Sponsored by
Happy Tuesday. A Michael Jordan jersey shattered an all-time record, Ramp raised a massive funding round, a town in Wisconsin is the U.S.’s hottest housing market, and older Americans are getting wealthier. Let’s dive in!
🎫 Register: For our next investor briefing looking at the current state of the fintech sector, including private companies such as Stripe, Ramp, and Revolut.
This issue is brought to you by Hubspot, a CRM so smart, it updates itself.
📈 DAILY MARKETS
🏀 RECORD JORDAN JERSEY
A Michael Jordan game-worn and photo-matched jersey from Game Two of the 1998 NBA Finals sold for $14 million in a private sale via Hunt Auctions, breaking the record set just two weeks ago for any piece of basketball memorabilia. The jersey, from Game 3 of the 1998 NBA Finals, sold for $12.3 million, breaking the previous record set by Jordan’s jersey from Game 1 of the same Finals, famous as the “Last Dance” for the Chicago Bulls dynasty. The purchaser of this record-breaking jersey is noted collector Ron Firman, who just made headlines last month for buying a Mickey Mantle photograph for $3 million.
➨ TAKEAWAY: This sale continues the strong year for collectibles, particularly high-end collectibles, and so far, a higher interest rate environment has not slowed down the market. And of course, demand for Michael Jordan memorabilia remains incredibly high, particularly for items from the 1998 season.
Partner
A CRM so smart, it updates itself.
HubSpot's CRM is so smart, it now updates itself. Calls get logged and summarized the moment they end. New leads get researched and a first outreach drafted, automatically. Deals move forward on their own, with next steps flagged before you have to ask.
Even the one repetitive task you've been meaning to fix can now run itself, no code required. Customers using it are already seeing the difference.
This isn't the CRM you have to work hard to figure out. It's the one already working before you log in.
📺 UPCOMING EVENT
Join Vincent’s Slava Rubin and Sacra’s Jan-Erik Asplund Thursday for a look at the private companies shaping the future of financial services. We’ll take a closer look at Stripe, Ramp, Revolut, and Plaid and how their businesses are changing the way companies and consumers interact with financial services. We’ll examine the technologies and business models gaining traction, how fintech is evolving alongside traditional financial institutions, and how AI, scale, and profitability are reshaping the industry.
October 15 (Thurs) at 11 AM ET
📰 NOTABLE NEWS
🚀 Ramp fundraise: The fintech startup raised a $1.85 billion mega funding round, pushing its valuation to $60 billion, 40% higher than its valuation from June, and nearly double its valuation from a year ago. We will be covering Ramp and other major fintech companies in our fintech nvestor briefing on Thursday.
🏡 Hottest housing markets: Kenosha, Wisconsin, a suburb between Chicago and Milwaukee, is the hottest housing market in the country based on views per property and average days on market. The top 20 is split between the Midwest and Northeast as buyers are targeting smaller, more affordable cities near major population hubs.
💵 Older Americans get richer: While the median family net worth in the U.S. rose just 2% from 2022 to 2025, adjusted for inflation, Americans aged 75 and older saw their median net worth jump by more than 30%. Meanwhile, Americans aged 35 and younger saw a median decrease of more than 20%, highlighting the stark divide in wealth between generations.
🪙 Securitize launches tokenized stocks: The platform Securitize is now offering tokenized U.S. equities, including Apple, Nvidia, and Amazon, directly on the Solana blockchain. Each token is backed one-to-one by actual shares with voting rights and dividends, and will eventually trade 24/7.
🤖 AI funding falls in Q3: Funding to AI startups dropped by 33% in Q2, but when you remove Anthropic’s $65 billion worth of fundraises from the Q2 numbers, capital raised was actually up in Q3. Overall deal count fell, though, as investors concentrated their bets into the 42 new unicorns in the space, the highest quarterly total since Q1 2025.
💎 24-carat pink diamond: The “Bulgari Pink”, a 24-carat emerald-cut fancy intense pink diamond, is coming to auction for the first time at Christie’s in Geneva next month. It carries a high estimate of $18 million.
🏡 LISTING OF THE WEEK
(Concierge Auctions)
Oheka Castle, the 23-acre estate that once hosted parties that inspired F. Scott Fitzgerald’s “The Great Gatsby” is up for auction on October 27 following a $40 million renovation. The 112,895 square foot home is the 2nd largest private home in the U.S., featuring 127 rooms and 34 guest suites, with formal gardens designed by the famed Olmsted brothers. The property is located in Huntington, NY, only five minutes from the nearest LIRR station, and is in the National Register of Historic Places. Used in productions ranging from “Citizen Kane” to “Succession” to a Taylor Swift video, it serves as a wedding venue and hotel, and also has a restaurant. Additionally, there are approved plans for a 95-unit luxury condo building on the property. For those of us unlikely to bid on Oheka Castle, you can tour the grounds for $30.
