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00:00 Intro01:34 TSMC Adds Another $100B Into U.S. Investment Plan02:54 House Backs Taiwan With $500M in Security Aid04:01 Taiwan Beats Beijing in Freedom and Prosperity Index04:25 Taiwan Mango Exports Reach Europe, Win K-Pop Praise05:03 China Builds Full-Scale U.S. Warship Replica08:45 Former Fed Adviser Sentenced in China Spy Case10:45 CCP Espionage in Taxpayer-Funded Research13:33 Fox News, Kevin O'Leary Face Lawsuit Over China Claims14:39 AI Data Centers Divide Communities in U.S.16:44 DNI Nominee Clayton Testifies at Confirmation Hearing17:26 Clayton: China Uses Economic Ways to Harm Americans
California's SEIU-UHW union is pushing a ballot initiative that would slap a 5% excise tax on net worth above $1 billion — targeting roughly 200 people across the entire state and projecting $100 billion over five years. The money is supposed to fill the Medi-Cal hole left by federal funding pullbacks. The problem: it's a one-time tax aimed at people who already have the best lawyers on the planet, the capital to relocate overnight, and every financial incentive to do exactly that.Sean breaks down why this is a house of cards from the start. The "full-blown panic among the ultra-wealthy" framing is clickbait — billionaires aren't panicking, they're strategizing. Between asset restructuring, legal challenges, and simply finishing the move out of state they were already making, the $100B projection is a fantasy. And the internal math only gets worse when you factor in that opponents are already outspending supporters, and Planned Parenthood is sitting on the other side of the table from the union pushing this thing.The deeper play is precedent. If California gets this through — a real long shot — it becomes a national litmus test for wealth taxation, and Newsom gets a new talking point about a social contract that's really just a funding patch for a program increasingly serving people who shouldn't qualify. Washington's millionaire tax saga plays out the same way: the money disappears before the ink dries. This isn't fiscal policy, it's a very expensive flag run up the pole.Subscribe to @reasonablenews for daily conservative commentary on Pacific Northwest and national politics — new episodes every weekday.#Seattle #PrideParade #CultureWarGO PREMIUM WITH REASONABLE+ FOR UNCENSORED ACCESS
Investors taking profits in AI memory names like SK Hynix (SKHY) and Samsung overseas is something Tom White sees hitting U.S. stocks. TSMC's (TSM) earnings added volatility to the tech trade even after it beat and announced an additional $100 billion investment into the U.S. Tom turns to the healthcare sector by talking about UnitedHealth's (UNH) earnings and how it shows the company "correcting the pains" it brought to investors in 2025. GE Aerospace (GE) and United Airlines (UAL) shares also traded lower despite a strong report. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about
TSMC (TSM) posted an earnings beat and announced another $100 billion worth of investments to the U.S. AI chips saw sharp selling action, from Nvidia (NVDA) to Micron (MU). Netflix (NFLX) released its quarterly earnings as the stock closed just above its 52-week low. Sam Vadas highlights the top stories moving markets in Thursday's trading session. ======== Schwab Network ========Empowering every investor and trader, every market day. Subscribe to the Market Minute newsletter - https://schwabnetwork.com/subscribeDownload the iOS app - https://apps.apple.com/us/app/schwab-network/id1460719185Download the Amazon Fire Tv App - https://www.amazon.com/TD-Ameritrade-Network/dp/B07KRD76C7Watch on Sling - https://watch.sling.com/1/asset/191928615bd8d47686f94682aefaa007/watchWatch on Vizio - https://www.vizio.com/en/watchfreeplus-exploreWatch on DistroTV - https://www.distro.tv/live/schwab-network/Follow us on X – https://twitter.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on Facebook – https://www.facebook.com/schwabnetworkFollow us on LinkedIn - https://www.linkedin.com/company/schwab-network/ About Schwab Network - https://schwabnetwork.com/about
Ian Cinnamon didn't set out to build a satellite company. After selling his first startup to Palantir, he became convinced the real bottleneck in space wasn't launch or payloads, but the spacecraft itself. While rockets were getting cheaper and payloads more capable, satellite buses were still being built like bespoke engineering projects. Apex's answer was simple in theory and incredibly difficult in practice: turn spacecraft into products. Four years later, Apex is building standardized satellite platforms for commercial and national security customers, with a product lineup that now spans missions from LEO to GEO. We get into whether the satellite bus market is genuinely supply constrained, if standardized spacecraft become commodities or durable technology platforms, and how Starship, proliferated constellations, and rising defense demand are reshaping the economics of spacecraft manufacturing. We also cover: Why Ian believes spacecraft should become products instead of bespoke engineering programs Whether the satellite bus market is actually underbuilt or heading toward oversupply How Apex thinks about manufacturing, vertical integration, and scaling production Why larger satellites may make more sense in a world of cheap launch The capital strategy behind building one of the industry's fastest-growing companies Check out Valley of Depth #045 on Apple, Spotify, or YouTube. • Chapters • 00:00 – Trailer 00:55 – New CEO of Apex 02:29 – The Apex origin story 05:39 – Partnering with Max Benassi 07:13 – Successes and drawbacks of Apex's first 6 months 08:50 – Apex's current product set 10:36 – Misconceptions about how much mass you need in orbit 12:08 – Is the plan to build larger and larger satellites indefinitely? 13:11 – State of the bus market today 14:52 – Domestically oversupplied, globally undersupplied 16:31 – Apex's biggest opportunities on the commercial and national security side 18:50 – When should a company utilize Apex vs. building their own bus in-house? 19:46 – Apex's moat 21:12 – Juggling the bespoke government customer 22:15 – What the primes having in-house buses says about the market 23:07 – Commoditization of the bus vs. owning the complete mission 26:01 – Apex partnerships 27:27 – How many satellites are you building at a $100B company? 28:10 – Apex's three $200M fundraising rounds 32:05 – Is there another fundraising round incoming? 33:04 – Where Apex needs to be to seriously consider going public 34:58 – The road to 200 satellites per year 35:46 – Who is Apex losing deals to the most? 37:39 – Apex vs. K2 40:27 – How the push for heavy launch will affect Apex 42:15 – Apex's ability to get to space if SpaceX fully cuts commercial launches 44:35 – Is York an under or overvalued business? 46:36 – What keeps Ian up at night? 50:10 – When is Apex launching their own constellation? 51:06 – The missions that Apex could enable 52:30 – Is Ian still excited about asteroid mining? • Show notes • Apex's' website — https://www.apexspace.com/ Ian's' socials — https://x.com/IanCinnamon Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam Payload's socials — https://x.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition's socials — https://x.com/ignitionnuclear / https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic's socials — https://x.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/ Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/ • About us • Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), Decoding Bio (biotech) and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world's hardest technologies. Payload: www.payloadspace.com Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com Ignition: www.ignition-news.com Decoding Bio: www.decodingbio.com
Accenture Song's planned acquisition of the Whalar agency was called the largest creator economy transaction ever. The structure underneath that headline is far more interesting than the number.In this special edition, Christian and Ayelet sit down with Chris Erwin of RockWater, one of the sharpest analysts in the creator economy, to go deep on what Accenture actually bought, what the founders kept, and why the deal structure tells the real story.Chris published a standout newsletter on this deal, and we brought him on to share his expert POV: the carve-out logic, the multi-year partnership nobody has details on, the "largest deal ever" math, and what Accenture Song buys next.What we cover: Why Neil Waller and James Street sold the agency but kept the broader creator-facing portfolio (Sixteenth, Foam, Moby Ventures, The Lighthouse, Umi Games), what the undisclosed multi-year partnership likely includes — global infrastructure, technology, enterprise client access, and balance-sheet capital, how the "$500M+ largest creator deal ever" claim squares with a $225-300M outside EV estimate, why the answer is probably a meaningful upfront payment plus a multi-year earnout, how Accenture's Droga5 precedent and stated M&A policy help reverse-engineer the structure, why the real value driver is media spend, measurement, and the performance data that unlocks $100B+ media budgets, the "do no harm" PMI era and why a prior 12-month working relationship de-risked the deal, and who Accenture Song buys next — plus why there's a genuine shortage of scaled independent creator agencies left to acquire.⏱️ TIMESTAMPS0:00 — Show note: why this special edition replaces Market and Deals Friday1:09 — Welcome and guest intro: Chris Erwin of RockWater1:38 — The backstory: Accenture Song's June 8th carve-out of the Whalar agency3:08 — "They sold the engine and kept the garage" — what that actually means4:17 — Speculating on the undisclosed multi-year partnership5:44 — Why life changes fast when you co-sell through Accenture's SOW machine6:37 — Predicting how the integration goes (and why a prior relationship matters)7:37 — The "do no harm" PMI era for people-heavy agency businesses8:01 — Is this really the largest creator economy transaction ever?8:49 — Reverse-engineering the structure: Accenture's M&A policy and the Droga5 precedent10:36 — Earnout norms: 3-5 years on larger deals, 2-3 on sub-$100M EV11:30 — Christian's thesis: Accenture is buying creator media dollars12:04 — The big-picture framing: consultancies pushing into marketing services14:05 — Why the materiality of the number unlocks everything Accenture can sell alongside it14:53 — What Accenture Song buys next — bolt-on capabilities across the creator stack16:56 — The real problem: a shortage of scaled independent creator agencies18:01 — The creator commerce wave and where the next big deals get built
Google just announced the biggest change to search in its history — and not everyone is happy. At Google I/O, the search bar became a search box, signaling a full shift toward conversational, Gemini-powered search. The market is already reacting: DuckDuckGo rocketed from around position 400 to the top 100 in the app stores almost overnight, right around the May 20–21 launch. Mike Ryan and Chris unpack what a privacy-and-no-AI search wrapper suddenly surging tells us about consumer appetite — and why the relentless pace of change is exhausting retailers and experts alike.Then: fresh eMarketer data puts the AI advertising hype into much-needed context. AI ad spend in the US sits around $32B in 2026 (roughly a third of Google's search spend), but ~80% of it is just AI-search-adjacent — ads above and below AI Overviews. The chatbot-driven slice everyone is panicking about? Tiny. We dig into why OpenAI's $100B ad ambition looks unrealistic, what the 2030 projections actually say, and why the real takeaway for CMOs and CDOs is: prepare, but don't abandon your bread and butter.The throughline: everything is changing, and everything is staying the same. With limited budget and talent, the retailers who win are the ones who resist FOMO, pick their battles, and keep investing in the core campaigns that still drive the business.In this episode:Why Google's “bar to box” change is its biggest search shift ever — and what it implies about how Google wants you to searchDuckDuckGo's surge from ~position 400 to top 100: a clear sign some consumers find the new box too muchWhy the pace of change may now be too fast even for Google itselfAI Max for Shopping vs. PMax — the strategic misalignment Google may not even seeWhy standard shopping is here to stay (and the comeback we called early)The new eMarketer data: ~$32B AI ad spend in 2026, ~80% of it AI-search-adjacentWhy OpenAI's $100B ad goal and the 2030 chatbot-ad market projections don't line upThe real CMO/CDO playbook: prepare efficiently, beat the FOMO, protect your bread and butterAbout Smarter Ecommerce (smec):Smarter Ecommerce (smec) empowers e-commerce brands with AI-driven PPC automation that optimizes for profit and business outcomes while maintaining strategic control.The platform activates first-party data - profit margins, customer lifetime value, and key business metrics - to automate campaign optimization toward goals like profitability and efficient growth, while detailed campaign insights provide full transparency and enable PPC teams to focus on strategic oversight rather than manual execution.As a Google Premier Partner and three-time Microsoft Retail Partner of the Year, smec manages over €500 million in ad spend and drives €5B+ in annual e-commerce revenue for 350+ global retail clients including THG, Snipes, REWE, and Intersport.Make sure to follow smec - Smarter Ecommerce for more performance marketing insights:smec - Smarter Ecommerce: https://www.smarter-ecommerce.comLinkedIn: https://linkedin.com/company/smarter-ecommerce-gmbhNewsletter: https://smarter-ecommerce.com/en/newsletter/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/smarterecommerce/
Powered by CJ Moneyway Media and Bleav Network. What if closing the racial wealth gap wasn't a slogan… But a strategy? On this episode of The CJ Moneyway Show, CJ sits down with Carter Cofield and George Acheampong, co-founders of Melanin Money — a financial education and tax strategy powerhouse on a mission to close the racial wealth gap by $100 BILLION. They've built a $10.5M business. Helped clients generate over $100M in wealth. Educated 20,000+ entrepreneurs for free. But this isn't just about revenue. It's about ownership. Carter, a CPA and brain tumor survivor, brings the tactical brilliance and heart behind tax strategy and business structure. George, a financial architect for rising founders, delivers mindset, clarity, and scalable wealth blueprints. In this episode, we unpack: • The $100B vision — and why it's achievable • The overlooked power of tax strategy in wealth creation • From hustle income to holding assets • The mindset shift from scarcity to strategy • Carter's health battle and how it sharpened urgency • Why financial literacy must evolve • Building an 8-figure brand rooted in education • The generational wealth blueprint for 2026 and beyond This is not surface motivation. This is financial architecture. Listen everywhere: https://pod.link/1707761906 Website: https://cjmoneyway.com Book CJ: https://calendly.com/cj-cjmoneywayshow/60min CJ MONEYWAY EXCLUSIVE BENEFIT High-level execution requires capacity. CJ Moneyway listeners receive a minimum $40 savings using code: CJMoney Claim here: https://readyrx.com/treatments/se?coupon=cjmoney Because wealth building requires energy. Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.
