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25-Year Old AI Hedge Fund Prodigy Wiped Out & Jersey Mike’s Goes Public
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25-Year Old AI Hedge Fund Prodigy Wiped Out & Jersey Mike’s Goes Public
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- [00:01]
Sponsor/Announcer
This episode is brought to you by Accenture. When your advertising operations fall out of sync, everything else follows. Spotify and Accenture are working together to reinvent the rhythm of ad sales, using automation, analytics and smarter workflows to simplify campaign delivery and access better data across the business. The result? Less time spent on operations, more time connecting brands with the moments and fandoms that matter most. Learn more@accenture.com Spotify
- [00:32]
Neal Freyman
Good Morning Brew Daily Show I'm Neal Freyman.
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Toby Howell
And I'm Toby Howell.
- [00:36]
Neal Freyman
Today Jersey Mike's goes public and plots a global takeover.
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Toby Howell
Then a 25 year old AI prodigy flew too close to the sun and lost his hedge fund billions. It's Friday, July 31st. Let's ride.
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Neal Freyman
What links would you go to to snag a job interview over in San Francisco? You might need to get a tattoo of the company's logo. The AI startup Lemon Lime has been catching heat following a stunt at a recent networking party. If you get a company tattoo from an artist that we brought to the event, you'll get a job interview immediately. Co founder Jordan Zets wrote. The concept was, quote, to meet exceptional people and find out which of them are just as crazy as we are. People thought they were crazy all right, blasting it as a symbol of Orwellian Silicon Valley culture. After realizing this was maybe not the best idea, Z apologized, calling it reckless and poor judgment.
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Toby Howell
You can't be doing this with a company that is just so clearly on the trend of the moment. Lemon lion creates AI agents in automations for companies. So I kind of get why you're pulling these insane stunts to try and hire your company does what every single other company in Silicon Valley does right now. That this is probably not a good time to mention that a couple of years ago a guy also got a morning Brew tattoo on his calf, but that was completely voluntary and he just loved the newsletter and maybe coffee as well. We will not be requesting any of you listening. Get a tattoo to show your support, a simple like and subscribe will do. And now a word from our sponsor, Anthropic, the team behind Clyde.
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Neal Freyman
We asked for your questions about AI and the NBD audience was not shy.
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Toby Howell
There was, there were questions about losing control of AI, workforce disruption and a lot more.
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Neal Freyman
And it's opened up a lot of really important conversations.
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Toby Howell
Anthropic, the public benefit corporation behind Cloud, heard questions like these in more than 120,000 interviews about people's hopes and fears around AI.
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Neal Freyman
Anthropic is not trying to gloss over these tough questions because their goal is to make sure AI actually works out well for people.
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Toby Howell
They publish real research on these kinds of questions, even when it's uncomfortable.
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Neal Freyman
So. So if you've got your own hard questions about I head to Claude AI/MBD to submit it to Anthropic and explore how they are answering them. That's claude.AI/mbd. The United States of America is becoming the United States of Data Centers. That's the takeaway from yesterday's GDP report, which revealed a sturdy American economy in the second quarter, underpinned by booming investments in AI infrastructure. The headline number, 1.5%, which is how fast the economy grew at an annualized pace. On the surface, it's a disappointing number. It's lower than economic growth in the first quarter, 2.1% and lower than expectations heading in. But dig a little deeper and you'll find more positive signs. For one, business investment is very strong, up 8.4% as companies shelled out for computers, chips and other equipment related to the AI buildout. In fact, here's a crazy stat. Ernie Tedeschi, the chief economist at Stripe, estimated that more than half of real GDP growth can be attributed to gross computer spending, which includes spending on computers, data centers and other things adjacent to AI. And it's this spending on computers that also drag down gdp. GDP is defined as the total value of the goods and services made inside the United States. But many of the chips and equipment needed to make data centers are produced outside the country, in other words, their imports. And when imports outweigh exports, as they did because of all of this investment, it weighs down on that GDP. Number in total trade subtracted more than 1 percentage point from headline GDP growth. Toby, there are threats to the economy, particularly those higher energy prices from the war in Iran. But for now, it's fair to characterize the economy and Kevin Wash his words as resilient.
