Oracle Credit Insurance Hits Record High as AI Spending Fears Mount

Palantir Technologies and Nebius Group announced a strategic partnership on September 8 to bring Nebius's AI-native compute infrastructure into Palantir's commercial platform. Palantir designated Nebius as its preferred sovereign AI infrastructure partner, integrating Nebius compute and inference endpoints directly inside the Palantir enterprise perimeter. The alliance allows commercial clients to deploy open AI models and run compute-heavy workloads while maintaining strict control over proprietary data, and the companies will also collaborate on modular data center deployments to rapidly scale compute capacity where power is available. For Palantir, the deal provides dedicated high-performance compute capacity supporting its rapid U.S. commercial expansion and 157% net dollar retention rate, while for Nebius it validates its full-stack AI cloud infrastructure and unlocks direct access to Palantir's enterprise customer base. The partnership carries execution and capital risks for both sides, with Palantir facing higher hosting and delivery expenses and Nebius remaining subject to persistent EBIT losses and negative free cash flow as it aggressively builds out data centers and acquires GPUs.

Akamai Technologies Inc. announced an $11.6 billion seven-year contract with artificial intelligence giant Anthropic, sending its shares up as much as 20% in after-hours trading on Thursday. The agreement will support Anthropic's CPU workload requirements through Akamai Cloud's distributed AI infrastructure and software, and adds to more than $2.8 billion in multi-year Cloud Infrastructure Services commitments Akamai announced earlier this year. Under the deal, Akamai issued Anthropic a warrant for non-voting convertible Series B Preferred Stock representing 7.7 million shares of Akamai common stock on an as-converted basis, or up to approximately 5% of the company's outstanding common stock, at an exercise price of $111.33 per share. About 2% of Akamai's common stock outstanding is expected to vest in connection with the $11.6 billion commitment, with the remaining approximately 3% vesting through expansion of the commitment up to an additional $9 billion within the seven-year warrant term, at roughly 1% of outstanding common stock for each additional $3 billion of cloud services purchased. Total capital expenditures related to the $11.6 billion commitment are estimated at approximately $5.5 billion, and the company expects no impact to its 2026 revenue guidance alongside an increase of approximately $1.7 billion in 2026 capital expenditures to secure and pre-purchase critical supply chain components, including memory.

Akamai shares surged about 13% in after-hours trading after Anthropic struck a $12 billion deal with the company for AI computing, with Akamai also discussing longer-term capital expenditure plans. The move made Akamai the biggest after-hours mover, climbing roughly 14%. In the regular session, Oracle fell 3.5% after sending a force majeure notice to a project developer, a unit of Blue Owl Capital, regarding a massive data center being built in New Mexico, a step tied to meeting power commitments that could delay rent for Oracle even as it would still owe the rent for the full lease term once payments begin. GoDaddy rose about 4.6% after the Financial Times reported that Gen Digital, the maker of Norton 360 antivirus, made an offer for the company in a deal that would roll up a number of major legacy software brands, though the talks are in early stages and may not lead to a deal; Gen Digital shares fell more than 12%. MGM Resorts dropped 11% after Barry Diller's People Inc dropped plans to acquire the rest of the casino giant, with Diller saying the mix was not coming together as hoped. Everpure was the top S&P 500 gainer, closing up about 11% after the data storage company forecast 2028 revenue above the average analyst estimate, drawing price target hikes from Citi to 160 from 130 a share and from B of A to 180 from 150 a share.