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Robert Croak
Smart move.
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Austin Hankwitz
You are listening to the Rich Habits Radar, our Friday episode of the Rich Habits podcast, where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. This episode is brought to you by vcx, the public ticker for private tech. My name is Austin Hankwitz. I'm joined by my co host Robert Croak. And the three things sitting at the top of our Rich Habits radar this week include Trump saying the Iran ceasefire is over. Yeah, that just happened. SK Hynix going public on Friday. And the U. S. Treasury warning of an AI bubble. Like straight up US Treasury. Really interesting. But before we talk about these three super important radar points, Miles Harrison, president and CEO of Connect you, is joining us on the show. Our conversation is going to be about the intersection of artificial intelligence and biotechnology and how his company connects you is now operating inside of a massive tailwind created by the rise of GLP1s. I mean, it's like buzzword after buzzword after buzzword. It's really cool. It's a great conversation. We, we filmed it actually a couple days ago here. So we're going to drop it into this episode before we get started because we're really, really excited about it and y' all are gonna love it. So we'll see you back here in about 20 minutes. All right, let's jump to our conversation with Miles. All right, everyone, so before we jump to our radar points for this week's episode, we've got a guest joining us that I've been really excited about and I want to set this up because it ties directly into something that we've been watching all year long. Back in January, Eli Lilly and Nvidia announced a billion dollar AI powered drug discovery lab. Lilly biologists working now with Nvidia AI engineers, over a thousand Blackwell Ultra GPUs, the whole thing. Then in May, Google's Isomorphic Labs, their AlphaFood spinoff raised $2.1 billion in a Series B to start pushing AI designed drug candidates into actual clinical trials. And then just this month, biotech mergers and acquisitions hit $106 billion year to date, already on pace to be the best year since before. Lot of big money is flowing and flooding into now this intersection of artificial intelligence and biotech. So today we're sitting down with someone who's building at that exact intersection. Miles Harrison, the CEO of Connexus Sciences Ticker CN Xu, which just started trading on the NASDAQ last month.
Robert Croak
And for all of you joining today, Miles is not new to this game. This guy ran Galderma's entire North American business. Maybe the Cetaphil brand rings a bell to you guys. Scaling it from 1.2 billion to over 2.1 billion. 1 billion in revenue. He also co founded an aesthetics company, built it from scratch and sold it in another eight figure exit in about four years. He also sits on the board of Castle Biosciences which is another NASDAQ listed company. Now he's leading Connect you which is developing a patented collagen based tissue regeneration platform. And we are going to get into all of that. What does it mean why AI is about to blow the doors off of Biotech and why GLP1s might be creating an entirely new market for what his company is building. Miles, I'm super excited and welcome to the show.
Miles Harrison
Thank you very much. Thanks for having him.
Robert Croak
So let's get right into it. This has been a big topic for Austin and I for quite some time and I'm excited to learn more for my own health reasons in this episode. So let's talk about artificial intelligence. It's disrupting basically every part of our lives at this point. We talk about it on this show pretty much every single week. But biotech seems like it might be the next major benefactor of this technology. When you look at where AI is headed. Why do you think biotech could end up being the biggest AI winner in the coming years?
Miles Harrison
Great question. So biology's always been hardest, you know, in terms of finding data and the first, for the first time, I believe we have a tool that can actually keep up with it. So I spent my career, as you mentioned, Galderma and previously in Novartis and I'd been on the commercial side and always did you find that biology moves a little slower than, you know, the capital wants it to. So when you're watching a compound, a promising compound sort of play out, it can take three to four years. Drug discovery can take 10 to 12 years. You can iterate in the lab before anybody can actually tell you that it really works. And the way that science, you know, the predictability of the science. So AI changes that slope. You can search chemical and biological space, you can flag formulations, you can also look at how to shorten the distance between your hypothesis and the real answer. So software disruption was really about distribution and getting in a good idea to faster. And biotech disruption is more about discovery itself moving faster. So that's a bigger prize. And healthcare touches every single person on the planet so in a way that no app ever will. And our founder, Dr. Claudia Chavez, she's a co founder actually as chief scientific officer, she's been living inside this extracellular matrix science that we've been working on for over a decade. And she put it well to me recently, where biology generates more data than we've even been able to interpret. But AI is the first technology that closes that gap. So I think that' that's where we will win speed and, and getting, you know, getting around all of that data, which is quite significant for biology.
