(Bloomberg) -- Success in the midterm elections for the Republicans and the Texas gubernatorial contest would set up stocks for a further rally, according to Bank of America Corp. strategists.
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#Startup #republicans #bank #selena

(Bloomberg) -- China's credit expansion held up better than expected in July, but weak borrowing demand among households and businesses pushed loans into a worse-than-forecast contraction.
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#selena #gomez #accused

By Samuel Shen and Eduardo Baptista
SHANGHAI/BEIJING, Aug 14 (Reuters) - China's Unitree, the country's most high-profile humanoid robot maker, is widely expected to have an explosive stock market debut in Shanghai next week. The only question is — how frenzied is it going to be?
Outside China, on private ‌share platforms such as EquityZen, UpMarket and Hiive, Unitree shares are tipped to almost triple, while on crypto exchanges Hyperliquid and Gate, derivative trades point ‌to a jump of almost four times.
Some others expect much more.
Such is the excitement around Unitree, whose humanoid robots have drawn global attention for their running, dancing and performing of martial arts, that its IPO was more than 8,000 times oversubscribed by retail investors, a record for Shanghai's STAR Market for tech startups.

#samuel

By Saeed Azhar and Milana Vinn
NEW YORK, Aug 14 (REUTERS) - Goldman Sachs is in talks with potential investors about participating in Nvidia's $500 billion AI financing initiative, after leveraging its long-standing relationship with the chipmaker to secure a coveted role in the deal, people familiar with ‌the matter said.
U.S. insurers, money managers and banks are expected to form the core investor base for the financing, one of the people said, ‌while ******* et managers plan to retain a sizable share of the financing, a second source said.
Nvidia announced on August 10 it has partnered with six major financial institutions including Goldman to launch compute platforms aimed at raising over $500 billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure. The move highlights how surging demand for AI computing capacity is drawing institutional investors, as governments, companies and startups race to build out data centers to support AI workloads.
Goldman can provide junior capital and private credit financing through its ******* et management arm, while its investment bank can also help place the debt into private credit funds and eventually public debt markets, the second source said.

#billion #managers #asset

(Bloomberg) -- Chinese tech firms' early earnings are giving hardware stocks renewed momentum, while internet platforms still struggle to show a full consumer‑demand recovery.
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#gomez #accused #Health #investors

Concerned about an AI bubble? Sign up for The Daily Upside for smart and actionable market news, built for investors.
As Anthropic preps for its initial public offering, there's a math puzzle not even its ultrafrontier models can solve: What's the right price?
Not just the price of its eventual IPO (though that's certainly top of mind these days), but also the price of using its suite of high-powered artificial intelligence tools. On Thursday, Bloomberg reported that Anthropic is in talks to pay $6 billion for startup Decart, which makes software that improves chip efficiency, reducing the cost of training and running AI. It's a big sign that it's reading the room on cheaper open-source models.
Sign up for The Daily Upside at no cost for premium **** ysis on all your favorite stocks.
READ ALSO: Growth at Fast Food Joints Like Wendy's Looks Soggy Next to Casual-Dining Chains and Ackman's Pershing Touts Value Investing Amid Bid to Stir Demand for Funds

#anthropic

By Hannah Lang
Aug 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday abruptly canceled a meeting scheduled for Friday on whether the agency should propose ‌new crypto-related rules.
In a statement, an SEC spokesperson said the meeting would be ‌moved "due to an unforeseen scheduling issue."
The agency was set to vote on proposing highly anticipated exemptions that would allow crypto startups to raise capital without having to comply with traditional securities offering rules.
The delay comes after the Senate left Washington on Saturday for a five-week recess without voting on the industry's top legislative priority, the Clarity Act, suggesting the bill's chances of passage have dimmed. The bill, ‌if passed, would create new federal ⁠rules tailored to cryptocurrencies, and would put companies on a more sound legal footing, lobbyists say.

