strategy

Morning Brew Inc, Photo: Michael M. Santiago/Getty Images

This whole AI boom has been one wild ride. In a couple short years, LLMs, once a way for college students to avoid writing their own essays, has been touted as the most groundbreaking invention since the Internet, electricity, or construction. AI was going to cure cancer, put us all out of work, or launch Skynet—pick your poison. Then some started warning of a potential stock market bubble that could put tulipomania to shame. More recently, some CFOs have pumped the brakes on tokenmaxxing after receiving some eyewatering AI bills.

Then, last week, Anthropic filed an S-1 with the SEC, and the rhetoric ramped up once more. Possibly the biggest IPO in history! A potential $1 trillion to $2 trillion valuation! 1,300% revenue growth! A $40 trillion total addressable market!

But how much of the hype is, well, hype? How sustainable is that level of growth? Are there hidden red or yellow flags in the S-1 that could spell trouble down the road? And what’s the deal with that change in auditors? To find out, we asked the kinds of people for whom a nearly 400-page S-1 constitutes a beach read: accountants, CFOs, CEOs, and IPO specialists.

Let’s start with how Antropic is really doing. Keep reading here.—CV

      

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It’s January. Brrr. The auditors are in the room, and you get hit with a question you didn’t see coming: Where, exactly, are you using AI?

Maybe leadership has been pushing you to adopt, and you’ve been protecting your control matrix. Maybe someone on your team has been running an AI tool on a personal account. Either way, November beats January (brrr) for finding out.

Your auditor could ask about AI this season, even if you haven’t deployed any.

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You’ll leave with a simple scoping test to decide whether your AI is in audit scope, plus a year-end timeline for when to bring your auditor in before go-live. The good news: A few well-chosen controls and a clean audit trail will do.

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risk management

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photo: Adobe Stock

Likely to the joy of investors (and the dismay of CFOs trying to control input costs and forecast expenses), oil and gas companies are reaping the rewards of high fuel prices. But recent earnings calls offered glimpses into where oil executives think prices may be headed.

Oil giants Chevron and ExxonMobil recently revealed Q3 profits that beat analysts’ expectations, “capp[ing] off a second straight banner quarter for Big Oil,” Reuters reported. ExxonMobil reported quarterly earnings of $15.4 billion, up from $7.5 billion year over year. Chevron’s $9.9 billion in Q3 earnings were up from $3.5 billion a year ago. In fact, major oil companies are so flush with cash that executives are “uncharacteristically wary” about the best way to spend it, according to Bloomberg.

Fuel prices have spiked as the US war in Iran caused disruptions to oil transport routes in the Middle East. As CFO Brew reported in March near the onset of the war, surging oil prices have “knock-on effects that could prove material to many businesses further down the line.”

For more on the macroeconomic impacts, keep reading.—AZ

      

talent management

Illustration: Morning Brew Inc., Photos: Adobe Stock, Unsplash

Some movement is coming back to the labor market.

Despite a tepid jobs report in September, where employers added just 29,000 jobs, labor turnover for the month picked up that month. Employers reported a monthly increase in job openings, hires, and quits, per the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ JOLTS data released Tuesday.

While today’s data brings some optimism for the labor market, employers and job seekers alike are still a ways away before recovery—and better opportunities—materializes, experts tell HR Brew.

Diving into the data. Employers had 7.5 million job openings posted at the end of September, increasing by more than 333,000 from August, and up nearly half a million from September 2025. Nearly one-third of the increase in job openings came from non-education state and local government, which had around 519,000 openings at the end of September, a monthly growth of more than 104,000.

Total hires, however, saw a more moderate monthly increase compared to total quits. Employers reported making 5.4 million hires in September, up 131,000 from August, though the hiring rate rose little during that period, to 3.4%.

“Employers are opening positions, but if you also look, they’re not really rushing to fill them,” Julie Loucks, head of North America vertical strategy for ManPowerGroup, said.

For more analysis of the new jobs report, keep reading on HR Brew.—PM

      

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market forces

Francis Scialabba

Today’s top finance reads.

Stat: $115 billion. That’s how much chipmaker Marvell is paying for data center optics maker Lumentum, in a deal worth more than half Marvell’s market cap. (Reuters)

Quote: “It’s worth noting that the strong growth in AI Mode queries had an impact because of the lower monetization we were seeing.” —Google’s chief business officer Philipp Schindler; the company’s stock dipped after a recent earnings call showed AI search was eating into ad revenue (Bloomberg)

Read: Making gluten-free Goldfish crackers has turned out to be an epic struggle for slumping Campbell’s. 🐟 (the Wall Street Journal)

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