⚠️ GameStop is closing stores while its CEO chases a $35B payday.

The company kicked off 2026 by shutting hundreds of US locations. Employees say many stores got just days of notice, sometimes with closure signs taped directly to the doors. Even profitable stores weren’t spared.

At the same time, the board approved a performance package that could award CEO Ryan Cohen up to $35 billion in stock options. The catch: GameStop would need to grow its market cap from ~$9.5B to $100B and deliver $10B in cumulative earnings.

Workers describe empty shelves, rushed shutdowns, and few transfer options. Corporate leadership talks about growth and transformation.

The contrast is stark and it’s saying more than any press release.

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⚠️$4B OpenAI stake surfaces as Musk lawsuit reopens Altman ouster

Court filings in Elon Musk’s case against OpenAI revealed internal emails suggesting co-founder Ilya Sutskever held a vested equity stake worth roughly $4B as of late 2023, adding a new financial dimension to the governance fight.

🖱 The disclosure comes from correspondence between OpenAI COO Brad Lightcap and Microsoft executives, entered into evidence.

🖱 The emails date to November 2023, during the brief period when Sam Altman was fired and Microsoft was preparing contingency plans.

🖱 At the time, Satya Nadella was ready to hire Altman and absorb OpenAI staff, with CTO Kevin Scott publicly pledging to match compensation for any employees who joined.

🖱 Lightcap estimated a full employee tender offer would cost $25B excluding Sutskever, and $29B including him, implying a $4B vested stake.

🖱 The figure reflects vested equity only; the size of Sutskever’s unvested options is not specified in the correspondence.

🖱 The size of the stake surprised observers, given OpenAI’s unusual nonprofit–for-profit hybrid structure and prior assumptions about founder economics.

🖱 As a result, Sutskever is expected to be called again to clarify both his role in Altman’s dismissal and his precise financial interest.

🖱 The revelation strengthens arguments that the 2023 boardroom crisis involved not just safety and governance concerns, but extraordinary personal financial stakes.

What looked like a philosophical split over AI safety is starting to resemble a $4B incentive problem hiding in plain sight.

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📚Books

Even if you’re not investing yet, reading about investing matters. These books build one of the core financial skills: how to think about capital, risk, and time. 10 books for beginners and advanced investors:

🖱 Super Founders — Ali Tamaseb: An analysis of hundreds of unicorns, breaking down what distinguishes the biggest outcomes and standout founders.

🖱 The Power Law — Sebastian Mallaby: Why venture capital depends on extreme, asymmetric wins and how legendary funds were built.

🖱 High Growth Handbook — Elad Gil: A practical guide to scaling after product–market fit: hiring, fundraising, and managing hypergrowth.

🖱 The Algebra of Wealth — Scott Galloway: A clear framework for building wealth through concentration, time, discipline, and diversification.

🖱 Mango Millionaire — Radhika Gupta: A modern personal finance book focused on habits, mindset, and everyday money decisions.

🖱 Investing 101 — Michele Cagan: A beginner-friendly introduction to stocks, bonds, ETFs, and IPOs.

🖱 Just Keep Buying — Nick Maggiulli: A data-backed case for consistency, patience, and ignoring short-term market noise.

🖱 Stock Market 101 — Michele Cagan: More tactical guidance on how markets work and how to start investing in stocks.

🖱 The Bogleheads’ Guide to Investing: The classic playbook for low-cost, long-term index investing.

🖱 Rule No. 1 Investing — Phil Town: A fundamentals-driven approach to finding quality businesses without constant market watching.

Reading won’t make you rich overnight but it will compound how you think for decades.

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🇨🇳 China quietly captured the humanoid robot market in 2025

While headlines suggest a coming humanoid robot boom, the actual sales picture is still small and overwhelmingly Chinese.

🖱 According to Omdia, only 13,318 humanoid robots were sold globally in 2025, far below the hype cycle.

🖱 Chinese manufacturers took the entire top-5 by unit sales, locking up nearly all commercial deployments.

🖱 AgiBot led the market with 5,168 units, followed by Unitree Robotics (4,200) and UBTech (1,000).

🖱 Leju Robotics and Engine AI rounded out the top-5, though neither disclosed exact shipment numbers.

🖱 The demand is largely domestic, driven by factory automation, service pilots, and aggressive state-backed experimentation.

