Key Markets & Headlines — Thursday, September 3, 2026

Daily market briefing for 2026-09-03.

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Key Markets & Headlines

Key markets and headlines for today.

The most market-moving story this morning centers on Google, as a federal judge has ruled that the company does not have to sell off its advertising exchange. Instead, Google must make its ad tech tools work with those operated by rivals. This decision spares the tech giant from a second attempt by the Justice Department to force a breakup of its advertising technology business. US District Judge Leonie Brinkema issued her decision under seal, accompanied by a short order rejecting the DOJ’s bid to force a sale of Google’s AdX. Instead, she ordered behavioral changes to Google’s business, though the specifics have not yet been made public. The redacted decision is expected later this month. The judge’s ruling follows an April 2025 finding that Google illegally monopolized two advertising technology markets. The DOJ had wanted Google to sell its exchange and make public the auction logic that determines which ads appear on websites. However, Brinkema rejected that option, opting to accept most of the behavioral changes recommended to her. Google’s vice president of regulatory affairs, Lee-Anne Mulholland, said the company is pleased the court rejected the proposal to break apart tools that help small businesses reach new customers and grow. The judge has ordered the parties to meet and file a joint final judgment proposal within thirty days. If they cannot resolve their differences, they should include their respective proposals. Much of the order remains sealed for two weeks to allow for redactions if necessary.

Turning to other major corporate headlines, Adobe has acquired India-based marketing intelligence company Rilo in a deal involving licensing and team acquisition. The move gives Adobe a team and technology focused on automating marketing workflows. Following the acquisition, Rilo will shut down and will not be available to customers. In a separate announcement, Adobe revealed that customers can now use its apps—including Firefly, Adobe Express, Photoshop, Premiere, Acrobat, InDesign, Illustrator, Stock, and Lightroom—directly with Slack’s AI chatbot, Slackbot. More than seventy Adobe tools will become available in Slack through the Adobe for Slack MCP app. With this integration, users can describe what they want to do, and Slackbot will call the right Adobe tool to complete the task. Initially, this will be available to Slack Business Plus and Enterprise Plus teams. Last month, Adobe introduced a similar integration for ChatGPT and is planning to launch a Gemini integration soon.

In the world of artificial intelligence, Anthropic has reportedly patched its relationship with the Trump administration, signaling a possible end to months of sharp differences over security concerns. US Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick indicated that ties with the company have improved after the Commerce Department briefly imposed export controls on Anthropic’s top two AI models, Fable 5 and Mythos 5, earlier this year. Those curbs were lifted after Anthropic addressed national security concerns. The company is now laying the groundwork for an initial public offering that could rival or surpass the size of SpaceX’s record-setting IPO. However, it remains unclear whether the improved relationship with the administration extends to the Defense Department, which earlier this year declared Anthropic a supply-chain risk and moved to end military use of the firm’s AI tools.

Berkshire Hathaway CEO Greg Abel has promised long-term support for five Japanese trading houses after the conglomerate increased its stake in each to more than ten percent in recent years. Speaking from Japan, Abel said Berkshire expects the companies’ underlying earnings to continue growing, with potential increases in dividends and share repurchases. He emphasized that this is a long-term investment intended to be held for many decades. Berkshire also aims to benefit from the AI boom by serving hyperscalers’ data center energy needs through its utility, Berkshire Hathaway Energy.

ByteDance has secured a twenty-nine point six billion dollar loan, making it Asia’s second-largest dollar-denominated borrowing this year. The Chinese tech giant, a leader in developing artificial intelligence technology, initially sought a twenty billion dollar facility but increased the size after strong commitments from banks. The proceeds will be used mainly for general corporate purposes, and the company is considering boosting capital spending to as much as seventy billion dollars this year—more than double last year’s total—to expand its data centers and other AI infrastructure. The loan deal attracted more than thirty billion dollars of orders before the commitment deadline, reflecting strong interest from lenders.

Coinbase is adding Anthony Armstrong, an Elon Musk ally and former Morgan Stanley banker, to its board of directors. Armstrong most recently served as chief financial officer of Musk’s companies, including xAI and X. He joins Coinbase as the crypto industry continues to recover from a deep slump that began last year. Armstrong previously spent about a decade at Morgan Stanley, which advised Musk’s acquisition of Twitter and led the financing. He later followed Musk to the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, and was hired as CFO for Musk’s companies.

Friedkin Group is working with advisers on a potential stake sale in Everton Football Club. The process is at an early stage and could result in new investors buying a significant stake in the club.