#rules #securities #without #lang

(Bloomberg) -- OpenAI is on track to generate annualized revenue of more than $40 billion based on its current performance, according to people familiar with the matter, roughly doubling its run rate from the end of 2025 and bolstering the company's plans for a Wall Street debut.
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#bloomberg #billion #openai #decart

By Hannah Lang
Aug 13 (Reuters) - The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Thursday abruptly canceled a meeting scheduled for Friday on whether the agency should propose ‌new crypto-related rules.
In a statement, an SEC spokesperson said the meeting would be ‌moved "due to an unforeseen scheduling issue."
The agency was set to vote on proposing highly anticipated exemptions that would allow crypto startups to raise capital without having to comply with traditional securities offering rules.
The delay comes after the Senate left Washington on Saturday for a five-week recess without voting on the industry's top legislative priority, the Clarity Act, suggesting the bill's chances of passage have dimmed. The bill, ‌if passed, would create new federal ⁠rules tailored to cryptocurrencies, and would put companies on a more sound legal footing, lobbyists say.

#reuters

Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.
Anthropic is holding discussions regarding a potential acquisition of artificial intelligence startup Decart AI for approximately $6 billion.
The potential deal would be Anthropic's largest acquisition to date and would boost the company's existing computing infrastructure, allowing it to handle greater demand, sources familiar with the matter told Bloomberg.
The Decart team would join Anthropic's inference and performance organization, though sources cautioned that the deal is not finalized and could be subject to change or ultimately fall through.
Read Also:Anthropic Could Reportedly Target $2 Trillion Valuation in October IPO—Jim Cramer Dismisses 'Out of Hand' Bubble Fears Amid Revenue Potential

#deal #benzinga #bloomberg

(Bloomberg) -- Applied Materials Inc. delivered an estimate-beating forecast that still got a lukewarm reaction from investors, a sign of the lofty hopes surrounding a company that's key to the AI boom.
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#materials

(Bloomberg) -- Workday Inc. shares jumped after a Reuters report that private equity firm Silver Lake is in talks to purchase the software provider.
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#silver #lake #decart

(Bloomberg) -- America's ambassador to the European Union said Brussels needs to relax corporate rules designed to protect the environment and human rights, linking the US's demands to a trade agreement struck last year.
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#european

By Juby Babu and Isla Binnie
Aug 10 (Reuters) - Nvidia said on Monday it has partnered with six major financial ‌institutions to launch compute financing platforms aimed at raising over $500 ‌billion in third-party capital for AI infrastructure.
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said on X that the company has the option to backstop up to $125 billion, or 25% of the poential deals.
The move highlights how surging demand for AI computing capacity is drawing institutional investors, as governments, companies and startups race ‌to build out data ⁠centers to support AI workloads.
Big Tech companies have signaled that spending on AI would not slow down, ⁠with combined outlays set to surpass $730 billion this year.

#Companies #juby

Wall Street has been fretting over a potential AI bubble burst and whether huge AI spending by companies would ever pay off. But Cathie Wood is doubling down. Ark recently bought 80,000 shares of Nvidia (NASDAQ:NVDA) across five funds. Ark also decreased its stake in Roblox (NYSE: RBLX).
Nvidia bears say AI infrastructure spending is running too hot and will eventually slow. That will directly impact Nvidia as its GPU sales will slow down.
Bulls say that fear misses the point. Nvidia's data center networking revenue jumped nearly 200% year over year last quarter. That shows Nvidia is capturing value beyond the GPU itself, through racks, interconnects, and software. Roughly half of data center revenue now comes from AI cloud, industrial, enterprise, and sovereign customers rather than the handful of hyperscalers everyone watches closely. Combined, Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet plan to spend up to $725 billion this year, up 77% year over year, and Nvidia is positioned to capture 35% to 40% of that.
The bear case is about the balance sheet, not the growth rate. Nvidia's inventories more than doubled year over year, and prepaid expenses grew over 40%, as the company locks up more supply commitments to protect delivery timelines. Three customers make up 30%, 18%, and 16% of Nvidia's accounts receivable, so any shift by a major buyer toward custom chips would hit hard. Non-marketable securities, mostly stakes in AI startups and infrastructure partners, now make up 17% of Nvidia's total ****** ets.
Cathie Wood of ARK Investment Management