Send us Fan MailThe Big IdeaProfessor Adam Braus pitches a fix nobody's tried: instead of taxing property at a flat rate, tax it like income — progressively. Own a modest home? You're barely taxed. Own a $50 million real estate empire? You pay real money. It's a property tax with a conscience, and Adam argues it could solve the housing crisis, fix California's broken Prop 13 system, and take a swing at the billionaire-hoarding problem all at once.Scot Maupin, doing his usual generous-interrogator thing, pokes at yachts, shell companies, and whether landlords will just pass the cost to renters — and Adam's got an answer for all of it.What's Broken Right NowProp 13 locks property taxes to a home's original purchase price — not what it's worth today. Buy a house in 1985 for pocket change, and decades later you're still paying taxes on pocket change, even as the home is worth millions.This hits commercial property too — including, allegedly, golf courses that shuffle ownership through shell-share tricks so they're never technically "sold."The result: California's budget is starved relative to its actual wealth, and the state leans harder on income tax to compensate — which hits working people disproportionately harder than a property tax would.Meanwhile, in places like Montana and Hawaii, wealthy outsiders are buying up land and driving housing costs through the roof — not because there's a housing shortage, but because of hoarding and speculation.The Fix: Progressive Property TaxInstead of one flat rate on a property's value, tax brackets stack on a person's total property holdings:First $200K (or so): little to no tax — protects ordinary homeowners and grandmas on fixed incomes.$200K–$2M: a low rate, comparable to today's lowest-tax states.$2M–$10M+: rates climb toward the top of the national range (2%+).+$50M: a "super bracket" — 2.5–3%+ on the excess.The pitch: this could roughly double California's property tax revenue (from ~$100B to $170–200B), funneled toward building housing, ending homelessness, and politically popular wins like paid leave — while lowering the tax burden on working people (no tax on tips, no tax on Social Security).How It Closes the LoopholesA beneficiary registry (already used in Australia and some U.S. states) ties every property to a real human owner — so you can't dodge the tax by splitting ownership across an LLC for every house, or spreading deeds across family members.Commercial real estate is included. Adam's pitch turns this into a two-for-one: tax pressure forces a sell-off of empty downtown office space (a post-COVID glut), and the state can buy it cheap and convert it into actual housing — bringing residents (and life) back to dead downtowns.The Objections, Pre-DebunkedScot plays it straight and asks the obvious questions:"Won't the rich just flee to Florida or Montana?" Adam's counter: capital flight of real estate is mostly harmless — the buildings can't be packed in a suitcase. If a billionaire sells, the property stays in-state; prices just come down, which is the point."Won't this just raise rents?" Possibly nudges the very top of the market, but the broad base of affordable housing should barely move — maybe even gets cheaper as demand shifts."Will yachts and jets count?" No — keep it simple, this is real estate only.Where the Idea Comes FromAdam name-checks Gary's Economics (and its scrappier YouTube cousin, Barry's Economics) for the broader "tax wealth, not work" framing, and ties the proposal back to existing progressive wealth-tax proposals from Bernie Sanders (the famous "8% bracket above $1B," pegged to average market returns) and Elizabeth Warren (flat 2% above $50M) — positioning the progressive property tax as a more politically palatable, state-level cousin of those ideas.Detour of the EpisodeA spirited tangent on Maine's Senate race, Graham Platner — oyster farmer, combat veteran, and the episode's pick for "proof this message can win" — plus a running bit on whether wind turbines can literally use up the wind. (They cannot. Probably.)Quotable"I'm so wealthy that I can't pay the tax on my wealth." — the complaint Adam says is doing a lot of work to protect a small number of very rich people.Want me to also draft a short, punchier episode description (the 2–3 sentence blurb for podcast apps) or social media copy to go with these notes? Support the showHelp these new solutions spread by ...Subscribing wherever you listen to podcastsLeaving a 5-star review Sharing your favorite solution with your friends and network (this makes a BIG difference)Comments? Feedback? Questions? Solutions? Message us! We will do a mailbag episode.Email: solutionsfromthemultiverse@gmail.comAdam: @ajbraus - braus@hey.comScot: @scotmaupinadambraus.com (Link to Adam's projects and books)The Perfect Show (Scot's solo podcast)Thanks to Jonah Burns for the SFM music.
The numbers tell one story. The forces behind them tell a far more interesting one. In this mid-year edition of This Year Next Year, Kate Scott-Dawkins unpacks a forecast that has been significantly upgraded since December — not in spite of geopolitical turbulence, but in some ways because of it. From the AI investment cycle reshaping advertiser behaviour across every category, to a new advertising channel that could scale faster than anything the industry has ever seen, to the uncomfortable questions about what ad-funded platforms owe the people they serve — this is the episode that sets the agenda for the next 18 months.Key Topics DiscussedWhy global ad growth has been upgraded to 9% — and what it says about the structural resilience of the industry in a world of conflict, inflation, and fractured consumer confidenceThe Gold Rush analogy at the heart of the forecast — and why California is, once again, at the centre of it allGenerative Search: the brand new channel that could hit $100B by 2030, making it the fastest-scaling advertising format ever measuredWhy social media is now the single largest ad channel globally — and what threatens that dominance from 2027 onwardRetail media's quiet takeover: how commerce advertising overtook all of television in 2025, and what agentic commerce does to that equation nextThe streaming crossover: why 2026 is the year US streaming finally surpasses linear in national TV ad revenueOut-of-Home's unlikely staying power — and what it reveals about the limits of algorithmic mediaCourts, platforms, and product liability: how two landmark 2026 rulings could fundamentally reshape the economics of social mediaThe effervescence paradox — why people are retreating into AI-mediated solitude and simultaneously paying record prices to be in a crowdNew surfaces, no rulebook: the creative opportunity waiting in AR, autonomous vehicles, and ambient computingWhat the forty-niners got badly wrong — and what that means for the choices the advertising industry faces right now00:00 - Introduction and the Gold Rush analogy 02:00 - The upgraded forecast: headline numbers in context 06:00 - Three themes that frame everything else 10:00 - Where the money is moving: a channel by channel breakdown 18:00 - The bigger picture: political, economic, social, and technological forces 32:00 - Regional highlights 35:00 - Closing: Manifest Destiny and the future worth building
Keith Golembiewski, AVP, director, annuity research, LIMRA, discusses sustained strength in U.S. annuity sales, driven by market volatility, higher interest rates and demand for protected growth and retirement income solutions.
Google's new AI-powered Shopping ads can now decide which of your products wins the click — and it's optimizing for the user, not for your margin, your brand, or your strategy. This Gemini-built format writes its own product descriptions and may re-rank which product gets shown, beyond your bid. Mike Ryan and Chris dig into what that means for retailers who suddenly have less control over what gets pushed. Plus: ChatGPT is finally bringing Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to its results — a solid first step, or a Bing-style copycat play?The real story: "more relevant to the user" is not the same as "best for the retailer." As automated channels get more aggressive at matching products to searches, advertisers risk quietly losing control of which products actually get sold.In this episode:→ What Google's AI-powered Shopping ads actually are — a new format inside AI Max for Shopping, not an umbrella term → "Intelligent product identification": how Gemini may re-rank which product is shown, beyond the bid → The retailer's blind spot — Google optimizes for click-through rate; you optimize for the business → The coffee-machine problem: when the highest-converting product isn't the one you need to sell → Why the best Google Ads outcome isn't always the best business outcome → ChatGPT's PLAs: a solid, feed-based first step — or a Bing-style copycat play? → What OpenAI's $100B ad ambition means for what comes nextThe throughline: AI executes, but only you know what your business needs to achieve. The retailers who win are the ones who keep translating business goals — margin, brand priority, profitability — into the channel, instead of letting the platform decide.
