Good Morning! The US economy added 178,000 jobs last month, 3x expectations. Starbucks is offering hourly workers up to $1,200 annually in quarterly bonuses. And AI drove a 25% jump in job cuts from February to March.

An Anthropic exec sees their desktop automation agent as a bigger opportunity than Claude Code. The average ETF lifespan is collapsing as Wall Street chases scale. And private jet costs are up as much as 20% on soaring fuel prices.

Plus: What a private credit fund is actually worth when the money is locked up, West Village is becoming the new Billionaires' Row, and the personality trait that makes life harder.

Equip yourself with a tool designed to help you focus longer. Fuel your focus with FRE.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Elon’s Side Deal for Investment Banks

Wall Street has spent years waiting for SpaceX to go public. Now that the deal is finally moving, Elon Musk is making banks pay for the privilege in a very Elon way: buy Grok.

According to The New York Times, Musk is requiring banks, law firms, auditors, and other advisers working on the SpaceX IPO to purchase subscriptions to Grok, the AI chatbot tied to xAI and now part of the broader SpaceX story.

Some banks have already agreed to spend tens of millions of dollars and begun integrating Grok into their systems. In other words, if you want a seat on one of the biggest IPOs in history, you may also need to help juice the revenue of Musk’s AI business.

The economics explain why nobody is pushing back too hard. SpaceX’s IPO is expected to raise more than $50 billion at a valuation above $1 trillion, which could generate more than $500 million in fees.

The banks in line for those fees include Bank of America, Citi, Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan, and Morgan Stanley. For them, buying Grok is not really a software decision. It is the cost of staying close to Elon, staying on the deal, and staying in the running for whatever comes next.

The twist is that Grok is not exactly winning on merit. It still trails ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini in the AI race and has generated plenty of controversy along the way. But that almost misses the point. Musk is using the gravity of SpaceX, still the most coveted equity deal on Wall Street, to force enterprise adoption of what some perceive to be a weaker product.

Takeaway: Big IPOs have always come with politics, ego, and side favors. Banks aren't adopting Grok because it's the best product in the room, they're adopting it because the best deal in the room requires it. On Wall Street, power has always been the only product that truly sells itself.

PRESENTED BY FRE

How to Create an Edge

The best analysts aren’t just smarter, they’re better equipped. They stack tools: AI copilots, faster modeling templates, cleaner workflows; anything that reduces friction when you’re deep in an LBO model, cleaning up a deck at 1 a.m., or turning MD comments for the third time.

The same logic applies to focus. Concentration is capital.

Nicotine has long been used as a cognitive tool to stay locked in, and, like your favorite AI modeling tool, not all tools are the same. Some are simply stronger or provide more specificity than others. FRE offers a range of 3 - 15mg pouches, allowing you to customize your focus in real time.

Creating an edge means choosing the tools that help you execute when it counts.

Explore FRE and lock in today.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• March jobs report: US adds 178,000 jobs, beating expectations as unemployment falls to 4.3% (CNBC)

• Starbucks rolls out $1,200 performance bonus for hourly workers this fall (BB)

• AI drove 25% jump in job cuts from February to March (LI)

• Wall Street giant sends doomsday warning to booming California company Micron (NYP)

• Anthropic executive sees Cowork agent as bigger than Claude Code (BB)

• Average ETF lifespan collapses as Wall Street grows antsy for scale (BB)

• The cost to fly private is up as much as 20% with fuel prices soaring (CNBC)

• What's a private credit fund worth when the money is locked up (WSJ)

• NYC's West Village just saw another $70M+ sale (NYP)

• The overlooked private credit risk is in life insurance (Axios)

• Fund founded by Pritzkers inks private credit deal for PLZ (BB)

• Bond yields rise after strong March jobs report (WSJ)

• Harvard launches "Strategic Authenticity Initiative" (The Crimson)

•  34 things to do in NYC in April (NYT)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Markets were closed for Good Friday.

Prediction Markets

• Todd Blanche (25% chance) currently serves as interim AG.

• Trade on real-world events with Kalshi. Use code OWS to get a $10 bonus when you trade $10.

Private Dealmaking

• Also, a micromobility and autonomous delivery company spun out of Rivian, raised $200 million

• StairMed, a brain-machine interface startup, raised $69 million

• Cognichip, a chip design startup, raised $60 million

• Alcatraz, a data center access authorization platform, raised $50 million

• Thesis Care, a clinical care platform, raised $45 million

• Sift, an intelligence layer for complex machine systems, raised $42 million

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

HEARD ON THE STREET

How's Your Health?

Blackstone has taken the top spot on the league tables for physical health, with employees lauding the firm for its unity across business units, its "no asshole" policy, and a culture where "people genuinely enjoy working here."

Truist and BNP round out the top three. See how your firm stacks up across all health metrics at Wall Street 360.

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Meaning of Your Life

Description:
A reflective and practical guide from Arthur C. Brooks on how to build a life rooted in meaning rather than achievement alone. Drawing from philosophy, psychology, and real-world observation, the book explores why modern success often feels empty and how to realign your life around purpose, relationships, and contribution. It offers frameworks for redefining happiness beyond status and designing a life that feels both fulfilling and enduring.

Book Length: 240 pages
Release Date: March 31, 2026

Ideal For:
Anyone questioning the relationship between success and fulfillment, and looking to build a more meaningful, purpose-driven life

Success without meaning is one of the fastest paths to emptiness.

DAILY VISUAL

OpenAI is Worth $852B

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

How Reliable Are LLMs for Financial Modeling?

AI has transformed Wall Street's language work: summarizing earnings calls, processing CIMs, drafting memos. But financial modeling is a different problem entirely.

LLMs are probabilistic. Run the same model twice, get two different answers. For an expert call summary, that's fine. For an LBO backing a multi-billion dollar decision, that's a structural flaw. A 99% accurate LBO is still a wrong LBO.

What firms need is purpose-built software where the math never varies. That's Mosaic.

Read the full article here.

DAILY ACUMEN

Shrinking Markets

Every industry looks stable until the year it doesn't. The people who saw it coming were rarely smarter than the people who didn't. They were just willing to take seriously a possibility that felt too uncomfortable to sit with for very long.

Kodak employed engineers who understood digital photography. Blockbuster executives had seen the Netflix pitch deck. The information was available.

What was missing was the willingness to act on a conclusion that would have required dismantling the thing they had spent their careers building.

Knowing something and being willing to do something about it are separated by a gap that has ended more careers than ignorance ever did.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• The personality trait that can make life feel harder

• 2 reasons highly disciplined people burn out

• Why isometric exercise is the most efficient fitness regime

• 6 things to avoid to keep your brain healthy

• Microshifting puts a new spin on 9-5 schedules

• Get your net worth insights*

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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