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Toby Howell
You are seeing a split economy emerging. On the one side there is consumer spending, which accounts for 70% of GDP. That's our favorite thing to say because it is true. And there were growth there, I mean, accelerating 3.2%, up from 0.5% in the first quarter. That shows signs of a healthy consumer. And then you have the AI side of the economy, which is absolutely ripping right now and maybe making things look better than they actually are, because the consumer side, although it came in strong, is losing some momentum. We are seeing spending slow a little bit. We are seeing some savings cushions shrink. A lot of that consumer spending was boosted by tax returns in that quarter, and those are running dry. Energy costs are going up. Tariff costs are continuing to bite into it. So if you start to see that side losing momentum, then the economy is truly just business investment. It's truly just that AI build out. And as you mentioned, it has its drawbacks when it comes to, you got to import a lot of this stuff. So two sides of the economy right now, both are looking strong, but one is losing a little bit momentum.
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Neal Freyman
Let's talk about why it may be losing a little bit momentum. And that's because inflation is still way above the Fed's 2% target. It has been for five years now. Alongside the GDP report, we do get an inflation report, the PC inflation rate, which is the Fed's preferred gauge. We talk a lot about the CPI report. The Fed prefers this PC report. We got that yesterday, and it was somewhat good. Inflation did cool from 4.2%, 3.1% in May down to 3.7% in June. And why that's a very important number, not just for your wallet, is because chairman of the Fed Kevin Walsh is looking at that and he just had this big press conference and Fed meeting in which he held rates steady. Investors are looking to the next couple of meetings which will get more inflation reports to see whether the stubbornly high inflation will cause the Fed to eventually hike rates.
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Toby Howell
One thing that does not contribute to the economy, but is just kind of indicative of the moment that we're in right now is corporate America, which continues to absolutely, absolutely crush it. Despite all of these pressures, despite the Iran war, despite energy costs going up, stock indexes are up this year. I know it feels very volatile recently, But S&P 500 net profit margins are on pace to reach 16%. That would be the highest since tracking began back in 2009. So right now, businesses feel very good, like they have healthy balance sheets, are making a lot of investments in the economy. Again, it's just, how is the consumer going to hold up if inflation does start to ease? Maybe the consumer is feeling pretty good, but there are headwinds and that's kind of like the big thing. When you talk about the economy, you're really talking about the health of the consumer. That's where all eyes are looking. Moving on. It's Stock of the Week Dog the Week Time, the segment where we pick one stock that falls for AI slop and one stock that has good media literacy. I won the pre show game of Jeopardy, so I get to go first. And since it's been a little raining this week and I'm feeling pessimistic. I'm starting with our dog of the week which is Situational Awareness, a hedge fund that just went from being a up more than 430% to getting liquidated. Situational Awareness is the AI focused fund founded by the 25 year old AI wonderkid Leopold Ashbrenner. Ashbrenner is a former OpenAI researcher who graduated from Columbia as valedictorian at 19. Joined OpenAI but was fired in 2024 following a dispute over sharing internal information. After leaving, he published a 165 page manifesto called Situational Awareness, arguing that AI would require a massive build out of chips, memory data centers and electricity. Then he built a hedge fund around that thesis and for a while it worked spectacularly. Situational Awareness made huge bets on Companies supplying the AI buildout, Bloom Energy, Micron, SanDisk, nebulous in SK Hynix, while also betting against traditional software companies like Adobe. It was reportedly up 439% through the first half of the year and had swelled to over $45 billion until suddenly both sides of that trade went against it. Four of its biggest holdings, Core Weave, Micron, Sandisk and Nebulous, dropped at least 35% this month. the same time, its software shorts moved sharply higher. The true issue though was that Situational Awareness was heavily levered, borrowing money to enhance its position. So when things went south, they really went south. The fund got margin, called and was forced to sell nearly its entire stock portfolio. The story doesn't end there though. In its mad dash for cash, Situational Awareness put its entire book up for sale, shopping both its long and short positions around. Rumors swirl that a large investment firm was interested and by midday it was revealed that none other than Ken Griffin Citadel was the opportunistic party involved. The timing couldn't have been better for Citadel and worse for Leopold. Nearly every name Digital Awareness had exposure to bounce back in a big way yesterday. Neil, this feels like a plot from industry.
