Morning newsletter digest

Fortune Term Sheet: “Rocket men”

• Furientis came out of stealth with $5M in pre-seed funding to build lower-cost ship-based interceptor missiles, led by former Virgin Galactic and Castelion engineers.
• The pitch is very defense-industrial-base 2026: U.S. missile stockpiles are strained, legacy interceptors can cost $1M to $5M, and Furientis says it can target roughly $250K per missile using automotive-style manufacturing and commercial parts.
• Notable deals: Recursive raised $650M for a self-improving AI platform, Fractile raised $220M for AI inference chips, and StarCatcher raised $65M for a space-based power grid.

Why it matters / action: The defense manufacturing reset is still pulling venture dollars, especially around cheaper, faster, more scalable hardware. Worth scanning if you care about Anduril-adjacent industrial startups.

The Rundown AI: “OpenAI’s Anthropic enterprise problem is growing”

• Ramp’s AI Index shows Anthropic taking the paid business-adoption lead among Ramp customers: 34.4% adoption versus OpenAI at 32.3%, with Anthropic usage up sharply over the past year.
• Claude Code appears to be a major driver, expanding Anthropic from technical teams into finance, legal, and research workflows.
• Other AI notes: Amazon folded Rufus into “Alexa for Shopping,” Adaption introduced AutoScientist for automated model customization, and Nvidia reportedly hit a $5.5T market cap.

Why it matters / action: The enterprise AI fight is no longer just model quality. It is workflow capture, developer tooling, reliability, pricing, and who becomes the default operating layer inside companies. Anthropic is making OpenAI sweat a little, which is healthy for everyone except OpenAI’s blood pressure.

Short Squeez: “Banks Making a Comeback”

• Private credit lending volume fell 14% in Q1 while bank lending to companies rose 12.7%, the fastest growth since 2022. Borrowers are drifting back toward cheaper bank loans.
• JPMorgan analysts estimate syndicated bank loans around SOFR +3.75%, compared with roughly SOFR +4.75% for private credit. Meanwhile, non-listed BDCs saw more than $15B in investor withdrawals in Q1 and fundraising dropped 60% year over year.
• Macro/markets: Kevin Warsh was confirmed as Fed chair, wholesale inflation rose 6% YoY in April, Treasury yields moved higher, and xAI is reportedly testing Grok with Wall Street firms.

Why it matters / action: “Private credit eats the banks” is looking less inevitable. If funding costs, redemptions, and credit-quality worries keep tightening the private-credit spigot, boring old bank balance sheets may get their comeback tour.

Worth opening: The Rundown AI for the Anthropic/OpenAI enterprise signal, and Fortune Term Sheet for the Furientis defense manufacturing piece.