Kushner and Iger Make a Play For the Lakers
Happy Wednesday.
The current thing in tech and business is Josh Kushner and Bob Iger putting in a record $12.5B for the Los Angeles Lakers.
Today’s Lineup
- Cllct Founder Darren Rovell at 11:30 AM
- WTSL Founder & CEO Patrick Whitesell at 11:45 AM
- CodeRabbit Co-Founder & CEO Harjot Gill at 11:55 AM
- Chroma Founder & CEO Jeff Huber at 12:05 PM
- Neros Co-Founder & CEO Soren Monroe-Anderson at 12:20 PM
- Sequoia Capital Partner Shaun Maguire at 12:20 PM
- Vivodyne CEO Andrei Georgescu at 12:35 PM
Run of Show
What’s in the news
Anthropic watermarking Claude output has, luckily, made enough waves in the discourse that Stratechery’s Ben Thompson chimed in on the issue (“worse than it seems”). Watermarking will allow the company to comply with an EU AI regulation that requires labs to ensure output is detectable as AI. Ben’s main observation is that by watermarking, the EU — and Anthropic — are fundamentally treating AI as an independent entity instead of a tool:
Implicit in the E.U.’s regulation is the idea that an AI is an independent entity that needs to be distinguished from humans; the alternative view — that I hold — is that AI is (at least for now) a tool that is wielded by humans. From this perspective, to insist on watermarking is no different than insisting that a ballpoint pen advertise itself as the author, a concept that is clearly absurd…What the E.U. is doing is stealing the last thing humans have — creation — and demanding it be bundled with substantiation, effectively giving AI the credit.
Josh Kushner and Bob Iger have made a $12.5B bid for the Los Angeles Lakers, a record valuation for an NBA team. The bid comes less than a year after CEO and chairman of TWG Global Mark Walter bought a controlling interest in the Lakers from the Buss family for a then-record valuation of ~$10B.
A bunch of animal-tech crossovers in the timeline recently. This morning Trae Stephens revealed that an intrepid squirrel fried the power to Anduril’s Mississippi facility; a massive swarm of jellyfish shut down three nuclear reactors in France on Monday via the plant’s North Sea-connected cooling canal; and Leonardo DiCaprio announced his support for a campaign to protect the Chilean pehuenche frog from a power transmission project designed to connect the grids of Argentina and Chile.
Clip Spotlight: Conor Sen says the housing shortage may be as much a financing problem as a building problem
"Right now the financing piece is really hard. A lot of people invested money in 2021-2022. Cap rates were low, valuations were high. And they got blown out pretty bad over the next few years."
"The equity got wiped out. People might still be sitting on those loans."
"So as we see the apartment market starting to turn, and it's time to build apartments again, there's no equity to go around."
"And you can't get a deal done unless there are equity investors ready to go. Because they all got wiped out last time. They're gun shy. And nowadays, maybe you'd rather fund a data center than an apartment building."
"So I think finding ways to finance new developments — and maybe the public sector can have a role here, whether it's subsidies or tax incentives, things like that — that's something that we should look into."
Headlines
ESPN: Sources: Josh Kushner, Bob Iger to buy Lakers for $12.5B
WSJ: Vibe-Coding Startup Lovable Hits $13 Billion Valuation
The Information: Kalshi Tops $4 Billion In Annualized Revenue as it Seeks $40 Billion Valuation
Bloomberg: DeepSeek Publicizes Efforts to Challenge Anthropic’s Claude Code
Bloomberg: Lightspeed Seeks $600 Million for Anthropic, OpenAI Wagers
The Information: Hyperliquid Looks for Path to U.S. Markets for Its Perpetual Futures
Bloomberg: Uber Working on Offering ‘Tween’ Rides Option for Kids 10 to 12
FT: Investor Nelson Peltz prepares bid for US burger chain Wendy’s
Business Insider: DoorDash is set to become a Nevada-incorporated company.
FT: Confessions of a former star M&A reporter
WSJ: Think You Know the Office Dress Code?
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