Good Morning! Ares followed Apollo in blocking investors from withdrawing even half the money they requested from private credit funds, a deepening sign of strain in the $1.8 trillion private. And Moody's downgraded FS KKR Capital Corp to junk amid rising bad loans and a string of weak earnings.

Hedge fund Millennium is exploring relocating its Dubai staff to Jersey. Apollo is acquiring Nippon Sheet Glass in a $3.7 billion deal, its largest private equity investment in Japan to date. And Jefferies shares popped on reports of a potential takeover bid from Japanese lender SMFG.

Plus: The wealthy are already racing to lock down a private chef in the Hamptons for the summer, and the hidden career cost of being too agreeable.

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SQUEEZ OF THE DAY

The VC Hunting Unemployable Founders

Hummingbird Ventures is closing in on an $800 million raise, inclusive of $600 million for its first growth fund and $200 million for early-stage bets, and the most interesting part isn’t the size. It’s the founder filter.

Hummingbird says it’s explicitly looking for founders who feel “almost unemployable” in normal corporate life. They’re targeting obsessive founders, anomalies, and people with nonlinear backgrounds and a chip on their shoulder. 

And in a market where every venture firm claims to want contrarians and then backs the same Stanford dropout with the same AI pitch deck, that’s either genuine differentiation or very good marketing. The portfolio suggests it’s the former.

Kraken was a Hummingbird bet long before crypto was institutionally acceptable. Lovable fit the same template in a different cycle, an AI coding company that looked unserious until usage exploded and the market caught up.

Both funds from those eras, along with the 2010, 2012, and 2014 vintages, reportedly returned 10x or more. For context, most VC portfolios are a graveyard with one decent logo and a lot of LinkedIn posts about "learnings."

The growth fund is the strategic move worth watching. Europe has plenty of seed capital and a much thinner pool of real scale capital. Hummingbird is trying to fill that gap without abandoning the original thesis - still hunting for 10x asymmetry at the growth stage, which only makes sense if you believe the next giants in AI, crypto, and frontier software will still come from founders too weird or too obsessive for normal committee logic.

Looks like investors are onboard with the thesis though, the raise was oversubscribed within a week, taking Hummingbird's AUM to nearly $2 billion.

Takeaway: Most VC firms say they want outliers. What they actually want are legible outliers - impressive résumés, familiar social proof, just enough weirdness to feel interesting. Hummingbird's real pitch is narrower and riskier: founders too intense or too nonlinear for normal institutions to process. If the market systematically discounts people who don't look hireable, the fund willing to underwrite that discomfort earliest gets access to companies everyone else missed.

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HEADLINES

Top Reads

• Ares limits private credit fund withdrawals as redemptions surge (BB)

• Apollo to acquire Nippon Sheet Glass in $3.7 billion deal (WSJ)

• Hedge fund Millennium explores shifting Dubai staff to Jersey (FT)

• Private credit fund run by Future Standard and KKR cut to junk by Moody's (BB)

• Japan’s SMFG explores possible takeover of Jefferies (WSJ)

• The 'Hunger Games,' Hamptons-style: hiring a private chef for summer (NYT)

• Jamie Dimon says Iran war makes Middle East peace prospects better in the long term (CNBC)

• Fund with SpaceX and Anthropic stakes jumps 1,200% above NAV (BB)

• Hedge fund founder Weiss loses defamation suit against Jefferies (BB)

• Estée Lauder, Puig in talks to form $40B beauty giant (CNBC)

• Apollo stock falls after private credit fund caps redemptions (WSJ)

• Home flippers see smallest profits since the Great Recession, real estate data firm says (CNBC)

• United Airlines adds premium seats, cuts back on coach (CNBC)

• OpenAI drops Sora, the controversial AI video app (YF)

• Moody's cuts rating on private credit fund run by KKR and Future Standard to junk as bad loans grow (CNBC)

• Dell's family office hunts private credit 'gems' amid turmoil (BB)

• Inside JPMorgan Chase's push to become the startup world’s new Silicon Valley Bank (CNBC)

• A $1,000 dog grooming session? The wellness industry is booming (NYT)

CAPITAL PULSE

Markets Rundown

Market Recap

• U.S. equities finished mostly lower as geopolitical uncertainty continued to drive sentiment

• Small- and mid-cap stocks outperformed, closing higher, while technology lagged, particularly software

