🦄 SVN: Who Wants AI In Their Ears?

Greetings from Lisbon, Portugal! As of today I’ve consumed way too much port wine, deleted many pastel de natas, and pretended to be king of at least three different castles. 10/10 recommend checking out Portugal. Anywho, SVN.

This Week’s Piping 🔥⛺️ (Hot ‘Tent)

• AI Computers in your Ears

• TikTok Following The Grindr Strategy?

• FTC Bans Non-Competes

• Invest like Pelosi and Buffett with this New App

• And more morsels of information for you to kick off the week…!

The Silly Valley

🚀 Elon’s OpenAI Rival Closing in on $6B in Funding. Despite being only 10-months old and having zero revenue, xAI has its sights set on dethroning OpenAI as the industry leader. Musk plans on connecting the digital and physical worlds by pulling in training data from each of his companies, which include Tesla, SpaceX, Boring Company and Neuralink. While they originally planned on raising $3B at a $15B valuation, investors “received an email that basically said, ‘It’s now $6B on $18B, and don’t complain because a lot of other people want in.” How any human being is able to run 5 companies and have the energy to start a 6th is beyond me. He must have a top-notch blood boy.

👂🤖 Want an AI computer in Your Ears? Startup, Iyo, debuted their wearable, earbud computer at the TedX conference last week. CEO, Jason Regulo, said the company aims to have third-party apps for music and search as well as first-party apps to make calls, set timers, and more. Will Iyo go the way of Google Glass or will the $700 piece of hardware become a functional fashion statement a la Apple’s AirPods? Only time will tell.

🤳 ByteDance Isn’t Backing Down. If TikTok gets banned, parent company ByteDance says they’ll shut down the app. Don’t panic (or celebrate) quite yet because this has a long legal battle ahead that will have ramifications for the entire tech industry. In the meantime, ByteDance says it will do one of two things - either sell the company without its algorithm, or shut down its US presence all together. Some say this draws similarities to what happened with Grindr (the Uber-for-Penis app). The formerly Chinese-owned company was forced to sell when U.S. officials expressed national security concerns. Grindr, however, was sold for $600M and TikTok is currently valued at $100B….So, we’re not exactly talking apples to apples here.

Sales Fact of the Week

Outside The Bubble

👨‍💻 The FTC Votes to Ban Non-Compete Agreements. The noncompete ban will save roughly $200 billion in healthcare costs alone over the next decade and will affect up to 30 million Americans (18% of the workforce) across all industries. This is a big win for workers and a big loss for “the man” who won’t let me jump at a pay raise from a competitor because I signed something I didn’t read out of desperation for a job in the first place.

👩🏻‍⚖️ Invest Like Nancy. The team that built the viral “Pelosi Tracker” twitter account that follows her stock investments released an app that tracks not just Pelosi, but every government official, as well as famous investors like Michael Burry and Warren Buffett. The company’s goal is to “democratize wealth management” and the app automatically links to your existing brokerage app. While there can be a delay in the time between Pelosi’s trades and yours because the app relies on quarter 13-F filings, if you wanna capitalize on the next Deep State economic conspiracy, Autopilot has your back.

🏀 Timberwolves Owner Sabotages $1.5B Sale. The sale was likely doomed from the start as owner Minnesota Timberwolves owner Glen Taylor conspicuously rejected several immediate cash payment offers in favor of a 3-year transitional sale to ex-baseball superstar Alex Rodriguez and his partners. The deal allowed Taylor to stay with the team and work to ensure a smooth transition. But, when it was finally time to pass the reigns, Taylor nixed the sale claiming Rodriguez didn’t have the money, something Rodriguez denies. Meanwhile, the Timberwolves are having their best season in 20 years on the back of young superstar Anthony Edwards and since agreeing to the sale 3 years ago, the team’s value has doubled to $3B. It appears Taylor never intended to sell and is now doing everything he can to take back his decision. Kinda like me ordering shots for the entire bar at 1am and then reporting fraud on my Chase Sapphire card the next morning.

📞 FCC Fines Major Mobile Carriers $200M. T-Mobile, AT&T, Sprint, and Verizon were fined for illegally selling location data without customer consent. The FCC says that “foreign adversaries and cybercriminals have prioritized getting their hands on this information” as has my sales manager since work-from-home became a thing. The investigation began following revelations that location data had made it’s way to a resale market for bounty hunters. The 200M fine doesn’t seem like much when the combined revenue of the three carriers was over $234B in 2023.

Last Week’s 🔥⛺️ (Hot ‘Tent)

This might our best episode yet…

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