📈 Anthropic asks to be slowed down | SpaceX IPO is oversubscribed

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The Big Picture

• Anthropic asks governments: Slow us down. Anthropic, the AI company behind Claude, put out a surprising call - asking governments and AI developers to agree to a ‘pause’ on AI development before it escapes human control. The company that develops cutting edge AI models is worried AI is approaching “full recursive self-improvement” where AI can train itself and improve without human intervention. (Anthropic | CNN)
  
  

• US government considers taking a stake in AI companies. First proposed by Senator Bernie Sanders on Monday, by Friday President Trump was discussing the US government taking a stake in major AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Sander’s proposed the government taking a 50% stake in these big AI companies, which was criticised by members of Trump’s team. But by the end of the week, Trump acknowledged that the proposal did resonate with many of his voters. (FT)
  
  

• One Nation membership passes Labor and Liberal. The AFR reports that One Nation membership has grown by 40,000 people since the last election and now sits between 60,000 and 70,000. In comparison, Labor membership sits at 55,000 while the Liberals are at 50,000. (AFR)
  
  

• Sydney and Melbourne home prices to fall. NAB’s latest forecast for the Australian housing market has Sydney and Melbourne falling 6% and 7% respectively in 2026. Overall, the bank expects the Australian housing market to fall 2% this year. Separately, Morgan Stanley forecast profit from Australia’s Big 4 banks to fall an average of 4% as a result of lower property prices. (Capital Brief | AFR)
  
  

• Big Tech’s Friday selloff. The Nasdaq-100 index dropped 4.8% on Friday, as US investors got out of Big Tech. Nvidia was down 6%, Broadcom down 8%, AMD down 11% and Micron down 13%. As a result of Big Tech’s fall, the S&P 500 dropped 2.6%, ending a run of nine weeks the US market had gained. (Bloomberg | NY Times)
  
  

• When good news is bad news. A key reason for the fall in tech stocks was a strong US jobs report, with the US economy adding 172,000 jobs in May and the unemployment rate holding steady at 4.3% for the third consecutive month. A strong US economy, combined with high inflation, increases pressure on the US Federal Reserve to raise interest rates - and the prospect of higher rates were the reason Big Tech stocks fell. (Bloomberg)

  
  

• Bitcoin follows tech stocks. As has been the case for the world’s largest cryptocurrency, Bitcoin acted like a highly-leveraged tech stock. It dropped as low as US$59,112, its lowest level since October 2024. (CNBC)
  
  

• Crisis on the International Space Station. A worsening air leak on the Russian side of the orbital laboratory saw five astronauts take shelter in a SpaceX capsule docked on the ISS. Two Russian cosmonauts were attempting to repair the leak in a way that NASA disagreed with, forcing the safe-haven procedures. Russia eventually paused its repair efforts and the astronauts re-entered the ISS. (AP)

Companies in the news

• SpaceX IPO is oversubscribed. It took 1 day for history’s largest IPO to be oversubscribed, with Bloomberg reporting orders exceeded shares on offer after just one day of investor meetings. If this report is correct, SpaceX looks likely to reach the $1.75 trillion valuation it is striving for. The deal is expected to be finalised on 11 June, with shares trading the next day on the US share market. (Bloomberg)
  
  

• SpaceX won’t be fast-tracked into the S&P 500. S&P Dow Jones Indices, the company that manages the benchmark S&P 500 index, announced it will not fast-track SpaceX’s inclusion into the index. Usually companies must be listed for 12 months before being added, but some argued SpaceX’s size - it will likely be America’s 7th largest listed company - meant it should be fast-tracked. Instead, it will have to wait. (Yahoo Finance)
  
  

• CSL sees a silver lining. The Australian healthcare giant has had a shocking run, down 60% in the past 12 months, and this week seeing the share price hit a decade low. There was a silver lining on Friday, however, with shares up 6% as insider buying calmed investor nerves. (The Bull)
  
  

• Markets don’t love Meta’s AI spending. Alphabet, the parent company of Google, has seen investors flock to its $80 billion capital raising as it continues to fund its AI data centre build out. So Meta decided to follow suit. A report that the social media giant was planning to raise tens of billions to fund more AI data centres wasn’t met with the same excitement as Alphabet - instead, shares dropped 6%. (Reuters)

OpenAI model solves 80-year math problem

An internal OpenAI model has solved the planar unit distance problem, an unsolved mathematical puzzle first posed by Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdős in 1946. The problem asks how many pairs of points can exist one unit apart on a two-dimensional plane.

The closest humans came to a solution was in 1984. An internal OpenAI model was able to crack it in mid-May of this year. External mathematicians independently verified the result, marking what OpenAI claims is the first time AI has autonomously solved an open problem in mathematics. The model was also not specifically trained in mathematics, using a completely novel approach to solve the problem. (Live Science)

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How Baby Boomers Could Triple Your Investment in Senior Living

James Rodda from Antipodes brought Brookdale Senior Living Inc (NYSE: BKD) to last Friday’s episode of Buy or Sell. Brookdale is the third largest senior living operator in the US, and a stock that has already risen 260% over the past three years. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

James argues the setup is demographic and unavoidable. The first wave of baby boomers turned 80 this year. They hit 85 in 2031, which is precisely when demand for senior living facilities accelerates sharply. The beds to meet that demand do not exist yet.

James says it costs $420,000 to build a new senior living room from scratch. But right now, Brookdale's share price values each of their existing rooms at just $250,000. So James argues you are buying something for less than it would cost to rebuild it.

His argument is that gap closes as the demand cycle plays out. When it does, the share price roughly triples just to get back to what those rooms are actually worth. That is your base case before you factor in what happens when thousands of baby boomers need a bed and there are not enough of them.

The company is not yet net profit positive, but it is EBITDA profitable and existing facilities are close to full. The next step is price rises, which unlock the returns that justify new construction, which then meets the wave of demand arriving in the back half of this decade.

• There is no new episode of Equity Mates today due to the public holiday. But be sure to catch last Friday’s Equity Mates Investing episode where we take a look at what Australian’s have been buying or selling so far in 2026. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)

• And Buy or Sell is back Ally is joined by two guests who give her their best anti-AI companies. (Spotify | Apple | YouTube)