AI Demand Meets Geopolitical Risk: Nvidia Discloses Over $180 Billion Anthropic Contract, Meta Expands Enterprise AI, Saudi Pipeline Resumes Exports

On Monday, the three major U.S. stock indexes opened lower across the board, with the Dow down 0.64%, the S&P 500 down 0.43%, and the Nasdaq down 0.47%^[4]. Asia-Pacific markets fell broadly, with South Korea's KOSPI closing down 2.7% at 6,889.75 points; Japan's Nikkei 225 closing down 0.7% at 65,877.62 points; and Japan's TOPIX closing down 0.4% at 4,112 points^[4]. Major European stock indexes opened slightly higher, with the Euro Stoxx 50 up 0.10%, Germany's DAX up 0.21%, the UK's FTSE 100 up 0.36%, and France's CAC 40 up 0.40%^[4]. In bonds, global bond markets fell broadly: India's 10-year government bond yield rose 5 basis points to 7.17%; the U.S. 5-year Treasury yield rose 5 basis points; Japan's 30-year government bond yield rose 1.5 basis points to 3.925%; South Korea's 3-year government bond yield rose to its highest level since November 2022; and the 10-year U.S. Treasury yield hit its highest level since 2007^[4]. Precious metals came under pressure, with spot gold falling more than 3% and spot silver falling 5.0% intraday to $61.07/oz^[4]. Oil rose, with WTI crude gains narrowing to nearly 2% at $94.2/barrel after earlier rising more than 4%; Brent crude rose more than 1.2% to $98.96/barrel^[4].

Nvidia's latest disclosures show that demand for AI infrastructure continues to expand. AI startup Anthropic has so far contracted 2.6 gigawatts of AI infrastructure compute capacity, with delivery extending through 2028, and its total contract value across multiple cloud service providers and emerging cloud platforms has exceeded $180 billion^[1]. Nvidia's overall supply commitments climbed sharply from $119 billion last quarter to $279 billion, an increase of $160 billion in a single quarter, with the growth in commitments mainly related to memory procurement^[1]. In addition, Nvidia's Neocloud partner in Australia committed to delivering up to 2 gigawatts of compute capacity by 2027^[1]. Nvidia's current portfolio spans 13 public companies and 229 private companies^[1]. The company also announced an increase of $150 billion to its share buyback authorization, and its stock rose more than 2%^[4].

On September 28 local time, Meta founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that the company has officially launched a new business pillar—Meta Enterprise Platform—aimed at helping enterprises use AI to achieve business growth and transformation^[2]. Initially, the platform will focus on launching a series of products including Muse Agent, Meta Business Agent, Muse API, and Muse Code^[2]. Meta announced the appointment of Chirantan “CJ” Desai as Chief Enterprise Platform Officer, reporting directly to Zuckerberg; Desai previously served as CEO and president of MongoDB, and also led product and engineering at Cloudflare and spent nearly eight years at ServiceNow^[2]. Following the news, MongoDB fell 26% as its CEO resigned to join Meta^[4].

Saudi Arabia's East-West oil pipeline resumed exports after a drone attack. On September 28, according to Bloomberg citing people familiar with the matter, crude flows through the pipeline were about 3.5 million barrels per day; the pipeline's total capacity is about 7 million barrels per day, of which about 5 million barrels are usually used for exports and 2 million barrels supply refineries on Saudi Arabia's west coast^[3]. The pipeline was shut down after a drone attack on September 10; it was previously reported that a full return to operations could take about six weeks; current flows are only equivalent to half of design capacity, meaning it will still take time to return to normal levels^[3]. During the pipeline outage, Saudi Arabia compensated for the supply gap by increasing crude exports through the Strait of Hormuz; Saudi Arabia's overall oil exports in September had risen to a wartime high of more than 5 million barrels per day, with most cargoes going to Asian markets^[3]. Brent crude prices remained near $100 per barrel, U.S.-Iran talks were deadlocked, and geopolitical risk continued to support oil prices^[3].

Trump rejected Iran's latest proposal over the weekend to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, and Iranian Foreign Minister Araghchi said Iran 'is prepared for the resumption of war,' causing markets to give back almost all of the gains accumulated on Friday when expectations for diplomatic negotiations had risen^[4]. Araghchi said Iran was prepared for a resumption of war with the United States but had not given up on diplomatic engagement: 'We are fully prepared for the resumption of war,' while 'we are also ready for diplomatic engagement at any time,' and 'that depends on the choice of U.S. President Trump'^[4]. Rajeev De Mello, senior macro portfolio manager at Gama Asset Management, said investors were once again disappointed by the lack of diplomatic progress^[4]. SpaceX opened slightly higher, after Starship carried out its first orbital-insertion burn and successfully entered Earth orbit^[4].