Story of the Week (DR):SuperBroIpoDystopia: Some key facts: MMa record-breaking $135 per share with$1.8T valuationTo make that math make sense, analysts estimate the company needs to grow its sales by 50% every single year for the next decadeSpaceX lost $4.9B last yearWall Street is Being Treated Like Order-Takers: Musk pre-set the IPO price strictly at $135 and dictating exactly which investors got allocations. This forced major investment banks like Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to act as glorified order-takers without even knowing their exact compensation beforehandSaudi Aramco $1.7T; Alibaba: $237B; Facebook $118BNasdaq aggressively pushed through "fast-entry" rule changes specifically to allow mega-caps like SpaceX to bypass the traditional year of seasoning and enter the Nasdaq-100 in just 15 trading days. This forces passive index funds to buy in blindly to avoid tracking errorsMeme stocker bros: $100B in share orders30% of $75B offering is earmarked for individual retail investors. This effectively shifts late-stage, hyper-inflated valuation risk away from institutions and onto the public.BlackRock $5BInstitutional investors admitted that when they bought into SpaceX privately, they were given high-level revenue figures but were denied a copy of the actual balance sheet—an unprecedented lack of transparency for a company raising tens of billionsUniversity of Washington more than 10% of its $17B in assetsUNC about 10%SpaceX will make $75B in proceedsSaudi Aramco $26B; Alibaba $22BElon Musk's Absolute Voting Tyranny (80% of voting power)personal net worth has officially skyrocketed past $1.1TSpaceX's foundational scale was built on the back of the American public, securing over $20 billion in U.S. federal government contracts to fund its rocket developmentAntonio Gracias: personally lent Musk $1M to keep him afloat; his PE firm Valor gave $76MThat $1M lifeline and early institutional backing from 2008 have compounded into what analysts are calling the most lucrative return on a personal favor in business history.The Second-Largest Shareholder: Through various Valor entities, Gracias controls roughly 7.3% of SpaceX's Class A stock (more than 500 million shares)Gracias's stake is officially worth anywhere from $91B to over $140BThis single corporate listing instantly catapults Gracias into the ranks of the world's 50 richest people.The big party: combined valuation of $3.6TAnthropic ($965B) filed confidentially on June 1OpenAI ($1T) filed confidentially on June 8"We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it's a complicated set of tradeoffs, and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best."What does it all amount to? 4 horrible objectives:Funding a Sci-Fi Passion Project with Public CashBecoming the Pentagon's Irreplaceable War MachineForget the folksy narrative that Starlink is just for connecting rural schools or isolated communities: SpaceX is systematically turning itself into the ultimate military contractorProject Starshield: Those satellites are the foundation for a highly classified, militarized version of the network designed for government surveillance, secure communications, and real-time battlefield tracking.Too Big to Regulate: By launching the vast majority of the world's payloads and controlling the dominant orbital communications network, SpaceX is making the U.S. military entirely dependent on its hardware. The ultimate point is to become so deeply embedded in national defense that the government can never afford to regulate, penalize, or dismantle Musk's empireAn Orbital Real Estate Land GrabBuilding a Borderless, Lawless EmpireSpaceX is attempting to build a tech infrastructure that exists entirely outside the jurisdiction of EarthUltimately, SpaceX isn't trying to save humanity from a dying Earth; it's trying to ensure that whoever controls Earth's future has to pay rent to Elon MuskIran threatens Elon Musk's companies in Middle East: Iranian state mediaAll of Elon Musk's companies in the Middle East are military targets for Iran as it retaliates against the U.S., Iranian state media outlet Fars reported.The targets include a regional Starlink ground station, according to Fars.Sen. Warren calls on SEC to delay SpaceX IPO, flagging concerns about valuation and governanceThe letter to the heads of the Nasdaq, S&P Dow Jones Indices, FTSE Russell and Morningstar Indexes sent on Thursday asked the companies whether they had made or considered rule changes based on lobbying from Elon Musk, other SpaceX officials or officials from OpenAI or Anthropic, and asked for any communications between the companies and the indexesLSEG, which owns the FTSE Russell, and Nasdaq declined to comment. Morningstar did not respond to a request from CNBC for comment.S&P Dow Jones Indices didn't comment on the letter, but the company noted it had decided not to change its rules regarding indexes: “S&P DJI determined that exceptions to these requirements should not be granted solely based on market capitalization,” it said in a statement to CNBC. “The decision not to adopt the proposed exceptions preserves core index principles by maintaining consistent application of these key requirements.”Democrats ask Goldman Sachs CEO why he's keeping lawyer who said she'd resign over ties to EpsteinGoldman Sachs CEO David Solomon is facing new scrutiny from congressional Democrats over his reported effort to retain the bank's top lawyer months after she said she would resign over revelations about her ties to convicted sex offender Jeffrey EpsteinIn a letter sent Wednesday:U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), Ranking Member of the Senate Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs CommitteeRepresentative Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-IL), Ranking Member of the Subcommittee on Health Care and Financial Services on the House Oversight Committee“Ruemmler ‘educated (Epstein) on how the law differentiates between underage victims of sex crimes and adult prostitutes…'”In February, Ruemmler announced her resignation from Goldman Sachs, effective June 30, 2026: “At the time, you stated that you “reluctantly” accepted Ruemmler's resignation. While Goldman Sachs has declined to comment on this matter, new reporting suggests that you ‘pressed' her to reconsider her resignation and instead move to a new position within the firm.”Teardown of Trump Phone Reveals Incredibly Embarrassing SecretA recent teardown by repair company iFixit confirmed that the T1 is an almost entirely unmodified HTC U24 Pro, a two-year-old and mid-tier Android phone, with a cheap coat of gold colorationTrump is selling an entirely Chinese smartphone, despite waging an economic war against the country.Apart from minuscule changes to the speaker grille and a lengthened flex cable, iFixit concluded that “everything is the same, except the pattern of holes in the case.”Goodliest of the Week (MM/DR):DR: Google and Meta denied new trial in youth social media addiction caseMM: In the United States, Solar Energy is Outpacing Coal for the First Time EverAssholiest of the Week - SPEED ROUND (MM):BP's useless, reactionary board of directors: BP drops net zero division in wake of boardroom turmoil; BP's new CEO Meg O'Neill rips up the energy giant's playbook—and the ‘green' era with it - 10Ryanair blowhard CEO Michael O'Leary: Ryanair investigated over charging parents to sit with children - 5EV killing GM and Mary Barra: GM is pivoting its battery expertise toward powering AI data centers and the grid - 10Every company that fired employees and replaced them with AI: Unfortunate Company Accidentally Blows Half a Billion Dollars on Claude in One Month; AI sticker shock hits corporate America - 10Everything out of Alex Karp's fat mouth: Palantir CEO Alex Karp says executives who brag about their AI cuts might as well ‘sign up for the Bernie Sanders manifesto'; Palantir CEO says AI companies 'don't understand how unlikeable they are'; - 10Sorry Liz, this is investors job: Sen. Warren calls on SEC to delay SpaceX IPO, flagging concerns about valuation and governance - 0Every investor in SpaceX IPO: Franklin Templeton to participate in SpaceX IPO, CEO Johnson tells CNBC; SpaceX IPO demand is approaching four times oversubscribed, source says; Wall Street's undignified SpaceX mania; SpaceX's president hints at a Tesla merger: 'That might make Elon's life a little easier' - 10Billionaires: Billionaires' Billions Are Increasing Faster Than Ever - 10Beef (not Ebola): Elon Musk Faces Backlash as a Horrific Texas Screwworm Outbreak Follows Brutal DOGE Budget Cuts - 10Mark: Meta Furious Over Bombshell Smart Glasses Revelation“Last week, Wired reported that Meta discreetly moved to infuse facial recognition tech into its popular smart glasses, as evidenced by a piece of code discovered in the Meta AI app by the magazine's journalists.” - 10Headliniest of the WeekDR: UBS CEO [Sergio] Ermotti hopes to step down before 2030MM: You Can Now Get a Religious Exemption From Using AI at Work“The funniest possible outcome of the AI mandate era is about to be HR departments discovering that ‘sincerely held religious belief' under Title VII has a much lower bar than they assumed, and Pope Leo handed every Catholic employee a written excuse,” tweeted San Francisco-based startup founder Corey Quinn. (Title VII of the Civil Rights Act prohibits employment discrimination and retaliation based on race, color, national origin, religion, and sex.)MM: Furious Judge Cancels Entire Trial After Finding Out Lawyers on Both Sides Used AIWho Won the Week?DR: HTC U24 Pro, a two-year-old and mid-tier Android phone. Or maybe it was the cheap gold paint?MM: Everyone religious - what CAN'T you opt out of using a religious exemption? PredictionsDR: Attacking dictator-run companies (i.e., Iran/Tesla) starts to enter the realm of normalcyMM: Atheists adopt a religion to opt out of tech bro oligarchies
Tired vs. Wired: $4 Trillion in IPOs Coming, $100B in M&A, and Why the SaaSpocalypse is Over The public markets spent the last twelve months telling you B2B software was finished. Stocks down 60 to 70 percent. PE firms buying nobody. For the first time in history, software trading at a discount to the S&P 500. And at the exact same moment, Anthropic is projecting $50 billion in revenue, Cursor is getting acquired for $60 billion, and SpaceX, Anthropic, OpenAI, and Databricks are about to generate more market value than every other IPO since 2000 combined. Both things are true - and which one defines your next 18 months depends entirely on one question: are you tired or are you wired? In this episode, SaaStr CEO and Founder Jason Lemkin calls the market as he sees it, names who is winning and who is pretending, and makes the case that the Cambrian explosion in B2B is just getting started. You'll learn: Why the SaaSpocalypse was never about B2B dying - it was about pre-AI software dying - and what the Palantir, Twilio, and Atlassian re-acceleration stories actually tell you The four categories every B2B company falls into right now, and why category four founders need to stop pretending the recovery is coming on its own Why vibe coding your CRM is dead as a concept, and what "putting deals on your calendar" actually means as a product strategy Why your biggest near-term competitive edge might be two days of engineering work - making your API agent-friendly before your competitors do What SaaStr's own journey from 20 humans to 3 humans and 21 agents teaches you about consistency as the only real cheat code in agents This is for you if: Your growth has slowed and you are not sure whether it is a market problem or a you problem - this session will help you figure out which You are a founder or exec who has been in the "AI is coming" conversation for a year but has not yet seen it show up in your revenue You want the unfiltered version of where B2B is headed in the next 18 months, including the parts most people are too polite to say out loud
Send us Fan MailWe've done the finance of Industry, the finance of Succession, the finance of Belle Burden's Strangers — but we've never done the finance of CREATORS. So when Spotify invited us to their Investor Day, we knew we had to sit down and ask the question every aspiring musician, podcaster, and Instagram creator is obsessing over: in a world where everyone wants to be a creator, how does anyone actually get paid?In this episode, we talk with Gustav Gyllenhammar, SVP of Markets and Subscriptions at Spotify, about the surprisingly complicated machinery behind every stream you play. Where does your $12.99 a month really go? How much does a million downloads of a song actually pay out? And how did a company born out of a piracy-ravaged Sweden convince an entire generation to start paying for something they'd grown up expecting for free? We get into the labels-versus-songwriters split, the rise of the independent artist, and the one number that explains why Spotify thinks it's playing a completely different game than the AI companies scraping the internet for content.Which brings us to the real tension underneath it all: as LLMs hoover up the work of writers, musicians, and creators everywhere, who's building a model to actually compensate them — and is Spotify offering a better blueprint? We dig into Spotify's philosophy on AI, why they waited so long to touch it on the music side, what "Time Well Spent" means when every other platform is optimizing for your attention, and whether the creators who power these platforms are about to get boxed out of their own economy. Plus: the new Universal Music partnership, the audiobook feature Jen has been praying for, and why a direct listing might be the most underrated way to go public.Shop our Self Paced Courses:Investment Banking & Private Equity Fundamentals HEREFixed Income Sales & Trading HERESubscribe to our Substack: https://substack.com/@thewallstreetskinny
