Forbes Daily Briefing

In January, the Silicon Valley venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz announced it had raised $15 billion in new funds. It was a monster fundraising haul that boosted the 17-year-old firm’s assets to more than $90 billion, nearly double the amount it held in 2024. It also marked an opportunity for the firm’s co-founders, Marc Andreessen and Ben Horowitz, to telegraph their lofty ambitions for how to remake the country—and the world. “As the American leader in venture capital, the fate of new technology in the United States rests partly on our shoulders,” Horowitz wrote in a blog post announcing the fundraise. “Our mission is ensuring that America wins the next 100 years of technology. That starts with winning the key architectures of the future—AI and crypto.” Forgive him if he sounds a bit boastful. After all, America may win the next century but his firm is already one of the winningest tech investors of the past year and decade. It first invested in OpenAI in April 2023 when it was worth $29 billion; the AI giant’s valuation hit $852 billion in March and is expected to go public next year with a valuation north of $1 trillion. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/giacomotognini/2026/10/28/billionaires-andreessen-and-horowitz-are-betting-on-pro-ai-politicians-who-could-boost-their-massive-fortunes/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Anthropic filed for its blockbuster IPO on Monday, bringing the AI behemoth closer to what could be the largest public debuts in stock market history. The 335-page filing revealed the Claude maker generated around $16.3 billion in revenue for the first half of the year, up from $1.2 billion a year earlier, but incurred a $80.7 billion net loss for the first half of the year (most of which is due to a non-cash accounting charge). The company touts more than 300,000 enterprise customers, 250 of which spend over $10 million on Anthropic’s products every year. It plans to list under the ticker symbol “ANT” and is on track to go public as soon as mid-November. Forbes estimates that its two most prominent cofounders: CEO Dario Amodei and his sister, Anthropic president Daniela Amodei, are worth $13.6 billion and $13.7 billion, respectively. Each cofounder owns an estimated 1.4% stake. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/the-prompt/2026/10/27/inside-anthropics-ipo-prospectus-revenue-losses-and-surprising-details/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

As cannabis prices crash around the country, struggling cannabis companies with big industrial buildings outfitted with power, fiber, water and HVAC systems thought they had a golden ticket to the AI race. But moratoriums, NIMBYISM and power constraints crushed most of their dreams. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/willyakowicz/2026/10/21/inside-the-weed-industrys-ai-data-center-pipe-dream/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This summer represented a bit of a changing of the guard on the soccer pitch, as exemplified by Spain’s winger Lamine Yamal, who hoisted the World Cup trophy at age 19 by beating Argentine legend Lionel Messi—the very man who had bathed him when he was an infant for a now-viral photoshoot in 2007. But while Yamal is already reaping the rewards of his star turn on American soil, he and the rest of soccer’s new generation still have a long way to go to close the financial gap on Messi and his Portuguese rival Cristiano Ronaldo, two of the greatest money-making machines the sports world has ever seen. For the fourth consecutive season, and the 12th time in the last 13 years, Ronaldo and Messi are the world’s two highest-paid soccer players, due to haul in $300 million and $145 million, respectively, according to Forbes estimates. (French striker Kylian Mbappé, who lands at No. 3 on Forbes’ list of the top-earning soccer players this year with an estimated $100 million, made a cameo at No. 1 in 2022 thanks to a massive signing bonus he received when he extended his contract with Paris Saint-Germain, two years before he left the club for Real Madrid.) Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/hanktucker/2026/10/17/the-worlds-highest-paid-soccer-players-2026/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Elon Musk on Monday announced he plans to give every child in America one share in his aerospace and AI company SpaceX next year, shortly after he criticized rival Anthropic’s plan to pledge 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund and urged the company to distribute its shares directly to the public. Read the full story on Forbes: https://www.forbes.com/sites/siladityaray/2026/10/19/elon-musk-says-hell-give-every-child-in-america-one-spacex-share-next-year/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices