The AI Funding Chain is Under Scrutiny: Funds Trim Positions in Stock Market Pullback, Cloud Providers Use Revenue to Justify Capex, and Model Companies Continue Expansion with Data Center Project Financing.
1｜Citadel Takes Over Majority of Positions, AI Fund Addresses Capital Structure First
Situational Awareness, led by former OpenAI researcher Leopold Aschenbrenner, sold most of its stock portfolio to Citadel after the AI stock pullback. The fund, which previously had about $16 billion in public stock positions, held stakes in targets such as Broadcom, Intel, and CoreWeave. Sources familiar with the matter said Citadel took over part of the positions financed with leverage from brokers.
The fund deliberated between raising more capital and reducing positions, ultimately choosing to sell off, but still maintains around $10 billion in assets post-transaction, including stocks and private investments in companies like Anthropic. The hedge fund's positions did not completely exit, but shifted from high-leverage public markets to longer-term private assets. As AI investments enter a period of volatility, the financing structure is starting to determine who can keep their bets in play.
(Source: Reuters / WSJ)
2｜Amazon Increases Capex, AI Investment Tests Cash Flow First
Amazon has raised its 2026 capital expenditure forecast by 10% to $220 billion. CEO Andy Jassy stated that even so, the company's computing power is still insufficient to meet customer demand. AWS second-quarter revenue grew 37% year-over-year to $42.2 billion, with AI and chip business' annualized operating rate both exceeding $25 billion.
The growth of cloud business indicates that AI spending is already driving orders, but the cycle of spending first and receiving income later continues to lengthen. Amazon stated that data centers typically start incurring costs about two years before going live, and after construction, they wait for customer demand to materialize. Large capital expenditures are no longer just about scale, as the market now assesses its effectiveness based on revenue growth, contract backlog, and cash flow.
(Source: Reuters)
3｜Institutional Funds Enter OTC Market, Tokenization Testing Enters Banking System
Market maker Wintermute stated that in the first half of 2026, institutional clients accounted for 72% of its OTC spot trading volume. This is not a universal gauge of the entire crypto market and cannot be directly extrapolated to all platforms, but it indicates that off-exchange liquidity is moving towards professional capital concentration. The price discovery of crypto assets increasingly relies on market-making, custody, and risk management, rather than just retail sentiment.
On the other end, the Bank for International Settlements' Project Agorá completed 30 transactions, totaling around 800,000 Swiss francs in a real-time cross-border test involving 6 currencies and 28 financial institutions and central banks. It brought together tokenized commercial bank deposits and wholesale central bank money on the same settlement chain. Structuring and tokenization are not the same, but they point to the same shift: the crypto competitive focus is moving from transaction volume to who can access a compliant payment and settlement network.
(Source: CoinDesk / BIS)
4｜Anthropic's Hashpower Project Financing, Google Swaps Guarantees for Project Equity
Data center developer Nexus Data Centers is raising $15 billion for a project related to Anthropic in the Hubbard, Texas campus. A bank syndicate led by Morgan Stanley is discussing the financing, with a plan including a $14 billion bridge loan and revolving credit facility for the campus, which will feature a 1.6 gigawatt gas power plant.
Google has agreed to provide several billion dollars in guarantees for Anthropic's data center lease and power payments, expecting to acquire around 20% ownership of the data center and power project. What is being priced in here is not just the modeling company itself but long-term infrastructure comprising land, power, chips, and leases. The expansion of cutting-edge models is looking more and more like a heavy asset engineering project that requires project financing.
(Source: Reuters / WSJ)
Also Worth Knowing ↓
U.S. Q2 Real GDP grew at an annual rate of 1.5%, and June core PCE rose by 3.3% year-on-year. The slowing growth alongside inflation stickiness also puts more focus on the dissent over the 3-hike view from the July FOMC. The financing environment for tech assets continues to orbit these macro figures.
(Source: BEA / CNBC)
Commonwealth Fusion Systems added $1 billion in equity financing, totaling around $4 billion in funding. The funds will be used for the SPARC demonstration reactor and advance the ARC commercial power plant. The demand for long-term power in AI data centers is pushing fusion projects into capital pricing earlier.
(Source: Reuters / CFS / TechCrunch)
Cook hinted at an earnings call that AI-powered Siri might start charging heavy users. Apple's FY2026 Q3 revenue was $1.094 trillion, with iPhone revenue around $543 billion, a 22% year-on-year growth. The hardware cycle remains steady as pricing AI services and supply constraints come to the forefront.
(Source: Axios / 9to5Mac / The Verge)
Welcome to join the official BlockBeats community:
Telegram Subscription Group: https://t.me/theblockbeats
Telegram Discussion Group: https://t.me/BlockBeats_App
Official Twitter Account: https://twitter.com/BlockBeatsAsia