#year #NVIDIA #spending #infrastructure

Brown Advisory, an investment management company, released its "Brown Advisory Global Leaders Strategy" for the second quarter of 2026 investor letter. A copy of the letter can be downloaded here. Brown Advisory's Global Leaders Strategy delivered a net return of 4.6% in the second quarter of 2026, underperforming its benchmark, the MSCI ACWI Net Index, which returned 14.9%. The relative weakness was driven mainly by underexposure to semiconductors and technology hardware, while software, cloud services, and financial holdings also weighed on performance. The strategy benefited from holdings in areas tied to AI infrastructure, with semiconductor exposure and AI-related investments gaining from strong demand. Looking ahead, Brown Advisory sees an attractive environment for active stock-picking, with its ready-to-buy list at its highest level since the COVID-19 period and an estimated 12%-13% average five-year base-case IRR, while maintaining a focus on quality, valuation discipline, and long-term cash-flow generation. In addition, please check the Fund's top five holdings to know its best picks in 2026.
In its second-quarter 2026 investor letter, Brown Advisory Global Leaders Strategy Fund highlighted stocks like Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK). Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) develops design and engineering software used by professionals across architecture, construction, manufacturing, and media industries. The one-month return of Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) was 17.37% while its shares traded between $185.50 and $329.09 over the last 52 weeks. On August 7, 2026, Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) stock closed at approximately $242.47 per share, with a market capitalization of about $52.59 billion.
Brown Advisory Global Leaders Strategy Fund stated the following regarding Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) in its Q2 2026 investor letter:
We exited Autodesk, Inc. (NASDAQ:ADSK) in June. Since our first-quarter drawdown review, we have continued our research and discussions around substitution risk for Autodesk, with a particular focus on the potential impact of world models replacing large parts of the 3D creation stack. At the same time, we have seen physical-AI startups, such as Jeff Bezos' Prometheus, investing heavily in developing engineering-grade physical models. (Prometheus closed a successful funding round in June, valuing the company at a level broadly comparable to Autodesk's market capitalization.) The competitive environment for Autodesk is intensifying. As we see substitution risk increasing and the range of outcomes for software companies widening, we have decided to allocate capital elsewhere, funding our initiations in Nvidia and Progressive Corporation.

#NASDAQ #adsk

ExxonMobil (NYSE:XOM) reported second-quarter 2026 results on July 31, and the headline number disappointed. Adjusted earnings came in at $3.52 per share, short of the $3.60 ***** ysts expected, even though that figure was up sharply from a year earlier. Reported earnings were $14.5 billion, or $3.48 per share. But the company also generated $23.6 billion in cash from operations and $17.2 billion in free cash flow, enough to fund $9.4 billion in shareholder distributions with room to spare. The miss made headlines. The cash didn't miss anything.
Exxon's operating results told a different story than the earnings line. The company posted its highest upstream production in more than two decades, excluding disruptions in the Middle East, and Permian output topped 1.8 million oil-equivalent barrels per day, a record pace consistent with its planned 9% annual growth rate through 2030. A fifth Guyana production vessel set sail during the quarter, with startup on track for the fourth quarter of 2026 and 250,000 barrels per day of new capacity coming online. Diesel production also hit a second-quarter record. None of that shows up directly in a per-share earnings number, but it is the foundation the company is building future cash flow on.
Cost discipline reinforced the picture. Exxon has now banked $16.3 billion in ***** ulative structural cost savings since 2019, including $1.2 billion added in the first half of 2026 alone, a total the company says exceeds what BP, Chevron, Shell, and TotalEnergies have saved combined. It kept investing anyway, spending $13.0 billion in cash capital expenditures through midyear, about 20% more than its nearest rival. Growing production while cutting costs is the combination that funds a rising dividend.
The earnings miss wasn't the only soft spot. The first quarter of 2026 generated just $2.7 billion in free cash flow against $9.2 billion in shareholder distributions, forcing Exxon to lean on its balance sheet, with debt-to-capital reaching 15.4% at the time. Zoom out to the full first half and the math is tighter than the strong second quarter suggests: $19.9 billion in free cash flow covered $18.6 billion in distributions, leaving only about $1.3 billion of cushion. The company reduced debt by $7 billion in the second quarter and brought net debt-to-capital down to 11%, but the episode is a reminder that commodity earnings swing hard from quarter to quarter, and the roughly $37 billion a year Exxon is committing to dividends and buybacks needs strong quarters to keep showing up.

