Good Morning! Trump's financial disclosure shows he took in about $1.2 billion from crypto businesses last year. Kroger is buying grocer Giant Eagle in a $1.65 billion deal. And PlayStation will end physical disc production for new games in 2028.

Goldman says the World Cup could boost the June jobs report by 40,000. China is missing out on the AI boom as stocks trail by the most since 2001. And Vance earned up to $7.4 million last year, mostly from book royalties.

Plus: Hedge funds are dumping tech stocks at the fastest pace on record, and how Equinox turned fitness into a $4,000-a-year habit.

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SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

Meta's Cloud Business

Meta surged after a report that Zuckerberg may be turning the company’s massive AI infrastructure spending into an actual revenue stream. The plan is for the company to launch a cloud business selling excess compute capacity and potentially hosted AI models to outside customers.

In late May, Zuck said the idea was “definitely on the table.” Now it looks like it may be on the roadmap. The market loved it immediately, and for good reason. For the past year, investors have treated Meta’s lack of an AWS-style revenue stream as the hardest question in the stock. The spending was real, but while the external monetization was not, that may be changing.

The bull case is clean. Meta has been spending hundreds of billions building AI infrastructure to train models and power its ad business. If it ends up with more compute than it can immediately use internally, selling that capacity turns idle GPUs into revenue, and turns Meta from a consumer of the AI infrastructure boom into a picks-and-shovels play on top of it.

Instead of racing to dethrone OpenAI, Meta can rent out capacity to everyone still trying. Zuck converts his data centers into a toll road and gets paid regardless of which model wins. That is a genuinely different business than what Meta has today, and the market is pricing in the optionality.

The neoclouds are getting hit for exactly that reason. CoreWeave, Nebius, IREN, Cipher, and the rest of the AI infrastructure trade have been built on one idea: compute is scarce and scarcity deserves a premium. Meta entering the market is a direct shot at that story. If the biggest hyperscalers start selling overflow capacity, “we have GPUs” stops being a moat and starts sounding like a commodity business with very expensive depreciation schedules.

There is also a harder problem lurking underneath: cloud is not just a pile of GPUs. AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud are valuable because of enterprise sales teams, security certifications, developer ecosystems, billing infrastructure, compliance, and years of trust. Meta can probably sell raw compute. Becoming a true enterprise cloud provider is a much longer and more expensive journey than flipping a switch on a data center.

The capex read-through cuts both ways. Bulls say this proves Meta found a way to monetize excess infrastructure, improving the cash flow outlook. Bears say the existence of excess capacity is itself the problem; if you have so much compute you need to rent it out, maybe the industry already overbuilt. The market wants to believe Meta’s cloud move means more revenue and less spending simultaneously. But a real cloud business requires constant available capacity, which means entering the cloud business may not be a retreat from the AI infrastructure arms race. It may be a deeper commitment to it.

Takeaway: Meta is trying to convert an AI capex problem into an AI infrastructure business, and if compute demand keeps growing, it could be brilliant. If demand fades, the industry may discover it spent a trillion dollars building the world’s most expensive GPU WeWork right as the tenants started negotiating rent. Either way, the move says the quiet part out loud: the AI race is no longer just about who has the best model. It is about who owns the pipes, who controls the power, and who can keep the GPUs full. Zuckerberg just decided he wants to be all three.

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HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Fed chief Kevin Warsh set to give view on rates, central bank overhaul at ECB forum (CNBC)

• Kroger to buy Giant Eagle in $1.65 billion deal (CNBC)

• PlayStation will end physical disc production for new games in 2028 (CNBC)

• World Cup could boost the June jobs report by 40,000, Goldman estimates (CNBC)

• China misses out on AI boom as stocks trail by most since 2001 (BB)

• Vance earned up to $7.4 million last year, mostly from book royalties (WSJ)

• Hedge funds dump tech stocks at fastest pace on record, Goldman says (Seeking Alpha)

• How Equinox turned fitness into a $4,000-a-year habit (WSJ)

• Trump made more than $1 billion on crypto deals, part of 2025 windfall (WSJ)

• AOL owner to go public at over $18 billion valuation (WSJ)

• New York's pied-à-terre tax targets billionaires row (WSJ)

• Video search startup raises $100 million from Amazon VC funds (BB)

• Google must pay nearly $2 billion to Klarna in antitrust case (WSJ)

• Palantir CEO takes aim at OpenAI and Anthropic, says AI tokens are 'worthless' (CNBC)

• Women on Wall Street leave finance careers to become influencers (BB)

• How Dangote's $40 billion IPO is energizing African markets (BB)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Update

• U.S. equities closed lower, led by weakness in the technology sector.

