Investors have poured an unprecedented $255 billion into five AI hyperscalers — Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft and Oracle — already this year, more than twice what those companies raised in all of 2025, Axios' Emily Peck and Dan Primack write.

• Why it matters: Investors are more exposed to AI's promises — and its risks — than ever. With savings dwindling and wages lagging inflation, portfolio gains are about the only place investors are making real money.

🔮 There's a lot more money on the way. SpaceX goes public Friday in the biggest U.S. IPO ever, by a mile, raising at least $85 billion, with demand far outstripping the shares available.

• Alphabet just sold a record amount of new stock.
• Both could be dwarfed by OpenAI and Anthropic, which are expected to go public later this year.

🧮 By the numbers: The five companies have said that by year-end, they'll have spent three-quarters of a trillion dollars on AI data centers, per Barron's.

The bull and bear case for SpaceX: It's a foregone conclusion that SpaceX will raise at least $85 billion. The real question is what happens next.

🐂 Bull: SpaceX could generate hundreds of billions of dollars in revenue by 2030, despite booking less than $19 billion last year.

• The biggest chunk would come from Starlink, which could use Starship's larger payloads to supercharge its young satellite phone service and corner the global market.
• SpaceX's AI business has a high floor: It keeps selling computing power. Deals like those with Anthropic and Google are already worth about $2 billion a month combined.

🐻 Bear: For most of its life, SpaceX has been the runaway leader in a business it essentially invented: commercial rocket launches.

• Its newer ambitions in AI and telecom are far more crowded, and the stock is very expensive to start.
• Its giant Starship rocket is still a work in progress. Computing power — one of SpaceX's cash cows — is getting cheaper as more and more data centers come online.

🃏 The wild card: Elon Musk. His market magic is real. Bet against him at your portfolio's peril. If Musk were no longer leading SpaceX, investor enthusiasm would dissipate.

• Share this story.

Maine Democrats handed progressive firebrand Graham Platner an easy win in yesterday's Senate primary, looking past his personal scandals in hopes he can oust GOP Sen. Susan Collins in November, Axios' Holly Otterbein writes.

• Standing behind a sign that defiantly read, "They Don't Know Maine," Platner delivered an acceptance speech that mixed talk of his past regrets and slammed elites who'd opposed him.

Why it matters: Platner's victory was a big win for Democratic progressives in their ongoing civil war with the party's moderates.

🗳️ Platner got 72% of the Democratic primary vote to 20% for Gov. Janet Mills, who suspended her campaign.

• The result sets up a general-election race against five-term Sen. Collins, the longest-serving Republican woman in Senate history.
• It's sure to be a nasty, expensive battle for a seat that will go a long way toward determining control of the Senate.

💡 Takeaways from election night:

1. Scandals haven't hurt Platner. His campaign has been a roller coaster ride of revelations, from the Nazi-linked tattoo he covered up to the recent reports that he'd sent sexually suggestive texts to women who weren't his wife. The reports gripped D.C. and made lots of ad fodder for Republicans, but didn't appear to damage Platner.
2. Here come the attacks: In a preview of the smash-mouth assaults headed for Platner, RNC Chair Joe Gruters called the Democratic nominee a "racist, sexist, Nazi-loving domestic abuser."
3. Dems warm to controversy: Platner's primary victory signals that Democratic voters have become more willing to accept skeletons in a candidate's closet.

🗳️ More takeaways ... AP results from Maine ... Nevada ... North Dakota ... South Carolina.

U.S. forces launched three rounds of strikes on Iran last night in response to Iran's downing of a U.S. helicopter, Axios' Barak Ravid and Dave Lawler write.

• Why it matters: The latest exchange risks military escalation with Iran, even as President Trump is seeking a deal to end the war.

A U.S. official said Iranian air defense and radar systems around the Strait of Hormuz were among the targets.

• Iran's military said it had targeted U.S. bases in the region in response to the strikes, including in Bahrain and Jordan.

The backstory: Both crew members of the U.S. Army AH-64 Apache are in stable condition after being rescued by a drone boat in a first-of-its-kind operation, Axios' Colin Demarest writes.

• The drone boat, known as a Corsair, offers a glimpse of future warfare, in which humans and smart, militarized machinery operate alongside each other.
• A spokesperson for Central Command, which oversees American military action across the greater Middle East, told Axios the Corsair "picked up" the crew and "transported them to another location on the water," where they were then "hoisted up to a helicopter."

Share this story ... More on the drone boat.

Kelly Loeffler, administrator of the Small Business Administration, told me at the debut of our new Axios AM Live event in D.C. yesterday that the "biggest beneficiaries" of AI will be small businesses.

• AI is a "huge leveler of the playing field for America," said Loeffler, a former financial-services entrepreneur and U.S. senator from Georgia.
• But if China wins the AI arms race, she said, "this is going to be really problematic for the entire country, but particularly for Main Streets."

Beyond AI, Loeffler said she's working to remake the SBA itself: "We're really reorienting the agency to be technology and customer-driven as opposed to bureaucracy-driven."

• Keep reading.

🎤 More from Axios AM Live: D.C. mayor interview ... Wall Street's crypto embrace ... Defending Trump's midterm gamble.

Transportation Secretary Sean Duffy is going all-out to get his 26-year-old son-in-law elected to a Wisconsin House seat, infuriating Republicans in the district who say he's abusing his office and access to President Trump, Axios' Alex Isenstadt writes.

• The campaign of first-time candidate Michael Alfonso has Duffy's fingerprints all over it — from Trump's endorsement of him at Duffy's urging to tens of thousands of dollars in campaign money from transportation interests the secretary holds sway over.

The intrigue: Duffy and his wife, Fox News host Rachel Campos-Duffy, rankled senior White House officials by not giving them a heads-up before asking Trump to endorse Alfonso.

• Duffy spokesperson Nathaniel Sizemore said the secretary "uses the power of DOT to execute on the president's ambitious transportation agenda. That's it."

Keep reading.

And on the seventh day … Republican Steve Hilton advanced to the general election for California governor after making the case that the state desperately needs new leadership following more than 15 years of Democratic dominance.

• He'll face Democrat Xavier Becerra, a former state attorney general and Biden administration health secretary, on Nov. 3.
• Democratic billionaire Tom Steyer, who spent $200+ million of his own money, was eliminated.

🕶️ Hilton, who grew up in the U.K. and was once a top adviser to former Prime Minister David Cameron, faces a tough road to the governor's mansion:

• California has nearly twice as many registered Democrats as Republicans.
• If elected, Hilton would be the first GOP candidate to win statewide office since Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2006.

Go deeper.

The share of Americans who say birth control, having a baby outside of marriage and gambling are morally OK has fallen sharply compared to recent years, Axios' Avery Lotz writes from new Gallup polling.

💊 Birth control: The share who say it's morally acceptable has fallen to 83% — the lowest in data spanning back to 2012.

🍼 Baby outside marriage: The share who say it's morally acceptable has slipped to 58%, down from 70% in 2022 and 2023.

🎰 Gambling: The share who say it's morally acceptable has dropped to 57%, the lowest since Gallup started polling on it in 2003.

• Share this story.

July cover of The Atlantic: For America's 250th, the 169-year-old magazine republishes sheet music for Julia Ward Howe's "Battle Hymn of the Republic," which was written for The Atlantic and debuted in the February 1862 issue.

• Go deeper: "The 'Battle Hymn' Can't Be Ignored," by Atlantic staff writer and in-house historian Jake Lundberg (gift link).