SpaceX Files S-1: The $2 Trillion IPO Thesis, Starlink Cash Engine, AI Pivot, and Bitcoin AngleThe script discusses SpaceX officially filing an S-1 with the SEC and frames it as a landmark IPO targeting a $2 trillion valuation after private valuations rose from $100B to $200B. It breaks SpaceX into three pillars: space launch/Mars ambitions (about $4.1B revenue in 2025), Starlink as the profitable cash engine (Q1 2026 connectivity revenue $3.3B with over $1.2B profit), and a major pivot into AI infrastructure with billions spent on data centers and custom hardware, described as roughly $8B per quarter. It notes the S-1 confirms SpaceX holds a significant digital asset and has been a longtime Bitcoin holder, while warning IPO volatility will be high and advising patience, monitoring Starlink growth and any post-IPO Bitcoin additions as potential catalysts.00:00 SpaceX IPO Shockwave00:55 Two Trillion Valuation Math01:11 Three Pillars Breakdown02:12 Starlink Cash Engine02:36 AI Infrastructure Pivot03:08 Bitcoin On The Balance Sheet03:59 IPO Risks And Mindset04:51 How To Play The IPO05:34 Live Coverage And Wrap Up________________________________________________________________FOLLOW ME ON X: https://twitter.com/staywinningusdFOLLOW ME ON INSTAGRAM: https://www.instagram.com/staywinningusd/SUBSCRIBE ON YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/@staywinningusdDOWNLOAD ON SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/2lPyA19keI2fpr0xZrEKxMNEWSLETTER SIGNUP: https://stay-winning-wealth.kit.com/806fb337d7SUBSCRIBE TO THE BLOG: https://medium.com/@staywinningusd________________________________________________________________
Liftoff finally went public this week — at a valuation that tells you exactly what the public market thinks mobile ad networks are worth. That's just one of four stories this week that genuinely matter if you run UA.Matej Lančarič flies solo for the breaking news segment, ranked from biggest to most practical. Liftoff listed on Nasdaq as LFT after a second attempt, raising $437M at a $3.83B valuation — a 25% haircut from the $5B it wanted in January, and below the private valuation General Atlantic paid in 2025. A Niko Partners report buried a number most Western publishers still aren't modeling: minigames are now almost 20% of mobile game spending in China. Akin launched AMF Capital with Makers Fund, opening with a $28M UA financing facility for Birhack. And the throughline of the week — mobile has officially shifted from core-first to event-first, with Monopoly Go's Simpsons crossover, Rovio's own admission, and Supercell's MoCo reboot all pointing the same direction.The bar keeps moving up. The industry is consolidating around scale, capital, and live-ops.━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━━⏱️ TIMESTAMPS00:00 Supercell reboots MoCo's live-ops00:30 Liftoff goes public at $3.83B — the IPO breakdown03:00 China minigames are now 20% of mobile spend05:30 AMF Capital launches with a $28M UA financing deal07:00 Mobile shifts from core-first to event-first09:00 What event-first actually means for your UA
Four stories today — all connected to the biggest monthin NIO's history.NIO has burned approximately 100 billion yuan — $14.6billion — over 8 years since William Li founded the companyin 2014. June is the verdict month. NIO delivered 67,061vehicles in April and May combined. To hit Q2 guidance of110,000-115,000 vehicles it needs 42,939 to 47,939 in Junealone. The ES9 is in its first full production month withover 50,000 pre-orders. Onvo L60 deliveries begin June 11.Gen 5 swap stations arrive mid to late June. NIO's shortinterest just hit a 32-month low — the bears are leaving.The setup has never been better.A major Chinese analysis this week asks why Chinese carsare getting bigger. The answer: margin pressure is forcingevery automaker upmarket into flagship territory whereprofits still exist. But the article makes a critical point —most brands launching flagships above 400,000 yuan arebystanders. Only brands with years of authentic premiuminvestment can actually convert those buyers. NIO has spent8 years building that identity. Most competitors have not.Lotus — the iconic British sports car brand owned by Geely —just walked back 8 years of all-electric commitment andis reintroducing hybrid powertrains. Pure EV was correctas a direction. But for a performance brand whose customerstrack their cars, range anxiety and charging limitationsmade the all-electric bet commercially unworkable. TheChinese internet put it perfectly: "Going fully electricwas correct. Retreating from fully electric is rational."NIO's battery swap network was built specifically to solvethe problem that just forced Lotus to retreat.Trump confirmed in a Wednesday interview that Iran hasalready agreed not to pursue nuclear weapons — and thatthe Strait of Hormuz could reopen as soon as this month.That triggers a sequence: oil drops, inflation falls,rate cut expectations return, growth stocks re-rate upward.Watch oil tonight. Watch Treasury yields. June could behistoric for your portfolio in more ways than one.
On this week's episode of Valley of Depth, our first recorded in person, we sit down with Jason Kim, CEO of Firefly Aerospace, in the company's historic Blue Ghost mission control room in Cedar Park, Texas — the same room where 60 engineers watched their lander touch down at one meter per second last year. From there, the conversation opens into how Jason actually thinks: about the Moon, about scale, and about being a "mission CEO" rather than a hardware or software one. Firefly went public in 2025, acquired defense software company SciTec within months, and now sits inside Golden Dome. Jason argues the market still prices the company as a pure launch player while he's building an end-to-end stack he puts in the same conversation as Anduril and Palantir. We cover: The last 30 seconds of the Blue Ghost Mission 1 landing, from inside the room where it happened Why Blue Ghost Mission 2 is harder: a three-spacecraft stack and the first US far-side landing Whether small launch makes money, and why Alpha is both a profit center and a strategic asset The Eclipse medium-lift bet, the Northrop partnership, and why Starship doesn't make everyone else obsolete Why the Moon matters, and how big the commercial lunar economy actually gets Why a hardware CEO bought a software company The valuation gap with Rocket Lab and what he believes the market hasn't priced in His honest read on SpaceX, China, the new-launch shakeout, and the path to a $100 billion company • Chapters • 00:00 - Trailer 00:53 – Blue Ghost Mission 1 04:41 – The bar for success for Blue Ghost Mission 1 07:16 – What is the new objective in Blue Ghost Mission 2? 11:49 – Jason coming into Firefly leadership 16:35 – Day 1 as Firefly CEO 18:53 – AE Industrial and how private equity informs Jason's mindset 21:02 – Product stack 22:34 – Demand signal from responsive launch 24:21 – Alpha and small launch economics 26:20 – Firefly's Eclipse 28:09 – How Starship will impact the launch market 29:41 – Viability of commercial launches 32:15 – Blue Ghost x Eclipse? 33:51 – Why does the Moon matter? 36:02 – Jason's commercial lunar economy predictions 38:02 – The future of Blue Ghost's missions 39:52 – Why Jason acquired Sitec 44:30 – Sitec in the Space Force's Golden Dome contracts 47:16 – Why shift Firefly to being a public company? 49:04 – How does Jason address stock price fluctuation internally? 50:49 – Do the public markets understand the space economy? 52:57 – Is Firefly just a launch company? 55:25 – What part of Firefly has the market not priced in yet? 56:50 – Firefly's strategy in a world where lift becomes effectively free 58:49 – Which launch companies will survive? 59:56 – The China question 1:00:33 – Is there a company out there that doesn't get enough attention? 1:01:53 – How Firefly is thinking about M&As 1:04:25 – The path to Firefly hitting a $100B valuation 1:05:25 – Jason Kim, the person 1:07:07 – Who does Jason call for advice? 1:07:57 – What Jason would tell 25-year-old Jason 1:11:58 – What Jason does for fun when not working on space • Show notes • Firefly's' website — https://fireflyspace.com/ Jason's' socials — https://x.com/Jason_Lil_Kim/ Mo's socials — https://x.com/itsmoislam Payload's socials — https://x.com/payloadspace / https://www.linkedin.com/company/payloadspace Ignition's socials — https://x.com/ignitionnuclear / https://www.linkedin.com/company/ignition-nuclear/ Tectonic's socials — https://x.com/tectonicdefense / https://www.linkedin.com/company/tectonicdefense/ Valley of Depth archive — Listen: https://pod.payloadspace.com/ • About us • Valley of Depth is a podcast about the technologies that matter — and the people building them. Brought to you by Arkaea Media, the team behind Payload (space), Ignition (nuclear energy), Decoding Bio (biotech) and Tectonic (defense tech), this show goes beyond headlines and hype. We talk to founders, investors, government officials, and military leaders shaping the future of national security and deep tech. From breakthrough science to strategic policy, we dive into the high-stakes decisions behind the world's hardest technologies. Payload: www.payloadspace.com Tectonic: www.tectonicdefense.com Ignition: www.ignition-news.com Decoding Bio: www.decodingbio.com
(0:00) OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar joins the show! (0:31) How OpenAI thinks about its IPO timeline (3:31) OpenAI, Anthropic, Google: The AI arms race (7:43) Navigating the compute crunch and AI bottlenecks, device preview! (15:53) OpenAI's economics (26:08) Push into chips, the cloud (29:32) OpenAI's ad business and strategy Thanks to our partners for making this possible! EY - Agentic AI is introducing a new investment discipline. As AI shifts to consumption-based models, EY connects spend to enterprise value. https://www.ey.com/en_us/insights/ai/agentic-ai-token-costs?WT.mc_id=3501318&AA.tsrc=sponsorship NYSE - Thank you to our partner, the New York Stock Exchange - a modern marketplace and exchange for building the future. It all happens at the NYSE. https://www.nyse.com Plaud - Never miss a moment. Plaud, our official wearable AI note-taking partner at All-In Liquidity Summit, captured every insight. https://www.plaud.ai Follow Sarah Friar: https://x.com/thefriley Apply for Summit 2026: https://allin.com/events Follow the besties: https://x.com/chamath https://x.com/Jason https://x.com/DavidSacks https://x.com/friedberg Follow on X: https://x.com/theallinpod Follow on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/theallinpod Follow on TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@theallinpod Follow on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/allinpod Intro Music Credit: https://rb.gy/tppkzl https://x.com/yung_spielburg
Sam went from drinking five Red Bulls a day as a civil engineering student in Paris to founding one of the most exciting retail concepts in Canada right now. In this episode, we sit down with the founder of KaleMart24, the health-forward convenience store brand that is quietly taking over Montreal and setting its sights on the US market. We get into how he spotted a massive gap in the North American convenience store industry, why he tested three completely different store formats at the same time before scaling, and how he built a 20-location franchise operation with a core team of three people, two of whom started as cashiers. Sam also opens up about his Dragons Den experience, what actually happens when a Dragon threatens to sue you on national television, how brands pay to get shelf space in his stores, and why he believes the proof of concept has to come before the pitch every single time. If you are thinking about starting a business, scaling one, or just want to understand how someone turns a matcha habit into an empire, this episode is for you. Follow us on socials: https://www.instagram.com/carinebadran/ https://www.instagram.com/taketheleadpodcast/ Subscribe to our newsletter: https://www.carine-badran.kit.com/b8b87327db/