Waymo, Alphabet’s autonomous driving unit, is in the final stages of talks to raise more than three billion dollars in debt for the first time. Lenders include Pacific Investment Management, Blackstone, and Sixth Street Partners. The debt will be unrated and could price at more than five hundred basis points over the benchmark. Waymo has been working with Goldman Sachs to finalize the deal, which could be completed in the coming days.

Kalshi plans to seek regulatory approval for an oil-linked futures contract that never expires, bringing a product popular in crypto markets into the traditional energy sphere. The contract, linked to the West Texas Intermediate benchmark, is set to be filed with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission as soon as next week. If approved, it would be the first contract of its kind to trade on a regulated US platform. The contract would trade twenty-four hours a day, five days a week, rather than the nonstop schedule offered for its crypto-linked perpetual contracts.

UBS analyst Leonardo Olmos has initiated coverage of Liberty Latin America with a Neutral rating and a nine dollar price target. The company combines strong telecom positions across the Caribbean and Central America with a differentiated regional networks platform. However, the analyst believes the stock’s valuation, which represents a thirty percent premium to its Latin America peers, already reflects much of its free cash flow improvement.

Medici Brands, the maker of the popular low-calorie, zero-sugar David protein bars, has raised two hundred fifty million dollars in a funding round that values the company at two point two five billion dollars—three times its valuation last year. Parent company Medici Brands will use the new funding to develop and scale more low-calorie, low-sugar food brands. Both David and HallPass, a low-sugar candy brand launched last week, use EPG, a fat alternative that helps keep calories low while maintaining rich flavors. David, which became available in mid-2024, is on track for more than three hundred million dollars in revenue this year and sells its products in more than thirty-five thousand retail locations.

Meta has released its most powerful artificial intelligence model yet, with its chief AI officer saying its capabilities are edging closer to top competitors. Developers can now access and pay for Muse Spark one point three, an updated version of its most advanced model. The update will soon roll out to users of Meta’s social media platforms, including Instagram and Facebook, as well as Meta AI. Meta’s Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang highlighted advancements in the model’s coding and agentic capabilities, saying the update puts Meta on par with recently released AI models from OpenAI and Anthropic. Wang said Muse Spark one point three is competitive with Anthropic’s Claude Fable five point one and better than OpenAI’s GPT-five point six Sol, especially for coding. OpenAI is expected to release a new, even more advanced model known as Astra soon. Meta has not yet decided whether to release the Muse Spark one point three’s weights, which would allow outside developers to download, run, or build upon the model. The company still plans to release weights for the prior version, Muse Spark one point two. Meta remains on track for the development of its larger, highly anticipated model, Watermelon.

Beijing-based startup Moonshot has confidentially filed for a Hong Kong initial public offering, aiming to raise three billion dollars. The developer of the Kimi large language model is in talks with Microsoft, Amazon, and Google on revenue-sharing agreements that would allow US cloud companies to host the model. Such a deal could mark the first big revenue-sharing pact between a Chinese AI firm and a major US cloud company. Moonshot has been valued at fifty billion dollars in an ongoing funding round.

Microsoft will begin disclosing quarterly revenue for its Azure cloud business for the first time, giving investors a clearer picture of its business that competes with Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud. The change is part of a broader shift in Microsoft’s reporting structure, trimming its operating segments from three to two. Under the new structure, Azure revenue grew forty-two percent to twenty-nine point four two billion dollars in the June quarter. That means Azure represented almost thirty-three percent of Microsoft’s total revenue in the latest period. Management expects fiscal first-quarter Azure revenue to grow forty-four to forty-five percent at constant currency.

In sports, the NBA has stripped the Los Angeles Clippers of five first-round draft picks and suspended owner Steve Ballmer for one year after finding the team circumvented salary cap rules by facilitating sponsorship agreements between outside companies and star player Kawhi Leonard. Leonard was fined seven hundred thousand dollars but not suspended. The Clippers were also fined thirty million dollars, the largest financial penalty in league history. Multiple executives within the organization were suspended, and the team will be subject to compliance and monitoring for the next five years. NBA Commissioner Adam Silver expressed deep disappointment in the violations and the leadership failures that led to the misconduct.

The NFL and TikTok have announced a multi-year extension of their partnership ahead of the 2026 season to expand the league’s official presence and fan engagement on the platform. The expanded deal will see the NFL participate in TikTok GamePlan to build dedicated league hubs and maintain its placement on the Pulse Premiere advertising platform. TikTok’s Pro Events framework will also launch a dedicated NFL fan hub featuring exclusive content, trending videos, and interactive fan rewards.

