Hey Snackers,
A LinkedIn post by the proud mother of a GameStop employee was so heartfelt that it inspired GameStop CEO Ryan Cohen to give the teenage employee a surprise gift so he could get to work more easily. (And the gift was arguably even better than a McDonald’s lunch and a pair of Cohen’s preowned underwear.) Whether it’s due to good karma or just good earnings, GameStop has been on a strong winning streak lately.
US stocks did little of note on Tuesday, with traders seemingly content to sit on their hands ahead of the Federal Reserve decision this afternoon. The S&P 500, Nasdaq 100, and Russell 2000 all declined 0.1% on the session.
The consortium slated to take over TikTok in the US is emerging
Oracle is indeed part of an upcoming deal for a US spin-off of TikTok, The Wall Street Journal reports, as a member of a consortium that also includes Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz. The US and China are finalizing the framework for a deal that would create a new US entity, with American investors holding a roughly 80% ownership stake.
Oracle has long been in the running, along with executives close to the Trump administration including not only members of the Ellison family but also CEO Safra Katz, who served on President Trump’s 2016 transition team.
Andreessen Horowitz, the storied venture capital firm and the largest in the field, also has significant links to the administration in addition to lots of ties to “First Buddy” Elon Musk.
Silver Lake is a major player in the private equity space; it’s incidentally the owner of Endeavor, a big talent agency in the entertainment industry, and took it private in March of this year.
Existing investors in ByteDance, including Susquehanna International, KKR, and General Atlantic, would also have skin in the game.
The remaining 20% would be owned by Chinese investors.
Under the current structure of the deal, US users would have to download and use a new app, which TikTok is now testing. The entity would have a largely American board, including one member nominated by the US government, the WSJ reports.
The Takeaway
Trump has extended the deadline for a deal until December 16. TikTok engineers would have to recreate the content recommendation algorithms for the new app, licensing tech from ByteDance.
AI Frenzy Could Launch the EarnPhone Boom
The hidden fuel behind AI? Your phone.
Billions of data points — from your clicks, swipes, scrolls, and searches — are feeding the next wave of AI innovation.
Big Tech is harvesting it.1 Mode Mobile is giving it back to you.
They are contributing to a user-powered data economy that shares the upside, and +50M users have already generated +$325M in earnings.
This isn’t theory… Mode’s 32,481% revenue growth from 2019-2022 landed them the #1 spot on Deloitte’s 2023 list of fastest growing companies in software,2 and they’ve secured the Nasdaq ticker $MODE ahead of a potential IPO.3
AI breakthroughs are everywhere, but these models need your data to survive. And you can still invest in the company that allows you to earn money from it.
What we’re really using AI chatbots for
In the past year, we’ve watched a lot of demos from the companies creating the AI chatbots and agents of tomorrow to showcase some of the ways we could use the tech, like OpenAI’s very relatable live example of its ChatGPT Agent helping an employee buy an expensive tuxedo and book hotels in Maui, and we’ve heard a lot of news reports about the most alarming uses of chatbots, from ChatGPT’s role in a death by suicide to Meta’s chatbot allowing “sensual” talk with kids. But while we hear the most about these disturbing incidents, they remain outliers. Well, now we’re starting to get a better picture of how people are really using chatbots on the daily.
On Monday, OpenAI released the results of a wide-ranging study that used AI to analyze 1 million chat transcripts, and here are the takeaways:
💃 70% of all queries were not related to work.
📝 The most common use for ChatGPT at work was writing, and mostly just to modify or improve a user’s text.
🙋🏻 About half (49%) of all queries were classified as “asking” — for guidance, advice, or information. 40% of messages were requests classified as “doing,” or asking the chatbot to complete a task.
👩💻 Female users contributed more than half of all queries, a massive shift from early on, when the vast majority of users were male. But it’s worth noting that the study determined this in a questionable way.
🛹 The youth loves AI. Half of all messages were from adults under 26.
There’s more detail and a breakdown of tasks by topic here.
