Fox’s roughly $25 billion acquisition of Roku will accelerate the media company’s push into streaming and connected TV, Morgan Stanley analysts wrote in a research note Tuesday. The deal gives Fox direct access to more than 100 million streaming households, analysts said, largely in the U.S. with international markets representing an emerging growth opportunity. Roku founder and CEO Anthony Wood, who holds more than 50% voting power in the company through Class B shares, will receive equal consideration for both share classes and is expected to join Fox’s board and remain involved after closing, the analysts wrote. Fox has emphasized that Roku will remain an open, partner-friendly ecosystem, according to the analysts. Fox shares fell 5% on Tuesday, adding to Monday’s decline.
SpaceX is deploying proceeds from its historic IPO to acquire Cursor, a startup that makes autonomous coding agents, in a $60 billion deal expected to close in the third quarter, the Wall Street Journal reported. SpaceX said in an April post on X that the companies had been working closely together and that SpaceX held an option to buy Cursor. “The combination of Cursor’s leading product and distribution to expert software engineers with SpaceX’s million H100 equivalent Colossus training supercomputer will allow us to build the world’s most useful models,” SpaceX said at the time. Shares of SpaceX rose 8.5% in premarket trading to $208.89, according to the Journal. The stock’s IPO price was $135.
The Commerce Department has blocked the use of Anthropic’s newest AI models — Fable 5 and Mythos 5 — outside the United States, according to the Journal. Deutsche Bank analyst Adrian Cox wrote that while the restriction may be a short-term impediment, it could benefit Anthropic longer term. “Even if Anthropic has to keep its most advanced models in a cage in the short term, in the longer term its reputation will likely have received a significant boost,” Cox wrote. The marketing benefit is especially important as Anthropic and OpenAI compete for investor attention ahead of potential public offerings expected later this year. Julius Baer analyst Enrico Chinello said Anthropic has overtaken OpenAI in U.S. AI adoption rates, citing the companies’ differing customer bases. About 85% of Anthropic’s revenue is enterprise-based, Chinello said, while the majority of OpenAI’s revenue comes from ChatGPT consumer subscriptions, most of which are free. Anthropic’s enterprise-heavy revenue provides a clearer path to profitability, Chinello wrote, adding that OpenAI’s profitability remains in question.
Separately, Bank of America’s global fund manager survey found a record share of investors viewing a long position in semiconductors as the most crowded trade — four in five fund managers, the highest in the survey’s history, the Journal reported. Crowded trades occur when many investors hold the same position, raising the risk of a sharp correction if sentiment turns. A gauge of semiconductor stocks has more than doubled in value this year and has risen close to 15% over the prior three trading days, according to the Journal.