• The 10-year Treasury yield rose to 4.48%, while the U.S. dollar strengthened against major currencies.

• WTI crude oil remained below $70 per barrel, erasing most of its gains following the Strait of Hormuz disruption.

• International markets were mixed, with Asia mixed overnight and European markets broadly lower.

Employment

• ADP private payrolls increased by 98,000 in June, below both May's 122,000 gain and consensus estimates of 110,000.

• Annual wage growth held steady at 4.4%, continuing to outpace inflation.

• Attention now shifts to Thursday's June employment report, with consensus expecting 100,000 new jobs and the unemployment rate to remain at 4.3%.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Meta ($META) +9% after announcing it will begin selling AI computing capacity to enterprises, launching as the fourth U.S. hyperscaler alongside AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud.

• (+) Nike ($NKE) +5% because Q4 earnings beat on both lines, prompting BTIG to reiterate Buy at $55.

• (–) Caterpillar ($CAT) -7% after Michael Burry publicly disclosed a short position at $1,060.98, arguing its 51x P/E reflects unsustainable “AI infrastructure proxy” hype.

Prediction Markets

• Unemployment numbers get released this morning at 8:30am EDT, one day earlier due to the holiday.

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

Private Dealmaking

• Kroger agreed to buy Giant Eagle, a food and pharmacy retailer, for $1.65 billion

• Together AI, an AI-native cloud, raised $800 million

• InKind, a restaurant commerce enablement platform, raised more than $320 million

• Dominion Dynamics, a Canadian developer of an Arctic surveillance network and drone systems, raised around $139 million

• Beeline Medicines, a precision immunology startup, raised $126 million 

• Higharc, a cloud platform for homebuilding, raised $95 million

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BOOK OF THE DAY

Counterintuitive

Description:
A thought-provoking guide from Naveen Jain that challenges conventional wisdom about success, innovation, and entrepreneurship. Drawing on decades of experience building transformative companies, Jain argues that breakthrough results come from questioning assumptions, embracing bold thinking, and solving problems that others believe are impossible. The book combines personal stories with practical lessons on leadership, risk-taking, curiosity, and creating outsized impact by thinking differently.

Book Length: 320 pages
Release Date: September 30, 2025

Ideal For:
Entrepreneurs, innovators, business leaders, and anyone looking to challenge conventional thinking and pursue ambitious goals with a first-principles mindset.

The greatest breakthroughs rarely come from doing things better, they come from questioning why they are done that way in the first place.

DAILY VISUAL

Fixed Income Replacement for Corporate Pensions

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What members get:

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If you want to level up your social circle and access the best people in finance and beyond, apply for membership below.

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DAILY ACUMEN

Curse of Knowledge

Once you understand something deeply, you lose the ability to imagine not understanding it. This is why the smartest person on a team is often the worst at explaining anything. The knowledge that makes them valuable also makes them blind to what the listener does not yet know, so they skip the steps that feel obvious to them and lose everyone in the room.

It shows up everywhere expertise meets communication. The memo that assumes context the reader does not have. The pitch that breezes past the one thing the audience needed defined. The mentor who cannot remember what confusion felt like, and mistakes a beginner's struggle for a lack of effort.

The rare skill is not knowing more. It is remembering, vividly, what it was like before you knew, and being able to walk someone across the gap you yourself already crossed. Clarity is not a measure of how much you understand. It is a measure of how well you recall not understanding.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• Why discipline beats strategy every time

• How to speak so people actually want to listen 

• Is technical literacy the new MBA? 

• How to reclaim the magic of summer

• Why tech workers are trying to minimize AI usage

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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