WSJ: Disruptive AI Company Challenges "Burn Rate" Logic, Anthropic Expects Explosive Revenue Growth in Q2

NEW YORK, May 21 (Bloomberg) — Kalshi Inc. has received an additional $200 million in funding from two new investors, expanding the size of its ongoing financing round, a source familiar with the matter told Bloomberg. The new backers are Layer Global, led by Anton Levy, and Baillie Gifford, both making their first investments in the prediction market platform, the source said on condition of anonymity due to the private nature of the negotiations. Earlier this month, Kalshi announced on May 7 that it had closed a $1 billion funding round led by Coatue Management, which valued the company at $22 billion post-investment.

May 21: SoftBank Group’s stock price surged nearly 20% in early Tokyo trading, driven by news that OpenAI plans to submit an initial public offering (IPO) application. On the same day, SB Energy—SoftBank’s second portfolio company, which develops energy infrastructure for data centers—announced it will confidentially file a registration statement for a U.S. IPO. SoftBank has a close financial partnership with OpenAI: it holds an approximate 13% stake in the AI firm, with cumulative investments totaling around $64.6 billion through its Vision Fund. Insiders revealed that OpenAI expects to submit its IPO application in the coming weeks, targeting a public listing this fall.

South Korea’s stock market rallied sharply on May 21 after Samsung Electronics – the world’s largest memory chip maker – reached a preliminary deal with its labor union, eliminating the imminent strike threat it had faced. The benchmark KOSPI index surged as much as 6.4% on Thursday, with Samsung’s share price climbing nearly 7%. Its competitor SK Hynix jumped by up to 8.4%. A South Korean trading platform temporarily paused program trading for the KOSPI and KOSDAQ indexes following sharp gains in stock futures. Chip-related stocks also got a lift from NVIDIA’s better-than-expected earnings results. “The preliminary labor-management agreement is seen as a positive development because it reduces uncertainty,” Ha SeokKeun, chief investment officer at Eugene Asset Management, said. “What’s more, NVIDIA’s recent earnings call once again underlined exceptionally strong demand for AI-driven memory – particularly high-bandwidth memory and advanced DRAM.”

May 21 – The Federal Reserve proposed a new, more limited-payment account this Wednesday that would allow fintech firms and other companies to move funds through the Fed’s payment system, though without all the safeguards traditional banks get. In a release, the Fed noted this proposed account won’t have access to daylight credit or the Fed’s discount window, and reserves held at the Fed here won’t earn interest. The proposal grows out of the Fed’s earlier work on a stripped-down account. Right now, the central bank is aiming to strike a balance: opening up its payments infrastructure to more firms while avoiding unnecessary risks to the U.S. financial system.

May 21st – On-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reports that the "PEPE Price Band 100% Win Rate Whale" appears to be liquidating their position, with an estimated cumulative loss of $17.12 million. Over the past 12 hours, the whale has deposited all their remaining 6.39 billion PEPE tokens into Bitget, valued at $2.357 million—selling these tokens would lead to an $8.4 million loss. It’s also worth noting that this party has transferred other altcoins like UNI and CAKE to a centralized exchange (CEX), so it remains unclear whether they’re preparing to liquidate their holdings or moving funds to a new wallet via the exchange.

On May 21, on-chain analyst Ai Auntie (@ai_9684xtpa) reported that a16z, the largest external holder of HYPE, is still accumulating the token. Over the past 24 hours, a total of 2.597 million HYPE tokens were withdrawn from major exchanges, amounting to $13.29 million with an average withdrawal price of $51.17. Separately, 73,000 HYPE tokens were deposited back to exchanges for an unknown purpose.