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Hollywood is getting bought and sold like clearance DVDs, daters now outsource small talk to robots, and SpaceX is somehow worth the GDP of a medium-sized nation. Meanwhile, IBM is raiding its savings account, Petco accidentally leaked half the internet’s ID cards, and Shopify insists “balance” is a myth (convenient!).
Welcome to today’s edition; where the tech world is chaotic, expensive, and occasionally allergic to basic cybersecurity, but at least it’s never boring.
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Seven bullets of updates
🎬 Paramount makes a $108.4B hostile move to buy Warner Bros. Discovery, just days after a rival $82.7B deal, launching a bidding war for Hollywood’s biggest prize.
💬 Daters can now skip awkward intros with Hinge's AI-powered conversation tips, already used in 13% of chats.
🚀 SpaceX’s valuation soars to $800B as investors and employees cash in during a new secondary share sale.
💾 IBM drops $11B in cash to deepen its cloud and AI tools by acquiring real-time data streamer Confluent.
🧘♂️ "Balance" isn't the goal—try integrating work and life to better meet business demands, says Shopify’s president.
🐾 A technical slip let users' SSNs and IDs become exposed, with 100k+ affected, as Petco scrambles to notify customers.
🤖 Trump aims to limit state-level AI rules, citing 50+ required approvals as stifling for companies.
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Tiger Global Navigates AI Fundraising Amid Elevated Valuations
Photo by micheile henderson on Unsplash
Tiger is rebooting its VC playbook with a new $2.2B fund and a more targeted, “humble” cadence; spray‑and‑pray is now spray‑and‑verify. The last fund rode AI winners (OpenAI, Waymo, Databricks) to ~33% paper gains, but the LP note says AI prices are elevated and sometimes detached from fundamentals.
For founders: expect fewer lead terms at nosebleed marks, slower diligence, and tougher questions on margins, distribution, and unit economics. Infra and true category leaders still eat; thin wrappers go on a diet.
Stakes: LPs get discipline without abandoning the AI wave; late‑stage tourists feel the chill. Competitively, this should cool the bidding wars and normalize pricing; if AI multiples compress, marks and liquidity timelines take the hit.
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The (NEW) Most Valuable Plot of Land in America
Hidden in the Atacama Desert, this place produces billions in lithium each year… and could hold trillions more. Lithium powers EVs, your phone, solar storage, medicine, glass; basically the entire carbon-neutral future we’re trying to build.
But as we discovered on this trip, the metal that could save the world is also destroying their world.
This video uncovers the real Lithium Triangle, why Chile dominates global extraction, and how the world’s clean-energy boom is quietly draining one of the driest places on Earth. And more importantly: the tech that could fix it, before it’s too late.
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Max Hodak Launches Science Corp. for Next-Gen Brain Implants
Photo by Milad Fakurian on Unsplash
Max Hodak—ex–Neuralink cofounder, has a new BCI play: Science Corp aims to reshape human consciousness via implants, starting with macular-degeneration patients and a chip to restore vision. Think less mind-reading, more eyesight reboot; at least at first.
If the tech works, it lands in a sweet spot: massive unmet need, clear functional endpoint, and potential FDA fast lanes (Breakthrough designation helps), but with PMA-class rigor, neurosurgical ops, and brutal manufacturing yield curves.
Strategically, sensory restoration can build defensible data moats and clinical networks before expanding to cognition. Competitors are chasing motor control; the race here is surgical throughput, safety data, and payer coverage.
Near-term tells: first-in-human readouts, durability past 12–24 months, and whether early results look like signal-to-noise progress or a lab demo.