Global markets rise as AI trade regains steam

Asia follows Wall Street higher in wake of Anthropic's long-awaited IPO filing

Global equity markets rose on Tuesday amid a renewed vigour for the AI trade following Anthropic's long-awaited release of its IPO documents.

The Nasdaq 100 closed 1 per cent higher on Tuesday after Anthropic's filing, which showed ballooning revenues for the first half of 2026 of $16.3bn, up from $1.2bn over the same period last year, as well as a $112bn cash pile.

Asian markets were buoyant on Tuesday, with South Korea's Kospi rising as much as 4 per cent, led by SK Hynix and Samsung, which were up 6.6 per cent and 4.6 per cent respectively.

Japan's Nikkei 225 gained 1.9 per cent, with SoftBank Group up 6.7 per cent, although the OpenAI investor has fallen by more than a quarter over the past month.

"There was a move overnight led by tech . . . which has led to a bounce in Asia, particularly in tech-heavy stock markets like the Kospi on the back of what's happened in the US," said Mitul Kotecha, head of Asian macro strategy for Barclays.

In recent months investors have expressed growing concern over the market's appetite to provide the hundreds of billions of dollars of investment for the AI supercycle without clear indications of profitability from the labs creating the models.

Futures for the US markets pointed to further gains, with contracts tracking the S&P 500 and tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 slightly higher.

Oil prices fell for a second day, with Brent crude down about $1.20 a barrel to $114.60 in Asian trading and WTI, the US benchmark, trading at about $101.

China's benchmark CSI 300 bucked the trend, falling 0.2 per cent, while Hong Kong's Hang Seng index was down 0.3 per cent, dragged lower by the Chinese companies listed in the territory.

"More broadly it's a little bit of calm ahead of the Fed and we're switching towards watching the [US] midterms," added Kotecha. "Markets are in a wait-and-see mode."