Good Morning! The AI arms race is heading for your company laptop. Yesterday, Google announced its new AI enterprise platforms - hot on the heels of Monday’s ChatGPT Enterprise release.

The job market is chilling, with openings hitting their lowest point since early 2021. Stocks surged on the news, aligning with the Fed’s aspirations. And the crypto market rallied following Grayscale clinching a legal battle over its Bitcoin ETF application.

If you were in NYC yesterday, your subway might have gotten interrupted when a 127-year-old water main flooded Times Square with almost 2 million gallons of water. Wall Street is gearing up for a $15 billion buying spree of risky buyout debt. And Apple is sending out invites for the unveiling of the iPhone 15 on September 12th.

If you are interested in getting in front of a smart, young audience of business leaders, bankers, investment professionals, policy influencers of over 500,000 people, then fill out this form, we’ll be in touch.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

Broadband Bonanza

With the M&A market looking bleak in 2023, Wall Street’s getting creative with making money. And it turns out investment banks and private equity firms are playing a huge role behind the scenes with bringing high-speed internet across the country.

High-speed internet is finally expanding into small and midsize cities. And Wall Street sees a void.

The playbook? Broadband companies need to raise money - so they’re tapping Wall Street with new bond sales. And private equity firms love broadband.

KKR and Oak Hill Capital backed a company that spent $70 million building a fiber-optic network in Fayetteville, NC this year. Apollo bought Brightspeed for $7.5 billion last year. And Frontier Communications is minority-owned by Ares.

But private equity isn’t just buying broadband companies - they’re also buying and building data centers, cell towers, and satellites.

Takeaway: Maybe infrastructure isn’t the sexiest investment, but it’s an area a lot of private equity firms have been pivoting towards over the past couple of years. And it goes to show Wall Street’s reach across the country - investment firms and banks are financing virtually all major infrastructure and construction projects.

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks rallied after jobs data fuels interest rate optimism.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Coinbase ($COIN) +15% after Grayscale won its Bitcoin ETF lawsuit.

• (+) Palintir ($PLTR) +5% after an upgrade by Bank of America.

• (+) Nvidia ($NVDA) +4% stock closed at record after announcing Google AI partnership.

Private Dealmaking

• Danaher, a life sciences conglomerate, bought Abcam for $5.7 billion

• Redwood Materials, an EV battery recycler, raised $1 billion

• L Catterton bought Thorne HealthTech, a nutritional supplements maker, for $680 million

• Tiger Global sold its stake in Indian food delivery company Zomato for $136 million

• Apollo.io, a B2B sales intelligence software provider, raised $100 million

• Rockset, a data analytics provider, raised $44 million

Get access to private deal flow here.

_{SPONSORED BY ARRIVED}

Invest In Real Estate With Just $100

We all know real estate can be a stellar investment (after all, it has outperformed the S&P 500 for the past 20 years).

But the everyday investor probably doesn’t have the up-front capital, time, or experience to invest in lucrative real estate projects.

Introducing Arrived. Backed by Bezos himself, Arrived lets you invest in real estate properties (like vacation rentals) with just $100 and share in the profits.

Simply browse from properties curated by Arrived’s experts, invest $100 up to $50k, and relax as Arrived handles all the end-to-end management.

Over $2.6 million in dividends has already been paid–invest in real estate today!

_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Central bankers see old economic models failing (Axios)

• Bitcoin trading volume is at its lowest in more than four years (CNBC)

• Citadel pays interns $19k/month looking for the next math whiz (BB)

• Mastercard, Binance end crypto card partnership (Reuters)

• Blackstone unloads mezzanine debt eyed for default risk (RD)

• Why the U.S. has a productivity problem (CNBC)

• Google to sell up to $100M of maps data to companies building solar products (CNBC)

• Uber Eats’ new AI chatbot will offer recommendations to customers (YF)

• Zillow predicts housing market will jump 6.5% by 2024 (Fortune)

• Amazon raises free shipping minimum for some non-Prime members (CNN)

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

Loonshots

Loonshots reveals a surprising new way of thinking about the mysteries of group behavior that challenges everything we thought we knew about nurturing radical breakthroughs.

Safi Bahcall, a physicist and entrepreneur, shows why teams, companies, or any group with a mission will suddenly change from embracing new ideas to rejecting them, just as flowing water will suddenly change into brittle ice. Mountains of print have been written about culture. Loonshots identifies the small shifts in structure that control this transition, the same way that temperature controls the change from water to ice.

Using examples that range from the spread of fires in forests to the hunt for terrorists online, and stories of thieves and geniuses and kings, Bahcall shows how a new kind of science can help us become the initiators, rather than the victims, of innovative surprise.

Over the past decade, researchers have been applying the tools and techniques of this new science―the science of phase transitions―to understand how birds flock, fish swim, brains work, people vote, diseases erupt, and ecosystems collapse. Loonshots is the first to apply this science to the spread of breakthrough ideas. Bahcall distills these insights into practical lessons creatives, entrepreneurs, and visionaries can use to change our world.

Along the way, readers will learn how chickens saved millions of lives, what James Bond and Lipitor have in common, what the movie The Imitation Game got wrong about World War II, and what really killed Pan Am, Polaroid, and the Qing Dynasty.

“If The Da Vinci Code and Freakonomics had a child together, it would be called Loonshots.”

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• 8 ways aspiring leaders can establish executive presence at work

• 5 ways your to-do list is hurting productivity

• 8 mindsets to keep you calm and productive

• How to get the most out of your schedule with time-blocking

• How to make coffee smoothies

_{DAILY VISUAL}

Grayscale's Big Court Win Boosts Bitcoin and Crypto Sentiment

_{SPONSORED BY SUPERSIDE}

Creative Assets on Demand

Maybe your brand launch is tomorrow.

Maybe you have no hiring budget (been there).

Or maybe your team is simply understaffed and overworked.

Regardless, if you need ad designs ASAP, you need Superside. They deliver high-quality, on-brand assets to your inbox in as little as 24 hours.

Yup, Superside hires the top 1% of creatives across the globe, so you don’t have to vet freelancers or make any hasty hires in a pinch.

Why Superside is the #1 Creative-as-a-Service:

• Graphic design, websites, ad copy–it’s all on-brand and on-time

• Used by over 450 companies like Google, Meta, Reddit, and Shopify

• Transparent pricing from the start to save you up to 50%

TL;DR: It’s on-demand advertising that’s bottom-line friendly.

Submit your brief today, get creative assets tomorrow.

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Procrastination

Today's daily acumen is about that ever-so-familiar devil we all know: procrastination. You might think you're just bad at managing your time, but guess what? It's not really about the clock; it's about your emotions.

Psychologists are increasingly saying that we procrastinate not because we're poor schedulers, but because we're avoiding negative feelings attached to a task. Whether it's fear of failure or just plain boredom, we hop onto YouTube or scroll through memes to get that short-term emotional lift.

This procrastination game has long-term consequences. We're talking not just deadline stress, but real health impacts like anxiety, depression, and even cardiovascular disease. Yikes. So how do we fight back? Embrace "psychological flexibility" and focus on the next simple action to pull you closer to your goal.

Turns out, just starting is often enough to keep you going. So the next time you're tempted to put something off, remember it's not your time you're mismanaging, it's your emotions. Let's get to it! 🚀

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day