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Good Morning,

Trump concluded his China visit, McKinsey revamped its partner pay structure, Twitter investors are set for a 200% return, Anthropic and OpenAI now capture 89% of all AI startup revenue, and US prosecutors are investigating valuation practices at a BlackRock private credit fund.

Before we dive in: Our Ramp × Litquidity Padel Club is coming to #NYTechWeek! I'll be hosting a Padel and Wellness event Wednesday, June 3rd during a16z's annual New York Tech Week with some padel and wellness-focused fun for NYC-area founders, investors, and operators. Come through!

Greenland Energy Company is preparing to drill in the biggest unexplored oil basin in the world – discovered in Greenland. Learn about them here.

Let's dive in.

Before The Bell

As of 5/15/2026 market close.

Learn more about the Litquidity portfolios and subscribe to the strategies on Autopilot.*

Markets

  • US stocks slumped on Friday as global yields surged on renewed inflation fears

  • Europe's Stoxx 600 dropped 1.5% in its worst day since March

  • China's CSI 300 snapped a five-week win streak

  • Ghana's GSE Composite is up 63% YTD as the world's second-best stock market 

  • G7 yields are the highest in 22 years

    • US Treasuries had their worst week in a year as 30Y and 10Y yields hit their highest in one year

      • US investment grade risk premiums fell to their lowest since early-February

    • UK 10Y yield soared 19 bps to 5.18% to push past 2008-highs 

    • Japan 30Y yield hit 4% for the first time

  • Private credit BDCs are trading at 15% discounts to NAV

  • Dollar gained 1.2% in its best week since early March

  • EM FX carry trade has returned 3% from its March Iran war-low 

Earnings

  • What we're watching this week:  

    • Tuesday: Home Depot, CAVA

    • Wednesday: Nvidia, Target, Lowe's 

    • Thursday: Walmart, Hamilton Lane, Zoom, Workday, Ralph Lauren

  • Full calendar here

Prediction Markets

  • Totally forgot about Gemini. It was the most hyped LLM for a few months in 2025 and suddenly disappeared from the AI discourse

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

Headline Roundup

  • Trump departs China after talks on trade, oil, and Taiwan (CNBC)

  • Bubble fear lures investors to hedge with exotics (BBG)

  • Yield-hungry investors bet on corporate credit as sovereigns sour (BBG)

  • Speed of Korea's record rally defies brewing jitters (BBG)

  • Foreign investors fear retreat in Japan's governance reforms (BBG)

  • India rally may be over after missing out on AI (BBG)

  • Equity funds inflows rose for eighth-straight week on AI hype (RT)

  • US prosecutors are investigating valuation practices at BlackRock (WSJ)

  • HSBC is struggling to progress in its $4B private credit effort (BBG)

  • Ares bulked up on credit funds in Q1 (RT)

  • FTC is investigating Arm Holdings for antitrust violations (BBG)

  • Twitter investors are set for 200% return following Musk mergers (BBG)

  • Anthropic and OpenAI now capture 89% of all AI startup revenues (TI)

  • McKinsey cut cash bonus and boosted equity in partner pay revamp (FT) 

  • Harvard endowment's CEO plans to retire (WSJ)

  • Miami hedge fund PM Joshua Chad Koren was arrested for stalking and harassing a woman (MNT)

A Message from Greenland Energy Company

A tight float, a sky-high borrow rate, and a basin nobody has drilled.

Post-de-SPAC GLND is the kind of setup tape-readers actually pay attention to: insider lockups still in place from the March 2026 business combination, and a reported borrow rate north of ~827% on the available shares – a number you only see when shorts are paying through the nose to bet against a name with no supply.

What's behind the ticker? Greenland Energy Company holds rights to earn up to a 70% working interest across the entire 2 million+ acre Jameson Land Basin – 58 prospects mapped (Sproule ERCE), with potential upside of up to ~13 billion barrels of recoverable oil.

The first drilling campaign is scheduled for H2 2026 with Halliburton, IPT Well Solutions, and Stampede Drilling already engaged.

Tight supply. Real catalysts. One Nasdaq ticker.

→ Learn more here

*This is a paid advertisement by Greenland Energy Company.

Deal Flow

M&A / Strategic

  • Utility giant NextEra Energy is in talks to acquire rival Dominion Energy in a $66B mostly stock deal at a 10% premium

  • Oil giant Saudi Aramco is looking to raise $35B via asset sales to PE firms 

  • PE firms including Blackstone and CD&R are exploring ‌bids for $10B-listed Magnum Ice Cream less than six months after it was spun out of Unilever

  • KKR is exploring a $3B sale of West Coast membership ​clubs operator The Bay Club Company

  • French advertising group Publicis Groupe agreed to acquire US data collaboration company LiveRamp ​in a $2.2B cash deal

  • Norwegian low-cost airline Norse Atlantic will launch a sale seeking a $1.2B valuation, including debt

  • Providence Equity Partners, Epiris, and a consortium of Oakley Capital and Inflexion-backed cloud platform Giacom are competing to acquire $1.2B UK-listed telecom services company Gamma Communications

  • Stellantis partnered with Dongfeng Group in a $1.2B deal to produce EVs under the Peugeot and Jeep brands in China

  • Brazil's largest private water utility Aegea will raise $1B in fresh capital from shareholders led by Singapore SWF GIC and Brazilian conglomerate Itaúsa to support a bid for state-owned utility Copasa