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Neal Freyman
It's always Ken Griffin, isn't it? Whenever you hear about a company needing to fire sale its assets and then there's another company that's anonymous, at least for a few hours, that's scooping them up at bargain basement prices. It's always Ken Griffin in Citadel. I mean this happened with Enron. The day Enron filed for bankruptcy, he flew down a bunch of Citadel employees, scooped up their quant research team and then build that into a huge commodity trading business worth about $30 billion. Whenever there's a copy of the U.S. constitution that's bought by an anonymous bidder. It's always Ken Griffin. He just always seems to be there to take the treats out of 25 year old hands who seem to be a little over their skis.
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Toby Howell
And the reason you get over your skis in this line of work is that you go down the leverage path again. Leverage is great when things are going well, it absolutely magnifies all your gains. But it turns really ugly when things go south. Steve Cohen, who is another famous hedge fund manager gave a good interview answer about leverage. He said you're going to lose money. I think the three things is liquidity, leverage and concentration. Those are the three rules. If you're in illiquid stuff, that's a problem. If you're using too much leverage, that's a problem. And if you're too concentrated, that's a problem. That's basically the exact playbook that Leopold was running here at Situational Awareness. He was illiquid because he's got a huge stake in Anthropic. That is one of his crown jewels of his portfolio. So that's not easy to move when you're in a liquidity crunch like this. You're way concentrated. He was very, he piled into these highly volatile adjacent name. So not a large breadth of different, you know, thesis was playing out within his portfolio. And then there's the leverage piece where he was borrowing money to you know, make all of these swings bigger and smaller. So Steve Cohen would say I gave you the playbook, you just ignored it and this is why you blew up.
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Neal Freyman
His ascent was astonishing though just as much as this downfall. Let's say he's 25, he probably has a long career left even though this is a bit of a black mark. So he came out of Columbia, worked at OpenAI, got fired, actually worked at FTX, is philanthropic arm. So he's kind of like the forest crazy by the way of AI and tech. And then he got investment for his hedge fund from really the monsters of AI in San Francisco, Patrick and John Collison, the Stripe co founders Daniel Gross and Nat Friedman even he got investments early from Jane street, which is this secretive hedge fund in New York that's not known for allocating capital to outside managers. So he got, for some reason everyone kind of believed in his thesis. He yoloed into this idea that artificial general intelligence is coming before 2030 and should that happen and you play it out on the back of the napkin math in terms of what this might lead mean for productivity for the, for the Requirements for data centers and memory and servers and all of that. It's like exponential, exponential, exponential returns. And that was his core thesis. It got Silicon Valley talking and he, he put his cards on the table and at least for one month, he got wiped out.
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Toby Howell
It was working. That's like the crazy part. I mean, being up 439% through the first half of the year, he was being tossed around as another name like Warren Buffett esque figure. And every time you're compared to Warren Buffett, it always ends poorly. We've seen that play out. But even still, after everything that just happened, the fund is still up about 80% year to date. So this is probably not the last we're going to hear of them. Even though his, you know, public equity portfolio is mostly in Ken Griffin's hands now, he still has that anthropic stake. It's still very valuable. When and if they go public, it will probably lead to another boondoggle for him. So it's not the last we've seen of Young Leopold, that's for sure.
