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Good Morning,

Markets are bracing for a mega wave of Big Tech earnings, Andurand is again down 37% YTD, DOJ dropped its criminal investigation into J Pow, Trump survived a third assassination attempt, another Forbes 30u30 alum was arrested, and our tax dollars are up 300% on Intel in just seven months.

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Let's dive in.

Before The Bell

As of 4/24/2026 market close

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Markets

  • US stocks rallied on Friday on hopes for a restart to US-Iran talks

    • S&P and Dow closed at fresh ATHs

    • Nvidia hit a $5T market cap

Earnings

  • Procter & Gamble beat Q4 earnings and revenue estimates as volume grew for the first time in a year but only reiterated its FY forecast amid geopolitical and macro uncertainty (CNBC)

  • What we're watching this week:  

    • Today: Verizon, Domino's pizza 

    • Tuesday: UPS, Visa, Spotify, Robinhood, Coca-Cola, Ford, Hilton

    • Wednesday: Microsoft, Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Qualcomm, Brookfield, Chipotle 

    • Thursday: Apple, Sandisk, Reddit, Eli Lilly, Mastercard

    • Friday: ExxonMobil, Chevron, TPG

  • Full calendar here

Prediction Markets

  • DOJ dropped the criminal probe into J Pow weeks before his chair term is set to end. Now, the question is whether Powell will stay on the Board of Governors following his chair term

  • Trade event contracts on Polymarket, the world's largest prediction market

Headline Roundup

  • Trump survived a third assassination attempt (WSJ)

  • DOJ dropped its criminal investigation into J Pow (CNBC)

  • US government's stake in Intel is up 300% to $36B (BBG)

  • China will curb US investment in tech companies after Meta deal (BBG)

  • Equity fund inflows surged to a 17-month high on AI optimism (RT)

  • Big Tech's $16T earnings week is make-or-break for rally (BBG)

  • Record-setting momentum rally is drawing doubters (BBG)

  • Collapsing volatility is turbocharging returns in carry trades (BBG)

  • Investors pile back into frontier markets (BBG)

  • Europe's safest government bonds are falling from grace (BBG)

  • Family offices emphasize caution with private market bets (WSJ)

  • Discounted BDCs are drawing bargain hunters (BBG)

  • BDC NAV arbitrage is making private credit withdrawals worse (WSJ)

  • Oracle's AI debt deluge pushes Wall Street to the limit (WSJ)

  • Hong Kong IPOs have raised $18B this year (BBG)

  • Andurand is again down 37% YTD after surging 32% in March (BBG)

  • Clearlake LPs raise concerns over founder's MLB team purchase (BBG)

  • Jane Street hauled in a record $40B in revenue last year (BBG)

  • SpaceX and Anduril won Golden Dome contracts (BBG)

  • Another Forbes 30u30 alum was arrested (NYP)

  • Canadian execs say red tape is worse than US tariffs (FT)

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Deal Flow

M&A / Strategic

  • Germany sounded out European white knight lenders to defend $45B-listed Commerzbank against a hostile takeover from Italian rival UniCredit

  • UK product testing firm Intertek rejected EQT's sweetened $11.2B takeover bid

  • Radio station giant IHeartMedia is in talks to merge with satellite radio service giant Sirius XM in a potential $10B deal

  • ​Toyota-affiliated auto parts supplier Denso will withdraw its takeover bid for $10B-listed semiconductor maker Rohm

  • Asian investment firm Seraya Partners is considering a $2B sale of offshore wind vessel operator Cyan Renewables

  • Luxury marketing collective The Independents held talks for an over $1B stake sale

  • Canadian AI startup Cohere agreed to acquire German AI leader Aleph Alpha in a deal that includes a $600M investment from German retailer Schwarz Group

  • A consortium of TPG, GIC and ICICI Bank agreed to acquire India's top green shadow lender Aseem Infrastructure Finance for $425M and merge it with a new JV

  • Growth investor Sumeru Equity Partners acquired AI tax technology company K1x for $175M

  • Middle East-linked HOF Capital and BlueFive Capital will acquire Porsche's 45% stake in Bugatti Rimac, including Porsche's entire 20.6% stake in Rimac

  • Warburg Pincus-backed Asian data center operator Princeton Digital Group is exploring a stake sale

  • VC Thrive Capital will take an ownership stake in MLB's San Francisco Giants

  • The world's largest oilfield service provider SLB agreed to acquire S&P Global Energy's geoscience and petroleum-engineering software business

  • New PE firm Invidia agreed to acquire fertility benefits and family services provider WIN in its first deal

