Good Morning! Silver Lake is negotiating a take-private for Workday in what could become one of the largest software buyouts for ~$43 billion. Bill Ackman unveiled six new investments including Netflix, Visa, and Mastercard and called his fund's slumping stock price "frankly absurd." And Anthropic is said to be in talks to buy AI startup Decart for $6 billion.

Anthropic investors are expecting a $2 trillion valuation in its upcoming IPO. Databricks closed a $5 billion funding round at a $190 billion valuation to invest in enterprise AI. And Citadel is requiring investment staff, including analysts, to sign non-competes lasting up to two years.

Plus: Two Sigma founder John Overdeck reportedly offered his wife $633 million in divorce proceedings; and she's seeking $6.2 billion. Blackstone snapped up Ken Griffin's 125 Worth Avenue retail space in Palm Beach for $86 million, and the Big Four have all now been caught passing off AI-generated content as thought leadership.

Mosaic's new LBO Watchlists continuously monitor public companies to identify the most compelling take-private opportunities.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Forbes Curse Strikes Again

Forbes might need to start bundling legal retainers with its awards.

Selena Gomez was named to Forbes’ “Self-Made 250” earlier this year. And now five investors in Wondermind, the mental-health startup she co-founded, are suing Gomez and other company leaders for fraud, alleging the company misrepresented its prospects, failed to build products it promised, and quietly deteriorated while investors were kept in the dark.

Wondermind launched in 2021 with Gomez, her mother Mandy Teefey, and entrepreneur Daniella Pierson running the company. A year later, it raised $5 million at a roughly $95 million valuation with a strong investor lineup including Lightspeed, Sequoia and Serena Williams’s venture fund.

The pitch was built in large part around Gomez herself: one of the most-followed people on earth would use an audience north of 500 million to help build a mental-fitness brand spanning content, products, and eventually an app. Investors were not just backing a startup; they were backing Selena Gomez’s distribution.

According to the lawsuit, much of that never materialized. The plaintiffs, who invested roughly $1.2 million combined, claim the promised app was never built, revenue initiatives failed to develop and Wondermind falsely represented partnerships with JPMorgan and Fidelity. They also allege Gomez failed to fulfill her obligations to promote the business and that the founders concealed operating and financial problems as the company deteriorated. 

And somehow Forbes itself got dragged into the bit during the same week. Randall Lane, the longtime top editor who created the 30 Under 30 franchise, left the magazine last month and was reportedly pushed out after accepting a $6 million payment from RJ Shook, whose company had worked with Forbes for years on wealth-adviser rankings. The payment reportedly came after Shook sold a majority stake in the business to private equity.

Takeaway: Forbes has developed an unfortunate habit of appearing in the first act of stories that later become scandals, from Sam Bankman-Fried to Charlie Javice. Gomez’s situation is obviously nowhere near comparable at this stage: she has been accused in a civil lawsuit and has not been found liable for anything. Still, it has been a rough week for the Forbes halo. At some point, the nomination form may need one more field next to “net worth”: “pending litigation.”

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HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Workday skyrockets 25% before trading halted on report of Silver Lake takeover (CNBC)

• Bill Ackman unveils 6 new investments including Netflix, Visa, Mastercard in portfolio overhaul (NY Post)

• Anthropic said in talks to buy AI startup Decart for $6 billion (BB)

• Anthropic investors salivate over expected $2 trillion valuation in upcoming IPO: report (NYP)

• Databricks wraps $5 billion funding round at $190 billion valuation (CNBC)

• Citadel imposes two-year non-competes even on some analysts (BB)

• Two Sigma’s Overdeck offered wife $633 million, her lawyer says (BB)

• Blackstone snaps up Ken Griffin’s 125 Worth Avenue in Palm Beach for $86M (Commercial Observer)

• The Big Four have now all been caught passing off generative content as ‘thought leadership’ (Consultancy.uk)

• Private credit shifts to shorter bonds as inflation keeps interest rates high (BB)

• ‘Big Short’ investor Steve Eisman sees an Achilles’ heel in the AI boom (CNBC)

• Robinhood plans to speed up debuts for publicly traded funds (Yahoo Finance)

