Good Morning! The U.S. added 165,000 jobs in October, nearly triple the 59,000 forecast, and unemployment dipped to 4.1%. Private credit defaults hit a record 6.3% in Q3, and Tesla is winding down Cybertruck production after a sales slump.

Elizabeth Warren is set to chair the Senate Banking Committee next year, giving Wall Street a new reason to lose sleep. Investors are questioning Anthropic’s $1.5 trillion IPO valuation, and Norway’s sovereign wealth fund reached a $224.5 million settlement with KPMG over SVB’s collapse.

Plus: Private tech valuations face scrutiny after the public market selloff, The New York Times eyes a $330 million Letterboxd deal, and the McDonaldization of venture capital.

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Jensen Huang admitted to cheating on his wife in a memo to Nvidia employees on Sunday. The confession came two days after reports came out that US intelligence believes he had a romantic relationship with a woman recruited by China’s Ministry of State Security. A US memo flagging the relationship was reportedly drafted just before Trump’s Beijing summit with Xi Jinping earlier this year.

So who is she? Alice Huang, also known as Huang Le, is a Chinese businesswoman and former managing director of Megaspeed, a Singapore-based data center company that became a major Nvidia customer. (Despite the shared surname, she has no relation to Jensen).

In June 2024, after the Computex trade show in Taipei, she was photographed drinking whiskey next to him at a gathering of tech executives. Trade records cited by The New York Times show Megaspeed’s Malaysian affiliate went on to buy at least $4.8 billion of equipment containing Nvidia chips between June 2024 and February 2026, and the US government had already been investigating Megaspeed over suspected chip smuggling into China. The two were seen together again in Taipei in May 2025. For someone allegedly seeking access, working for a major customer is a natural way in.

And access to Huang matters because he does more than sell chips: he helps shape the debate over who should be allowed to buy them. He has long argued that keeping Nvidia out of China only gives rivals like Huawei room to grow, and has complained publicly that Nvidia went from 95% market share in China to zero.

The company had previously brushed off the reporting, calling the interactions normal for a customer relationship. Now the board is opening an independent investigation led by a committee of independent directors with outside counsel. It says it has no reason to believe national security or company secrets were compromised, but will review all available information. Huang said he would fully cooperate.

Upon hearing the news, Trump defended Huang as “an honorable guy,” and Elon Musk backed him publicly. Meanwhile, House China committee chair John Moolenaar renewed calls for Huang to testify before Congress. Huang has spent the past year lobbying Trump to loosen chip exports to China, which helped secure approval for H200 sales with the US government taking a cut, a deal that frustrated China hawks inside the administration.

Takeaway: Nvidia reportedly spends ~$4M a year on Huang’s security, but it apparently couldn’t keep an alleged spy out of his inner circle. When one executive has this much influence over the AI industry, who gets close to him becomes a concern for shareholders (and in this case, the entire economy). Nvidia can restrict access to its chips, but putting a firewall around the CEO’s personal life is a harder assignment.

PS: Enjoy some extra Jensen memes in today’s edition below.

Billionaires like Larry Ellison and Elon Musk have long borrowed against their stock instead of selling it. A new Deloitte survey of 57 major lenders, reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, puts a number on how big that kind of lending has become: about $5.4 trillion in credit extended against portfolios. Deloitte estimates about $1.6 trillion is actually borrowed.

It's also reaching a wider group of clients. Schwab said its pledged asset line, open to clients with at least $100,000 in nonretirement assets, helped lift its bank-loan balances 35% to $72.3 billion last quarter.

Stelrix builds on the same idea with an investment-backed credit card, helping investors spend the way the wealthy do: against their investments, without selling them.

Learn more about Stelrix.

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Description: Kenneth Chenault, former CEO of American Express, reflects on his journey from growing up during segregation to becoming one of America's most influential business leaders. He shares lessons from his career, the mentors who shaped him, and the values that guided his leadership. The memoir explores overcoming barriers, building successful organizations, maintaining integrity, and creating opportunities for future generations.

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Leadership is not simply about reaching the top. It is about what you accomplish, the principles you uphold, and the opportunities you create for others.

AI companies are shopping for something businesses have been accumulating for years: their internal records.

Business Insider reported this week that one data broker says it pays $100,000 to $2 million for a midsize company’s data, with plans to spend $1 billion buying more over the next year.

For financial sponsors, distressed-credit investors, and M&A advisors, that becomes another asset worth examining. Petrarch sources operational records from businesses, including bankruptcy estates, then de-identifies and restructures the material for sale to AI labs and startups. Its process includes on-premise anonymization (reducing privacy risk) and legal-clearance checks (permission to sell the data) before resale.

Explore how Petrarch turns operational records into an asset. Book some time with their CEO.

Researcher Gloria Mark measured how long people stay on one screen. In 2004, the average was 2.5 minutes. Today, it is 47 seconds.

The more costly part is the return. After a break from a task, it takes about 25 minutes and 26 seconds to get back to the original project, and people work only about 10.5 minutes before being interrupted, whether by someone else or by themselves.

The cost isn’t the interruption, it’s the long trip back. Protect one uninterrupted block a day and silence notifications during it.

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