🍴 Trump “broke the Barrel”

Cracker Barrel’s logo rebrand turned into a culture war saga after conservatives, led by Trump, blasted the chain for going “woke.”

Under pressure, the company backtracked, restored its old logo and thanked the President for weighing in.

🖱 MAGA influencers framed it as a test case: “Go woke, lose money”
🖱 Trump allies claimed credit after executives called to confirm the reversal
🖱 Cracker Barrel also deleted its Pride page and scrubbed DEI mentions from its site
🖱 Conservative pundits declared “victory” and quickly issued new demands

A restaurant logo became a political battlefield, showing how fast companies can fold under online pressure.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

🚀 Naval on Elon Musk’s true drive

Naval Ravikant shared a story that changed how he sees Musk. It started with a clash between Elon and Bill Gates.

Bill Gates once shorted Tesla. Elon confronted him:

🗣️Elon: “Why would you short Tesla?”
🗣️Gates: “The math says it’s overvalued. I’ll profit on the short.”
🗣️Elon: “Profit? I thought you cared about climate change and saving the world?”

Elon walked away and never spoke to Gates again.

For Naval, that moment revealed Musk’s mindset:

🖱 Money is only a tool, never the mission
🖱 His audacious goals aren’t for show, he means them literally
🖱 He doesn’t want to be remembered as “the car guy” or even “the one who saved America” — he wants humanity in space

It’s not about credit or legacy.
For Musk, it’s about getting us to the stars in his lifetime.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📉 First-time VCs hit a wall on second funds

Managers who raised debut funds in the boom years of 2021–2022 are now struggling to secure Fund II.

PitchBook data shows only 33% of 2021’s first-time managers and just 12% from 2022 have raised a second vehicle.

🖱 In 2021, first-time VCs raised a record $24.1B
🖱 Median time between funds used to be under 3 years
🖱 Now LPs concentrate on big firms, with 12 funds capturing over half of all capital in 2025
🖱 Emerging managers face LP pullback, economic uncertainty, and political headwinds in climate and energy

The result is a two-speed venture world. Big firms get bigger, while new managers risk stalling out, threatening the next generation of investor talent.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

💰 $1B Solana treasury in the works

Galaxy Digital, Multicoin Capital, and Jump Crypto are teaming up to raise $1B for a Solana-focused treasury, with Cantor Fitzgerald as lead banker and the Solana Foundation’s reported backing.

🖱 Would be the largest corporate SOL reserve, surpassing Upexi’s $400M holdings

🖱 Plan involves acquiring a public entity to run the treasury business

🖱 Other players like DeFi Development Corp and Bit Mining are also building SOL reserves

🖱 SOL trades near $200, up 6.6% in the past month

A billion-dollar treasury would cement Solana as a core institutional asset and mark a new phase of its post-FTX recovery.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

👩‍💻 Startup hiring in 2025

A new chart tracks the ratio of new hires to departures across 10 startup sectors. Green shows headcount growth, orange shows cuts. Back in early 2021, fintech had 4.2 hires for every exit.

Today the pattern looks different: most startups now follow “one out — one in.”

🖱 Leaner teams, less churn
🖱 More discipline on costs
🖱 Healthier ARR per employee

It’s a shift from hypergrowth to efficiency, startups aren’t chasing headcount, they’re squeezing more from every seat.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📊 Crypto Venture Weekly: August 25–29, 2025

$255M raised across 30 projects this week, led by Rain ($58M) and M0 ($40M). Alongside, $1.53B in new digital asset treasury allocations were announced by B Strategy, Sharps Technology, and DeFi Development Corp. Avail acquired Arcana, while OKX and Unified Ventures launched $130M in fresh funds.

Here’s what the top 10 are building 👇

🖱 Rain ($58M, Sapphire, Dragonfly, Galaxy, Lightspeed Faction, Samsung Next)
Enterprise-grade infrastructure for stablecoin payments.

