Marketplace - What's in AI's next chapter?

Episode Date: October 26, 2026

A few Big Tech firms are slated to explain their quarterly earnings later this week. AI will, of course, be the protagonist of these earnings calls. Investors are hoping for some positive character development, or at least a spoiler for any plot twists. In this episode, the next installment of the AI narrative. Plus: Central banks prepare for interest rate setting, Treasury rates rise with heightened risk, and the Energy Department adds helium to its critical materials list — again.Every story has an economic angle. Want some in your inbox? Subscribe to our daily or weekly newsletter.Marketplace is more than a radio show. Check out our original reporting and financial literacy content at marketplace.org — and consider making an investment in our future.Read the stories in today’s episode:AI is the main character in Big Tech's earnings storiesWill the world's central banks rase interest rates this week?At the Belcourt Theatre, you can see everything (including the documentary)Helium is back on the U.S. list of 'critical materials'Treasury interest rates are up because they're looking riskyAging farmers and the government want to save farms, but for many the cost is too high

So the products our company makes could destroy humanity, but you want to buy some shares anyway? From American public media. This is Marketplace. In Los Angeles, I'm Kyle Rizdahl. It is Monday. Today, this one is the 26th of October good as it always is. It is a very, very safe bet that the most read document in American capitalism today is securities and exchange commission form S1, a registration statement under the Securities

Act of 1933 filed this morning by Anthropic PBC. That's Public Benefit Corporation, which is all about what the company is trying to be, and which is a story for another day. The story for today is, first of all, that the S-1 has finally dropped. We now know Anthropics looking to start trading a week or so before Thanksgiving. N-T will be the ticker, by the way. We don't know exactly how much it's hoping to raise earlier reporting has it at about $100 billion, or what valuation it's expecting. A trillion and a half-ish to $2 trillion is a pretty good ballpark. We also know, because they tell us in the S-1, that both their capital expenditures, CAP-X, is how you sometimes hear that,

and their indebtedness is going to increase, and I'm quoting here, substantially. So with that as prologue, I will note here that this is a big week for earnings announcement from some of the big AI companies, Microsoft and Alphabet and Amazon by name. Marketplace is Stephanie Hughes gets us going with that. When tech companies report earnings, they're weaving narratives. One of the tales they're telling the story of AI. Things like capital expenditures tell us what happened in the most recent chapter. And? It tells us how aggressively comes.

companies are spending. Analyst Daniela Hathorn with Capital.com says that spending on AI has been a part of the story for a minute. And now investors are ready for some plot developments to find out if it's really paying off. It's particularly important to see whether that translates into strong demand and whether that translates into higher revenue. Hathorne says she'll also be watching what Alphabet, Amazon, and Microsoft say around forward guidance, which you could think of as foreshadowing. If it's not looking great, they have to say that, but they try and give a little bit of color to explain why that may be and why that may change in the future.

One important thing to remember. We're in the first few chapters of the book. Gill Maria leads tech research at D.A. Davidson. That's the other message that they're giving us is there's some good stories to tell so far. But more importantly for us, we think the stories to be told will be even more important and more impressive. There are also new storytellers that are about to become a lot more vocal, like Anthropic. With all the new paperwork it's filing, investors will have more insights into how a company that's solely focused on AI is doing. Melissa Otto is with S&P Global Market Intelligence.

So it'll be interesting to hear, you know, what they say about the overall ecosystem and their ability to grow within that, as well as how they're able to monetize it. Right now, we know that AI. is definitely a main character in this story, but we'll have to keep reading to find out if it's the hero or the anti-hero. I'm Stephanie Hughes for Marketplace. One more quick thing about Anthropic that might be helpful for would-be buyers of their shares. There's a whole section in S-1s, and that's S-1s for every company, where they have to list basically everything that could possibly go wrong

so those wannabe investors don't get caught unawares. Anthropics risk factors run 94-7. single spaced pages and does include, and I'm quoting again, catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. While I have you and while we are talking to AI, Microsoft said today it's going to offer voluntary buyouts to 60,000 of its employees. That's about a quarter of its entire workforce. Why, I hear you asking, it's got to pay for all the AI investments it is going to make. Wall Street today, generally higher. The Fed meeting starts. tomorrow we'll get an inflation update on Thursday. Details numbers. You all know the drill.