In this episode of the Capital Raiser Show, Richard Wilson sits down with billionaire entrepreneur and AI investor Pavan Agarwal for a fireside chat on mindset, artificial intelligence, mortgage innovation, and building a long-term technology platform. Pavan shares how his family built SunWest Mortgage into a major national lender, why trust and integrity helped the business survive the financial crisis, and how Angel AI is being developed to simplify financial services, lending, credit, insurance, taxes, and long-term wealth planning. This conversation explores the mindset behind building and protecting a massive AI portfolio — and why the biggest opportunities may come from combining deep industry experience with technical execution. Topics covered include: The mindset shift required to scale a national business Why integrity matters when markets turn against you How AI is changing mortgage lending and financial services Why AI is an "ocean," not just a wave The value of patents, proprietary technology, and long-term vision Why founders should trust their own instincts earlier How Angel AI aims to become a personal financial companion Real estate, fixed income, and technology investing insights Why patient capital can win in AI and startups The biggest mistakes founders make when chasing trends To meet investors in person and learn directly from decamillionaires, family offices, and ultra-wealthy investors, visit FamilyOffices.com
On Halloween 2008, while the global financial system was collapsing and banks were getting bailed out with taxpayer money, an anonymous figure posted a nine-page paper that would change everything. Two months later, Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin block and buried a newspaper headline inside it about bank bailouts - a permanent message encoded forever on every node on Earth. Then he mined over a million Bitcoin, watched it become worth over $100 billion, and never touched a single coin. This is the real origin story of Bitcoin, told the way it deserves to be told. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
May 27, 2026: Your daily rundown of health and wellness news, in under 5 minutes. Today's top stories: Nordic-inspired wellness experiences including saunas and cold plunges grew 62.5% globally from 2024 to 2025, with cold plunge market hitting $355M and sauna industry nearing $1B Lucis raises $20M to expand preventative health across Europe as "Function Health for Europe," combining 110-marker blood testing with AI health companion for 10,000 users Apple loses momentum in digital health per Bloomberg as wearables shift toward predictive insights, facing competition from Oura and Whoop despite $100B in Apple Watch sales More from Fitt: Fitt Insider breaks down the convergence of fitness, wellness, and healthcare — and what it means for business, culture, and capital. Subscribe to our newsletter → insider.fitt.co/subscribe Work with our recruiting firm → https://talent.fitt.co/ Follow us on Instagram → https://www.instagram.com/fittinsider/ Follow us on LinkedIn → linkedin.com/company/fittinsider Reach out → insider@fitt.co
Quantum computing stocks surged after the US announced $2B in grants with equity stakes. Spotify jumped 13% on 2030 guidance targeting $100B in revenue. Anthropic expects $10.9B in Q2 revenue and its first-ever operating profit, while Trump pulled back an AI executive order after calls with Musk and Zuckerberg. Shares of quantum computing companies surged Thursday after the US government announced grants with equity stakes: D-Wave closed up 33%, Rigetti 30%, IBM 12% (CNBC) Spotify closed up 13% on Thursday after announcing new features and 2030 guidance, forecasting a compound annual growth rate in the mid-teens (CNBC) Workday reports Q1 revenue up 13% YoY to $2.54B vs. $2.52B est., and lifts its full-year forecast, saying its AI strategy is working; WDAY jumps 9%+ after hours (CNBC) Sources: Trump delayed signing the AI EO because "he just hates regulation"; there were questions about the EO giving the Treasury Department a leading role (Axios) Investor disclosures: Anthropic says it expects to generate $10.9B in revenue in Q2, up 127% from $4.8B in Q1, and turn a $559M operating profit, its first ever (WSJ) Longreads In more than two-thirds of the world's countries, birthrates have fallen below replacement, and researchers increasingly point the finger at smartphones and social media (FT) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Most fintechs treat cross border payments as a cost centre. George Davis built a business that treats it as the $100B infrastructure opportunity nobody else is rebuilding, and grew 55X in 12 months doing it.In this episode I speak with George Davis, Co-Founder and CEO of Lorum, a global clearing and settlement infrastructure business serving financial institutions across the Middle East, Europe, Asia, and beyond. George is a serial founder who previously co-founded BVNK before leaving to rebuild the layer of the payments stack that big banks have left untouched.Key takeaways:The payment system isn't broken; banks running it are wrongly incentivisedWhy stablecoins add friction to cross border payments rather than removing themHow mid market fintechs can access wholesale treasury rates and turn FX into a profit centreWhat access to clearing infrastructure actually means for remittance, payroll, and import-export businessesWhy Lorum 55X'd in 12 months by going after the bottom of the payments stackGeorge also shares the founder mindset behind Lorum's growth: first principles thinking, radical adaptability, and hiring for obsession over experience.
Matt is joined by Hernan Lopez, founder of Owl and Co. and Wondery, to talk about the rise of vertical video, how it ballooned to a $100B/year business, the staggering success of Reels, and which companies in Hollywood are best suited to benefit the most from this trend (00:00). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about next season's cast of 'Saturday Night Live' (26:50). Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Hernan Lopez Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Matt Pevic Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Industry voters visit Starz FYC.com. For more information visit Hulu.com/FYC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
OpenAI is weighing legal action against Apple over a Siri integration it says fell far short. Cerebras opened at $350 in the largest US tech IPO since Uber. Mythos helped researchers crack macOS security, Anthropic restores OpenClaw access with Agent SDK credits, and 71% of Americans oppose local data centers. Sources: OpenAI is weighing legal action against Apple after expectations that ChatGPT's Siri integration would generate billions in revenue fell short (Bloomberg) Security researchers used Anthropic's Mythos to discover a privilege escalation exploit in macOS, circumventing Apple's Memory Integrity Enforcement in five days (WSJ) Cerebras opens at $350, valuing the chipmaker at $100B+, after raising $5.5B by selling 30M shares at $185, the largest US tech IPO since Uber's debut in 2019 (CNBC) Anthropic unveils Claude Agent SDK credits for paid plans, which users can allocate for programmatic use of third-party agents like OpenClaw, starting June 15 (VentureBeat) AT&T, T-Mobile, and Verizon sign an "agreement in principle" to form a joint venture that aims to end wireless dead zones in the US, without giving many details (The Verge) Gallup: 71% of Americans oppose local AI data center construction, citing water and electricity issues, with opposition higher among Democrats than Republicans (Washington Post) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
On Thursday, May 14, Brian Szytel recaps a broad market gain (Dow +370, S&P 500 +0.7%, Nasdaq +0.9%) with the 10-year Treasury closing near 4.48% and argues the 4.50% level is not a meaningful “line in the sand,” noting rate pressure tied to oil above $100 amid Iran-deal uncertainty. He summarizes Trump's two-day meeting with China's President Xi as generally positive, with Xi raising Taiwan and Trump not engaging. Markets continue a “wall of worry” melt-up driven by an AI capex/productivity boom, while Q1 tax refunds ($202B vs. $179B last year) and about $100B in refunded tariffs (about one-third already returned) add stimulus, though both reflect timing of taxes extracted and refunded. Strong earnings compressed valuations (S&P ~22x to ~21x), with Middle East tensions and energy prices creating Q2 uncertainty and a moderate bull-bear ratio (~2.2:1). He addresses a question about sharing ideas on media, emphasizing TBG's client relationship and evolving portfolio management as the core value. Economic notes: retail sales in line, jobless claims slightly higher but in line, and import/export prices higher with exports rising more. 00:00 Market Snapshot 00:25 Rates Oil And Geopolitics 01:48 AI Boom And Wall Of Worry 02:21 Refunds And Tariff Rebate Boost 03:45 Valuations Earnings And Sentiment 04:49 Sharing Ideas Versus Client Value 06:42 Economic Data And Sign Off Links mentioned in this episode: DividendCafe.com TheBahnsenGroup.com
Surojit spent 14 years at Google building mobile ads into a $100B+ business and then took Coinbase public as Chief Product Officer in 2021. In early 2023, before "agent" was even a word in AI papers, he started Ema in stealth—betting on a future where teams of AI agents would replace the "human glue" inside Fortune 500s.In this episode, Surojit breaks down how a Hitachi deployment across 55,000 employees became Ema's true PMF moment, why he spent the first year obsessed with SOC 2, ISO 42001, and air-gapped architecture before chasing revenue, and why one client just cut their HR team from 1,000 people to 550 by automating 65,000 monthly job changes.Why You Should ListenWhy true PMF is when your average salesperson can sell the product without you in the room.How a single Hitachi deployment unlocked credibility for every Fortune 500 deal that followed.Why a cold email—not a warm intro—turned into Ema's largest partner today.How partnering with PwC and KPMG became a faster wedge into the C-suite than any conference.Keywords startup podcast, startup podcast for founders, product market fit, finding pmf, AI agents, enterprise AI, AI employees, Fortune 500 sales, Surojit Chatterjee, Ema, agentic AI, enterprise softwareChapters00:00:00 Intro00:02:00 Hitachi Was the PMF Moment00:04:10 What Ema Actually Does00:11:48 From Coinbase to a Pre-ChatGPT Bet00:28:48 The Cold Email That Won a Top Partner00:30:52 Small Dinners Beat Massive Conferences00:36:11 The Moment of True Product Market FitSend me a message to let me know what you think!
Gavin Newsom's “Stop Nick Shirley Act” backfires as Nick calls him out for protecting fraud, confronting California lawmakers over a bill critics say chills journalism, hides migrant spending, and violates the First Amendment.
Three stories on the table this week, and none of them small.Saks Global plans to exit Chapter 11 on June 22nd carrying $1.2 billion in debt, with a reorganization plan targeting $9 billion in GMV by fiscal 2030. That's nearly double where they sit today. Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky walk through the vendor mess (720 brands stopped shipping at the worst of it), the repair work underway, and why exiting bankruptcy this leveraged sets up another round of trouble down the road.The Watson Weekly Weekend edition is sponsored by Avalara - the agentic AI platform automating global tax and compliance for leading eCommerce brands. For more details: https://avalaratax.watsonweekly.comOver at Victoria's Secret, Australian investor Brett Blundy's BBRC Worldwide has built a roughly 13% stake and is pushing to remove two directors: chair Donna James and Miriam Naficy. The complaint is acquisitions like Adore Me. CEO Hillary Super is running a "path to potential" plan built around body positivity and a return to the Angels heritage. Fiscal 2025 sales are up 5%. The question is whether that's enough to keep the activist quiet.Then earnings. Alphabet did $109B in Q1, with Google Cloud growing 63% YoY to a $20B run rate and a $462B backlog. Amazon hit $181B, AWS grew 28% to $37.5B, and the chip business crossed a $20B run rate of its own. Shopify cleared $100B in quarterly GMV for the first time, with operating income up 88% on the back of all the layoffs and restructuring.The thread underneath all of it: AI compute is getting more expensive, not less. The pricing power is sitting with the infrastructure layer. Amazon, Nvidia, and the LLM owners are collecting the rent. The businesses adopting AI are paying it.
California's 5% billionaire wealth tax has cleared the ballot threshold and could raise $100 billion if voters approve it in November. In this video, IMI covers the law applying retroactively to any residents worth over $1 billion on January 1, the billionaire exodus already in motion, the $80 million counter-offensive funded by Google's founders, and the three strategies wealthy Americans are running to prepare for a potential federal version.Read the full story here.