UK-based neocloud provider Nscale is informing prospective investors that its total contracted revenue has expanded to approximately one hundred three billion dollars, bolstered by a landmark forty-five billion dollar computing deal with Anthropic. The Nvidia-backed infrastructure firm could launch an initial public offering as soon as this month, using the massive backlog to demonstrate sustained enterprise demand for specialized AI compute capacity. Nscale had previously disclosed fifty-one billion dollars in contracted revenue before finalizing the Anthropic agreement and landing additional commitments from other AI-native clients. The signed lease contracts carry an average duration of five point seven years, equating to an annualized average of roughly eighteen billion dollars, though these metrics are illustrative and not formal revenue guidance. Internal documents show rapid sequential acceleration in Nscale's business, with second-quarter revenue estimated to have topped one hundred million dollars.

On the legal front, the Trump administration has submitted a brief supporting OpenAI in its dispute with the New York Times and other newspapers over the AI firm’s use of their work to train large-language models. The administration argues that AI training typically makes fair use of copyrighted materials. This is the first time the White House has weighed in on the wave of cases brought by various copyright owners.

In a separate legal development, victims from the Tumbler Ridge massacre have filed thirty lawsuits against OpenAI over its failure to alert police about ChatGPT interactions with the suspect months before the February mass shooting in Canada. The lawsuits build on seven filed in April by families of victims from the shooting. They allege that OpenAI acted negligently, violated product-liability standards, and aided and abetted the massacre. The Wall Street Journal previously reported that OpenAI considered alerting law enforcement about the suspect’s interactions with ChatGPT but ultimately decided not to contact authorities until after the shooting.

A House panel has voted to subpoena Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison for information about the company’s role in the Veterans Affairs Department’s electronic health records system. The House Veterans’ Affairs Committee voted unanimously to seek testimony from Ellison and CEO Mike Sicilia about the system. Several members questioned the increased size of the contract for Oracle, which is now the prime contractor on the VA’s system. The contract ceiling was raised by sixteen point nine billion dollars in August and now totals twenty-six point nine billion dollars. The Government Accountability Office cited Oracle for not implementing past recommendations on the rollout.

Peter Zaffino, executive chairman of American International Group, is stepping down from the insurer’s board and will join Palantir Technologies as global head of financial services. Palantir expects Zaffino to drive growth across its financial-services business, including insurance companies, banks, asset managers, private-equity firms, and other financial institutions. Palantir recently raised its full-year outlook after reporting that its revenue nearly doubled in the second quarter. Zaffino, who retired as AIG’s chief executive earlier this year, will become a senior adviser at AIG.

Recently retired NBA star Russell Westbrook has joined Project B, a startup aiming to create a global basketball league. Westbrook will be an equity holder, co-founder, chief strategy officer, and board member. He retired last month after eighteen seasons and contracts worth nearly three hundred fifty million dollars, the eleventh-highest total in NBA history. Project B adds to Westbrook’s growing business interests, which include working with a group building a sports and entertainment district in Oklahoma City, investing in English Premier Club Leeds United, and fashion brand Honor the Gift. Project B is backed by institutional investors and individuals, including former NFL star Steve Young, pro tennis player Sloane Stephens, and David Krane, CEO of GV, formerly Google Ventures.

Snowflake shares surged more than twenty percent in extended trading after the company raised its outlook for annual sales, topping analysts’ estimates, and highlighted rapid adoption of its AI-assisted coding tool. Product revenue for the year ending in January will be about six point zero seven billion dollars, up from its May forecast and above analysts’ average projection of five point eight six billion. Product sales make up about ninety-five percent of the company’s total revenue. More than two thousand customer accounts started using CoCo during the quarter, bringing the total to ninety-one hundred. For the quarter ending in July, product revenue increased thirty-seven percent to one point four nine billion dollars, beating analyst estimates. Remaining performance obligations, a measure of bookings, were nine billion dollars.

TikTok has dropped out of an upcoming meeting with the House Select Committee on China on national security issues, citing unrelated child-safety litigation. The bipartisan roundtable was set for September fifteenth and was to focus on lawmakers’ questions about TikTok’s US business, which was spun out earlier this year from China-based ByteDance to majority-American owners under a national security deal. TikTok had agreed to send its chief security officer, Will Farrell, to discuss how the new venture is safeguarding TikTok’s algorithm and Americans’ data from Chinese influence, but backed out on August twenty-seventh. The cancellation raises questions about the algorithm, access to Americans’ data, and the extent of Chinese Communist Party influence over TikTok.

