Anthropic IPO Filing Ignites US Stocks
Tuesday morning the Nikkei 225 index surged 1191.64 points or 1.92%, closing the morning session at 63381.29 points; the TOPIX index closed the morning up 0.58% at 3996.17 points. Claude developer Anthropic formally filed for an initial public offering, boosting chip and AI stocks, while a pullback in crude oil prices helped all four major US stock indexes close higher on Monday October 26, with the Philadelphia Semiconductor Index up 2.82% standing out.
US AI Benchmark Stocks Rise Together
US AI benchmark stocks rose across the board, with Nvidia up 2.39%, Intel up 4.04%, Micron up 2.98%, SK Hynix up 4.09%, and optical communications maker Lumentum surging 8.19%. According to media reports, Anthropic is expected to conduct its IPO in the week of November 16. Buoyed by sharp gains in US peers, Japanese AI and chip stocks were broadly strong, with buying concentrated in semiconductor equipment and materials names.
AI startup investor SoftBank Group rose 6.71%, while chip equipment maker Advantest rose 9.69%, the stocks contributing the most to the Nikkei index gains. Peer Tokyo Electron rose 2.76%, semiconductor testing equipment maker Lasertec rose 4.95%, and semiconductor materials maker Sumco rose 4.86%. Substrate maker Ibiden soared 11.20%, while memory maker Kioxia rose only 0.16%, showing divergence within the sector.
Gains Concentrated as Market Stays Cautious
Chipmaker Renesas Electronics rose 3.34%, semiconductor and flat-panel manufacturing equipment maker Screen Holdings rose 4.36%, passive component maker Taiyo Yuden rose 1.91%, and Murata Manufacturing rose 3.16%. Among the three fiber-optic cable giants, Fujikura rose 2.46%, Furukawa Electric rose 0.07%, and Sumitomo Electric Industries rose 3%. Daiwa Securities senior strategist Daisuke Hashizume said news of the upcoming Anthropic IPO brought relief to the market, with heavyweight technology stocks following US chip stock indexes higher. But overall, only half of stocks rose, and investors remained cautious about buying aggressively ahead of earnings this week from US hyperscale data center operators including Alphabet and Microsoft.