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Neal Freyman
But there is a lot of shot. There was so much schadenfreude yesterday because this is a guy who had no, you know, investment experience, had never managed a portfolio before. And you have all these big names throwing money to him. He got a little bit larger than life. A lot of people hailed him as the next AI profit. And then thanks to this downfall, a lot of folks were saying, I told you so. Okay, my stock of the week is Jersey Mike's, which, much like Snooki, has risen from the Jersey shore to big city stardom. Yesterday, the sub chain went public in one of the biggest restaurant IPOs ever. Trading under the ticker JMK, it fell 6% on its first trading day after going public at a valuation of $7.3 billion. For decades, Jersey Mike's was a family establishment owned by founder Peter Cancro. But that all changed last year when it was acquired by the private equity giant Blackstone. Over the ensuing 18 months, Blackstone got busy turning this family biz into a corporate Goliath that wouldn't wilt under the bright lights of Wall Street. Installing a veteran CEO, adding experienced food players to its board, and trimming the fat when it came to expenses. What's emerged is a lean Mead submachine on a mission to bring its freshly sliced sandwich gospel to more corners of the world. In its IPO filing, Jersey Mike said it planned to expand to 15,000 restaurants, up from the 3,300 it had at the end of March. International markets form a key part of that strategy with 400 restaurants slated to open in the UK and Ireland for a start. Toby. I'm just happy for Danny DeVito.
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Toby Howell
The Blackstone of this all is so interesting because Jersey Mike's was a family owned business. Blackstone came in and saw that a lot of members of Cancer's family was still on the corporate payroll. Nine members were taking a paycheck from Jersey Mike. So they kind of said, all right, we're, we're ushering in this new era of professionalism. You guys are seeing the door. And then they also tinkered with the menu, which when you hear PE tinkering with a beloved sandwich chain, you figure it's not going to end well. But they kind of popped off here. One, one thing that they brought in was the first hot Italian sub. I have had it from Jersey Mike's. It's quite delicious. They also brought back a chicken salad promotion. They're trying to broaden the chain's appeal across more markets. So there's also been a uglier side where people on social media have been sharing images of their sandwiches and saying, look at how they're skimping on me. This is private equities playbook playing out in front of our eyes. But you have to give them some credit. Anybody who says, let's make a hot Italian sub, that's pretty, that's a pretty good idea.
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Neal Freyman
So the bull case for Jersey Mike's is that it's going to become the next Subway, right? So US Sales have more than tripled in the past couple of years. They are, they're basically worth as much as Subway. Subway was just bought for 9.4 billion. And you know, Jersey Mike's after this IPO is not too far off. Subway has 30,000 restaurants globally. It's become this global chain. That's exactly what Jersey Mike's wants to do now that it went public. So they're growing fast. They, people generally think of them as high quality and they are on the expansion route. The bear case is that restaurants, it's a tough, it's just a tough market over there. Like the restaurants index is down 0.5% this year. That's well underperforming. The S&P 500, 6.9% advance restaurants seems to seem to go up and down with the times. The consumer, as we mentioned in the first story, is, is tight right now. So, you know, this is a volatile market for restaurants broadly and that's what Jersey Mike's is going into. That's just their industry.
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Toby Howell
One thing that Jersey Mike's thinks is their competitive advantage is that their customers skew a little higher income. That is what their CEO said, which has insulated the company from some of that consumer pressure that we have been feeling. So maybe they're feeling okay because their ace in the hole is they just have a richer customer base that seems to withstand economic, economic pressure a little better than maybe the typical customer that goes to a Subway. All right, we're going to take a quick break and come back with what Tim Cook said on his last earnings call right after this.
- [17:04]
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- [17:42]
Neal Freyman
What is happening?
