Billion Dollar Grüns Sale Gives Consumer Investors Hope When Unilever last week announced its $1.2 billion acquisition of Grüns, a three-year-old brand of gummy vitamins, I had a flashback to a decade ago when Unilever bought Dollar Shave Club for almost t...

Unilever’s $1.2 billion acquisition of Grüns is reviving hopes for venture-backed consumer exits after years of slowdown. Investors are betting a new wave of IPOs and acquisitions could follow.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4dQ45Dx

New SpaceX Numbers Show Reliance on Starlink A new set of numbers for Elon Musk's SpaceX makes it clear that the success of its potential initial public offering will depend on investors embracing the growth of the company's Starlink satellite internet business. The other two businesses inside Spa...

Starlink is now the backbone of SpaceX, producing most revenue and profit as rockets and AI drain cash. https://thein.fo/41tesG5

China’s Probe of Meta’s Manus Purchase Sends Startups Scrambling China’s AI startup founders are jittery. The Chinese government’s investigation of Manus’ sale to Meta Platforms has cast a shadow over a popular exit path for startup founders. And it has caused some...

China’s AI startup founders are jittery. The Chinese government’s investigation of Manus’ sale to Meta Platforms has cast a shadow over a popular exit path for startup founders.

Read more in today's AI Agenda newsletter: https://thein.fo/47XvSOM

Anthropic Changes Pricing to Bill Firms Based on AI Use Amid Compute Crunch Businesses whose employees are heavy users of Anthropic’s Claude products are likely to pay significantly more for them after the company changed its pricing model in recent weeks to charge business c...

Exclusive: Anthropic shifts Claude Enterprise to usage-based billing, raising costs for heavy users.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4ct88n5

OpenAI Plans New Pricing for ChatGPT Ads, Explores Other Upgrades OpenAI plans to start pricing some ChatGPT ads based on whether people click on the ads rather than just how many people see them, an agency executive who spoke with OpenAI employees and works with Ch...

OpenAI is testing click-based pricing for ChatGPT ads as it looks to boost advertiser spending and close gaps with Google and Meta.

Full story: https://thein.fo/4vxH5zq

Netflix on Deck This Week; Pressure on Software Stocks Intensifies We interrupt our regular AI programming to talk about something more entertaining: Netflix! The video-streaming giant kicks off tech earnings season on Thursday with its first-quarter earnings. It's the first quarterly report since Netflix walked away f...

Netflix’s growth streak faces pressure as ads and price increases carry more of the load. https://thein.fo/4cjpNxd

‘Reinforcement Learning Gym' Startup, Buoyed by Labs' Appetite For Training Data, Reaches $750 Million Valuation AI developers are getting more creative in how they acquire data to train AI models. For instance, they're paying startups to develop copies of popular apps, like Salesforce or Excel, to teach models how to use the apps--otherwise known as reinforcement...

Startups selling reinforcement learning “gyms” are seeing explosive growth as AI labs chase data.

https://thein.fo/4ciQHoZ

How a Self-Taught Programmer Became the Father of Claude Code Boris Cherny, the head of Claude Code, almost parted ways with Anthropic for good last summer. Instead, he has helped shape the coding agent into a megahit that has closed the distance with rival OpenAI. Claude Code has supercharged Anthropic’s growth. ...

Anthropic’s Boris Cherny nearly left the company last year, but returned to build Claude Code into one of the fastest-growing AI coding tools. The product is now driving billions in revenue and helping Anthropic close the gap with OpenAI.

Read our profile: https://thein.fo/48CSPXy

Microsoft Plots New Copilot Features Inspired by OpenClaw As Microsoft faces growing competition for business customers from Anthropic, it is developing new features that would make its AI assistant Copilot function more like OpenClaw, the open-source AI agent that has taken the AI industry by storm in recent ...

Microsoft is developing OpenClaw-style agents for Copilot as competition from Anthropic intensifies. https://thein.fo/3On8jrY

Handshake, Mercor Revenue Surges on Demand for Human Contractors to Train AI AI firms’ voracious appetite for more data has lifted sales for obscure startups doing the industry’s unglamorous work: contracting with lawyers, PhDholders and medical doctors who grade the answers A...

Exclusive: Handshake’s gross annualized revenue from AI training has risen to nearly $1 billion, up from $550 million in January, a few months after it started the new business.

Read more: https://thein.fo/3Ot5fdI

Polymarket Reverses Course on Startups That Piggyback on Insider Trades Polymarket was already under pressure to curb insider trading when it launched a program late last year to support startups that sent trades to its prediction market. Those companies quickly began han...

