Venture Capital

🤖 Anthropic export restrictions lifted Access to Fable 5 will start restoring tomorrow after export restrictions on Anthropic were lifted. Details of the deal with the government remain unknown. Anthropic develops AI models like Fable 5. The company’s future pricing and subscriber access terms remain unclear. ✔️ @venture

🇺🇸 Trump account bought Axon before ICE sought a $220M contract A federal ethics filing shows an account in Donald Trump's name bought between $1M and $5M of Axon stock on Feb. 10, 2026. Two weeks later, ICE posted a notice for a 5-year, $220M contract for stun guns. ⠀ The contract has not been awarded, and no insider trading has been proven. But the specifications point closely to Axon's TASER 10 product line. Axon already supplies ICE and controls around 90% of the U.S. conductive energy weapon market. ⠀ The filing also shows smaller Axon trades in both directions during the quarter. The key detail is size: the Feb. 10 purchase was much larger than the other Axon trades and came shortly before the ICE notice. ⠀ The White House says the account is managed by third-party financial institutions and that Trump does not direct individual trades. Ethics specialists note that the setup is not a true blind trust. ⠀ The issue is not only the trade. It is the timing around a government contract that appears written for one company. ✔️ @venture

💳 Circle drops as payment giants launch a rival stablecoin Circle ($CRCL) fell 16.3% after Mastercard, Stripe, BNY, and other financial firms unveiled Open USD, a new stablecoin built as shared infrastructure. Unlike USDC, Open USD distributes reserve yield across its partners instead of a single issuer. The project directly targets a market currently dominated by USDC and USDT. ⠀ The pressure is building from multiple directions. Insiders have sold about $225 million more stock than they've bought over the past year, while the Fed is proposing stricter rules for stablecoin issuers. ✔️ @venture

📈 Reddit turns its communities into a bigger advertising business Reddit has launched new advertising products as it doubles down on what it calls its biggest advantage: real conversations between real people. The company introduced Shopping List Ads, a new format that allows multiple brands to promote products around relevant discussions. It also launched AI-powered ad creation tools and a feature that lets brands use positive Reddit comments directly in advertisements. ⠀ The timing is notable. Reddit's advertising business has already become a major growth engine, generating more than $2 billion over the last fiscal year. ⠀ Ad revenue has climbed nearly 300% in the past three years, rising from $160 million in Q1 2023 to $624.7 million in the latest quarter. Popular communities such as r/AskReddit and r/mildlyinfuriating attract 18 million and 12 million weekly visitors, respectively. ⠀ As AI floods the internet with generated content, Reddit is betting that human conversations become more valuable, not less. ✔️ @venture

This McDonald’s menu is from the 1950s. Hamburger: 15 cents Fries: 10 cents Coffee: 10 cents And people still think cash is “safe.” ✔️ @venture

In 2006, Elon Musk was worth around $200 million. Today he’s worth nearly $1 TRILLION, a 500,000% wealth increase in just 20 years. ✔️ @venture

❕ Trump warns that "the Islamic Republic of Iran will no longer exist" if Iran continues violating the ceasefire The US has launched fresh strikes on Iran after a tanker was hit in the Strait of Hormuz, marking the biggest escalation since the interim peace deal was signed on June 17, 2026. Here's what has happened over the last 48 hours: 🖱 On Friday, Iran attacked the commercial vessel Ever Lovely in the Strait of Hormuz. 🖱 The US launched strikes on Iranian coastal radar, missile, and drone storage sites in response to Iran's attack on the commercial vessel Ever Lovely. 🖱 Iran retaliated by striking multiple US military positions in Bahrain. 🖱 On Saturday, Iran then attacked the Panama-flagged tanker M/T Kiku in the Strait of Hormuz. 🖱 CENTCOM said US forces struck 10 Iranian military targets across multiple locations. 🖱 For the past one hours, Air raid sirens are now sounding in Bahrain as Kuwait says its air defenses are intercepting hostile Iranian missiles and drones. The conflict is continuing to escalate despite the ceasefire signed just two weeks ago. ✔️ @venture

🕯 Micron could be one of the biggest winners of the AI memory boom For years, memory was one of the worst businesses in tech. AI is changing that. Modern AI servers require 8-10x more DRAM than traditional servers, while HBM memory has become essential for advanced AI chips. Producing HBM uses roughly 3x more wafer capacity, tightening supply across the entire market. ⠀ That shortage is pushing prices higher. DRAM prices rose more than 170% year over year by the end of 2025, with another 58-63% increase expected in Q2 2026. ⠀ Unlike traditional memory, HBM suppliers must pass lengthy qualification processes tied to specific AI platforms. Once approved, they can remain locked into that ecosystem for years. ⠀ SK Hynix still leads the market, but many investors are watching Micron. The company is receiving $6.1 billion in U.S. manufacturing support and has more room to gain share as AI demand keeps growing. ⠀

The AI boom is creating winners beyond Nvidia. Memory is becoming one of the most important bottlenecks in the entire stack.

