In today’s newsletter I discuss if the AI bubble has already burst, Paramount Skydance wins the bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery beating Netflix, Zendaya and Tom Holland may have gotten married in a secret ceremony, Microsoft signed a $50 billion dollar deal with SpaceX’s Starlink, Anthropic lost their $200 million dollar contract with the Department of War and then Sam Altman’s OpenAI sold out and signed a new contract with the Department of War, over $10 million dollars a week in cryptocurrency wallets are lost when people die without sharing their passphrases with their loved ones, DJI just sued the FCC, and the sport of Curling is on the come up thanks to the recent 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics.

Let’s get into it!

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🫧 Has The AI Bubble Already Burst?

A lot of people lately have been asking if we’re in an AI bubble? The truth is it’s notoriously difficult to know if you’re in a bubble until it’s burst. Remember the dot-com bubble? Everyone thought those good times would last forever….until they didn’t. Now some of the biggest names in AI, like Nvidia and Palantir, and AI data center hyperscalers like Amazon, Meta, and Microsoft, are off their highs by as much as 15%-30%, so it’s safe to ask the question: Has the AI bubble already burst?

The excitement around AI has led to some insanely high stock prices for nearly any tech company that has even a tiny bit to do with AI. Those companies saw huge runups in their stock price; in some cases they saw their valuations more than double in the last few years. Now many of those same AI-related companies are trading well below their record highs. Most AI chipmakers have seen their stock prices drop by double-digits in recent weeks as investors are questioning if the pace of AI growth justifies those stock’s earnings projections and valuations. Then we have software companies, whose very existence is being threatened by the rise of AI. They’ve seen their stock prices drop by an average of 20% in the last year including Adobe, whose stock is down 27%, SalesForce whose stock is down 25%, and Chegg whose stock has dropped by 36%. Now some stock analysts are even asking if these companies will be made completely obsolete by AI in the next few years.

Let that sink in for a minute. 

Adobe reached its highest ever market cap of $322.20 billion dollars back in 2021. Today, Adobe’s valuation has fallen to approximately $112.05 billion dollars, representing a 65.22% drop from its all time high. Salesforce reached its peak valuation of $330.66 billion dollars in 2025, and now has a market cap of roughly $185.44 billion dollars, representing a 43.92% percent drop in a little over a year. Then we have Chegg, which even though they’ve recently tried to pivot from a textbook rental company to a digital learning company, they’ve seen their market cap drop 99% from a high of $13.99 billion dollars in 2021 plummet to approximately $71 million dollars today.

A 99% drop in market valuation! Are you serious? This is a company that is one step away from bankruptcy and being sold for pieces. That’s what AI has done to a single company in this market.

The astronomically high costs of everything AI-related is starting to weigh on the entire technology sector. This has led to a lot of uncertainty for people who are holding some of the once highest flying stocks in their portfolios and retirement accounts.

Scary stuff!

So you can understand why some people on Wall Street are questioning whether the AI bubble has already burst.

Now let’s take a look at some of those AI companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Palantir. There’s a lot of concern about the demand for AI chips going forward, and the massive cost of building AI data centers. Nvidia was trading at $108 this time last year in February 2025. It hit a high of $212 back in October 2025, and since then it’s fallen $29 from its peak, or 13.68% drop from its high to its current price around $183.

Advanced Micro Devices, or AMD (because who has time to say their whole name?) was trading at $98 in May 2025, before it rallied through the Summer and hit a high of $267 in October 2025, a rise of 172% in less than 6 months. Today AMD is trading at around $197, which is a fall of $70 or 26% from its high.

Palantir Technologies was trading at $83 back in February 2025, before it rallied to $207 in November 2025, up 150% in 10 months. Today Palantir is trading around $147, for a drop of $60 or 29%.

These figures show that the massive growth seen in AI companies like Nvidia, AMD, and Palantir in the past year, and how much their valuations have dropped as enthusiasm for AI stocks has begun to slow. Now let’s look at the so-called hyperscalers, which can be defined as large cloud services that provide state of the art AI chips from companies like Nvidia and AMD to companies like OpenAI and Anthropic who are building the Large Language Models, or LLMs, that are powering this AI revolution. Some great examples of hyperscalers are Meta Compute, Microsoft Azure, Alphabet/Google, and Amazon’s AWS.

Meta was trading at $655 last year before it rallied to $796 in August 2025, up 22%. Today Meta is trading back down around $656, for a drop of $140, or 18 percent from its peak.

Microsoft was trading at $388 last year before it peaked at $555 in October 2025, representing an increase of 43%. Microsoft is now around $400, which is a decrease of $155, or 28% from its high.

Alphabet, or as I’m always calling them Google, was trading at $167 back in June 2025 before they reached a high of $349 just a few weeks ago on February 3, 2026, for a gain of 109% in just 8 months. Alphabet is now trading around $308, off $41 from their high or 12%.

Amazon was trading at $205 dollars in June 2025 before peaking at a 52-week high of $258 in November 2025, up 26% in 6 months. Now Amazon is trading around $208, off $50 from its high, or down 19%.

As you can see, with some of the highest flying software stocks off their highs by as much as 20 percent, there’s a lot of fear in the markets that AI is going to eat software companyies lunch. The thinking goes that AI could replace the need for these software companies, and the services they offer, completely.

I’m, shall we say, skeptical!

People thought the same thing would happen during the dot-com bubble. There was no way that Pets.com was going to get all pet owners to shop at their newly launched website on that new-fangled Internet, when 95% of households weren’t even online yet. They were decades ahead of the market. Even today you have a company like Chewy, which I’ve used and love, and they only control around 41% of the online pet market. Just like dog food during the dot-com bubble, companies are either overly enthusiastic about their AI growth plans, or consumers and investors are highly skeptical of AI company’s promises and projections. Just because AI can do some things much cheaper and faster than humans or existing software companies, doesn’t mean it will replace them overnight….or ever. It just doesn’t work like that.

Jensen Huang has made a counter argument that agentic AI will use existing software companies and services instead of replacing them. He believes that AI can be plugged in and used as a tool by businesses to improve their existing workflows. This would make AI something that enhances existing companies rather than destroys them. You’d ask your AI agent to go out and do something for you, like book tickets to a concert, and it’d handle the entire process drawing on its knowledge that you like indoor seating instead of lawn tickets, and that $350 a ticket is too much, but you’d be willing to pay up to $200.

Then we have Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase. He doesn’t think AI will replace people in the workforce, but don’t ask the 40% of people, or roughly 4,000 people, who used to work at  Jack Dorsey’s company Block. He just laid them off claiming “that AI tools now allow fewer employees to accomplish the same work.” Jamie Dimon said that he believes that AI will change how people do their jobs every day in various industries, and he sees that happen at his company JPMorgan Chase today, but AI isn’t replacing his employees or making them obsolete. Instead AI is making JPMorgan Chase’s workforce more efficient and productive. Jamie Dimon said that JPMorgan Chase is using AI to automate jobs that are time consuming and repetitive for employees, and they are reassigning employees who are affected by these changes to new roles within the firm where they can be more productive and boost the company’s bottom line. Many other companies are looking at how they can use AI to improve their own efficiency and profitability without having to resort to laying off employees. By focusing on growth and human productivity, rather than cutting costs through job layoffs, it shows that the technology can be a positive force for workers if it is managed correctly by leaders like Jensen Huang and Jamie Dimon.

So while some of the top stock market darlings of the AI revolution may be off their highs set back at the end of 2025, and some software company’s stocks may have sold off by as much as 20% out of fear for their viability in the new era of AI, I think it’s good for us to ask if the AI bubble already burst. I don’t think the answer is a simple yes or no solely based on the stock price of a few dozen companies at the forefront of AI. Like the dot-com bubble’s burst, I think it’ll be a while until we can definitively say the bubble has burst, but in the meantime never underestimate Wall Street’s ability to get behind an industry’s stock market rally….or sell-off.

Quick Hits

🏦 Business

Paramount Skydance won the bidding war to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery for $110.9 billion dollars, when Netflix dropped out on Friday right after an ominous visit to President Donald Trump’s White House. Hmm, I wonder what they discussed?

Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellisonhas said in an interview they plan on merging HBO’s app into the Paramount+ streaming service with 79 million subscribers, while keeping the HBO brand fully intact, and onboard all of Warner Bros. Discovery’s 123 million subscribers to create a single streaming platform with more than 200 million subscribers. A combined streaming service could bring in as much as $4.6 billion dollars in monthly revenue, and $55.2 billion dollars in annual revenue. Nice acquisition!

💍 Entertainment

The rumor is that Zendaya and Tom Holland have married in a secret ceremony. Where did this scoop come from? None other than Zendaya’s celebrity stylist Law Roach (Hollywood stylists have all the juicy gossip). The news of their potential nuptials resulted in a massive surge across all social media platforms.

So why’s this big business news? Both Tom Holland and Zendaya have earned massive paydays through their acting careers. Tom Holland has a total career box office gross of $10.7 billion dollars, and a reported net worth estimated to be $25 million dollars. Zendaya has a total career box office gross of $5.2 billion dollars, and a reported net worth estimated to be $40 million dollars. Together this power couple has brought in $15.9 billion dollars at the box office, and are worth an estimated $65 million dollars. Talk about a power couple!

📡 Tech

Microsoft has signed a $50 billion dollar partnership agreement with SpaceX to utilize their Starlink satellite network to bring high-speed internet access to millions of people around the world in global community hubs. The collaboration involves integrating Microsoft’s Azure cloud infrastructure  into SpaceX’s satellite constellation to provide download speeds of 100 megabits per second for thousands of schools and hospitals. Microsoft’s goal is to help bridge the digital divide for underserved populations in more than 75 different countries that currently lack reliable access to the Internet. We need more good news like this. I believe more people around the world deserve access to the Internet if it helps to lift them up out of poverty.

🐊 AI

On Friday, February 27 after a showdown at the Pentagon with Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of the Department of War (formerly and forever to be called by me the Department of Defense), Anthropic lost their $200 million dollar contract with the Department of War because the leadership of Anthropic, including co-Founder and CEO Dario Amodei, wouldn’t agree to the demands by the Department of War to remove Anthropic’s safeguards against mass domestic surveillance and autonomous lethal weapons. Following this news, downloads of Anthropic soared to the top spot on the Apple App Store as soon as the public learned about the ethical stance against the Department of War that Anthropic had taken.

Never one to miss an opportunity to speed up humanity’s demise, Sam Altman quickly signed a deal with the Department of War for OpenAI to integrate their technology into the Pentagon’s military systems. Following the news of OpenAI being awarded a new contract by the Department of War that didn’t guarantee the same safeguards that Anthropic was fighting for, customers of ChatGPT began canceling their monthly subscriptions to protest OpenAI’s new military partnership. This drop in revenue comes hot on the heels of OpenAI’s new $110 billion dollar funding round, which included capital from Nvidia, Softbank, and Amazon. Wonder if people will begin protesting them next?

🪙 Crypto

In a recent analysis by Robert Rhodin’s team over at KeychainX, they estimate that families lose roughly $10 million dollars every week because owners of digital assets, like Bitcoin, pass away without sharing their seed phrases and passcodes for self custody wallets that control. That adds up to around $365 million dollars a year in lost cryptocurrency. One of the best examples of this is James Howells, who lost a hard drive containing roughly 3.7 million Bitcoin when he threw it out while cleaning his office. Today his wallet would be worth more than $543.4 million dollars. And the biggest loss of Bitcoin belongs to the anonymous creator of Bitcoin Satoshi Nakamoto, who holds 1.1 million Bitcoin worth roughly $74.7 billion dollars. The wallets containing those Bitcoins have remained dormant for the last 15 years. It’s unknown if Satoshi Nakamoto lost access to the wallets, or if they just walked away from the billions of dollars in Bitcoin stored in the wallet. You can just chalk that up to the estimated 20 percent of the total supply of Bitcoin that is considered permanently lost. Ouch!

🚁 Drones

DJI just filed a lawsuit in the Ninth Circuit court against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to argue against the inclusion of DJI on the federal government’s Covered List, which prevents the sale of new equipment by DJI. DJI argues that the FCC acted without evidence, and that the decision harms 80% of the 1,800 law enforcement agencies in the U.S. that use DJI drones for police work.

Global revenue for DJI were expected to reach $63.6 billion dollars, with DJI controlling roughly 77% of the market. If DJI loses access to the U.S. market they could see a significant drop in revenue, to the point of possible bankruptcy. Talk about crashing.

🥌 Sports

The sport of Curling is on the come up thanks to the recent 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. More than 1 billion people worldwide have been exposed to Curling, and it’s having a moment. Curling has been growing steadily for the last decade since mixed doubles Curling teams were introduced in the 2018 Pyeongchang Winter Olympics in South Korea.

In the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics mixed doubles Cory Thiesse and Korey Dropkin competed earned the Silver medal for Team USA, becoming the first mixed doubles medalists for the United States, while Cory Thiesse became the first female American to win an Olympic medal in the history of Curling. That’s cool! (sorry for the Dad joke)

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In today’s newsletter I discuss the business of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, Paramount Skydance raises their offer for Warner Bros. Discovery, the rich are trying to live forever, the trailer for the new Scream 7 movie is out, a company Google started in their X Labs just raised funding at a $1.3 billion dollar valuation, Figma is working with AI company Anthropic to turn AI-generated code into editable designs - so there goes the entire design industry! JPMorgan Chase endorses Ripple's XRP, and Team USA won more gold medals than in any other Winter Olympics in history!

Let’s get into it!

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🥇 The Business Of The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics

The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics were a massive undertaking that involved billions of dollars and thousands of people to make the games successful. The world turned its attention to the mountains and cities of northern Italy where the best athletes on the planet competed for glory, and for some financial rewards in the form of cash and brand endorsements. Organizing an event of this magnitude requires a complex balance of public and private funding, and the impact it can have on the host country can lift the nation’s entire economy. We’re diving into the financials behind hosting the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, the economic impact of the games on Italy’s economy, how much athletes from different countries get for medaling in these games, and NBC’s 12-year, $7.65 billion dollar contract and what it takes to cover both the Summer and Winter Olympics. Let’s get into it.

The responsibility of organizing and managing the $1.7 billion dollar budget to put on the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics in Italy fell to one person - Andrea Varnier, who served as the CEO of Italy’s Olympic organizing committee. These Winter Olympics were originally budgeted to cost $1.3 billion dollars, but that number quickly grew to more than $1.7 billion dollars by the time the games kicked off. Italy utilized a combination of $4.19 billion dollars in public money for infrastructure and construction projects across Italy, including the $141.3 million dollars spent on renovating the sliding center in Cortina, and the approximately $359 million dollars used for the new construction of the Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena in Milan, Italy where both the gold medal matches of the Men’s and Women’s hockey games were held. When you add up the total price tag for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics, it’s estimated to be around $6 billion dollars when all the regional costs and infrastructure projects are tallied up. That’s more than 3 times the original budget, but most of the project and facilities that were built will be used in the future, so it’s more of an investment in Italy’s future.

The economic impact of The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics is expected to be substantial over the long term as Italy recovers its investments through increased tourism and the new jobs the Olympics have brought to the country. Some financial experts estimate that the total economic value generated by the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics could reach $6.26 billion dollars for Italy’s economy. This includes $1.4 billion dollars in direct spending from tourists who visited the region during the games, and continued tourism for the next eighteen months that typically follow the Olympics. The games were also credited with creating 36,000 jobs in northern Italy, and providing a boost to small businesses in the municipalities located near the sports venues. Local governments were allowed to collect higher tourist taxes to help fund public services, and maintain the new facilities that'll be used by residents for many years to come. Italy’s hope is that the investment in high speed internet and fiber optic connections, and improved transportation, will make these mountain communities a more welcoming and popular place for young people and new businesses to relocate to after the crowds have gone home. The success of the local economy depended on the ability of these regions to continue to attract visitors long after the Olympic torch has been put out.

Olympic athletes who won medals during The 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics will all receive different cash payouts depending on which country they represented at the games. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) doesn’t pay athletes who compete or medal in the games. Athletes from the United States receive $37,500 dollars for a gold medal, $22,500 dollars for a silver medal, and $15,000 dollars for a bronze medal. The Canadian Olympic Committee pays Canadian athletes $20,000 dollars for a gold medal, $15,000 dollars for a silver medal, and $10,000 dollars for a bronze medal. On top of that, the Canadian health care tech entrepreneur Sanjay Malaviya donated an additional $5,000 dollars to each Canadian athlete that medals at the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics through his Malaviya Foundation, which provides direct financial support to the athletes who represent Canada on the global stage. Then there are some countries that pay much higher amounts, like Singapore which would have paid alpine skier Faiz Basha $788,000 dollars for a gold medal, but sadly he finished 35th overall in the Men's Slalom event. Tough break! But Singapore isn’t alone in offering an astronomical amount to athletes from their country if they won a gold medal. Hong Kong was willing to pay $768,000 dollars for a gold medal, but the closest their athletes came was the seventh place finish by Hong Kong speed skater Joey Lam Ching-yan in the women's 1,500m short-track speed skating final, which makes her performance the highest-ever placing by a Hong Kong athlete in Winter Olympic history. Then we have the host nation of Italy, which will pay their ten gold medalists $214,000 dollars each for their wins, Federica Brignone won gold medals in both the women's super-G and giant slalom, so she’ll be bringing home a check worth $428,000 dollars from the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics. All of these financial rewards from athlete’s countries are a recognition of the incredible dedication and hard work that they put in order to reach the top of their sports on the world stage.

NBC, owned by Comcast, holds the exclusive broadcasting rights for the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics as part of a massive long-term 12-year agreement with the International Olympic Committee that extends through the year 2032. NBC paid $7.65 billion dollars to secure this contract, which covers every Summer and Winter Olympics for 12-years ending with the Brisbane, Australia Olympics in 2032. NBC has invested heavily in a permanent broadcast center in Connecticut to manage the thousands of hours of live Olympic content, without needing to recreate their broadcast studio every 2-years to cover the next Olympics. Smart!

NBC has developed a massive digital infrastructure worldwide to support the live streaming capabilities of the Peacock application. The network utilizes more than 810 camera systems bringing high definition video from every event to viewers in the United States. This setup allows for the first ever Winter Olympics 4K experience by viewers. The video system generated 6,500 hours of live content, and made it available for on demand viewing and live streaming. And you better believe NBC monetized every minute of that video. NBC sold out all of its available commercial slots, with brands paying around $8 million dollars for a 30-second commercial. This once again proves there is continued demand for live sports content, which is why NBC has made sports a central pillar of their broadcasting strategy.

All of these investments by NBC have paid off big time!

NBC's coverage of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics smashed records. The games averaged 23.5 million viewers across NBC’s TV and Peacock streaming service, and represented Peacock’s highest month of viewership ever. NBC’s audience more than doubled from their coverage of the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing, China. 

The business side of the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics shows that while the costs of hosting an Olympics might be sky high, the economic rewards for the host country, their athletes, NBC, and viewers around the world, make it all worth it.

Quick Hits

💵 Business

Paramount Skydance just submitted a sweetened bid of $32 dollars per share to acquire all of Warner Bros. Discovery for approximately $115 billion dollars. This is $32.3 billion dollars more than Netflix’s offer of $82.7 billion dollars for just Warner Bros. Discovery’s studio and streaming assets, but not their TV unit, which includes such channels as Discovery, TLC, HGTV, Food Network, Animal Planet, Travel Channel, TBS, TNT, TruTV, and OWN,

Paramount Skydance’s CEO David Ellison is so confident in his offer that he’s included a $2.8 billion termination fee payable to Netflix, as well as a fee of $650 million dollars a quarter payable to Warner Bros. Discovery if the merger faces regulatory delays. David Ellison’s dad, Oracle Founder Larry Ellison, is also providing all the financial backing for the bid to, you know, ease shareholder’s concerns. Nothing like having dad step in to help when you’re trying to buy a multi-billion dollar media conglomerate.

🔪 Entertainment

The trailer for the new Scream 7 movie is out. Original cast member Neve Campbell is back reprising her role as Sidney Prescott, who must protect her daughter Tatum, played by Isabel May, from a new Ghostface in Pine Grove. Also reprising their roles from the original movie are Courteney Cox and Jason Lillard, which will be interesting to see how they bring his character back since everyone thought he died in the original Scream movie.

📡 Tech

Alphabet just announced a new $100 million dollar funding round for a company they spun-out back in 2022 called Aalyria. This funding round values Aalyria at $1.3 billion dollars. Aalyria was originally created over a decade ago as one of Alphabet's advanced technology projects under the umbrella of Google X Labs.

Aalyria seeks to compete with companies including SpaceX’s Starlink, founded by Elon Musk, and Amazon’s Project Kuiper, which was founded by Jeff Bezos. Aalyria has developed a laser communications system that can create a high speed mesh network in space. Aalyria uses software called Spacetime, and hardware called Tightbeam, to manage connections between planes, ships, and space-based assets.

I guess you could say that Aalyria’s new valuation is out of space! (sorry for the dad joke)

🎨 AI

Graphic design software company Figma is working with AI company Anthropic to turn AI-generated code into editable designs. The new tool is called “Code to Canvas” (not very original I agree), and it transforms code into editable designs. The idea behind this is to make the images generated in Anthropic editable within Figma, so save time by full-time Designers, and make it easier for novices to create the same high fidelity designs create by professionals with 20+ years of experience.

I have mixed feelings about this, since I own a design firm named Branded AF. It’s great that design software is becoming more accessible to creators, but those Designers with 20+ years of experience have learned their craft through 10,000+ hours of hands-on experience creating designs that now any kid in a college dorm room can generate in seconds. If we make Designers obsolete, then everything will begin to look like AI-generated slop, and the world will be worse off.

🪙 Crypto

JPMorgan Chase just published a report that identifies Ripple's XRP as the top digital asset for use by global financial institutions. I read the report so you don’t have it. It says that JPMorgan Chase believes that Ripple's XRP can help them, and other banks, to unlock $120 billion dollars in liquidity a day by providing faster settlement times than the traditional systems currently can. That’s literally the entire argument set forth by Rippl’s CEO Brad Garlinghouse, who argues that Ripple's XRP can be used for cross-border cash settlements in seconds, instead of the 24+ hours payment networks like SWIFT now take to settle the same transactions. The global cross border payment market was worth $194 trillion dollars in 2024, and is expected to exceed $320 trillion dollars by 2032. Now that’s a market worth disrupting!

💊 Health

Are you rich and want to live forever? Well there’s a new longevity program called Immortals that costs $1 million dollars per year, and there’s only 3 spots left. The Immortals program was created by Bryan Johnson, who sold his payment processing company Braintree to PayPal in 2013 for $800 million dollars. Now Bryan Johnson spends $2 million dollars a year trying to reduce his biological age, by following an intensive health protocol he designed has him taking 100 daily supplements and undergoing rigorous medical testing. Now if only I had $1 million dollars laying around.

🇺🇸 Sports

Team USA finished the 2026 Milan-Cortina Winter Olympics with a total of 33 medals, including 12 gold medals, 12 silver medals, and 9 bronze medals. This is the highest gold medal count Team USA has ever won in a Winter Olympics. The U.S. Olympic Committee will be giving out cash rewards to athletes like Nathan Chen and Alysa Liu who medal in the games. Athletes are paid $37,500 dollars for gold medals, $22,500 dollars for silver medals, and $15,000 dollars for bronze medals. This is on top of the multi-million dollar brand endorsement deals that Olympic athletes usually sign after winning a medal. It pays to be on Team USA!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss Bad Bunny’s growing business empire, Snap is rolling out their own creator subscription service, Bad Bunny scores the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, OpenAI acquires OpenClaw’s creator, Elon Musk ‘s X is about to launch stock and crypto trading, NASA says astronauts can use iPhones in space, and Netflix just scored the long awaited primetime MMA fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano.

Let’s get into it!

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🐰 Bad Bunny’s Growing Business Empire

Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio, better known to the world as Bad Bunny, has climbed to the top of the global music scene by breaking nearly every traditional rule possible, and he’s building a massive business empire that’s based on spreading love and positivity. There’s a lot to be learned from how Bad Bunny’s built a net worth that’s estimated to be more than $100 million dollars without ever signing a traditional major label contract. Bad Bunny’s turned his personal brand into a diversified portfolio that includes investments in sports, tech, and real estate.

Let’s talk about Bad Bunny’s music career. Bad Bunny signed to Rimas Entertainment, an independent Puerto Rican record label specializing in Latin trap and reggaeton, in 2016 after his hit song "Diles" went viral on SoundCloud. Rimas Entertainment was founded in 2014 in San Juan, Puerto Rico by Noah Assad and Rafael Jiménez-Dan, and later Bad Bunny also became a co-owner in the label. Noah Assad is now Bad Bunny’s manager and business partner, and together their team has driven Bad Bunny's global success. Even Bad Bunny’s record contract has broken the typical rules of the music industry. While most artists under major labels may only see between 15–30% of the revenue they bring in, Bad Bunny has an incredibly favorable royalty structure with his label Rimas Entertainment that gives him a 90/10 split in his favor. Through Bad Bunny’s partnership with Rimas Entertainment and a distribution deal with Sony's The Orchard, Bad Bunny gets 90% of revenue from music, streaming, and tours, a figure unheard of for most major music artists.

Bad Bunny’s also earned a huge collection of awards. He’s won 6 Grammy Awards, including a historic win for Album of the Year for the project titled, “Debí Tirar Más Fotos”. This was the first time a solo Latino artist won that category with an all-Spanish album. Bad Bunny also has 17 Latin Grammy Awards, 16 Billboard Music Awards, 54 Billboard Latin Music Awards, 13 Lo Nuestro Awards, and 9 American Music Awards. So yea, it’s clear the music industry recognizes the talents of Bad Bunny.

All of Bad Bunny’s fame has helped him gain over 108 million followers on Spotify, and has a record 20 billion plus streams on the platform making him the most streamed artist globally on Spotify. He’s even more streamed than Taylor Swift, and that’s no easy feat. Bad Bunny’s influence extends to Instagram, where he has over 52 million followers, and on TikTok where he has another 52 million followers. And over on YouTube? You guessed it, he has another 52 million subscribers. And just for good measure you can include his 13 million followers on Facebook, and 5 million followers on Twitter (I mean X). So yea, Bad Bunny is a big deal on social media. Bad Bunny’s social media footprint, and his record touring and awards, are a big reason he was chosen to headline the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show.

Bad Bunny recently reached a pinnacle of his music career with his Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show. Following his Super Bowl appearance, streams for Bad Bunny’s music on Spotify surged by 470% in the U.S., reaching nearly 100 million streams in a single day. My guess is he’ll be announcing a world tour pretty soon. That’s what most artists do after performing at the Super Bowl, but this being Bad Bunny it’s anyone’s guess. He’s that much of a business maverick!