#quarter #cash

Manus announced Tuesday that it will resume operating as an independent company, as it works to comply with Beijing's order to reverse Meta's $2 billion acquisition of the startup.
Manus is an AI agent startup that originated in China in 2022 and later moved its base to Singapore, according to CNBC. Meta announced the acquisition of Manus in December 2025. China's National Development and Reform Commission issued a directive in April ordering the parties to unwind the transaction, citing the country's rules on foreign investment.
As part of the separation, some Manus users will have data deleted. Specifically, for users in certain jurisdictions, any data created from December 29, 2025 onward — the day the acquisition closed — is slated for removal. "This is part of our separation from Meta; we must take this step to comply with regulatory requirements in specific parts of the world," the company said.
Affected users have a backup window open through 7:59 p.m. EDT on August 22. Data will be deleted August 23 through August 24, and users will be able to restore their backed-up data starting August 25. Manus said it will not charge affected users during the backup period.
The unwinding process has been underway for months. Meta cut off Manus staff from its internal data systems and barred Meta employees from using Manus tools, in steps toward operational separation. China's NDRC order made clear that offshore incorporation does not shield a deal from Beijing's authority when the underlying technology and talent originated in China — a structure critics had called "Singapore washing." Co-founders Xiao Hong and Ji Yichao were required to appear before Chinese officials in Beijing in March and have since been prohibited from traveling abroad.

#meta #august #users #acquisition

Advanced Micro Devices (NASDAQ:AMD) is trying to solve two problems at once: proving its AI hardware can keep growing as fast as Street expects, and making a case for why that growth alone should justify the stock's price. On August 6, AMD confirmed a deal to buy Taalas, a Toronto-based startup building specialized silicon for AI inference, a move aimed squarely at the first problem even as the second has been driving the stock's swings all week.
Taalas, founded in 2023, has built technology that optimizes how data moves during AI inference, cutting the compute and memory bottlenecks that slow general-purpose chip designs. AMD plans to fold that technology into its accelerator roadmap and pair it with AMD Instinct GPUs, adding another layer to a platform that already spans Helios rackscale systems, EPYC CPUs and the ROCm software stack. The deal, still subject to regulatory approval, also extends AMD's long-standing presence in Canada, where the company says it intends to keep growing its engineering talent base.
The underlying business backs that ambition up. Second-quarter revenue hit a record $11.5 billion, up 50% year-over-year, with data center revenue alone climbing 107% to $6.7 billion. Adjusted EPS jumped 246% to $1.66, and operating margin improved to 17% from a 2% loss a year earlier. AMD has picked up customers once seen as Nvidia territory, including Oracle, Microsoft and OpenAI, and CEO Lisa Su says AMD has lined up 6 gigawatts of committed capacity apiece from OpenAI and Meta Platforms for its new MI450 chips and Helios racks. Su has pegged the AI data center chip market at $1.4 trillion annually by 2030 and forecasts that AMD's own data center sales will roughly double once more in 2027.
Despite that quarter, AMD shares fell, and the simplest explanation is that much of the good news was already baked into the price. The stock trades at nearly 70 times forward earnings, a multiple that ******* umes years of growth are already locked in. Some of AMD's headline growth rate is also flattered by an easy comparison: a US government ban on chip sales to China in April 2025 depressed AMD's results a year ago, making this year's percentage gain look larger than the underlying quarter-over-quarter trend, which came in at 16%.
Hedge fund ownership of AMD ticked up from 132 funds in the prior quarter to 134 in the most recent one, a modest increase suggesting institutional interest is holding steady rather than swinging hard either way. Short interest is low at 2.45% of float, showing little organized betting against the stock. Even so, AMD carries a forward price-to-earnings ratio of 65.36 as of August 7, a rich multiple that leaves the stock priced for the growth story to keep delivering rather than for any near-term stumble.

#data #year #price #center

OpenAI has acquired the presentation technology startup NextSlide, integrating the company's team into the development of ChatGPT.
The acquisition was disclosed in a note by NextSlide founder Ahmed Beshry, who stated on LinkedIn that although the announcement is being made now, the transaction took place "earlier this year."
Financial terms of the deal have not been made public.
According to a statement on the NextSlide website, the company developed a product intended to convert prompts, notes, documents, or research into polished, editable presentations.
Beshry said: "Presentations help ideas move through the world. They teach, persuade, share research, and move important work forward. But creating a great presentation has traditionally required hours of work, design experience, or both."

