AI wobbles and Iran strikes Bahrain again

Happy FRIDAY, ladies and gentlemen. We’re shipping you off into the weekend with the same two themes that seem to have taken over most of our mornings (and evenings) for what now feels like an eternity: The speed bumps in AI Land and — you guessed it — Iran.

Jensen Huang’s resignation from Nvidia briefly rattled markets yesterday, but investors quickly concluded the AI boom is bigger than one man. Nvidia shares fell 14% at the open after Huang stepped down over a series of affairs, including one with a woman US intelligence suspects of spying for China.

The stock recovered to close down 4.3%, as investors weighed AI demand and looked for companies that could benefit from the turmoil, Bloomberg reports. Rival chipmakers Broadcom and AMD were among the S&P 500’s biggest gainers on bets they’ll pick up any business Nvidia loses. CFO Colette Kress is now interim CEO while the board looks for a permanent replacement.

In around a week’s time, investors will have another major name in the market to pour into. Anthropic’s shares are expected to start trading on Nasdaq on or around next Thursday, 19 November at a price that would value the whole company at up to USD 1.4 tn — a bit less than some investors had hoped, Reuters reports. It’s only selling a small slice of itself, but that could still bring in as much as USD 64.4 bn, CNBC says. Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, and other tech giants are buying an extra USD 26 bn of its shares.

Investors will be watching how Anthropic’s shares sell to judge whether Wall Street is still bullish on AI. They’re a little jumpy right now. AI stocks have only partly bounced back from last week’s post-midterm selloff, as we noted on Tuesday. That selloff is already hitting Gulf wallets. Abu Dhabi’s Mubadala may be down about USD 17.5 bn on its AI wagers since the end of June, while Saudi Arabia’s PIF is down about USD 5.64 bn, according to estimates by consultancy GlobalSWF first reported by Semafor.

Meanwhile, in our neck of the woods, a tanker carrying LNG hit a mine while crossing through the Strait of Hormuz and “suffered an explosion,” Reuters reports, after Iranian media reported yesterday that another four tankers faced attacks while in the strait. Outside the strait, the attacks are also continuing, with Iran hitting a US early-warning radar in Bahrain, according to Reuters. –Salma