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Toby Howell
I'm just excited for what a howling good time families can have at any of Great Wolf Lodge's toys to locations across the country. Splash away in the indoor water park where it is always 84 degrees. There's a massive wave pool, a lazy river and tons of water slides.
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Neal Freyman
There's also a bunch of great dining options, spacious suites, and complimentary daily events like nightly dance parties all under one roof.
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Toby Howell
Book your stay@greatwolf.com that's greatwolf.com Neil, you know how parents always get loads of unsolicited advice about kids clothes?
- [18:19]
Neal Freyman
I believe it, but I can't say I've experienced it. Wait, are you expecting no.
- [18:24]
Toby Howell
For clothes you can actually count on, there's Little Sleepies.
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Neal Freyman
Real moms created Little Sleepies with clothing designed for the realities of daily life with babies and kids. Plus super soft, super stretchy fabrics and no scratchy tags.
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Toby Howell
Snacks down for the kids in your life@little sleepies.com that's little sleepies.com Apple reported earnings yesterday and it was hard to focus on the actual numbers because it was CEO Tim Cook's last earnings call ever. Cook stepped down as Apple is on top of the world, literally. It retook its throne as the most viable company this week and its results mostly confirmed it belongs there. All important iPhone sales beat estimates hitting $109 billion for the quarter as Tim Cook called it, their strongest June quarter ever. But it wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. China revenue continues to be a problem, falling short of expectations, as did its services, business and iPad sales. With the stock already trading at a record price and up 25% this year, there was little room for error. And sure enough, the stock dipped 7% after hours. There are still problems ahead for Apple, namely the memory supply crunch and its unproven and off delayed AI powered upgrade to Siri. But those are now incoming CEO John Ternus, his problems to handle. As for John, we finally got to hear from him on an earnings call. The first words out of his mouth when asked about competition were, I would just reiterate what Tim said. Electric stuff. Neil Cook rides off into the sunset with a brief stumble at the finish line. That comes after guiding Apple to a 14 fold increase in value during his tenure. Not too shabby.
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Neal Freyman
Okay, if I break up, bring up something a little out of left field. Apple tv. Apple TV is absolutely cooking. Viewership hit an all time high last quarter. I think a lot of people were very confused when Apple launched a streaming service and paid all this money for original content. But people are loving Apple TV right now. Its reputation is at an all time high along with viewership. Ted Lasso is coming back for its fourth season. It just had this huge hit in Widow's bay. It earned 19 Emmy nominations, which is the most at most nominations for a new program. And then the trailer for the upcoming cyberpunk TV series Neuromancer went absolutely viral online. So it's not going to, that's coming in 2027. It's not going to move the needle one way or another for a $5 trillion company. But at least in terms of branding, I think has absolutely succeeded at this point.
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Toby Howell
Yesterday there were a lot of serious questions floating around about saying that's not a serious question. Yeah, well, there were. There was Siri, literally Siri questions going on like how is China revenue going to withstand this? Are your input costs going to continue going up? And yet most of the analyst call was kind of a love fest for Tim Cook. Every single analyst, or nearly every analyst started their question in the live Q and A portion by congratulating Cook. There was also a love fest for John Turner Stew. Tim Cook basically kept putting praise his way. It's. It makes sense. He's saying the transition is going seamlessly. They're also trying to hype up Siri as much as possible. So those are kind of the big themes. Even though the stock fell. It was mostly because a lot of this was already priced in like Apple has been on an insane run so far this year, but it was, it was kind of like a feel good Kumbaya moment because Tim Cook really did have a heck of a run there.
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Neal Freyman
Well, we all go into work every morning hoping to increase shareholder value, but this guy actually did it. I mean, Apple shares are up more 24, 100% since Cook took over from Steve Jobs and talking about big shoes to fill. So now John Turner's has similarly big shoes to fill as he takes over the helm of Apple next month.
