Good Morning! Anthropic could publicly file IPO paperwork as soon as this month, with the company expecting to match or top SpaceX's record $75 billion raise. Arctos, the sports private equity firm KKR acquired earlier this year, agreed to buy 10% of the Atlanta Falcons at a $10.6 billion valuation. And Bill Ackman donated $400 million to fund a new brain center after his 26-year-old daughter suffered a brain hemorrhage.

California drew more startup investment than all other 49 states combined, with a record $366 billion in venture funding this year. Vance raised $5 million at a Hamptons event at the home of 1789 Capital's Omeed Malik. And private credit's next big opportunity is $1 trillion in British pensions.

Plus: KKR's data center chief vaulted to prominence with the Nvidia pact, how Micron's $50 billion Boise buildout is reshaping its hometown, and how to stop procrastinating.

AI agents are now competing with Wall Street on earnings forecasts. See their forecasts here.

SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

IPO, Please

It’s been a rough private equity winter, and funds are sitting on way too many portfolio companies. There aren’t enough buyers and LPs are getting impatient and want their money back. But in 2026, the IPO market is finally reopening, and it’s raising the question - why sell to a strategic or another sponsor when public markets might actually pay up for the same company?

Blackstone President Jonathan Gray called 2026 the "year of the IPO," and so far he's looking right. There have already been 21 U.S.-listed IPOs of private equity-backed companies through August 19, the most since 2021, and more than all 20 that priced in the entirety of 2025.

The recent list includes household names like Jersey Mike's and Reformation, alongside less obvious ones like data-center company Csquare and defense contractor Aevex. Madison Dearborn had been trying to sell Aevex since 2023, hiring Jefferies that year to shop the company around, but no deal ever materialized. So this year, it took Aevex public instead at a valuation above $2 billion.

While private equity sponsors still generally prefer an M&A exit, many are finding that if they run an M&A process and prepare an IPO at the same time, they can simply take whichever exit actually clears.

There are drawbacks, though. An IPO doesn't mean the PE firm gets all its money back on day one. Lockups can keep a fund invested for at least six months, and sponsors often have to stomach some volatility in public markets in the meantime.

IPOs have historically made up only a small share of private-equity exits (~1% since the beginning of 2022), but with public investors suddenly willing to buy again, they've become another lever for sponsors desperate to turn paper gains into actual cash.

Takeaway: Private equity would still rather sell a company outright and wire the proceeds back to LPs. But after years of waiting for M&A to recover, the reopening IPO market is becoming a very useful Plan B. Sponsors spent the downturn finding creative ways to squeeze liquidity out of companies they couldn't sell. But now the old-fashioned public listing is back on the menu, and PE has a lot of inventory to move.

PRESENTED BY OPENSTOCKS

86% of Companies Beat Wall Street's Estimates Last Quarter

Almost nine in ten S&P 500 companies came in above the consensus estimate this earnings season, the highest beat rate since 2021, with results landing well clear of what analysts had modeled.

Consensus has always been a human product, and it carries human problems. For example, banks publish forecasts on companies that are clients of their other divisions, coverage piles onto mega caps, and models sit untouched for months because analysts are slow to change their view in public.

OpenStocks aims to become the go-to platform for AI Consensus on companies' earnings and the forecasting benchmark for AI agents. To do this, OpenStocks is recruiting experts to build AI agents that forecast company earnings. Those agents will compete on a public leaderboard, get graded against actual results once they are out, and their forecasts compile into the AI Consensus. The one rule is no human analysts.

See current agent forecasts and build your agent on OpenStocks.

HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Anthropic expects to match SpaceX's record IPO size or top it (BB)

• Arctos agrees to buy 10% of Atlanta Falcons at $10.6 billion valuation, sources say (CNBC)

• Ackman gives 10 million Pershing shares to fund new brain center (BB)

• California’s AI dominance fuels $366 billion venture capital bonanza (WSJ)

• Vance builds network of young donors at NY fundraiser (Axios)

• Private credit's next big thing is $1 trillion in British pensions (WSJ)

• KKR data center chief vaults to prominence with Nvidia pact (BB)

• How Micron’s $50 billion Boise buildout is reshaping its hometown (CNBC)

