Canva’s $4B Revenue, Nvidia Nears $30B OpenAI Deal, Kraken Buys Magna Ahead of IPO

This week shows how AI distribution, compute capital, and sovereign backing are converging at scale. Canva’s $4B revenue milestone reflects AI-driven acquisition, Nvidia’s near $30B move into OpenAI highlights rising frontier compute costs, and xAI’s $20B round signals strategic capital positioning around infrastructure. Let’s dive in…

THIS WEEK’S BREAKING NEWS

Canva converts AI referrals into $4B revenue growth

Canva reached $4B in annual recurring revenue in 2025, with monthly active users surpassing 265M and paid users exceeding 31M. B2B revenue doubled to roughly $500M ARR. The company also reported rising referral traffic from large language models such as ChatGPT and Claude, positioning AI-driven discovery as an emerging acquisition channel. (1)

MARKET UPDATE

Southeast Asia IPOs migrate to deeper markets  

Companies across Southeast Asia are pursuing overseas IPOs as Philippine, Indonesian, and Thai markets lag the MSCI Asia Pacific Index. Jollibee Foods Corp. and fintech Maya are eyeing U.S. listings, while Indonesia’s Merdeka Gold and Thailand’s Minor International consider Hong Kong or Singapore. Thin liquidity and weaker valuations are pushing issuers toward deeper international capital pools. (2)

STABLETON MORNINGSTAR PITCHBOOK UNICORN 20 STRATEGY

The Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy is the world’s first passive, systematic, and semi-liquid approach to investing in the Top 20 privately held tech companies before they go public.

This strategy offers a straightforward and cost-effective way to gain exposure to leading private technology companies within a single portfolio. With no performance fees and enhanced liquidity, it offers a unique alternative to traditional private market investments.

PORTFOLIO NEWS

Anduril integrates Shift5 into Lattice Mesh and Army NGC2

Shift5 has joined Anduril in the U.S. Army’s Next Generation Command and Control (NGC2) initiative, delivering vehicle health telemetry into Anduril’s Lattice Mesh for real-time readiness visibility. The integration was completed in two months and demonstrated at Ivy Sting 4. The Anduril-led consortium operates under a $99.6M OTA agreement to modernize Army command systems. (3)

Anduril expands SRM capacity with $43.7M DPA funding

Anduril secured $43.7M in additional Defense Production Act Title III funding on October 2, 2025, to expand U.S. solid rocket motor capacity, following a $14.3M award in December 2024. Combined with Anduril’s $75M internal investment, the capital scales its Mississippi facility, strengthens test and storage infrastructure, and positions it as the third U.S. SRM supplier. (4)

Anthropic scales AI with latest launch of Claude Sonnet 4.6

Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 4.6, its second major release in 12 days, positioning it as the default model for free and Pro users. The company claims Opus-level performance on economically valuable office tasks, alongside improved coding consistency. The rollout follows a $30B raise at a $380B post-money valuation amid intensifying competition with OpenAI and Google. (5)

Anthropic partners with Rwanda on AI education and health

Anthropic signed a three-year MOU with the Government of Rwanda to deploy AI across health, education, and public sector systems—its first formal multi-sector government partnership in Africa. The agreement builds on a 2025 education program that issued 2,000 Claude Pro licenses and expands into health initiatives targeting cervical cancer elimination, malaria reduction, and maternal mortality. (6)

Anthropic embeds in Infosys’ global delivery engine

Anthropic partnered with Infosys to build industry-specific AI agents combining Claude models, including Claude Code, with Infosys’ Topaz platform. The rollout begins in telecommunications via a dedicated AI agent center, then expands to financial services and manufacturing. Infosys shares rose 4.8% on the announcement, outperforming the NSE Nifty’s 0.3% gain. (7)

Canva expands motion strategy with Cavalry, MangoAI acquisition

Canva acquired Cavalry and MangoAI to expand into motion graphics and AI-driven video advertising as software stocks face pressure from AI disruption. Canva ended 2025 with over $4B in annualized revenue, up 36% year over year, versus Adobe at $6.2B quarterly revenue, up 10%. Canva is not raising capital and continues to scale. (8)

