Good Morning! Goldman agreed to buy real estate firm LCN Capital Partners, which manages ~$3 billion in assets, for up to $410 million. University of California just sold $1 billion in PE stakes to HarbourVest at a discount north of 10%. And Anthropic's revolving credit facility is on track to blow past its $10 billion target ahead of its IPO.

Google paid $10 million for Spirit Airlines' data to train AI models, reportedly ~100 million emails and 500 million Microsoft Teams chats. And Daniel Ek's body-scanning startup Neko Health is opening its first US office in New York, where more than 25,000 people are apparently already on the waitlist.

Plus: Kalshi wants to launch perpetual contracts tied to equity indexes, the OpenAI and Anthropic IPOs could unlock hundreds of billions for charity, and how to actually free yourself from information overload.

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

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Gen Z's New Asset Class

Back during the meme stock era, Wall Street was starting to worry that Gen Z was treating their Robinhood accounts like a casino and investing like gambling. It was easy to see why with GameStop, AMC, crypto pumps and zero-day options at midnight replacing compound interest with dopamine hits and instant riches for some. But fast-forward to 2026, and it looks like that same story running backward, and gambling is becoming the new investing. 

A new Betterment survey found that 25% of Gen Z investors are making sports betting a key part of their long-term financial strategy. For context, that's up from around 14% of millennials, 6% of Gen X, and basically less than 1% Boomers. And more than half of Gen Z respondents admitted they've taken money that was originally supposed to go toward investing and put it into sports betting instead over the past year, with 14% redirecting money multiple times a month.

The wall between a brokerage account and a sportsbook has been getting thinner for a while now, and meme stocks and crypto already made investing feel like gambling for a lot of younger traders. Over the past few years, sportsbooks have been returning the favor, and many of them have adopted the interfaces and the language of finance.

One 32-year-old that Bloomberg interviewed has a Robinhood account but says he's spent more time betting this year than actually investing. He approaches it the same way he'd approach a real position and researches the matchup, sizes his bets carefully, and tries not to let emotion drive the decision. He's up around $2,500 for the year.

The tension between investing and gambling is a genuine fight for where Gen Z's spare dollars end up, and it's not slowing down. Legal sports betting is closing in on a $17 billion industry, and money that would've gone automatically into a brokerage account or a Roth IRA has a lot more competition these days, and most of that competition offers a much faster payoff than sitting around watching an index fund compound for three decades.

And that's really the crux of it for this generation specifically. A lot of Gen Z feels locked out of the traditional milestones, buying a house chief among them, while AI anxiety, job insecurity, and the rising cost of basically everything have made the slow, patient path to financial security feel a lot shakier than it used to. So the generation splits down the middle. One half is maxing a Roth IRA at 22 and treating compounding interest a religion. The other half has the exact same underlying anxiety about the future, and it's spending it on Sunday Night Football.

Takeaway: Sportsbooks used to compete with bars and casinos for Gen Z's money, but now they're going head-to-head with Schwab and Vanguard for the same dollar. The old worry was that Robinhood made investing feel like gambling, but the new one is whether gambling has finally gotten convincing enough to pass for investing.

PRESENTED BY MOSAIC

LBO Watchlists: Real-Time Alerts for Take-Private Opportunities

Never miss a take-private opportunity again. Mosaic's new LBO Watchlists continuously monitor public companies to identify the most compelling take-private opportunities. Users can build custom watchlists, define what makes a company "actionable," and receive real-time alerts the moment those criteria are met.

Behind the scenes, Mosaic automatically refreshes an LBO and DCF analysis for every company in a watchlist, every hour.

Users can create highly customized screening criteria across LBO returns, DCF valuation, price action, operating performance, leverage, and other company fundamentals, ensuring they never miss an opportunity that fits their investment strategy.