Bad Bunny has become quite the investor in recent years. In May 2021 Bad Bunny became a co-owner of the Puerto Rican basketball team Los Cangrejeros de Santurce when he joined the ownership group of the Baloncesto Superior Nacional. Through this partnership with his manager Noah Assad and Jonathan Miranda, Bad Bunny wants to help foster positive change on the island of Puerto Rico. In Miami, Florida Bad Bunny teamed up with nightlife mogul David Grutman and his Groot Hospitality firm to open the restaurant Gekkō in August 2022. Gekkō combines the elegance of a modern steakhouse, with the high-energy, lounge-style feel typical of a Miami nightclub. The restaurant specializes in various cuts of high-end Wagyu (including olive-fed and snow beef), and features a six-seat omakase bar, sushi, and creative shared plates like lobster dumplings and a 24k Otoro dish. Since Gekkō opened it has become a major destination for celebrities, including Lionel Messi, the Kardashians, and DJ Khaled.

Did you know Bad Bunny is also an angel investor? Bad Bunny has made investments in the venture capital world a major focus of his growing business empire. Bad Bunny is a confirmed angel investor in a company called Creative Intell. The company has developed an AI-powered, legal, and educational platform designed for the music industry in order to simplify contract drafting, negotiation, and signing. Creative Intell enables artists, managers, and lawyers to create, manage, and understand legal agreements while offering educational courses on music business, intellectual property, and revenue protection.

Bad Bunny is a dream client for nearly any brand, because of his global recognition and appeal. Bad Bunny has used brand partnerships to play a massive role in becoming a household name across the entire planet. Bad Bunny signed a deal with Adidas that recently led to the launch of his own signature sneaker called the BadBo 1.0. When people saw Bad Bunny wearing these sneakers during his Super Bowl performance it caused a 496% increase in searches for the brand. Bad Bunny’s sneakers weren’t the only thing people were looking at during his Super Bowl performance. During Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show he wore a custom outfit from Zara during a major performance to show a connection to accessible fashion. In the luxury space Bad Bunny has worked with Kendall Jenner on a global luggage campaign for Gucci. Bad Bunny also signed a partnership deal with PepsiCo that included a $500,000 dollar donation to the Good Bunny Foundation.

Bad Bunny currently has a real estate portfolio that is valued at $25 million dollars, and he’s only getting started. In January 2023 Bad Bunny purchased a mansion in West Hollywood for $8.8 million dollars that features a 7316 sqft house with an infinity pool. In January 2024 Bad Bunny purchased Ariana Grande’s home, located in the Bird Streets neighborhood of Los Angeles, for $8.3 million dollars. While Bad Bunny has multiple homes in Los Angeles, mostly for work and a little play, he maintains his primary residence in secure, sprawling estate in San Juan, Puerto Rico. When he’s not soaking up the sun and vibes in Puerto Rico, Bad Bunny also rents a penthouse in Manhattan's West Chelsea, which reportedly costs him $150,000 dollars per month, making it one of the most expensive rentals in New York City’s history.

Bad Bunny has amassed an estimated net worth of $100 million dollars as his career continues to reach new heights. The growth of Bad Bunny’s portfolio is fueled by his nearly non-stop touring, revenue from his music catalog thanks to the nearly unheard of 90/10 split he has with his music label, and his investments in startups, restaurants, and real estate.

Bad Bunny’s rise from a grocery store worker in Puerto Rico, to the world’s most streamed artist, proves that the old barriers of the music industry don’t exist anymore. And through the partnerships he’s struck, and the investments he’s made, Bad Bunny’s business empire is just getting started.

Quick Hits

🫰 Business

Snap is launching a new creator subscription service on Snapchat that will allow their 850 million monthly active users to pay monthly fees to their favorite influencers, similar to how platforms like Patreon and OnlyFans work. This initiative by Snap CEO Evan Spiegel is the company’s latest effort to capture a portion of the $250 billion dollar creator economy. Snap is aiming to diversify their income away from digital advertising, and increase their annual revenue above the $5.93 billion billion dollars they reported for 2025. If my kid’s addiction to doom-scrolling Snap is any indication then the company is going to have a very good 2026!

🥇 Entertainment

Bad Bunny just reached the #1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for the first time as a solo artist with his song “DtMF” following his amazing performance at the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show. His Super Bowl appearance helped drive a massive audience to streaming services like Spotify and Apple Music, which in turn boosted his song “DtMF” to the top of the charts. This is the first time that Bad Bunny has had a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, although he did share the #1 spot when Cardi B’s song “I Like It”, which he appeared on, hit the #1 spot eight years ago. I’m guessing this won’t be the last time Bad Bunny has a #1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.

🦞 AI

Peter Steinberger, the guy who created the viral software hit OpenClaw, is now joining OpenAI to help Sam Altman lead the development of the next generation of personal artificial intelligence agents. The decision by Sam Altman and OpenAI to hire Peter Steinberger comes as OpenAI has reached a valuation of $500 billion dollars, and it comes hot the heels of OpenAI’s acquisition of Jony Ive’s io Products for $6.5 billion dollars in order to design and launch an AI hardware product for the company sometime in 2026.

🪙 Crypto

Elon Musk ‘s X is preparing to launch a new feature called Smart Cashtags that will allow their 388 million monthly active users to trade stocks and cryptocurrencies right in their feed. This project is part of Elon Musk’s goal to build an everything app, and it’s another step toward the launch of the X Money payment system that will allow users to manage their entire financial life from right inside X. I can’t decide if this is the most exciting news I’ve ever heard from X, or the most terrifying.

📱 Space

NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman just announced that astronauts will now be able to bring their Apple iPhones on future missions for the primary use of the phone’s camera, so astronauts will be able to record high quality videos for their families and the public. This is all part of a push by Jared Isaacman to begin modernizing NASA and save money by using off the shelf commercially available technology. Say “Cheese!”

🥊 Sports

Netflix just scored the long awaited primetime MMA fight between Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano. This is huge in the world of MMA, because both fighters once were stars in MMA before they each transitioned to acting. The fight is being promoted by Jake Paul’s Most Valuable Promotions, and will take place at the Intuit Dome in California on Saturday, May 16, 2026.

Netflix’s last big fight was between Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua in December 2025 in Miami, Florida, and both fighters walked away with a reported $92 million dollars each from a total purse of $184 million dollars.

No word yet on how much both Ronda Rousey and Gina Carano are expected to earn from the fight, but if past Netflix streamed fights are any indication they’ll be doing better than you and me.

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In today’s newsletter I discuss what if data centers didn’t need to be cooled, Jennifer Garner’s company Once Upon a Farm IPOed, Alphabet just raised $30 billion dollars by selling 100 year bonds in the UK, Scientists detected a radio signal from 13 billion light years away, the toilets don’t lie, NBC saw the most amount of viewers ever tuned in for the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics, and MrBeast just bought a bank!

Let’s get into it!

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🧊 What If AI Data Centers Didn’t Need To Be Cooled?

What if AI data centers didn't need to be cooled? We might be closer to that dream than you think, with new AI chip cooling breakthroughs from Nvidia, innovative projects like Microsoft’s undersea data center experiments, and space-based AI data center satellites from Elon Musk’s SpaceX AI. Let’s get into it.

Think about the last time your laptop got so hot it felt like it'd melt a hole through your desk. Now imagine that on the scale of giant AI data centers that companies are spending billions of dollars to keep thousands of computers and AI chips from bursting into flames. But what if in the future we didn’t need to cool AI data centers? Companies worldwide are projected to spend approximately $18-$27 billion dollars annually on data center cooling solutions as of 2025, with the mercury rising as high as $40-$50 billion dollars by 2030–2032.

Investors have been betting that the only way to fix this heat problem is with massive liquid cooling systems that suck up even more massive amounts of electricity. Now a couple of heavyweight tech CEOs have come up with some, let’s say novel, approaches to lowering the amount of electricity needed to cool data centers, and some of their ideas are out of this world.

First up, let’s discuss Nvidia’s Jensen Huang, who may have just flipped an entire industry on its head during a recent talk he just gave about the future of Nvidia’s AI chips. Jensen Huang shared that Nvidia’s new chip architecture, called Vera Rubin, is so efficient that it doesn't need the intense liquid cooling infrastructure that most data centers use today to cool their servers in order to prevent them from overheating and melting. He explained that these new chips can handle even higher temperatures than previous models, and that the water going into these systems can stay at 113 degrees Fahrenheit without needing a massive water chiller to cool it down. This revelation's a big deal in the data center industry, because chillers are one of the most expensive parts of a data center’s cooling setup.

Jensen Huang described how this architecture is designed to reduce the cost of running AI chips by 10X compared to older model chips. The Vera Rubin GPU features 336 billion transistors, and uses an advanced processing node for efficiency. Jensen Huang’s speech focused on what he called speculative decoding, which helps the chips process information faster without using more power. If Jensen Huang can deliver a chip that performs this well without needing a total redesign of data centers then the cooling industry is in trouble.

Investors have been pouring money into companies that make this specialized equipment in order to keep up with the demand from AI data centers, but now those investments might be on the verge of being obsolete. Jensen Huang shared that he sees a future where AI data centers might be much simpler and cheaper to design, build, and operate than the current generation of AI factories. The financial markets responded instantly with huge drops in stock price from some of the biggest names in data center cooling, like Vertiv Holdings, Modine Manufacturing, Trane Technologies, and Johnson Controls. Now an entire sector of the economy is feeling the pressure all thanks to the vision of Nvidia’s Jensen Huang.

Microsoft’s Project Natick was ahead of its time. The project’s subsea engineering pushed the boundaries of edge computing by submerging a self-contained data center 117 feet below the surface of the North Sea in the Orkney Islands off the coast of Scotland, UK. The data center, known as the Northern Isles, was a 40-foot-long steel pressure vessel packed with 12 racks containing 864 servers and 27.6 petabytes of storage, which was completely powered by a 100% renewable grid of wind and tidal energy from the Orkney Islands. What made it truly ahead of its time was its "lights-out" operating philosophy. By replacing corrosive oxygen with a dry nitrogen atmosphere, and utilizing the ocean’s thermal mass for passive cooling through submarine-style heat exchangers (read: no massive energy-hungry cooling required), Microsoft achieved a Power Usage Effectiveness of 1.07 (sometimes I like to just throw in technical numbers to impress you). The results were beyond what anyone could have projected. Without human interference, humidity, or oxygen-induced oxidation, the underwater servers failed at only one-eighth the rate of their land-based counterparts, proving that the most stable environment for high-performance silicon might actually be the silent, high-pressure depths of the ocean.

Now let’s talk about an idea to cool AI data centers that’s out of this world. In a newly proposed Orbital Data Center initiative, which was just revealed in a FCC filing, Elon Musk’s SpaceX is planning to design, build, launch into space, and operate a constellation of up to 1 million AI data center satellites. The plan represents a radical shift in high-density computing by moving AI workloads into the ultimate "lights-out" environment - space! Each satellite is designed to act as a modular computing node, targeting approximately 100 kilowatts of AI processing power per ton, fueled by high-efficiency solar arrays that enjoy near-constant exposure to the sun in specialized sun-synchronous orbits. To handle the extreme thermal output of AI chips, which on Earth require millions of gallons of water for cooling, SpaceX plans to leverage the -455°F temperature of the vacuum of space as a "limitless" heat sink. The system utilizes massive, deployable radiative panels to circulate specialized coolants, dumping waste heat as infrared radiation into space. This space-based AI data center architecture not only bypasses the Earth-based power grid's limitations, but also eliminates the need for atmospheric cooling, which could theoretically allow for a Power Usage Effectiveness approaching 1.0, which would be lower than that which was achieved by Microsoft’s undersea data center Project Natick. SpaceX is positioning orbital space as the most cost-effective location for the next generation of massive AI data center satellites.

The race is on to lower the cost of cooling AI data centers, whether it’s through new AI chip breakthroughs, undersea cooling, or space-based AI data center satellites, it’s clear the industry is racing toward a future where AI data centers are more efficient and cost less to operate.

Quick Hits

💷 Business

Alphabet, which owns Google, just issued $30 billion dollars in bonds using pounds sterling to attract international investors who are willing to wait for the bonds to mature in 100 years in order to be fully paid back. 100 years! So why did they sell the bonds in the UK? To take advantage of lower interest rates in the UK, while meeting the demand of pension funds for ultra long duration assets in Europe. The bond offering was oversubscribed by 5X! This is one of the first of 5 trenches of bonds that Alphabet will be selling in order to raise billions of dollars this year as they continue their AI data center build out.

And it’s not like Alphabet doesn’t have money of their own. They’re sitting on a cash reserve of over $160 billion dollars, but they got such a good rate on the bonds by selling them in the UK to hungry European investors that they couldn’t pass up this good of a deal.

With Alphabet’s $30 billion dollars 100 year bond offering over subscribed, the global financial markets have demonstrated incredible trust in the long-term stability of Alphabet, even though the company will take the next 100 years to pay off these bonds in full.

Now that’s some financial trust!

👩‍🌾 Entertainment

Jennifer Garner’s organic food company Once Upon a Farm just raised $198 million in their Initial Public Offering, and now sports a market valuation of $724 million dollars. The company was first created by Cassandra Curtis and Ari Raz, and later brought on Jennifer Garner, who sits on the board and appears in ads for the company, and is also known in the company as "Farmer Jen", as well as John Foraker who serves as the company’s CEO. Once Upon a Farm brings in over $150 million dollars in annual revenue through partnerships with large retailers including Target, Walmart, Whole Foods Market, Kroger, Publix, and Wegmans.

Once Upon a Farm plans to use this new funding to scale their production of healthy snacks and meals for children, which is a market segment that was worth $6.57 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $12 billion by 2035.

Can we just talk about how awesome of an actress, mom, and entrepreneur Jennifer Garner is!

🛰️ Space

Scientists have just detected a radio signal that lasted 10 seconds from a galaxy located 13 billion light years away. The mysterious signal repeats with a clear periodic pattern every 0.2 seconds. Lead researcher Daniele Michilli and his team used the Canadian Hydrogen Intensity Mapping Experiment telescope, which cost approximately $9 million dollars to build, to capture the signal’s data. Sadly, this isn’t an alien signal, unfortunately. On a brighter note, this signal does provide new information for researchers as they study the origin of these massive energy releases from distant universes in order to better understand how neutron stars and magnetars produce these bursts of power in deep space. So again, no alien signal. You can take off your aluminum foil hats.

🏦 Banking

Jimmy Donaldson’s company, better known to the world as MrBeast and Beast Industries, has  acquired the financial tech application Step, which is a banking-as-a-service app designed for teens and young adults (think: Gen-Z and Gen Alpha). Step serves over 5 million users, and has previously raised $175 million dollars from VC firms Coatue, General Catalyst, Stripe, Collaborative Fund, and Crosslink Capital, and from celebrity investors like Charli D'Amelio, Stephen Curry, Justin Timberlake, Will Smith, The Chainsmokers, and Eli Manning.

CJ MacDonald, who founded Step, will join the team at Beast Industries to help expand financial literacy tools for younger generations. This acquisition brings together the massive audience of MrBeast, with a platform that has processed billions of dollars in transactions to create a new ecosystem for digital banking and commerce.

You know what would be cool? If MrBeast did one of his $1 million dollar challenges to see how much teens could save up with the Step app. Teaching the next generation to be frugal and learn to save could be one of MrBeast’s greatest accomplishments in life. 

🚽 Interesting Stats

What if I told you that a record number of Americans held it in until after they watched Bad Bunny perform at the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show? How do I know? Well the folks over at New York City’s Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) just reported that NYC saw a dramatic decrease in the amount of water consumed during the Super Bowl Halftime Show, and then saw the equivalent of 761,719 toilets flushing right after Bad Bunny performed. 

Say what you will about the Super Bowl Halftime Show, but the toilets don't lie.

🏅 Olympics

The Winter Olympics opening ceremonies have kicked-off in Milan and Cortina, and averaged 21.4 million viewers across NBC and the Peacock platform, which is a 34 percent increase from the previous 2022 Winter games in Beijing, which averaged 15.9 million viewers. Over 3 million people watched the event on the Peacock streaming service, making it the most streamed Winter Games opening ceremony in history. This viewership total includes preliminary Nielsen data and streaming numbers, and represents the most watched Winter Olympics opening ceremonies in many years for NBA. It also reflects a significant growth in audience engagement for international sporting events. It also doesn’t hurt that we’re freezing our butts off here in Upstate New York, and we’re willing to watch literally anything while we’re curled up on the couch trying to stay warm this Winter!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss the economics of the Super Bowl, SpaceX just acquired Elon Musk’s xAI, SpaceX wants to launch 1 million orbital AI data center satellites, Tesla is going to stop making cars at their Fremont, California factory to instead begin making their Optimus robots which will go on sale in 2027, Chinese organized crime networks moved an estimated $16 billion dollars in crypto in 2025 so that’s not good for the image of crypto, Lindsey Vonn crashed into a safety fence just 2 weeks before she’s scheduled to compete in her last Olympics, the 2026 Winter Olympics officially start with the Opening Ceremonies on Friday, Feb. 6, and that jerk Punxsutawney Phil just saw his shadow so we’re in for 6 more weeks of Winter

Let’s get into it!

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🏈 The Economics of the Super Bowl

The Super Bowl is more than just a championship game. It is a massive financial engine that hums with the energy of billion dollar industries, and the attention of a global audience of 212.4 million viewers across 197 countries and territories during last year’s Super Bowl. Every year those numbers climb even higher as the Super Bowl continues to transform from just another sports broadcast into a cultural and economic phenomenon. The Super Bowl represents a unique moment where the world of professional athletics meets the absolute peak of consumer capitalism, with a little bit of entertainment thrown in for good measure.

The scale of the money involved in the Super Bowl tells a story of a nation that is willing to invest billions of dollars into a single football game that lasts only 4 hours from kickoff to the final whistle. This year Super Bowl LX, or Super Bowl 60 for those of us that don’t know how to read Roman numerals, will be played this year at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, California, and will feature a matchup between the 14-3 New England Patriots facing off against the also 14-3 Seattle Seahawks, also known as my son’s favorite football team. The Bay Area Host Committee projects the economic impact for the San Francisco Bay area will be between $370-$630 million dollars. While the Super Bowl will take place at Levi's Stadium, it will be broadcast live on NBC and streamed online via their Peacock app. For the 2026 Super Bowl the NFL is anticipating a record breaking viewership of 213.1 million viewers worldwide.

This is the New England Patriots’ twelfth Super Bowl appearance, which is the most of any team in the NFL, and their first appearance since quarterback Tom Brady left the team in 2020. A win would give the New England Patriots a seventh Lombardi Trophy, giving them one more than the Pittsburgh Steelers for the most Super Bowl championships in history of the NFL. The Seattle Seahawks, who are the odds on favored team to win the Super Bowl, are making their fourth appearance, and they are looking for their second Lombardi Trophy.

The financial scale of this event is evident by the $10 million dollar cost of a 30 second commercial. This is a record breaking amount that shows how valuable the airtime during the Super Bowl has become for the biggest brands in the world. Advertisers are shelling out millions of dollars to produce these ads, and often pay top dollar for celebrity spokespeople like Peyton Manning and Sabrina Carpenter. Total consumer spending across the United States for food, drinks, and apparel related to the Super Bowl is expected to reach a record $20.2 billion dollars in 2026. This comes out to about $94.77 dollars per person.

Yup, that sounds about right for my family.

Last year’s 2025 Super Bowl generated a record breaking $800 million dollars in advertising revenue, which is up from the estimated $650-$700 million dollars in advertising revenue brought in by the 2024 Super Bowl. Many advertisers are aiming for humor this year to try and keep things light, amidst concerns about the economy and the splintered political divide in this country. NBC’s broadcast will feature a host of returning advertisers like Budweiser and Pepsi, as well as new entrants including the health care company Ro and the betting site Fanatics Sportsbook. Approximately 40 percent of the advertisers in 2026 are new to advertising during the Super Bowl.

This year the average price for a ticket to the Super Bowl is around $7,865 dollars, but you can still find some entry level seats on the secondary markets like StubHub that are going for between $4,500-$5,100 dollars a ticket, while over on Ticketmaster’s site they have tickets listed for as high as $57,330 dollars for VIP seating on the 40 yard line.

This year players on the winning team of the Super Bowl will each earn a bonus of $178,000 dollars, while players on the losing team will still get a paycheck for $103,000 dollars. Nice paying job for just showing up. They also get a Super Bowl ring that is made of yellow or rose gold, it’s encrusted with diamonds, has their team’s name and logo, and the phrase “World Champion”. Each ring can also be customized with the name and uniform number of each player. The final price of a Super Bowl ring usually comes in between $30,000-$50,000 dollars per ring.

And since this is the biggest sporting event of the year, we can’t forget to mention the economic impact of the legal sports betting industry, which is projected to reach $1.7 billion dollars in wagers nationwide this year, and will also include prediction market newcomers like Polymarket and Kalshi. Approximately 75 million Americans are expected to place some form of wager on the Super Bowl, with the scale of gambling showing how deeply the Super Bowl has become ingrained within the betting industry.

Performing at this year’s Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show is the controversial, to some, Latin American superstar Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio - better known to the music world as Bad Bunny. This is a big deal for the Super Bowl, and also for global entertainment economics. Performing at the big game solidifies Bad Bunny as one of the hottest performers worldwide, and exposes the NFL to a demographic that has increasing spending power. The Latin American music industry is a massive and rapidly expanding market, where revenues grew by a remarkable 22.5% in the last year alone. It’s no wonder that Jay-Z’s Roc Nation, in partnership with the NFL and Apple Music, jumped at the opportunity to sign Bad Bunny to the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show.

Bad Bunny is one of the most commercially dominant artists in the world, with his success largely driven by streaming and his seemingly never ending touring. Bad Bunny has amassed over 115.8 million records sold worldwide, and his songs have accumulated close to 100 billion total streams on platforms like Spotify and YouTube. His massive tours have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue worldwide.

Want some examples? I’m glad you asked.

Bad Bunny’s 2024 “Most Wanted Tour” grossed approximately $210.9 million dollars. Before that in 2022, Bad Bunny’s “El Último Tour Del Mundo” and his “World's Hottest Tour” combined set an industry record for the highest grossing tours in a calendar year by pulling in over $435 million dollars.

With a net worth of around $100 million dollars, you’d expect Bad Bunny would be getting paid big money to perform at the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, right? Well, you’d be wrong. Artists don’t get paid to perform at the Super Bowl Halftime Show. It’s that big of an honor, but their dancers do. Who foots the bill for all that dancing? The artists themselves. The Super Bowl Halftime Show is such an oddity in the world of entertainment! The logic goes that artists are selected to perform at the Halftime show when they have reached the pinnacle of their career, and are usually financially set for life. In addition to paying their dancers, they also usually contribute to the cost of their show to cover whatever the NFL’s production costs don’t cover in order to achieve their dream performance. It also doesn’t hurt that following a Super Bowl Halftime Show performance the artist usually sees a big boost to the global brand with increased album sales and streaming, as well as a new tour which most artists kick off after the show.

This year’s production of the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show is being directed by Hamish Hamilton and produced by Jesse Collins, alongside Roc Nation’s CEO and co-founder Desiree Perez. The pregame musical performances this year include Charlie Puth singing the national anthem, and Brandi Carlile performing “America the Beautiful”, as well as Coco Jones singing “Lift Every Voice and Sing”.

The Super Bowl has grown into such a massive global phenomenon that defines the intersection of sports and economic power. With ads selling for a record-breaking $10 million dollars per 30 second ad, and an estimated $20.2 billion dollars in total consumer spending for this single football game, the Super Bowl has become the ultimate stage for capitalism. As millions of viewers worldwide watch the New England Patriots face off against the Seattle Seahawks, and millions of Gen Z and Millennials tune in just to watch Bad Bunny’s Halftime Show, the financial impact of the Super Bowl continues to remain unmatched in the world of sports and economics.

Quick Hits

🤑 Business

SpaceX has announced that they are acquiring Elon Musk’s AI startup xAI, which itself merged with his social media company X (forever to be called Twitter by me) back in 2025. This deal values SpaceX at $1 trillion dollars and xAI at $250 billion dollars, for a combined market cap of $1.25 trillion dollars - the largest merger in the world.

This all comes as rumors have swirled about this possible acquisition, and a potential merger between SpaceX and Tesla, all ahead of SpaceX’s planned IPO coming in in June 2026. 

Add to all of this, xAI was just announced last week that Tesla has invested $2 billion dollars in xAI during a $20 billion funding round that also included investors Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity, Valor Equity Partners, Stepstone Group, Fidelity, Qatar Investment Authority, Abu Dhabi’s MGX and Baron Capital Group.

This has me excited, because as a long term Tesla shareholder that means I own equity in Elon Musk’s xAI, which was just acquired by SpaceX, so I’m now also a shareholder in SpaceX! This is like a dream come true for an investor and space geek like me!

🦫 Entertainment

Punxsutawney Phil just saw his shadow, so they’re saying we’re in for 6 more weeks of winter. Reporting from Upstate New York, where we’re 3 weeks into having -10 F temperatures at night, I could have told you Winter is nowhere near close to being over.

That groundhog is smart to go back to sleep. Do me a favor and wake me up when it gets warm again!

🚀 Space

Elon Musk’s SpaceX just filed an application with the FCC to launch 1 million orbital AI data center satellites. This will significantly expand beyond SpaceX’s current network of 9600 Starlink satellites, which cost SpaceX an estimated $10 billion dollars to design, build, launch, operate, and provide space-based Internet services to their 9 million active subscribers worldwide in over 155 countries, territories, and markets.

SpaceX’s new data center satellites will use solar panels to gather continuous energy from the sun, while relying on the freezing temperatures of the vacuum of space to cool all those AI computer chips, resulting in what Elon Musk believes will be a massive cost savings over the cost of operating AI data centers here on Earth.

Here’s to hoping those cost savings are out of this world. (sorry, I couldn’t help myself!)

🤖 Robots

The robot revolution is about to begin, and Elon Musk’s Tesla announced they will be ending the production of Models S and X vehicles at their Fremont, California factory in order to begin making Optimus robots. Elon Musk has said Tesla will begin selling Optimus robots by the end of 2027. But take that date with a grain of salt; Elon Musk is known to be a little bit optimistic shall we say about when things will happen, so my guess is we still have a few more years to binge all the Terminator and Matrix movies as we prepare to fight back against the machines.

🐷 Crypto

In another blow to the image of cryptocurrency, it’s been reported by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis that Chinese organized crime networks moved an estimated $16 billion dollars in crypto in 2025. 

This comes as China has tightened their domestic enforcement of cryptocurrency networks, so these organized crime networks have migrated to countries in Southeast Asia like Cambodia and Myanmar, where they often operate out of specialized "scam compounds" where they run cons like "pig butchering" scams, which is a sophisticated, long-term form of investment fraud in which perpetrators cultivate fake romantic relationships with victims before persuading them to send money, often in the form of cryptocurrency. The term comes from the analogy where scammers "fatten up" their victims with attention and compliments before they move in for the "slaughter" where they take all their money.