Elliott has built a sizeable stake in Deutsche Telekom and indicated the German telecommunications giant should abandon a potential merger with its American arm T-Mobile US. The activist investor instead wants Deutsche Telekom to consider alternative ways to unlock shareholder value, including larger share buybacks. This stance puts Elliott at odds with Deutsche Telekom CEO Tim Hoettges, who has been working on bringing the company closer to T-Mobile via a full combination to create the world’s biggest phone company. Deutsche Telekom holds a roughly fifty-three percent stake in T-Mobile. The plan has already faced headwinds, with T-Mobile executives expressing concerns over a tie-up.

Uber Technologies is cutting about three thousand three hundred roles, or ten percent of its staff globally, in a massive restructuring aimed at reducing management layers and reallocating spending into its ride-sharing, delivery, and robotaxi businesses. The cuts will reduce the number of managers by twenty percent, with some being moved to individual contributor roles. CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said the changes will generate savings that Uber intends to reinvest in growth, innovation, and key capabilities for the coming years. The layoffs could result in annualized savings of one point five to two billion dollars, though heavier investment in autonomous vehicles may limit the near-term margin benefit.

In a related development, Delivery Hero’s board has voted to accept a takeover offer from Uber Technologies, moving the nearly fifteen billion dollar deal for the German delivery platform another step toward completion. Delivery Hero’s directors said the offer is in the best interest of shareholders and the forty-one point five zero euro per-share price is fair. The shareholder acceptance period expires on November fifth. Uber announced the agreement in July as part of its move to expand global operations. The company already owned a direct stake of about twenty-five percent and said the transaction would need regulatory approval.

Proofpoint, backed by Thoma Bravo, is in talks to acquire cybersecurity company Varonis Systems. This would be one of the biggest technology take-privates since the steep selloff in software stocks earlier this year. Proofpoint is negotiating the terms of a potential deal with Varonis, which has been working with advisers to field takeover interest. A transaction could be announced in the coming weeks, assuming talks don’t fall apart. No final agreement has been reached, and another bidder could emerge. Varonis shares rose ten percent to close at forty-six dollars and seventy-six cents, giving the company a market value of about five point four billion dollars.

Uber and Wayve have launched supervised autonomous rides in London, marking the first time autonomous trips are available in the United Kingdom. Londoners requesting an UberX, Uber Electric, or Uber Comfort may be matched with a Wayve ride at no extra cost, with upfront fares shown in-app. Riders matched with a Wayve ride will travel in an all-electric Ford Mustang Mach-E vehicle equipped with the Wayve AI Driver and surround sensors. The in-vehicle experience, designed by Uber, features an interactive screen available in sixty-four languages where riders can start their trip and view the vehicle’s planned path.

Israeli-Dutch AI startup Wonderful has raised five hundred fifty million dollars in a Series C funding round, giving it a valuation of five billion dollars—more than double its two billion dollar valuation from six months ago. Insight Partners led the round, with participation from existing investors and Salesforce joining for the first time. Wonderful will use the new funds to develop products faster, expand its FDE teams, and meet growing demand.

Turning to macro headlines, Abu Dhabi-based artificial intelligence firm G42 has held exploratory talks with potential investors to raise billions of dollars. The firm already counts Mubadala Investment, Silver Lake, and Microsoft among its investors. No final decisions have been made on the structure or size of the potential capital raise. G42 operates businesses spanning cloud computing, data centers, and AI applications, and has forged partnerships with some of the world’s biggest technology companies. Abu Dhabi is already a major investor in AI and related infrastructure through MGX, which aims to invest as much as ten billion dollars in the sector each year.

The Bank of Japan is leaning toward raising its benchmark interest rate by a quarter point this month in response to upward price risks, while leaving open the possibility of accelerating the pace of hikes thereafter. Officials will consider an increase in the policy rate from one percent at the two-day meeting ending September eighteenth. They continue to see inflation risks as skewed to the upside, with service prices and ongoing weakness in the currency strengthening the case for action. For now, officials see economic developments broadly in line with their outlook and do not see the need for a larger move of half a percentage point.