Brought to you by TogetherLetters & Edgewise!In this episode: AI FrontierAnthropic's New Mythos A.I. Model Sets Off Global AlarmsMozilla Used Anthropic's Mythos to Find and Fix 271 Bugs in FirefoxSam Altman compares Mythos to dropping a bomb while selling a $100B bomb shelterAnthropic could raise a new $50B round at a valuation of $900BOpenAI releases GPT-5.57-0 wipeout: ChatGPT-5.5 vs Claude 4.7 in 7 impossible testsChina orders Meta to unwind $2B Manus acquisitionHe Built a $1.8 Billion Company Alone with AITech Layoffs & Big MovesJohn Ternus named Apple CEO to replace Tim CookNearly 40,000 tech jobs lost in April 202620,000 job cuts at Meta, Microsoft raise AI labor crisis concernNetflix plans vertical video feed and AI recommendationsPrivacy, Security & Age ChecksUS Bill Mandates On-Device Age VerificationBrussels age-checking app hacked in 2 minutes$5 Bluetooth tracker in a postcard exposes Dutch warshipHardware, Science & EngineeringNIST creates 'any wavelength' lasers in tiny circuitsNASA shuts off instrument on Voyager 1Anker made its own AI chip (Thus)YouTuber builds working DRAM in backyardLinux begins dropping Intel 486 supportPancreatic cancer mRNA vaccine shows lasting resultsBMW one step closer to a color-changing carAlberta startup sells "no-tech" tractors for half priceRobots Take the FieldChinese android beats human half-marathon recordJapan Airlines pilots humanoid robots at HanedaTable tennis robot defeats top human playersWeird & WackyChinese carmaker patents voice-controlled in-vehicle toiletAir New Zealand adds economy bunk beds (with rules)Hairdryer allegedly used to trick weather sensor for $34K Polymarket betDOJ arrests soldier who made $400K betting on Maduro's removalI bought Friendster for $30K — here's what I'm doing with itNZ DOC: remote tech begins a "new era" for conservationTech Rec:Sanjay - Citymapper Adam - Claude DesignFind us here:sanjayparekh.com & adamjwalker.comTech Talk Y'all is a proud production of Edgewise.Media.
Sysco just made a $29.1 billion move to acquire Restaurant Depot—and it could reshape how independent restaurants buy food forever. In this breaking-news style episode, the Restauranttopia crew unpacks what this deal really means for pricing, competition, and the future of distribution. From cash-and-carry economics to delivery margins, this isn't just industry gossip—it's a shift every operator should be paying attention to. If you rely on Sysco, shop at Restaurant Depot, or work with a local distributor… this one matters. The real reason Sysco wants Restaurant Depot (hint: it's not just volume) How Restaurant Depot achieves ~13% profitability with a low-cost model Why this deal could push Sysco toward $100B+ in total sales The difference between delivery vs. cash-and-carry economics What happens if one company controls both truck delivery AND in-store pricing The hidden labor and time costs of self-shopping for inventory Food safety risks operators take when transporting product themselves How this impacts:
In this episode, Jared visits with Phil McInnis, the chief investment strategist at the $100B+ asset manager Avantis Investors, to break down the science and art of building better investment portfolios. They explore the realities of passive vs. active investing, why fees and structure matter, and how to think about risk and uncertainty in today's markets. Jared and Phil unpack what it even means to be an "evidence-based investor", exploring the key levers that matter most when constructing portfolios designed to optimize long-term returns.For more information and show notes visit: https://bwmplanning.com/post/128Connect With Us:Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/BrownleeWealthManagement/?ref=py_c Linkedin - https://www.linkedin.com/company/brownlee-wealth-management/ Disclosure: This information is for informational purposes only. Nothing discussed during this video should be interpreted as tax, legal, or investment advice. If you have questions pertaining to your specific situation, please consult the appropriate qualified professional.
Big Tech earnings landed — Alphabet soared on cloud growth while Meta dropped 10% after hiking capex to $145B. SoftBank plans an AI/robotics IPO called Roze, Anthropic weighs a $900B+ round, and Musk called himself a "fool" for backing OpenAI. Microsoft says Q3 Intelligent Cloud revenue was $34.68B, vs. $34.27B est., with Azure and other cloud services up 40% YoY; Microsoft 365 Copilot has 20M+ seats (CNBC) Meta raises full-year capex outlook to $125B–$145B, up from $115B–$135B; shares drop ~10%, biggest intraday decline since October (Bloomberg) Alphabet stands out on Big Tech earnings day as Google Cloud revenue jumps 63% and backlog nearly doubles to $462B; capex guidance raised to $180B–$190B (MarketWatch) Big Four combined Q1 capex hit a record $130B, on pace for $725B in 2026, up 77% from $410B last year (FT) Sources: SoftBank plans to create an AI and robotics company called Roze in the US to build data centers and list it as early as 2026, seeking a $100B valuation (FT) Sources: Anthropic has begun weighing a new funding round at a $900B+ valuation, after previously resisting investor proposals at an $800B+ valuation (Bloomberg) Sony confirms that some digital PS4 and PS5 games require a one-time online license check "to confirm the game's license" (GameSpot) OpenAI explains Codex's "goblin problem": reinforcement training rewarded quirky creature metaphors via a discontinued "Nerdy" personality, and the behavior spread (The Verge) Musk v. Altman: Elon Musk says he was a "fool" for backing OpenAI, accusing Altman and Brockman of manipulating him into donating tens of millions of dollars (WSJ) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Limited BONUS: First 1,000 builders get $1,000. Claim yours while supplies lasts.: https://startup-ideas-pod.link/hyperagent I sit down with Howie Liu, co-founder and CEO of Airtable, to talk about the agent economy and the launch of HyperAgent. We walk through Sequoia's charts on AI agent deployment, the economics of token-based work versus human labor, and why frontier agents have crossed a threshold that changes how companies get built. Howie then does a live show-and-tell of HyperAgent, including a custom "Greg Isenberg contrarian AI" skill he spins up in real time. This one is for anyone building a solopreneur business, operating a fleet of agents, or trying to figure out where to place their bet in the agent ecosystem Timestamps 00:00 – Intro 02:22 – Sequoia's AI agent deployment chart reaction 04:41 – Copilot vs Autopilot territory and the $1T+ opportunity 08:13 – Agent economics vs human labor costs 11:12 – Fastest enterprise adoption curve in history 14:48 – The agent command center and fleet of 20 agents 18:03 – What is HyperAgent? 19:43 – Live demo: hyperlocal real estate market reports 22:38 – HyperAgent as the founder, not just the developer 23:21 – Street View, Zillow redesigns, and visual tool power 24:15 – Command center view across a fleet of agents 25:48 – Skills as the key primitive for frontier agents 26:30 – Building the Greg Isenberg contrarian AI skill live 32:31 – HyperAgent vs Perplexity Computer, Manus, OpenClaw, Codex 34:52 – Reviewing writing skill 36:55 – The arbitrage of persistence 41:31 – Confidence milestones: first dollar, $10K/month 35:27 – Reviewing contrarian tweet drafts live 45:05 – Giving the agent feedback and building rubrics 50:15 – Connectors, OAuth, and building custom API skills 53:03 – How to get started with HyperAgent 01:01:54 – Credit giveaway for listeners 01:03:31 – Closing Thoughts Key Points Frontier agents have crossed a threshold in the last 4–5 months where they function as true autonomous coworkers, not just chat assistants. Reframe agent cost by value delivered: a $150 token spend for a board memo beats hours of human time, so anchor on opportunity cost. The real arbitrage is persistence: 99% of people quit after one shot, while daily practice for 30/60/90 days produces top 1% operators. Skills are the most important primitive in frontier agents, turning generally intelligent models into domain experts through playbooks. HyperAgent's differentiation is a low floor plus a high ceiling, with rubrics, LLM-as-judge evals, and fleet-wide observability for scaling. Aim for $100B companies with under 5 employees, built on fleets of always-on agents mapped to human job roles. The #1 tool to find startup ideas/trends - https://www.ideabrowser.com LCA helps Fortune 500s and fast-growing startups build their future - from Warner Music to Fortnite to Dropbox. We turn 'what if' into reality with AI, apps, and next-gen products https://latecheckout.agency/ The Vibe Marketer - Resources for people into vibe marketing/marketing with AI: https://www.thevibemarketer.com/ FIND ME ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://twitter.com/gregisenberg Instagram: https://instagram.com/gregisenberg/ LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gisenberg/ FIND HOWIE ON SOCIAL X/Twitter: https://x.com/howietl Hyperagent: https://www.hyperagent.com Airtable: https://www.airtable.com-
Our 242nd episode with a summary and discussion of last week's big AI news!Recorded on 04/22/2026Hosted by Andrey Kurenkov and Jeremie HarrisFeel free to email us your questions and feedback at andreyvkurenkov@gmail.com and/or hello@gladstone.aiRead out our text newsletter and comment on the podcast at https://lastweekin.ai/In this episode:OpenAI released a new ChatGPT image model that excels at accurate text and screenshot-like generations, suggesting a transformer-style approach aligned with agentic “computer use” ambitions.Chinese model activity accelerated with Alibaba's Qwen 3.6 Max Preview moving to an API-only offering, plus open releases from Moonshot AI (Kimi K2.6, a 1T-parameter MoE) and Minimax (Minimax M 2.7) showing strong benchmark results.Google expanded Deep Research with a “Max” option built on Gemini 3.1 Pro and MCP support for accessing proprietary data, while Mozilla reported using Anthropic's Claude to find and fix 271 Firefox bugs. Business and policy updates include a reported SpaceX–Cursor deal with a $60B buy option, Cerebras filing for an IPO, Amazon adding $5B to Anthropic alongside a $100B AWS spending pledge, and platform responses to synthetic media like AI music spam and YouTube deepfake takedown requests.Timestamps:(00:00:10) Intro / Banter(00:01:05) News Preview(00:01:41) Sponsors(00:04:41) Response to listener commentsTools & Apps(00:09:40) ChatGPT's new Images 2.0 model is surprisingly good at generating text | TechCrunch(00:16:02) Alibaba Drops Qwen 3.6 Max Preview—Its Most Powerful Model Yet - Decrypt(00:19:26) Google launches Deep Research and Deep Research Max agents to automate complex research(00:25:00) Mozilla Used Anthropic's Mythos to Find and Fix 271 Bugs in Firefox | WIRED(00:28:35) Ordering with the Starbucks ChatGPT app was a true coffee nightmare | The VergeApplications & Business(00:29:48) SpaceX is working with Cursor and has an option to buy the startup for $60B | TechCrunch(00:34:11) AI chip startup Cerebras files for IPO | TechCrunch(00:38:23) Two startups want to replace how AI learns: one just raised $180M, another is seeking up to $1B(00:38:56) Months-old start-up Recursive Superintelligence raises $500mn for self-teaching AI(00:41:36) Anthropic takes $5B from Amazon and pledges $100B in cloud spending in return | TechCrunch(00:45:09) Kevin Weil and Bill Peebles exit OpenAI as company continues to shed 'side quests' | TechCrunch(00:46:04) Meta hires five Thinking Machines Lab founders including a reported $1.5 billion engineer - Meta cuts 198 Bay Area jobs as even larger layoffs reportedly loom(00:50:12) Meta employees are up in arms over a mandatory program to train AI on their mouse movements and keystrokes(00:51:43) Chinese fabs import record volumes of US chipmaking equipment via Singapore and Malaysia — homegrown tool makers booked record 2025 revenues as price competition squeezes margins(00:54:01) Google Eyes New Chips to Speed Up AI Results, Challenging Nvidia(00:54:20) Canadian quantum company Xanadu soars to $16 billion valuation after Nvidia releaseProjects & Open Source(01:00:13) Moonshot AI releases Kimi-K2.6 model with 1T parameters, attention optimizations - SiliconANGLE(01:05:22) MiniMax Just Open Sourced MiniMax M2.7: A Self-Evolving Agent Model that Scores 56.22% on SWE-Pro and 57.0% on Terminal Bench 2 - MarkTechPostPolicy & Safety(01:06:25) Infusion: Shaping Model Behavior by Editing Training Data via Influence Functions(01:10:25) Scoop: NSA using Anthropic's Mythos despite blacklist(01:11:03) Unauthorized group has gained access to Anthropic's exclusive cyber tool Mythos, report claimsResearch & Advancements(01:17:21) Parcae: Scaling Laws For Stable Looped Language Models(01:24:20) OccuBench: Evaluating AI Agents on Real-World Professional Tasks via Language Environment SimulationSynthetic Media & Art(01:27:01) Deezer says 44% of songs uploaded to its platform daily are AI-generated | TechCrunch(01:29:47) Celebrities will be able to find and request removal of AI deepfakes on YouTube | The VergeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.
