Live: Anthropic to hit stock market with 'eye-popping' growth and massive losses

The AI giant behind Claude, Anthropic, has revealed huge revenue growth but widening losses while filing to list on Wall Street.

US tech stocks led a rally buoyed by the float news. However ASX futures are seesawing.

Follow the day's financial news and insights from our specialist business reporters on our live blog.

Disclaimer: this blog is not intended as investment advice.

Oil prices retreated after Friday's strong gains, amid signs of easing hostilities in the Middle East. Still, prices remained near recent highs as persistent attacks on key producer Saudi Arabia kept traders wary. The Houthi group in Yemen said on Monday it had attacked Saudi Arabia's East-West crude oil pumping stations and Riyadh airport.

As mentioned, Wall Street was up ahead of tech earnings - but it was a different story in Brazil where historic losses were posted. The country's stock exchange halted trading via a circuit breaker after President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva's reelection. His opponent refused to concede.

In Europe, stocks rebounded on corporate optimism, led by gains in British technology services provider Computacenter and Danish biotech Genmab.

It's a bit of a wild time, as Chris Weston, Pepperstone's head of research, puts it:

"The combination is formidable: megacap earnings, AI funding concerns, global semiconductor results, five major central bank meetings and potentially market-moving inflation and growth data. The danger isn't simply that markets move sharply. It's that one catalyst changes the interpretation of the next, creating feedback loops across equities, rates, FX and volatility."

As for interest rates - it's assumed the US Federal Reserve will hold at the next opportunity but with an 80% chance of a hike in December. Goldman Sachs says the biggest contributing fact is oil futures:

"The more extreme and long-lasting the energy shock becomes, the more Fed participants will worry that inflationary pressures could broaden."

Yesterday we brought you news that retailer Myer has told employees that when it moves to a new office just around the corner from the ABC in Melbourne, everyone will be in it.

That is, work-from-home (WFH) is essentially dead, with exceptions on a person-by-person basis for people with illness, caring responsibilities or mega-commutes.

It's another flashpoint in a long-running issue that was meant to be settled.

A key case about the Clerks Award, the broad agreement about the rights and conditions of people working in administration, was meant to provide a definitive answer about this.

Essentially employees can ask for WFH. Employers must answer.

But it doesn't clear up if there is a clear entitlement to the right.

Here's a note from Ryan Murphy of McInnes Wilson Lawyers about the end of the case:

"Will this give all employees a standalone 'right' to work from home? No. Will it actually change a whole lot? Potentially not."

"So, does the new clause in the Clerks Award create a right to work from home for all? No, we don't think so.

"By saying that an 'employee may request, and an employer may agree to', the proposed new clause is softer than the flexible work right in the Act. Indeed, the proposed Award clause anticipates that an employer may not agree to an employee's work from home request.

"What the clause may do, however, is broaden the scope of those who have a right to request to work from home. That presents the possibility that employees will seek to rely on this 'right' in disputes if an employee feels they have been treated less favourably because they have made the request."

The analysis from software firm Employment Hero spells it out pretty clearly:

"Can a request be refused? Yes. Because clause 5A operates on a consensual basis, an employer can decline a request. The clause does not set a response time, a requirement to give reasons, or rules around having to have any grounds for refusal."

So no 'right' but the reality that most employers and employees will negotiate.

As ever, the best bosses are not the ones that say yes to everything but those who are open to anything.

Anthropic disclosed steep losses and red-hot revenue growth in its filing for a US initial public offering (IPO).

The AI lab is pushing ahead with its listing plans even as a once-lively IPO calendar has slowed, with recent market volatility prompting companies to delay offerings. (Think: Firmus.)

Anthropic's filing comes as investors increasingly dissect the potential payoff from massive AI spending.

"Today's all about the Anthropic release, so we're back on a little bit of an optimistic tilt, I would say," said JP Powers, chief investment officer at RWA Wealth Partners in Boston.

"But there's a lot in that release. It will be interesting to see how well things are received when they actually come to list. The risk is maybe a little bit of a whipsaw if things aren't all moving in the same direction."

This comes ahead of a big week for US tech — more than a third of S&P 500 companies are scheduled to report earnings this week, including hyperscalers Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon, whose results will be parsed for signs of whether the hefty AI investments are translating into growth.

Wall Street has rebounded as oil continues the decline.

It's been a shaky time for markets worldwide as they try to work out what these AI stocks are really worth. Meanwhile, Anthropic throws itself into the fray and files for an IPO.

The morning is off to a stellar start — let's get cracking!