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(Bloomberg) — Asian stocks traded within tight ranges early Wednesday, mirroring similar moves on Wall Street amid a lack of fresh catalysts, while a rebound in cryptocurrencies lost steam.

MSCI Inc.’s gauge of regional shares was up 0.1% as tech-heavy benchmarks in South Korea and Taiwan advanced. Japanese indexes were mixed. Futures on the S&P 500 and Nasdaq 100 indexes edged higher after the US benchmark capped its sixth advance in seven trading sessions on Tuesday. Bitcoin fluctuated after surging back above $91,000 in the previous session, suggesting that the crypto market remains on shaky ground.

The mixed backdrop highlighted the fragile sentiment heading into the year-end, with investors juggling tight equity moves and renewed volatility in cryptocurrencies as they wait for this month’s rate decisions by the Federal Reserve and the Bank of Japan. With only a handful of data releases left before Fed officials meet next week, equity traders are treading carefully.

“Asian markets are trading with a cautiously positive tone today, drawing some momentum from Wall Street, but the sky certainly isn’t clear enough for a broad-based rally,” said Hebe Chen, an analyst at Vantage Markets in Melbourne. “The upcoming, decision-shaping US PCE print and a heavy slate of central bank meetings are keeping traders on edge.”

The volatile moves in the crypto market have also kept broader appetite for risk assets in check. Bitcoin jumped nearly 6% on Tuesday, recovering from a bruising selloff in the previous session that caught Wall Street off guard and erased nearly $1 billion in fresh leveraged bets.

The US is due to release ADP’s report on private sector employment as well as the import price index and industrial production for September on Wednesday. The University of Michigan’s preliminary reading of consumer sentiment in December will be released on Friday.

As traders awaited the last few economic reports before next week’s Fed decision, President Donald Trump said he plans to announce his selection to lead the central bank in early 2026. Trump has pressured the Fed for months to lower interest rates, and naming a successor to Jerome Powell — whose term as Chair expires in May — would give the president his biggest chance yet to reshape the institution.

After cutting interest rates by more than a percentage point, Fed officials are now wondering where to stop – and finding there’s more disagreement than ever.

In the past year or so, prescriptions for where rates should end up have diverged by the most since at least 2012, when US central bankers started publishing their estimates. That’s feeding into an unusually public split over whether to deliver another cut next week, and what comes after that.

“Nothing is going to change our view that the Fed eases next week, but it is looking more like a hawkish cut,” said Andrew Brenner at NatAlliance Securities. “We can see at least three dissents next week.”

Corporate News

Medical supply company Medline Inc. is set to begin formal marketing for its initial public offering as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter, in what’s expected to be the biggest US listing this year. Taiwanese prosecutors charged Tokyo Electron Ltd. for failing to prevent staff from allegedly stealing Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. trade secrets, escalating a dispute involving two Asian linchpins of a chip industry increasingly vital to national and economic security. Amazon.com Inc.’s cloud unit raced to get the latest version of its artificial intelligence chip to market, renewing efforts to sell hardware capable of rivaling products from Nvidia Corp. and Google. Comcast Corp. is looking to merge its NBCUniversal division with Warner Bros. Discovery Inc., according to people familiar with the company’s plans. Marvell Technology Inc. announced plans to acquire startup Celestial AI for at least $3.25 billion, part of a push to capture more of the runaway spending on artificial intelligence computing. Tesla Inc.’s China factory shipments rose for only the third time this year amid a broader global downturn in sales for the Elon Musk-run company. UltraGreen.ai is set to begin trading Wednesday morning in Singapore’s biggest initial public offering since 2017 excluding real estate investment trusts. CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. raised its fiscal year 2026 guidance, signaling resilient demand for the company’s expanding portfolio of artificial intelligence-enabled cybersecurity products. Some of the main moves in markets:

Stocks

S&P 500 futures rose 0.2% as of 10:51 a.m. Tokyo time Nikkei 225 futures (OSE) rose 0.8% Japan’s Topix fell 0.4% Australia’s S&P/ASX 200 rose 0.2% Hong Kong’s Hang Seng fell 0.6% The Shanghai Composite fell 0.1% Euro Stoxx 50 futures rose 0.2% Currencies

The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index was little changed The euro rose 0.1% to $1.1637 The Japanese yen rose 0.1% to 155.65 per dollar The offshore yuan was little changed at 7.0628 per dollar The Australian dollar rose 0.2% to $0.6573 Cryptocurrencies

Bitcoin rose 0.7% to $92,280.57 Ether rose 0.8% to $3,022.51 Bonds

The yield on 10-year Treasuries declined one basis point to 4.07% Japan’s 10-year yield advanced 1.5 basis points to 1.870% Australia’s 10-year yield declined two basis points to 4.60% Commodities

West Texas Intermediate crude fell 0.1% to $58.56 a barrel Spot gold rose 0.3% to $4,219 an ounce This story was produced with the assistance of Bloomberg Automation.

–With assistance from Winnie Hsu.

©2025 Bloomberg L.P.

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Anthropic has tapped law firm Wilson Sonsini to begin work on one of the largest initial public offerings ever, which could come as soon as 2026, as the artificial intelligence start-up races OpenAI to the public market.

The maker of the Claude chatbot, which is in talks for a private funding round that would value it at more than $300bn, chose the US west coast law firm in recent days, according to two people with knowledge of the decision.

The start-up, led by chief executive Dario Amodei, had also discussed a potential IPO with big investment banks, according to multiple people with knowledge of those talks. The people characterised the discussions as preliminary and informal, suggesting that the company was not close to picking its IPO underwriters.

Nonetheless, these moves represent a significant step up in Anthropic’s preparations for an IPO that would test the appetite of public markets to back the massive, lossmaking research labs at the heart of the AI boom.

Wilson Sonsini has advised Anthropic since 2022, including on multibillion-dollar investments from Amazon, and has worked on high-profile tech IPOs such as Google, LinkedIn and Lyft.

Its investors are enthusiastic about an IPO, arguing that Anthropic can seize the initiative from its larger rival OpenAI by listing first.

Anthropic could be prepared to list in 2026, according to one person with knowledge of its plans. Another person close to the company cautioned that an IPO so soon was unlikely.

“It’s fairly standard practice for companies operating at our scale and revenue level to effectively operate as if they are publicly traded companies,” said an Anthropic spokesperson. “We haven’t made any decisions about when or even whether to go public, and don’t have any news to share at this time.”

OpenAI was also undertaking preliminary work to ready itself for a public offering, according to people with knowledge of its plans, though they cautioned it was too soon to set even an approximate date for a listing.

But both companies may also be hampered by the fact that their rapid growth and the astronomical costs of training AI models make their financial performance difficult to forecast.

The pair will also be attempting IPOs at valuations that are unprecedented for US tech start-ups. OpenAI was valued at $500bn in October. Anthropic received a $15bn commitment from Microsoft and Nvidia last month, which will form part of a funding round expected to value the group between $300bn and $350bn.

Anthropic had been working through an internal checklist of changes required to go public, according to one person familiar with the process.

The San Francisco-headquartered start-up hired Krishna Rao, who worked at Airbnb for six years and was instrumental in that company’s IPO, as chief financial officer last year.

Wilson Sonsini did not respond to a request for comment.