This week on the Watson Weekly, Rick Watson breaks down the biggest stories shaping commerce, technology, and AI infrastructure.Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO after 14 transformative years that took the company from a $300B market cap to $4 trillion. John Turnis takes the helm September 1st.The Watson Weekly is sponsored by Avalara - the agentic AI platform automating global tax and compliance for leading eCommerce brands. For more details: https://avalaratax.watsonweekly.comAnthropic just inked a $100 billion, 10-year infrastructure deal with AWS for 5 gigawatts of compute, while Amazon pours another $5B (potentially $20B more) into the AI lab. Brad Jacobs strikes again: QXO is acquiring Top Build for ~$17B, his third deal in under a year.Plus, a tribute to industry leader Jon Panella.The Investor Minute with 5 items this week from the world of venture capital, acquisitions, and IPOs.
On this weekend edition of The Watson Weekly, Rick Watson and Jessica Lesesky break down the biggest stories shaping tech, retail, and AI.Amazon is doubling down on its Anthropic bet — with a new deal that has Anthropic committing $100B to AWS over the next decade, while Amazon pumps in an additional $5B(with up to $20B more on the table) and locks in guaranteed compute capacity. With over 100K customers already using Claude on Bedrock and Amazon holding a reported 15% stake, this partnership is reshaping the cloud AI landscape.Home Depot quietly acquired SIMPL Automation, a scrappy robotics startup that had raised just $100K before piloting its warehouse density technology at Home Depot's Locust Grove DC. Rick and Jessica unpack what this signals about the arms race between Home Depot and Lowe's to modernize supply chain and distribution.The Watson Weekly Weekend edition is sponsored by Avalara - the agentic AI platform automating global tax and compliance for leading eCommerce brands. For more details: https://avalaratax.watsonweekly.comPlus, the end of an era at Apple: Tim Cook is stepping down as CEO after 15 years to become executive chairman, handing the reins to 25-year Apple veteran John Ternus. Cook leaves behind a company transformed — from a $350B market cap to $4T, and a services business that now tops $100B. What does a hardware-focused CEO mean for Apple's AI strategy and search partnerships?
Welcome back Matt Liberty (Joulescope) and Luke Beno (Werewolf.us) Matt has been a guest on episodes 527 and 607 Luke was a guest on episode 272 Luke launched a new cable manufacturing and power supply company in the US called Werewolf.us Matt is working on the JS320 We discussed how PartsBox is a great ERP solution but Matt and Luke decided to go fully custom with Claude Code. Jan Rychter was a guest on episode 542 We discussed the differences with Product Lifecycle Maintenance. Michael Corr of the recently acquired Duro Labs was on episode 577 CAM workflow A fully verticalized PCB factory is something Jonathan Hirschmann talked about on episode 299 Jeff Bezos is investing 100B in a fund that is looking at automation in the factory using AI Matt recently had success with Claude Code and verilog programming Saleae for hardware in the loop using their APIs Other tools to check out pyelf pdfdk blast superpowers skill (by past guest at Teardown Jesse Vincent) Luke used OpenClaw to power a chat agent in his ERP system Working with distributors TI backlog Chris recently learned that Digikey has a developer API Cocotb verification framework (in Python) Luke is working on vision experiments for inhouse developed AOI solutions
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Apple named John Ternus as its next CEO, with Tim Cook stepping up to executive chairman on September 1. Amazon agrees to invest up to $25B more in Anthropic, Bezos' Project Prometheus nears a $10B raise, and SpaceX's IPO prospectus reveals Musk's power moves. John Ternus, senior VP of Hardware Engineering, will become Apple's next CEO on September 1; Tim Cook will become executive chairman of Apple's board (CNBC) Amazon agrees to invest up to $25B in Anthropic, on top of the $8B that it has already invested; Anthropic commits to spend $100B+ on AWS over the next 10 years (CNBC) Sources: Jeff Bezos' Project Prometheus is close to a $10B fundraising deal, which includes an initial $6.2B raise in November, at a $38B post-money valuation (FT) Draft of SpaceX's confidential IPO prospectus: Elon Musk increased his stake in SpaceX last year by purchasing $1.4B of stock from current and former employees (The Information) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
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What if every fight over music technology throughout history has actually been the same fight, and we're just now facing a version of it we've never seen before? In this special episode, Dmitri shares a keynote he gave at the Algo Rhythms conference last month called "Is Music Making Up For Grabs?" Drawing on four hundred years of disruption in music, from the harpsichord to amplification, Dmitri traces the pattern of how every generation has fought over new tools and every generation has been wrong about what those tools would destroy. But this episode isn't just a history lesson. It's a live argument, complete with the Kalyuka, the WARBL, and few sounds you won't expect. Along the way, the stories of T-Pain and Blanco Brown show exactly where the pattern holds and where it finally breaks. Because the question Dmitri lands on is one no generation before us has had to answer. Not what counts as an instrument, but whether the creator is still human. The news Selling a $3B Spotify stake, Michael Ovitz as Chairman of the Board, and a $100B+ company: Welcome to Bill Ackman's plan for Universal Music Group. After Universal, Warner, and Merlin deals, now Udio inks licensing agreement with Kobalt https://www.musicbusinessworldwide.com/after-universal-warner-and-merlin-deals-now-udio-inks-licensing-agreement-with-kobalt/ The Music Tectonics podcast goes beneath the surface of the music industry to explore how technology is changing the way business gets done. Visit musictectonics.com to find shownotes and a transcript for this episode, and find us on LinkedIn, Twitter, and Instagram. Let us know what you think! Get Dmitri's Rock Paper Scanner newsletter.
https://rhr.tv/stream Iran Proposes Bitcoin Oil Toll https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/iran-wants-bitcoin-payments-oil-142809623.html + https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqs2k4fh032uxuhnmh5r7s6ra3cx4tczkhhc9tt4yuqu3xfl2juxx7skudrk5 France Repatriates Gold Reserves https://x.com/clashreport/status/2041076906280309046 Bitcoin ETF Fastest to $100B https://x.com/mtanguma/status/2041865673110962555 Square Phases Bitcoin Payments https://x.com/milessuter/status/2040154587232182565 Salvadoran Bitcoin Students Join Mempool https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqsqcfhdguz5x4hy6zhhur3f72nvjypw4an9ln7lcs0rek6cl5arxgc4rdqj5 Strike updates https://x.com/Strike/status/2041273272587686035 OpenSats 16th Nostr Grants https://opensats.org/blog/sixteenth-wave-of-nostr-grants Russia | Banks to Use State Messenger for Transaction Verification Russia's Ministry of Digital Development is drafting legislation that would require banks to confirm customer financial operations through Max, a Kremlin-controlled messaging app. In practice, instead of confirming transactions within their banking app (or via SMS), users would receive a message in the Max app and must approve the action there to complete it. The proposal applies to undefined “significant” actions, granting officials broad discretion over which financial activities require approval. This would insert state-run app verification into everyday banking. And if Max goes down, significant financial activity may stop entirely. FinancialFreedomReport.org Sprout Nostr AI Relay https://github.com/block/sprout Mesh LLM Distributed Inference https://github.com/michaelneale/mesh-llm Nunchuk CLI for AI Agents https://x.com/nunchuk_io/status/2041878908547821872 Iran Blackout Day 41 https://x.com/netblocks/status/2042140068509290961 Bitchat iOS banned in China, Bitchat android hits 3.2M installs https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqs8k3n72knrtm3nvz5vqp4cm9dctxtuc627zz8kttxvqssnl7z60mqfj4rr7 + https://primal.net/e/nevent1qqspne9a0e40ulra9uhvht6mdgad40m63w3xr6h6tuh77rsthue0nlgg66x3y Google AI Finance Global Launch https://x.com/thefox/status/2041910855479259400 03:33 - Big week 06:13 - Dashboard 08:43 - Hormuz 28:53 - France wants their gold 33:33 - BTC ETF growth 36:18 - Square update 39:23 - Hot Style Takeover 40:43 - Salvadorans join Mempool 43:48 - Strike loan update 45:28 - OpenSats 50:48 - HRF Story of the Week 53:33 - Boosts 57:28 - Software updates 1:26:23 - Carlyle redemptions 1:32:33 - S&P Shoutout to our sponsors: Coinkite https://coinkite.com/ Strike https://strike.me/ Stakwork https://stakwork.ai/ Salt of the Earth https://drinksote.com/rhr Follow Marty Bent: Twitter https://twitter.com/martybent Nostr https://primal.net/marty Newsletter https://tftc.io/martys-bent/ Podcast https://tftc.io/podcasts/ Follow Odell: Nostr https://primal.net/odell Newsletter https://discreetlog.com/ Podcast https://citadeldispatch.com/
JCD BACK IN THE HOUSE! Correction in some areas and sectors. Crude oil DROPS after “good” talks and a deal brewing with Iran. Airports are a mess. PLUS we are now on Spotify and Amazon Music/Podcasts! Click HERE for Show Notes and Links DHUnplugged is now streaming live - with listener chat. Click on link on the right sidebar. Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter Warm-Up - JCD BACK IN THE HOUSE - Need a new CTP - Airports are a mess - Not Kosher - Futures moves Markets - From the Brink....All is good? - Correction in some areas and sectors - US Dollar Rises, Gold, Silver and Bitcoin Drop - Crude oil DROPS after "good" talks and a deal brewing with Iran - reversing all of the above JCD UPDATE - AH waiting by the microphone on a Tuesday in March - - no John... 9pm, 9:05, 9:15pm... - Health update etc...Can we get the story? - Thoughts on John S. Dvorak (Mimi on No Agenda) - Family backup! Market Update - Small-Caps taking the brunt of the selling - Russell 2000 small-caps are down 10% from their high - an official correction -- Interestingly the R2000 is still up this year by about 2% - Stocks up on Monday after President Trump says intense negotiations over weekend and postpones targeted attacks for 5 days (after giving a 48 hour ultimatum) Manipulation? Say it ain't so... - Dateline Monday morning... - Futures took a leg down pre-market - even after Friday (after close) President Trump said he was looking to wind down the Iran affair - At around 6:50 a.m. in New York, S&P 500 e-Mini futures trading on the CME recorded a sharp and isolated jump in volume. - A similar pattern was observed in oil markets. - Roughly 15 minutes later, at 7:05 a.m., Trump posted a market-moving announcement about Iran on Truth Social. - Futures on DJ up 1,000 and oil down 89% --- Were there really conversations and negotiations over the weekend? A Few Leftovers that need to be discussed Private Credit Again - All of a sudden they are admitting there is a problem..... - Blackstone Inc. approved redemptions of a record 7.9% from its flagship private credit fund, totaling about $3.8 billion. - Redemption requests have increased across multiple private credit funds in recent quarters. - Investor unease is being driven by concerns over the private credit asset class, particularly exposure to software companies vulnerable to AI disruption. - According to Hugh Chung, CIO of Endowus, Blackstone's experience suggests these concerns are asset-class wide, not limited to a small group of managers. - Apollo Global Management CEO Marc Rowan warned that a shakeout is coming for private credit firms, driven by rising defaults on loans to software companies. - Rowan emphasized that the shakeout is unlikely to be short-term, calling it foreseeable and predictable, and underscoring the importance of disciplined underwriting and strong risk management. - He argued that investors should prefer having credit risk reside within private markets firms, rather than on bank balance sheets backed by government-insured deposits, which can amplify systemic risk. - LATEST: Apollo is curbing redemptions from one of their biggest Private Credit funds. Michael Gayed: Private credit default rate just hit 9.2%. That's higher than 2008 bank loan peaks. $1.8 trillion in assets, $100B in secondary liquidity. 