Happy Friday. John Caddedu gives us an investing pick, more promising inflation news came in, the Yankees made a deal with Apollo, and a 1 of 1 Cooper Flagg card was found. Let’s dive in!
🎤 Listen: To the latest episode of Smart Humans, where Slava Rubin chats with John Cadeddu about investing into and incubating AI startups and why he invests in farmland.
This issue is brought to you by The Champion Fund - institutional-grade access to the sports asset class.
📈 DAILY MARKETS
✅ PICK OF THE WEEK
Anthropic
Last public valuation: $965 billion (May 2026)
Notice.co valuation: $1.35 trillion (there are rumors of a $2 trillion upcoming IPO)
Even if the price is silly, I would still buy Anthropic in the Pre-IPO market
When it does go public, I think it will do very well
I think the company has a special team, if you look at the people leaving other companies to go work for them - talent is always a signal
I would hold post-IPO and look back three years and say wow
Here’s a list of our past expert investment picks.
Partner
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👨🏫 TODAY'S EXPERT
John Cadeddu is the founding and managing partner at Corner Ventures. John brings 25 years of venture capital experience to this role and is a generalist with domain expertise in machine learning and artificial general intelligence. Prior to Corner, John co-founded DAG Ventures in 2004 and was Key Man for Funds I-V. As a venture investor, John has led investments in over 60 companies, including Bloom Energy, FireEye, Ambarella, Yelp, Pacific BioSciences, Jasper Technologies, Xoom, Eventbrite, Nextdoor, OneMedical and Wealthfront. Prior to this, John worked at JP Morgan, Tandem Computers and Octel Communications. He earned his BA with Honors from Harvard College and his MBA from Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. John co-founded Aurite in 2023 following the release of ChatGPT. John and his wife, Wendy, established a college scholarship fund in their Canadian hometown 25 years ago that has enabled 149 students, and counting, to attend university.
🎤 PODCAST
“[Aurite] is gonna be a name that people are talking about in a couple of years.” - John Cadeddu
In the newest episode of Smart Humans, Slava Rubin talks with Corner Ventures and Aurite AI’s John Cadeddu about his 25-year VC journey, incubating AI startups, and investing into farmland.
📰 NOTABLE NEWS
📊 PPI report: A day after a promising Consumer Price Index (CPI) report on inflation, the Producer Price Index (PPI) report showed that U.S. wholesale prices stayed flat in July, coming in better than the expected 0.2% gain. The odds of a Fed rate hike in September fell again, this time from around 40% to around 33%, according to the CME FedWatch tool.
⚾ Yankees sell share to PE: The most valuable franchise in baseball reached a $2.6 billion deal with Apollo’s sports investment division, with the money largely going to refinance existing debt. There will be no change in ownership and it is unclear what the deal values the franchise at, but it does represent a further step into baseball by private equity.
🏀 Cooper Flagg card: The 1 of 1 signed rookie debut patch card of the NBA’s reigning rookie of the year was pulled on a live stream earlier this week, and has already received a number of multi-million dollar offers, as well as a offer from the Dallas Mavericks, the team Flagg plays for.
🤖 River AI fundraise: The two-month old AI startup founded by xAI co-founder Igor Babuschkin raised a $1.1 billion funding round at an undisclosed valuation. The company is attempting reinvent the way AI trains models and turn AI agents into capable personal assistants.
🪙 Russia approves crypto trading: The Bank of Russia is about to allow ordinary retail investors to trade 300,000 rubles (around $3600) per year of Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Tether (USDT) on public exchanges. Qualified investors will not have any restrictions, but all investors will be required to pass a test about crypto trading.
🚀 Neros triples valuation: The defense tech startup that focuses on autonomous and interceptor drones raised $250 million at a $2.5 billion valuation, which more than triples its latest valuation from last November.
📝 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Monday: 🚀 New Robinhood fund, 📈 SpaceX surge
Tuesday: 🚀 VC vintages, 🏢 CRE tops investor picks
Wednesday: 🐉 Pokémon market, 🏡 Existing home sales fall
Thursday: 📊 CPI inflation report, 🏀 Record-breaking Lakers sale
Have a great weekend!
