Good Morning! OpenAI is valued at $80 billion after a recent deal. It was a rough year for Goldman - but CEO David Solomon got a 24% raise and made $31 million last year. Moelis bet big on the Middle East and is cashing in with an IPO boom. And Deutsche wants managers in the office 4 days a week, backpedaling from their previous pro-hybrid work tone. Plus, exploring the hidden costs of social media, and 10 lessons learned after business failure.

_{SQUEEZ OF THE DAY}

NFL Could Be Your New Landlord

Your next landlord might be an unexpected host - a professional sports team.

With professional sports team values increasing exponentially over the past few decades, owners are looking to real estate as a means to rake in extra cash and drive up the asset value of franchises even more. Owners aren't just relying on ticket sales, TV sales, and concessions to bring in revenue - many are turning to real estate.

Local and state governments have contributed $33 billion to build stadiums across the U.S. over the past fifty years. And owners are realizing the stadiums are just the tip of the iceberg. The real gold mine is the development rights that come with them.

Stadiums used to be surrounded by parking lots - think the NYC area with Citi Field and MetLife Stadium. But billionaire owners see potential in the surrounding area, and they want to diversify their portfolios. They’re scrambling to develop surrounding areas into mixed-use districts. 

Take SoFi Stadium’s Hollywood Park, for example - it’s helping revitalize what was a pretty rough neighborhood even five years ago. Or the Battery Atlanta in Georgia - the Braves’ owners were willing to move away from downtown if that came with the ability to develop the ballpark area into apartments, restaurants, hotels, and shopping.

And some teams are finding out that some fans are willing to shell out top dollar to live near the home team’s stadium - especially if they’ll be living in a new, cutting-edge community.

Takeaway: When it comes to billionaire sports franchise owners, we’re dealing with some of the savviest business minds in the world (and many come from Wall Street, too). If they see the surrounding stadium area as a way to diversify revenue streams and become a real estate mogul, many will jump at the chance. And with professional sports owners known for their egos - we might see a real estate mogul arms race in the coming years.

_{SPONSORED BY CASKX}

The Next Frontier of Alternative Investment is... Bourbon?

The bourbon-whiskey industry is booming.

All across Kentucky, rickhouses are being built at record speeds to keep up with the booming bourbon industry.

And even with 10 million barrels aging at this moment, the demand is still eclipsing the supply.

Enter CaskX: your gateway to investing in a carefully curated selection of bourbon barrels from top-tier American distilleries.

Click here to skip the line in the red-hot bourbon market.

_HEADLINES

Top Reads

• OpenAI valued at $80 billion after recent deal (YF)

• Goldman Sachs CEO Solomon gets 24% pay bump to $31 million (CNBC)

• Deutsche Bank is ordering managers back to the office 4 days a week (Fortune)

• Deal famine is driving private equity evolution (Reuters)

• Moelis bet big on the Middle East and is now cashing in (BB)

• NYC sues social media giants (Axios)

• Private equity firms pump sales opportunities for 2024 (WSJ)

• Companies make 2024 the year of cost cuts (CNBC)

• How the strong stock market helped boost inflation (Axios)

• Investors dump cash, continue to pour money into stocks (YF)

_{CAPITAL PULSE}

Markets Rundown

Stocks gave up gains as stubborn inflation persists.

Movers & Shakers

• (+) CoinBase ($COIN) +9% after the cryptocurrency exchange platform posted its first quarterly profit in two years.

• (–) Dropbox ($DBX) -23% after posting light guidance, double downgrade by Bank of America.

• (–) Roku ($ROKU) -24% after posting a larger-than-expected Q4 loss.

Private Dealmaking

• RedBird IMI bought All3Media for $1.45 billion

• Gabon will buy Carlyle’s oil business for $1.3 billion

• DraftKings bought Jackpocket, a lottery ticket app, for $750 million 

• Firefly Bio, a protein-focused biotech, raised $94 million

• Orienspace, a Chinese rocket launch startup, raised $83.5 million

• Antithesis, a software testing startup, raised $47 million

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

_{BOOK OF THE DAY}

People We Meet On Vacation

Two best friends. Ten summer trips. One last chance to fall in love.

Poppy and Alex. Alex and Poppy. They have nothing in common. She’s a wild child; he wears khakis. She has insatiable wanderlust; he prefers to stay home with a book.

And somehow, ever since a fateful car share home from college many years ago, they are the very best of friends.

For most of the year they live far apart—she’s in New York City, and he’s in their small hometown—but every summer, for a decade, they have taken one glorious week of vacation together.

Until two years ago, when they ruined everything. They haven't spoken since.

Poppy has everything she should want, but she’s stuck in a rut. When someone asks when she was last truly happy, she knows, without a doubt, it was on that ill-fated, final trip with Alex.

And so, she decides to convince her best friend to take one more vacation together—lay everything on the table, make it all right. Miraculously, he agrees.

Now she has a week to fix everything. If only she can get around the one big truth that has always stood quietly in the middle of their seemingly perfect relationship. What could possibly go wrong?

“Maybe things can always get better between people who want to do a good job loving each other. Maybe that’s all it takes.”

_{DAILY VISUAL}

How Uber and Lyft Measure Up

_{DAILY ACUMEN}

Stress

Ever caught yourself treating stress like a game of Whack-a-Mole, armed with yoga mats and meditation apps, only to find the moles of work overload and personal drama popping up faster than you can say "Namaste"?

It's like trying to plug a leak with bubblegum—creative but hardly effective. We've become pros at stress-snacking and Netflix marathons, but when it comes to confronting the boss about unrealistic deadlines, we're not so great.

It's time to set boundaries and have those tough conversations.

Because in the end, managing stress is less about dodging moles and more about turning the game off altogether.

_{ENLIGHTENMENT}

Short Squeez Picks

• The power of a fake morning commute

• Exposing the costs of social media

• Why keeping it simple drives productivity

• 10 lessons learned after business failure

• The most and least expensive pizza cities in the U.S.

_{MEME-A-PALOOZA}

Memes of the Day