18:1 mismatch PRIVATE CREDIT More OpenAI Funding - Amazon invested $50 billion, Nvidia invested $30 billion and SoftBank invested $30 billion in the round, OpenAI said in a release Friday. - The investment boosts OpenAI to a $730 billion pre-money valuation, which marks a big jump from its $500 billion valuation in a secondary financing in October. - The will use some of the money to expland and buy more chips and cloud from NVDA and AMZN (? Circular?) MORE ON THE CIRCULAR SHAM - OpenAI said it is expanding its existing $38 billion agreement with Amazon Web Services by $100 billion over the next eight years. - AWS will also serve as the exclusive third-party cloud distribution provider for OpenAI's enterprise platform Frontier, which it unveiled earlier this month. AI and Where we stand - Can we talk about Anthropic? Is the Government going to crush Claude? - What is our Go-to AI bots? - What stage are we at right now? LLMs > Infernce>Agentic - - What comes after Agentic Netflix OUT - Last week, Netflix exited the bidding for Warner Bros. Discovery after a competing bidder submitted a superior offer. - The decision followed pre-planned bidding scenarios, with co CEO Ted Sarandos saying the company knew exactly how to respond once the higher offer emerged. - Sarandos said the Paramount deal is likely to drive significant cost-cutting, including roughly $16 billion in reductions and thousands of job losses. - He emphasized that Netflix will continue investing in its business and explore new ways to collaborate with theater owners, rather than pursuing large acquisitions.| - Stock rose nicely on the news Tariff Refund Update - You are screwed.... -- Trump administration seems hell-bent on keeping our money Airlines - After a rather bullish commentary from Delta last week.... - United Airlines is cutting more unprofitable flights over the next two quarters as it prepares for a prolonged period of high jet fuel prices due to the Iran war, even as strong travel demand has allowed U.S. carriers to raise fares. Chief Executive Scott Kirby said in a staff memo the airline is preparing for oil to rise as high as $175 a barrel and remain above $100 until the end of 2027. - At those levels, United's annual fuel bill would rise by about $11 billion, more than twice the profit it earned in its "best year ever," he said. - Ticket prices going up! Gas Prices - Have you seen diesel prices? - > $5 gallon on average across the U.S. -- Implications beyond --- Let's discuss the similarities to the 1973 oil embargo. (Barry switching license plates) - 1973–1974 ? Arab oil embargo (the classic “1970s oil embargo”) - 1979 ? Second oil shock caused by the Iranian Revolution (not an embargo, but another major supply shock) Even So - Fedex - FedEx Corp. raised its full-year profit forecast, with adjusted earnings expected to be $19.30 to $20.10 a share for the fiscal year. - The company's shares climbed after the announcement, with the stock advancing about 23% this year through Thursday's close. - FedEx does not expect the war in the Middle East to have a direct material effect on its business, but the broader consequences, including higher energy prices and volatile shipping patterns, are adversely affecting the global economy. - In fact, company raised its full year outlook..... --- Not a material effect??? Bad People - SuperMicro Co-Founder Charged! - Super Micro shares sank 28% last Friday after U.S. prosecutors charged three people linked with the company, including its co-founder, with helping smuggle billions of dollars worth of AI technology to China. (NVDA chips) - The U.S. Justice Department charged Super Micro co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw, sales manager Ruei-Tsang Chang, and contractor Ting-Wei Sun with running a scheme to route U.S.-made servers through Taiwan to Southeast Asia. - The defendants allegedly used a Southeast Asian company as a middleman to place orders for high-end servers containing restricted Nvidia H200 and Blackwell chips. The equipment was then repackaged into unmarked boxes and diverted to China. - To evade U.S. audits and customs inspections, the individuals allegedly created thousands of "dummy" servers and used a hair dryer to remove and reattach serial number labels from genuine servers to the fake ones. --- Soooo, only 3 people did all of this? Amazon Phone - Amazon's new phone project codenamed 'Transformer' - Focus on AI integration, Alexa features, and mobile personalization - Here is what we know: -------It is a smartphone, not a wearable or accessory - It is AI-centric, with Alexa deeply integrated - It is meant to act as a personalized, always-on gateway into Amazon's ecosystem (shopping, Prime Video, Prime Music, services like Grubhub) - It is being built inside Amazon's Devices & Services group by a skunkworks team called ZeroOne, led by former Xbox architect J Allard OpenClaw - Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang says OpenClaw could be the next ChatGPT as AI shifts from answering questions to taking action. - Jensen said : Nvidia is building security around the technology with NemoClaw to enable safe and scalable adoption of AI agents. - Project OpenClaw: “It is now the largest, most popular, the most successful open-sourced project in the history of humanity,” - OpenClaw is an open-source autonomous AI agent platform that goes beyond traditional chatbots. -----Instead of answering questions, these agents can complete tasks, make decisions, and take actions with minimal input from users. - Use case: Prompt to study images of a kitchen, learn design tools, iterate ideas to learn how to design a kitchen ------- Jensen says: “Every carpenter can now be an architect. Every plumber will become an architect. We are going to elevate the capabilities of everyone” ---- What happens to the architects? Something.... - One of the hardest hit countries in all of this mess has been South Korea - ~70% of South Korea's crude oil imports come from the Middle East - Most of that oil transits the Strait of Hormuz - Margin calls kicked in as high margin debt with heavy retail participation - Won weakened sharply (17-year low) - Korea economy is dependent on global demand and stable energy prices - South Korea often leads sell-offs as it is the purest RISK ON market in Asia ---- SOOOOO, if this thing ends quickly, there is a potential of EWY to move up again.... Love the Show? Then how about a Donation? THE CLOSEST TO THE PIN for CATERPILLAR Winners will be getting great stuff like the new "OFFICIAL" DHUnplugged Shirt! FED AND CRYPTO LIMERICKS See this week's stock picks HERE Follow John C. Dvorak on Twitter Follow Andrew Horowitz on Twitter
In this episode, Lisa Boothe sits down with investigative journalist Chris Rufo to uncover shocking examples of government waste, fraud, and political corruption—particularly in California. Rufo breaks down his latest reporting on a $114 million taxpayer-funded wildlife bridge, massive Medicaid fraud, and how billions in public funds are funneled into ideological projects and politically connected groups. The conversation also dives into San Francisco’s controversial diversion of police funding into DEI initiatives, raising serious questions about public safety and accountability. Plus, what does this mean for Governor Gavin Newsom’s national ambitions—and will voters care about the staggering scale of waste?
1. Oil Prices & National Security Lower global oil prices weaken hostile regimes like Iran, Russia, and Venezuela by reducing their revenue. The Trump administration aims for a “sweet spot” oil price ($60–$70/barrel): Low enough to hurt adversaries. High enough to avoid bankrupting U.S. independent oil producers. If prices drop into the $40s, it could collapse small oil producers in Texas and the Permian Basin. 2. Venezuela’s Oil Infrastructure Venezuela has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, but decades of mismanagement have destroyed its infrastructure. Estimates from oil executives: Increasing production from 1 million to 3 million barrels/day could take 10 years and require $100B+ in investment. Even going from 1 million to 2 million/day would take 5–7 years. Gulf Coast refineries can process Venezuela’s heavy sour crude, but expanded imports would mostly affect Canada and Mexico, not U.S. light-sweet crude producers. 3. Cuba’s Economic Crisis Cuba historically survived on financial support from: The Soviet Union (until its collapse). Venezuela under Chávez/Maduro (oil and money). With Venezuela no longer able to support Cuba, the island is in economic freefall. Mexico is currently providing oil that helps sustain the Cuban regime. The Trump administration may pressure Mexico to cut this supply, potentially pushing Cuba toward political collapse. 4. Jack Smith & January 6th Investigation Smith is accused of leading a politically motivated prosecution against Donald Trump. He allegedly relied on questionable or disproven testimony, notably from Cassidy Hutchinson. Hutchinson’s dramatic claims (e.g., Trump lunging for a steering wheel) were not confirmed by eyewitnesses. Jim Jordan challenged Smith in hearings, accusing him of: Using unreliable witnesses. Conducting a partisan, anti-Trump investigation. Targeting large numbers of Republicans with subpoenas. 5. Crime Statistics & Trump Administration Policies Nationwide murder rates reportedly declined ~20% from 2024 to 2025. Approx. 1,400 fewer murders. Major cities showing decreases: Chicago: 30% NYC: 20% Baltimore: 31% Oakland: 33% Washington, D.C.: 31% (after National Guard deployment) Other violent crimes also declined: Motor vehicle theft: ↓25% Robbery: ↓18% Aggravated assault: ↓8% Law enforcement stats cited: Violent crime arrests: ↑100% Gangs disrupted: ↑210% Fentanyl seized: ↑31% Missing/abducted children located: ↑22% Human traffickers arrested: ↑15% Significant increase in arrests of espionage suspects and fugitives. Please Hit Subscribe to this podcast Right Now. Also Please Subscribe to the 47 Morning Update with Ben Ferguson and The Ben Ferguson Show Podcast Wherever You get You're Podcasts. And don't forget to follow the show on Social Media so you never miss a moment! Thanks for Listening YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruz/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/verdictwithtedcruz X: https://x.com/tedcruz X: https://x.com/benfergusonshowYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@VerdictwithTedCruzSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.