🖱 M0 ($40M, Polychain, Ribbit, Endeavor Catalyst, Pantera, Bain Crypto)
Universal platform for application-specific stablecoins.

🖱 aPriori ($20M, HashKey, Pantera, Big Brain, Primitive, Gate Ventures)
Order flow coordination layer for high-performance blockchains.

🖱 Hemi ($15M, YZi Labs, Republic, HyperChain, Big Brain, Crypto.com)
EVM-level programmability layer for Bitcoin.

🖱 The Clearing Company ($15M, USV, Coinbase, Variant, Haun, Compound)
Onchain, permissionless, and regulated prediction market.

🖱 MAGNE.AI ($10M, DuckDAO, Castrum, Becker Ventures, TBV)
AI + Web3 hardware project building decentralized smartphones.

🖱 Kira ($6.7M, Stellar, Blockchange, Credibly Neutral, Grit Capital)
AI-driven DeFi infra for embedded fintech products.

🖱 Metafyed ($5.5M, Stellar, Draper U Ventures, Cyberport, Zero2Launch)
Marketplace for tokenized real-world assets.

🖱 Credit Coop ($4.5M, Maven 11, Faction, Coinbase, TRGC, dlab)
Onchain credit protocol backed by cash flows.

🖱 Suzaku Network ($1.5M, Blizzard Fund, Avalanche Foundation, Yield Yak)
Restaking protocol on Avalanche.

Investor focus this week was on stablecoin infra, AI-powered DeFi, and RWA marketplaces, while treasuries and M&A kept reshaping the landscape.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

💰 Nvidia’s Q2 boom came from just two buyers

Nvidia posted a record $46.7B in revenue in Q2, up 56% year over year. But filings show how concentrated that success really is.

🖱 One customer brought in 23% of revenue
🖱 Another added 16%
🖱 Together, they made up 39% of the quarter’s sales
🖱 Four more customers contributed between 10 and 14% each

These are direct buyers like OEMs and system integrators, not the cloud giants themselves. Yet hyperscalers still drove half of Nvidia’s data center revenue, which was 88% of the total.

The picture is clear: Nvidia is riding the AI wave, but much of the ride depends on a small circle of very big spenders.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

⚡ The fall of Fisker: how an EV dream unraveled

Henrik Fisker wanted to build a Tesla rival, starting with the Ocean SUV. But from day one, cracks showed: missed production targets, faulty cars, and a scramble for cash. Within two years, the startup collapsed into bankruptcy.

🖱 2023: Fisker repeatedly cut production goals, sold debt to stay afloat, and ended the year aiming for just a quarter of its original forecast.

🖱 Early 2024: Sales lagged far behind promises, while the Ocean SUV triggered multiple federal safety probes over brakes, rollaways, and sudden power loss. Layoffs hit 15% of staff.

🖱 Spring 2024: Cash dwindled to $121M, production paused, and a potential Nissan rescue deal fell apart. NYSE suspended trading as the company lost track of millions in customer payments.

🖱 Summer 2024: More layoffs, unpaid vendors, a string of recalls, and asset disputes piled up. By June, Fisker filed for Chapter 11 with up to $1B in assets and half a billion in liabilities.

🖱 Fall 2024: The bankruptcy process turned chaotic: creditors battled over assets, the DOJ stepped in on recalls, and Fisker’s HQ was abandoned in “complete disarray.” Eventually, liquidation was approved, with 3,000 SUVs sold off at ~$14K each.

🖱 2025: Henrik Fisker quietly shut down his nonprofit, marking a quiet end to his second failed car venture.

The story of Fisker is a reminder that building an EV company isn’t just about design ambition.

Without flawless execution and solid foundations, even billions raised and star power cannot keep the wheels from coming off.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📱 How Apple makes its money

Revenue growth came mainly from iPhones, Macs, and services, with a sales bump as customers rushed to upgrade before Trump’s tariffs took effect.

