Citizens Reiterates Microsoft Market Outperform, $550 Target on AI Strategy

Alphabet has added Anthropic's Claude Opus 5.5 to Google Cloud, a move that comes as the company's shares slipped 2.8% to $337.6795. According to Anthropic, typical workloads on Claude Opus 5.5 cost 40% less to run than on Opus 5, with output arriving more than 30% faster. Input tokens are priced at $4 per million and output tokens at $20 per million. Reuters also reported the launch. Google can earn cloud revenue from customers who choose Claude even when they pass over its own Gemini models, though the question is whether more usage and infrastructure spending make up for cheaper model calls. GuruFocus notes that its $251.63 GF Value sits 34.2% below the displayed share price, leaving investors little room for disappointing returns on AI spending.

Meta's new Muse AI agent has reached 2.8 million downloads in its first 12 days across the US and Canada app stores, according to Sensor Tower data, surpassing ChatGPT's 1.3 million downloads over the same early window. Muse also set a new US daily download record of 264,000 on Sept. 19, its third straight day above 200,000, and has surged to the top spot on Apple's App Store. Shares of Meta have rallied by some 20% over the past two weeks as Muse mania has taken hold across markets and social media. All eyes now turn to CEO Mark Zuckerberg at his annual Meta Connect event later today, where investors expect details on how Muse will be integrated into Meta's smart glasses and fresh download and usage data. Meta Chief AI Officer Alexandr Wang has said usage is running well ahead of internal projections, framing Muse as the biggest consumer AI launch since ChatGPT. Separately, Gary Cohn, vice chair at IBM and former economic adviser to President Trump, said on Yahoo Finance's Sozzi Unleashed that he is not comfortable giving up his personal data and is not yet ready to use Muse in his daily life.

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic carry a combined $5.2 trillion valuation that exceeds the combined first-day market value of every U.S. technology IPO from 1980 through 2025, a group of 3,365 offerings worth $4.07 trillion as compiled by University of Florida professor Jay Ritter. SpaceX alone holds a market capitalization of almost $2.1 trillion following its June IPO, in which it raised $85.7 billion, while privately held OpenAI is discussing a new funding round at a valuation of roughly $1.2 trillion, up from $852 billion in March, and privately held Anthropic is reportedly targeting about $2 trillion for a potential IPO now anticipated in November. The comparison carries a large asterisk: SpaceX has a live public-market valuation, OpenAI's figure is a proposed private financing valuation, and Anthropic's is a prospective IPO target. OpenAI projects $278 billion of negative free cash flow from 2026 through 2030, with revenue forecast to rise from $36 billion in 2026 to $350 billion in 2030 against about $856 billion of computing infrastructure spending, while Anthropic expects revenue of as much as $18 billion this year and $55 billion in 2027 but has pushed back positive cash flow until 2028. Apollo Global Management chief economist Torsten Slok warned clients that major technology companies could need to triple their cash flow by 2030 to sustain the industry's AI infrastructure spending, and that otherwise the AI trade could weaken, credit spreads widen, capex plans be cut, and U.S. GDP growth slow.