Now that doesn’t sound very romantic.

⛷️ Lindsey Vonn

Lindsey Vonn crashed into a safety fence on Friday, January 30, 2026 in Crans Montana, Switzerland. The accident occurred during her final scheduled competition before the start of the 2026 Winter Olympics. Luckily she was able to get up and walk with a slight limp on her injured knee before being airlifted via helicopter from the slopes for a trip to the hospital to get checked out.

Her journey back to the Olympics at age 41 has been filled with months of intense training, and seeing her injured just days before the start of the games is a heavy blow for her and all her fans worldwide. Lindsey Vonn started skiing at age 3 with her father and grandfather, and has won 84 World Cup race victories, and 3 Olympic medals (including 1 Gold and 2 Bronzes) during her career.

In a statement to reporters she said her “Olympic dream is not over” after crashing, and with 2 weeks before her scheduled Super-G downhill race on February 8 she’s hopeful that her doctors will give her the all clear to compete in what will most likely be her last Olympics.

🏅 Sports

The 2026 Winter Olympics officially start on Friday, Feb. 6, with the opening ceremonies live from Milan, Italy, but some of the competitions are actually getting a head start beginning this Wednesday like the edge-of-your-seat Curling mixed doubles.

The 2026 Winter Olympics in Milan-Cortina are expected to cost over $6.17 billion dollars, and aren’t without controversy. Some of the venues, like the brand new ice hockey arena in Milan, Italy, won’t be finished in time for the first match of the games. So I guess they’ll be using rollerblades instead?

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Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

Letter From The Editor
It dawned on me that I haven’t written to you in a while. I mean, I write to you every week, but not anything from the heart.

The holidays were good. Stressful and filled with sickness, but it was great to spend time with family and unplug a little. I actually doubled-down on content creation because the weather was great, so I was able to get outside and do a lot of extra filming over the break.

Now we’re almost end of January, and it’s been an INSANE business cycle. I’ve tried to focus on the positives, but it hasn’t been easy. Since this isn’t a political newsletter, I’ve thrown myself into writing about more thats going on in the business world. For 2026 I want to lean more into where business meets culture, and the affect that has on both the business world and us as individuals. I know that’s kinda vague, but I’ll be unpacking it more as the year goes on.

For now, I couldn’t be more excited about where this newsletter, and our Business Behind The News YouTube channel are heading. Thank you to all of you who continue to support me as we grow!

In today’s newsletter I discuss NASA’s new Administrator Jared Isaacman, the NYSE is going to begin 24/7 crypto token trading, Sydney Sweeney might be in trouble for climbing the the Hollywood sign, Elon Musk is preparing for SpaceX’s IPO in 2026, OpenAI is working with Jony Ive to create a new AI hardware device, gold just hit a record high of $5,042.50 dollars per ounce, Tesla lost more than $15 billion dollars in brand value in 2024, and the Washington Spirit signed Trinity Rodman to a record breaking 3-year, $2 million dollar per year contract extension.

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🚀 Running NASA Really Is Rocket Science!

Imagine you’ve just been handed the keys to a business that’s a political football, has 18,000 employees, a budget of $24.4 billion dollars a year, and running it is literally rocket science. That’s the job Jared Isaacman just accepted when the Senate confirmed him as the new NASA Administrator. And it comes at a time when the price tag for exploring the cosmos is hitting a record high. 

Jared Isaacman's appointment as NASA Administrator brings a more business-minded approach to how the government buys its trips to orbit. He's the first billionaire to lead NASA, and the first person with commercial astronaut experience to take the top spot at the agency thanks to his own two privately funded SpaceX missions. Everyone from investors, to engineers, to politicians are watching to see how his background will affect the bottom line of the American space program as he tries to figure out how to return humans to the moon without breaking the bank.

Before we get into Jared Isaacman's background, I was wondering if you could help me out. One of my goals for this channel in 2026 is to reach 1,000 subscribers, and you can help me with that right now. If you’re new to this channel and like this video please consider smashing that Like button, and do me a solid and subscribe to my channel so you can be notified next time I drop a hot take. Thanks!

Jared Isaacman's journey as an entrepreneur is different from any other NASA Administrator in the history of the agency. He dropped out of high school at 16 to start his first company, United Bank Card, in the basement of his parent’s home. He later changed its name to Shift4 Payments, and grew it into a major force in the payment processing industry by focusing on high volume transactions for restaurants and hotels. Today Shift4 Payments handles over $200 billion dollars in payments annually, and generates hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue each quarter. The result of Shift4 Payment’s success has led to Jared Isaacman having a personal net worth estimated to be around $1.9 billion dollars. He also founded Draken International in 2012 to train military pilots from around the world using a private fleet of fighter jets that he owns. Draken International now has the largest private air force in the world, and provides services to the Department of Defense. In 2019 he sold a majority stake in Draken International to the Blackstone Group for a reported nine-figure sum. His experience building and selling large complex companies has given him a reputation for efficiency and operational success, and it’s a big reason the Senate chose him to manage the complex finances of NASA.

President Donald Trump originally nominated Jared Isaacman for the position while he was on good terms with Elon Musk, who was leading the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE). When the relationship between Donald Trump and Elon Musk changed after a falling out, President Donald Trump withdrew Jared Isaacman’s nomination and appointed Sean Duffy to be the acting interim administrator for NASA at the same time he was the Secretary of Transportation. When President Donald Trump and Elon Musk made up, Jared Isaacman was renominated and the Senate confirmed him in December 2025 with 67 votes in favor and 30 votes against his nomination. This political path to the leadership of NASA's been closely watched by observers in Washington and the private space sector. The decision to bring him back into the fold suggests a desire to keep strong ties with the commercial space industry despite previous disagreements between political leaders. It's clear the Trump administration wants a leader who's comfortable moving fast and breaking things in the style of a startup leader.

Jared Isaacman's appointment has resulted in his planned third private space mission with SpaceX to be canceled. The mission was designed to take a crew of hand selected people on a journey around the moon. One of his aims was to select individuals from diverse backgrounds and countries around the world to show that space can be accessible to everyone. The goal of this mission was to fly a Starship spacecraft into deep space and perform scientific research while orbiting the moon, without ever actually setting down on the lunar surface. Jared Isaacman had hand selected people from civilian life like Hayley Arceneaux from St. Francisville, Louisiana, who's a physician assistant, Chris Sembroski Kannapolis, North Carolina, who's a data engineer, Sian Proctor from Hagåtña, the capital of the United States territory of Guam, who is a full-time professor of geology, planetary science, and sustainability at South Mountain Community College in Phoenix, Arizona. These same individuals flew on the Inspiration4 mission, which Jared Isaacman funded, and went on to raise over $250 million dollars for charity. He also selected retired Airforce pilot Scott Poteet, and SpaceX engineer Sarah Gillis for the Polaris Dawn mission. These missions served as the templates for his planned moon mission, which is now on hold since he’s been appointed as NASA Administrator. In the meantime, it doesn’t look like Jared will be bored. NASA is already working on the Artemis II mission, which will send 4 NASA astronauts, including Reid Wiseman, Victor Glover, Christina Koch, and Jeremy Hansen, around the moon sometime in 2026 if everything goes as planned. 

The financial management of NASA’s Artemis program is Jared Isaacman's highest priority as NASA works to return humans to the lunar surface. The project's massive $93 billion dollar price tag covers the next few years of the development of the Space Launch System and the Orion spacecraft. To say that these flights carry a heavy price tag is an understatement. Launching a single Space Launch System (SLS) rocket, with an Orion spacecraft, is estimated to cost between $4-$5 billion dollars per mission, with estimates putting the SLS rocket alone at around $4.1 billion per launch, and then another $1 billion for each Orion capsule.

Holy spaceflight Batman!

And that doesn’t even land us on the moon. NASA signed a contract with Elon Musk’s SpaceX for $2.9 billion dollars to build the initial human landing system to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface. And thanks to the beauty of government overspending, NASA signed a second contract with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin for $3.4 billion dollars to create a second lunar landing option for later missions. Now there's significant pressure on Jared Isaacman to reduce the costs of these programs, while still meeting the goal of landing Americans on the moon before China gets there. 

Another major expense for NASA going forward is the Mars Sample Return mission, which has an estimated cost of $11 billion dollars. Jared Isaacman will need to work with the team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory to find more efficient ways to bring rocks from Mars back to Earth. Then we have the James Webb Space Telescope, which cost $10 billion dollars to develop, and is another example of a large-scale investment that NASA has made and needs to continue maintaining for the next decade. If you’re starting to get the feeling that NASA has a lot going on these days then you’re beginning to get a feel for how big of a job Jared Isaacman has ahead of him.

So here's the bottom line. Jared Isaacman is stepping into a role where the real work of returning to the moon and winning the space race with China is only just beginning. His appointment's a clear signal that the agency's shifting toward private companies to help trim that $24.4 billion dollars annual budget. Jared Isaacman has his work cut out for him as he tries to balance the books while directing the next several decades of human space flight. It's a high stakes gamble on the future of the American space program where the margins are thin and the costs are astronomical.

Quick Hits

🏛️ Business

The New York Stock Exchange is developing a platform that will allow for 24/7 trading of U.S. listed equities and ETFs in the form of crypto tokens. The NYSE’s parent company, Intercontinental Exchange, says this initiative will allow for fractional share trading and immediate settlement instead of the 1 day it usually takes for securities to settle. This follows the NASDAQ’s moves at the end of 2025 to allow for trading 23 hours a day.

I’m on the record as saying that allowing for trading 24/7/365 is a mistake, because without liquidity retail investors will be on the losing end of each trade. I’m all for the tokenization of securities, but the investors and trading volumes need to be there in order for it to be successful.

👙 Entertainment

Sydney Sweeney climbed the Hollywood sign to drape pink bras over the sign as a promotion for her new lingerie brand named Syrn. According to the Hollywood Chamber of Commerce, no license or permission was granted for the commercial shoot even though a filming permit was issued by FilmLA allowing her company to film what’s called “distance photography” of the sign. This unauthorized stunt by Sydney Sweeney at the landmark could lead to criminal trespass charges and fines that could reach $1,000 dollars or more for people who touch the restricted sign.

Sydney Sweeney’s new brand Syrn has raised funding from the private equity firm Coatue, which has raised funding from investors including Jeff Bezos and Michael Dell. While terms of their investment haven’t been revealed, celebrity clothing and cosmetics companies, like the
Kardashian’s Skimms and Kylie Cosmetics have reached billion dollar valuations.

If anyone can use their celebrity status to grow a brand Sydney Sweeney certainly can!

🤖 Tech

OpenAI is working with Jony Ive to create a new AI hardware device that is expected to drop in 2026. Chris Lehane, Chief Global Affairs Officer at OpenAI, says OpenAI's first AI device will operate differently than your normal smartphone. OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s io Products, Inc. for $6.5 billion dollars in May 2025 to develop a new family of AI hardware. The AI hardware space is already littered with devices that promised the power of AI, but delivered lack-luster pins or rings that fizzled when consumers got their hands on them. Here’s to hoping that Jony Ive can work his magic, like he did with Apple’s iPhone, and create the first AI device for OpenAI that consumers will rave about.

🚀 Space

Elon Musk is preparing for SpaceX’s IPO as early as June 2026 by bringing on board JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and Bank of America to help the company go public with a target valuation of $1.5 trillion dollars. The company recently reached an $800 billion dollar valuation on the secondary market with shares priced at $421 dollars while recording $15 billion dollars in total revenue last year. Starlink generated $12 billion dollars of that revenue in 2025, as the company aims to raise $30 billion dollars from their IPO. With SpaceX’s IPO, Elon Musk will become the world’s first trillionaire, with a net worth of approximately $1.437 trillion dollars.

🟡 Precious Metals

The price of gold recently climbed to a record high of $5,042.50 dollars per ounce, as investors worry about global instability and inflation in the U.S.. Market analysts like Peter Schiff and Jerome Powell have monitored the rising value of the precious metal, which has seen a 117.76% percentage increase from the $2,315.60 dollars per ounce this time last year. I think the market is so chaotic right now, and the world is teetering on the head of a pin, that we could easily see the price of gold reach $6,000 dollars per ounce by the end of the year. Convince me I’m wrong!

® Branding

Tesla lost more than $15 billion dollars in brand value because of consumers' reactions to Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter (which he calls X, but I continue to call Twitter), his political public statements, and his role in the Trump administration’s DOGE. The total valuation of Tesla’s brand dropped from $58 billion dollars in 2024 to $43 billion dollars in 2025, while other major electric vehicle companies saw their market share and reputation scores increase. It turns out that while we all have the freedom of speech, what we say can and does have real world effects.

⚽ Sports

The Washington Spirit, part of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL), recently signed Trinity Rodman to a record breaking 3-year, $2 million dollar per year contract extension that runs through the conclusion of the 2028 season. This landmark agreement includes various bonuses that solidify Trinity Rodman as the highest paid female soccer player in the NWSL, and allows the Washington Spirit to utilize the new High Impact Player rule to exceed the league’s salary cap. It really isn’t much of a surprise that Trinity Rodman is such a phenomenal athlete, considering her dad is Dennis Rodman, one of the Chicago Bulls’s most eclectic power forwards to ever play the game.

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Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I ask the question how big the prediction market will become, Tesla is becoming a SaaS company, Heineken’s Dos Equis is bringing back their "Most Interesting Man in the World" ads, Meta’s Threads is now bigger than Twitter (I mean X), Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce just wrote a book called “No Dumb Questions: And All of Our Dumbest Answers”, the U.S. DoD is investing $1 billion dollars in Aerojet Rocketdyne, Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke just became the largest private landowner in the U.S., Matthew McConaughey just filed with the USPTO to trademark three of his catchphrases including “Alright Alright Alright”, and Fanatics has partnered with OBB Media to create Fanatics Studios.

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🔮 Want To Bet How Big The Prediction Market Will Become?

Imagine you've got a crystal ball, but instead of hazy mist it's filled with cold hard cash in the form of the wisdom of the crowds. This is the reality of prediction markets, which are moving into a new era where betting on the future's becoming the nation's new pastime.

According to a new report by Citizens Financial Group, prediction markets could become a $1 trillion dollar market by the end of this decade. That's a massive number that sounds like it’s made up, but the growth's real and platforms like Polymarket and Kalshi are capitalizing on it right now. Today you can bet on, er, I mean “predict”, anything and everything from elections, to how a movie'll do at the box office, to interest rates set by the Federal Reserve, and even what color tie President Donald Trump'll wear next Tuesday. The prediction market industry's estimated to generate $2 billion dollars in revenue in 2026, and it's expected to generate over $10 billion dollars a year by the end of this decade.

Polymarket, founded by Shayne Coplan, is one of the biggest prediction markets in the world. As their platform's grown in popularity, its user base's grown to over 1.3 million unique users, and 477,000 monthly active traders, who've invested over $21.5 billion dollars in total trading volume in 2025. The platform gained popularity when people wagered an estimated $3.6 billion dollars on the 2024 presidential election between Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. Polymarket recently raised a $2 billion dollar funding round led by Intercontinental Exchange, the owner of the New York Stock Exchange, which valued Polymarket at $9 billion dollars. That brings the total amount of money raised by Polymarket to $2.3 billion dollars across seven funding rounds, including from the VC firm Sequoia Capital, and famous investors like Vitalik Buterin, one of the co-founders of the cryptocurrency Ethereum, who invested in a $45 million dollars funding round.

Kalshi, co-founded by Luana Lopes Lara and Tarek Mansour, is the other 800-pound company in the prediction markets industry. Kalshi's total trading volume in 2025 was approximately $23.8 billion dollars, from their over 2 million unique users. In 2025 Robinhood Markets’ CEO Vladimir Tenev partnered with Kalshi to offer their users event contracts by integrating Kalshi's prediction market tech into Robinhood’s platform. Kalshi's latest funding round was a $1 billion dollar Series E in December 2025, which valued the company at $11 billion dollars, and was led by VC firms Paradigm, Sequoia, and Andreessen Horowitz. With this funding round Kalshi co-founder Luana Lopes Lara became the youngest self-made billionaire, with a net worth of $1.3 billion dollars.

The size of the prediction market industry's growing so fast that it's starting to rival the market size of the traditional sportsbooks market, and is estimated to surpass it within a decade. The global sports betting market size's estimated to be between $109-$155 billion dollars as of 2025, and is expected to grow to $256.52 billion dollars in 2030, with a CAGR of 10.54%. While sports betting's been a huge market, the prediction market industry has a larger total addressable market size of as much as $500 trillion dollars, thanks to the opportunity for investors to bet on every conceivable event in the world from corporate mergers, to global conflicts, to presidential elections.

And where there’s money to be made, there’s fraud to be committed. Prediction markets've already made a name for themselves as being ripe for insider trading. I’m not saying someone used insider information, but just before Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro was captured by the U.S. one anonymous trader made a $436,759 dollar profit by betting on his capture. That’s pretty insanely specific. It's me wondering how many other world leaders people're betting'll be captured by the U.S.. This trader made most of his $30,000 dollar bet, I mean investment, just a few hours before the White House announced the capture of Nicolas Maduro. That’s either not a coincidence, or this person's the best luck in the world and should probably play the new Powerball drawing. There was another case of a French trader who won $85 million dollars after betting on Polymarket that Donald Trump'd win the U.S. presidential election. He used a network of accounts to spread his bets out over more than 11 accounts, and his winnings've been tough to trace. Some experts suggest he may've made even more than the $85 million dollars that's been reported in the news. These high stakes wagers show how people with specific inside information, or really strong/lucky convictions can turn their bets into millions of dollars.

The 16th century philosopher Sir Francis Bacon once famously said "knowledge is power", and that's never been more true than with today’s prediction markets. Leaders in the industry, like Polymarkets and Kalshi, are blazing a trail to a future $1 trillion dollar market, where ideas can be turned into tradable assets, and there’s a market for everyone’s opinion.

Quick Hits

🛞 Business

Elon Musk just announced that Tesla will stop selling the Full Self-Driving system as a $8,000 dollars one-time purchase, and will instead move to more of a SaaS model that will be a $99 dollars monthly subscription. This change is part of Elon Musk’s plan to reach 10 million active subscribers that could bring in $12 billion dollars a year for Tesla.

With that kind of growth, Elon Musk shouldn’t have any trouble hitting his compensation package targets that could eventually be worth $1 trillion dollars in stock.

Buyer beware - bet against Elon Musk at your own risk!

🍺 Entertainment

Heineken’s Dos Equis is bringing back their "Most Interesting Man in the World" advertising campaign, with actor Jonathan Goldsmith reprising his famous role after nearly a decade away, where presumably he was busy with some of the most interesting side projects in the world. The original campaign, which ran from 2006 to 2016, became a cultural phenomenon and helped Dos Equis more than 3X their sales thanks to those ads. Then in 2016, for some reason that defies logic, Heineken’s Dos Equis retired the fictional "Most Interesting Man in the World" character in a farewell ad sending him to Mars, to instead modernize the campaign in a failed effort to try and attract younger drinkers by introducing a younger, more action-oriented "Interesting Man" to try and boost their sales which were getting stale. The public wasn’t having it, and Heineken’s Dos Equis' retail sales dropped by 8% as of 2025.

Now Heineken is investing $30 million dollars in a new marketing campaign to reintroduce the "Most Interesting Man in the World" to the public, beginning on January 19, 2026 with an ad during the college football national championship game. The global beer market is valued at $881.9 billion dollars as of 2025, and Heineken is hoping that by bringing back the debonair persona of the "Most Interesting Man in the World" they will able to reverse their losses and help their Dos Equis brand regain its footing in the highly competitive market for sophisticated beer drinkers.

🧵 Tech

Meta’s Threads, which I’m now going to refer to as the X killer, has grown to over 35 million daily active mobile users, surpassing Elon Musk’s Twitter (I mean X’s) 34 million daily active mobile users. Ouch! Elon Musk is not going to like that!

📚 Book Club

Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce are expanding beyond their New Heights podcast by releasing a 240 page book called “No Dumb Questions: And All of Our Dumbest Answers” with publisher William Morrow. The book, which will retail for $30 dollars, plays off a segment on their New Heights podcast where Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce answer fan questions sent in through social media and a hotline about anything ranging from football rules to silly debates like how many holes does a straw have.

In August of 2024 Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce signed a 3-year $100 million dollar deal with Amazon’s Wondery for their New Heights podcast. Their YouTube channel has 3.16 million subscribers, and has over 1.13 billion lifetime views. The New Heights podcast routinely ranks in the Top 5 podcasts for Sports on both Spotify and Apple Podcasts, and often holds the #1 spot during the NFL season.

Combined Travis Kelce and Jason Kelce have won a total of 4 Super Bowl championships, and have earned a combined $194.3 million dollars from their football salaries, and that doesn’t even take into consideration their endorsements. For 2026 Travis Kelce is on track to haul in between $30-$35 million dollars in endorsement income from a massive list of brands including Nike, State Farm, Bud Light, Pfizer, McDonald’s, Papa John’s, DirecTV, Sleep Number, T-Mobile, Old Spice, Tide, Lowe’s, Subway, General Mills, Experian, and Casa Azul Tequila. Then we have Jason Kelce, the oldest of the two brothers, who retired from the Philadelphia Eagles in 2024, and is expected to tackle between $200$25 million dollars in endorsements from brands including Old Spice, Nike, Bose, Campbell’s Soup, Tide, Accelerator Active Energy, and Buffalo Wild Wings. He also pulls down around $8 million dollars a year from his contract with ESPN where he serves as an analyst on Monday Night Countdown.

It’s good to be a Kelce brother!

🚀 Space

The U.S. Department of Defense is investing $1 billion dollars in Aerojet Rocketdyne to fund the expansion of their solid rocket motors used in various missile systems including Tomahawks and Patriot interceptors. This massive $1 billion dollar infusion of funding will be part of the spun off company, giving the U.S. Department of Defense an equity stake of 10% that will convert to common equity when the company goes public later in 2026.

So the U.S. government is investing in startups and IPOs? Now I’ve seen everything!

🏞️ Real Estate

Los Angeles Rams owner Stan Kroenke recently became the largest private landowner in the United States with a total of 2.6 million acres across several states, including Wyoming, Montana, Nevada, Texas, and New Mexico, as well as the massive 1 million acre Douglas Lake Ranch in British Columbia, Canada. In total Stan Kroenke owns a land portfolio valued at approximately $2.5 billion dollars.

Stan Kroenke also owns the Arsenal FC soccer team, the Denver Nuggets basketball team, the Colorado Avalanche hockey team, the Colorado Rapids MLS soccer team, and the Colorado Mammoth lacrosse team.

Stan Kroenke made his $21.3 billion dollar fortune by investing in real estate development, and it didn’t hurt that he married Walmart heiress Ann Walton. With his “connections” he developed commercial shopping centers that were anchored by Walmarts, which certainly helped him grow his real estate empire, and rake in some significant rental income along the way from all those Walmart locations.

™️ AI

Matthew McConaughey just filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office to trademark three of his catchphrases, including his famous “alright alright alright” from the 1993 coming of age movie “Dazed and Confused”, "I mean... what are we gonna do?", and "Just keep livin', right?" which is the name of the nonprofit organization that Matthew McConaughey founded with his wife Camila McConaughey to provide high school students with the necessary tools to lead active lives and make healthy choices for a better future.

These registrations will cover various goods and services like clothing and entertainment, which helps Matthew McConaughey protect his brand identity from unauthorized artificial intelligence voice clones that could cost him millions of dollars in potential endorsement revenue. But it’s not like my man is hurting. Matthew McConaughey has a net worth of around $160 million dollars, and he’s cemented his legacy as one of Hollywood’s coolest actors of all time.

In total, J.K. Livin Brands, Inc. filed eight applications covering both sound marks (for his voice) and motion marks (for his likeness and specific facial expressions) to establish a federal "legal perimeter" around his persona.

Alright then.

🎬 Sports

Michael Rubin’s Fanatics has just launched a joint venture with Michael Ratner’s OBB Media to create Fanatics Studios, which will create original programming including feature films, documentaries, and digital series. Fanatics Studios aims to reach $100 million dollars in revenue in 2026, and will create both scripted and unscripted content, as well as live events at the intersection of sports and culture for their customer base of 100 million fans. Fanatics is valued at more than $30 billion dollars, and employs more than 22,000 people worldwide. For 2026 the company is expecting to haul in more than $13 billion in revenue. Now that’s a grand slam!

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss why Venezuelan oil won't lower gas prices, Paramount sues, Baywatch is getting a reboot, Congress restores NASA’s funding, Nvidia CEO and Co-founder Jensen Huang says data centers won’t need as much cooling with their new Vera Rubin AI chips, Ripple partners with AWS to use their Amazon Bedrock service, Apple to integrate Google’s Gemini technology into Siri, and FIFA partners with TikTok for the 2026 World Cup.

Let’s get into it.

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⛽ Why Venezuelan Oil Won’t Lower Gas Prices

Today I want to discuss how Venezuelan oil won't lower the price of gas at the pumps, no matter how much of it the U.S. takes for free. I have to warn you, this is gonna be a spicy topic! Let's get into it.

Let’s level-set for a minute. On January 3, 2026, the U.S. launched a military operation, which they named "Operation Absolute Resolve," in Venezuela in order to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores, before transporting them to the U.S. where they have been charged with drug trafficking. The current Trump U.S. administration claims they took this action, without notifying Congress as they are constitutionally required to do I might add, in the name of the war on drugs in order to combat Venezuelan drug smuggling. At the same time, the U.S. is proclaiming that they will “run” Venezuela for the time being, and that all Venezuelan oil will now be controlled by the U.S.. For the last few months, the U.S. has been striking suspected drug smuggling boats in both the Pacific and the Caribbean, which has been controversial to say the least. Recently, the U.S. said that Venezuela will give the U.S. 30-50 million barrels of their oil for free, and that the U.S. will begin selling Venezuelan oil on the markets and keep some of that money, while releasing what’s left back to the Venezuela government to be spent on modernizing their oil and energy infrastructure.

WoW! Ok, then. Glad I got that out of the way.

Now, as you all know, this channel isn’t about politics, so I want to focus on how no matter how much Venezuelan oil the U.S. takes, it won’t help the U.S. economically or lower the price of gas for consumers for one simple reason: it’s the wrong kind of oil.

Venezuela holds the largest proven oil reserves in the world, with over 303 billion barrels of oil in the ground. It’s much larger than the 267 billion barrels Saudi Arabia has, or the 208 billion barrels Iran has. The United States only has between 45-80 billion barrels of proven reserves, while Russia has 80 billion barrels of oil reserves. At current prices, the total value of Venezuela’s oil reserves is $17.3 trillion dollars. The massive difference between the 303 billion barrels in Venezuela and the 45-80 billion barrels of proven oil reserves in the United States is the very reason Venezuela is so important for the Trump administration: security. The United States wants to make sure those 303 billion barrels of Venezuelan oil are under the influence of the United States, and not Russia or China. This is all about geopolitics, with a tiny footnote mentioning drug smuggling.

