MORNING BID EUROPE-Our products could end all human life, buy our shares

A look at the day ahead in European and global ​markets from Tom Westbrook Anthropic is making a massive ​bet that AI will transform ‌the global economy ​and that public investors will pay to underwrite it.

The prospectus of the US AI company, seen by Reuters, lays out $518 billion in spending ‌plans as it seeks to stake out the frontiers of a technology pitched as a bigger deal than industrialisation, electricity and the internet. It's headed to market after the November midterms, and in the midst of increasingly ‌public questions — even from within Anthropic — about the speed and direction of AI development.

This month an ‌Anthropic researcher quit the firm, warning that the pace of AI development poses an existential threat, possibly within a decade. Another researcher at the firm said the odds of human extinction exceeded 10%. CEO Dario Amodei has called, along with rivals at ⁠OpenAI, Google's ​DeepMind, Microsoft and xAI, ⁠to slow the development of increasingly capable AI systems.

Markets, for now, are staying pretty sanguine despite risks which, Anthropic's prospectus discloses, ⁠also include the company earning nearly a quarter of its revenue from two customers. A week ago the Nasdaq stood ​at a record high. Yet elsewhere the financial backdrop is growing more hostile.

Sovereign yields have put ⁠in a big rise through September and benchmark 10-year rates trade around their highest for decades across major economies. Increasingly, investors think ⁠that ​the data-centre building boom that's boosting growth, employment and commodity prices is going to put the economy on a footing where it can bear higher interest rates for longer.

That means a durable period ⁠where companies pay more to borrow, households spend more servicing debts and government interest bills go up, leaving ⁠less money for social ⁠programmes. Anthropic's sale will test whether enthusiasm for the AI trade can withstand rising rates and scrutiny.

Key developments that could influence markets on Tuesday: (Editing by Sonali Paul)