August 14, 2026

Presented By

Happy Friday. The New York Times charted the most popular emoji in the world, and the results suggest people are...crying a lot. These were the three most popular last year:

😭
🤣
😂

Some of the fastest-rising ones included 🥀 (big on TikTok to signify heartbreak) and 🗿 (the youngs commonly use this as a deadpan reaction).

The “hot beverage” emoji came in a lowly 213th place, but it’s No. 1 in our hearts.

—Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Adam Epstein, Holly Van Leuven, Neal Freyman

In today’s newsletter, we’ll get into:

Anthropic’s potential $2 trillion IPO valuation
The companies getting huge tariff refunds
Gen Zers redirecting funds from stocks to sports bets

Markets

Nasdaq

26,803.03

+0.81%

S&P

7,798.99

+0.65%

Dow

53,839.99

+0.13%

10-Year

4.641%

-4.0 bps

Bitcoin

$63,378.09

-0.25%

Netflix

$78.24

+5.43%

Data is provided by

*Stock data as of market close, cryptocurrency data as of 4:30pm ET. Here's what these numbers mean.

Markets: Stocks went Jeffersons mode and moved on up yesterday, notching a record high for the S&P 500 as investors digested the latest inflation data. Meanwhile, Netflix jumped after billionaire Bill Ackman revealed a new stake in the streaming giant.

OH MY CLAUDE

Report: Anthropic could IPO at record $2t valuation

Adobe Stock

Chatting with Claude may be more thrilling than watching a SpaceX rocket blast off…at least for Wall Street. Anthropic investors expect the AI giant to hit a valuation of $2 trillion or more during its public debut planned for the fall—which would surpass SpaceX’s recent $1.77 trillion IPO to become the biggest in history, the Financial Times reported yesterday.

Is $3 trillion next?

Anthropic backers think that the company’s soaring sales justify the steep number, which is double its current ~$1 trillion valuation:

They project Anthropic’s sales by the end of 2026 will put it on track for as much as $120 billion in annual revenue—10x what it was at the start of the year.
Some investors say such explosive growth would justify valuing the company at $3 trillion, or 30x its annual revenue. FT notes that other AI superstars like Palantir and Nebius are trading at 55 times their annual revenue.

But there’s some reason for caution. Despite Anthropic’s top models outperforming products from rivals OpenAI and Alphabet, they’re vulnerable to businesses scaling back their AI use due to the hefty price tag. Its top model, Fable, is 2.5x more expensive than a comparable tool from OpenAI.

Things are also tense with Uncle Sam: Anthropic is fighting the federal government in court over the Pentagon designating its products a supply chain risk. The Trump administration also temporarily placed export controls on the company’s most powerful models in June, alarming some customers and slowing revenue growth.

Meanwhile, Anthropic is doing its own pre-IPO shopping: It’s reportedly discussing a $6 billion deal to buy the AI software startup Decart. Decart’s know-how could help Anthropic slash the cost of training its models and enable it to design its own chips, putting it in competition with Nvidia.—SK

Sponsored By BluSky AI

“If you bet against the data center, you got trampled,” one of Wall Street’s most-followed voices said Wednesday. BluSky AI is substantially positioned to capture this booming market with prefab AI solution centers that deploy in months, are 300x smaller, and use less water and power than competitors. Public shares recently closed as high as $7. Invest directly at $5 through Aug. 20.

that was fast

Companies are getting their tariff money back

Collage showing three photos of company signage in black and white, with Ford on the left, Apple in the middle, and Nike on the right, all on a background of vibrant neon green money.

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock

Much like when you forget about your Venmo balance for a few months to trick yourself into feeling flush, corporations are reveling in speedy tariff refunds to pad their quarterly earnings.

ICYMI: The Supreme Court struck down President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on almost every US trading partner in February, and since then, importers have been clamoring to get their cash back. Of the $166 billion in tariffs SCOTUS nixed, $129 billion in refunds had been approved as of the end of July.

So, what companies got the biggest checks? Over 40 members of the S&P 500 reported a combined $9.6 billion in refunds last quarter:

Apple leads the pack at $2.2 billion in refunds. The tech giant said the payout contributed about 5% of Q2’s per-share earnings, boosting it by about 11 cents.
Ford was refunded $1.3 billion.
Nike received $986 million, FedEx got $800 million, and Amazon collected $640 million.