🖱 At CES 2026, Chinese humanoids dominated the floor playing table tennis, cleaning, doing martial arts signaling confidence and manufacturing readiness more than real-world scale.

🖱 Meanwhile, the most famous Western humanoid developer, Boston Dynamics, has almost no sales despite a decade of viral demos.

🖱 This year, Boston Dynamics finally unveiled a commercial Atlas aimed at factories, capable of lifting 30–50 kg, swapping its own batteries, and operating 24/7.

🖱 Hyundai, which owns Boston Dynamics, plans to deploy Atlas in its own factories but for now, the public demo remains animation-only.

🖱 The contrast is stark: China is shipping imperfect robots today, while the US is still polishing perfect robots for tomorrow.

Humanoid robotics is no longer a question of who has the best demos it’s becoming a race about who’s willing to manufacture early, ship at low margins, and learn in public.

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🇺🇸 OnlyFans creators are redefining America’s “extraordinary talent” visa

A US visa category once designed for elite artists and performers is now being increasingly used by influencers and OnlyFans creators, reshaping how “extraordinary ability” is interpreted.

🖱 According to The Guardian, social media influencers and OnlyFans models now dominate O-1 visa applications, a program historically reserved for top-tier actors, musicians, and cultural figures.

🖱 The O-1 visa requires proof of “extraordinary ability,” but in practice this is increasingly demonstrated through follower counts, engagement metrics, and platform earnings rather than traditional awards or critical acclaim.

🖱 Immigration lawyers report a sharp rise in applications from digital creators over the past few years, accelerated by the pandemic-era boom in online content businesses.

🖱 Some applicants earn five- or six-figure annual incomes from platforms like OnlyFans, which are now being accepted as evidence of commercial success and distinction.

🖱 Approval numbers for O-1 visas have grown steadily over the past decade, even as other work visa pathways remain capped or politically constrained.

🖱 Critics argue the trend dilutes the original intent of the visa, replacing artistic excellence with algorithm-driven popularity.

🖱 Supporters counter that digital creators are legitimate cultural and economic actors, exporting American-style media influence globally and generating real revenue.

🖱 For many creators, the O-1 has become one of the few viable immigration routes left especially as H-1B visas remain lottery-based and highly restricted.

🖱 As one lawyer put it, this is simply “the American dream, updated for the internet age.”

What used to reward Oscars and Grammys is now rewarding reach, monetization, and attention turning immigration policy into a mirror of the creator economy itself.

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🔒 VC & startup newsletters worth your attention

If you want to stay sharp on deals, funds, and trends, you don’t need Twitter doom-scrolling just 5–10 minutes a day and a few trusted inbox reads. Here’s a clean starter pac:

🖱 StrictlyVC: Operational updates on deals, fund moves, and investor interviews. For quickly orienting yourself in the week’s most important events.

🖱 Term Sheet (Fortune): One of the most-read VC newsletters globally. For tracking major rounds, new funds, and shifts in LP strategy.

🖱 Not Boring (Packy McCormick): Deep dives on companies and long-term trends through a venture lens. For non-obvious insights and big-picture thinking.

🖱 a16z Tech Newsletter: Research and analysis from Andreessen Horowitz across AI, biotech, fintech, and more. For strategic frameworks rather than daily noise.

🖱 The Diff (By Byrne Hobart): Thoughtful essays on markets, companies, and capital structures. For understanding venture through macro and corporate finance.

🖱 PitchBook — The Daily Pitch: A daily briefing on private markets and venture activity. For staying up to date on deals and trends with minimal effort.

🖱 Axios Pro Rata: Short, sharp updates on deals and dealmakers across VC, PE, and M&A. Perfect if you like the “one-minute, straight-to-the-point” format.

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🚁 Walmart’s drone rollout signals a shift from pilots to scale

A partnership once framed as experimentation is hardening into infrastructure, as Alphabet’s Wing deepens its integration with Walmart’s delivery engine.

🖱 TechCrunch reports that Wing will activate drone operations at 150 additional Walmart locations, its most aggressive expansion so far.

🖱 The move pushes the total footprint to 270+ stores, giving aerial delivery access to roughly one in ten Americans.

🖱 Wing is Alphabet’s autonomous delivery arm, but Walmart is now its clearest path to commercial relevance.

🖱 The drones are optimized for lightweight, high-urgency orders groceries, household staples, and forgotten essentials dropped by tether in minutes.

