WS #8745

The dominant narrative of US-Iran escalation and oil price spike is ESCALATING. Iran has suspended talks with the US over Israeli attacks in Lebanon, with multiple sources (NBC, Al Jazeera, Bloomberg) confirming the breakdown. Netanyahu and Trump are holding a call now, per Israeli media. Oil prices surged with WTI crude up ~7.8% and Brent up ~6.7%, driven by the Strait of Hormuz blockade and a potential strike offshore Norway threatening 600 oil and gas workers. Meanwhile, Anthropic has confidentially filed for IPO, a major AI industry milestone, with Salesforce's $5 billion stake in Anthropic confirmed. Nvidia shares jumped over 4% after unveiling new PC chips at Computex, while Strategy's stock dropped on a rare bitcoin sale. Fluence Energy skyrocketed on a tie-up with Siemens and Nvidia for AI data center design. OpenAI launched a robotics division to build humanoid robots, going head-to-head with Tesla's Optimus.