Reuters World News - Anthropic IPO warning, Cornell and Trump family business

Episode Date: September 29, 2026

Anthropic warns its own IPO investors that the technology could pose catastrophic risks to humanity. A civil lawsuit alleging gang rape at Cornell University prompts a district attorney to reopen the case. And Democrats plan to probe Trump family business deals if they win control of Congress in November. Podcasts, breaking news, and video analysis from the source. ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Download the Reuters app here.⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Listen to the Morning Bid podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Sign up for the Reuters Econ World newsletter ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Listen to the Reuters Econ World podcast ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Visit the ⁠⁠Thomson Reuters Privacy Statement⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ for information on our privacy and data protection practices. You may also visit megaphone.fm/adchoices to opt out of targeted advertising. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hi, I'm Kim Vinal in Wanganui, New Zealand. It's Tuesday, September 29th. Today, Anthropic tells potential investors AI will be more transformative than industrialization, but that the technology also poses existential risks to humanity. Prosecutors reopen an investigation into sexual assault allegations at a Cornell University Fraternity House. and Democrats eye investigations into lucrative Trump family deals after the midterms. This is Reuters World News, bringing you everything you need to know from the front lines in 10 minutes, seven days a week. We begin with a Reuters exclusive about AI giant Anthropic. Reuters was able to view the company's IPO prospectus, which shows its betting that AI will transform.

the global economy more profoundly than electricity, the internet, or even industrialisation. It's also warning potential investors that advanced AI could pose, quote, catastrophic or existential risks to humanity, even as it works to profit from the very same technology. Its plans are also costly. It anticipates spending half a trillion dollars on infrastructure in the years ahead. The IPO likely won't happen until after the November midterm elections in the US. That's according to sources. And AI safety concerns continue elsewhere as well.

OpenAI has shelved the release of its next generation model. The company is saying it doesn't meet its safety standards. GPT 6.1 Astra had been planned for an October launch. The Wall Street Journal reports that the newest model shows higher levels of deception than its predecessor and did not always accurately disclose what actions it had taken. In other tech news, Invidia says it's setting aside a record $150 billion to buy back its own shares, the biggest stock repurchase program ever announced by a US company. The move underscores just how much cash Nvidia is generating from the artificial intelligence boom.

The chipmaker's total buyback firepower now stands at $235 billion, more than the entire market value of most companies in the S&P 500. For more on the markets, and what else investors are watching, here's Mike Dolan from our sister podcast Morning Bit. So the bond market squeeze continues to go on and it's beginning to drag on stocks, worried about the heat of the economy and lots of interest rate rises ahead. However, the AI universe, there was a flurry of information from it over the past 24 hours, not least from this AI Star Anthropic, which is its prospectus for its planned IPO, which we expect sometime after the midterm elections, outlining yet again an existential risk to humanity from its developments. Now, this is obviously a clear warning when we've heard many times over the recent weeks, but it happens just as it. it's meeting with the White House and as it's outlining the numbers behind that IPO, 500 billion of spending over the coming years from a company that made 42 billion of losses only last year. And in the meantime, its big rival Open AI has shelved this latest model,

it is chat GPT model on safety fears. You can catch morning bid wherever you get your podcasts. A civil lawsuit has brought fresh scrutiny to the handling of gang rape allegations at a Cornell University Fraternity House back in 2024. New York prosecutors have now reopened the case and plan to present evidence against seven alleged perpetrators to a grand jury which will decide whether to indict. The lawsuit alleges the woman was unable to consent

after being given alcohol and drugs and that fraternity members used a Snapchat group chat to encourage others to join in. Reuters Joseph Axe has more. The district attorney released a rather lengthy statement that was aimed, at least in part, on explaining why he had decided to reopen the case, but also why his office did not pursue criminal charges two years ago. One of the explanations that he gave was that the alleged victim's statement to police

at the time, a few weeks after the incident in 2024, didn't specifically allege that there was anything non-consensual and did not allege that she had been involuntarily applied with any drugs or alcohol. That's not really what the lawsuit says. And there's a bit of a dispute between the district attorney and the lawyer who represents the alleged victim in this case. He says that the 24 statement to the police and the lawsuit are pretty similar.

And so he's faulting the district attorney's office for not fully investigating this back when it happened in 2024. The members of the fraternity in question haven't made public statements about this. One defense lawyer for one of them did say that the lawsuit was meritless and that his client did not participate in any illegal act. Cornell University, for its part, has denied any allegation that it went easy on these fraternity members.

It conducted its own investigation in 2024 that resulted in what it described as a range of punishments from expulsions to suspensions. And we are go for orbit. Space X's Starship reached orbit for the first time yesterday, deploying 26 Starlink satellites. But an engine failure cut the uncrewed mission from 10 hours down to 3, and shares failed 2%. And Starship has landed.

It's unclear how much of a setback this is for Elon Musk's goal to put the spacecraft into routine service later this year. U.S. and Iranian officials have held separate talks with mediators in a renewed push to end their now seven-month-long war. Any further discussions are expected to focus on an updated ceasefire proposal put forward by Tehran at the UN General Assembly last week. According to Iran's state news agency, Tehran is now waiting for Washington's response, including on conditions for restoring shipping through the strait of Hormuz.

Speaking to thousands on his last day in France, Pope Leo urged negotiators to make compromises to end the war in Ukraine. That, after dramatic images from Kiev, show people being forced to escape out of windows at the Academy of Sciences. After a Russian strike on the building, set it on fire, killing at least two. Elsewhere in the capital, shaken residents watched as black plumes of smoke escaped from a medical center, also struck by Russian attacks. Solomia Bacchinsk says she can't believe that things aren't better by now.

Speaking in his evening address, President Vladimir Zelensky said more than 120 drones had been launched in the assault, and more than 80 people were injured. Russia has started using a new type of jet-powered drone against Kiev in recent weeks. that Zelensky says is harder to intercept. Back in the US, Democrats say if they win control of either the House or the Senate in the midterms, they'll be taking a closer look at business deals tied to President Donald Trump and his family. That could include Trump-linked crypto ventures, Jared Kushner's business interests, and Donald Trump Jr's venture capital firm.

Reporter Alexander Olmer says the result could be a major. political and legal fight in the second half of Trump's term. We spoke to about a dozen lawyers and several crisis communication specialists and they all basically said that they haven't seen companies this word in a while and they're coming through their records, seeing where any potential liability lines, they're hiring big firms, big law firms, they're hiring specialists to try to, you know, create a narrative for public opinion and they're doing risk audits to see where they were exposed. There's an expectation that's going to move quickly. What does that mean exactly?

It means we could see subpoenas as early as February. Alexandra says some companies are going to find themselves in a tough spot. Many of them don't want to defy Congress. But on the other hand, they don't want to run afoul of the White House either. And they're going to be under significant pressure from Congress to turn over certain documents that the White House probably doesn't want out there. So we're going to see a really difficult decision for these companies and potential lawsuits from Congress if companies don't comply.

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