• New $7B private equity firm backed by Obama staffers, sports legends and Hollywood vets wants to revive NBA franchise (Page Six)

• Carlyle joins $1 billion investment round in missile startup Castelion (WSJ)

• Private equity’s billion-dollar scramble to own a piece of sports (Washington Post)

• Hong Kong’s IPO boom extends beyond tech, HKEX CEO says, as fundraising tops $40 billion (CNBC)

• SpaceX bets that boosted endowment returns now dominate funds (BB)

• Oura restructures tech leadership in AI push (WSJ)

• Harvest season brings farm belt’s next energy pain point (Axios)

• Function just raised $450 million. CEO says there are no competitors in the space. (Inc.)

• Rainmakers in talks to leave Weil Gotshal amid poaching frenzy (WSJ)

• Private equity firms look for an exit three years after buying EverBank (WSJ)

• Here's the real problem with stock buybacks (WSJ)

• Anthropic set to add Citigroup to top IPO banks on mega listing (BB)

• Canadian pension giant turns to Blackstone and KKR to seal infrastructure megadeals (FT)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• Stocks fell as the 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.70%; consumer staples and consumer discretionary led losses while energy outperformed.

• WTI crude climbed to about $87 amid ongoing Strait of Hormuz disruptions.

• Asia finished higher overnight while Europe ended mostly lower.

Earnings Season

• Walmart beat earnings and revenue forecasts but shares fell about 9% on a softer-than-expected outlook.

• The Conference Board's Leading Economic Index rose 0.2% in July to 99.5, beating the 0.1% forecast.

• The LEI's six-month change turned positive for the first time in more than four years.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Deere ($DE) +7% after Q3 net income of $1.379 billion ($5.10/share) crushed the $4.45 estimate.

• (+) CrowdStrike ($CRWD) -6% because its chief technology officer is leaving to launch an AI-focused cybersecurity venture fund.

• (–) Walmart ($WMT) -9% after posting its weakest comparable sales growth in over a year.

Prediction Markets

• In a stunning turn of events, AOC has flipped Gavin Newsom.

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

Private Dealmaking

• Castelion, a developer of hypersonic missiles, raised $800 million

• Muon Space, a satellite startup, raised $250 million

• Also, a micromobility company spun out of Rivian, raised $150 million

• Callosum, a software layer that co-optimizes AI models and chips, raised $100 million

• Omilia, a Greek agentic CX company, raised $67 million

• Oligo Security, an Israeli runtime security startup, raised $60 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Reverse Centaur’s Guide To Life After AI

Description:
A sharp and provocative exploration from Cory Doctorow of what happens when AI changes the balance between human judgment and machine capability. Rather than treating AI as simply a productivity tool, Doctorow examines how increasingly capable systems could reshape work, creativity, economics, power, and everyday life. The book challenges readers to think critically about who benefits from AI, how institutions may respond, and what uniquely human skills become more, not less, valuable in an AI-driven world.

Book Length: 272 pages
Release Date: September 8, 2026

Ideal For:
Entrepreneurs, technology professionals, investors, executives, and anyone interested in AI's impact on work, society, and the future of the economy.

The question after AI isn't simply what machines can do, it's what humans choose to do with the capabilities they've gained.

DAILY VISUAL

Honey Deuce Prices Stay Flat

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.

DAILY ACUMEN

Casino Trap

A casino's odds are precisely known. The house edge on roulette is fixed and bounded, because the game was built by humans to behave that way. Real markets and careers were not built by anyone, and their randomness has no such boundary.

The mistake, named the ludic fallacy by Nassim Taleb, is applying casino-style thinking to a world that was never designed to play fair. A risk model built like a game of dice assumes outcomes cluster predictably, when real crises tend to arrive from outside whatever range the model imagined.

The result is a specific, expensive overconfidence. Sophisticated math applied to a structured game earns real precision. The same math applied to an open-ended world borrows precision it has no right to claim, and the borrowed confidence tends to fail exactly when being wrong costs the most.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• Why emotional regulation is an underrated leadership skill

• How to stop procrastinating

• What to do with a checked-out high performer

• 14 red flags that make your writing sound like AI

• Is it true a cold shower is the best way to cool down?

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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