Exclusive: Polymarket is auditing startups in its developer program after some promoted tools that help users copy suspected insider trades.

The move underscores growing scrutiny as the platform tries to curb abuse while relying on those developers for growth. https://thein.fo/4vJKV90

New SpaceX Numbers Show Reliance on Starlink A new set of numbers for Elon Musk’s SpaceX makes it clear that the success of its potential initial public offering will depend on investors embracing the growth of the company’s Starlink satellite i...

A new set of numbers for Elon Musk’s SpaceX makes it clear that the success of its potential IPO will depend on investors embracing the company’s Starlink satellite internet business.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4vvo4O7

Polymarket Reverses Course on Startups That Piggyback on Insider Trades Polymarket was already under pressure to curb insider trading when it launched a program late last year to support startups that sent trades to its prediction market. Those companies quickly began han...

Polymarket was facing pressure to curb insider trading while also backing startups that copied those trades. Now it's reversing course.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4mzf1rG

Cisco in Talks to Buy AI Security Startup Astrix for at Least $250 Million Cisco Systems is in talks to acquire Astrix Security, a five-year-old Israeli cybersecurity startup that sells software to monitor and secure AI agents, for between $250 million and $350 million, according to people with knowledge of the deal. That woul...

Cisco is eyeing Astrix for up to $350 million, as concerns over rogue AI agents boost cybersecurity acquisitions.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4vdCn9Y

Polygon Labs in Talks to Raise Up to $100 Million for Payments Business Polygon Labs, developer of the blockchain that underpins prediction market Polymarket and other crypto platforms, is in early talks with investors to raise as much as $100 million to build a new stablecoin payments business, according to people familiar...

The funding discussions come amid a nasty downturn in crypto. The new venture would be a way for Polygon to diversify out of a market that has stalled.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4caPNe7

The Electric: In the U.S. and China, Exaggerated Claims of Solid State Batteries In a livestreamed event last month, China’s Chery Automobile said it had made a breakthrough in solid-state batteries and would deploy them next year in a luxury electric SUV that would have a whoppin...

Battery experts are skeptical despite the claims and say that while the industry is closer to a working, reasonably priced, manufacturable solid-state battery, no one is truly there yet.

More in today's Electric newsletter: https://thein.fo/4cnUDou

Microsoft Slowed AI Spending. Now It’s Playing Catchup Microsoft is playing catch-up in the AI power race by grabbing big sites in Texas and West Virginia for data centers fired by natural gas. It wasn’t long ago that the company had a big lead.In the ear...

Microsoft is playing catch-up in the AI power race by grabbing big sites in Texas and West Virginia for data centers fired by natural gas. It wasn’t long ago that the company had a big lead.

More in today's AI Infrastructure newsletter: https://thein.fo/3Oq8faK

The ‘Tokenmaxxing’ Tide May Already Be Turning At tech giants like Meta Platforms, employees may have embraced the idea of “tokenmaxxing” as a way to show off how dedicated they are to using AI in their jobs. Don’t expect businesses beyond the dee...

Meta employees may have embraced the idea of “tokenmaxxing” as a way to show off how dedicated they are to using AI in their jobs. Don’t expect businesses beyond the deepest-pocketed tech giants to follow their lead, though.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4tN7x6I

Atlassian and Figma Lead the R&D Arms Race Wall Street’s sell-off of enterprise software stocks resumed in earnest late last week, sending stocks such as ServiceNow and Snowflake down around 8% or so on Friday, as jitters over the impact of ne...

Atlassian and Figma spend far more than other software firms on R&D in proportion to revenue, a noteworthy metric amid the software selloff.

More insights: https://thein.fo/4vhskRg

Microsoft Plots New Copilot Features Inspired by OpenClaw As Microsoft faces growing competition for business customers from Anthropic, it is developing new features that would make its AI assistant Copilot function more like OpenClaw, the open-source AI age...

Exclusive: Details on Microsoft’s plan to turn the OpenClaw craze into a boost for Copilot.

Full story: https://thein.fo/3QjEfho

How a Self-Taught Programmer Became the Father of Claude Code Boris Cherny, the head of Claude Code, almost parted ways with Anthropic for good last summer. Instead, he has helped shape the coding agent into a megahit that has closed the distance with rival OpenAI. Claude Code has supercharged Anthropic’s growth. ...

Anthropic’s Boris Cherny nearly left the company last year, but returned to build Claude Code into one of the fastest-growing AI coding tools. The product is now driving billions in revenue and helping Anthropic close the gap with OpenAI.

