Elice’s offering was reportedly oversubscribed 400 times. Its shares then fell 30% on their first day of trading.
The demand before the listing did not carry into the debut. Other AI businesses are facing questions about what the buildout will cost and what will be left after the bills are paid.
AI Demand Is Strong, but Debt Is Drawing Scrutiny
Elice raised $151 million in the Kosdaq’s biggest initial public offering this year. One account valued the company at $750 million. Elice rents out GPUs and provides systems to operate them.
Reuters said the debut revived concerns about the AI trade after last week’s sell-off. The Financial Times reported a surge in trading of credit default swaps bought to protect portfolios if the AI boom unravels.
CoreWeave raises a more direct question about borrowing. One commentator said its shares fell 21% last week and cited a 145% yield on its 2030 bond.
The assessments of its debt differ. Goldman Sachs called the fears overblown and upgraded the stock to buy. JPMorgan said 16% of contract value would remain after debt repayment.
That leaves a question about CoreWeave’s contracted business: how much will be left for owners once the debt is paid?
Meta Has Put a Price on Its Personal Agent
Meta has launched a personal AI agent with a free tier and plans costing $20 or $100 a month. Meta says the agent can book appointments, fill out forms, and monitor home security feeds.
Users must opt out if they do not want their interactions used to train Meta’s models.
Mark Zuckerberg has described personal agents as a reason for Meta’s data center spending and a foundation for future products and revenue. The paid plans put a price on that idea. The material provides no subscriber figures to show how many people have signed up.
There is another reported development among AI companies. Bloomberg reported that a former Google CEO owns around 1% of Anthropic through an early investment. Anthropic’s public debut was reported to be imminent.
Inflation Is High While Housing Is Weak
September consumer prices rose 3.7% from a year earlier. Fuel oil rose 74%, and gasoline rose 34%. One commentator said wages, after adjusting for inflation, have fallen over the past six months.
Housing tells a different part of the rate story. The 30-year mortgage rate is 7.4%. With 20% down, the median monthly mortgage payment rose from $834 a decade ago to $2,315 today.
Builders are cutting prices. In October, 43% of them did so, with an average cut of about 6%. One market account reported that pending home sales fell 7.3% in September, to an index reading of 66.0.
That same account said traders priced roughly a 15% chance of an October Fed rate increase. Weak housing helps explain that expectation. The inflation figures show why the choice is still difficult.
The weakness was not confined to housing. One market post put Japan’s Nikkei down 8.9% over nine trading sessions. Over the same period, it put Bitcoin down 4.1% and the S&P 500 down 1.6%. The post described Japan’s decline as led by stocks rather than a yen move.
Britain’s bond market recovered after the sharpest sell-off among G7 peers following the Iran war. The Financial Times said investors were betting that next week’s Budget would avoid renewed concern about Britain’s finances.
Netflix shares fell after a downbeat outlook for the rest of the year. The report said it was struggling to attract new subscribers. Elon Musk also said a merger of SpaceX and Tesla would be “a good idea” and that the companies had formed committees to discuss it.
Retirement Gains Sit Beside Other Pressures
Fidelity said the average 401(k) balance rose 10.5% from March through June, its biggest quarterly increase since 2020. Its data showed 769,000 accounts above $1 million in the middle of this year.
One commentator, though, put credit card delinquencies near 13% of balances. The retirement figures and that estimate describe very different pressures on households.
One commentator also pointed to abundant liquidity, high leverage, frantic trading, and exuberant retail investors as signs that this may be the most speculative market ever. That is the commentator’s assessment, not a measure of what happens next.
Separate allegations concern political activity on technology platforms. Another commentator alleged that platforms restricted political accounts in the United States, Albania, and Brazil. TikTok and Meta attributed several of the described restrictions to technical errors.
The commentator also cited a report alleging that an AI system was used to map Brazilian voters, create false accounts, and spread disinformation. Those claims remain allegations alongside the companies’ explanations for the account restrictions.
Meta’s paid agent brings the focus back to AI spending. Its plans are available, but subscriber figures have not been provided here. Will people pay for what it is building?