The type of oil in Venezuela is a heavy substance that requires specialized refineries and can’t just be processed by any old facility in the world. In the United States, there are dozens of refineries, primarily along the Gulf Coast in Texas and Louisiana, as well as some in California, that can handle Venezuelan oil. Refining this heavy oil requires specialized "complex" configurations to process heavy, sour Venezuelan crude. Only a handful of the major oil companies like Valero, Phillips 66, ExxonMobil, and Marathon have the refineries and capacity to refine Venezuelan heavy oil.

The Phillips 66 Sweeny refinery in Old Ocean, Texas, and their refinery in Lake Charles, Louisiana are the primary refinery sites in the U.S. that are ready today to begin processing this heavy oil. Combined, these two plants can process around 200,000 barrels per day of Venezuelan crude, which is literally a drop in the bucket of how much oil the U.S. consumes in a day. Other Gulf Coast refineries would require billions of dollars in investment to restart their heavy oil refining processes, and it would take years to bring these plants back online.

Right now the current breakeven price for Venezuelan crude oil is $80 per barrel, while the current market price for oil is around $59 per barrel as of January 12, 2026. So, if you try and process Venezuelan crude oil to make gasoline you’re basically losing money on every barrel you process. That’s not a good way to run a business, which is why U.S. refiners aren’t thrilled about the current U.S. administration's recent acquisition of exclusive physical rights to Venezuelan crude oil. Not to mention that the refining capacity of the plants that can process Venezuelan crude oil is so small that it won’t even begin to affect the price of gas Americans pay at the pump.

Before the U.S. “acquired” Venezuela’s entire oil supply, the country was sending 389,000 barrels per day to China to pay back some of their $170 billion dollars of debt that they’ve been using to prop up their regime and failing economy. It seems crazy that Venezuela, which has the world’s largest proven oil reserves, is so poorly run that they needed to borrow money from the Chinese, which has resulted in ruining their economy, where the International Monetary Fund estimates Venezuela's inflation rate is a staggering 682%.

Venezuela's national economy is only $82.8 billion dollars a year, which makes this debt a huge burden for the country. Last year total oil sales reached only $17.52 billion dollars, and most of that money did not reach the citizens. Instead, it was used to service their debts to China. The Trump administration has redirected 50 million barrels, worth $3 billion dollars at today’s prices, into accounts controlled at American banks. It remains to be seen how long this arrangement will last, and what those funds will be used for.

It’s been estimated that rebuilding the Venezuelan oil industry would require an investment of $183 billion dollars over the next 15 years. Their oil industry needs $14 billion dollars in immediate capital just to reach a production level of 1.4 million barrels per day. Their current production is around 934,000 barrels per day, which is less than 1% of the global supply of 106 million barrels used per day.

So, the arrival of Venezuelan oil in the United States is not a quick solution for lower gas prices at the pump, and it’s not going to help the Venezuelan people, government, or their oil industry overnight. The popular belief, stoked by the talking points of the Trump administration, is that adding Venezuelan oil to the U.S. markets will drive down oil and gasoline costs for the average American, but the facts on the ground say otherwise.

Quick Hits

⚖️ Business

Paramount Skydance just doesn't know how to take no for an answer. Since they haven't been able to convince the board of Warner Brothers Discovery that their offer of $30 dollars a share for the entire company is superior to Netflix's offer, they have taken their case to court by suing Warner Brothers Discovery in a Delaware court to challenge the $82.7 billion dollars deal Ted Sarandos and David Zaslav accepted from Netflix. Paramount Skydance have made an offer of $108.4 billion dollars, of which $40.4 billion dollars is being guaranteed by Larry Ellison, the father of Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison, as well as $54 billion dollars in debt being financed by a number of Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. Looks like this corporate boardroom battle royale will be fought in a Delaware court and decided by a jury.

🏊‍♀️ Entertainment

In incredibly exciting news for people who can’t get enough of slow motion running on beaches, the classic TV show Baywatch is getting a long-awaited reboot with twelve new episodes coming to Fox in 2026. California Governor Gavin Newsom recently approved an expansion of the California film and television tax credit program to $750 million dollars per year in order to support the local economy and the thousands of workers who depend on Hollywood for their livelihood. In completely unrelated news, if anyone needs me I’ll be in the gym working on my dad-bod in case they need any middle-aged extras.

🕋 Tech

Nvidia CEO and Co-founder Jensen Huang just introduced a new line of Vera Rubin AI chips that might not require the same expensive data center cooling systems that the industry currently uses, which would result in a massive cost savings for data center operators. Shares of data center cooling technology companies like Vertiv Holdings and Modine Manufacturing fell by more than 10% on the news. It turns out that betting billions of dollars on giant fans and liquid cooling isn’t a foolproof strategy for building wealth. Who would have thought?

🪙 Crypto

Ripple Labs CEO Brad Garlinghouse and AWS are exploring the use of Amazon Bedrock to analyze XRP Ledger system logs, which currently generate between 30-50 gigabytes of data per node every single day. This technical collaboration aims to reduce the time it takes for engineers to diagnose network issues from 2-3 days down to between 2-3 minutes. Just another sign that Ripple’s XRP is upending traditional finance and the $156 trillion dollars that moves across borders worldwide each year.

🚀 Space

Congress just showed they do have a backbone by rejecting the Trump administration's funding proposal for NASA that only offered $18.8 billion dollars of the proposed $24.4 billion dollars in funding for the agency. This massive funding plan approved by Congress restores $5.6 billion dollars that Donald Trump wanted to cut, while at the same time his administration is demanding that NASA return to the moon to beat the Chinese. It’s nice to see that the U.S. Congress actually wants to pay for our country’s space dreams, instead of just relying on hopes and dreams to get back to the moon.

🤖 AI

Tim Cook announced that Apple will integrate Google’s Gemini technology into Siri to improve their AI for the hundreds of millions of iPhone users around the world. This partnership involves a multiyear agreement for Google to receive between $18-20 billion dollars a year to remain Apple’s default search provider and provide AI services. Here's hoping that when my mom asks Siri what the weather is going to be like today she’ll actually get an answer that doesn’t explain the entire meteorological process of how rain clouds are formed.

⚽ Sports

TikTok and FIFA have entered into a partnership for TikTok be the Preferred Platform for the 2026 FIFA World Cup tournament. This deal connects TikTok to the World Cup, which is projected to generate over $11 billion dollars in revenue while reaching an estimated global audience of 6 billion people worldwide. Just what the world needs, more Gen Z teenagers dancing in their kitchens celebrating their team scoring a goal in the World Cup!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss my Top 10 business predictions for 2026, copper prices just hit an all-time high along with gold and silver, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s board of directors just voted to dissolve the private nonprofit entity all together 😿, Gen Z isn’t drinking as much as Gen X, Nvidia just introduced an open-source AI platform for self-driving cars, Starbucks just launched their new Iced Dubai Chocolate Mocha (so I know what I’m getting today), and lastly Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg just bought a minority stake in the Welsh soccer club Swansea AFC.

Scroll on!

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🎯 My Top 10 Business Predictions For 2026

I’m sucked for a good Top 10 list, so today I’m counting down my Top 10 business predictions for 2026, and before you go placing bets on Kalshi I need to tell you I’m almost never right about these things, but I’m going to give it try now and I’ll check back in a year from now to see how I did. Let’s get into it.

I figured I’d get some of my easier predictions out of the way early in my Top 10 list of business predictions for 2026.

#10
Paramount will be successful in acquiring all of Warner Brothers Discover. I know the board has selected Netflix, and Paramount has submitted their bid multiple times and been rebuffed, but I don’t think the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) would approve it. I also think Paramount may raise their bid, and then Warner Brothers Discover’s board will be forced to reconsider. Ultimately I think Paramount would be a better home, if for no other reason than Paramount wants to continue to debut new movies in the theaters, which Netflix only does reluctantly for a short theatrical release in order to qualify for awards. My money is always on seeing movies in the theater.

#9
SpaceX IPOs in 2026 and reaches a valuation of $2 trillion dollars by the end of the year. The first part of this prediction is easy, because Elon Musk has already said that his aim is for SpaceX to IPO in 2026, in what I’m guessing will be the biggest IPO in history. The second part of my bet is that by the end of 2026 SpaceX will have a valuation of over $2 trillion dollars. I think this will just be down to the momentum of the stock, and FOMO from Wall Street and individual investors.

#8
If #9 on my list, SpaceX’s IPO comes true in 2026, then my #8 prediction is pretty easy: Elon Musk becomes the world's first trillionaire. This is just simple math. Elon Musk owns around 44% of SpaceX, so if it IPOs at $1.5 trillion dollars, he will make $660 million dollars. He’s already worth around $717 billion dollars, so a SpaceX IPO will put his net worth over $1 trillion dollars.

#7
Gold hits $6,000 per ounce. Right now the world is like a nervous cat in a room full of rocking chairs (I got that one from my Dad). Investors seem to be continuously running for safety, and Gold is where they are investing their money when things get spicy. I think the momentum of Gold alone will drive it to $6,000 per ounce in 2026.

#6
More companies will mandate return to office. This is a mistake, but apparently no one asked me what I think, but I’ll tell you anyway. I’ve worked remotely for the last 15 years since 2010. Some of my favorite companies are fully remote, including beehiiv and Expensify. Corporate America got it right during the Covid epidemic, then they forgot the lessons of improved productivity that came with a remote workforce, and now the flavor-of-the-month buzzword is “return to office” (which yes I know is more than one word). In my network I know a bunch of corporate cubicle dwellers who used to be able to work remote 2-3 days a week, then in 2025 that was whittled down to a max of 2 days a week, and then starting in 2026 they’ve been told they must be in the office at least 4 days a week. It’s not a stretch to imagine a near future where corporate America mandates 5-days a week in office for all their employees, and I think that’s a big missed opportunity for both productivity and employee retention, but what do I know? I work remotely!

#5
Number 5 on my list has a lot to do with number 7, Gold hitting $6,000 per ounce. I think Bitcoin will hit $250,000 in 2026. There was a time when Bitcoin moved in lock-step with Gold, but in the last few years they’ve detached. As the world witnesses more wars, inflation, “nation building”, and AI market bubbles, I think Bitcoin will rally, and I predict will hit $250,000. I know people have been making yearly Bitcoin predictions only to eat their words a year later, but this is the prediction hill I’m choosing to dye on. So go buy some Bitcoin (that’s only a joke. DYOR. This is not investment advice. No one should EVER take investment advice from me).

#4
I think 2026 is the year of Ripple’s XRP. With more banks adopting XRP for cross-border payments, I think we’ll see XRP hit $5 a coin in 2026. If Bitcoin rallies, then Ripple’s XRP will follow. With Ripple’s legal cases settled, and a more favorable forward-thinking crypto minded administration in the Whitehouse, I think the tailwinds of change will push Ripple’s XRP to $5 a coin in 2026.

#3
OpenAI will reach a valuation of $1 trillion dollars. They’re currently valued at $500 billion dollars on the secondary market. Add to that OpenAI’s co-founded Sam Altman is in competition with his fellow OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk for who can have the most valuable private startup. Elon Musk has SpaceX, which is planning their own $1.5 trillion dollar IPO in 2026, and Sam is jealous of Elon. I also think with OpenAI’s data center ambitions, and the continuing AI stock rally, I’m betting that by the end of 2026 OpenAI will be valued at over $1 trillion dollars.

#2
The 2026 FIFA World Cup will be an incredible economic event for the U.S.. I’m not saying the U.S. men’s team will win (any) matches, because let’s be honest Uruguay has beaten the U.S. men’s team on multiple occasions, and when Uruguay can beat us I don’t really hold a lot of hope for a win in the World Cup. But economically speaking, the 2026 FIFA World Cup is projected to have a massive economic impact on the U.S., with total gross output estimated to be around $30 billion dollars, it’ll add approximately 185,000 jobs across the country, and contribute an estimated $17 billion dollars to the U.S. GDP in 2026. Go Team USA!

#1
Nvidia will reach a market cap of $6 trillion dollars. Nvidia’s market cap in the beginning of January 2026 currently stands around $4.64 trillion dollars, so it’s only $1.36 trillion dollars away from my prediction of $6 trillion dollars, and I don’t see the demand for AI chips slowing down in 2026, so I think it can get there if the AI stock market rally continues.

And a bonus prediction:

The Business Behind The News reaches 10,000 subscribers in 2025. This isn’t a joke. I really think we can achieve this, but I can only do it with your help. If you haven’t already please forward this email to your closest friends and family, and tell them how much you enjoy reading The Business Behind The News each week.

Quick Hits

🪏 Business

Copper prices just reached a record high of $11,771 dollars per metric ton as the industry faces supply challenges and increasing demand thanks to the AI industry. This surge in copper prices is happening at the same time that gold recently hit an all-time high of $4,565 dollars per ounce, and silver hit an all-time high of $83.62 per ounce in late December 2025. So if you have any old gold, silver, or a ton of copper sitting around your house you might want to think about selling it right about now.

💵 Entertainment

After cutting nearly every penny of the roughly $500 million dollars in annual funding for public media in 2025, the current Corporation for Public Broadcasting’s board of directors just voted to dissolve the private nonprofit entity all together. I don’t care what side of the political spectrum you may find yourself, but when they start coming after Big Bird and Elmo we should all be up in arms! Now how are future generations supposed to learn to read?!?

🤖 Tech

Nvidia’s Jensen Huang just announced the company’s new open-source AI platform for self-driving cars, called Alpamayo, which will first appear in the new all electric Mercedes Benz CLA compact sedan to bring human-like reasoning to vehicles. Nvidia also introduced the Vera Rubin architecture, named after the astronomer Vera Rubin who discovered dark matter. This is Nvidia’s successor to their Blackwell architecture. And lastly they debuted their new Jetson T4000 high-performance system-on-module chip (whatever that is) that’s designed specifically for humanoid robots, or what Nvidia is calling "Physical AI"; as in one-step closer to taking over the human race.

🍹 Partying

The global nightlife industry is shifting towards sober raves, as young people in Gen Z spend less on alcohol, and it's shaking up the spirits industry. Currently Gen Z consumers are spending $1,200 dollars less a year on drinks than other generations, like my Gen X. This nonalcoholic beverage industry has grown to be an $11 billion dollar a year market, while traditional bars saw their revenues drop by 15 percent in the last few years. Since I’m too old to be staying up all night at raves, and my anti-cholesterol statin prevents me from drinking alcohol in excess, these Gen X kids might be onto something.

☕ Starbucks

Starbucks just launched the new Iced Dubai Chocolate Mocha and the Caramel Protein Latte. I’m a sucker for caramel anything, so I’m gonna be looking for this at my local Starbucks next time I drive-thru. Starbucks had $37.2 billion in revenue in 2025, and I’m pretty sure my family single-handily helped them boost their revenue during the holiday season.

⚽ Sports

Martha Stewart and Snoop Dogg have joined an investment group to purchase a minority stake in the Swansea City AFC soccer club, which is currently valued at $216 million dollars. No word on how much either celebrity is investing, but since both of them are savvy investors I’m guessing it’s in the low single-digit millions, but what do I know. I’m just a content creator.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

Letter From The Editor
Happy New Year! 2026 is going to be a great year!

In today’s newsletter I discuss bitcoin and Satoshi Nakamoto has been gone for 15 years, Silver prices have been surging, soon you’ll be able to change your Gmail address, Nokia and NASA are working together to build the first cellular network on the moon, Beyoncé has officially become a billionaire according to Forbes, and the NBA is exploring setting up an European NBA league.

Let’s get into it!

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🟡 Satoshi Nakamoto Has Been Gone For 15 Years

It's been 17 years since Satoshi Nakamoto brought Bitcoin into the world, and 15 years since they were last heard from, and yet the world is no closer to knowing their true identity. Why is that? Good question. Let's get into it.

The identity of Satoshi Nakamoto remains one of the greatest mysteries in the history of tech and finance. This person, or group, created a system that changed how the world thinks about money, and then they walked away. The disappearance of Satoshi Nakamoto has led to years of searching and speculation, but no one has been able to prove who Satoshi Nakamoto is. Satoshi Nakamoto built the Bitcoin network, and then allowed the community to take over while they slowly melted into the background like Homer Simpson. The mystery of Satoshi Nakamoto is a core part of the story of digital money, and is just one part of the reason why Bitcoin has grown into a global force of change in the world, and why Bitcoin now has a market cap of $1.8 trillion dollars.

Satoshi Nakamoto launched the Bitcoin network by mining the very first block, which is known as the genesis block. Inside the code for this first block Satoshi Nakamoto included a specific message that explained why the system was being built. The message was a headline from The Times, a British newspaper, and it said “Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks,” symbolizing the financial system's problems that inspired Bitcoin as a decentralized alternative. Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to create a financial system that did not rely on banks or governments that could fail and require bailouts. Satoshi Nakamoto designed the system to be decentralized so that no single person or organization could control the system or print more money whenever they wanted. It makes sense then that Satoshi Nakamoto would remain anonymous so as not to steal the focus away from what Bitcoin would become to the world. Had they stuck around they would be the story, and not the crypto revolution that Bitcoin ushered in.

The creation of Bitcoin’s genesis block was the first step in a global movement that would eventually involve millions of people worldwide, creating millionaires and even billionaires, while threatening to change the dynamics between financial systems governed by countries in the form of fiat currency, and a new cryptocurrency called Bitcoin that was decentralized by nature and governed by the economic laws of supply and demand.

So where did Satoshi Nakamoto go? It’s not like they just up and disappeared; well not exactly like that. Their first step was when they stopped all public facing communication. For a while, they continued to communicate privately with two of the core Bitcoin developers, including Gavin Andresen and Mike Hearn, to confirm with them the transition of leadership of the project and responsibilities going forward. Then came Satoshi Nakamoto’s final sign off, when they shared "I've moved on to other things. It's in good hands with Gavin and everyone." A few days later on April 26, 2011, Satoshi Nakamoto sent what is considered their final email to Gavin Andresen himself, famously asking him to stop describing them (Satoshi Nakamoto) as a "mysterious shadowy figure", and instead focus on the Bitcoin open-source project and its other contributors.

In the end, Satoshi Nakamoto wanted to remain anonymous and maintain their privacy, while ensuring that Bitcoin would continue to be bigger than just one person. They were worried that the press would spin the Bitcoin story as someone’s get rich quick scheme, instead of as the decentralized open source cryptocurrency project that it was. This narrative ensured that the integrity of Bitcoin’s technological vision superseded any narrative concerning the personal glory of Satoshi Nakamoto.

The final act of Satoshi Nakamoto was the transfer of critical Bitcoin repository keys to Gavin Andresen in order to guarantee the long term success and decentralization of the entire Bitcoin network. Gavin Andresen was given the responsibility to lead the technical direction of the project, while Mike Hearn was given information about the status of the development. The code was left in a repository in a state where it could continue to function without the presence of Satoshi Nakamoto. And with that Satoshi Nakamoto was gone, without a forwarding mail address. This is someone who didn’t ever want to be found or contacted ever again.

The mystery of “Who is Satoshi Nakamoto?” remains unsolved. None of the Bitcoin held in the earliest Bitcoin wallets that were created when Satoshi Nakamoto mined the first Bitcoin have ever been touched. In total, it’s believed that Satoshi Nakamoto mined a total of 1,100,000 Bitcoins. These Bitcoin can be traced to the earliest blocks mined on the blockchain, and their associated addresses. One interesting quirk of the blockchain is that while only the person with a wallet’s keys can access a wallet to remove Bitcoin, anyone can send Bitcoin to a wallet. The very first Bitcoin wallet that was created by Satoshi Nakamoto when he successfully mined a block of 50 Bitcoin is called the “Genesis Wallet”. After that each new block of 50 Bitcoin mined were deposited into a new wallet that Satoshi Nakamoto controlled. Since the creation of the “Genesis Wallet”, people have continued to send Bitcoin to that wallet as tips or to thank Satoshi Nakamoto for his creation. In total an additional 50 Bitcoin have been sent to the “Genesis Wallet” by thousands of other wallets in the last 17 years as a form of tribute. You gotta love the Bitcoin community!

One of the most important rules Satoshi Nakamoto put into the Bitcoin code is the limit on the total number of Bitcoins that can ever exist. There will only ever be 21 million Bitcoins in the system, and this makes Bitcoin scarce like gold. Currently there are 19,934,271 million Bitcoin in circulation. Satoshi Nakamoto also created a process called “the halving”, which cuts the number of new Bitcoins that are minted in each block in half every 4 years. Technically, this happens every 210,000 blocks, and that comes out to around every 4 years depending on how much processing power is being applied to mining Bitcoin across the system. This “halving” is done in order to ensure that the supply of new Bitcoins slows down over time in order to prevent inflation and makes existing Bitcoin more valuable as the total supply approaches the maximum limit of 21 million Bitcoin. This mathematical certainty is different from traditional fiat currencies, where governments can print as much money as they want, which can cause inflation. Satoshi Nakamoto built this rule to ensure the long term value of the Bitcoin network would be protected by the laws of mathematics, rather than the decisions of politicians. The predictable issuance of new Bitcoin allows investors to calculate the exact supply of the asset at any point in the future. This transparency is a major reason why Bitcoin is often referred to as digital gold. Satoshi Nakamoto knew that scarcity would be essential for the currency to be viewed as a store of value. As it stands right now, the very last Bitcoin is expected to be mined around the year 2140.

One of the very first times that anyone used Bitcoin to buy a physical item is the famous story of one of the earliest core Bitcoin developers on the project named Laszlo Hanyecz. He wanted to see if the digital Bitcoins in his wallet could actually be used to purchase something in the real world. Laszlo Hanyecz went to a forum and offered 10,000 Bitcoins to anyone who would order two large pizzas and have them delivered to his house. A 19-year old man named Jeremy Sturdivant accepted the offer, and used his own credit card to buy two large pizzas from Papa John's for Laszlo Hanyecz. At the time those 10,000 were worth about $41 dollars, but today those Bitcoins would be worth $875,800,000! So Laszlo Hanyecz's loss should be Jeremy Sturdivant’s gain, right? Nope! Jeremy Sturdivant didn’t keep the Bitcoins he got from Laszlo Hanyecz. He used them to buy video games.

OMG!

Today, people celebrate May 22nd as “Bitcoin Pizza Day” in commemoration of Laszlo Hanyecz’s first purchase of 2 large pizzas for 10,000 Bitcoin.

Quick side note to this story, those 2 large pizzas from Papa Johns weren’t the only time Laszlo Hanyecz used Bitcoin to purchase pizzas. Because he was one of the earliest Bitcoin miners, mining 50 Bitcoin every few hours with no way of spending the Bitcoin, it added up fast. According to Laszlo Hanyecz, he believes he may have mined as much as 100,000 Bitcoin, and used ALL of it to purchase pizzas. Before you flip out thinking about how much Bitcoin that would be in today's dollars, you need to remember that Bitcoin didn't really have any value back then. Laszlo Hanyecz was mining 50 Bitcoin every few hours when there were only a few dozen other Bitcoin miners in the world. Today, all those Bitcoins that Laszlo Hanyecz mined, and then used to buy pizzas, would be worth $8.75 billion dollars!

Hope those pizzas were good!

So what would happen if someone were to come forward claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto? Well, more than a handful of colorful characters have in recent years claimed to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but none of their claims have ever panned out. In order to conclusively prove their identity they would need to provide proof that they could access any of Satoshi Nakamoto’s early wallets, move those Bitcoins, or sign a message using the private keys associated with the genesis block. Without doing that, there can be no definitive proof that anyone claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto is really them.

That hasn’t stopped some people from claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto, only to be publicly humiliated when they failed to provide that proof. My favorite example of someone falling flat on their face after claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto is the case of Craig Steven Wright, who claimed for years to be Satoshi Nakamoto, but when push-came-to-shove the High Court of England ruled against Craig Steven Wright. Judge James Mellor ruled that the evidence in the trial was overwhelming that Craig Steven Wright was not Satoshi Nakamoto, and that he had lied extensively including forging documents to try and support his false claims. Craig Steven Wright was sentenced to twelve months in prison which was suspended for two years as long as he never again sues anyone while claiming to be Satoshi Nakamoto.

Today Satoshi Nakamoto’s Bitcoin wallets are worth approximately $96 billion dollars, and have remained untouched for the last 17 years. The silence of Satoshi Nakamoto is the most powerful evidence that the creator intended for the project to live on without him.

So will we ever know the identity of Satoshi Nakamoto? My guess is no, not after all this time. If they had wanted to come forward they probably would have done so by now. It’s obvious that they didn’t create Bitcoin for the money, since they’ve never touched any of the Bitcoin they mined. And because they’ve never come forward it wasn’t for the publicity of being the creator of Bitcoin. So why did they do it? The best answer I can come up with is they wanted to bring something into this world that didn’t exist, and they wanted it to live on long after they were gone. Bitcoin has achieved both of those goals. Thank you Satoshi Nakamoto.

Quick Hits

🩶 Business

Silver prices have been surging in the last week, and just hit an all time high of $83.90 dollars per ounce over the weekend. Silver has rocketed up over 158% in 2025, while outperforming the S&P 500 total return index. I asked ChatGPT, so you didn’t have to, and it predicts that Silver could reach $100 per ounce in 2026, with some analysts predicting that Silver could reach between $100-$200 per ounce by the end of 2026.

💸 Entertainment

Beyoncé has officially become a billionaire according to Forbes, following the success of her “Renaissance World Tour”, which earned $579 million dollars, and the growth of her music catalog with the release of her “Cowboy Carter” album and accompanying "Rodeo Chitlin' Circuit" tour, which brought in over $400 million from ticket sales and $50 million dollars in merchandise. Damn! Beyoncé is just printing money with each new album and tour!

📫 Tech

Google’s CEO Sundar Pichai announced that users can now change their primary Gmail address without having to create a new account or losing any of their existing emails or data.  How will this work? Well, essentially you’ll create a new email address, and your old one will still be active and act as an alias that redirects incoming emails to your new email address. I won’t bother trying to explain how this works technically, but I don’t understand how alias or even email works in the first place, but it is nice to see that a company worth over $2 trillion dollars will finally let me change my Wu-tang Clan referenced email address from 2004.

🌝 Space

Nokia and NASA are working together to build the first cellular network on the moon through a contract valued at $14.1 million dollars. Their goal is to set up a 4G system that will support HD video streaming for both astronauts and lunar rovers as a part of the Artemis program. Spending $14.1 million dollars for astronauts to doomscroll on the moon seems expensive, but can you really put a price on watching cute cat videos?

🏀 Sports

The NBA is exploring setting up an European NBA league, and is talking with a number of family offices, Gulf state investment funds, and Premier League sports teams about purchasing stakes in the new teams for between $500 million to $1 billion dollars. By some estimates a new European league could generate $3 billion dollars in annual revenue, and would have a market valuation of $20 billion dollars. So it’s easy to see why NBA Commissioner Adam Silver is exploring the expansion. 

