Hey Snackers,
If you didn’t get a Valentine’s Day gift and aren’t bothered by it, you’re not alone: 77% of people said they’d rather use the money for a major financial goal instead of spending it on gifts.
The market ended last week with the S&P 500 just shy of record highs. On Friday, the Nasdaq 100 posted a decent gain and the Russell 2000 retreated modestly. Love was in the air for shares of Airbnb, which posted robust quarterly results thanks to strong demand for international travel and was the best performer on Valentine’s Day.
Quizzical thinking: What is the bestselling video game of all time?
Check your answer.
Nvidia sneezes, SoundHound gets the flu
It’s not exactly stop the presses, breaking news that Nvidia — market cap $3.3 trillion — is a pretty important stock followed by lots of people for a host of reasons. It’s the flagship of the AI armada, its fortunes reverberate across entire industrial sectors, and all sorts of incredibly valuable companies in crypto, technology, data, and gaming operate downstream of it.
But Friday saw just how make-or-break a little bit of attention (or neglect) from Nvidia can be for smaller companies. Take the diverging fortunes of WeRide and retail favorite SoundHound AI for example. SoundHound’s stock price chart has looked like a hockey stick, due in no small part to the reveal last February that none other than Nvidia had taken a stake in the company, which works in voice-based AI. Things were great for SoundHound after that, with the stock price increasing ninefold in the time between Nvidia disclosing its stake and the end of the year, when it finished at $22.68 a share.
Meanwhile, Chinese self-driving car company WeRide only just managed to list its US ADRs on the Nasdaq as recently as October, and shares have risen only 1% between that listing and February 13.
Then, on Valentine’s Day, everything changed:
Nvidia announced it had sold its stake in SoundHound. Lots of retail investors seemed to agree, upon review, and the stock fell nearly 30% in a single day.
In the same filing, Nvidia revealed a stake in WeRide. Investors quickly noticed their oversight and plowed money into the company, with shares nearly doubling that morning and finishing the day up 80%.
The daily trading volumes chart for WeRide, really, must be seen to be believed. Wow.
The Takeaway
Nvidia is clearly a whale in the market, a pillar of the ecosystem, the top of the food chain — take this marine metaphor as far as you want, but the company is running the reef. Sometimes we can forget just how fickle the fortunes of a company with one-thousandth of its market cap can be, but the Valentine’s Day shift in fortunes for SoundHound and WeRide is a reminder that it’s Nvidia’s market, and everyone else is just trading in it.
The Investing Platform Providing Exposure to Perplexity, Databricks, Epic Games
Ever wish you could invest in some of today’s well-known private companies like Perplexity, Databricks, and Epic Games?
Enter StartEngine, a leading alternative investment platform that has enabled 1.8 million users2 to invest $1.3 billion into startups (when combined with a competitor acquisition of SeedInvest).3
How’s it going? StartEngine doubled its revenue YoY in the first half of 20244 thanks to the launch of StartEngine Private, an investing portal offering exposure to some of the more popular private venture-backed businesses, like Perplexity, Databricks, Epic Games, and more.
The even more exciting news? You can become a shareholder in StartEngine itself by joining their current round — with $5+ million raised so far and $80+ million in lifetime funding.5
Stories We’re Watching
The level of hype surrounding DeepSeek, China’s ultracheap AI breakthrough, has helped bring the AI landscape into focus. The model’s reveal was a real “look what we can do” moment in the growing AI arms race. If you want VC money for your startup, you better be able to answer: how does it use AI? But what the “DeepSeek freak-out” really exposed is an even more central question that we should’ve been asking all along: what do users actually want from AI?
Jamie Dimon, tell us how you really feel: the JPMorgan CEO got very, shall we say, candid about his thoughts on remote work in an internal town hall that leaked to reporters. Let’s just say he isn’t a fan of the growing trend of the hybrid model.
Worth A Read
Step aside, Asimov. Here are OpenAI’s 50 Laws of Robotics
OpenAI is letting its AI loosen up: “No topic is off limits.” But it’s also making it anti-“woke.”
See what the “right” and “wrong” answers are for, “Is it OK to celebrate Independence Day?”
What Else We're Snackin'
Moderna missed in Q4, so its stock did what it’s done for nearly eight months straight: go down
A 15-year-old reporter asked fellow teens why they listen to TikTok influencers over experts
Real-life Rosey the Robot incoming: Meta is making AI-powered humanoid robots to help with household chores
Snack Fact of the Day
The world will add more than a Japan’s worth of electricity consumption each year until 2027.
This Week's Events
Homebuilder confidence index. Earnings expected from Baidu, Medtronic, and Toll Brothers
January housing starts and building permits. Earnings expected from Carvana, Wingstop, Cinemark, and Etsy
US leading economic indicators. Earnings expected from Shake Shack, Wayfair, Rivian, Alibaba, Live Nation, and Walmart
January existing home sales. University of Michigan Consumer Sentiment (final). Earnings expected from Spirit and Bally’s
1 Kevin O’Leary is a paid spokesperson for StartEngine. See his 17(b) disclosure, here.
2 Count determined by the number of unique email addresses in StartEngine’s database as of 08-27-2024. One individual may have more than one email address.
3 In May 2023, StartEngine acquired assets of SeedInvest, including email lists for SeedInvest’s users, investors and founders. Go here for more details.
4 This revenue growth has been driven by StartEngine Private, a new product line that offers funds in late stage companies. This product line has driven over $11.5M of the $21.6M of the revenue in the first 6 months of 2024. To understand the impact on margins, see financials.This revenue growth is H1 2023 vs. H1 2024. There is no guarantee that StartEngine revenue will continue to increase at similar rates.
5 Lifetime funding is across all previous and current offerings.
6 This is a paid advertisement for StartEngine’s Reg. A+ offering. Please read the most recent offering circular and related risks at invest.startengine.com.
The offering is made available through StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc. No broker-dealer or intermediary was involved in offering.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors. This investment is highly speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. There is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities.