Bell Canada struck a deal to sell a minority stake in its newly formed tower business to investment group La Caisse for CAD2.5 billion ($1.8 billion), cash set to be used to cut debt and invest in growth areas.
The operator’s parent company BCE noted the investor would take a 49.9% stake in the TowerCo business with Bell retaining the remainder.
TowerCo is set to take ownership of more than 5,000 sites across Canada, making it the country’s largest dedicated tower company. It will lease capacity back to Bell, which retains full ownership and control of spectrum, active network equipment and owned land.
The transaction expected to close in Q1 2027 subject to regulatory approval.
BCE explained the sale would help strengthen its balance sheet and allow it to invest in growth areas, including AI-related solutions. Last year, the company set a target of reducing its net debt leverage ratio to 3.5 times by the end of 2027.
BCE and Bell Canada president and CEO Mirko Bibic said the transaction would “unlock the significant value embedded in our infrastructure assets” while allowing the company to continue operating its wireless network.
He added the company aims “to strengthen our balance sheet, invest in growth and deliver total returns to shareholders”.
La Caisse EVP Emmanuel Jaclot noted making telecoms tower infrastructure available to multiple service providers could help “more people access the connectivity they rely on every day”.
Anthropic filed for an IPO which could rival SpaceX’s record-breaking listing, as the AI business revealed a rise in revenue and billions of dollars of infrastructure cost commitments.
The Claude large language model (LLM) developer’s S-1 filing with the US Securities and Exchange Commission yesterday (26 October) offered the first detailed public look at its finances. Anthropic submitted IPO paperwork confidentially in June, allowing the agency to review the figures before their wider release.
Anthropic applied to list Class A shares on the Nasdaq Global Select Market under the symbol ANT but did not disclose how many shares it would offer, a price range or valuation. Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley headed the list of underwriters.
The documents revealed revenue of $16.3 billion in the first half of 2026, up from $1.2 billion in H1 2025 and well above the $4.6 billion recorded for the whole of 2025.
Cost of revenue rose to $2.4 billion from just over $1 billion, with compute and infrastructure accounting for almost all of it. Anthropic cautioned operating margins will fluctuate as more capacity comes online.
The company booked a net loss of $80.7 billion in H1. Of the amount, $72.4 billion reflected non-cash charges from revaluing convertible notes and similar instruments as its valuation rose.
Amazon and Google supply key parts of Anthropic’s computing infrastructure.
It runs workloads on Amazon Web Services (AWS) Trainium chips, Google Tensor Processing Units, and GPUs from Nvidia and AMD. It also pays fees to sell Claude through AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.
Amazon holds convertible notes which will convert into non-voting Class N shares at the IPO, subject to an ownership cap.
Anthropic’s infrastructure plans include spending at least $110 billion on Amazon cloud services until April 2036 and up to $120.5 billion with SpaceX through 2029.
It has committed a further $114.5 billion to Google until 2033 and $44.9 billion to Microsoft until May 2033 for computing infrastructure.
Risks In the documents Anthropic warned some cloud suppliers are developing rival AI models and could restrict, reprice or cut off its access to computing capacity.
It also highlighted criminals have already used AI in cyberattacks and warned misuse in biology could cause greater harm.
The company also highlighted the potential for AI to concentrate power and destabilise geopolitics.
Anthropic increasingly uses its models to develop their successors and noted the new versions’ capabilities could advance faster than safety measures. It also cautioned AI systems could act independently in harmful ways if they fail to follow intended goals.
Rival OpenAI confidentially filed paperwork for a US IPO in June, but delayed the listing until early 2027.
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