Broadcom is predicting a boom in artificial intelligence chip sales over the next two years, helping renew optimism that it can challenge Nvidia’s dominance in the market. AI chip revenue is expected to double to about one hundred fifteen billion dollars in fiscal 2027 and soar to two hundred thirty billion dollars the following year. CEO Hock Tan said the company is on track to top earnings of thirty dollars a share in fiscal 2028, outpacing Wall Street estimates. Tan noted that demand for chips is higher than what Broadcom can ship, particularly due to supply shortages.

On the geopolitical front, President Vladimir Putin said Russia and Ukraine maintain contacts even as he gave little sign that they’re making progress on a peace deal. Speaking at the Eastern Economic Forum in Vladivostok, Putin said Russia and Ukraine should come to an agreement between themselves first and foremost, though other countries including the US and China are ready to help. Contacts with Kyiv are continuing mostly at the security services level, though it’s difficult to say whether they’ll lead to a peace agreement. Putin said there is a chance for a deal, but Ukraine’s threat to disrupt air traffic to Russia complicates the possibilities for bilateral negotiations. US-led peace talks have stalled since February as President Donald Trump has focused on the war with Iran. Russia has intensified missile and drone attacks on Kyiv and other Ukrainian cities after concluding that negotiations are at a dead end in the war, now deep into its fifth year.

Turning to event-driven news, Accelevation Holdings has filed for an initial public offering, joining a rush of offerings from fast-growing companies exposed to the boom in artificial intelligence data centers. The Olympus Partners-backed maker of infrastructure, thermal management, and power products for the data center market reported net income of eighteen point eight million dollars on revenue of four hundred thirty-seven point five million dollars for the six months ended June thirtieth, compared with a net loss of eight point seven million dollars on revenue of one hundred fifty-eight point six million dollars a year earlier. The company reports a backlog of contracts and purchase orders worth about one point one billion dollars at the end of June. Olympus Partners will continue to hold the majority of shareholder voting power after the IPO.

CVC Capital Partners has raised ten billion dollars for its latest secondaries fund, the largest pool it has ever amassed for buying and selling private equity assets on the second-hand market. The secondaries market has boomed as more private equity firms find themselves stuck with hard-to-sell assets, with deals in this area surging to a record one hundred twenty-one billion dollars in the first half of the year. Carlo Pirzio-Biroli, head of CVC’s secondaries strategy, said there’s continued support for secondaries, which has become an asset class of its own, and investors are ramping up their allocations. There’s a massive opportunity set, with several trillions of capital trapped in unsold private equity holdings.

Definitive Healthcare said it has received a notice of interest from Advent International to acquire the company for one dollar and two cents a share. Advent, a private-equity firm, would pay in all cash and would bring the healthcare market data provider private. Shares of Definitive Healthcare jumped fourteen percent in premarket trading. The company has formed a special committee of independent directors to consider the potential deal.

A unit of Jefferies has won a worldwide freezing order against Radiant World and its founder Pinkesh Nahar. The freezing order from the UK’s High Court is the most significant move yet by a creditor against Radiant World, which is facing a growing list of legal difficulties. Several top commodity firms have moved to cut ties with the company amid concerns it had provided falsified documents to banks to secure finance. Jefferies’s Point Bonita fund was financing invoices related to both parties but was informed by trading counterparties that the documents were not genuine. In Singapore, Radiant World and Nahar are also being sued by a local trade finance firm, while Mizuho Bank has applied to put its main operating unit under judicial management, a form of debt restructuring.

Plus Automation, an artificial intelligence company developing self-driving technology for trucks, is set to go public through a business combination with a special purpose acquisition company backed by funds managed by Yorkville Advisors Global. The transaction values PlusAI at eight hundred million dollars on an equity basis before the merger with the SPAC, Texas Ventures Acquisition Three. The deal is expected to provide up to about three hundred million dollars in capital, mostly from the SPAC’s trust of about two hundred thirty-six million dollars. The deal also includes more than sixty million dollars of fully committed financing, with a significant portion coming from funds managed by Yorkville Advisors, alongside new and existing investors.

Looking at key charts and data points, in 2026 so far, debt issuance by the five hyperscalers plus Nvidia is approximately three hundred twenty billion dollars, according to JP Morgan.

In the Eurozone, European gas storage is abnormally low as winter approaches, especially in Germany, raising concerns about energy security as colder months near.

Equities markets are seeing sharply higher volumes, driven by zero day options and increased use of options by wealth managers to create income and manage tax liabilities.

On the bull market front, only two of the nine items on the Strategas bull market top checklist are checked off today, suggesting that, for now, the market remains in a healthy position.

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