Claude maker Anthropic will likely be rated junk, Blackstone told investors. It had forecast investment grade before 2027.

Also in 30 seconds: Salesforce buying Rune, a military logistics start-up, after Salesforce won a ten-year US Army contract with a $5.6 billion ceiling, and Celonis pitching investigation software to German police, where Palantir already runs in several states.

1. Blackstone, the anchor investor in the deal that finances Anthropic's chips, expects a "high" junk rating after the IPO, the double B range, TechCrunch reported, citing the Financial Times. That reverses its earlier forecast. Neither forecast is an agency rating. Anthropic and Blackstone declined to comment. Such a rating could make raising money harder and costlier for Anthropic, TechCrunch noted.

2. Salesforce said it signed a definitive agreement to buy Rune Technologies, whose software the US Army and Marine Corps already use. It did not disclose the price. The $5.6 billion is a ceiling on Army spending over ten years. Salesforce says its defense business is growing 80% a year and gives no revenue base.

3. Celonis, a Munich software maker, announced software for investigators and security authorities that links data from systems police already run and logs every search and change, Computerwoche reported. It named no police force, contract or price.

Neither the FT nor TechCrunch says how much of Anthropic's spending runs on debt today. Would a supplier's downgrade trigger a review under your AI contracts, or only at renewal?

🎥 Narration: AI voice · Photos: David Kernan/Wikimedia, CC BY 4.0 (Salesforce); Wikimedia-User Jivee Blau/Wikimedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 (Celonis) · Other images: AI-generated (Anthropic).