Market Beats | Train Fire Near Hudson River Tunnels Disrupts Rail Service; Dell Shares Surge as AI Server Demand Prompts Explosive Sales Forecast; Anthropic Valuation Surge to $965 Billion; UBS Eliminates Hundreds of EMEA Roles; Citadel Securities Posts Record $4.3 Billion Q1 Trading Revenue; Canada Edges Into Technical Recession; Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Explodes in Launchpad Test

—— Train Fire Near Hudson River Tunnels Disrupts Rail Service; Dell Shares Surge as AI Server Demand Prompts Explosive Sales Forecast; Anthropic Valuation Surge to $965 Billion; UBS Eliminates Hundreds of EMEA Roles; Citadel Securities Posts Record $4.3 Billion Q1 Trading Revenue; Canada Edges Into Technical Recession; Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Explodes in Launchpad Test

1. Train Fire Near Hudson River Tunnels Disrupts Rail Service

A train fire near the Hudson River tunnels that link to New York City’s Penn Station disrupted rail service across the Northeast early Friday, forcing Amtrak and New Jersey Transit to suspend trains in and out of the nation’s busiest passenger rail hub. The blaze, which was aboard an Amtrak work train, broke out around 1:30 a.m. on Track 11 just outside Penn Station, according to FDNY Deputy Chief Michael Barvels. More than 100 firefighters responded, battling heavy smoke and electrical hazards in the confined tunnel space before extinguishing the fire around 4 a.m.

“It was a very heavy smoke condition, high heat, a lot of hazards down there — tripping hazards, electrical hazards,” Barvels said at the scene. He said power removal proved the most significant challenge, requiring firefighters to enter through an emergency exit rather than from the station itself. Five workers were transported to Bellevue Hospital and evaluated by EMS. No firefighter injuries were reported, and marshals are investigating the cause.

All services traveling south of Penn Station were suspended until at least noon due to track and signal maintenance stemming from the fire, with northbound trains also facing significant delays, Amtrak said.

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2. Dell Shares Surge as AI Server Demand Prompts Explosive Sales Forecast

Dell Technologies Inc. shares surged the most in two years on Friday after the hardware maker gave an outlook for annual sales that far surpassed analysts’ estimates, fueled by demand for servers that power artificial intelligence work. Revenue in the fiscal year ending in January 2027 will be about $167 billion, including $60 billion from the sale of AI servers, the Texas-based company said Thursday in a statement. That’s up from a prior revenue outlook of about $140 billion and topped analysts’ average estimate of $142.1 billion, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

Dell’s servers designed to run AI workloads are attracting customers from companies that rent computing power like CoreWeave Inc. and Nscale Global Holdings Ltd., as well as corporate clients and major AI providers. The company booked $24.4 billion in AI orders and generated $16.1 billion in AI server sales in the quarter ended May 1, Chief Operating Officer Jeff Clarke said in the statement. “The AI opportunity shows no signs of slowing.” The shares rose as much as 35% to $428.68 in New York as trading got underway, the biggest intraday increase since March 2024 and a record high.

Dell’s server business has been viewed as an AI winner this year, sparking the stock more than 150% higher through Thursday’s close.

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3. Anthropic Valuation Surge to $965 Billion

Anthropic PBC’s latest funding round has vaulted the AI firm’s seven founders into the ranks of the world’s 500 richest people, the most from one company to be added in a single day in Bloomberg Billionaires Index history. Led by siblings Dario and Daniela Amodei, the founders each own less than 1% of the company, according to wealth index calculations, but their individual stakes are worth about $8 billion after Anthropic raised $65 billion Thursday at a $965 billion valuation. Along with the Amodeis, other Anthropic co-founders joining Bloomberg’s wealth list for the first time are Tom Brown, Jack Clark, Jared Kaplan, Sam McCandlish and Christopher Olah.

A spokesperson for Anthropic declined to comment. The artificial intelligence boom has created an explosion of wealth both in public and private markets over the past few years. Jensen Huang, co-founder of AI chipmaker Nvidia Corp., has seen his fortune rise to more than $177 billion from $10.9 billion in October 2022, making him the eighth-richest person on the wealth index.

Bloomberg this month identified 19 new AI billionaires — collectively worth $59 billion — to emerge from the latest round of buzzy startups, ranging from the founders of Cerebras Systems Inc., which went public earlier this month, to Surge Lab’s Edwin Chen, who’s now worth $13 billion.