#nextslide #presentations #work #chatgpt

Australian AI infrastructure startup Firmus Technologies has received full commitments for a $2bn strategic equity investment round, as it moves ahead with its Project Southgate AI Factory rollout across Australia.
The round includes follow-on participation from Coatue and Nvidia, as well as new investment from funds managed by Blackstone Tactical Opportunities and other Blackstone vehicles, which the company collectively referred to as Blackstone. Global trading and technology firm Jane Street is also participating.
Firmus said the funding will support the next phase of Project Southgate in Australia and help prepare for expansion into other Asia-Pacific markets.
The company said it already manufactures its proprietary HyperCube platform in Australia and has grid-aware software in place. It added that the new capital will help accelerate its domestic rollout and support targeted investments tied to future expansion.
Firmus said it is developing an AI infrastructure based on Nvidia's DSX AI Factory Reference Architecture to speed up deployment, improving tokens per watt, and boosting resiliency at scale.

#firmus #project #infrastructure #round

Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMD) just announced an acquisition that could give major competition to NVIDIA Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA) in AI-inference. On August 6, AMD said it has agreed to buy chip startup Taalas as specialized inference chips become a critical area of focus for semiconductor makers. The financial terms of the deal have not been disclosed.
The company plans to integrate Taalas' technology into its accelerator roadmap and develop system-level solutions combining it with AMD Instinct graphics processing units (GPUs).
"AMD is building a full-stack AI platform that gives customers ‌the ⁠flexibility to deploy the right compute solutions for every AI workload," Vamsi Boppana, senior vice president of AMD's Artificial Intelligence Group, said in a statement.
The acquisition strengthens AMD's AI portfolio by offering it differentiated inference performance and efficiency. The move also highlights the rising importance for leading GPU makers to offer integrated systems with several different components and chips rather than standalone processors.
The acquisition itself follows a string of smaller inference-focused deals made by AMD. Back in November, the company acquired MK1, an AI software startup ⁠specializing in high-speed inference. It also acquired MEXT in June and added FastFlowLM to its artificial intelligence group in July. Together, these moves may strengthen AMD's AI inference capabilities to compete with giants such as Nvidia.

#taalas

Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.
Walt Disney Co. is preparing to expand beyond its traditional subscription model by exploring a free, ad-supported streaming offering to reach more viewers while strengthening Disney+ and its advertising business.
The comments came on Wednesday during Disney's fiscal third-quarter 2026 earnings call. Goldman Sachs ***** yst Michael Ng asked whether the company would pursue a free ad-supported television offering similar to Fox Corp.'s Tubi, Paramount's Skydance's Pluto TV and The Roku Channel.
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#free

Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.
The Walt Disney Company plans to evolve Disney+ from a video platform into an integrated fan ecosystem combining games, merchandise, and interactive experiences by spring 2027, as Chief Executive Officer Josh D'Amaro declared that the entertainment giant is "just playing a different game" compared to streaming rivals.
Speaking during Disney's fiscal third-quarter 2026 earnings call, D'Amaro outlined a vision to position Disney+ as the digital centerpiece of fan engagement, leveraging first-party data and broad franchise IP.
Don't Miss:
A single bad hire can set a startup back years. Here are the 5 hires founders most often misjudge — and why

#benzinga #chief #officer

Aug 7 (Reuters) - Chinese startup Moonshot's flagship AI model, Kimi K3, escaped a cybersecurity testing ‌environment developed by the UK AI Safety ‌Institute, research firm Frontier Security said on Thursday, raising concerns over the cybersecurity risks posed by advanced AI systems.
AI models are typically run in isolated "sandboxes" during cybersecurity tests to block access to external information and ***** s their ‌ability to solve ⁠problems independently.
Kimi K3 bypassed one such sandbox, allowing it to access information beyond ⁠the test environment, U.S.-based cybersecurity research firm Frontier Security said.
The researchers warned that if one "high-reasoning model" discovers such a shortcut, other models with similar access could likely ‌do the same.
As Kimi K3 is a publicly available model, the researchers cautioned that it could be used by "adversarial actors," making the incident potentially more harmful.

#model #security #firm

Robinhood this week unveiled a financial instrument that lets anyone feel like they, too, can make money by backing Y Combinator startups.
Robinhood Venture Fund II (RVII) is expected to become a publicly traded fund on August 13 at an opening price of $25 per share.
The fund intends to raise as much as $200 million, Reuters reports, and use that money to invest in startups founded by current and former Y Combinator participants, should those startups agree to sell their shares.
While any retail investor can buy shares in the fund, they will not directly hold any shares in the startups. Investors will be able to trade their shares in the fund, but it's unclear how much profit they can expect to make should the YC companies manage big exits.
The fund intends to pay the 2/20 fees typical in the VC world to another entity owned by Robinhood, plus tack on extra fees. That means Robinhood's unit will collect 2% of the net returns as a management fee, plus other fees, taking the total to just over 4%, the company said. The fund will also pay the Robinhood unit 20% "carried interest" (commonly called "carry"). That means if enough Y Combinator companies have good exits for the fund to make money, that Robinhood unit will get 20% of the resulting returns.

