That would open up a highly lucrative market for ultra-fast travel.
JOHN: Turning to the European Perspective. Europe is weighing a ten-billion-euro plan to fly its own astronauts.
MARY: Right now, the European Space Agency hitchhikes. European astronauts fly on American rockets. That means Washington sets the schedule and Washington sets the price. Europe wants independence. They will decide on funding at a summit in Rome on December 15th.
JOHN: But look at the incentives. That ten billion euros mostly flows back to massive aerospace contractors in the countries footing the bill. The countries paying the most expect the biggest contracts in return. That political horse-trading will shape the final rocket design much more than pure science will.
MARY: Speaking of local economies, let us look here in Germany. The Ifo institute tracks economic data. Their price expectations index tracks how many businesses plan to raise prices. It just jumped from 21.4 in August to 22.7 in September.
JOHN: The head of research there expects inflation to climb back above three percent this winter. Oil prices are up due to shipping blockades. Gas and power prices hit their highest levels since late 2022. Utilities are going to hike your heating bills.
MARY: Here is who wins and who loses. Businesses can change their prices quickly to protect their profit margins. Regular wage earners and pensioners cannot. They are forced to absorb the delay and eat the extra costs.
JOHN: And speaking of pensioners, there is a fierce fight brewing over retirement here in Germany. The Verdi trade union is pressing the Labour Minister to keep penalty-free retirement at age 63.
MARY: The conservative bloc wants to make cuts to early retirement. But their proposed compromise hits women the hardest. Women generally take more time out of the workforce for caregiving, so they have shorter contribution records.
JOHN: Tighter eligibility rules would penalize them the most. The resulting savings would flow straight to the federal budget and the national pension fund, at the expense of female retirees.
MARY: Finally, we head to Italy. The Ferretti Group builds luxury superyachts. They just received the very first single authorization under Italy’s new Special Economic Zone, or SEZ, regime.
JOHN: An SEZ is an area with special tax breaks and looser rules to attract business. Ferretti used this permit to expand their shipyard in Ancona. Instead of navigating a maze of different local approvals, they got one master key.
MARY: If this single-permit system actually works in practice, it is a huge draw. Manufacturers will have a massive incentive to expand in Southern Italy and Adriatic ports rather than dealing with red tape elsewhere in Europe.
JOHN: That is the big picture today. So, what is the temperature? Today, the toll collectors are winning. Whether it is cloud computing giants taking a cut of the AI boom, or Wall Street betting satellites will eat traditional cell towers, controlling the infrastructure means controlling the future. Meanwhile in Europe, political bargaining is shaping everything from space rockets to retirement ages, and the everyday consumer is left footing the bill for higher inflation.
MARY: Thanks for spending a few minutes with us. If you found today’s episode useful and want to stay one step ahead every morning, we would love for you to join The Gist’s daily newsletter. It is completely free, and the subscribe link is right there in your show notes. Just tap it, drop in your email, and you are good to go. We will catch you tomorrow!
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