  • A JV between brand managers WHP Global and G-III Apparel Group will acquire fashion label Marc Jacobs from LVMH in an $850M deal

  • Thoma Bravo is exploring a $750M sale of its 55% stake in construction software maker Command Alkon

  • UK insurer Prudential will acquire a 75% stake in India's Bharti Life Insurance Company for an initial cash consideration of $365M

  • SHEIN will acquire D2C sustainable fashion brand Everlane from LVMH for $100M

  • UK telecoms firm BT is reviving talks with AT&T, Orange, and Verizon for a sale or partnership of its ​struggling international business 

  • Entrepreneur Equity Partners, the investment firm of Trump-pardoned Tim Leiweke, is looking to buy minority stakes in European soccer clubs including Benfica following a recent deal with Venezia FC 

  • Investment firm Neuberger Berman will acquire the fund products of UK asset manager Schroders' wholly-owned China ‌fund unit

VC

  • Anthropic is set to raise over $30B at a $900B pre-money valuation co-led by Greenoaks, Sequoia, Dragoneer, and Altimeter 

  • Rapido, an Indian ride-hailing company, raised a $240M round at a $3B valuation led by Prosus

  • Dutch weapons maker Destinus is in talks to raise $235M in a pre-IPO round

  • Sarvam AI, an Indian multilingual, voice-first foundational AI startup, raised a $300M round at a $1.5B valuation led by Bessemer Venture Partners

  • Spanish balloon-tourism startup EOS X Space raised a $140M Series D

  • Multiverse, an AI up-skilling platform, raised a $70M round at a $2.1B valuation led by Schroders

  • Fundamental Research Labs, an enterprise AI startup building vertical AI agents, raised $33M  

  • Nord Quantique, a quantum computing startup, raised a $30M round at a $1.4B valuation from Fidelity

  • Arkeus, a defense technology company building AI-powered sensing systems, raised an $18M Series A led by QIC Ventures

Access the complete VC deal flow and data on Fundable

IPOs / Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

  • SpaceX will file publicly for an ~$80B June IPO on Wednesday; Elon Musk will not sell any shares in the IPO; BlackRock is in talks to invest $5B to $10B

  • Berkshire Hathaway sold $8B worth of Chevron stock

  • Chinese data center spinoff DayOne plans to raise $5B in the first Singapore and New York dual IPO

  • Berkshire Hathaway took a $2.65B stake in ​Delta Air Lines and smaller stakes in Macy's, Amazon, UnitedHealth, Visa, and Mastercard in first moves under new CEO Abel

  • Bill Ackman's hedge fund Pershing Square built a $2.1B stake in Microsoft days after TCI sold its $8B stake

  • KKR-backed German aerospace firm OHB is planning a $1.2B share offering

  • TSMC will sell $850M worth of shares in Vanguard International Semiconductor to cut its stake from 27% to 19%

  • Korean lender Hana Bank acquired a 6.5% stake in crypto exchange Dunamu for $670M

  • STT Global Data Centres India is considering raising $500M at a $5.5B valuation in an India IPO

  • VC Thrive Capital made a rare $100M public investment in Shopify

  • Japanese lender Mizuho will slash its stake in Japanese credit card firm Orient from 48% to 34% amid pressure from activist Strategic Capital

  • Digital consumer bank Forbright filed for an IPO

  • Data center power systems supplier Erock filed for an IPO

  • Activist Elliott took a stake in $24B-listed medical device firm Dexcom and struck a deal to put two independent directors

SPAC / SPV

  • Trump family-linked Yorkville Advisors plans to raise $200M for a Venezuela SPAC

Debt

  • Vietnamese EV maker VinFast will sell two Vietnamese factories to shed $6.9B in debt 

  • Alphabet raised $3.6B in its debut and the biggest-ever yen bond sale by a non-Japanese firm

  • Advent is seeking to sell $1.5B of a $4.9B buyout loan for Polish parcel-locker company InPost to a group of banks before marketing the rest to institutional investors

  • Goswami Infratech, a unit of Indian conglomerate Shapoorji Pallonji, is in talks to raise a $1.5B zero-coupon bond at an 18.75% YTM from Cerberus, Farallon, and Ares

  • Indian conglomerate Adani Group revived plans for a $1B US-listed dollar bond sale

Bankruptcy / Restructuring / Distressed

  • Apollo-backed West Technology is in exclusive talks to sell its remaining operating business to a counter-party amid liquidity struggles 

Funds / Secondaries

  • Michal Strnad, the Czech billionaire founder of defense giant CSG, is launching an investment firm with potentially $12B to target acquisitions in Europe and US

  • HSG (fka Sequoia Capital China) raised a $3B CV anchored by a stake in ByteDance

  • Trump Jr's America-first VC firm 1789 Capital AUM surged from $200M to $3.5B over the past year amid a dealmaking spree with leading AI startups 

  • Bain Capital is seeking to raise $1B for a single-asset CV to extend ownership of Spanish aerospace company ITP Aero

  • European PE firm Lightrock raised $500M for a new Asia and Africa-focused clean energy fund 

Crypto Sum Snapshot

  • Crypto exchange Kraken cut 150 jobs due to AI 

  • SBF thanked Drake for shoutout on new album 'Iceman'

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

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*DISCLAIMER: Investment advice provided by Autopilot Advisers, LLC ("Autopilot"), an SEC-registered investment adviser. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investing carries risks, including loss of principal. As always, be smart out there. Litquidity is compensated to promote AutoPilot. Compensation details available upon request.

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