#combinator #shares #money #unit

Unleash the AI agents, says Circle (CRCL) co-founder and CEO Jeremy Allaire.
"We think that there will eventually be billions of agents providing work and labor, and they'll be able to be orchestrated and integrated within a firm and across firm boundaries," Allaire said on Yahoo Finance's Opening Bid (see video above). "And this is an incredible time for entrepreneurs, for startups, for builders who are going to be able to tap into these agent labor markets to get things done and accelerate their own development and growth."
Allaire is aggressively using AI agents alongside human workers to help scale up its stablecoin business.
"AI and humans can interact directly through messaging environments like Slack, but also can interact between each other and communicate between each other directly," Allaire explained. "And so the thing that we're doing at Circle is we're asking all of our employees to be part of crafting this and building this. And this is, I think, incredibly exciting because we want our employees to have the superpowers of fleets of agents that they can use themselves to amplify their own capabilities. So this is an opportunity to multiply the capabilities of a firm and of humans themselves."
Circle just dropped a second quarter that was good enough to send the stock higher — but not so clean that the bulls can declare total victory. Hence, the stock is down 2% in Wednesday's trading.

#allaire #agents #able #directly

Anthropic has signed a $10 billion, six-year deal for computing capacity with Volta Infra Holdings, a cloud infrastructure startup backed by Nvidia Corp (NASDAQ:NVDA, XETRA:NVD), according to media reports citing people familiar with the matter, as the Claude maker moves to secure additional computing resources amid growing demand for its AI products.
Volta announced earlier Tuesday that it had secured a six-year, $10 billion agreement with an unnamed artificial intelligence company. The deal will be delivered in partnership with Bitdeer Technologies Group, a bitcoin miner that operates data centers, using a site in Norway.
The managed data center is expected to feature Nvidia's next-generation Vera Rubin AI chips, according to details of the agreement. Volta was recently valued at $2.4 billion following a $300 million funding round.
Volta CEO Ricard Boada declined to identify the customer. Representatives for Anthropic and Bitdeer declined to comment.
The agreement adds to Anthropic's efforts to expand its computing capacity as businesses and consumers increasingly use its Claude chatbot and other AI tools, particularly for coding and related tasks.

#claude

Robinhood (NASDAQ:HOOD) is seeking to raise up to $200 million through the U.S. initial public offering of its second private markets investment fund, according to a regulatory filing released on Monday.
The new vehicle, Robinhood Ventures Fund II (RVII), plans to offer as many as 8 million shares, including 400,000 shares owned by Robinhood itself. The shares are being marketed at $25 each.
The new offering forms part of Robinhood's broader strategy to give retail investors greater access to private companies, an area traditionally dominated by leading Silicon Valley venture capital firms.
Robinhood Ventures Fund II will focus on investing in early-stage and growth-stage private businesses, with particular emphasis on companies that currently participate in, or have previously graduated from, the Y Combinator startup accelerator.
The launch follows the debut of Robinhood Ventures Fund I in March.

#private #million #Companies #stage

By Jaspreet Singh
Aug 4 (Reuters) - Spotify said higher marketing and development costs would hurt its profit in the current quarter as the Swedish music-streaming giant bets heavily on features powered by ‌AI to attract users.
The company also projected third-quarter monthly active users below Wall Street estimates on ‌Tuesday, blaming the weakness on product changes in emerging markets such as India and Indonesia that may help Spotify in raising prices.
"So examples would be sign-up changes, deprecation of old lower-end Android devices, carefully introducing some friction in the ad load with respect to increasing ad load and some limitations on our free tier as well," Co-CEO Alex Norström told Reuters.
Price hikes have become central in recent years to Spotify's push to prove it can convert its huge user base ‌into meaningful profit. The company has in ⁠recent months also leaned on AI to fend off startups built around the technology, such as Suno.

#reuters #users #company