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter we discuss consumer confidence and the holiday shopping season, Google’s TPUs chips might be a $1 trillion dollar revenue driver, Jelly Roll gets a pardon, get ready for a S&P 500 for cryptocurrencies, Palantir’s billionaire CEO Alex Karp just purchased a 3,700 acre St. Benedict’s Monastery for $120 million dollars, Jake Paul got his butt handed to him but still made $92 million dollars for the fight, the Kansas City Chiefs just signed a deal to build a $2.5 billion dollar domed stadium in Kansas City, Kansas, Coinbase is launching a prediction market, and Google wants to replace Zillow.

Let’s get into it.

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🎁 Consumer Confidence And The 2025 Holiday Shopping Season

The 2025 holiday shopping season is almost over, with Christmas only a few days away. This year, the season is proving to be highly unusual and a pretty stressful period for most American consumers - myself included. While the streets and malls may look traditional, the financial data reveals consumers who are increasingly divided and deeply concerned about the future of their household budgets.

This year’s holiday season is defined by a significant tension between the desire to celebrate and the reality of rising costs, creating a shopping landscape unlike any in recent memory. For some higher-income households, they’ve barely noticed the higher prices; they’re spending the same, if not more, this holiday season than they did in 2024. For middle and lower-income households, it’s a very different story. Everything is more expensive, but paychecks haven’t kept pace with inflation. The result is that many parents are having to cut back and tell their kids 'no' to simple things, like brand-name cereals or the latest sneakers when their current pair still has plenty of life left in them. I’m speaking from personal experience here.

Economists call this a K-shaped economy. It’s defined by a post-downturn recovery where different economic groups' spending diverges dramatically. Wealthy households see their income and portfolios shooting up the top arm of the 'K,' representing strong growth, while lower- and middle-income households find their incomes lagging or even declining as they face inflation and job insecurity - representing the bottom part of the 'K.' This K-shaped economy marks a stark divide where high-income earners thrive with rising wealth from investments, contrasting with how the rest of us are struggling with the cost of living, stagnant wages, inflation, and mounting debt.

The National Retail Federation is forecasting total holiday sales for November and December to grow between 3.7% and 4.2% over last year, which would push total spending past $1 trillion dollars for the first time ever. In comparison, holiday sales in 2024 totaled $976.1 billion dollars, which was also a record. This growth suggests a resilient consumer, but a deeper look at the data shows a clear divergence in financial health. According to a PwC survey, consumers overall expect their average seasonal spending to decline by 5% from 2024 - the first notable drop in expectation since 2020. 

Americans still feel like giving this holiday season; it’s just that their spending power isn’t what it used to be even a year ago, and consumers are clearly stressed. Affordability is the main anxiety driving this change in behavior, despite what some politicians may say in their speeches. This only enhances the perception that they are detached from the reality of the average American consumer.

Data from a Gallup poll shows a sharp contrast in planned gift spending based on income. Americans in households earning less than $50,000 dollars now expect to spend $651 dollars on holiday gifts. This marks a drop of roughly $100 dollars from last year’s $776 dollars. This group is clearly tightening their belts. Meanwhile, middle-class Americans in households earning $100,000+ dollars are planning to spend $1,479 dollars, which is up from $1,403 dollars in 2024 - so, basically the same. The overall average estimated gift spending in 2025 sits at $1,007 dollars, almost identical to the $1,014 dollars from the previous year. This stability in the average figure hides that K-shaped recovery where high-income consumers are pulling the numbers up while lower-income groups pull back.

The financial strain is exacerbated by high debt levels and diminished savings. Yea, tell me about it! Total outstanding credit card balances reached an all-time high of $1.23 trillion dollars in the third quarter of this year, according to the New York Federal Reserve. The average credit card balance for Americans carrying debt is now $7,719 dollars - sounds about right. This existing debt load is heavily influencing holiday plans. A survey by the firm Achieve found that 80% of consumers have less than $1,000 dollars set aside for their 2025 holiday expenses. This lack of cash savings means reliance on credit is high, with more than 52% of consumers expecting to incur debt that will take months to pay off. The personal savings rate in September was reported at a low 4.7%, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. Americans are not building a savings buffer, which is forcing many to fund holiday purchases with credit at a time of higher interest rates.

Hmmm, I wonder what’s changed in 2025 to affect Americans' savings and spending habits? Could it have anything to do with the effects tariffs have had on the price of literally everything? Yea, I think we have a winning answer here!

You know what’s one thing making it even easier for Americans to continue spending money so freely in the face of rising prices? Online shopping. Adobe forecasts that online holiday spending will reach $253.4 billion dollars this year, a 5.3% increase over last year. A significant portion of this growth is driven by mobile devices, which are expected to account for 56.1% of all online revenue. To manage the cost of these digital purchases, consumers are turning to 'Buy Now, Pay Later' services in record numbers. Not me, yet, but I have to be honest - I’ve been tempted.

Adobe reported that Cyber Monday alone saw $1.03 billion dollars in 'Buy Now, Pay Later' transactions. Since the start of the holiday season, these flexible payment methods have driven $10.1 billion dollars in total spend. While this helps consumers manage cash flow, a Motley Fool survey found that 57% of users rely on these services to buy items they otherwise could not afford, adding another layer of future financial risk. Consumers just can’t seem to catch a break!

The luxury and discount sectors are showing a widening gap in performance this year. J.P. Morgan research indicates that affluent households earning $200,000+ dollars dominated Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales, while mass-market shoppers are waiting for deeper post-holiday discounts. Roughly 44% of consumers will consider luxury gifts, but 25% of those shoppers are turning to pre-owned luxury items to save money. Discount retailers and off-price chains are positioned to benefit, as 77% of surveyed shoppers plan to 'trade down' on brands. Big-box stores are expected to capture 39% of holiday budgets as families prioritize essential goods over discretionary splurges. This shift highlights a market where value-driven retailers thrive while mid-tier specialty stores face volume declines and tighter margins.

So, let’s get into the root of much of America's angst. I touched on it sarcastically earlier, but get ready for the full firehose version. The pervasive effect of tariffs is a core problem adding to consumers' financial and psychological strain. The average effective tariff rate - which is between 14.4% to 17.9% - is the highest since the 1930s. This is creating upward pressure on the price of goods typically bought for the holidays. Analysis from the Yale Budget Lab estimates that all 2025 tariffs are causing a short-run price level increase of 2.3%. This translates to an average loss of purchasing power of $3,800 dollars for the average American household. Ouch!

This effect is not uniform across all products. Apparel and related prices are estimated to increase by 17% under the new tariffs. This directly hits the cost of clothing, shoes, and bags often purchased as gifts. This elevated cost for staple consumer goods is contributing to widespread consumer pessimism. So, that explains why I’m feeling so sad every time I pull out my credit card.

Holiday travel and the labor market also reflect this mood of cautious participation. According to Deloitte, more than half of Americans intend to travel this season, but their average travel budget of $2,334 dollars is down 18% from 2024 levels. On the employment side, retailers are being more conservative. The National Retail Federation expects retailers to hire between 265,000 and 365,000 seasonal workers this year, a noticeable decrease from the 442,000 seasonal hires made in 2024. This reduction in seasonal hiring is the lowest level in over 15 years, according to CBS News. The trend reflects a softening labor market and a desire by businesses to keep costs low in an uncertain trade environment. These shifts in travel and employment show that the economic ripples of the holiday season extend far beyond the checkout counter.

The consequence is a fundamental change in how Americans approach holiday shopping. A BMO survey found that 61% of consumers are changing their holiday spending plans this year specifically because of tariff-related concerns. Two in five Americans 41% plan to cut back on spending due to the rising cost of living. Consumers are prioritizing value. A PwC survey shows that 78% of shoppers are seeking less expensive alternatives. More than a quarter of American consumers 25% started their holiday shopping earlier to lock in prices and avoid potential future increases. This strategic, frugal approach demonstrates that while Americans value their holiday traditions, financial pressure has forced them to become highly disciplined.

The 2025 holiday shopping season is typically a period of strong sales growth, but this year it’s not even across all consumers. The National Retail Federation’s prediction of sales surpassing $1 trillion dollars for the first time is a nice soundbite, but I’m highly skeptical of it coming true. The truth will be in the numbers we get when the holiday season is over, and all that’s left are the returns.

Quick Hits

🏦 Business

Google’s custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs) chips could reach a market valuation of $1 trillion dollars, based on the estimated $10 billion dollars in revenue the company is pulling in per year from the sales of these AI chips. Google’s parent company Alphabet has been scaling their AI data centers, and renting out their TPUs chips to customers who are hungry for AI chips that aren’t named Nvidia and both overly expensive and incredibly hard for companies to get their hands on. To date, Google has only used these TPUs internally, but with demand rising they’ve been approached by other hyperscalers about purchasing these chip sets outright for use in their own data centers. Sensing an opportunity to bring to the markets their own AI chips Google is ramping up production, and has recently signed a multi-billion dollar deal to supply 1 million of their TPUs chips to Amazon-backed Anthropic. Heads up Nvidia, you’ve got new competition coming from Google.

🫘 Entertainment

Country star Jelly Roll, known by his god-given name Jason DeFord, was just pardoned by Tennessee Governor Bill Lee for the two felony convictions he received for a robbery when he was 17, and drug possession when he was 23.

How is this business news? Well Jelly Roll has been a champion of prison reform and redemption, and has made it one of the pillars of his music career. Jelly Roll’s latest tour, the Beautifully Broken Tour, brought in $67.5 million dollars and sold 597,000 tickets across 48 individual shows. Jelly Roll’s net worth is estimated to be over $10 million dollars, and he’s used his platform and fortune to help his community, like building a recording studio in a juvenile jail, supporting reentry programs like the Health and Reentry Project (HARP) that focuses on holistic support for formerly incarcerated individuals, and inspiring others with his own transformation from inmate to a Grammy-nominated artist. Now that’s a role model.

🎲 Prediction Markets

Coinbase is about to launch a prediction market, powered by Kalshi, that will also offer their customers zero commission stock and options trading. This is all in an effort to transform Coinbase into an everything app that CEO Brian Armstrong says will one day be a one-stop financial platform. 

While the prediction market aspect of this deal is interesting and is the lead story, I think the idea of tokenized on-chain equities, that could be traded 24/7/365 without a centralized exchange, is the real hidden story here. This has the potential to upset the order of the entire $127 trillion dollar global equities market.

🪙 Crypto

Right now there's no S&P 500 for cryptocurrencies, but that’s about to change of Bitwise Asset Management’s CEO Hunter Horsley gets his way. Bitwise is seeking approval for a new ETF that would track the top 10 largest cryptocurrencies by market capitalization. We’re talking about the usual suspects like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Ripple, and Solana to name a few.

This proposed ETF, or exchange traded fund, would aim to provide investors with a broad index of cryptocurrencies, similar to how the S&P 500 is structured. The current Bitwise 10 Crypto Index Fund currently holds $1.2 billion dollars worth of cryptocurrencies, and would transition from an OTC product to an ETF listed on the Nasdaq exchange if the SEC gives the green light.

💸 Billionaires

Palantir’s billionaire CEO Alex Karp just purchased ultimate real estate getaway. A 3,700 acre St. Benedict’s Monastery that has been home to Trappist Monks for 68 Years, located in Snowmass, Colorado, for a whopping $120 million dollars. This makes it the most expensive residential real estate transaction in Colorado’s history. The property features a 21,000 square foot main residence, where the monastery and "retreat center" are housed, as well as two smaller dwellings to the west of the main residence and another one that "towers over the entire property" providing views of the private valley and three streams that come with the estate.

Alex Karp is known to spend around five hours a day cross country skiing in the winter as part of his exercise routine that has enabled him to decrease his body fat to just 7%.

So let me see if I got this straight. Alex Karp is CEO of one of the hottest AI companies in the world, he’s a billionaire, is incredibly fit, and is now the owner of a 3,700 acre former monastery that he just bought for $120 million dollars. I can’t even begin to count the ways that doesn’t sound fair.

⛪ Real Estate

Zillow’s stock sank last week by 12% after reports surfaced that Google is testing a new real estate search feature. Zillow’s concern is that Google’s move could redirect traffic away from Zillow’s website. The drop in stock price cut $1.6 billion off of Zillow’s market cap, which has continued to fall and now stands around $14.59 billion dollars from a peak of $31 billion dollars back in 2021.

The Google real estate sales listings appear next to search results, and are powered by real estate data company HouseCanary. Users can view a property’s full details, request a tour, and contact an agent. If users can get everything about a property right from a search result, why would they ever need to visit Zillow’s website again?

Zillow should be nervous right about now.

🥊 Sports

Jake Paul got his butt handed to him by former world heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua on Saturday night, December 20 in the live Netflix streamed match, and at the same time broke his jaw in two places and had to have surgery to fix it while losing a few teeth during the ordeal. On the upside, both Jake Paul and Anthony Joshua will split the $184 million dollar purse evenly, with each boxer making $92 million dollars. For that kind of money you can break my jaw anytime!

🏈 NFL

The Kansas City Chiefs just signed a deal to build a $2.5 billion dollar domed stadium in Kansas City, Kansas - a move that would see the team leave their current home at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri and move across state lines in 2031 to their team’s namesake Kansas City, Kansas.

Don’t even get me started on why there’s a Kansas City in both Missouri and Kansas. The point is that the Kansas City Chiefs are getting a new stadium, and the Hunt family is kicking in $500 million dollars toward the project’s $2.5 billion dollar price tag.

No doubt the team has their sights on landing a Super Bowl in their new domed stadium, now if only the Kansas City Chiefs can find the endzone and make it to the playoffs next year.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter we discuss Disney’s Zootopia 2 crushing it at the box office worldwide, the Nasdaq wants to extend trading to 23 hours a day, Disney has greenlighted a live action spinoff of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ entitled ‘Gaston’, Taylor Swift has a new docuseries out on Disney+ entitled “The End of an Era” and a concert film called “The Final Show”, Ripple Labs, Circle Internet Financial, BitGo, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets each received conditional bank charters, Sam Altman wants his own rocket company to compete with his arch nemesis Elon Musk, Tesla’s board is getting rich(er) with all those glorious stock options that they approved for both Elon Musk and themselves, SpaceX wants to IPO in 2026, and Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have sold a minority stake in their Wrexham AFC to the private equity firm Apollo Sports Capital valuing the team at $440 million dollars.

Let’s get into it.

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💰 Disney’s Zootopia 2 Crushes It At The Box Office

The theatrical release of Zootopia 2 has proven to be an overwhelming financial success for Walt Disney, exceeding all financial expectations and joining an elite club of box office titans. The animated sequel, directed by Jared Bush and Byron Howard, officially crossed the $1 billion dollars threshold in worldwide revenue in just 17 days, cementing its status as one of the most successful films of 2025. The entire Zootopia franchise has now raked in a massive $2.155 billion dollars in worldwide box office totals. This achievement is a strong indicator of the franchise’s enduring global appeal, following the enormous financial success of the original Zootopia back in 2016, which itself went on to earn over $1.023 billion dollars worldwide against a reported production budget of $150 million dollars.

Without giving away too much of the plot, the sequel picks up with Judy Hopps, the determined rabbit police officer, and Nick Wilde, the sly fox turned ZPD officer, who are now official partners at the Zootopia Police Department. Their differing personalities and approaches to law enforcement quickly lead to hysterical issues on the job, but these issues threaten their partnership and force them into a mandated "Partners in Crisis" therapy program. The duo stumbles upon a deeper mystery surrounding a newly introduced reptile named Gary De'Snake and the dark history of Zootopia itself. This investigation takes them into previously unseen districts of the city, including the segregated Marsh Market and a historic gala hosted by the influential Lynxley family, whose ancestors shaped the city’s founding. You still with me? In their neverending pursuit of the truth, often against the direct orders of their superiors, they become fugitives of the very job they’ve dedicated their lives to all in order to uncover a massive conspiracy that challenges the foundational myth of Zootopia as a city of perfect inclusion.

One of the biggest factors driving Zootopia 2's insane performance at the worldwide box office is the film’s massive opening run during the busy Thanksgiving holiday period, where Zootopia 2 secured the highest global opening of an animated movie for all time, debuting with $559.5 million dollars worldwide over a five-day period. The North American domestic gross was the second-highest Thanksgiving holiday opening ever, bringing in an estimated $156 million dollars, with $403.5 million dollars coming from the film’s international box office. The reigning champion of the Thanksgiving holiday season remains last year’s debut of Walt Disney Animation Studios’ Moana 2 that brought in $225.4 million dollars worldwide over the same five-day period.

The film’s success is also driven by its exceptionally strong reception and staying power in North America, despite the ongoing conversation of Americans' feelings about the K-shaped economy as we enter the 2025 holiday season. The movie reclaimed the number one domestic box office spot in its third weekend of release, which is a strong indication of the word-of-mouth this film has that is helping it to fight off new competition. The domestic total of $258.97 million dollars after three weekends of release shows Zootopia 2 has commercial "legs," even with the bulk of its revenue coming from overseas. The movie’s success has been boosted by its Certified Hot audience score of 96% on Rotten Tomatoes, which signals a positive viewer sentiment that is sustaining the film’s box office momentum well beyond the Thanksgiving holiday season.

The international markets have been a crucial component of Zootopia 2's rapid rise above the $1 billion dollar milestone. As it stands right now the international gross alone has contributed a staggering $877.7 million dollars, eclipsing the film’s domestic total of $259 million dollars after three weekends of release. The film’s ability to draw huge crowds in diverse markets across the world is one of the reasons it has become the fastest PG-rated film to ever reach the $1 billion dollars mark globally after its Thanksgiving holiday debut.

Zootopia 2's performance in China has been exceptional, providing a tremendous boost to the overall box office numbers by contributing over $502.4 million dollars to date, which makes China the largest single market for Zootopia 2 outside of North America. This Chinese box office haul has not only made Zootopia 2 the highest-grossing imported animated film in the country’s history, but also the second highest-grossing Hollywood film of all time in China, behind only Marvel Studios’ Avengers: Endgame, which is hard to argue with if you think about it. Beyond China, the film has posted impressive numbers from countries like France which brought in $36.4 million dollars, South Korea which brought in $35 million dollars, and Japan which brought in $27.7 million dollars. If you’re starting to get the feeling that Zootopia 2 has a broad appeal across the globe then you’re starting to understand why this movie has soared to become the highest grossing animated film in history.

Revenue from premium larger format screenings, like IMAX, have had a big impact on revenue from the higher ticket prices. Zootopia 2 has generated an estimated $56.6 million dollars from global IMAX screens alone. This huge revenue stream is overwhelmingly international, with $45.7 million dollars of the total coming from overseas territories where IMAX is more developed than in the domestic U.S. market. As you can imagine, China led the way in revenue from IMAX screenings, contributing $34 million dollars. The remaining $10.9 million dollars came from domestic U.S. IMAX receipts. This performance makes Zootopia 2 the second Hollywood animated film ever to surpass $50 million dollars in the IMAX format.

Pop quiz:

Can you guess what the number one animated IMAX movie is worldwide in terms of revenue?

The answer is the movie Ne Zha 2, which earned over $164 million dollars from IMAX screens globally. This made Ne Zha 2 the highest-grossing animated IMAX film ever released in China, and the highest-grossing animated IMAX movie worldwide.

Zootopia 2, which was written and directed by Jared Bush alongside co-director Byron Howard, has been a massive global hit for Disney, having quickly passed the $1 billion dollars threshold and currently standing at just over $1.137 billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide. Its success confirms the franchise's powerhouse status and reinforces the strategy of prioritizing major theatrical releases, exactly as its outstanding domestic and international opening figures had initially suggested. The exceptional financial results achieved by Zootopia 2 prove that when the property is right and the execution is sharp, as it usually is from Disney, moviegoers will continue to turn out in droves to the theater to watch their favorite Disney movies on the big-screen.

Disney doesn’t just have one $1 billion dollar animated hit on their hands. Zootopia 2 is their second animated movie to hit $1 billion dollars in global earnings in 2025, following the success of Lilo & Stitch earlier this year, which has brought in $1.03 billion dollars to date.

Together, the original Zootopia movie as well as the Zootopia+ series, have collectively surpassed 725 million viewing hours worldwide on Disney+, which has reinforced the Zootopia franchise's enduring value across the company's streaming and content divisions. So you just know they’re gonna milk Zootopia for all it’s worth with merchandise, rides at their theme parks, and new sequels. When that revenue starts to drop off, they’ll take a page from Moana and release a live-action version of Zootopia. I can just see the dollar signs now!

Quick Hits

🏦 Business

The Nasdaq stock market has officially petitioned the SEC requesting to extend the exchange’s trading day to 23 hours a day. The proposed plan divides the trading day into two distinct sessions that total 23 hours of operation. The primary day session is the longest stretch and runs for 16 hours, beginning early at 4 a.m. and continuing through the standard New York day until 8 p.m. Eastern Time. Once this session concludes, the Nasdaq will shut down specifically from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m. Eastern Time for a strict one 1 period dedicated to system maintenance, software updates, and the clearing of trades. Following this necessary pause, the overnight session opens at 9 p.m. and operates for 7 hours until 4 a.m. the next morning, allowing investors to trade during market hours in Asia and the early morning in London.

As a daytrader, I have mixed feelings about this news. We already have the 4 a.m. until 8 p.m. New York session. I don’t think more trading hours are the answer, because there isn’t the same volume or liquidity. Essentially there aren’t enough people trading during extended hours to be able to easily enter and exit a trade as it stands. What I would find to be more interesting would be if they had a specific Asian trading session, then a European trading session, followed by the current New York trading session; 3 distinct sessions, with a 1 hour period between the session. Then I think that could attract the volume and liquidity that is currently lacking in extended trading, but what do I know? I’ve only been trading since 1998.

🤺 Entertainment

Because Disney’s ‘Moana 2’ was so successful, bringing in more than $1 billion globally in 2025, they decided to create a live action version of ‘Moana’, which comes out on July 10, 2026. You just know it’s going to crush it at the box office!

Now Disney has greenlighted a live action spinoff of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ entitled ‘Gaston’, which will be more of a "swashbuckling" action-adventure movie that they say will provide a fresh, original origin story for Gaston. I’m a sucker for a good origin story.

Considering that the 2017 live action remake of ‘Beauty and the Beast’ earned over $1.26 billion dollars at the global box office, it’s safe to say Disney will continue to print money by recycling their original IP for years to come.

🫶 Taylor Swift

Taylor Swift has a new docuseries out on Disney+ entitled “The End of an Era” and a concert film called “The Final Show” that began airing on Friday, December 12. Earlier this year Taylor Swift signed a record $100 million dollar deal, with Disney CEO Robert Iger, for the exclusive rights to both these projects, which chronicles the record breaking tour that earned over $2 billion dollars in ticket sales worldwide from 10 million fans who flocked to her “Eras Tour” in 2024.

🪙 Crypto

Ripple Labs, Circle Internet Financial, BitGo, Paxos, and Fidelity Digital Assets each received conditional bank charters last week from the U.S. Office of the Comptroller of the Currency. These federal trust bank charters will allow them to oversee fiduciary and custodial services, which means they can legally hold, manage, and protect assets like stable coin reserves. This is a good first step, but their goal is to eventually receive a full banking license, which will allow them to accept deposits from business and retail customers, make commercial loans, provide checking and savings accounts, and offer mortgages to the general public. With their new federal trust bank charters these companies will be subject to more scrutiny, which is actually what these crypto companies are looking for in order to gain mainstream acceptance that will eventually lead to broader adoption of cryptocurrencies by the public. 

👽 Sam Altman

Sam Altman is so jealous of his former friend and OpenAI co-founder Elon Musk, that he’s been talking to a couple of space startups about either acquiring or investing in them so he can have his own rocket company. How fragile can one man’s ego be that he needs to run out and spend billions of dollars to have their own space startup? Actually, it turns out there’s a handful of billionaires who do own space startups, so strike that question.

🤑 Tesla

Tesla’s board is getting rich(er) with all those glorious stock options that they approved for both Elon Musk and themselves. To date the board has made over $3 billion dollars from the stock options they’ve granted themselves. Tell me again how I can get on the board of a tech startup?!?!

🚀 Space

There's ego, and then there's Elon Musk! Imaging being so successful, and having so many banks falling over themselves to represent SpaceX when their go public in one of the most highly anticipated IPOs in history, that you are now asking those banks to audition in order to represent your company when it IPOs at a valuation of $1.5 TRILLION DOLLARS!

Elon Musk is already the wealthiest person in the world, with a net worth of around $510 billion dollars according to the Forbes Billionaire List. When SpaceX IPOs, Elon Musk's 42% stake in the company will add another $630 billion dollars to his net worth, rocketing him up to having a net worth of $1.14 trillion dollars - making Elon Musk the world's 1st Trillionaire!

🏈 Sports

Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney have sold a minority stake in their Wrexham AFC to the private equity firm Apollo Sports Capital, which values the soccer club at approximately $440 million dollars. Let’s rewind a minute, and remind everyone that Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney originally purchased the team back in November 2020 for roughly $2.5 million dollars. That’s a 17,500% return on investment in only 5 years! The transaction involves the sale of a 10% stake Wrexham AFC, but both Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney will continue to be the controlling shareholders of the club. So I think it’s safe to say both owners could retire from acting and literally just watch their Welsh soccer team play while continuing to make money off their investment for the rest of their lives. Nice job if you can get it!

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I ask the question: Are we in an AI bubble? Then we discuss Netflix and Paramount Skydance’s offers to acquire Warner Bros. Discovery including who I think will win in the end, Kate Beckinsale tells a hysterical and completely over-the-top and inappropriate story which we just loved, Lando Norris wins the 2025 Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship, SpaceX seeks a valuation of $600 billion dollars to become the number one private company with the highest valuation, and Inter Miami FC wins the MLS Cup.

Scroll on!

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🫧 Are We In An AI Bubble?

Are we in an AI bubble? It's the question that everyone on Wall Street and Main Street is asking as we witness the meteoric rise of companies at the center of the Artificial Intelligence revolution. You don’t have to look any further than the sky high valuations of AI chip powerhouses like Nvidia, which is currently valued at an eye-watering $4.44 trillion dollars, and AMD, whose stock has rallied more than 83% in 2025. Then you have the cloud computing giants like Oracle and Alphabet’s Google, which are racing to build out their infrastructure to handle the massive demand for AI. Oracle, with a market cap around $625.21 billion dollars, has seen its stock jump more than 171% over the last three years. Even hyperscalers like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are spending billions of dollars in capital expenditure on data centers, and their investors are expecting huge future returns on those investments. Google is undertaking an aggressive $85 billion dollars capital expenditure plan for 2025 for its AI and Cloud infrastructure buildout, giving its Google Cloud business an annual revenue run rate now exceeding $50 billion dollars. Let’s get into it.