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Toby Howell
Amazon also reported earnings yesterday and it's looking like its AI porridge is just the right temperature. Apple's is maybe too cold and not enough spending or progress. Metta and Google's is too hot, burning money without adequate payoff. But Amazon is goldilocksing it, having seemed to have judged things just right. It had a very strong second quarter quarter with sales coming in 20% higher, hitting $200 billion and beating expectations. But more importantly than everyone buying lots of toilet paper on its E Comm site, its cloud unit is crushing it. Despite having the most mature cloud division amongst its big tech peers, it's still growing like a weed, with revenue expanding 37% year over year. That marked the unit's fastest growth since 2021, according to Amazon CEO Andy Jassy.
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Sponsor/Ad Voice
Speed.
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Toby Howell
Its AI bets are paying off handsomely too, with its cloud business serving AI demand growing at a triple digit rate, sort of under the radar. But Amazon also has its own chip making business that is also growing at triple digits, crossing $25 billion in revenue. Neal Amazon is spending a lot on AI 54 billion during this past quarter, but it's also uniquely well positioned to benefit from the AI boom too. Its stock jumped 9% after hours. Goldilocks.
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Neal Freyman
One thing that stood out to me from this earnings report is that Amazon said it received about $600 million in tariff refunds in the second quarter and it will automatically issue reimbursements to consumers under, quote, a limited set of circumstances. I thought the white tees that I was buying on Amazon were a little pricier, so maybe I'll be in line for that. That's something that you should also keep your eye on. But I think the we can assess some winners and losers here because all of big tech has reported Amazon, Microsoft, Meta and Apple this week. Winners were absolutely Amazon and Microsoft. We saw their cloud divisions grow 40%. They accelerated growth. Microsoft fastest since 2022. Amazon fastest since 2021. Investors are liking to see that cloud growth because that means that all these AI investments, which power GDP are, are paying off losers. Metta was down 8%. It doesn't seem like it has a particular plan to monetize AI. And then Apple. Even though it was a love fest for Tim Cook, it did fall considerably. So we're seeing a split in big tech, which maybe not even best to characterize them altogether, but that's sort of where everything's shaken out now that all those companies have reported.
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Toby Howell
I think it's so funny too that we just completely ignore the $116 billion Amazon made from its E Commerce operations because it's just not what drives the stock anymore. The margins aren't that big, but there was some prime day, you know, deals involved that were pulled forward into June, so it made this quarter look even better. But it always just fascinating to me that it's just a cloud division at this point. That's the only thing that is driving if the stock is going up or down while the retail operations are just kind of behind the curtain and not as important anymore.
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Neal Freyman
All right, well, they're making $116 billion. I think they can offer some refunds for, for the rest of us. Okay, let's sprint to the finish with some final headlines. FIFA's plan to sell private stakes in the World cup may have been stopped dead in its tracks. And that's because in an extraordinary move yesterday, Europe's soccer governing body, UEFA, said its 55 members would boycott all FIFA events. Were the proposal to move forward, that would mean a World cup men's and women's, without any European teams, which would probably improve America's prospects, but eliminate the viability of the tournament. In a strongly worded statement, UEFA said national associations around the world are now presented with an ultimatum except the irreversible capture of football's greatest competitions or bear the consequences. This is not a democratic decision, but governance by intimidation, an act of coercion unworthy of institution entrusted with the stewardship of the global game. Now it looks like the head of FIFA, Gianni Infantino, will have to overhaul his plan to private equity ify the World cup or scrap it all together. Because there simply cannot be a World cup without Erling Haaland.