Read our profile: https://thein.fo/48CSPXy

xAI Spending Pushed SpaceX to a Nearly $5 Billion Loss SpaceX lost just under $5 billion last year while generating more than $18.5 billion in revenue, two people familiar with the figures said. The financial figures includexAI, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence company that SpaceX acquired in F...

SpaceX's $5B loss highlights that investors who participate in the IPO will essentially be financing Musk’s unproven AI ambitions.

Read the full story & what it means for SpaceX's IPO: https://thein.fo/4dLAVWh

SpaceX Woos Investors As C-Suite Shakeups Continue Some of the biggest Wall Street fund managers are planning to trek to the southernmost tip of Texas, then about 950 miles to Memphis, Tenn, in two weeks, for exclusive visits to SpaceX facilities ahead of what could be the biggest initial public offerin...

SpaceX is ramping up its IPO pitch with tours of its rocket and data center operations, even as leadership turnover hits xAI.

Full story: https://thein.fo/4vmwyqL

Nvidia Worth $22 Trillion? This Old-School Financial Model Says Yes. Nvidia shares should be worth a lot more than they are now--400% more, to be exact. And most software stocks should be worth less--some a lot less--than they are now. You can find assessments like these all over social media, but in this case, they come...

Nvidia’s 73% cash flow return on investment puts it in the top 0.1% of companies, driving a valuation far above today’s levels in UBS HOLT’s model. Meanwhile, stock-based compensation and slowing growth make many software names look expensive.

Full analysis: https://thein.fo/3Q2sCve

Nebius in Talks to Buy Israeli AI Startup AI21 After Nvidia Deal Fizzles Nebius, a cloud provider backed by Nvidia with a market cap of $32billion, is in talks to buy Israeli-based AI startup AI21 Labs, according to people with knowledge of the deal. The potential deal wou...

Exclusive: Nebius is in talks to acquire Israeli startup AI21 Labs, reviving a deal Nvidia once considered at up to $3 billion. The potential deal would help Nebius expand AI services for its customers beyond its main business of renting out servers.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4sZh76d

Cisco in Talks to Buy AI Security Startup Astrix for at Least $250 Million Cisco Systems is in talks to acquire Astrix Security, a five-year-old Israeli cybersecurity startup that sells software to monitor and secure AI agents, for between $250 million and $350 million, according to people with knowledge of the deal. That woul...

Cisco is eyeing Astrix for up to $350 million, as concerns over rogue AI agents boost cybersecurity acquisitions.

Read more: https://thein.fo/4vdCn9Y

At HumanX, Anthropic Stokes AI Optimism This year’s HumanX—the second AI conference from the team that puts on Money 20/20 and Shoptalk—had a different vibe than the inaugural event did. The fact that it was held at Moscone Center in San Francisco instead of a posh hotel in Las Vegas was a bi...

Anthropic’s surge to a $30 billion revenue run rate dominated conversations at HumanX, reinforcing investor optimism around AI’s growth.

More insights from HumanX this week: https://thein.fo/4mmYqqA

xAI Spending Pushed SpaceX to a Nearly $5 Billion Loss SpaceX lost just under $5 billion last year while generating more than $18.5 billion in revenue, two people familiar with the figures said. The financial figures includexAI, the Elon Musk-founded artificial intelligence company that SpaceX acquired in F...

SpaceX's $5B loss highlights that investors who participate in the IPO will essentially be financing Musk’s unproven AI ambitions.

Read the full story & what it means for SpaceX's IPO: https://thein.fo/4dLAVWh

OpenAI Forecasts Advertising to Hit $102 billion by 2030 OpenAI’s advertising effort is so new that the company is still working out the kinks in it. That hasn’t stopped it from setting ambitious aims for the business, which it expects to become the largest driver of its revenue by the end of the decade. Open...

Exclusive: OpenAI is betting ads will account for 36% of its revenue by 2030, a dramatic shift in how it makes money.

Full forecast details: https://thein.fo/4mge8Uw

How a Self-Taught Programmer Became the Father of Claude Code Boris Cherny, the head of Claude Code, almost parted ways with Anthropic for good last summer. Instead, he has helped shape the coding agent into a megahit that has closed the distance with rival OpenAI. Claude Code has supercharged Anthropic’s growth. ...

Anthropic’s Boris Cherny nearly left the company last year, but returned to build Claude Code into one of the fastest-growing AI coding tools. The product is now driving billions in revenue and helping Anthropic close the gap with OpenAI.

Read our profile: https://thein.fo/48CSPXy