Pre-market news roundup for US stocks: US inflation data comes in higher than expected, Anthropic common stock set to begin trading next Thursday.

According to Fortune, Alta, a developer of a Layer 1 blockchain for banks and large financial institutions, announced Tuesday it has closed a $47.5 million Series A funding round, with its valuation undisclosed. The round was led by Index Ventures, with participation from GV (Google Ventures), Blackbird Ventures, Square Peg, and Capital49. Prior to this, the firm secured a $32.5 million seed round, backed primarily by Australian fintech giant Airwallex, which currently competes with firms like Stripe in the global payments market. Alta CEO Loong Wang previously founded a crypto startup that he sold in 2021, then joined a second startup leveraging quantum computing for drug discovery. He later returned to the crypto space and co-founded Alta with former Meta executive Catherine Porter. The company recently rebranded from its original name, Metal. Porter was involved in Meta’s abandoned crypto initiative. In an interview, Wang said that despite the proliferation of so-called Layer 1 blockchains in the market, he decided to build a new blockchain because he believes blockchain is the optimal technology for value transfer. He also noted that existing blockchains do not offer a full set of privacy and compliance tools tailored specifically for banks and other large financial institutions.

Annex Wealth Management’s chief economic strategist Brian Jacobsen noted that core CPI’s month-on-month rate hit 0.3% again. The issue is not only that overall CPI remains elevated, but also that oil price shocks have passed through to core inflation. Chicago Fed President Austan Goolsbee is not a voting member this year, but when he pointed out that AI demand could be a factor the Federal Reserve needs to curb, he may be speaking for many Fed officials. Furthermore, Fed Governor Christopher Waller said he might back a larger interest rate hike. The Fed is now likely more worried that AI investment demand will crowd out resources from other economic activities and drive up prices. Setting aside oil prices, the Fed’s new concern could be rising employment costs for skilled trades like plumbers and electricians.

According to monitoring by Onchain Lens, a trader holding long positions in both BTC and ETH suffered three consecutive liquidations on Hyperliquid, with cumulative losses amounting to $5.08 million. The trader previously held positions worth approximately $35.13 million, and total account losses have reached $5.29 million.

Marble announced its official launch and completion of a $11 million seed financing round today. The round was led by Polychain Capital, with participation from venture capital firms and strategic investors including Maven 11, Ripple, Susquehanna Crypto, Lattice, Blockwall, as well as individual investors focused on the AI sector. Marble provides capital and liquidity to global frontier markets via its two core business lines: Marble Compute, which is building an institutional private credit system for AI infrastructure, connecting institutional lenders with emerging cloud providers (Neocloud) and GPU operators advancing AI infrastructure; and Marble Markets, which is developing an institutional trading platform covering digital assets, real-world assets (RWA), prediction markets, and computing power markets. Marble was co-founded by Matt Ballensweig and Leon Marshall, who serve as co-CEOs. Ballensweig previously served as Global Head of Trading at BitGo, where he built and led its institutional trading business, and co-led trading and lending operations at Genesis. Marshall was most recently CEO of Europe at Galaxy Digital, and held prior roles at Genesis, Apollo, and Trafigura. The firm added that it will continue expanding its team in the coming months, with plans to recruit senior talent from leading trading firms, trading platforms, and AI infrastructure companies.

After the release of U.S. October inflation data, according to CME’s FedWatch tool, the probability that the Federal Reserve will hold interest rates steady in December stands at 0%. The chance of a 25 basis point rate hike is 84.7%, while the probability of a total 50 basis point rate hike is 15.3% (previously 1.1%). For next January, the probability of the Fed keeping rates unchanged is 0%, the probability of a total 25 basis point rate hike is 43.9%, a total 50 basis point rate hike is 48.8%, and a total 75 basis point rate hike is 7.4%.

According to data from the BIT Stock Platform, Nasdaq 100 Index futures fell 1.5%, hitting a pre-market low.