Build your first LBO Watchlist.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Goldman Sachs to buy real estate investment firm for up to $410 million (WSJ)

• KKR makes $9 billion takeover bid for natural gas and electricity distributor (WSJ)

• University of California offloads $1 billion of private equity stakes (BB)

• Anthropic pre-IPO credit facility set to climb past $10 billion (BB)

• Google bought Spirit Airlines’ data to train AI models (Quartz)

• Daniel Ek’s body scanning startup Neko Health opens first US office in New York (TechCrunch)

• Kalshi wants to launch perpetual contracts tied to equity indexes (CNBC)

• IPOs for OpenAI, Anthropic could unlock $430B for charity (NY Post)

• SharkNinja is building an AI tool to monitor profitability in real time (WSJ)

• KKR’s Internet Brands readies debt refinancing in near term (BB)

• Investors slam SEC plan to remove best price rule (WSJ)

• Mark Walter’s insurer to slash scrutinized loans by $6.5 billion (BB)

• Thoma Bravo weighs concessions in $2 billion Sophos refinancing (BB)

• Pimco’s Stracke says wealth firms running shy of private credit (BB)

• Treasury yields rise as FOMC minutes show Fed in no rush to cut rates (CNBC)

• American Airlines to add seatback screens, bigger first class in race to catch up to Delta and United (CNBC)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• Nasdaq fell 1.3% on semiconductor weakness, while energy, health care, and consumer staples outperformed.

• The 10-year Treasury yield closed near 4.7% and the 30-year finished around 5.28%, near its highest since 2007.

• WTI crude traded back above $80 amid ongoing Middle East uncertainty.

Earnings Season

• Home Depot beat on earnings and sales, with average ticket size up 2.8%, and reaffirmed full-year guidance.

• Lowe's, TJX, Ross Stores, and Walmart report later this week.

• U.S. investment-grade bond issuance is up nearly 30% year over year through July, per SIFMA.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Duolingo ($DUOL) +7% after multiple analysts raised price targets and KeyBanc and DA Davidson upgraded the stock.

• (–) CoreWeave ($CRWV) -12% because of concerns over rising AI infrastructure overspending hitting the market.

• (–) Klarna ($KLAR) -23% after the buy-now-pay-later company cut its full-year revenue guidance.

Prediction Markets

• At least the politicians can still trade, right?

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

Private Dealmaking

• Francisco Partners agreed to acquire Weave Communications, a patient engagement and payments platform, for around $650 million 

• Neros Technologies, a drone manufacturer, raised $250 million

• Freehand, a supplier payment automation startup, raised $75 million

• Boulevard Bio, a precision immunology startup, raised $65 million

• Skan AI, a context graph of work for enterprise AI, raised $63 million

• ChipAgents, a developer of agentic AI platforms for semiconductors, raised $60 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

Curiosity Redefines The Limits

Description:
A memoir-driven leadership book from Rodney C. Adkins that explores curiosity as a practical competitive advantage. Drawing on his journey from growing up in Miami to becoming a senior IBM executive and serving on multiple Fortune 500 boards, Adkins shows how asking better questions can improve leadership, decision-making, adaptability, and personal growth. The book combines career lessons with stories from his life, emphasizing continuous learning, relationships, preparation, and purposeful leadership.

Book Length: 280 pages
Release Date: March 31, 2026

Ideal For:
Executives, entrepreneurs, emerging leaders, and professionals interested in leadership, continuous learning, decision-making, and developing a more curious mindset.

Curiosity isn't simply a desire to know more, it can become a competitive advantage that expands what's possible.

DAILY VISUAL

Where Are the AI Job Losses? Not in Travel Agencies

PRESENTED BY BLUEFLAME AI

5 AI Use Cases for Senior Investment Bankers

1. Market and sector intelligence

2. Buyer and investor targeting

3. Meeting prep in minutes

4. Deck and memo quality control

5. CIM battle-testing and stress tests

The advantage is multiple investment banking use cases in a single platform; it’s what happens when AI becomes a collective part of the day-to-day banking workflow. Investment banks can move from pitch to outreach to execution with better information, fewer blind spots, and more consistency at every stage.

See the difference with AI purpose-built for investment banking. Explore Blueflame AI.

DAILY ACUMEN

Skill Ceiling

As a competitive field gets better at something, the gap between the best and the average narrows, not widens. Every participant is more skilled than a decade ago, which means skill alone explains less of who wins. Luck fills the space that shrinking skill differences leave behind.

This is why a stock picker's edge is harder to find today than fifty years ago, even though analysts are smarter and better equipped than ever. Everyone improved together, so the field flattened, and what used to separate winners from losers now looks nearly identical across the pack.

The paradox is that in the most skilled arenas, results tell you the least about actual ability. A single great year in a highly efficient market is weaker evidence of skill than the same year would have been decades earlier, precisely because everyone left in the game is now good enough that luck gets to decide.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• 2 forgetful habits that mean you’re intelligent

• Knock over the career ladder

• The best places to do nothing but read

• The best types of magnesium for recovery and sleep

• How to free yourself from information overload

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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