Meanwhile, rival AI startup Anthropic released its own detailed look at how consumers and businesses are using its Claude AI chatbot. Unlike OpenAI, Anthropic had good news for those hoping AI could streamline workflows, but bad news for workers themselves. It found that 77% of businesses using Claude were automating whole jobs away rather than collaborating with humans while they do their jobs — so there may be a lot of applications to OpenAI’s platform for people who lose their jobs to AI after all.
The Takeaway
Investors and businesses are anxious to see the real-world returns of all that capex pouring into AI, and the report on ChatGPT use isn’t encouraging, though Anthropic’s shows some promise. Meanwhile, let’s be real: usage is up because kids are back at school, and it’s new fun toys like Google’s Nano Banana that power most of the excitement and chatter — and downloads — for AI, as Google can currently brag about.
The Best Thing We Read Today
Long-term unemployment in the US has risen to a postpandemic high
The number of Americans who’ve been unemployed for more than six months is now at the highest level since the pandemic — almost double the number of people recorded in early 2023. We’re still far away from the all-time high seen after the global financial crisis of 2008, but unemployment is still unusually high.
Yesterday’s Big Daily Movers
Webtoon Entertainment jumped after Disney said it’s buying a 2% stake in the digital comics platform
Nio surged following an upgrade from UBS ahead of its new SUV launch
Warner Bros. Discovery dipped after a TD Cowen downgrade
Hims & Hers dropped after the FDA posted a warning letter about its marketing materials
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Private investors are watching this fast growing tech company
It's Mode Mobile, 2023’s fastest-growing software company according to Deloitte.2
While Wall Street focuses on acronyms — FAANG, MANGO, and whatever comes next — Mode focuses on the data that powers them.
Paying users to use their smartphones, Mode’s revenue grew 32,481% in the three years from 2019 to 2022.
⏰Share price change alert – invest now before the price changes.4
What Else We're Snackin'
Tesla’s stock continues to rise following strong August sales data and, most of all, CEO Elon Musk declaring, “Daddy is very much home”
Trump is suing The New York Times for $15 billion, which is way more than the entire company is worth
Rivian is breaking ground on a $5 billion EV plant that could produce 200,000 vehicles a year by 2028
Institutional investors are the most bullish since the stock market’s February peak and no longer think a trade war is the biggest risk
$48M raised and oversubscribed at $0.30/share. Now Mode Mobile has opened a capped5 pre-IPO offering3ahead of their price change this month. 🚨 Invest now before the price changes.4
Snack Fact Of The Day
YouTube has paid over $100 billion to creators, artists, and media companies over the past four years.
Today's Events
FOMC interest rate decision and Powell press conference
Earnings expected from General Mills
1 For further details see this article.
2 The rankings are based on submitted applications and public company database research, with winners selected based on their fiscal-year revenue growth percentage over a three-year period. See Deloitte 2023 Technology Fast 500™rankings for further details under historical rankings.
3 Mode Mobile recently received their ticker reservation with Nasdaq ($MODE), indicating an intent to IPO in the next 24 months. Any IPO timing is unknown and general steps to be accepted for an IPO have not been undertaken at this point. An intent to IPO is no guarantee that an actual IPO will occur.
4 A minimum investment of $990.90 is required.
Please read the offering circular and related risks at Mode Mobile’s website. This is a paid advertisement for Mode Mobile’s Regulation CF Offering.
Past performance is no guarantee of future results. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors because it is highly speculative and involves a high degree of risk. It should only be considered a long-term investment. You must be prepared to withstand a total loss of your investment. Private company securities are also highly illiquid, and there is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities.
DealMaker Securities LLC, a registered broker-dealer, and member of FINRA | SIPC, located at 105 Maxess Road, Suite 124, Melville, NY 11747, is the Intermediary for this offering and is not an affiliate of or connected with the Issuer. Please check our background on FINRA's BrokerCheck.
5 All Regulation CF offerings are capped at raising $5 million in a 12-month period.