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Toby Howell
I see the vision. It's hard to lose 41 to Belgium if Belgium isn't even in the tournament. And yet that vision fell apart too, because concacaf, which US is a part of, also joined Europe in rejecting the deal. So there would be no Belgium and no US There Basically no tournament whatsoever. We joke about this, but a lot of people are saying who might suffer. Initially, it could just be the women's game, because the first real test of this boycott is the Women's U20 World cup in September. It's coming up pretty shortly, so they are at threat of becoming a pawn in this political matchup between UEFA and FIFA. So you hope it all gets worked out, especially ahead of the 2027 Women's World cup in Brazil as well. Moving on. Dulles Airport stinks, but Trump wants it to stink less. The president unveiled a 22 and a half billion dollar overhaul of the Washington area airport this week. Alongside United CEO Scott Kirby, whose airline handles roughly 70% of Dulles traffic. The plan is to preserve most of the airport's exterior while essentially gutting everything inside, expanding or replacing concourses, buses, and also extending the underground train directly to terminals, eliminating the dreaded people movers. If you don't know what a Dulles people mover is, look it up. And also consider yourself lucky. Trump's timeline to get it done is two years, which is funny, Neil, because airlines had previously estimated it would take. Listen to this. 60 years.
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Neal Freyman
One of the greatest joys of my life is not ever having to fly out of Dulles. I think I've had to do it maybe once, but it's just a blessing. And one of the other greatest joys in my life right now is flying out of LaGuardia, which received an $8 billion investment overhauling the terminal there. And it is beautiful. It is. It is just such a joy to go fly out of laguardia. And Dulles is in need of a makeover. No one in the D.C. area will say will disagree with that. In the J.D. power North American survey, Dulles ranked 23rd out of 27 large airports for passenger satisfaction. I hadn't even heard of these people movers. And then you showed them to me yesterday, and, you know, I blinked. I was like, is this a real thing? I can't believe Leaf. We're in 2026 in our nation's capital, and we're still using these people movers to get people around Dulles Airport.
- [28:17]
Toby Howell
It simply cannot be the best solution. And which is why they're trying to make the underground train actually do its job. Also, thank you for a peek into Neil's mind. A lot of joys of your life right there. Not flying out of Dulles, flying out of LaGuardia. We love to hear what brings you joy.
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Neal Freyman
All right, finally, did you read some thought leadership on LinkedIn you're convinced was a slop. Now you can report it. Yesterday, the platform released a button called Seems like a slop that you can click on and Surface LinkedIn. It's a response to growing complaints that the feed has been overtaken by ChatGPT written drivel. Chief Product Officer Hari Srinivonsan said people came to LinkedIn to connect with real people and share their real perspectives, ideas and expertise. But he was also quick to point out that LinkedIn wasn't categorically opposed to AI, saying it can be a useful tool for tasks like proofreading posts or refining thoughts.
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Toby Howell
This is going to be brutal because LinkedIn is also privately flagging post posts in the user's dashboard before they hit send. That this sounds like I imagine you chef up what you think is a great announcement that I'm joining this or this company, and they go, dude, you sound a lot like AI right there. I hope people are writing in a differentiated enough way that they do not get mistaken for AI, but this is absolutely something that was needed on LinkedIn. I mean, LinkedIn has become a slot fest, let's be honest. Like, you see people, you know, it's straight.
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Neal Freyman
Why are you looking at.
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Toby Howell
I'm hey, we're just conversing here. You know, you're the only person I can look like. But I actually think it's smart that LinkedIn is pivoting it more into a proofreading tool. That's how a lot of people do use AI. Don't use it to actually generate your content. Use it to check it. Also, we saw something similar out of Substack, which is, you know, the tool for a lot of people's newsletters. They help users identify whether content was written by AI. So. So not the first we're going to see of this, not the last we're going to see in this because people want to know if the content they're consuming is generated by humans or by bots.
- [30:08]
Neal Freyman
That is all the time we have. Thanks for starting your morning with us. Have a wonderful Friday and an even better weekend. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morning Broadcom or DM us on Instagram at me. Daily show let's roll the credits. Emily Milian is our supervising producer. Raymond Liu is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham, and our associate producer is is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is open to work. Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew.
- [30:36]
Toby Howell
Great show Today Neil. I wish you all well.