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🍋 ASU’s Influencer Major

🍋 ASU’s Influencer Major

Plus: Anduril nearly doubled its valuation in months, Goldman's COO is fighting over trees at his $32 million estate, and KPMG is training interns at its $450 million facility.

Short Squeez
July 27, 2026

Together With

“Some of the best work is done by people who find an easy way to do something hard.” — Paul Graham

Good Morning! Anduril returned to market for a new round that could value the defense tech firm at ~$100 billion, up from its $61 billion valuation just two months ago. Miami's ultra-luxury home sales are now outpacing New York and San Francisco. And BlackRock kicked off a $12.3 billion bond sale to finance a Meta data center.

Goldman's president is firing back in a battle over knocking down trees at his $32 million Martha's Vineyard estate. KPMG sent its summer interns to a boot camp in Florida at the firm's $450 million training facility. And Paramount and Warner Bros. halted their merger until legal challenges are resolved or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first.

Plus: How much a TikTok creator with 30,000 followers really makes, the $600 million world of executive perks, and how deep sleep builds muscle and burns fat.

The first half of the year brought hope for a strong end to the year for PE. Prepare for deals in the second half of 2026 with Mosaic.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

ASU’s Influencer Major

Arizona State University is launching a Bachelor of Arts in Content Creation through its School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The school says the major will prepare students to become “an influencer and strategic storyteller who thrives in the rapidly evolving creator economy.” So yes, getting college credit for becoming an influencer is now officially a thing.

The specifics are worth knowing before you dunk on it. The 120-credit-hour degree was approved by the ASU University Senate in March 2026 and appears in the university’s 2026-2027 course catalog. Coursework will cover content planning, video and podcast production, and personal branding, with real-world experience through a Los Angeles Content Studio, brand content projects, media internships, and content creation trips abroad.

The capstone is what makes it interesting. For their final project, students must pick a social media platform like Instagram or TikTok, develop a growth strategy, produce content, and show real audience growth with actual followers. In other words, the final exam is building a tiny media company and proving it works, needing real numbers and a follow count to back it up.

Goldman Sachs projects the creator economy will reach $480 billion by 2027, which makes influencing less of a punchline and more of an actual industry. The skills required are real too: video production, audience analytics, brand partnerships, platform strategy and monetization are all part of building a modern media business. So you can roll your eyes at “majoring in TikTok,” but half of corporate America is currently paying agencies and creators to figure out TikTok for them.

The skepticism is still fair. One ASU professor asked on X whether the degree would survive the new federal rule requiring programs to show they actually increase graduate earnings over non-degree holders. That is a real question in an industry where the top 1% can make millions and everyone else may just be posting into the void.

There is also something ironic about the whole thing. The creator economy was supposed to be the great unbundling of media, where anyone with a phone could bypass the gatekeepers and build an audience directly. Then universities looked at the trend and asked: what if we bundled it back into a degree program?

Takeaway: The headline is “students majoring in TikTok.” The substance is closer to entrepreneurship, analytics, media production and brand monetization. Whether you need four years of tuition to learn it is the real question. But the creator economy is not going away, and ASU just became one of the first major public universities to treat it like it isn’t.

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

Bain: "PE Is Sitting on 32,000 Unsold Companies"

Bain's new Global PE Report put out a huge number: private equity is holding 32,000 unsold companies worth $3.8 trillion. After years of waiting, the exit window appears to be opening.

Medline's listing was the largest PE-backed IPO in history, corporate buyers are back, and Bain's survey of GPs indicates a belief in that momentum carrying through 2026. But buyers are still selective, and the deals getting done are the ones where the seller can back up the price.

PE firms are getting exit-ready in Mosaic, where a new Football Field tab adds a DCF, public comps, and precedent transactions to any completed LBO in one click, and the redesigned Deals View keeps models, metrics, and documents in one place for the whole team.

See why firms are turning to Mosaic for modeling.

HEADLINES

Markets Rundown

Market Update

S&P 500 finished little changed and the Nasdaq fell 0.6% on chip weakness, while the Dow and Russell Midcap Index posted modest gains.
New 10% to 12.5% tariffs took effect overnight under Section 301, replacing the temporary Section 122 levies from February.
WTI crude fell below $90 but still finished the week up roughly 9%; the 10-year Treasury yield eased to 4.68%.

Earnings Season

Alphabet's Wednesday earnings sent the Nasdaq down more than 2% Thursday after raised capex guidance.
Microsoft, Meta, Amazon, and Apple all report next week.
S&P 500 full-year earnings are projected to grow 28%, led by energy, technology, and communication services.

Movers & Shakers

(+) Digital Realty Trust ($DLR) +11% after Q2 revenue hit $1.9B, well above the $1.66B consensus thanks to AI and cloud leasing demand.
(+) Booz Allen Hamilton ($BAH) +10% because the consulting firm beat earnings, with adjusted EBITDA margin rising to 11.9%.
(–) MaxLinear ($MXL) -22% after investors took profits after earnings, even despite Q2 revenue and EPS beating estimates.

Prediction Markets

Was the Trump 2028 hat from the White House Correspondents’ Dinner a dead giveaway?
Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

MN8 Energy agreed to acquire Greenbacker Renewable Energy for $375 million
Etched, an inference chip startup, raised $300 million

Equipifi, a provider of embedded BNPL solutions, raised $34 million
Parasail, a deployment network for AI agents, raised $32 million
Geordie AI, a security and governance platform for AI agents, raised $30 million
Nas, an AI platform for solopreneurs, raised $27 million

For more PE, VC & M&A deals, subscribe to our Buysiders newsletter.

BOOK OF THE DAY

Situated

Description:
A groundbreaking guide from Angela Duckworth that argues success depends not only on grit, but also on the environments we create for ourselves. Building on the ideas introduced in Grit, Duckworth explains how the people around us, our physical surroundings, daily routines, and communities profoundly shape our behavior and performance. Combining psychological research with practical advice and real-world stories, she shows how intentionally designing your environment can make achieving your goals easier, more sustainable, and more fulfilling.

Book Length: 352 pages
Release Date: September 1, 2026

Ideal For:
Professionals, leaders, students, and anyone interested in psychology, habit formation, and creating environments that support long-term success and well-being.

Your environment is not just the backdrop to your life, it is one of the most powerful forces shaping who you become.

DAILY VISUAL

Not All Software Is Bad

Source: Apollo

PRESENTED BY ALUMNI VENTURES

Invest in High-Potential Startups Like These

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See current AV deals.

DAILY ACUMEN

Just World

Most people carry a quiet, largely unconscious belief that the world is fundamentally fair, that success reflects virtue and failure reflects some deserved flaw. It is a comforting belief and almost entirely wrong, which makes it a dangerous lens for judging outcomes, your own or anyone else's.

This shows up as a bias toward assuming winners in any field were simply better and losers were simply worse, when the honest account usually includes a large helping of circumstance neither party controlled. It also produces false comfort, the quiet assumption that if you are careful enough, misfortune will not find you.

The market does not know or care whether you deserve a good outcome. Diligence improves your odds. It does not purchase immunity, and letting go of that belief is uncomfortable precisely because it means admitting fairness was never guaranteed to begin with.

ENLIGHTENMENT

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What’s the smell in the office?
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Why mid-year is the perfect time to set new goals

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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