The Iran war is minting new one-day millionaires: oil tankers brave enough to sail across the Strait of Hormuz

The 2026 economy has created a new throng of one-day millionaires, businesses raking in seven-figure sums in 24 hours or less. That includes teams at AI frontier labs like Anthropic, who are seeing monthly revenue top $500 million from just a single client’s Claude spending, one consultancy reported. That’s nearly $17 million per day.

Outside of the AI boom, there’s a new stock of near-instant daily millionaires as a result of the Iran war: oil tankers willing to odyssey across the Strait of Hormuz.

The cost for a vessel to haul oil from the Persian Gulf to China, which requires crossing the key chokepoint, reached $1.035 million per day, according to data from the Baltic Exchange this week, the first time the price tag has exceeded seven figures. By comparison, a similar large crude carrier transiting from the Persian Gulf cost about $208,000 per day, per the Platts VLCC index.

Commercial traffic through the Strait of Hormuz has continued to dwindle in the Iran war’s seventh month, but the need to export oil from the Gulf is still more urgent as constrained supply drives up costs above $100 per barrel once again.

Ioannis Papadimitriou,........

© Fortune