But you probably won’t get your money back. Some companies have promised to pass the funds on via lower prices, but they won’t be sending you cash. Plus, it’s difficult to prove which price hikes were due to tariffs rather than other market factors. However, shippers like FedEx, UPS, and DHL will be offering direct refunds to some customers because they can track individual imports that had tariffs slapped on them.—MM

WOULD YOU LIKE FRIES WITH THAT?

McDonald’s might have a huge dossier on you

Nick Iluzada

Ba-da-ba-ba-ba: Release the files—the McDonald’s loyalty program files. After requesting a copy of his data from the burger chain, a Wired journalist received a 515-page file on his McDonald’s habits that was far more detailed than expected, he wrote this week.

According to Wired’s Reece Rogers:

The McDonald’s loyalty program tracks purchase behavior, like favorite menu items and most-visited locations, which is apparently fairly standard.
The “concerning” part was how McDonald’s used this data to predict how often he’d visit in the future, what he’d spend, what he’d order, and the likelihood that he’d stop being a customer (0%).

“We use information such as past purchases to provide a more engaging, personal customer experience,” a McDonald’s spokesperson told Wired. The loyalty program’s 210 million active users are also the “single most important digital metric” for McDonald’s, its CFO said earlier this year.

Zoom out: The average US consumer belongs to more than 15 loyalty programs as of 2024, per BCG, and some may be exploiting your data (in addition to selling it). A Washington Post columnist recently discovered that Starbucks’s loyalty program may have given him fewer discounts because it determined that he was willing to pay full prices. Consumer Reports alleged similar schemes within Kroger’s loyalty program.—ML

Dave’s sports desk

Gen Z is moving money from stocks to sports bets

Getty Images

On Fridays, the Brew’s Dave Lozo looks at a sports business story that says a lot more than just the final score of a game.

Hey, sports fans, this is Adam filling in for Dave this week. For some people, their relationship to sports betting is restricted to losing $10 on their office’s March Madness pool every year. But, for many Gen Zers, it’s increasingly a major part of their financial planning.

Per a survey from the wealth management platform Betterment:

Twenty-six percent of Gen Zers “treat sports betting as a deliberate part of long-term financial strategy,” compared with 14% of millennials and 12% of the general population.
More than half (52%) of Gen Zers said they have rerouted funds from investments to sports betting in the last year, vs. 24% of all Americans.

The rapid legalization of betting apps and prediction markets means it’s never been easier to bet your paycheck on the Jets winning fewer than 5.5 games this season. Meanwhile, some young people believe that the stock market is rigged, even though funds that track the S&P 500 historically yield positive returns.

“When a prediction market or sportsbook starts to feel like a retirement strategy, we have a problem,” Betterment CEO Sarah Levy told Bloomberg.—AE

Reader Poll

Do you consider sports betting to be part of your long-term financial strategy?

Yes.
No.
Maybe if I were better at it.

Friday trivia

Here’s a classic riddle: If you have three, you have three. If you have two, you have two. But if you have one, you have none.

What is it?

Share the Brew

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Your friends get smarter. You get rewarded. Win-win.

Your referral count: 0

Click to Share

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Answer

Choices

Word of the Day

Today’s Word of the Day is: jaunt, meaning “a short fun trip or journey taken for pleasure.” Thanks to Zach from Grand Rapids, MI, for the suggestion. Submit another Word of the Day here.

✳︎ A Note From BluSky AI

This is a paid advertisement for BluSky AI’s Regulation A offering. Please read the offering circular at https://invest.bluskyaidatacenters.com/.

✳︎ A Note From Aflac

Source: *LIMRA 2024 U.S. Supplemental Health Insurance Total Market Report

✤ A Note From money.com

¹Offer expires 8/17/2026. Pricing available to new members for first-year ShieldGold™ and ShieldSilver™ base plans only. Discount cannot be applied to previous purchases or combined with other offers. Not valid in conjunction with a real estate transaction. Coverage available for single-family residences under 10,000 sq. ft. generally, and under 5,000 sq. ft. condos/townhomes. Coverage not available in all areas.

Written by Adam Epstein, Sam Klebanov, Matty Merritt, Molly Liebergall, Holly Van Leuven , and Neal Freyman

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