VC

  • Google agreed to invest up to $40B in Anthropic 

  • AI coding startup ​​Cognition is in early talks to raise a round at a $25B valuation 

  • Jeff Bezos' physical AI startup Project Prometheus raised a $10B round at a $38B valuation from JPMorgan, BlackRock, and others 

  • Finnish AI infrastructure company Verda (fka DataCrunch) raised $117M in funding led by Lifeline Ventures

  • Biossil, a biotech company reviving failed drug candidates using AI, raised $70M in funding from OpenAI, Founders Fund, and Staircase Ventures

  • Orkes, an AI orchestration platform for agentic workflows, raised a $60M Series B led by AVP

  • Snabbit, an Indian on-demand home services startup, is preparing to raise $50M-$55M funding round at a $400M valuation led by Susquehanna Venture Capital

  • ComfyUI, a node-based workflow startup for controlling diffusion-model outputs, raised a $30M round at a $500M valuation led by Craft Ventures

  • Zapata Quantum, a quantum software platform, raised an oversubscribed $15M round led by Triatomic Capital

  • Blackstar Computers, an AI-native hardware and OS startup, raised a $12M seed round led by Abstract 

  • Nava, a blockchain startup building guardrails for the agentic economy, raised an $8.3M seed round led by Polychain and Archetype

  • Series, an AI social network built to run inside iMessage, raised a $5.1M pre-seed round from Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Pear VC, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and others

Access the complete VC deal flow and data on Fundable

IPOs / Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

  • Chinese optical transceivers maker Eoptolink picked banks for a $3B Hong Kong listing

  • India's biggest asset manager SBI Funds Management plans to launch an India IPO to raise $1.5B at a $15B valuation

  • Amazon and Ken Griffin-backed nuclear reactor developer X-Energy jumped 27% in its trading debut after raising $1B in an upsized IPO for an $11.6B market cap

  • Chinese optical-computing company Lightelligence is set to raise $323M in an oversubscribed Hong Kong IPO priced at the top of a marketed range

  • Miner Lumina Metals raised $300M in an upsized Canada IPO

  • Spanish specialist engineering firm TSK plans to raise $175M in a Spain IPO

  • Boutique investment bank Lincoln International filed for an IPO

  • Data center services firm Csquare filed confidentially for an IPO

Debt

  • SpaceX refinanced debt with stopgap $20B loan before its IPO filing

  • Intel is readying a $6.5B dollar bond sale to help fund a $14.2B buyback of half of an Ireland manufacturing plant that it previously sold to Apollo

  • Data center developer Related Digital secured financing for a $16B Oracle data ‌center in Michigan, with PIMCO buying $10B of the bonds and Blackstone investing equity 

  • Chick-fil-A raised $650M in a private placement of investment grade bonds

Bankruptcy / Restructuring / Distressed

  • Conglomerate Shapoorji Pallonji Group, India's biggest private credit and junk borrower, agreed with bondholders including Cerberus, Varde Partners, Davidson Kempner, and Deutsche Bank to delay payment on a 20% YTM $1.5B note at its Goswami Infratech unit

Funds / Secondaries

  • $7B stock-picker hedge fund Eminence Capital is shuttering after 27 years

  • European PE firm Waterland raised $4.7B for its tenth flagship fund

  • French asset manager Amundi won EU's mandate to run a $3.5B EM-focused public-private bond fund

  • FOF StepStone raised ~$1.6BB for its second credit opportunities fund

  • Too-good-to-be-true FX hedge fund Mars FX collapsed in a fraud with over $600M missing

  • Education impact investor Achieve Partners raised a $450M fund to acquire firms tackling AI-related labor displacement in technology and healthcare 

  • RFK Jr.'s son is seeking to raise a $100M for Victura Ventures, a healthcare VC fund to back companies benefiting from RFK's 'MAHA' movement

  • Instacart co-founder Apoorva Mehta launched Abundance, a hedge fund run almost entirely by AI agents

  • KKR and Capital Group will launch a public-private credit fund in Asia following success in US 

Crypto Sum Snapshot

  • Trump's crypto luncheon draws superstars but his token hovers near low

  • Crypto faithful wins memecoin lunch with Trump for just $500

Crypto Sum compiles the most important stories on everything crypto. Read it here.

Exec’s Picks

  • WSJ published their latest rankings on the greatest entrepreneurs in US history. I'd take it with a grain of salt but it's an interesting read nonetheless.

  • Bloomberg published a short primer on how the biggest feud in tech landed in court. I.e. Musk vs Altman.

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