It's Central Bank Week here at Marketplace World Headquarters. A whole bunch of them are meeting the Fed. Tomorrow on Wednesday, as I said, the Bank of Canada Wednesday as well, the European Central Bank on Thursday, and the Bank of Japan on Friday. Macro-economically, they're all facing pretty much the same set of challenges. But as Marketplace's Mitchell Hartman reports, they're not all going to react the same way. Let's start with the Bank of Canada, which Jennifer Lee at BMO Capital Markets in Toronto says is in a tight spot. This trade war has really hammered business confidence and consumer confidence. Three quarters of our exports go to the U.S. The Bank of Canada is expected to hike rates this week, which could make the downturn from the trade war worse, but there's also inflation. You know, I feel it when I'm standing at the pump and waiting for my tank to be filled up and I'm watching the dollars go higher and higher and higher.

It hurts, given that we're not immune to inflation. inflation in higher energy prices. It is sort of understandable why they wouldn't want to raise rates. Over to the European Union, which is facing higher inflation as oil and gas supplies remain disrupted, but it's also facing domestic unrest in its second biggest economy, says Richard de Chazel at investment firm William Blair in Madrid. What's now happening in France has put the kibosh on any chance of a rate increase. I think a rate increase at this point would just be exacerbating the situation. Politics is also helping to diminish the chances of a rate hike from the U.S. Federal Reserve this week.

Not because a rate hike isn't warranted, says former Fed Governor Frederick Michigan. The inflation rate is too high and not coming down. Also, it's been above the target range for close to five years. But he says President Trump's unprecedented attacks on Fed independence since his re-election have the Fed governors playing it safe before the midterms. If the Fed raised rates at this particular juncture, Trump would make claims that the Fed is being very political. So I think it's understandable the Fed doesn't want to poke the bear. Michigan does expect the Fed to return to rate hiking twice by early 2027.

I'm Mitchell Hartman for Marketplace. We were talking movies in our morning production meeting the other day. And somebody mentioned it had been a while since we had talked to Stephanie Silverman. She runs the Belcourt Theater in Nashville, Tennessee. So we got her on the phone. Well, well, well, Stephanie Silverman, as I live and breathe, how you been? Hello, my friend. How's it going? You know, it's not so bad. Not so bad. What about you?

It's pretty good. Pretty good times in life and in movie world. I cannot complain. Glad to hear both. Let's talk about movie world instead of your life. How are things at the bell court? Well, the bellcourt is a pretty fantastically insane place right now. We are going on all cylinders. What's going on? It's great. I mean, clearly, one of the major drivers is the movie everyone cannot stop talking about. You can see everything. We've just had sellout after sellout after sellout, which is fabulous.

All right. We'll get back to that in a minute. That will be the closing segment of this interview because I have thoughts. Okay. Generally speaking, though, so that's driving everything. Sell out after sell out. Is everything else selling out? Do you have enough people?

Are you selling concessions, all that jazz? Yeah, we are. We are. I mean, you know, it is interesting on a trend for this year. We are definitely seeing concession sales a little bit below where we would expect to see it based on our overall box office. It trends in about 50% typically. We're just a little bit behind. And I suspect that's because people are just being a little more careful with their dollars these days.

But, you know, we are seeing a general enthusiasm for being in the movie theater. and, you know, it's just music to our ears. And then the rest of this year is looking really strong in terms of films that are going to come on our screen. So it's, it's... If I'm a member of the bellcourt, how much do I have to pay to see a movie? You're paying $10.50, which is, I used to say it's 1980s movie pricing. I think we are edging into 1990s movie pricing, but it's still, you know, we work so hard to keep this a very, very accessible. affordable place for all of Nashville.

You have, though, raised ticket prices for non-members, isn't that true? Yeah, we raised ticket prices for both non-members and members. But it is the first time that we've done that in nearly three years. So we really go slow when we do it. Have you not heard about inflation? Your markup could be huge. I know. Well, this is also why we love our donors.

We love the people who support us philanthropically, because that really does. does allow us to keep a good balance between what we have to bring in through the box office and what we can bring in through donations to keep the bell court really accessible to everyone. Can we talk about your labor force for a minute? How are you doing staffing-wise? We're good. We're good. We've been really lucky. We don't see a lot of turnover. And we just have a fabulous staff. Nashville's a harder place to live in all the time. So they are more challenged. We are more challenged to keep up with, you know, the cost of living in Nashville for them. But we're very lucky to have a really exceptional group of people who work for us.

All right. So can we talk about that Elizabeth Holmes movie for a minute, please? Yeah. So you've probably seen it a couple of times, right? At least once. I've seen it once. Yes. Okay. What'd you think? Well, I loved it. I mean, I followed her all the way along. So she's always been a fascinating character to begin with. But wow, did the movie surprise me. And I don't get surprised by films a lot. See, that's the thing. You're the film professional in this conversation. And I guess I want your insights into what it is that is making all these people go to the bellcourt and sell out time after time after week after week. I really think it, well, first of all, it's just so nice, I think, to have something in the zeitgeist that's not our politics, our inflation.

our economy or everything else. I think that's one thing. I also think this is some really creative storytelling made by some people who took some big swings in a format that's not exactly the format they work in all the time. I just think it is a super theatrical documentary, which is also a lift in and of itself. Yeah, that's the phrase, right?

