American Tourists Are Everywhere

SPEAKER_1 (0:00)

The thing about AI for business, it may not automatically fit the way your business works.

At IBM, we've seen this firsthand. But by embedding AI across HR, IT, and procurement processes, we've reduced costs by millions, slash repetitive tasks, and freed thousands of hours for strategic work. Now we're helping companies get smarter by putting AI where it actually pays off, deep in the work that moves the business. Let's create smarter business, IBM.

Luke Vargas (0:33)

Anthropic tries to reassure investors ahead of its blockbuster IPO.

Berber Jinn (0:38)

You're seeing the company try and project confidence about the state of their business at a moment where who ultimately ends up winning the AI race and the business models of these AI labs that burn billions of dollars training models are still in question.

Luke Vargas (0:52)

Plus, another Democratic primary, this time in Wisconsin, pits the far left against the party establishment. And from wealthy boomers to restless Gen Zers, we'll look at the Americans grabbing their passports and traveling the globe. It's Tuesday, August 11th. I'm Luke Vargas for the Wall Street Journal. And here is the AM Edition of What's News, the top headlines and business stories moving your world today.

Anthropic is gearing up for what could be one of the largest IPOs in history this fall. The journal's Berber Jinn reports that the company has kicked off a series of meetings with potential IPO investors in a bid to try and rally support for the listing.

Berber Jinn (1:33)

In recent months, a lot of investors have grown a bit nervous about potential challenges to their business model, namely the rise of cheaper AI models being developed in China that are open weight models, which means that they're customizable, generally less cost on the market, and a lot of businesses have been complaining about the power that Anthropic has over pricing expensive AI products and just the general dominance of the business. So in these meetings, Anthropic executives have sought to quell a lot of investor concerns about these Chinese AI models, telling them that they don't think it's a big concern because of the sophistication of Anthropic's models. Another thing that they've addressed is the growing backlash against AI across the country. And what Anthropic executives have said in these meetings is that they plan to focus more of their efforts in the future on building AI applications for biology and health care, which they said they hoped would be able to help turn the tide on some of that negative sentiment.

Luke Vargas (2:38)

We understand that Anthropic is targeting a public debut in September or early October with top-rival OpenAI, now expected to follow with a listing as late as next year.

President Trump's media company says that it's signed up more than 10 customers to a real-time feed of top-truth social accounts for between $60,000 and $100,000 a month. Government watchdogs and congressional Democrats have criticized the service, arguing that the president is selling investors access to market-moving information. Interim Trump Media CEO Kevin McGurn pushed back on that assessment.

Kevin McGurn (3:14)

The criticism is misinformed, is the first thing I would say.

Truth API provides machine-readable feeds of publicly available truth posts from the platform's top counts in milliseconds. Our customers will get published in publicly available posts fractionally faster. Providing licensed real-time public data through commercial APIs is a well-established business practice.

Luke Vargas (3:36)

While the Iran War has boosted the importance of Trump's true social account with posts sending oil markets into wild swings, Trump Media has languished, losing nearly $240 million in Q2, due largely to poorly timed bets on Bitcoin.

Washington's push to revive domestic shipbuilding is drawing the interest of foreign investors. South Korean conglomerate Hanwha is making a more than $1 billion offer for shipbuilder Austal USA, which if successful would hand it an Alabama shipyard and a number of major government contracts. Hanwha, which bought a historic Philadelphia shipyard in 2024, is separately planning an Arkansas munitions factory to supply American armed forces. Well, the latest US inflation reading is due tomorrow and widely expected to show a continued easing after prices declined in June, and one supermarket staple in particular is providing relief. It's wholesale prices for boneless, skinless chicken breasts, which are down about 37% from a year ago, something that agriculture reporter Patrick Thomas says is a result of food companies overestimating demand.

Patrick Thomas (4:46)

Basically, you had chicken processors, so think of the big companies, Tyson Foods, Pilgrim's Pride, Wayne Sanderson Farms. They had been ramping up production in anticipation of a drop-off in demand of beef. It's reached all-time high prices over the last year, and the general idea was that maybe we'd see some of this demand fall off in Americans switching to a cheaper meat from beef to chicken. Well, beef demand volumes are actually up about 2 percent from last year despite the high prices. We have a chicken glut. For meat packers, this is not good news when they were relying on good chicken profits to offset some of the losses in beef right now.