• Wholesale prices were flat in July, below expectations for 0.2% increase (CNBC)

• SpaceX passes first lockup expiry test with $500 billion rally (BB)

• Jane Street lease backs $2.25 billion of green data-center bonds (BB)

• Style war: inside Wall Street’s battle to revive J Crew (FT)

• Anthropic's CFO is leading early IPO meetings, has not talked valuation: sources (CNBC)

• Forbes fires top editor after he secretly accepted $6m payment from business partner (Guardian)

• US robot vacuum maker one-ups China rivals with voice commands (BB)

• OpenAI's revenue run rate tops $40 billion ahead of IPO (BB)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• S&P 500 hit a new record high as July CPI and PPI both came in cooler than expected; the Nasdaq is up 15% year to date and the S&P 500 up about 14%.

• Odds of a September Fed rate hike fell to about 34% from 55% last week, per CME FedWatch.

• The 2-year Treasury yield eased to about 4.15% from 4.2%.

Earnings Season

• Headline PPI rose 4.7% year over year, below the 4.9% estimate; core PPI rose 4.2%, slightly above the 4.1% forecast.

• Both readings came in below June's levels, though inflation remains above the Fed's 2.0% core target.

• One more inflation report is due before the September 16 FOMC meeting.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Workday ($WDAY) +18% after reports emerged that private equity firm Silver Lake is in talks to acquire the enterprise software company.

• (+) Sandisk ($SNDK) +14% because the memory chipmaker forecasted an extremely bullish long-term outlook through 2030 at its Investor Day.

• (–) Cerebras Systems ($CBRS) -12% after the AI chipmaker's Q2 revenue missed consensus despite growing 74% year-over-year.

Prediction Markets

• Post first earnings call and halfway through the month, what will the second half of August look like for SpaceX?

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

Private Dealmaking

• Thoma Bravo agreed to buy Accelerant, a risk exchange platform for specialty insurance, for more than $4 billion

• Dynatrace agreed to acquire Arize, an AI observability company, for $915 million

• AEVEX agreed to buy BlackSea Technologies, a developer of autonomous maritime and subsea systems, for up to $650 million

• eToro agreed to acquire TradeZero, an online brokerage, for up to $231 million

• Finn, a German car subscription provider, raised around $150 million

• Aureka Biotechnologies, a developer of biological foundation models for drug discovery, raised $100 million

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BOOK OF THE DAY

The Four Obsessions Of An Extraordinary Executive

Description:
A classic leadership fable from Patrick M. Lencioni that distills organizational excellence into four fundamental disciplines. Through the story of a newly appointed CEO, Lencioni demonstrates why extraordinary companies prioritize organizational health alongside financial performance. The four obsessions center on building a cohesive leadership team, creating organizational clarity, communicating that clarity relentlessly, and reinforcing it through systems and processes. The result is a practical framework for leaders who want to build organizations that are aligned, healthy, and capable of sustained performance.

Book Length: 272 pages
Release Date: February 1, 2000

Ideal For:
CEOs, executives, founders, and managers who want a practical framework for building aligned teams, improving organizational health, and creating a high-performing company culture.

The healthiest organizations aren't necessarily the smartest, they're the ones that create clarity and reinforce it relentlessly.

DAILY VISUAL

Spider-Man, Odyssey Lift Box Office Grosses to Record High

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DAILY ACUMEN

Hindsight

Once an outcome is known, the brain quietly rewrites its own memory to make that outcome feel like it was obvious all along. The crash that surprised almost everyone gets remembered as something you basically saw coming. The deal that fell apart gets recalled as one you always had doubts about, even if the messages from that week say otherwise.

The danger is what it does to learning. If you believe you predicted the outcome, there is nothing left to learn from it, no update needed to the process that produced the decision, because in your revised memory the process already worked fine.

The only real defense is a written record made before the outcome arrived, noting what you actually believed and why. Compare it honestly against what happened. Most people are far less prescient than their memory later insists.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• Why homeownership feels impossible for Gen-Z

• 10 ways to look hotter, according to grooming experts

• The invisible work draining your best employees

• The no. 1 emotion that predicts whether you will feel you lived a meaningful life

• The 4 types of thinkers

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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