🖱 iPhone and Mac sales were the strongest drivers
🖱 Services continue to expand as a stable revenue stream
🖱 iPad and “other devices” declined, a segment where Apple hasn’t launched anything compelling for years

The picture is clear: Apple still thrives on its flagship products, but weaker categories show how dependent the company remains on its core hits.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

💶 Scramble makes investing in consumer brands simple

Scramble is a European platform that lets anyone back fast-growing consumer companies and earn from it - without the noise of stocks or daily market tracking.

Each month, users get a curated batch of companies, and investments are automatically diversified.

🖱 Founder-backed loans, disbursed in stages to reduce risk
🖱 Group A: monthly repayments, up to 12.4% annually
🖱 Group B: higher risk, up to 25% returns
🖱 Scramble co-invests up to 20% in every batch

✨ New users get €10 for signing up, plus €5 bonus for every €100 invested.

Positioned as a hands-off, lower-volatility way to grow capital, Scramble is betting on the appeal of consumer brands as a stable entry point for retail investors.

🎥Jim Jarmusch on Mubi’s Sequoia funding

At the Venice Film Festival, director Jim Jarmusch premiered his new film Father Mother Sister Brother and faced questions about Mubi - the indie streaming platform that co-produced the movie and recently raised $100M from Sequoia Capital.

Some filmmakers criticized the deal, citing Sequoia’s ties to Israeli defense tech. Mubi’s CEO denied any link to war funding.

Jarmusch distanced himself from the controversy:
🖱 His collaboration with Mubi began before the funding round
🖱 He praised Mubi as “fantastic” partners
🖱 But added bluntly: “All corporate money is dirty”

A reminder of the growing tension between independent cinema ideals and the realities of venture-backed streaming.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📈 2025’s most prolific unicorn backers in Europe

So far this year Europe has minted 11 new unicorns, nearly matching all of 2024. Behind them are a handful of VCs shaping the continent’s startup landscape.

Here are the top backers at the 2025 midpoint:

🖱 Accel – Backed Tines, Lovable, Fuse Energy. Led the $200M Series A for Lovable and now counts 26 European unicorns in its portfolio.

🖱 Balderton – Backed Quantum Systems and Fuse Energy. Quantum is already eyeing €500M revenue and a potential IPO in 2026.

🖱 Creandum – Backed Lovable twice (Seed and Series A) and Fuse Energy. Doubling down on one of Europe’s hottest AI startups.

🖱 Felicis – Backed Tines and Mubi, with N8n possibly next in line.

🖱 General Catalyst – Backed Neko Health and Parloa, strengthening its reputation for being in every hot European deal.

🖱 Lakestar – Backed Neko Health and Fuse Energy, while raising new funds for deeptech and defense.

From defense tech to vibe coding, the unicorn pipeline in Europe is diversifying fast. The concentration of power among a few global VCs is shaping not just who gets funded, but which sectors become the continent’s growth engines.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📊 GPU-backed loans are the newest gamble in venture debt

Startups racing to build AI data centers are now collateralizing their GPUs to raise debt. The model looks like classic asset-backed lending, but with a twist: no one really knows how long these chips will hold value.

🖱 Nvidia GPUs have become the “gold rush shovels” of AI, pushing firms like Lambda, Crusoe, and CoreWeave to pile up billions in GPU-collateralized loans.

🖱 Private credit giants including BlackRock, JP Morgan, and Carlyle are in the game, but smaller non-bank lenders also see opportunity in shorter-term, smaller-ticket loans.

🖱 The challenge is depreciation: chips can be worth more than retail one quarter, then instantly outdated by a next-gen model. Lenders are still struggling to design the right curves.

🖱 Some argue the market will balance itself. Even older GPUs still have value for startups with smaller compute needs. “Not everyone needs the Ferrari. The Toyota Camry is fine.”

