AI.com sells for $70 million; Anthropic Raises another $20 Billion; and Japan Nikkei Rises on Takaichi's Reelection

The AI boom just crossed a new threshold, and it’s no longer confined to pitch decks, labs, or VC term sheets. From a $70 million power grab for the AI.com domain by Crypto.com’s founder, to Anthropic closing in on one of the largest private funding rounds in tech history, artificial intelligence is now colliding head-on with consumer branding, public markets, and geopolitics. Elsewhere, Japan’s markets are ripping to record highs on a decisive political mandate. Bitcoin is staging violent rebounds that leave bulls and bears equally uneasy, and risk appetite is swinging wildly across stocks, crypto, and global assets. Together, the moves paint a picture of a market struggling to price the next phase of growth, the costs, the risks, and hype that come with it. All this and more in today’s Read It And Eat!

Markets Around The World

Markets as of 6th February 2026. Cells in RED mean that the value is down, cells in Green mean the value is up.

MAJOR HEADLINES

• AI.com bought by Crypto.com founder for $70mn in biggest-ever website name deal

Crypto.com co-founder and CEO Kris Marszalek acquired the AI.com domain for approximately $70 million in cryptocurrency and plans to launch a consumer AI platform under the brand. 

Marszalek announced the purchase on X on Feb. 6, writing that he bought the domain in April 2025 and has been building a team since. 

Marszalek will serve as CEO of both Crypto.com and AI.com. The platform, set to officially launch following a Super Bowl LX commercial on Sunday, will let users create personal AI agents that can send messages, execute actions across apps, trade stocks and build projects, according to AI.com's press release. User data will be encrypted with individual keys. "We are at a fundamental shift in AI's evolution as we rapidly move beyond basic chats to AI agents actually getting things done for humans," Marszalek said in the release.

The AI.com launch comes just days after Crypto.com spun out its prediction markets business into a standalone app called OG, also timed to Super Bowl activity. Crypto.com claims more than 150 million retail users and roughly $1.5 billion in annual revenue. Marszalek told the Financial Times he has already received what he called "an absolutely insane amount of money" in offers for the domain but intends to keep it. "When we started Crypto.com there were around a thousand different exchanges, and we somehow managed to make it work," he said. "We will make this work one way or another." Financial Times 

• Anthropic closes another $20 Billion Funding Round

Anthropic is ironing out the final details on a funding round likely to raise more than $20 billion and slated to close this week, according to people familiar with the matter. The OpenAI rival was initially seeking $10 billion but is now on track to raise more than double that amount at a $350 billion valuation, thanks in part to excess investor interest, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the details are private.

Anthropic has lined up checks north of $1 billion each from Coatue Management, Singapore’s GIC and Iconiq Capital in its latest financing, in addition to as much as $15 billion from strategic investors Nvidia Corp. and Microsoft Corp., Bloomberg News previously reported. The latest funding round would nearly double Anthropic’s prior valuation and comes just five months after the company raised $13 billion a sign of an investor frenzy buoyed by the artificial intelligence startup’s soaring revenue run rate, which crossed $9 billion last summer.

The deal has not yet officially closed and timing or specific terms could still change. Altimeter Capital Management and Sequoia Capital, both OpenAI backers, are expected to invest in the round, according to people familiar with the talks. Lightspeed Venture Partners and Menlo Ventures are also participating. Yahoo.Finance

• Japanese stocks soar to record after Sanae Takaichi’s landslide election win

Tokyo’s Nikkei share index jumped as much as 5% to a record on Monday after Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi’s governing party secured a two-thirds supermajority in a parliamentary election.

The landslide victory gives Takaichi a much stronger mandate to pursue market-friendly policies, though the impact on Japan's currency and bond markets may not be quite so positive.

"So overall, as the LDP has gone from a very weak government that really couldn’t do anything to an extremely strong government now with the supermajority of the lower house, they really could call the shots,” said Neil Newman, managing director and head of strategy at Astris Advisory Japan. 

NHK, citing results of vote counts, said Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party, or LDP, alone secured 316 seats by early Monday, comfortably surpassing a 261-seat absolute majority in the 465-member lower house, the more powerful of Japan’s two-chamber parliament.  That marks a record since the party’s foundation in 1955 and surpasses the previous record of 300 seats won in 1986 by late Prime Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone.  Takaichi's first major task when the lower house reconvenes in mid-February is to work on a budget bill, delayed by the election, to fund economic measures to address rising costs and sluggish wages. Financial Times 

• Bitcoin is still about $70,000 too high 

  
  

Bitcoin broke above $70,000 on Friday, just one day after narrowly avoiding falling below the key $60,000 mark, as part of a stunning rebound. The token rose to as much as $71,458.01 on Friday, up more than 11% on the day. As of Monday, February 9, 2026 at around 3:00 p.m. ET, Bitcoin was trading around approximately $70.702 USD, according to live price data.

The forceful rebound followed the flagship cryptocurrency's dive below $61,000 on Thursday, marking a 15% plunge on the day. It comes as some investors are snapping up bitcoin after its more than 50% decline from its record high above $126,000 hit last October.

The reversal comes as stocks also rose on Friday, suggesting the market could close on a more positive note following a very volatile week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average advanced 918 points, or 1.9%. The S&P 500 added 1.4%, while the Nasdaq Composite traded up 1.5%. Investors' rotation back into risk-on assets drove stocks' surge amid fading fears over the threats posed by artificial intelligence technologies' to software firms. Several BigTech names rebounded, including Nvidia and Microsoft, which rose 6% and 1%, respectively. Financial Times 

Minor Headlines

• Taiwan says 40% shift of chip capacity to US is 'impossible' Yahoo.Finance

• Novo Nordisk shares rise as Hims abandons $49 weight-loss pill  Yahoo.Finance

• Dow Jones surpasses 50,000 Bloomberg

• UK’s FCA plans to publish all trading data for London-listed shares Financial Times

• Kenyan government forces clean tech startup that raised $100 million to shut down  Apnews

• Legal US Betting For Super Bowl 60 To Approach $1.75 Billion Usatoday

• US embassy in London denies visas to executives over minor offences  Financial Times 

  
  

• Starmer’s Chief of Staff Resigns, Citing connections with Epstein and Mandelson  Financial Times