💳 Mastercard to acquire BVNK for up to $1.8B in stablecoin push

Mastercard agreed to acquire London-based stablecoin infrastructure startup BVNK for up to $1.8B, including $300M tied to performance targets. It is the company’s largest crypto deal.

BVNK, founded in 2021 and valued around $750M, operates across 130+ countries and supports transactions on major blockchain networks.

The acquisition gives Mastercard the ability to connect traditional payment rails with systems built on stablecoins and tokenized deposits.

The deal positions Mastercard deeper inside digital currency infrastructure as adoption grows.

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🦑 Kraken pauses IPO plans despite $20B valuation

Crypto exchange Kraken has put its IPO on hold after filing confidentially with the SEC in November. The company may revisit the listing when market conditions improve.

Kraken was valued at $20B during an $800M raise, but weaker crypto prices and lower trading volumes have made public markets less attractive.

The pause comes after a strong 2025, when crypto IPOs raised $14.6B, but 2026 listings are facing a tougher environment.

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📉 Dell cuts 11,000 jobs while scaling AI server business

Dell reduced its workforce by about 10% in fiscal 2026, cutting roughly 11,000 employees. The company reported around 97,000 staff as of January 31, down from 108,000 a year earlier.

Severance costs reached $569M in 2026, compared to $693M the previous year.

At the same time, Dell expects revenue from AI-optimized servers to double by fiscal 2027 and increased its dividend by 20%, adding $10B to its buyback program.

Companies are freezing legacy IT projects and redirecting budgets into AI ahead of proven results.

The shift is driven by competition, as firms move early to avoid falling behind rivals already scaling AI.

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💻 Emergent CEO calls vibe coding a “bitcoin $1” moment

Emergent CEO Mukund Jha says the vibe-coding industry is still at an early stage, estimating it has reached only about 1% of its potential.

The company hit $100M ARR just 8 months after launch, doubling from $50M in a single month. The broader trend is driven by non-technical users building software with AI.

Jha points to a shift from 20M developers to a much larger base of knowledge workers creating tools themselves.

AI coding tools are expanding the software market beyond traditional developers.

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Ⓜ️ Meta shuts down Horizon Worlds after ~$80B losses

Meta will remove Horizon Worlds from the Quest store by end of March 2026. The VR version will fully shut down on June 15. Reality Labs has accumulated about $70–80B in losses since 2020.

Horizon Worlds was the core product behind Meta’s VR metaverse strategy. It aimed to let users build and explore virtual spaces inside headsets.

With the shutdown, the main consumer metaverse product in VR is effectively gone. The scale of losses and the exit point to a shift away from this direction.

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⚡️ Uber partners with Rivian on robotaxis in deal up to $1.25B

Uber will invest $300M in Rivian and plans to buy 10,000 autonomous R2 SUVs for a 2028 rollout in San Francisco and Miami. The deal could reach $1.25B, with an option for 40,000 more vehicles from 2030. The fleet will run exclusively on Uber’s network.

Rivian will build the robotaxis on its upcoming R2 platform. The company is developing an AI-based autonomy system that learns from fleet data and aims to reach hands-off driving, with future upgrades targeting full autonomy.

The plan spans 25 cities across the U.S., Canada, and Europe by 2031. The challenge is execution: R2 production has not started, the Georgia factory is still under construction, and full autonomy is not yet deployed.

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🏦 Goldman and JPMorgan offer bets against $1.8T private credit market

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan are offering hedge funds ways to short the $1.8T private credit market. The products are based on baskets of listed companies with exposure to the sector.

Goldman built several indices, including European financial firms, business development companies, and alternative asset managers. JPMorgan’s basket also focuses on alternatives managers and BDCs, with options to invest directly in the indices.

The move comes as private credit faces redemptions. Concerns are rising around exposure to software companies, where AI is reshaping the market.

Wall Street is starting to package downside exposure to private credit.

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🚨 Super Micro co-founder faces up to 30 years over $2.5B Nvidia chip smuggling case

The U.S. Department of Justice charged Yih-Shyan “Wally” Liaw with organizing illegal shipments of servers with Nvidia chips to China worth about $2.5B. The scheme routed hardware through Taiwan and Southeast Asia using shell companies and fake documents.

