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This is Scott Becker with the Becker Business and Private Equity podcast. Today we're going to discuss 14 technology and business stories that we're watching. The technology sector continues to dominate and just to kick this off right now, nine of the 10 largest publicly traded market cap companies are technology companies, with the tenth one being the house that Warren Buffett built, Berkshire Hathaway. So at the end of the day, the world is increasingly dominated by technology. At least the the Nasdaq is the publicly traded companies are and we'll see how long that lasts with that cyclical or that's going to be a long term thing where we move into technology companies dominating the market cap wars. So here are 14 stories that we're following today. First, figure AI, a humanoid robotics company which is valued at 39 billion in their latest funding round. That reflects just incredible growing interest in humanoid robots. That could help in terms of warehouses, factories and a lot more. Brett Adcock is the CEO of Figure AI and again that was led by Parkway Ventures. But that's really an amazing sort of fundraising round in valuation. Second, Tesla has had an amazing recovery the last six months. It's up 70% over the last six months. That's put it back in the black year to date. Again the lesson should be don't bet against Elon Musk. And for better or for worse, Tesla seems to be doing far better now that Elon Musk has removed himself from Doge, the Department of Government, whatever it was exactly called, but not government efficiency. But they seem to be doing far better that he's removed himself from that role and become just one bit less political, though he still is out of the political stoop pretty aggressively. Third, Oracle and Larry Ellison are having a breakout year. The Stock is up 84% year to date. His net worth is now estimated about $393 billion. That's a lot of money. He has become a big Michigan Wolverine fan. That is largely through his fourth or fifth wife slash partner. And I know that's just a little bit of noise, but Larry Ellison, what a tremendous success that he has had even though he Marc Andreessen And Larry Giese are Illinois grads. He has somehow or another or Illinois students. He somehow became a Michigan fan through this fifth wife. But that's not the real story. Another note on Larry Ellison and Oracle. Oracle is one of the companies with Andreessen Horowitz and another big name that's potentially buying Tik Tok. That's been widely reported recently. Another story that involves Larry Ellison. I'll just quickly hit this. I saw this morning a story on how between Larry Ellison, Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg they're collectively worth a trillion dollars plus. So that's our Oracle and Larry Ellison for the day. Both Oracle hitting it out of the park, Larry Ellison becoming a Michigan fan. Larry Ellison and Oracle potentially investing in TikTok. Then between Ellison, Musk and Mark Zuckerberg being collectively worth a trillion dollars. Fourth, one of the things you're seeing a lot in the media world, computer world, Rolling Stone magazine has sued Google alleging that essentially their AI summaries are killing traffic to the Rolling Stone sites into, into their, to their, to their magazines. And I think that's fascinating that it's depressing online traffic. Fifth, a company named Dash Bio has raised another $17.5 million in venture funding. It's built a platform that uses sort of robotics to speed drug development. We'll see how that goes. Dave Johnson, formerly of Moderna, is the CEO of Dash Bio. Sixth, Nvidia has got a new chip. Currently it's getting a lot of noise and pushback in the Chinese market where they're saying they're not going to buy the chip. Or on top of not buying the chip, that's getting lukewarm reception there. That continues to be a bit of a political football that you're seeing there. Seventh, the economy, the good, the bad and the ugly. The good retail sales in the stock market keep on rising. That's good. The bad GDP growth quarter to quarter has really slowed. And when you've got slow growth in an increasing deficit, that's a horrible combination. Finally, the ugly unemployment continues to rise. We're technically at 4.3% now, but there is also a ton of people working part time that would prefer to have full time jobs. And we also expect that 4.3% number to go up as it's recalculated. And also on the ugly side, we already mentioned this deficit keeps on rising. We're going to come in this year at another $2 trillion deficit in the United States. Those are horrendous numbers. A story we're following today. Bill Ackman of Pershing Square, one of the brightest investors out there. He keeps on doubling down on Amazon and on Uber. The biggest stake they've got in their hedge fund is an Uber where They've got about $2.8 billion stake. He he sees lots of growth in future in Uber. Also he's got a big stake in Amazon and they've got about 9% of their investments in Amazon. Ninth, health tech investing in the United States is heating up. Like for those that don't know the reference, like the Microwave Vinnie Johnson Vinnie Johnson was a great basketball player back in the day, known as the microwave. US and European health tech startups raised 7.9 billion in venture capital in the first half. That puts them on pace for the best year of funding in several years. We'll see how that turns out for the rest of the year. 10th Great to interview yesterday, Heidi hi Heidi, one of the great names of all time, is a leader at Cedars Sinai and we interviewed her in their system about improving patient flow and capacity management. Just fantastic to visit with her. Also fantastic today at the Healthcare Growth and Operations Conference in Charlotte at McGuire woods to interview Nina Williams, leader at Mount Sinai Ventures. Just a fantastic discussion. Interview 12 we're planning the Becker Business Media Technology and Business virtual conference for December 2025. We'll have more on that shortly and we'll be looking for speakers and sponsors and more. 13th hats off to Larry Giese, the founder of Madison Industry and also University of Illinois alum. He has made now two enormous gifts to the University of Illinois. One, to rename the business school the Geese School of Business. Second, now they're going to name I think the football field the the stadium after Geese as well. His net worth is estimated at 1.5 billion, so he's nowhere near the trio of Zuckerberg, Musk and Ellison, but still doing very, very well and no reason to worry about Larry Geese and his success. Finally, 14th it was fascinating yesterday or two days ago to interview fascinating author of a book called the Rise and Fall of Explorers in IBM Watson Health. We interviewed Doug Mel on the on the podcast and Doug worked there for 10 years when IBM Watson was trying to grow. And people don't remember this perhaps, but at one point IBM Watson Health was the biggest darling, the biggest growth and success story, the biggest excitement. This was before AI really got going. It ended up failing miserably, not going as well as it should have. They were probably a little bit before their time and they didn't execute well. But just fascinating to talk to Doug Mill about the book that he's written on the rise and fall of IBM, Watson Health. Again, thank you for listening today to the Becker Business Podcast, the Becker Private Equity Podcast, where we're talking about 14 technology business stories. We hope you enjoyed this special episode. Thank you so much for joining us.