One reason to think we’re in an AI bubble is by looking at the staggering gains in the stock market this year, which some compare to the good ’ol days of the dot-com bubble of the late 90s and early 2000s when the S&P 500 rose by approximately 170%, and the Nasdaq Composite Index surged by approximately 572%. Today the S&P 500 has seen a total return of 18.22% in 2025, following a massive 25.02% total return in 2024. The Nasdaq Composite has also shown incredible momentum, posting a 29.6% total return in 2024 and continuing its surge in 2025. Even the broader Dow Jones Industrial Average is up around 12.72% in 2025. 

Specific companies at the core of the AI boom are driving these market gains. For instance, Nvidia’s stock has surged over 33.5% in 2025 alone, while AMD’s stock has posted gains of approximately 83.0% for the year. Even established giants have seen huge moves, with Microsoft’s stock rising by nearly 14.8% and IBM’s stock up an impressive 39.9% in 2025. Meta is up around 8.5% this year, and Oracle has seen its stock rise around 32.2% in 2025. Meanwhile, the valuations of some companies seem to defy traditional metrics. The trailing Price to Earnings ratio for AMD is hovering around 125 times, which is an elevated valuation to say the least. The sheer speed of the market rally and the astronomical valuations for companies that have no earnings yet certainly bring back memories of the dot-com era when companies with no business plan or revenue were valued at billions of dollars. This time around, even profitable leaders like Nvidia carry a heavy valuation burden, trading at a price-to-sales ratio around 23 times sales.

Adding to the bubble conversation are the colossal funding rounds secured by AI startups at valuations that seem completely unhinged from current financial performance. OpenAI is my #1 example. OpenAI, which, after a massive $40 billion Series F funding round in March 2025 that valued the company at $300 billion, saw its valuation surge to a staggering $500 billion dollars in October 2025, following a secondary share sale, making OpenAI the number one private startup with the highest valuation. Another AI startup, Safe Superintelligence, which was founded by former OpenAI executives Ilya Sutskever and Daniel Levy as well as startup founder Daniel Gross, raised $2 billion dollars at a $32 billion dollar valuation in April 2025 without a product on the market. Then we have xAI, founded by Elon Musk, which closed a $10 billion dollars debt and equity fundraise campaign in July 2025, which included $5 billion dollars in debt financing and placed the company's estimated valuation around $80 billion dollars. These valuations for pre revenue companies are truly historical, and dwarf any startups during the dot-com bubble. This speculative frenzy also extends to the battle for AI talent, with top researchers being offered compensation packages that reportedly can reach tens of millions of dollars in annual compensation, sometimes exceeding $250 million dollars over four years as was the case when Meta hired Matt Deitke, a 24-year-old AI researcher known for his work on multimodal systems. This highlights the extreme competition for core AI intellectual property.

One big key difference between now and the dot-com bubble is that this time around, the companies that are doing the massive spending on AI data centers and infrastructure are not unprofitable startups. They are global giants that are making billions of dollars in revenue and profit. Nvidia’s fiscal year 2025 total revenue was a record $130.5 billion dollars, representing a massive 114.2% year-over-year increase, with its data center revenue alone soaring over $30.8 billion dollars in the third quarter of fiscal 2025. Amazon’s cloud business, AWS had over $100 billion dollars in annual revenue and $40 billion dollars in operating profit in 2025. Amazon is planning to increase its 2025 capital expenditures to more than $100 billion dollars, mostly to expand its AWS AI capacity. Microsoft, Meta, and Alphabet are also generating billions of dollars in revenue from their AI initiatives. Microsoft, through its Azure cloud and AI services, saw its AI business reach an annual revenue run rate of $13 billion dollars in the second quarter of fiscal year 2025, a stunning 175% increase year over year. Alphabet’s Google Cloud revenue, which is heavily fueled by AI infrastructure demand, grew 32% year over year to $13.6 billion dollars in the second quarter of 2025. Meta, while still primarily an advertising company, is seeing strong revenue growth that funds its AI spending, with its overall revenue increasing 26% year over year to $51.24 billion dollars in the third quarter of 2025. Even Oracle, which signed a landmark $300 billion dollars cloud computing contract with OpenAI in September 2025, expects its cloud infrastructure revenue to reach $25 billion dollars this fiscal year. Other major players like Intel and IBM, are also significantly profiting from the AI surge. IBM specifically generated a significant portion of its total revenue, estimated around $28 billion dollars in 2025, from AI-boosted segments like consulting and Red Hat cloud, which have seen billions of dollars in generative AI bookings. These are companies with strong balance sheets that are investing their profits into infrastructure, rather than the speculative frenzy of the late 90s.

The biggest question facing the markets today is whether this AI boom is sustainable, or if we are watching a bubble form right before our eyes. We see the sky high valuations for AI chip leaders like Nvidia and AMD, and the rapid growth of cloud giants like Oracle and Alphabet. The massive capital expenditures by hyperscalers like Microsoft, Meta, and Amazon are all driving the current market dynamics. It’s hard to look at the numbers and not ask the question: Are we in an AI bubble?

Quick Hits

🎬 Business

Over the weekend Netflix agreed to acquire the film and streaming assets of Warner Bros. Discovery, including HBO and HBO Max, for a $72 billion dollars equity value, which represents a total enterprise value of approximately $82.7 billion dollars, with Netflix using both cash and stock in an offer of $27.75 dollars per share.

David Ellison's Paramount Skydance, which started this whole thing by making an unsolicited offer to buy all of Warner Bros. Discovery, including their television assets, quickly launched a hostile takeover bid by going directly to shareholders with a superior, all-cash offer of $30 dollars per share for the entire company, creating an offer that values the entire company at $108.4 billion dollars.

Where’s David Ellison going to get all that cash? Good question. David Ellison’s dad, Larry Ellision is worth $272.9 billion dollars, and has already helped his son to the tune of billions of dollars to fund Skydance, and the recent merger with Paramount. Now Paramount Skydance has partnered with Affinity Partners, the private equity firm led by Donald Trump's son-in-law, Jared Kushner. They’ve also secured investments from the sovereign wealth fund of Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, and L'imad Holding Company PJSC, which is an entity owned by the government of Abu Dhabi, as well as a large debt component that has been fully committed by major banks and financial institutions, including Bank of America, Citi, and Apollo Global Management.

In a twist that literally everyone except Netflix saw coming, President Donald Trump has publicly voiced concern that the proposed Netflix deal could be a problem due to market dominance and pledged to be involved in the final regulatory decision. We all know what that means. This Netflix deal is never going to close, and they have pledged $5 billion dollars in a breakup fee if the deal falls through.

🥚 Entertainment

Kate Beckinsale was on Jimmy Kimmel recently, and told this insane story. My words can’t do it justice, so check out the clip below:

🚚 Delivery

Amazon is considering ending its 30 year partnership with the US Postal Service, and will instead conduct a reverse auction for delivery contracts. Negotiations with US Postal Service have stalled lately, and if Amazon stops using them it could cost the financially troubled US Postal Service nearly 8 percent of its total revenue, which was $79.5 billion dollars for fiscal Year 2024. If they lose 8%, which would come out to $6.36 billion dollars, then the US Postal System would only bring in $73.14 billion dollars. The US Postal Service already loses around $9 billion dollars a year, so for fiscal year 2026 they could be looking as a loss of $15.36 billion dollars a year. Ouch!

🏁 Formula 1

Lando Norris, the 26-year-old British driver for the Formula 1 team McLaren, claimed his maiden Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship at the intense Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Sunday, winning the title by only two points with 423 points over four-time champion Max Verstappen of Red Bull, who won the race, while McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri finished a close third in the overall drivers' standings with 410 points after accumulating seven Grand Prix victories and eighteen podium finishes across the twenty-four race season.

With this win Lando Norris will receive a $10 million dollars championship bonus, contributing to his total on-track earnings of $57.5 million dollars for 2025, which is still far behind Max Verstappen's $76 million dollars in earning for the year.

And in a quirk of the Formula 1 sport, the winner of the Formula 1 World Drivers' Championship has to pay a pay a huge super license fee based on how many points they scored the previous year, so Lando Norris could be on the hook to pay an estimated $1,191,250 for his Super Licence in 2026. Somehow, I think he can afford it!

🚀 Space

SpaceX is reportedly seeking an $800 billion dollars valuation in a new secondary share sale structure, which is double the company's prior $400 billion dollars valuation from earlier this year. This massive growth is driven by the Starlink satellite service, which currently serves over 8 million active customers. SpaceX won’t be receiving any of that cash. This secondary offering is to provide employee liquidity so they can sell shares that have been locked up in stock options since they started with SpaceX. Although there are now rumors that SpaceX could be exploring an IPO in 2026 that would raise $30 billion dollars and value the company at $1.5 trillion dollars if the stars align. Sorry, I couldn't resist the dad joke.

⚽ Sports

Inter Miami FC, co-owned by David Beckham, Jorge and Jose Mas, secured their first MLS Cup title in a 3 to 1 victory over the Vancouver Whitecaps over the weekend. Lionel Messi helped with two vital assists in a record-breaking postseason performance by the Argentine star. This historic win makes David Beckham the first individual ever to lift the trophy as both a player and as an owner. Inter Miami FC is now valued at approximately $1.2 billion dollars after winning their first MLS Cup.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss how Larry Page just became the second richest person in the world, “The Big Short” Michael Burry thinks Tesla and AI stocks are overvalued, you can buy a palazzo in Biella, Italy for $160,000 dollars,
“Zootopia 2” becomes the highest worldwide debut for an animated film, Michael Dell donates $6.25 billion dollars to 25 million children’s 'Trump Accounts', Switzerland votes against inheritance tax initiative, OpenAI invests in Thrive Holding’s AI startups and holdings, NASA has found tryptophan on an astroid, and MLS viewership is up big time this year.

Let’s get into it!

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💵 Larry Page Just Became The 2nd Richest Person In The World

Larry Page has just passed Larry Ellison to become the world’s second-richest person on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List, thanks in large part due to the increase in the stock price of Alphabet, Google’s parent company of which Larry Page is a co-founder of alongside his friend Sergey Brin, who sits at number five on Forbes’ list. Larry Page officially surpassed the net worth of Oracle founder Larry Ellison in early December to secure the number two spot on the global wealth list. The only other individual who remains ahead of Larry Page is Tesla CEO Elon Musk, whose personal fortune currently commands a net worth of roughly $489.9.4 billion dollars. Larry Page’s significant financial jump is the direct result of a massive and sustained rally in Alphabet’s shares, which have been heavily driven by investor enthusiasm for the company’s aggressive focus on artificial intelligence and its rapidly expanding cloud infrastructure development. This market momentum gained particular strength following Alphabet’s strong Q3 reporting, which included a remarkable 34% boost in cloud revenue. This success has propelled the parent company of Google to surpass $100 billion dollars in quarterly revenue for the first time ever. The financial markets did what they do, and have rewarded Alphabet's stock by surging by more than 86.6% in the last year.

Larry Page’s current staggering net worth reflects his influence in the tech world, where he’s been regarded as a visionary ever since he co-founded Google with Sergey Brin in 1998 while they were doctoral students at Stanford University. With the skyrocketing stock price of Alphabet, Larry Page’s estimated net worth has surged to an unprecedented $264.9 billion dollars. This immense personal fortune recently overtook the estimated $247.4 billion dollars held by Larry Ellison, whose wealth has been more volatile due to recent declines in Oracle’s stock price. To put Larry Page's wealth into perspective, his personal net worth is greater than the Gross Domestic Product of entire nations such as Hungary, which has an approximate GDP of $203.83 billion dollars. 

The sheer speed of Larry Page’s wealth accumulation is evident in the single-day gain of $4.5 billion dollars on Wednesday, December 3 when he saw when Alphabet's shares climbed by 1.7%, trading at approximately $321.24 dollars per share. This monumental stock performance has pushed Alphabet’s market capitalization to an astounding $3.8 trillion dollars, with the company now aggressively targeting a $4 trillion dollars valuation.

Alphabet's market capitalization experienced a colossal increase of approximately $1.435 trillion between December 2, 2024, and December 2, 2025, surging from around $2.365 trillion to $3.86 trillion dollars as of today. This explosive growth was almost entirely driven by investor confidence in the company's aggressive and successful pivot to Artificial Intelligence, with the market rewarding the strong performance of its Gemini 3 AI models and the strategic integration of AI into its core search product and enterprise solutions. Furthermore, the accelerating growth and improved profitability of Google Cloud Platform (GCP), fueled by soaring demand for its AI infrastructure and custom Tensor Processing Units (TPUs), firmly cemented Alphabet's position as a dominant, high-growth leader in the new AI era.

The vast fortune of Larry Page has allowed him to acquire a substantial portfolio of the usual billionaire toys and real estate, including a number of private islands around the world - yes, as in more than one private island! One of the crown jewels in his collection is Eustatia Island, a pristine 30-acre private paradise located in the British Virgin Islands, situated just north of Sir Richard Branson’s Necker Island. This island is designed as a model of self-sufficiency, boasting a complete state-of-the-art solar electric grid and an independent reverse osmosis desalinization plant to ensure its water supply is entirely clean and sustainable. Larry Page’s collection of tropical real estate also includes the Hans Lollik Islands in the U.S. Virgin Islands, and Cayo Norte which is located between Puerto Rico and the British Virgin Islands, that he acquired for a combined total of $32 million dollars in two separate real estate transactions. On the mainland, Larry Page and his wife Lucinda Southworth maintain a notable presence in Palo Alto, California, where he purchased a 9,000 square foot Spanish Colonial Revival house in 2005 for $7.2 million dollars. He later constructed a nearby 6,000 square foot environmentally conscious home designed with sustainable principles. For maritime travel, Larry Page was the former owner of the $45 million dollars superyacht Senses, which is a 193-foot expedition vessel that he acquired in 2011, which features amenities like a helicopter landing pad and a cruising range of 6,904.67 miles.

While his fame rests on his early work with Google, Larry Page’s long-term business vision is best demonstrated by his unique business ventures and foundational ideas. His original, breakthrough concept was PageRank, the mathematical algorithm that assigned a numerical importance score to every webpage based solely on the quality and quantity of links pointing to it. This idea formed the genius core of the Google search engine. Although the patent for PageRank was assigned to Stanford University, the institution later sold its 1.8 million shares of Google stock in 2005 for a value of $336 million dollars in exchange for the exclusive license to the algorithm. Larry Page has made a number of other bets with Google’s money, including on the life sciences company Calico and the autonomous driving unit Waymo, which both operate at significant losses, at least for now. This sustained, multi-billion dollar commitment to loss-making, long-term speculative technology is a powerful measure of Larry Page’s business intelligence. Larry Page also manages the Carl Victor Page Memorial Fund, his own philanthropic vehicle, which reports total assets of over $4 billion dollars and focuses on large grants toward environmental and human services projects.

The recent rise of Larry Page to the second-richest person in the world shows the extraordinary value Wall Street has placed on companies at the forefront of artificial intelligence and cloud computing. His massive wealth, which is now estimated at $264.9 billion dollars, is a direct result of the market’s positive response to Alphabet’s advancements in its cloud business and its next generation AI models like Gemini 3. The financial strength of the company has generated significant personal wealth for Larry Page, allowing him to successfully pass Larry Ellison for the number two spot on the Forbes Real-Time Billionaires List. This new positioning immediately behind Elon Musk underscores the continuing power of Silicon Valley’s founders to redefine the boundaries of personal fortune through strategic foresight and relentless technological innovation, driving the market capitalization of Alphabet toward the $4 trillion dollars mark.

Quick Hits

💰 Business

Michael Burry has been on a tear lately in his critique of companies he feels are overvalued, and he’s begun taking short positions in some of the biggest names in the newly formed AI bubble….if it’s even a bubble, which the jury is still out on.

Michael Burry is an investor and hedge fund manager famous for successfully predicting the 2008 U.S. housing crisis, and the inspiration for the movie “The Big Short”. That’s what makes his current market warnings carry such weight. Michael Burry has recently called Tesla's market valuation "ridiculously overvalued" at $1.43 trillion dollars, arguing that the company's stock price is divorced from its underlying fundamental performance.

Michael Burry's firm, Scion Asset Management, has established significant positions against several other technology players, including put options that targeted over $134 million dollars of Palantir Technologies stock and another $56 million dollars in puts against Nvidia. He’s been broadly critical of the tech industry for the widespread accounting practice of capitalizing massive expenditures on new artificial intelligence infrastructure, rather than immediately recognizing these costs as expenses. This specific accounting method, which is common among large AI "hyperscalers" like Microsoft, Alphabet, Oracle, and Meta, effectively allows these companies to artificially inflate their reported short term net earnings. Michael Burry argues that this widely adopted but misleading practice obscures the true cost of building out the massive computational power required to support the burgeoning AI industry.

If Michael Burry is saying companies like Tesla, or those in the AI industry, and are overvalued, then investors should probably listen up. This is a guy who knows what he talking about, or at least Hollywood thinks so.

🍿 Entertainment

Walt Disney's new movie “Zootopia 2” claimed the top spot over the five day Thanksgiving weekend, earning a massive $156 million dollars domestically and $556 million dollars globally. This makes “Zootopia 2” the highest worldwide debut for an animated film, and the fourth biggest opening globally for any kind of movie. The sequel shattered the previous film’s $75 million dollars domestic opening and was hugely popular in China, where it took in $272 million dollars of its total $400 million dollars international haul. So the new secret sauce for animated movies in Hollywood is to have a cute and cuddly fox and bunny, instead of a mouse with big ears or a princess.

🏡 Real Estate

A couple from Houston, Texas, John and Vicky Ambrose, purchased a 3,000 square foot dilapidated 1930s palazzo in Biella, Italy for 140,000 euros, or about $160,000 dollars, sight unseen. They knew of the region’s wine industry, and liked that it was off the beaten path of typical tourists. They had been looking for a second home in Europe to spend family vacations while hitting the slopes in the Alps; you know, like every American family dreams of.

They spent about $170,000 on renovations including new electrical, plumbing, and air conditioning. What they weren’t prepared for was the laid back approach to business in Italy, where the renovations latest more than 3 years.

They originally thought about buying one of the fabled $1 houses that have been all over social media with people from overseas buying their houses and apartments for $1 and then chronicling their renovations on YouTube. Ultimately, they didn’t want to go that route, and found that the 1930s palazzo had “good bones” that were only in need of some TLC to bring it back to its former glory.

The family doesn’t have any plans to rent the home out, but are looking forward to spending time there with family, sipping wine, and enjoying the calm and serene views for years to come. 

🏦 Offshore Banking

An initiative in Switzerland to impose a 50 percent federal tax on inheritances and gifts exceeding $61.8 million dollars has been defeated at the polls. The proposal, called the “Initiative for the Future”, was proposed by the Young Socialist party in Switzerland to generate revenue specifically for measures combating the climate crisis. Opponents of the initiative celebrated the rejection by over 78 percent of voters as a win against a risky fiscal experiment that would have resulted in wealthy families moving their money out of Switzerland and tarnishing the country’s banking biz. It looks like billionaires in Switzerland won’t have to liquidate their businesses and empty their bank accounts, so at least we have that to be thankful for this holiday season.

🤖 AI

OpenAI has announced that it has taken an ownership stake in Thrive Holdings which is focused on building and acquiring companies aligned with AI adoption. The company was spun off of Thrive Capital in April 2025, which was founded in 2010 by Joshua Kushner, the brother of Jared Kushner who is married to Ivanka Trump; the daughter of President Donald Trump. You get all that?

The partnership between OpenAI and Thrive Holdings was publicly announced on December 1, 2025, by OpenAI COO Officer Brad Lightcap and Thrive Holdings CEO Joshua Kushner, and will involve embedding OpenAI teams into portfolio companies.

I’m sure there’s absolutely no politics going on behind this deal. Just straight up capitalism. MM’K?

🙏 Philanthropy

Michael and Susan Dell have pledged to donate $6.25 billion dollars to seed the accounts of 25 million children’s investment accounts, otherwise referred to as ‘Trump account’ in the Big Beautiful Bill. The philanthropic gift by the Dells will deposit $250 dollars into each eligible child's account, plus an additional $1,000 dollars that the U.S. Treasury is contributing to accounts for children born between January 1, 2025, and December 31, 2028. Parents are also eligible to contribute up to $2,500 per year in pretax income. And what about parents that can’t afford to contribute to their children’s future? Well, it looks like unfortunately they’ll be getting an early lesson in the divide between the haves and the have-nots.

🍗 Space

NASA's OSIRIS REx asteroid mission has found the presence of the amino acid tryptophan, the same chemical that causes me to get sleepy after eating turkey on Thanksgiving. The mission to the asteroid Bennu returned 122 grams of material on September 24, 2023, all for the low-low price of $1.16 billion dollars for the round trip. After some analysis by geochemist Angel Mojarro of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, astrochemist José Aponte, they were able to confirm they’ve found a total of fifteenth protein building blocks in their samples. I wish I knew who was the brainiac who thought up this mission to fly some 4.4 billion miles, and spend $1.16 billion dollars, in order to find the same ingredients that were in the turkey I just made for Thanksgiving. Nice job nerds!

⚽ Sports

Major League Soccer, or MLS for those of us who love to abbreviate everything, have seen their playoff viewership numbers shoot up 23% from the 2024 season, and are now averaging 711,000 global viewers per match across all platforms. Some of that is obviously thanks to Lionel Messi and Inter Miami’s spectacular run so far, but the league’s 29% regular season increase, and the fact that Apple TV is providing free access to all playoff matches, are also helping to boost the viewership numbers this year. Who would have thought that giving away content for free would help boost viewership numbers. Score!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss if the new Coinbase Bitcoin rewards credit card is too good to be true, Cher is performing on SNL for the first time in 38 years, Disney launched their newest vessel Disney Destiny, AWS is spending $50 billion on government AI data centers, Ripple Labs now has a valuation of $40 billion dollars,
a 1939 first edition copy of Superman No 1 just shattered the world record when it sold at auction for $9.12 million dollars, and LeBron James began his record-breaking 23rd NBA season.

Let’s get into it.

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💳 Is Coinbase’s Bitcoin Rewards Credit Card Too Good To Be True?

The financial world is witnessing a major shift in the credit card rewards programs that customers are signing up for. Now with the introduction of the Coinbase One Card, powered by the American Express network, there’s been a huge uptick in search traffic as people are trying to learn more about this rewards program. This credit card is making headlines because it allows users to earn up to 4 percent back on all eligible purchases in the form of Bitcoin. This offering is available exclusively to Coinbase One members who pay an annual membership fee which starts at $49.99 dollars per year for the Basic annual plan.

Full disclosure: I’m not a member (yet).

The combination of a familiar trusted payment network like American Express with the high yield of 4 percent in a volatile asset like Bitcoin is what has captured the attention of millions of consumers. Early adopters of the card have collectively deposited over $200 million dollars in assets on the exchange to maximize their rewards and have spent over $100 million dollars in total purchases. 

To fully understand the appeal of this card you need to know exactly how the 4 percent Bitcoin back is earned. The Coinbase One Card is issued by First Electronic Bank and operates on the American Express payment network. The exact percentage of the reward is tiered and is dependent on the cardholder's total assets on Coinbase at the time of the purchase. For customers who have $200,000.00 dollars or more in assets on Coinbase they qualify for the top 4 percent reward rate. Customer’s purchases on this tier are capped at the first $10,000 dollars in eligible purchases per calendar month. Once that $10,000 dollars monthly cap is exceeded all subsequent eligible purchases for that month will revert to a 2 percent Bitcoin rewards rate.

So all ya’ll charging more than $10,000 per month to your credit card will have to settle for only 2 percent back in Bitcoin. I call that 1st world problems.

The new Coinbase One credit card is physically notable for being a stainless steel card that  weighs only 17 grams, and is etched with the original Bitcoin Genesis Block. Rewards are awarded by being deposited directly into the cardholder's Bitcoin wallet on the Coinbase platform. As with any investment or reward in the form of an asset like Bitcoin users are responsible for any tax liability they incur.

This is a big gotcha, but we’ll come back to it whenI walk you through an example a little bit later.

The Coinbase American Express card not the only player in the growing crypto rewards space. Several other financial institutions and cryptocurrency platforms are also offering innovative ways for users to earn digital assets on their everyday spending.The Gemini Credit Card offers rewards in Bitcoin and more than 50 other cryptocurrencies with no annual fee. Then we have the Crypto.com Visa Signature Card, which offers tiered rewards paid in the exchange's native Cronos or CRO token (never heard of it, but ok then). Even mainstream payment platforms like Venmo are getting involved with their Venmo Credit Card, which allows users to automatically convert their standard cash back rewards into cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, Ethereum, Litecoin, or Bitcoin Cash (is that still a thing?). Other cards like the Upgrade Bitcoin Rewards Card offer an unlimited 1.5 percent back in Bitcoin when purchases are paid down. These examples highlight a competitive and rapidly expanding industry focused on integrating digital currency into the traditional rewards ecosystem.

The emergence of these cards is happening within the massive financial infrastructure that is the global credit card rewards market, which is valued at $1.2 trillion dollars as of 2023, and is estimated to grow to $2.5 trillion by 2032, with a CAGR of 8.1%.

The credit card market size itself is HUGE, having reached $608.71 billion dollars in 2024 and is expected to grow to $930.03 billion dollars by 2029 at a CAGR of 8.9%. This massive pool of consumer spending and reward payouts which saw major U.S. banks disburse an estimated $35 billion dollars in rewards in 2019 represents the prize that companies like Coinbase and American Express are now targeting with their Bitcoin rewards program. 

I think we’re in serious need of an example to break down how this rewards program could work for the average American household. Let’s consider a family that charges on average $2,500 dollars per month for their regular expenses like food, gas, clothing, and entertainment. They have over $200,000 in assets on the Coinbase platform, so they qualify for the 4 percent rewards tier. This monthly spending would generate $100.00 dollars in cash back. Given the recent Bitcoin price of $87,000 dollars, that $100.00 dollars would instantly convert to approximately 0.001149 Bitcoin which is deposited into their Coinbase Bitcoin wallet. If this person maintains that $2,500 dollars in monthly spending for a full year they would earn $1,200 dollars in Bitcoin rewards annually, which is a total of 0.013793 Bitcoin (in today’s prices) in a year simply from their everyday purchases. It is critical to note the tax implications of receiving this. While traditional cash back is usually a non-taxable rebate, the IRS considers cryptocurrency to be property. That means the $1,200 dollars worth of Bitcoin a customer earned is viewed as ordinary income, and taxed at the user's income tax rate - not the lower capital gains rate of 20%. For a high income earner subject to the highest combined Federal and State tax rates, such as an estimated 37% percent Federal rate and a 11% New York State rate, then the total tax on that $1,200 dollars in Bitcoin rewards could approach 48%, meaning the user would owe approximately $492 dollars in combined Federal and New York State taxes on the rewards alone. If they had just taken those credit card rewards in the form of cash-back or airline points then they wouldn’t have been taxed. This is critical to understand with the new Coinbase One credit card.