GPU-backed loans may stick around as long as AI infrastructure spending stays hot. But they highlight the fragility of debt models built on assets with such short technological half-lives.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

💰 Anthropic hits $183B valuation with $13B raise

Anthropic secured $13B from Iconiq, Fidelity, Lightspeed, BlackRock, Blackstone, and Qatar’s sovereign fund.

🖱 ARR jumped from $1B to $5B in one year
🖱 300K+ enterprise customers onboard
🖱 Large accounts ($100K+ ARR) grew nearly 7x
🖱 Claude Code brings $500M annually with usage up 10x in 3 months

The deal cements Anthropic as one of the fastest-scaling AI companies in history.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📣 Larry Page on the power of “lazy” thinking

Page once said:

“Find leverage in the world so you can actually be lazy.”

Not about slacking, but about spotting the levers that turn small moves into 10x outcomes.

🖱In 2000 he called AI the ultimate Google.
🖱In 2025 he showed up at Y Combinator to push founders to think bigger.

Google went from a dorm project to global dominance because Page never chased effort for effort’s sake.

💡In venture the same rule applies. Returns don’t come from working harder than everyone else. They come from finding the right lever.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📊 How many startups actually make it to Series B?

Carta’s latest data shows that about 30% of Seed-backed startups reach a Series B within seven years.

🖱That stage already counts as a solid milestone. Early investors usually have a path to returns, founders often cashed out a small piece, and the company proved it can scale beyond the first checks.

🖱Later investors may still face turbulence, but those on board from the beginning are already in the win column.

The myth of “only 1% of startups succeed” doesn’t quite match the numbers.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

🔥 OpenAI buys Statsig for $1.1B

OpenAI just made one of its biggest acquisitions yet, picking up Statsig, a platform for product testing and A/B experiments used by Microsoft, EA, and Atlassian.

🖱Later Founder Vijay Raji will become CTO of Applications at OpenAI, overseeing ChatGPT, Codex, and new products
🖱Later Statsig’s tools will be integrated into OpenAI to speed up development and experimentation
🖱Later The startup will remain a separate entity in Seattle, still serving external clients, while its full team joins OpenAI
🖱Later Deal is pending regulatory approval

A $1.1B move that signals OpenAI is doubling down on scaling product velocity, not just models.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

📰 Perplexity tries a Spotify-style fix for AI content

AI search has cut website traffic in half for some publishers. Why click when the answer is summarized in the result?

Perplexity is testing a new model: real revenue share instead of “traffic for access.” Publishers get paid every time their content is used inside Comet, the AI browser.

🖱Later $42.5M payout pool at launch, funded by Comet Plus subscriptions
🖱Later 80% of that revenue goes to publishers
🖱Later Payments tied to actual usage: link opens, citations in AI answers, task completions
🖱Later Direct response to lawsuits and accusations that AI is just scraping

OpenAI pays for training licenses but not usage. Google’s AI Overviews show content but offer no revenue.
Perplexity wants to flip the script: pay publishers per use, not just for training.

Whether this becomes the new normal or ends up like music streaming, with creators complaining about micropennies, will decide if AI and media can finally coexist.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher

⚖️ Google avoids breakup in antitrust trial

A federal judge has ruled that Google won’t be forced to split up its search business, but it will need to change how it operates.

🖱Later Google can no longer tie Search, Chrome, Gemini, or Google Assistant to exclusive distribution or revenue deals
🖱Later Must share parts of its search index and user-interaction data with “qualified competitors”
🖱Later Required to offer search and ad syndication services at standard rates
🖱Later A technical committee will enforce the remedies for six years

The DOJ had pushed for harsher penalties, including divestiture of Chrome or Android, but Judge Amit Mehta opted for a narrower set of remedies.

The stranglehold of default placements (like Google paying Apple $20B+ annually for Safari) is loosening. That could open rare distribution opportunities in search, AI assistants, and ad tech — if challengers can seize the moment.

✔️Powered by Trade Watcher