Theatrical documentary. Yeah. For sure. Stephanie Silverman runs a Bellcourt Theater. You should go if you're a national. Sure. Stephanie, thanks a lot. It's good to talk to you. It's really good to talk to you, Kai. A story now from the Noble Gas section of the periodic table of the elements. The Department of Energy has added helium to its list of critical materials. The qualifications for which

are that said materials have to be both essential for an energy technology and at high risk of supply chain disruption. Those of you in the Noble Gas business might know that the United States is the biggest supplier of helium. But as Marketplaces Caitlin Tan explains, we are still somehow in a shortage. Before we get into the shortage, a quick primer. Grab your pencils and notebooks. I'm taking you back to your high school chemistry class now.

Richard Brooke runs Garrison Ventures, a helium consulting company. If you look at the far right column on a periodic table, the first noble gas on the chart there is helium. It's the coldest element on the periodic table, making it perfect for cooling medical imaging equipment like MRIs and for manufacturing microchips, which is creating a growing demand for helium. But if they can't get it, they can't make the parts. That got helium on the 2018 critical minerals list, but after a few years of steady supply, it got removed.

Probably premature to think that there would be smooth sailing. The waters got choppy this year when the Strait of Hormuz closed, cutting off the second largest global supplier. Qatar, the U.S. is essentially the last person standing. Putting us in a global shortage again, says Phil Kornbluth, also a helium consultant. So this is helium shortage 5.0. We don't name them very creatively. It's 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0. Cornbluth says the 5.0 shortage would likely end tomorrow if the Strait of Hormuz opened. But, you know, so production is likely ramping up in Wyoming, which is one of the the top helium producers in the world, and startups are also looking at the Southwest and Minnesota.

The biggest hurdle for them is raising the money because they don't have an existing revenue stream. Putting helium back on the criticals list could open up more government funding, says Mora Garvey, who runs Intelligas consulting. And it might help open up the permitting process. But if the helium shortage worsens? They're not going to have the new iPhones, the new everything, you know, the data center. Which some people might say doesn't sound too bad. I'm Caitlin Tan for Marketplace. Coming up.

The cons are it's expensive. Ain't that always the way? First though, let's do the numbers. Down Dustrils rose 146 points on the day, 3 tenths percent, 52,361. The NASDAQ gained 214.8.10%, 26,169. NISTP 500 added 53.7 tenths percent, 76, tech stocks riding high after that anthropic news. Chipmakers and data center outfurters were the big winners.

Broadcom increased 2 and a third percent. Invidia picked up 2 and 4 tenths percent. So did Dell Corweave, the Neocloud company. We should do a story on Neoclouds, actually. Suffered a sell-off not too long ago. We told you about that. Lifted 1 and 8 tenths of 1% on the day. Bond prices went up when that happens.

The yield goes down. 4.99% on the 10-year you're listening to Marketplace. This is Marketplace. I'm Kai Risdholm. If you were of a mind to buy a one-year treasury bill today, that is, if you were going to lend the United States government some money for exactly one year, as of today, the Treasury will pay you a hair under four and a half percent interest. If, on the other hand, you're willing to tie your money up for 10 years by buying one of those t-notes we mention every day, you will get just the merest, of hairs under 5%.

And that's usually how it goes with government bonds, lower short-term rates and higher long-term rates. But the gap between the two has been growing. And as marketplace is Justin Ho reports, that is a sign investors are feeling a bit unsettled. Treasuries are some of the safest investments out there. If you buy one, you're going to get your money back when it matures plus interest. But if interest rates happen to go up while you're holding that bond?

A treasury note or a treasury bond? can lose value. That's Emmanuel Munch, a professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance and Management in Germany. He says because of that risk, investors typically require some form of compensation. That compensation is known as the term premium, and the longer your money is tied up in the bond, the bigger a term premium you want. Imagine you buy a 30-year bond. All kinds of things could happen in the meantime. So the 30-year bond, typically we think of as having a higher term premium. Munch created a model that estimates term premiums have been rising, over the last five years. Over the past year, one particular premium on 10-year bonds has almost

doubled from around half a percent to a full percentage point. John Canavan, lead market analyst at Oxford Economics, says some of that is because investors are concerned about what will happen if the government floods the market with new treasuries to finance the national debt. So all of this borrowing raises the question of, will investors have enough cash flow in order to easily absorb all this debt. If they don't, if demand for government bonds doesn't keep up with supply? The value of these might go down, and given that risk, we're going to require some extra yield in response.

