Good morning! Private equity firms are adding force majeure-style clauses, which protect companies from acts of God, to now include acts of AI. PE is also pouring billions into defense tech as investors debate whether the sector is becoming a bubble.

Meanwhile, Advent closed 2026’s biggest PE fund at $30 billion, and managers at Sweetgreen’s top stores will earn pay packages above $200K starting next year.

Plus: “Buy, borrow and die” has become a $5 trillion market, US MBA applications plunge 27% as international demand falls, and Ares is buying private credit firm MidCap Financial from rival Apollo for $2.6 billion.

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Most people’s favorite meme stays in the group chat. But when Kylian Mbappé was asked about his favorite meme of himself on the French podcast The Bridge, an innocent question turned into a problem for his sponsors and an entire league. The Real Madrid star described a video that put his face on “some guy, I think he’s a Chinese dictator,” as the clip cut to an image of Mao Zedong.

Within days, that answer cost him endorsement deals and got LaLiga pulled off Chinese state TV.

At least three companies ended their partnerships with him this week: dairy brands Mengniu and Milkground, and drinks maker Eastroc (also known as Dongpeng). The value of the lost deals hasn’t been disclosed, but Forbes estimates Mbappé makes ~$30M a year off the field. And the fallout went well beyond his own checks.

State broadcaster CCTV stopped streaming LaLiga matches and said its apps would no longer feature news about Mbappé, putting one of the league’s biggest international markets at risk.

LaLiga said it “deeply regrets the offence caused to Chinese fans,” apologized on behalf of the league and its clubs, and said it’s rolling out a new communication protocol for players.

President Javier Tebas added that he “cannot allow the actions of an individual to tarnish this relationship.” Mbappé followed with his own apology, saying he has “deep respect for the Chinese people and their history” and is “sincerely sorry.”

For brands, the appeal of someone like Mbappé is that his audience follows him everywhere, but the catch is that his comments do, too. A casual interview can reach the same customers as a carefully approved advertising campaign, without anyone from legal getting a look first. Sponsors spend months negotiating how a star appears in their ads, but an unscripted answer can end up getting more attention than the campaign.

Takeaway: This caps off just about the worst 24 hours of Mbappé’s glamorous life: losing the Ballon d’Or to Harry Kane, then losing lucrative sponsorships and becoming a meme himself.

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Description: Set in a fractured future America, Exit Party follows Ari Waker as she investigates a mysterious disappearance at a Los Angeles party where people seem to have doubles and reality begins to unravel. Moving between parallel worlds, political upheaval, and a surveillance-driven society, Emily St. John Mandel explores the fragile balance between freedom and security. The novel examines how societies respond to chaos and authoritarianism, weaving together mystery, speculative fiction, and deeply human questions about identity, resilience, and the consequences of political collapse.

Book Length: 320 pages
Release Date: September 15, 2026

Ideal For: Readers who enjoy literary fiction, dystopian worlds, psychological mysteries, and thought-provoking stories about politics, technology, and human resilience. Particularly appealing to fans of Station Eleven and Sea of Tranquility.

The choices we make between freedom and security can shape not only the world we live in, but the people we become.

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Physicist Geoffrey West asked why cities seem to last forever and companies don’t. Cities scale with an exponent of about 1.15, so doubling a city’s size raises its total output by about 2.2 times.

He studied more than 20,000 publicly traded US companies and found the opposite. Companies scale at less than one, so bigger firms produce less per employee.

His conclusion is that companies add layers of structure faster than they add ideas, and eventually stall. Cities keep generating new connections between people.

If you build or run a company, track output per head as it grows. When it starts falling, size is working against you.

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