The group used “dummy servers” and manually altered serial numbers to bypass checks. Three people linked to the case are under investigation, with one still at large.

Super Micro itself is not charged, but the stock has dropped following the news.

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🤖 Bernie Sanders discusses privacy with Claude

Bernie Sanders spoke with Claude about data security and AI’s impact on privacy. The chatbot said user data is collected across many sources and monetized without clear consent.

Claude also framed privacy in AI as a threat to democracy. The exchange is now circulating in media with headlines about AI admitting data manipulation.

The output reflects the data it was trained on, including Reddit and news content.

The reaction focuses more on framing than new information.

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🎰 FedEx founder saved the company with a $5K blackjack bet

Fred Smith, founder of FedEx, once used the company’s last $5,000 to gamble in Las Vegas. He turned it into $27,000 and covered a $24,000 fuel bill that week.

FedEx had launched in 1973 and was already losing over $1M per month after the oil crisis doubled fuel costs. Investors refused to fund the business, leaving the company without cash to operate.

The extra week bought time to raise $11M in new funding. By 1976, revenue reached $75M, and the company went public two years later.

Today FedEx delivers 17M packages daily across 220 countries.

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⚖️ Musk found liable for misleading investors during Twitter deal

A jury ruled that Elon Musk misled investors with tweets in 2022 claiming Twitter had too many fake accounts. The statements were seen as an attempt to push the price down during the acquisition process.

Regulators calculated how the tweets affected the stock price over roughly five months. Compensation will be set later after investor claims.

The potential damages are estimated in the hundreds of millions or billions of dollars.

The case ties social media statements directly to market impact.

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🐮 Peter Thiel’s Founders Fund backs AI cow collar startup Halter at $2B valuation

Halter is raising a new round led by Founders Fund that would value the company at over $2B. The previous round in June brought in $100M at about a $1B valuation.

The startup builds AI-powered collars for cows that create virtual fences and track location and health. Farmers can manage herds remotely through an app using sound and vibration cues.

The deal is heavily oversubscribed despite weak sentiment in agtech. Halter is expanding into the US with a new office in Colorado.

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📱 Zuckerberg builds AI agent to support his CEO workflow

Mark Zuckerberg is developing an AI agent to help with CEO tasks. The system is designed to gather information, analyze data, and prepare inputs for decisions.

The final decision still stays with Zuckerberg. The agent replaces the need to move through layers of managers to collect and structure data.

The shift points to flatter company structures, with AI handling internal workflows instead of middle management.

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📱 OnlyFans owner Leonid Radvinsky dies at 43

Leonid Radvinsky, the majority owner of OnlyFans, has died of cancer at age 43. He bought the platform in 2018 and turned it into a major direct-to-consumer content business.

OnlyFans lets creators charge users directly and takes a 20% fee. In 2024, it reported 4.6M creators, 377M users, and $1.4B in revenue. Radvinsky received about $1.8B in dividends since 2021.

He had been in talks to sell a 60% stake at a ~$5.5B valuation. Ownership questions now follow after his death.

The platform remains one of the largest monetization systems for online creators.

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👽 Musk to build chip factory Terafab in Austin with Tesla and SpaceX

Elon Musk said Tesla and SpaceX will launch Terafab in Austin to manufacture their own chips. The project is aimed at covering internal demand for AI, robotics, and vehicles.

The facility will produce chips for edge use in cars and robots, as well as high-power chips for data centers and space systems.

Musk says current chip supply cannot keep up with future needs, so the companies plan to build their own production.

Big tech is moving further into in-house chip manufacturing.

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🤖 OpenAI offers 17.5% returns to secure PE backing for AI ventures

OpenAI is offering private equity firms a minimum return of 17.5% to invest in joint ventures focused on enterprise AI adoption. The company is targeting firms like TPG and Advent.

The structure lets PE firms deploy OpenAI tools across their portfolio companies, while getting early access to new models and downside protection.

The push comes as OpenAI competes with Anthropic for the same partners. Both are using joint ventures to expand into enterprise markets.

Some funds are opting out, citing concerns over long-term returns and flexibility.

AI labs are using capital incentives to lock in distribution at scale.

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