Canavan says another factor pushing up term premiums this year is the war in the Middle East and all of the risks it's generating. So that's caused a rethinking about what type of geopolitical tensions we might see going forward. It's caused a rethinking about oil prices going forward and what that means for inflation going forward. Investors also aren't really clear on how the Fed is going to react to the current rise in inflation, since Chairman Kevin Warsh has decided that the Fed will be less transparent. That means he's not going to be telling the markets as much as previous Fed chairs did about what they anticipate the Fed funds rate to do going forward. That's Carol a binder, an economics professor at UT Austin.

That gives us uncertainty about short-run interest rates, which in turn leads to uncertainty about longer-run interest rates. And that uncertainty kind of increases the further down into the future you go. And once again, when investors are uncertain, then investors need that premium to compensate. Meaning an even higher term premium and even higher interest rates. I'm Justin Howe for Marketplace. We have a serious housing supply demand. imbalance in this economy, as you know, to the tune of four or more million places to live that we are lacking. The catch is that all those houses have to go someplace, and increasingly

that someplace is farmland. The American farmland trust said three or four years ago that housing developments have paved over or otherwise compromised about 2,000 acres of farmland a day. So, as KBIA's Jan Arose-Schleiss reports, farmers who are retiring, are doing what they can to make sure their farmland stays farm. Dan Kibler is spending the morning out on what used to be his farm. Kibler grew fruits and vegetables on these 30 acres in Ashland, Missouri, and sold his produce at the local farmer's market. Ashen was a little bit of sleepy town in 77 when we bought it.

As Kibler neared retirement, he watched farmland on his two-mile dead-end road get sold and broken up into parcels. I kind of saw that. I saw where it was going. He wanted to protect his farm from a similar fate. Well, I want this piece of property to kind of go to someone who's going to utilize it in an agricultural kind of way. Kibler worked with a local land trust to attach what's known as a conservation or agriculture easement to his property deed. It dictates that the farmland must remain farmland, no matter who owns it, forever. Nick Shapiro is the executive director of the Greenbelt Land Trust

of Mid-Missouri. You cannot subdivide it. You cannot sell it off for residential development or commercial development. That is the guiding principle. Due to the increasing average age of farmers and landowners, at least 50 million acres of farmland in the Midwest is set to change hands by the end of the decade, according to USDA data. Since flat, cleared fields are ideal for development, the fear is farms will continue to disappear. Greenbelt Land Trust was formed to preserve natural areas such as forests and wetlands. But Shapiro says they expanded their work to farmland as development pressures increased. Since so much of Mid-Missouri's, not just economy, but culture and heritage is based in farming, there is an important role for us to play in helping to preserve that

heritage as well. But placing development restrictions on a piece of land could lower its resale value. Exactly how much depends on a number of factors, including location, nearby development pressures, and how restrictive the easement is. Josh Wright is with American Farmland Trust, where he helps landowners through the often years-long legal and financial process of securing an easement. Whenever you go to sell your property is going to be appraised, and that's going to be judged at best, highest dollar, and they call it best use in the industry. In other words, the most profitable use, which farming generally isn't. Unfortunately, it's probably considered the worst use. Twelve years ago, Congress expanded federal easement programs, setting aside money to compensate farm owners for a portion of the reduced value of their land. More than one million acres of farmland have been preserved with an easement since the federal program began.

But more than half of that land is in just three states. Montana, Colorado, and California. No farmland in Missouri has yet been restricted from development under the federal program. In Kansas City, Rick Moreski has been growing berries and forest farming on 40 acres of land for the past 25 years, and he considered an easement. The cons are it's expensive, you know. It's like $25,000 just to do it, and then you lose money. Moreski says he doesn't want the years he spent caring for his land to be erased,

but he can't afford to sell for less. We're trying to make it as beautiful as possible and as enticing as possible for someone to buy it and keep it going the way we have it. With or without an easement, Moreski hopes the future of his land includes farming. In Ashland, I'm Jana Roe-Schleis for Marketplace. This final note on the way out today,

Justin was doing the bond market term premium for us a minute ago. We are going to go out on the risk premium, oil risk premium, to be precise. Saw this on Axios. The JP Morgan puts the fair value of Brent Crude at $94 a barrel. That's what, in theory, the supply demand realities say oil ought to be going for. At the close today, Brent Crude, $115.20 a barrel. That right there, that $20-ish, whatever it is in change, that is the risk premium.

I don't need to explain the risks, right? Right? Amir Babawi, Kately Ness, John Gordon-Koya-Karra, Steve Mullis, and Stephanie Seek, are the Marketplace editing staff. Kelly Silvera is the news director, and I'm Kai, Resdal. We will see you tomorrow, everybody. This is A.m.