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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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