Figure advances humanoid autonomy with Helix 02

Figure unveiled Helix 02, enabling full-body humanoid autonomy through a layered System 0, 1, 2 architecture operating up to 1 kHz. In a four-minute kitchen demo, the robot completed 61 continuous actions without resets. System 0, trained on 1,000+ hours of human motion, replaces 109,504 lines of C++ code, supporting coordinated loco-manipulation and tactile sensing integration. (8)

Databricks cuts streaming cost via Zerobus

Databricks launched Zerobus Ingest within Lakeflow Connect to cut the cost and complexity of streaming data pipelines by eliminating intermediary message buses such as Kafka. The fully managed service routes data directly into governed Delta tables in the lakehouse, reducing infrastructure overhead, latency, and duplication. It targets single-destination ingestion to accelerate real-time AI and agentic workflows. (9)

Epic Games strengthens Unreal AI 3D modeling with Meshcapade

Epic Games acquired digital human startup Meshcapade for an undisclosed sum to enhance character creation across Fortnite and Unreal Engine. Meshcapade’s AI converts standard video into high-fidelity 3D motion and body models, reducing cost and complexity. The team will join Epic, which will open its first Cyber Valley office in Tübingen. (10)

Kraken acquires Magna ahead of IPO

Kraken acquired token management platform Magna as it expands ahead of a planned IPO. Magna helps crypto issuers manage token distribution and ownership tracking. The deal follows Kraken’s $1.5B NinjaTrader purchase and marks its sixth acquisition in a year, positioning the exchange to support issuers earlier in their lifecycle. (11)

Kraken scales tokenized equities to $25B

Kraken’s xStocks surpassed $25B in transaction volume in under eight months, including $3.5B onchain across more than 80,000 unique holders. xStocks represents 68% of the top 25 tokenized equities by holder count and trades across CEX, DeFi, and regulated venues. Recent integrations include TON, Bybit, Gate.io, and 360X under Deutsche Börse Group. (12)

Nvidia nears $30B OpenAI investment, replacing $100B pact

Nvidia is close to finalizing a $30B equity investment in OpenAI, replacing last year’s non-binding $100B multiyear framework. The deal would form part of a $100B+ funding round valuing OpenAI at $730B pre-money. OpenAI plans to spend about $600B on computing through 2030 and recently surpassed $20B in annualized revenue. (13)

OpenAI deepens enterprise push with global consultancies

OpenAI signed multiyear “Frontier Alliances” with Accenture, Boston Consulting Group, Capgemini, and McKinsey & Company to scale deployment of its Frontier enterprise platform. Enterprises represent about 40% of OpenAI revenue and could reach 50% this year, as partners accelerate AI agent implementation in production workflows. (14)

Perplexity abandons ads to protect AI trust

Perplexity has phased out advertising, arguing that sponsored responses risk eroding user trust in AI-generated answers. Valued at $18B with roughly $200M in annualized revenue and over 100M users, the company derives most income from subscriptions ranging from $20 to $200 per month, prioritizing accuracy over ad-based monetization. (15)

Ripple CEO sees 80% odds for Clarity Act

Brad Garlinghouse said the Clarity Act has an 80% chance of passing by April, aiming to define which digital assets fall under securities law versus CFTC oversight. Ripple has spent nearly $3B on acquisitions since 2023 but is pausing deals to focus on integration, citing growing institutional demand for regulatory certainty. (16)

Stripe’s Bridge wins OCC trust bank approval

Bridge received conditional approval from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency to establish a U.S. national trust bank. Final approval would allow custody, stablecoin issuance, and reserve management. Stripe acquired Bridge in 2024 for a reported $1.1B, positioning it within a clearer federal banking framework. (17)

Humain backs xAI in $20B funding round

Saudi Arabia’s state-backed Humain invested $3B in xAI as part of a $20B January funding round, becoming a significant minority shareholder before its stake was converted into SpaceX shares following the merger. The move aligns with the kingdom’s AI diversification push, including 500MW of planned data center capacity. (18)

OTHER NEWS

ByteDance scales U.S. AI research operations

ByteDance is hiring nearly 100 U.S.-based AI roles within its Seed division, spanning LLM data production, generative video and image research, general intelligence models, and drug discovery. The expansion follows its TikTok restructuring and comes amid rising U.S.-China AI tensions. ByteDance was recently valued at $480B in a share auction. (19)

