📈 Chinese unicorns now out-earn US peers by $166B a year

🖱 Chinese unicorns founded since 2010 generate $706B in annual revenue. That is $166B more than comparable US companies.

🖱 Despite this scale, China still has no public company with a market cap above $1T. Private firms like ByteDance are often cited as exceptions, but they are not publicly traded.

The gap highlights a mismatch between revenue strength and public market outcomes. Over time, this difference may narrow as more Chinese firms mature or list.

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🌙SpaceX delays Mars mission to focus on the Moon

🖱 SpaceX has pushed back its planned 2026 Mars mission. The company is now prioritizing a lunar mission for NASA, according to people familiar with the decision.

🖱 SpaceX is targeting March 2027 for an uncrewed Starship landing on the Moon. The shift aligns with NASA’s Artemis program, where SpaceX is contracted to deliver astronauts to the lunar surface using a modified Starship.

🖱 The move comes as SpaceX leans into bigger bets. After acquiring xAI, the combined business was valued at $1.25T, and an IPO is being discussed for as early as this summer.

Mars is still the long-term goal. For now, the Moon is back at the front of the roadmap.

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Valuations today:

🖱 Apple: $4.1 trillion
🖱 Nokia: $40 billion

Valuations when iPhone launched:

🖱 Nokia: $110 billion
🖱 Apple: $104 billion

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“To be successful, you don't have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren't - consistent, determined and willing to work for it. No shortcuts."

~ Tom Brady

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🌐 How a $100 domain turned into a $70,000,000 sale

In 1993, Arsyan Ismail registered AI.com for $100. He was 10 years old. The letters matched his initials. He held the domain for 32 years.

Ismail built early internet projects in parallel. He released Orenscript as a teenager, shipped popular mIRC tools, launched a local social network, founded 1337 Tech, and became an early Bitcoin user with marketplace experiments.

Over time, AI.com became one of the rarest domains online. Two letters tied to the most valuable tech narrative. By 2023, it was redirecting between giants like ChatGPT and xAI, watched as a digital trophy.

In 2026, the sale closed. Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek bought AI.com for $70,000,000, paid fully in crypto. The deal was brokered by Larry Fischer.

$100 became $70M. Time did the work.


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💰 A $5k angel helped pull $700k into a seed round

🖱 In 2020, Freshpaint was raising its seed round when COVID hit. The company still closed $1.6M. One investor came in with a $5,000 check.

🖱 That angel introduced other angels. Those angels brought in more investors and funds. The chain that started with the $5k check delivered $700,000, about 43% of the round.

🖱 Freshpaint builds software that helps companies collect and analyze customer data, with an early focus on healthcare. Since then, it has raised two more rounds in 2022 and 2024, reaching $42M total.

Small checks can open big doors.

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❕ The AI trade is bigger than $NVDA

Everyone keeps framing AI as a single stock story. But the actual spend moves through a long supply chain.

Big Tech capex flows in stages. It does not go straight to GPUs.

🖱 Tools and equipment first
ASML
Lam Research
Applied Materials

🖱 Then the fabs that make the silicon
TSMC
Intel
GlobalFoundries

🖱 Then the real choke points
Broadcom
Marvell
Credo Technology
Amphenol
Coherent
Lumentum

🖱 Servers ship at the end
Super Micro Computer
Hewlett-Packard Enterprise
Dell

Many of these stocks trade as if AI spending slows soon. Capex plans across Big Tech point the other way.

The middle of the chain looks underwatched.

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The books you need to succeed

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✖️ Key engineers leave xAI as 2 co-founders walk out to launch a new startup

🖱 More than 10 well-known engineers and researchers have left xAI in the past 24 hours. Among them are two co-founders, Jimmy Ba and Yuhuai Wu.

🖱 In total, 6 of the company’s 12 co-founders have now exited within a few years of its launch. The latest group appears to be moving together. They hint at building something new and are already hiring, though no official details have been shared.

🖱 The departures are unfolding as xAI is being absorbed by SpaceX and faces investigations linked to Grok’s erotic content generation.

A young AI lab is losing half its founding bench while a new one forms next door.

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📈 Alphabet’s 2026 capex comes in above expectations

Alphabet plans capital spending in 2026 that exceeds market forecasts. The biggest cost driver is data center buildout for AI workloads across Google.

This is part of a wider push. Mark Zuckerberg has said Meta will allocate $125B to capex this year.

AI is pulling hyperscalers into a new spending cycle.

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