Nonetheless, people are still excited about the Coinbase One Card by American Express. Maybe it’s because people are so wild for Bitcoin, or maybe it’s just because most Americans are bad at math. Whatever the reason, there’s been a spike in searches for info about the card when it was announced back in June of 2025, and there’s been a renewed focus on the card now as it has begun to roll out. It’s one of the most talked about and searched for credit card rewards programs on the internet right, which demonstrates how strong of a market appetite there is these days for all things crypto.

By offering up to 4% back in Bitcoin rewards the Coinbase One Card by American Express has set a new standard for cryptocurrency rewards programs. Just read the find print and be sure to check with your accountant before you sign up. You’ll thank me later!

Quick Hits

💵 Business

AWS announced they’re investing $50 billion dollars to expand their AI and supercomputing infrastructure for U.S. government agencies. This investment, which is set to begin construction in 2026, will add 1.3 gigawatts of capacity across AWS Top Secret, AWS Secret, and AWS GovCloud U.S. regions to support missions like national security and scientific research. AWS Chief Executive Officer Matt Garman said this move will help to remove technological barriers and make the government’s use of AI more efficient, which is good news because we certainly don't want the government being sloppy with their AI and cloud computing.

🎤 Entertainment

Cher is set to appear on Saturday Night Live as the musical guest on December 20, 2025, marking her first time returning to that role since 1987. The Oscar, Emmy, and Grammy winner will appear on the final episode of 2025, which will be hosted by actress and singer Ariana Grande. It’s comforting to know that even after four decades, nobody is willing to just let Cher turn back time and relax.

🪙 Crypto

Ripple Labs now has a valuation of $40 billion dollars following their $500 million dollar funding round earlier this year. With that fresh funding, Ripple Labs has been aggressively expanding into traditional finance. To bridge crypto and Wall Street, CEO Brad Garlinghouse spearheaded $2.25 billion dollars in acquisitions this year, including the purchases of treasury management platform GTreasury and prime broker Hidden Road. Ripple Lab’s XRP now has a market cap of over $132.23 billion dollars, Ripple is ready to compete with the big boys of finance on Wall Street.

💻 Cruising

Disney Cruise Line's newest vessel, the Disney Destiny, a Wish-class ship with a Heroes and Villains theme, has embarked on its maiden voyage from Fort Lauderdale, Florida, on November 20, 2025. This massive 144,000 gross ton ship can carry 4,000 paying passengers, and features the first Marvel character statue, Black Panther, in its Grand Hall. My family is already asking when we can set sail on the new Disney Destiny.

📖 Comic Books

A 1939 first edition copy of Superman No 1 that had been found in a Northern California attic, and it shattered the world record when it sold at auction for $9.12 million dollars. The 86 year old comic, which earned an unprecedented Certified Guaranty Company 9.0 grade, easily surpassed the previous record of $6 million dollars for a similar issue of the famous comic book. In this housing market, it seems the only way to afford a house in California is to stumble upon a vintage cardboard box full of millions of dollars in vintage comic books.

🏀 Sports

LeBron James began his record-breaking 23rd NBA season in November after being drafted number one way back on June 26, 2003 at the age of 18. Since then he’s cemented his legacy as the NBA’s current GOAT. LeBron James became the first active billionaire in the NBA in 2022, and boasts a net worth of approximately $1.3 billion dollars, with career earnings from his contracts of over $581 million dollars.

For the current 2025/2026 season with the LA Lakers, the four time champion exercised his player option for a guaranteed salary of $52,627,153 dollars, proving that you can absolutely buy happiness, assuming it comes in the form of a record-breaking NBA contract.

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss Method Man’s new career as a NFL photographer, 50-year mortgages could become a thing (if you’re bad at math), you can now mine Bitcoin and heat your house at the same time, MrBeast’s company Beast Industries is worth $5 billion dollars, what would happen to the Bitcoin network in a disaster, Mark Wahlberg buys a new house that has been bought-and-sold 4 times in the last 5 years, Jeff Bezos starts a new AI startup called Project Prometheus to compete with arch nemesis Elon Musk (good luck with that), and Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 Team Principal and CEO Toto Wolff is in advanced talks to sell a 5% stake for $300 million dollars.

Scroll on!

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📸 Method Man Has A New Career As A NFL Photographer

Today, I want to talk about the career of Method Man, whose god-given name is Clifford Smith Jr. And trust me; there’s a business story here behind the headlines. For decades, Method Man has been a massive figure in the world of hip-hop, famous as one of the founders of the legendary East Coast rap group Wu-Tang Clan. But he’s more than just a musician. He’s taken his career beyond music, to dip his toes into the world of acting, investing, and most recently as a photographer for the NFL. It’s an unusual shift for an artist of his stature, but what Method Man has stayed true to is his creative passions, wherever they may lead.

For those who aren't aware, Method Man started his career as a founding member of the Wu-Tang Clan, who debuted their first album Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers) in 1993. That group album sold over 1 million copies by the end of 1994. Afterward, Method Man launched his solo career, which took off quickly. Method Man released his critically acclaimed first solo album, Tical, on November 15, 1994, through Def Jam Records. The album was a major commercial success, debuting at number four on the Billboard 200 chart. Tical was certified Platinum by the RIAA on July 13, 1995, with over $1 million dollars in sales in the United States alone. His second solo album, Tical 2000: Judgement Day, released in 1998, also went Platinum and sold an impressive 411,000 copies in its first week.

Following his musical success, Method Man got into acting. He began with his debut film appearance in the Wayans Brothers' comedy, Don't Be a Menace to South Central While Drinking Your Juice in the Hood in 1996, and later appeared in the acclaimed drama The Wire as Melvin "Cheese" Wagstaff, a recurring role he held from 2003 to 2008. He also starred alongside fellow rapper Redman in the cult-classic comedy film How High in 2001. In the film, Method Man and Redman, whose real name is Reginald Noble, played the lead roles of Silas and Jamal, two underachieving students who aced their college entrance exams after smoking magical marijuana. The movie had a production budget of around $12 million dollars but went on to earn $31.1 million dollars at the domestic box office.

Method Man’s personal life has remained relatively private, especially compared to his public career. He has been married to his wife, Tamika Smith, since 2001, but they’ve been together since the early 1990s before he ever became a star. Together, they have three children: sons Shakuan Smith and Raekwon Smith, and daughter Cheyenne Smith, with Raekwon and Cheyenne being twins. Method Man has been vocal about keeping his family life away from the media spotlight.

After Method Man’s successful decades-long career in music, acting, and brand endorsements, he has a pretty impressive estimated net worth of around $14 million dollars. But Method Man is far from retired. He still has a steady acting career and tours with the Wu-Tang Clan regularly. Thanks to residual checks from his acting career on critically acclaimed shows like The Wire and Power Book II: Ghost, his acting income is substantial, earning him tens of thousands of dollars per episode. This stable income from television helps to smooth out his financial portfolio.

Recently Method Man’s career has taken a turn with one of his passions: photography. On Sunday, November 9, 2025, Method Man was officially credentialed as an NFL celebrity photographer for the game between the New York Jets and the Cleveland Browns at MetLife Stadium. He wore an official NFL Media vest and worked the sidelines, capturing photos of the live-action game and the fans.

The NFL’s Celebrity Photographer Series, which has also included stars like Kevin Durant, Marshawn Lynch, and Ken Griffey Jr., is designed to give fans an intimate view of the game from the "intersection of football and culture." During his time on the sidelines, Method Man was not working alone; each guest celebrity photographer is paired with the League's Live Content Correspondents (LCC) team to ensure they are "gaining insider access and mentorship to authentically document the NFL experience." The sight of the legendary rapper on the sidelines, camera in hand, immediately went viral, with fans posting pics of him to social media in a bit of irony.

Beyond entertainment, Method Man has established himself as an entrepreneur. In 2020, he launched his own cannabis brand, TICAL Official. TICAL is an acronym that stands for Taking Into Consideration All Lives, and the brand is built with a social equity focus, prioritizing partnerships with Black, female, and minority-owned businesses. The company raised approximately $300,000 dollars for its initial launch, with Method Man retaining a 20% ownership stake. In 2022, Method Man became a stakeholder and advisor for Intercept Music, a digital distribution platform that helps independent artists access major streaming platforms while retaining 100% of their rights and masters. His commitment to media investment extends to the digital space where his YouTube channel generates between $60,000 and $75,000 dollars per year, and his Instagram presence brings in between $15,000 and $25,000 dollars per year. He also co-founded the production company Six AM, An Entertainment Co. with his manager, Shauna Garr. The company aims to produce diverse content for streaming and television, including a third film in the How High series, as he continues to focus on expanding his influence across the business world. This approach echoes the Wu-Tang Clan’s original "branded house architecture" business strategy, where members, including Method Man, were strategically allowed to sign solo deals with different record labels to maximize their financial viability and brand reach.

Method Man’s career is a great example of a talented individual who refused to be boxed in by a single profession. From his foundational work with the Wu-Tang Clan starting in 1993, to his Platinum-selling solo career with albums like Tical, and his substantial film and television acting resume, he has built an impressive career. His new passion for photography shows that even at the height of his fame, he is still driven to explore and master new creative avenues. I love seeing artists and business people I admire find new ways to connect with the world through different creative lenses.

Quick Hits

🏦 Business

President Donald Trump has proposed the creation of a 50-year mortgage, but these mortgages would saddle a borrower with roughly $378,240 dollars in extra interest compared to a 30-year loan. If a new homeowner can’t afford a 20% down payment for a normal 30-year mortgage, then maybe they shouldn’t be buying a house that comes with five decades of debt. And when you look at the cost savings of a 30-year mortgage versus a 50-year mortgage on a $400,000 dollars home, you’re only saving around $250 dollars a month with a 50-year mortgage, but you’ll end up paying nearly double the total loan cost over the 50 years, so it’s actually going to cost you a lot more in the long term. Simple math people!

📱 Entertainment

YouTuber MrBeast’s company Beast Industries just secured a $5 billion dollar valuation when they recently raised $200 million dollars. This put MrBeast’s equity in the company, which he reportedly owns over 50% of, at roughly $2.5 billion dollars. Not bad for a guy who got his start on YouTube playing the video game “Minecraft” on his channel.

💻 Tech

What would happen to the Bitcoin network if there was a 24-hour global Internet blackout? Liam 'Akiba' Wright wanted to know, so he researched and wrote a paper that suggest that the Bitcoin network could split into different partitions like Americas, Asia, and Europe/Africa, with different hashrate distributions if each region lost their connection with other regions. The separated regions would autonomously produce blocks, with the 45% hashrate region producing approximately 2.7 blocks per hour, which would eventually lead to hundreds of blocks of divergence after a full day of mining. When the Internet recovered all Bitcoin transactions that had been confirmed on the shorter chains, which could potentially amount to millions of dollars in value, would be orphaned, and their owners left with no rewards for successfully mining Bitcoins in their regions. Luckily, this would only happen in the most dire of circumstances where the entire Internet was cut off from other regions of the world, which would most likely only happen in a nuclear war. So there’s that to provide you Bitcoin miners with some comfort.

🪙 Crypto

What do you get when you combine home heating and Bitcoin mining? A Bitcoin mining setup that can also heat your house, of course. Some Americans are utilizing the substantial heat generated by their home cryptocurrency mining equipment to warm their homes and offset their traditional heating costs this winter. There’s a new device from HeatTrio that retails for around $900 you can take the heat from your Bitcoin mining setup and circulate that heat throughout your home. The profitability of mining enough Bitcoin to generate a profit is pretty low, and when you factor in the rising costs of electricity, good luck not losing money on your home Bitcoin mining operation.

🏡 Real Estate

Mark Wahlberg just bought a new home in Florida for $37 million dollars. That’s not really surprising or news, since he buys and sells real estate all the time. In fact he just sold his home in Los Angeles for $55 million back in February of 2023. What is interesting about this purchase, is that the home has been bought and sold four times in the last 5 years, by the same Douglas Elliman real estate broker Senada Adzem, which amounts to over $106 million in real estate transactions in the last five years. At a commission rate of 4%, that means Senada Adzem could have made $3.18 million dollars in commission by selling the home 4 times!

🤖 AI

Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, has stepped back into the business world as co-CEO of a new AI startup called Project Prometheus, which focuses on applying AI to engineering and manufacturing in fields like aerospace and automobiles. The company raised $6.2 billion dollars in funding with some help from Jeff Bezos himself. They already have 100 employees, including researchers from OpenAI and Google DeepMind.

Project Prometheus is concentrating on what is being called "physical AI" or "world models" to build AI systems that learn by interacting with the real world, such as through robotics, scientific experiments, and physical processes. What they are not doing is relying only on Large Language Models (LLMs) like OpenAI. The company’s approach is to accelerate scientific discovery, drug design, and the automated manufacturing of complex components for sectors including computers, aerospace, and automobiles. So it looks like Jeff Bezos is back to competing with his arch nemesis Elon Musk again in the AI field, in addition to space flight.

🏁 Sports

Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 Team Principal and CEO Toto Wolff is in advanced talks to sell a 5% stake in the Mercedes AMG PETRONAS F1 team to George Kurtz, the CEO of sponsor CrowdStrike at a valuation of the team of $6 billion dollars. Toto Wolf has an equal equity stake of 33% with co-owners of the team including Mercedes and Petronas. This valuation means Toto Wolff would receive $300 million dollars from the sale of his 5% of the team, leaving his remaining 28% stake in the team valued at approximately $1.68 billion dollars. That should be a nice consolation prize when Mercedes loses the Constructions Championship and neither of their two drivers wins the Driver’s Championship for another year of losing. Go McLaren!

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In today’s newsletter I discuss how YouTube rules the streaming world, consumers will spend an estimated $1 trillion dollars this holiday season, Coinbase is getting in on speculative initial coin offerings in time for the crypto markets to make a comeback, Nike and Palace Skateboards have opened an indoor skatepark called the Manor Place in South London, Google is launching two AI data center satellites powered by solar energy to see if that works out, 1Password just make $400 million dollars in ARR and has a long list of celebrity investors including Ryan Reynolds and Scarlett Johansson (who used to be married coincidentally), Ark Invest founder Cathie Wood believes that humanoid robots could be the biggest opportunity in the field of artificial intelligence, and my New York Giants have finally fired head coach Brian Daboll, but for some reason didn’t let their General Manager Joe Schoen who hired him go also ("Big mistake, huge!").

Let’s get into it.

YouTube

Top Story

📺 YouTube Rules The Streaming World

Who do you think is the biggest streaming service in the world? Apple TV+? Amazon Prime Video? Maybe even HBO Max (or whatever they’re calling themselves today). If you guessed Netflix you’d also be wrong. It's YouTube, and it’s not even a close competition.

YouTube is an absolute juggernaut, drawing in a massive global audience. YouTube has over 2.7 billion monthly active users, which accounts for a little over 30% of the world's population. This scale means YouTube's audience is nearly ten times larger than Netflix's subscriber base of approximately 300 million users, and is 38% bigger than rival platform Instagram's active users.

Online users collectively watch over 1 billion hours of video every day on YouTube, which exceeds the daily watch time of any other streaming service. In 2024 alone, YouTube generated approximately $36.1 billion dollars in advertising revenue from those watch hours, marking a 14.6% increase year-on-year from 2023. YouTube's subscription revenue is also a rapidly growing part of its business, primarily driven by YouTube Premium and YouTube Music. YouTube generated an estimated $14.5 billion from its Premium subscription model in 2024. These impressive revenue figures clearly show YouTube’s financial dominance in the streaming world.

YouTube’s success is no longer limited to only the small screen; it's rapidly replacing traditional TV. According to Nielsen, in the United States, YouTube has consistently claimed the largest share of total U.S. TV streaming time, and recently accounted for around 12.5% of all television viewing time. This share is 67% bigger than Netflix’s approximate 7.5% share, and is actually larger than both Netflix and Disney+ combined. By far, YouTube is the single biggest source of video consumption in the U.S.

This dominance is fueled by a breathtaking volume of content and a growing emphasis on high-quality, authentic creation. To fully grasp YouTube's scale, you have to consider this: more than 500 hours of video are uploaded to YouTube every single minute worldwide. That translates to approximately 720,000 hours of video content uploaded daily, making YouTube’s platform unparalleled in both size and depth of content. YouTube has built a digital moat that no other streaming service's curated, in-house content library could ever hope to rival. This volume is increasingly vetted for originality, as YouTube has tightened its policies, renaming its "repetitious content" rule to the "inauthentic content" policy in 2025 to ensure creators are rewarded for truly original, high-value work.

YouTube's business model is what really sets it apart from subscription-based competitors like Netflix and Disney+. Instead of producing all the content itself, YouTube relies on the content creator economy. This model, which started with the introduction of the YouTube Partner Program back in 2007, allows anyone to upload video content and then share in the advertising revenue. Eligible creators in the YouTube Partner Program receive 55% of the ad and subscription revenue generated on their videos, with YouTube retaining the remaining 45% of the revenue. This revenue sharing model is unmatched in the industry, and has helped kickstart the entire creator economy, allowing millions of people to build their content creation businesses on the YouTube platform. An Oxford Economics research paper from 2024 shows that YouTube's creative ecosystem contributed over $55 billion dollars to the U.S. GDP and supported more than 490,000 full-time equivalent jobs in the country. This model also results in significantly lower content costs compared to rivals, who spend tens of billions on in-house production. A single million views on a YouTube video can translate to content creators earning between $1,200 and $6,000 dollars from ad revenue alone, although this varies widely by niche and audience location.

The platform's sheer scale is almost incomprehensible, reaching into every corner of the world. The shift in advertising dollars is another massive indicator of the platform's strength, as YouTube advertisements have the potential to reach an audience of 2.53 billion people. This immense ad reach gives YouTube's core ad business a scale that is approximately twelve times bigger than Netflix's nascent advertising segment. Brands are pouring money into content creator ads, seeing a clear return on investment by leveraging the authentic connection creators have with their audience. This is part of a larger creator economy that was valued at $250 billion dollars in 2024 and is projected to double to $500 billion dollars by 2027. This financial ecosystem, which includes ad revenue, merchandise sales, and direct fan payments, means that individual creators are generating nearly six in ten dollars of the market's revenue. Only 30% of independent creators report working full-time, but for those who do, YouTube provides a foundation for a substantial career. Content creators are directly impacting commerce, with over 70% of viewers reporting that they have purchased from a brand after seeing it advertised or featured on YouTube.

Another key factor in its growth is the explosion of YouTube Shorts. This short-form video product, launched in 2020, is a serious competitor to other short-form video platforms like TikTok and Instagram Reels. In 2024, YouTube Shorts were averaging over 70 billion daily views. In Q3 of 2025, YouTube Shorts achieved revenue parity with traditional long-form video on a per-watch-hour basis in the United States, which is a huge milestone that confirms its status as a mature, high-value monetization engine rather than just a growth tactic.

YouTube also has an established and rapidly growing subscription model. YouTube Premium and YouTube Music together officially surpassed 125 million paid subscribers globally, generating an estimated $14.5 billion dollars in revenue in 2024. This segment's growth is a strategic financial hedge for the platform, as this stable revenue stream is immune to ad-blockers and brand safety concerns. For top creators, these ad-free viewers now contribute up to 30% of their total monthly revenue, providing a crucial layer of income stability. YouTube has formalized this "twin-engine" model by announcing a payout of over $8 billion dollars to the music industry in the 12 months between July 2024 and June 2025 - a figure fueled by both ads and subscriptions. The platform's global reach is evidenced by its top markets: the largest user base resides in India, and is estimated at over 460 million users in 2024, followed by the United States with over 230 million users. The most successful channels on YouTube show this global reach, with the most subscribed channel, T-Series, being based in India, while the highest individual earner in 2024 was MrBeast, who's based in the United States and has earned an estimated $85 million dollars from his YouTube channels.

YouTube's position as the world's largest streaming service is absolutely secure, driven by its massive global audience of over 2.7 billion monthly active users and its innovative content creation model. By sharing the majority of ad revenue with creators and focusing on a dual-engine model of advertising and high-growth subscriptions, YouTube has cultivated the $250 billion dollar creator economy that continues to attract both individual content creators and major brand advertising dollars. By bringing in $36.1 billion dollars in advertising revenue and $14.5 billion dollars in subscription revenue in 2024, and a staggering 70 billion daily views for their Shorts, YouTube has cemented its standing as the world’s largest streaming platform for not just watching content, but for fueling the content creator economy.

Quick Hits

🎁 Business

It’s estimated that consumers will spend $1 trillion dollars this holiday season for the first time ever. According to the National Retail Federation (NRF) they’re estimating an increase of between 3.7%-4.2% over last year's $976.1 billion dollars in sales.

I know my family will be doing their part to help push holiday spending over $1 trillion dollars this holiday season!

🪙 Crypto

The speculative crypto market is back baby!

Coinbase has launched a new platform to purchase digital tokens before they are listed on the exchange. The new service allows U.S. retail investors to participate in initial coin offerings (ICOs).

Head of trading at Coinbase, Scott Shapiro, says the new system offers a safer path, which is great because everyone knows nothing fuels market stability quite like easier access to prelisted speculation.

🛹 Skateboarding

Nike and Palace Skateboards have opened a sports hub in South London called the Manor Place, and it’s housed in an old 19th-century bathhouse. Architecture studio Jam designed the indoor space, which features a free to use skatepark that can be mechanically lifted up in the air when not in use to transform the space into an underground football pitch called the Cage. They’ve also built out 6 studio spaces for artists, which they call "lunar landers" and are made from timber wrapped in a reflective fabric. How artsy!

🚀 Space

Google has embarked on an ambitious new moonshot called Project Suncatcher, which will explore a scalable AI infrastructure system that utilizes constellations of solar powered satellites. Each satellite will be equipped with TPUs, which stands for Tensor Processing Unit, and is a specialized, custom designed ASIC (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) developed by Google to rapidly accelerate the massive matrix calculations and convolutions fundamental to machine learning and deep neural networks. These satellites will be connected by high speed optical links, which initial research has found to be fundamentally sound by confirming radiation tolerance of the TPUs and addressing data center scale inter satellite links.

Got all that?

Google believes that falling launch costs will make the system economically comparable to terrestrial data centers, meaning Google wants to launch solar-powered satellite data centers in space. Google's next step is launching a satellite in 2027 to test prototype hardware and models in space.

🔐 Celebrity Investors

1Password's annual recurring revenue just surpassed $400 million dollars as of November 2025, and a lot of the thanks can go to its A list of celebrities who have invested in the company over the years, including Ryan Reynolds, Scarlett Johansson, Robert Downey Jr, Matthew McConaughey, Chris Evans, Rita Wilson, Ashton Kutcher, Trevor Noah, Justin Timberlake, and Pharrell Williams. This impressive growth follows the company's January 2022 Series C funding round which raised $620 million dollars and gave 1Password a $6.8 billion dollar valuation. Now that they have all that money, they can finally afford to pay someone to remember all those celebrities' passwords.

🤖 Robots

Cathie Wood, founder of Ark Invest, believes that humanoid robots are the biggest opportunity in artificial intelligence, predicting that this market could have a massive revenue potential of $26 trillion dollars and a valuation opportunity up to $70 trillion dollars. Semiconductor giant Nvidia agrees, designing its specialized Isaac GR00T foundation models and Jetson chips to power these "embodied AI" agents for partners like Figure AI, which received $675 million dollars in funding recently. And this whole robotics vision is inline with Tesla CEO Elon Musk's vision, who has stated that Tesla's Optimus humanoid bot, which could be mass produced at a target cost under $30,000 dollars per unit, will eventually account for 80 percent of Tesla's valuation. The future is so bright your personal robot will have to wear shades.

🏈 Sports

My New York Giants finally fired head coach Brian Daboll on Monday after the team's 2-8 start. What John Mara should have done was also fire General Manager Joe Schoen who’s responsible for hiring Brian Daboll and the rest of the horrible Offensive Line. Only good hires seem to be Quarterback Jaxson Dart, who just went out with a concussion because he takes too many chances and gets hit too often, and Running Back Cam Skattebo, who went out with a dislocated ankle and fractured fibula.

Wake me up when John Mara fires GM Joe Schoen and hires someone who knows how to draft a football team!

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

Editors Note

Last week’s article about Elon Musk’s $1 trillion dollar proposed pay package got a few likes, but when I released the YouTube video Elon Musk's $1 Trillion Dollar Pay Package From Tesla yesterday I really hit a nerve. Someone accused me of click bait, or even rage baiting them (that part might be partially true). My goal of the article and subsequent video was to lay out all the facts, and ask what my readers and viewers though - and WoW did I get a lot of feedback. Overall nearly everyone that responded defend Elon Musk’s $1 trillion dollar proposed pay package, and told me if I don’t like it I should sell my Tesla shares. That’s not how things work, so I’ll be holding onto my Tesla shares thank you very much. But I was mildly surprised how strongly people responded to a video about Elon Musk, but I probably shouldn’t had have been too surprised. Every article and video I’ve ever made about Elon Musk has received similar attention, which is why some might think I’m creating them for clickbait - but I’m not. I’m actually a HUGE fan of Elon Musk the tech guru, but not so much for his views outside of tech. So if you have strong opinions, and want to be “triggered” feel free to watch, like, and comment on the YouTube video below, and I’ll be sure to respond. With that said, onto today’s issue.

In today’s newsletter I discuss why Is quantum computing is so hot right now, Apple’s market cap just exceeded $4 trillion dollars, while Nvidia’s market cap is now over $5 trillion dollars cementing it as the world’s most valuable company by market cap, Nintendo is increasing its sales forecast for their Nintendo Switch 2, it’s out with the “Hot girl Summer” and in with “TMI Autumn” if Taylor Swift’s music is to be believed (which as a Swifie, I do!),  cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com and entertainment platform Hollywood.com have jointly announced a partnership to launch a new, federally regulated prediction market for movies, television, Broadway, music, and celebrity events, OpenAI has finished their corporate restructuring into a for-profit company owned by a non-profit (confused yet?), Amazon Web Services is building its first solo subsea internet cable called Fastnet, Ben Cohen of Ben & Jerry’s has created a Palestine themed flavor Watermelon Sorbet and launched it under his Ben's Best brand, and the Los Angeles Dodgers' World Series victory over the Toronto Blue Jays has provided a significant financial boost to both country’s local economies and Major League Baseball as a whole.

Let’s get into it.

YouTube

Top Story

🔐 Why Is Quantum Computing So Hot Right Now That The Government Wants to Get Involved?

The field of quantum computing is so hot right now that even the government wants to get in on the action by investing the government’s money (which is actually YOUR money) into a handful of quantum computing companies in exchange for stock in order to ensure that the U.S. is a leader in quantum computing worldwide. Today’s we’re going to dive into what exactly is quantum computing, why is it so hot right now, and what’s the government doing investing in quantum computing companies. Let’s get into it.

Quantum computing is one of the most talked-about subjects right now, and not just in scientific circles. It has the potential to fundamentally change everything from how we protect our data to how we treat serious diseases. People are starting to realize that this isn't just a distant dream anymore. It’s here right now, and it’s a developing technology with real-world implications that are getting closer every day.