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4. UBS Eliminates Hundreds of EMEA Roles

UBS Group AG has eliminated several hundred positions across its operations in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, marking the latest wave of reductions tied to the acquisition of Credit Suisse three years ago. The cuts mainly affected staff in support functions although some bankers in client-facing roles were included as well, according to people familiar with the matter. Some of the employees whose roles were scrapped got offered new jobs inside the firm as part of an effort by UBS to cushion the impact on staff, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information.

A spokesperson for UBS said the bank will keep job cuts as a result of the integration “as low as possible” in Switzerland and globally. To mitigate redundancies, the bank is focusing on moving roles currently performed by third-party providers in-house, the spokesperson added. UBS’s headcount has dropped by around 17,500 since the takeover, according to the latest data.

In the months after the deal, the bank had plans to ultimately cut about 35,000 jobs, Bloomberg News has reported.

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5. Citadel Securities Posts Record $4.3 Billion Q1 Trading Revenue

Citadel Securities posted a record $4.3 billion of trading revenue in the first quarter as the firm benefited from the volatility that’s spurred windfalls at market-making peers and Wall Street banks. The firm’s trading revenue rose 28% from the same period a year earlier, according to people familiar with knowledge of the results. Net income also climbed, increasing nearly 10% to $1.9 billion, the people said, asking not to be identified discussing private information. A representative for Miami-based Citadel Securities declined to comment.

Citadel Securities is among a group of nonbank firms that developed their own technology and quantitative analysis to help match buyers and sellers. Its biggest US rivals include Jane Street Group, Hudson River Trading and Susquehanna International Group. Some of those firms have been posting records of their own, even vaulting past Wall Street incumbents. Jane Street pulled in a record $16.1 billion of trading revenue during this year’s first three months, more than double its haul in the same period a year earlier.

HRT posted $6.4 billion of trading revenue in the quarter — more than half of its total for all of 2025, according to initial estimates.

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6. Canada Edges Into Technical Recession

Canada edged into a technical recession as weak business and government spending drove a slight contraction in the first quarter, pointing to persistent slack in the economy amid US trade tensions. Real gross domestic product fell by 0.1% on an annualized basis during the first three months of the year, Statistics Canada reported on Friday. That follows a 1% contraction in the fourth quarter, a downward revision from a 0.6% decrease previously reported by the federal agency.

The surprise decline in the first quarter stands in contrast with forecasters’ expectations. Economists surveyed by Bloomberg were anticipating a 1.5% annualized increase in the first quarter, aligning with the Bank of Canada’s projection. The last time Canada recorded two consecutive quarters of negative growth was in 2020 during the Covid-19 pandemic. Before that, it was in 2015 amid low oil prices. The loonie fell to a session low after the report and was trading at C$1.3809 per US dollar as of 10:16 a.m. in Ottawa.

Canadian government bond yields dipped to lows of the day, extending outperformance versus Treasuries, with the two-year benchmark down four basis points to 2.803%.

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7. Blue Origin’s New Glenn Rocket Explodes in Launchpad Test

Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded in a massive fireball while undergoing a test on a Florida launchpad Thursday evening, dealing a major setback to the Jeff Bezos-backed firm in its efforts to challenge a dominant SpaceX. The firm was preparing the vehicle for its fourth launch, which was slated to deploy a batch of satellites for Amazon.com Inc.’s Leo, a rival satellite network to SpaceX’s Starlink. None of the satellites were on the rocket when it exploded, a spokesperson for Amazon said. “Very rough day, but we’ll rebuild whatever needs rebuilding and get back to flying,” Bezos wrote in a post on X. The rocket experienced an “anomaly” during the test and all personnel have been accounted for and are safe, the company said on X.

New Glenn, which is key to Blue Origin’s plans for space exploration, is years behind schedule and has faced longer-than-expected waiting periods between flights. The explosion is the latest blow to its reputation as a reliable alternative to SpaceX’s Falcon 9. It’s unclear exactly how the explosion will affect the company moving forward, but Blue Origin’s launch schedule is certain to suffer significant delays.

The company has touted that New Glenn has a backlog of $10 billion in customer contracts, and CEO Dave Limp said last month he’d like to launch the rocket eight to 12 times this year.

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