Happy Friday. John Caddedu gives us an investing pick, Airtable was sold, data center construction is booming, but a labor shortage is slowing it down. Let’s dive in!
🎤 Listen: To the latest episode of Smart Humans, where Slava Rubin dives into the spacetech world with Orbit2Orbit founder Bradley Hatton-Jones.
This issue is brought to you by Aurite, Inc. - Runtime agent identification, governance and security.
📈 DAILY MARKETS
✅ PICK OF THE WEEK
SpaceX (NASDAQ: SPCX)
Current share price: $114.92 ($1.5 trillion market cap)
I’d like to buy it under $90, which could happen with the future lock-up expirations
Google and Facebook both sank lower after their IPOs before recovering significantly
SpaceX is so uniquely positioned that it’s hard to erode their market share
There was a lot of excitement over the IPO that has turned negative with the lock-up expirations coming, but in five years it could be at a big number
Here’s a list of our past expert investment picks.
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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
“Orbit2Orbit is busy building what comes before launch and what comes after the launch.” - Bradley Hatton-Jones
In the newest episode of Smart Humans, Slava Rubin talks with Orbit2Orbit founder Bradley Hatton-Jones about the SpaceX IPO, the future of space logistics, investing into space tech, and the in-orbit economy.
📰 NOTABLE NEWS
🚀 Bending Spoons buys Airtable: The recently IPO’d Italian software conglomerate has agreed to buy Airtable for $1.28 billion, a massive discount to the company’s peak valuation of $11.7 billion in 2021. Earlier this year, secondary shares were still trading in the $4 billion range, so the purchase price should concern investors who are still anchored to earlier valuations when evaluating private companies.
🏢 Data center construction: A record-high $81.5 billion has been spent on data center construction in the U.S. in the first half of 2026, which already eclipses the total for all of 2025. Both the number and average size of new projects are growing quickly as demand for AI infrastructure continues to explode.
🤖 Labor shortage woes: While demand for data center construction grows, a bottleneck is emerging in the persistent shortage of skilled trade workers needed for large-scale construction projects. This shortage is causing delays in project completions and rising costs across the board.
🏡 Sales surged in July: Zillow’s latest market report showed that U.S. home sales rose 7% year-over-year last month, but that increase may be short-lived as pending listings fell 7.7% due to mortgage rates increasing.
💵 Ares cuts back: The alternative asset manager is scaling back its semi-liquid private credit fund following pushback over valuation practices, in another blow to the struggling private credit sector.
🎨 AI art authentication: The startup QuantumSpace is using AI to try and address forgery in the art world, as authentication remains crucial to auction houses and collectors.
📝 IN CASE YOU MISSED IT
Monday: 📉 Closed-end funds, 💵 Record default rate
Tuesday: ⚾ National recap, 🚀 Energy fundraises
Wednesday: 🚀 Secondary market update, 📈 Equity record-highs
Thursday: 🏢 Office sector rebound, 🚀 VC funding record
Have a great weekend!