The promise of quantum computing is massive, offering breakthroughs in areas like cryptography and new pathways toward curing cancer. It's the kind of revolutionary technology that will define global economic and national security leadership for decades to come, which is why the stakes are so incredibly high.

First off, let’s level set. What exactly is quantum computing?

Quantum computing is a revolutionary form of computation that harnesses quantum mechanical phenomena like superposition and entanglement to enable quantum bits (or qubits for short) to process an exponential number of calculations simultaneously, allowing it to solve problems beyond the capability of classical supercomputers.

You get all that? Makes about as much sense to me as pigs flying, but let me break it down for ya’ll.

A quantum computer achieves its power by leveraging two unique principles: superposition and entanglement. Unlike a classical bit (which is either a 0 or a 1), a qubit can be both 0 and 1 simultaneously (which is called superposition), allowing it to process a vast number of possibilities at once.

Then we have entanglement, which links multiple qubits so that their fates are intertwined, causing their collective computational power to grow exponentially with each added qubit. This dual capability allows a quantum computer to examine and solve extremely complex simulations with unprecedented speed.

For cryptography, the threat is imminent. An algorithm developed by MIT mathematician Peter Shor in 1994 proved a powerful quantum computer could quickly factor large numbers, breaking encryption systems like RSA that secure our digital transactions. You know when you’re shopping online, and you see that little lock in your browser window when you go to check out? That means the transaction is encrypted and secure. Well, with quantum computing, you could be looking at the possibility that all encryption could be easily broken, and then nothing is really secure.

Scary stuff.

But don’t worry. Those same brainiacs that are inventing quantum computing are all thinking about how to update cryptography in a post-quantum computing world.

In the field of medicine, quantum computing offers a revolutionary path forward for fighting cancer by sifting through complex genomic data and molecular interactions to accelerate drug discovery and personalize treatment. Analysts at Bank of America estimate the global quantum computing market will grow from around $300 million dollars in 2024 to approximately $4 billion dollars by the early 2030s.

Quantum computing has recently caught Wall Street’s attention, and thus the federal government’s. On Thursday, October 23, quantum computing stocks surged after a Wall Street Journal report indicated that the Trump administration is seeking to acquire equity stakes in several key quantum computing companies in exchange for an injection of around $10 million dollars per company from the federal government (which, remember I told you was your money) This is all in an effort to ensure that the U.S. remains a leader in quantum computing worldwide.

The quantum computing companies reportedly in talks to receive government investments include IonQ, Rigetti Computing, D-Wave Quantum, Quantum Computing Inc., and Atom Computing. Following this news, quantum computing stocks saw immediate gains of 10+ percent in the stock market. The move mirrors the Trump administration's earlier action in August 2025 to take a nearly 10% stake in Intel by converting grants into equity, as well as the 15% stake the Pentagon took in the rare-earth miner MP Materials back in July 2025.

The bottom line is that quantum computing's transformative power in areas like secure cryptography and life-saving medical breakthroughs, particularly in the fight against cancer, is no longer theoretical. The enormous potential is why the technology is generating so much excitement right now, and the recent report that the Trump administration is talking to companies like about taking equity stakes in exchange for federal funding shows that the government views this as a critical strategic sector. This mix of revolutionary science and direct government interest means that quantum computing will remain one of the hottest sectors for the foreseeable future, driving both scientific innovation and significant market movement.

Quick Hits

🏦 Business

These days, not a week goes by that a company breaks a new record for highest market cap, or shatters a corporate earning report. On October 8, Apple’s market cap crossed the $4 trillion dollar mark. Then on October 29, Nvidia’s market cap crossed the $5 trillion dollar mark, making it the most valuable publicly traded company in the world. These market cap milestones are being fueled by the continuing AI boom, and Wall Street apparently can’t get enough!

🍁 Entertainment

As the season changes from Summer to Fall, out with “Hot girl Summer”, in with “TMI Autumn”, at least if we’re going by new albums from Taylor Swift and Lily Allen. Both sing about intimate situations that aren’t exactly business-friendly for this newsletter, but these artist’s sincerity and vulnerability are what fans are embracing in increasing numbers.

Taylor Swift’s ‘The Life of a Showgirl’ just finished its fourth straight week at No. 1 atop the Billboard 200 chart, and has sold 4,650,000 since its release, and it’s estimated she made $135 million dollars in the first week after it was released from album sales and streaming.

🎮 Tech

Nintendo increased its forecast for Nintendo Switch 2 hardware sales forecast for the fiscal year ending March 2026 from 15 million units to 19 million units, following the console's launch on June 5, 2025. To date, Nintendo has sold 10.36 million units of their Nintendo Switch 2.

I know what my kids will be asking for for Christmas.

🎲 Prediction Markets

Cryptocurrency exchange Crypto.com and entertainment platform Hollywood.com have jointly announced a partnership to launch a new, federally regulated prediction market for entertainment events. The platform, powered by Crypto.com’s Derivatives North America unit, will be overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and will allow users to make compliant predictions on outcomes like box office revenues from movies, television, Broadway, music, and celebrity events. The prediction market is projected to grow to $3.5 trillion dollars by 2029, and includes heavyweights like Polymarket and Kalshi.

For me, my heart will always lie with the Hollywood Stock Exchanges (HSX), where I’ve been predicting how movies will do since 1996!

🤖 AI

OpenAI has finished their corporate restructuring, and Microsoft has a 27% equity stake, which is valued at approximately $135 billion dollars based on the company's $500 billion dollars private valuation.

When OpenAI was first incorporated they were incorporated as a non-profit entity called OpenAI, Inc., who was the sole controlling shareholder of a "capped" for-profit subsidiary called OpenAI Global, LLC, which they used to raise billions of dollars in investment and grant employee stock options.

Now, OpenAI Global, LLC has converted to a Public Benefit Corporation, and renamed as the OpenAI Group PBC. The non-profit entity that was called OpenAI, Inc. has been renamed as the OpenAI Foundation, and now holds a 26% equity stake worth approximately $130 billion dollars in the for-profit company OpenAI Group PBC.

The OpenAI Foundation still retains control of the OpenAI Group PBC through the right to appoint and remove its board of directors, ensuring the non-profit mission still governs the for-profit operations, even with their minority equity stake.

Now that that’s all cleared up, OpenAI can get back to the business of shepherding in the AI apocalypse.

📼 Data

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is building its first solo subsea internet cable called Fastnet, which will run from Maryland to Ireland and is expected to be operational in 2028, transporting over 320 terabits per second of data - enough to stream 12.5 HD movies at the same time. That’s a lot of content!

🍦 Ice Cream

The ice cream company Ben & Jerry's has been going through some things lately. Back in September Jerry Greenfield stepped down from the company co-founded 47 years ago because parent company Unilever wasn’t allowing him, and co-founded Ben Cohen, to pursue their social activism that they say they were promised the ability to do when their company Ben & Jerry’s was acquired in 2000 for $326 million dollars.

Now Ben Cohen, who still works for Ben & Jerry’s, has created a Palestine themed flavor Watermelon Sorbet, and is launching it under his Ben's Best brand. Ben Cohen said he parent company Unilever blocked him from launching the new flavor that he says shows his "solidarity with Palestine", so he decided to launch the new flavour “as part of a personal series highlighting causes the company has been barred from addressing publicly.” according to an article in the BBC.

Turns out in today’s politically charged climate corporations no longer have the freedom, or the courage and backbone, to stand up for free speech. 

⚾ Sports

The Los Angeles Dodgers' World Series victory over the Toronto Blue Jays provided a significant financial boost to both country’s local economies and Major League Baseball. Direct revenue from games, including high-priced tickets, poured millions of dollars into both Los Angeles and Toronto as they hosted the games, with some estimates placing the economic benefit of each game as high as $20 million dollars. For the Toronto side, restaurant transaction volume jumped by as much as 27% near Rogers Centre on game nights. For MLB and its broadcast partner, FOX, the World Series is an advertising goldmine, where a 30-second commercial slot can cost between $350,000-$600,000, especially for later games in the series. MLB's Postseason Players' Pool reached a record high of $129.1 million dollars, with the champion LA Dodgers paying out approximately $477,000 dollars per player. 

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.

In today’s newsletter I discuss Elon Musk’s insane $1 trillion dollar pay package the Tesla wants to give him, the U.S. Department of Energy and AMD have partnered on a $1 billion dollars supercomputer deal, Taylor Sheridan may be departing Paramount for a massive new production contract with NBCUniversal that could be worth over $1 billion dollars, Nike just unveiled the company's "world's first powered footwear system" for running and walking, President Donald Trump just issued a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ who founded Binance and went to jail for 4 months after pleading guilty to money laundering, Yuga Labs is trying to make NFTs popular again by launching a social hub called the Koda Nexus in their Otherside metaverse (man, do I miss NFTs), and there’s a whole bunch of drama over in the NBA involving illegal sports books and mafia-related poker games.

Scroll on!

YouTube

Top Story

⚡ Elon Musk’s $1 Trillion Dollar Pay Package

Tesla’s board of directors has just done something that has never been done before. They have offered Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla, a $1 trillion pay package!

Let that sink in for a minute.

$1 trillion dollars!

This offer is unprecedented in the history of executive compensation, and then some!

The sheer magnitude of this proposed award is insane! This package is contingent on Elon Musk hitting specific company milestones, and is designed to keep him engaged and focused on his duties as CEO of the electric vehicle manufacturer.

Hold up a second.

Isn’t the CEO of a publicly traded company supposed to already be “engaged and focused” just by paying them a normal salary that is in line with what other CEOs make? Last time I checked, no other CEO in the world is getting paid $1 trillion dollars!, and yet other CEOs sure due seem engaged and focused.

Something a little sus here.

The proposal, which is scheduled for a shareholder vote at the annual meeting on November 6, 2025 marks a significant moment in corporate governance, given its scale and the questions it raises about executive pay.

Oh that’s going to be a fun meeting to attend.

Full disclosure, I’m a Tesla shareholder, and you can probably guess which way I’m leaning to vote. At the end of this video, let me know down in the comments if you think the Tesla board and shareholders should vote to approve the $1 trillion pay package for Elon Musk.

The official name of the $1 trillion dollar pay package for Elon Musk is called the “2025 CEO Performance Award”, and is structured as a grant of 423,743,904 shares of performance-based restricted common stock, representing approximately a 12% stake in Tesla. This massive stock grant would be unlocked in 12 separate tranches of stock over a ten-year period. To fully receive the entire $1 trillion pay package, Elon Musk must guide Tesla through a series of ambitious operational milestones in order to achieve a market capitalization for Tesla.

The market capitalization goals start at a valuation of $2 trillion dollars for Tesla, and increase in $500 billion dollar increments, with the final market cap targeted to be a staggering $8.5 trillion dollars for Tesla. This figure is more than double the current market capitalization of the world's most valuable company, NVIDIA, so let that sink in for a minute.

The operational milestones that must be achieved alongside the market cap goals include a list of 'Mars-shot' type targets. These are not easily achieved, and include the delivery of 20 million vehicles in total, the deployment of 1 million Robotaxis in commercial operation, 10 million active Full Self-Driving subscriptions, and 1 million Optimus AI-powered robots from Tesla’s new robotics division.

For the financial targets, the final operational milestone requires Elon Musk to lead Tesla to a $400 billion adjusted EBITDA, which means growing the company's current adjusted EBITDA by approximately 26 times.The Tesla shares only become 'Earned Shares' to Elon Musk when both a market capitalization milestone and an operational milestone are met, and they are generally scheduled to vest after 7.5 to 10 years, depending on when they are earned. To put this proposed package into perspective, the largest executive pay packages in history pale in comparison. For example, Elon Musk's own previous 2018 compensation plan, which was valued at $56 billion dollars and was already considered the largest in corporate history at the time. That pay package was ruled void by a Delaware court on January 30, 2024, leading to Elon Musk moving Tesla’s incorporation to Texas where he believes he’ll have more favorable corporate governance laws.

The second most expensive executive pay package is significantly lower, and belongs to Apple's Tim Cook with a value of $770.5 million dollars. Then we have Alphabet's Sundar Pichai's pay package which comes in around $280 million dollars. Going back to 2023, the highest-paid CEO, who wasn’t named Elon Musk, was Jon Winkelried of TPG, the global alternative asset management firm, and his total compensation was $198.6 million dollars.

This new $1 trillion package for Elon Musk doesn’t just eclipse all others; it redefines the upper limits of executive compensation by an astronomical amount! The ratio of CEO-to-worker pay has historically ballooned, going from about 20 times the average worker's salary in 1965 to over 400 times by 2006 for CEOs of major U.S. companies. The sheer scale of Elon Musk's proposed pay package pushes this ratio into an entirely new realm. The average salary of a Tesla employee is around $114,033 per year. The ratio of the average Tesla employee's salary to Elon Musk's salary is approximately 1 to 8,769,391. This means that for every dollar the average Tesla employee is paid, Elon Musk is paid about $8.7 million dollars.

Tesla's board has argued that the massive pay package is necessary to retain and motivate Elon Musk, and to ensure his long-term focus on the company's growth and innovation, particularly in areas like Artificial Intelligence and robotics, which are key to Tesla’s "Master Plan Part 4 Sustainable Abundance." The board has stated that the key to Tesla's success lies in ensuring alignment of Elon Musk's interests with those of the shareholders. Critics have raised concerns that Elon Musk wields significant influence over the Tesla board, which includes his own brother Kimbal Musk, as well as other hand-picked board members, so it’s not exactly impartial.

Right now Elon Musk owns approximately 13% of Tesla's stock, and has publicly stated that one of his reasons for pushing for a larger award is to raise his equity stake in Tesla up to 25% to gain more control over the company's direction. As if he doesn’t already control Tesla’s board and make every decision himself, but I digress.

Elon Musk also divides his time with his other ventures, including SpaceX, his brain implant company Neuralink, his tunnel drilling company The Boring Company, and his AI company xAI, which recently merged with his company X (formerly and to forever be called Twitter by me).

And we’re not even going to get into his short-lived side hustle where he ran the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE for 90 days earlier this year in the beginning of the second Trump Administration.

The figure of $1 trillion dollars is hard for me to even wrap my head around, but here’s a couple of examples I came up with of what you could buy for $1 trillion dollars.

You could buy 200 billion McDonald's Happy Meals for $1 trillion dollars, which is enough to give each of the 8.2 billion people in the world around 24 McDonald's Happy Meals each, which cost around $5 per Happy Meal. Given that there’s around 475 calories in each McDonald's Happy Meals, that means you’d be consuming 11,400 calories if you ate them all in one sitting, which I don’t recommend.

On the topic of healthcare, right now in Congress, lawmakers are trying to permanently extend the enhanced Obamacare subsidies of the Affordable Care Act, which would cost an estimated $410 billion dollars over the next 10 years. At that price, you could singlehandedly afford to pay it, and still have $590 billion left over - so if you’re feeling generous you might as well just extend Obamacare for the next 20 years to ensure any American that needs healthcare can afford it.

For $1 trillion dollars you could afford to buy a pair of Nike Air Jordan sneakers, retailing for around $150 dollars, for approximately 6.67 billion people in the world, or about 81.34% of the world's population. They might not all have healthcare or clean running water, but they’d all be rocking some really nice kicks.

And lastly, since we’re talking about Tesla here, considering that the cheapest new Tesla Model 3 starts at around $38,630, if you had $1 trillion dollars you could afford buy 25,886,616 Teslas with that amount, which would be good for Tesla's market cap, and help Elon Musk get closer to the milestones the company has set for him, so you’d actually doing him a solid.

The proposed $1 trillion dollar pay package for Elon Musk is an extraordinary proposal that sets a new, and possibly unattainable, standard for executive pay. Proponents argue it is essential for retaining Elon Musk's talent and vision, which has been crucial to Tesla's success, and that the value created for shareholders by meeting the $8.5 trillion dollar market cap and operational milestones will be far greater than the cost. Opponents point to the unprecedented size, the potential for massive dilution of shareholder value from the 423.74 million shares being granted to Elon Musk, and the concentration of Tesla’s equity into Elon Musk's hands, arguing that it is excessive for a CEO who’s already well compensated.

I know where I stand on this issue, and I’ve already cast my vote ahead of the November 6 Tesla shareholder’s meeting. What do you think? Leave a comment down below letting me know if you think Tesla should award Elon Musk a $1 trillion pay package, or if you think it’s an insane number to even consider. And with that, I guess you know what I think.

Quick Hits

🔋 Business

The U.S. Department of Energy and AMD have announced a partnership worth over $1 billion dollars in public and private investment for the construction of two new AI supercomputers named Lux and Discovery. The Lux system, which will use AMD Instinct MI355X accelerators, is scheduled for deployment in early 2026 to expand the DOE's AI capabilities for science and national security.

AMD has been signing other major AI deals lately, including a $10 billion dollar collaboration with HUMAIN to further advance global AI infrastructure, and a multibillion dollar partnership with OpenAI that includes the deployment of 6 gigawatts of AMD GPUs in OpenAI data centers. It sure is a good time to be an AI chip company.

🦚 Entertainment

Television creator/actor/writer/producer Taylor Sheridan may be departing Paramount for a massive new production contract with NBCUniversal that could be worth over $1 billion dollars, and include not only new shows but movies. His film deal would start in March 2026, and his five year television agreement, which is reportedly tied to him producing up to 20 shows, will formally begin in early 2029 after his Paramount deal ends in 2028. Honestly, I’ll watch anything Taylor Sheridan makes anywhere he chooses to stream it.

👟 Tech

Nike just unveiled the company's "world's first powered footwear system" for running and walking, designed by their Project Amplify project team with robotics partner Dephy to augment lower leg movement, which the company claims is like an e-bike for your feet. This exoskeleton system features an ankle movement augmenting motor, a drive belt, and a rechargeable battery to provide an unparalleled boost. But don’t get too excited just yet. A consumer launch isn’t expected for a few years, and no price has been confirmed (i.e. read: it’ll make a paid of Nike Air Jordans look cheap).

🪙 Crypto

President Donald Trump just issued a pardon for Changpeng Zhao, better known as CZ who founded Binance. CZ served four months in prison in April 2024 after pleading guilty to money laundering. His company Binance was fined $4.3 billion dollars and CZ paid a personal fine of $50 million dollars.

CZ’s company Binance is a partner with the Trump family’s crypto company World Liberty Financial’ stablecoin, called USD1, and promoted it to Binance's users - so no conflict of interest to see here I guess.

The pardon by President Donald Trump completely erases the criminal record of Changpeng Zhao, showing that the only thing better than good compliance is a very good political connection.

🐒 NFTs

Remember NFTs? Those were fun times. It seems Yuga Labs, owner of the Bored Ape Yacht Club really wants to bring back those good times. They have officially launched their central social hub, called the Koda Nexus for their metaverse Otherside. The Koda Nexus launch represents the company's biggest bet on reviving the BAYC brand and proving that a creator-focused, NFT-integrated virtual world can compete with major Web2 platforms.

NFTs may have gone the way of Garbage Pail Kids when the last crypto winter set in, but Yuga Labs has been busy with their Otherside build out in hopes of a resurgence in NFT sales. In an effort to try and kickstate the NFT industry, Yuga Labs unveiled a major partnership with Amazon Gaming, which will feature an exclusive, co-branded virtual character called Boximus to introduce digital assets to a mainstream audience.

🏀 Sports

In a recent federal indictment the government charged over 30 individuals, including Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups and Miami Heat guard Terry Rozier, in schemes involving illegal sports betting and Mafia-backed rigged poker games. The schemes, which operated between December 2022 and March 2024, allegedly leveraged insider NBA information for illegal sports betting and cheated victims out of at least $7 million dollars in the poker operation, which was tied to organized crime families like the Gambino, Genovese, and Bonnano. Someone explain to me why Terry Rozier, who’s in the last year of his $96.3 million dollar four-year contract, would be involved in illegal sports betting and poker games? He’s literally going to make $26.6 million dollars this year even while he now sits out on administrative leave, which should give him plenty of time for all those court dates that are coming up.

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Letter From The Editor
Last week’s launch of the newly redesigned and branded The Business Behind The News was a resounding success, and I didn’t even receive any angry emails. Like I predicted I did lose a few subscribers, but it was only (2), and it was more likely due to my Taylor Swift story than the actual rebranding, so I’m calling that a win.

For the rest of this Fall I’m going to be reaching out to other newsletters to inquire about partnering to include a small article from The Business Behind The News in their issues, and then reciprocate it with their content in my newsletter. So if you’re interested drop me a line and let’s chat.

In today’s newsletter I discuss the great OpenAI circular fundraising, content creator Amelia Dimoldenberg launches Formula 1 ‘Passenger Princess’ YouTube series, Uber has found a way to entertain their gigworking drivers when they’re not driving, Coinbase has acquired the onchain capital raising platform Echo for approximately $375 million dollars, Spotify has partnered with Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group to create new AI music products (I’m sure that will sound great), and Apple and Formula 1 have announced a five year United States media rights deal for all F1 races beginning in 2026, with Apple paying approximately $140 million dollars per year for the rights.

Scroll on!

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Top Story

⭕ The Great OpenAI Circular Fundraising

OpenAI's massive capital raising is not a conventional fundraising effort. It is a highly complex, multi-party financial strategy, sometimes referred to as circular financing, designed to secure the immense, and currently scarce, computing power needed for its next-generation AI models. This strategy is centered on its $500 billion Stargate supercomputer project.

OpenAI is the lead partner in the Stargate Project, a joint venture with SoftBank, Oracle, and others, with an announced goal to invest up to $500 billion in U.S. AI infrastructure by 2029. The project aims to deploy at least 10 gigawatts (GW) of AI data center capacity; equivalent to multiple large power plants, to train and run its frontier models.

This colossal spending is necessary because the scarcity and cost of high-end AI chips (GPUs) are the primary bottlenecks to advancing AI and achieving Artificial General Intelligence (AGI). Nvidia, the dominant AI chip supplier, has committed to investing up to $100 billion in OpenAI over time. This investment is progressively tied to deployment milestones. As OpenAI builds out its massive data centers, Nvidia’s capital helps fund those very facilities.

In turn, OpenAI commits to filling these new data centers (at least 10 GW worth) with millions of Nvidia systems and chips, effectively guaranteeing a massive, long-term revenue stream for its investor, Nvidia. This arrangement provides OpenAI with guaranteed, prioritized access to the most advanced and scarce Nvidia GPUs, while providing Nvidia with a financial stake in its most prominent customer and cementing its hardware as the backbone of the future AI industry.

OpenAI signed a separate, monumental deal with Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), estimated to be worth up to $300 billion in cloud computing power over approximately five years. Oracle is a core partner in the Stargate Project, overseeing the build-out of major data center campuses (like the flagship site in Abilene, Texas), providing the physical and cloud infrastructure where OpenAI's AI supercomputer will run.

To diversify its supply and create a competitive chip landscape, OpenAI struck a major deal with AMD for the deployment of 6 GW of its chips. As part of this deal, OpenAI was granted warrants that could give it up to a 10% equity stake in AMD, further aligning its success with the chip supplier's performance.

OpenAI is using its funding to buy cloud capacity from Oracle, and Oracle, in turn, spends billions buying Nvidia and AMD chips to fill its data centers for OpenAI's use. This creates a powerful, interconnected flow of capital that is fueling the entire AI infrastructure boom.

So hopefully that all makes sense, and it’s as clear as mud. I think they lost me somewhere around Nvidia investing $100 billion dollars in openai, which openai then is using to buy $100 billion dollars worth of Nvidia chips. Seems a little sus to me. 

What is clear is we’re seeing that OpenAI isn't just traditional fundraising; it's a brilliant, interconnected strategy designed to bypass the bottlenecks of AI compute. By securing massive investments from giants like Nvidia—who then become both investors and suppliers—and locking in unparalleled cloud capacity from Oracle, which in turn fuels purchases of chips from both Nvidia and AMD, OpenAI has engineered a unique circular financing model. This complex dance of capital ensures they have the cutting-edge hardware and infrastructure necessary to build the AI future, creating a powerful, mutually beneficial ecosystem that is driving the entire AI industry forward at an unprecedented pace. It’s a testament to the immense value and ambition behind the race for advanced AI.

Quick Hits

🛌 Business

Another week, another cheeky economy term to describe the current job market. Ed AlHussainy, a strategist at Columbia Threadneedle Investments, describes the current labor market as "bed rotting" to describe how the job market is atrophying with employers reluctant to make major hiring commitments. That explains why my LinkedIn feed is full from colleagues who’s looking for work, but no one seems to be hiring.

🛻 Entertainment

British creator Amelia Dimoldenberg, known for her ‘Chicken Shop Date’ YouTube series where she interviews famous people and goes on a tongue-and-cheek date with them at a Chicken Shop, has launched a four part F1 series called ‘Passenger Princess’, where she gets driving lessons from Formula 1 drivers including George Russell, Oscar Piastri, Ollie Bearman, and Carlos Sainz. The premier video has the Team Mercedes driver George Russell being the first driver to try and teach Amelia Dimoldenberg how to drive. Since Amelia Dimoldenberg is an Internet famous content creators known for trying to date everyone she interviews, I can’t wait to see how her driving lessons from Formula 1 drivers goes.

🤖 AI

Uber announced a US pilot program that will let drivers and couriers earn supplemental income by completing digital tasks like recording speech samples and uploading images. The tasks, which include data labeling and annotation for AI models, are designed to be completed in the Uber driver app during downtime, with pay varying by task complexity. By leveraging its global workforce for the AI training, Uber is expanding income opportunities for their gigworkers whole enhancing their homegrown AI models. Looks like a win-win for the machines, ah…I mean workers.

🪙 Crypto

Coinbase acquired the onchain capital raising platform Echo for approximately $375 million dollars, comprised of a mix of cash and stock. Echo has helped projects raise over $200 million dollars through approximately 300 completed deals, and this acquisition allows Coinbase to offer a full stack solution for token issuers. Given the $375 million dollars price tag that Coinbase is paying for Echo, hopefully the "future of onchain capital formation" is at least more profitable than past crypto projects.

🎶 Music

Spotify has just revealed a massive push into artificial intelligence, forging a major partnership with industry heavyweights Sony Music Group, Universal Music Group, and Warner Music Group to create new AI music products. Spotify revealed that has removed over 75 million spammy tracks from its platform in 2024 alone. No wonder all new music sounds the same to me - that and I’m a 48-year oldman who’s musically tastes are stuck in the ‘90s.

🏁 Sports

Apple and Formula 1 announced a five year United States media rights deal for all F1 races beginning in 2026, with Apple paying approximately $140 million dollars per year for the rights. Formula 1's president and CEO Stefano Domenicali called the partnership "incredibly exciting." As a part of the deal current F1 TV subscribers (me) will get the same great experience if you’re an Apple TV subscriber for the low-low cost of only $12.99 dollars per month. As long as they keep Jolyon Palmer and David Coulthard as commentators on F1 TV’s feed then I’ll watch them anywhere.

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.