• WTI crude rose nearly 4% to ~$92 per barrel amid mixed signals on the conflict timeline

• Reports suggest potential peace talks, but also U.S. troop deployment (~3,000 troops) to the region

• Treasury yields climbed, with the 10-year reaching ~4.40%, a multi-month high

• Gold reversed gains after reports of potential reserve sales by Turkey

• Markets remain highly sensitive to oil price movements and headlines

Economic Pulse Check

• March PMI data provided an early read on the economic impact of the conflict

• U.S. data was mixed:

  • Manufacturing strengthened

  • Services weakened, hitting an 11-month low

• In the eurozone, both PMIs and consumer confidence declined, with confidence seeing its sharpest drop since 2022

• The current shock is both:

  • Growth-negative due to uncertainty and higher costs

  • Inflation-positive due to rising energy prices

• Despite this, underlying fundamentals remain supportive:

  • Consumer income levels are significantly higher than prior cycles

  • Household balance sheets remain healthy

  • Unemployment remains low

• Continued AI-driven investment is also supporting broader economic resilience

Rates and Policy Outlook

• The Federal Reserve remains in a holding pattern, balancing:

  • Inflation risks from energy prices

  • Potential slowdown in growth and hiring

• Historically, central banks have looked through temporary oil shocks, but persistent inflation complicates that approach

• The Fed maintained its projection for one rate cut, signaling flexibility but caution

• Compared to prior cycles:

  • The labor market is less tight

  • Policy is less accommodative

  • Fiscal support is more limited

Movers & Shakers

• (+) Netgear ($NTGR) +11% after the FCC banned all imports of foreign-made consumer routers, citing national security risks, giving domestic manufacturers like Netgear a major competitive edge.

• (+) Jefferies ($JEF) +3% because the Financial Times reported that Japan’s second-largest bank, Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group, is preparing a potential takeover bid for the investment bank.

• (–) Circle Internet ($CRCL) -20% after debate over the Clarity Act, legislation that would regulate stablecoins, weighed heavily on the crypto company’s stock.​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​​

Prediction Markets

• Watch Market Wednesday: The Rolex Datejust 41 “Wimbledon”

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

Private Dealmaking

• Apollo will acquire Nippon Sheet Glass for $3.7 billion

• Kandou AI, an AI chipmaker, raised $225 million

• Arlington Capital Partners will acquire Eptec Defence for about $100 million

• NoTraffic, a traffic management platform, raised $90 million

• Gimlet Labs, a developer of AI inference software, raised $80 million

• Above Security, an insider threat cybersecurity platform, raised $50 million

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

BOOK OF THE DAY

The Infinity Machine

Description: A deeply reported account of the race to build artificial general intelligence, centered on Demis Hassabis and the rise of DeepMind. Mallaby traces the company’s origins, its breakthrough achievements, and the high stakes competition between tech giants to control the future of AI. Blending biography, corporate strategy, and cutting edge science, the book explores both the promise and the risks of creating machines that could surpass human intelligence.

Book Length: 480 pages
Release Date: March 31, 2026

Ideal For: Investors, technologists, founders, and anyone interested in the future of AI and the people shaping it.

The race for superintelligence is not just about building smarter machines. It is about who controls the systems that will shape the future of human progress.

DAILY VISUAL

Trillions in IG Supply Coming to the Market

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DAILY ACUMEN

Rewired

The most dangerous thing AI is doing to you is not taking your job. It is making you feel smarter while quietly making you less capable, and doing it so gradually, so comfortably, that you will not notice until the day you need to think without it and discover that muscle has atrophied.

Every time a hard thing gets done for you, the part of your brain that was supposed to struggle through it gets nothing. No friction, no resistance, no signal to grow. The shortcut feels like help. It functions like a slow erosion of the very thing that made you worth hiring in the first place.

The people who will matter in ten years are not the ones who used AI the most. They are the ones who used it without letting it use them back, who stayed fluent in difficulty, kept their judgment sharp, and never confused the ability to prompt a machine with the ability to actually think. That distinction is becoming the most important one alive, and most people are drifting to the wrong side of it without ever making the choice.

ENLIGHTENMENT

Short Squeez Picks

• The hidden career cost of being too agreeable

• How to get better at staying off your phone

• 3 reasons smart people struggle to make decisions

• The simple mental habit elite performers use to build willpower

• 9 tips to help you cope in turbulent times

MEME-A-PALOOZA

Memes of the Day

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