✔️ @venture

On this day in 1967: first ATM unveiled. ✔️ @venture

📉 $NFLX has crashed to 52-week lows. Meanwhile: 🖱325M subscribers in 2025 → ~350M expected in 2026 - 🖱Advertising revenue is scaling rapidly 🖱 Management just authorized an additional $25B share buyback The market is acting like Netflix is broken. ✔️ @venture

🤖 US Limits Access to GPT-5.6 The Trump administration requires OpenAI to release GPT-5.6 gradually, offering it only to select corporate clients chosen by the government. OpenAI’s staged rollout marks a shift from earlier open releases, reflecting increased government control over advanced AI models. Anthropic must suspend access to its Mythos 5 and Fable 5 models for foreign nationals, including some employees without US passports, tightening AI export restrictions. ✔️ @venture

❕ Morgan Stanley and Others Limit Withdrawals Amid Rising Redemptions Morgan Stanley is restricting withdrawals from its $7 billion North Haven Private Income Fund after 11.6% of investors sought redemptions this quarter, up slightly from before. The bank is fulfilling only about 43% of requests. Apollo paused withdrawals from a large private credit fund after redemption requests hit $2.4 billion (16.8%), imposing a 5% quarterly cap. Partners Group, with an $8.6 billion fund, limited withdrawals after requests surged to 9.8%, nearly double its limit. The Swiss firm’s shares fell 13% in Zurich. Blackstone Mortgage Trust issued a $343 million loan tied to a June 9 default on a Chicago skyscraper. The 2018 loan included about $159 million in commercial mortgage-backed securities.

Redemption gates are often an early sign that stress is spreading through the financial system.

✔️ @venture

🍏 Apple raises prices as the AI memory shortage gets worse Apple has increased prices across 8 major products after surging memory chip costs, a problem CEO Tim Cook recently described as a "hundred-year flood." The MacBook Air now starts at $1,299 (+$200), the MacBook Pro at $1,999 (+$300), while several iPads, iMacs, and Mac Studio models also received price increases of up to $1,300. ⠀ The issue goes far beyond Apple. AI data centers are consuming enormous amounts of DRAM and HBM memory, tightening global supply. More than 90% of the world's memory chips are produced by just Samsung, SK Hynix, and Micron. ⠀ As AI companies continue buying every available chip, consumer electronics makers are paying more for the same components and passing those costs on to customers. ⠀ The AI boom is no longer affecting only AI companies. It's starting to reshape the prices of everyday technology. ✔️ @venture

It’s going to be a loooong year for SpaceX ✔️ @venture

🍔 Wendy's becomes the latest WallStreetBets favorite Wendy's ($WEN) surged 42% in a single session, its biggest one-day gain since the rebound from the 2020 market crash. The rally started after the company appointed Steven Cirulis, a former Potbelly executive, as CFO. But the scale of the move had more to do with market positioning than management changes. ⠀ Just one day earlier, Wendy's had fallen to a 13-year low of $6.07, down nearly 40% over the past year after weak results that included a 5.5% decline in sales and a 42% drop in net income. ⠀ At the same time, short interest reached a record 26%, creating conditions for a potential short squeeze. As the stock rose, short sellers were forced to buy shares back, adding more fuel to the rally. ⠀ The stock also became the second most discussed name on WallStreetBets over the last 24 hours, drawing comparisons to the meme-stock frenzy that lifted GameStop and AMC in 2021. ⠀ The difference this time is that Wendy's entered the rally with one of the highest short interests in its history. ✔️ @venture

The riskiest time to invest is when the market looks safest. The safest time to invest is when the market looks riskiest. ✔️ @venture

🔽 SpaceX loses most of its IPO gains within days SpaceX shares jumped from the IPO price to a peak of around $225, briefly pushing the company's valuation close to $3 trillion. Within days, the stock fell to $150 before recovering to roughly $162. At its peak, SpaceX briefly reached a valuation of nearly $3 trillion, putting it above both Microsoft and Amazon despite being a much smaller business by revenue and profitability. ⠀ For comparison: • Microsoft: $318B revenue, $125B profit • Amazon: $743B revenue, $91B profit • SpaceX: $19B revenue, -$9B profit ⠀ Part of the explanation is structure. Only about 5% of SpaceX shares are publicly traded. The market price of that small float determines the valuation assigned to the remaining 95% held by Elon Musk, employees, and early investors. ⠀ The recent acquisition of xAI has also raised concerns about debt and integration risk, adding pressure after the initial IPO excitement faded. ⠀

There is a reason many IPOs follow a similar path: excitement first, fundamentals later. The chart has repeated often enough to become a pattern.

✔️ @venture

Examples of companies who have successfully utilized the "7 Powers" framework ✔️ @venture

🔍 Alphabet shares drop 6% on departures Alphabet's stock dropped 6% after DeepMind's Noam Shazeer and John Jumper left for OpenAI and Anthropic, cutting about $250 billion in value. DeepMind is Alphabet's AI unit, and losing top talent raises retention. ✔️ @venture

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