🖱 Walmart says repeat usage is already common in live markets, indicating behavioral adoption rather than curiosity-driven trials.

🖱 The expansion prioritizes dense suburban corridors where speed, not bulk, defines customer value.

🖱 From Walmart’s side, drones ease labor pressure and compress last-mile costs while narrowing Amazon’s speed advantage.

🖱 For Alphabet, Wing stands out as a rare moonshot converting autonomy into operating revenue. Regulatory friction remains, but the scale implies increasing FAA comfort with routine drone flights.

Drones are shifting from marketing story to operational tool inside Walmart.

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🛰 Starlink gets a green light but not a blank check

The FCC has approved SpaceX’s plan to deploy 7,500 additional second-generation Starlink satellites, pushing the constellation toward a new scale milestone.

🖱 The approval raises the total number of Starlink satellites to ~15,000, cementing SpaceX as the dominant player in low-Earth orbit broadband.

🖱 SpaceX originally sought authorization for 30,000 satellites, but regulators have so far cleared only about half of that request.

🖱 The FCC attached firm deadlines: 50% of the newly approved satellites must be operational by December 2028, with full deployment required by December 2031.

🖱 Regulators also removed earlier limits on overlapping coverage and network capacity, clearing the way for direct-to-smartphone connectivity outside the US.

🖱 SpaceX has previously promised download speeds approaching 1 Gbit/s, positioning Starlink closer to terrestrial broadband performance.

🖱 Astronomers continue to push back, citing light pollution and interference with ground-based observations.

🖱 There are also orbital safety concerns, earlier this year SpaceX lowered the altitude of some satellites to reduce collision risk.

🖱 The decision signals growing regulatory comfort with mega-constellations, even as scientific and debris risks remain unresolved.

Starlink’s expansion is no longer a question of if, but how far regulators are willing to let orbital infrastructure scale before the costs become unavoidable.

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BREAKING: CoinGecko may be sold for ~$500M

Crypto data platform CoinGecko is exploring a potential sale and is targeting a valuation of around $500M, according to sources. The company has hired Moelis to advise on the process, which is still at an early stage.

The timing is notable. In 2025, crypto M&A reached about $8.6B across 133 deals, a record year for consolidation. Major transactions included Coinbase’s $2.9B acquisition of Deribit and Kraken’s $1.5B purchase of NinjaTrader.

Founded in 2014, CoinGecko is one of the largest independent crypto data platforms. Data and infrastructure assets are increasingly becoming strategic acquisition targets.

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JUST IN: Elon Musk vs. OpenAI trial set for April 27

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“Controlling your time is the highest dividend money pays.”

- Morgan Housel

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🤖 Apple puts Google’s Gemini inside Siri

Apple and Google confirmed a multi year AI partnership.

🖱 Gemini will handle specific Siri functions like summarization and task planning. Core logic, UI, and system control stay on Apple’s own models.

🖱 Apple says Apple Intelligence still runs on device and on its Private Cloud Compute servers. User data does not flow into Google infrastructure.

🖱 Media framed this as Google taking over Apple’s AI stack. In reality, it is a narrow dependency on models that currently outperform.

The irony is timing. Google spent years catching up after ChatGPT. Now Apple is buying the result.

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Pentagon will integrate Grok into military AI systems

🖱 The US Department of Defense plans to connect Elon Musk’s AI chatbot Grok to Pentagon networks, including both unclassified and classified systems later this month.

🖱 Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said Grok will operate alongside Google’s AI tools inside the military’s AI framework under a newly announced AI acceleration strategy.

🖱 The deployment aims to feed military and intelligence data into the model for analysis across Pentagon operations.

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❓ What is the average revenue that companies generate from a single active user?

The highest Netflix subscription costs $24.99, which is still lower than the revenue Zuckerberg earns from each user.

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"We will continue to ignore political and economic forecasts, which are an expensive distraction for many investors and businessmen."

- Warren Buffett

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OpenAI acqui hires the team behind Convogo

OpenAI is hiring the founders and team of Convogo, an AI tool used by executive coaches and HR teams for assessments and feedback reports.

🖱 OpenAI is not acquiring Convogo’s product or IP. The team joins to work on AI cloud efforts. The deal is all stock. Convogo will be shut down.

🖱 This is OpenAI’s 9th acquisition in about a year. In most cases, the product disappears and the team is absorbed.

M&A here is about talent density, not expanding a product lineup.

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