Celonis and LeafLabs power AI robotics analytics for supply chains

Celonis and LeafLabs launched the Robotic Systems Intelligence Manager to convert high-volume robotic telemetry, up to 100GB per robot daily, into process-level insights tied to business KPIs. Piloted by Pickle Robot Company, the solution accelerated core processing development by 50%, targeting higher automation ROI and faster production scaling. (20)

Cerebras revives IPO plans with recent confidential US filing

Cerebras has once again filed confidentially with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission for a potential IPO, according to The Information. The California-based AI hardware specialist, known for its wafer-scale processors, previously withdrew a listing attempt and could pursue a U.S. public offering as soon as this year amid renewed market interest in tech listings. (21)

Mistral AI acquires Koyeb to accelerate AI cloud buildout

Mistral AI has agreed to acquire Paris-based cloud startup Koyeb in its first acquisition, underscoring its ambition to build out Mistral Compute, a full-stack AI cloud offering. Koyeb’s serverless deployment platform and team will help Mistral scale AI inference, optimize GPU use, and support deployment on customers’ own infrastructure. (22)

Plaid and Backbase integrate open finance for banks

Backbase partnered with Plaid to integrate Plaid’s secure, real-time financial data connectivity into Backbase’s AI-powered Banking Platform. The integrated open finance solution aims to help banks and financial institutions streamline customer onboarding, aggregate account data, and deliver more personalized services by addressing persistent data fragmentation in legacy systems. (23)

Hexaware expands RapidX through Replit partnership

Hexaware Technologies launched an open version of RapidX with native integration into Replit to accelerate enterprise software delivery from rapid prototyping to production. The joint offering combines RapidX’s agentic AI engineering governance with Replit’s natural-language development environment, supported by dedicated squads and a new AI SDLC Center of Excellence in Chennai. (24)

CHART OF THE WEEK

The steady increase in average primary round size reflects a deeper change in where venture capital is being deployed. As AI, compute infrastructure, and defense technology take center stage, funding needs have expanded materially. These businesses require sustained capital to fund models, data, hardware, and long development cycles. The result is fewer but significantly larger primary rounds, often raised more frequently, as leading companies race to secure strategic advantage while investor conviction remains high.

This shift reshapes late-stage private blue-chip tech markets. Capital is concentrating around companies with the scale and ambition to absorb large checks and deploy them productively. The Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy focuses on the private technology companies attracting the largest rounds and driving the next phase of value creation across AI, infrastructure, and defense.

THE UNTOLD UNICORN STORY

Anthropic: The AI watchdogs building the future

Dario Amodei and Daniela Amodei, co-founders of Anthropic. (25)

Anthropic's founders helped create some of AI's most powerful systems, then left to build them more responsibly. CEO Dario Amodei led development of GPT-2 and GPT-3 at OpenAI before departing in 2021 with his sister Daniela and five colleagues, convinced the industry was moving too fast on capabilities and too slow on safety. (26)

Their approach centers on Constitutional AI, a technique where models learn to critique and correct their own outputs against a set of principles (27). The company has grown into one of the leading AI labs, backed by Amazon and Google.

Fun Fact: Claude is named after Claude Shannon, the father of information theory. The company itself was almost called "Sponge" or "Sloth" before the team landed on Anthropic, a word meaning "human-centered," partly because the domain was available. (28)

Did you know? Anthropic is one of the 20 companies in our Stableton Morningstar PitchBook Unicorn 20 strategy, a systematic, index approach that aims to outperform public benchmarks with low-cost fees, and without a performance fee. Click below for more information.

SOURCES

1 - TechCrunch, 2 - Bloomberg, 3 - PR Newswire, 4 - Anduril, 5 - CNBC, 6 - Anthropic, 7 - Bloomberg, 8 - CNBC, 9 - TechTarget, 10 - GameSpot, 11 - Fortune, 12 - Finance Magnates, 13 - Financial Times, 14 - CNBC, 15 - Financial Times, 16 - Coindesk, 17 - Reuters, 18 - Financial Times, 19 - Bloomberg, 20 - ITWire, 21 - The Information, 22 - TechCrunch, 23 - Retail Banker International, 24 - PR Newswire, 25 - Fortune, 26 - Contrary Research, 27 - Anthropic, 28 - Medium