Austin Hankwitz
I love that breakdown, Miles. And I think it's really important because it really ties into my question here, which is, you know, the, the healthcare innovation cycles, I would argue how it has been traditionally is someone has research on a drug or some sort of hypothesis and then they spend years or decades trying to really hone in on the best deliveries. They do the different types of trials like all these other things. But now with artificial intelligence, I got a hunch that healthcare innovation cycles are getting compressed. Things that used to take a decade or more now might take three, four, five years. Are you seeing that yourself in the data?
Miles Harrison
Well, research and design side, Yes, I think meaningfully, right. So I think that you can go much faster. But on the clinical and the regulatory side, no, and it shouldn't because, you know, AI can compress how fast you can analyze literature or optimize a formulation or design an experiment or interpret, you know, imaging data. And we've seen those cycles shrink, we've seen populations in clinical trials reduced because there's more data and you can act faster. But there's a part of the business that AI cannot and should not compress and that's the clinical validation. So Patient safety operates on biological time and not computational time. So, you know, you can't simulate your way to a 510k clearance, for example, or a pre marketing authorization, a PMA approval and you wouldn't want to. So what we see is that in some parts of the business, you know, you can speed up the first bit, but certainly for safety and efficacy and how products work in the body, I don't think you can speed that up because, you know, it's biology at work. So the honest answer is that, you know, the funnel maybe gets faster, but the finish line doesn't move dramatically just because the funnel did.
Austin Hankwitz
That's a great perspective to share. I appreciate that. Yeah, I've seen, you know, I, I want to say I was listening to a podcast the other day and someone was talking about how like I don't know much about DNA and genomics and like all the fun stuff, but I, they were talking, you know, leaps and bounds and strides that have been made because of artificial intelligence just in the last couple years here. But I completely agree, you know, that's a computational clock that is getting compressed from a research perspective. But the trials, the biological, how it actually affects the body, definitely should not rush that one.
Robert Croak
Well, I'm excited about all of it because for me it's, you know, I want to live forever. And if we can figure all this out with AI and modern technology and medicine and reverse aging or slow aging down, I am all for it. But Miles, we've seen Eli Lilly become one of the most valuable companies on the planet, largely off the back of the GLP1s and innovation in that weight loss and metabolic health space. Could the next trillion dollar companies come from AI powered healthcare rather than software? Is Lilly an early example of what that looks like? Break that down for our listeners.
Miles Harrison
Yeah, I think it's not just possible. I think it's already underway. I think that Lilly is a fair, there's early adopt to here and they bet big, right? And they, they have big pockets so they can be big and good for them. Lilly didn't become one of the most valuable health care companies through a software multiple. It's really got there with a biological problem at scale that people have worked on for years and, and it touches an enormous percentage of the population. You know, in 2030, GLP1s are going to be worth $200 billion. McKinsey recommends $200 billion prescription market. I mean that's phenomenal. So there's a, you know, I think in the last twenty five dollar companies came from software, because software was the technology that could scale a single idea to, you know, billions of dollars. And healthcare can't do that. Biology doesn't scale like code. So AI is starting to close that gap, and it's helping to scale the discovery process itself. So if we can speed up the discovery process, then literally we can touch more humans and more potential solving for humankind. And that's a huge upside, I think, where AI lets healthcare innovation move at a fraction of software speed. But. But there's this. The ceiling is enormous. You can arguably build bigger, more addressable
Austin Hankwitz
problems from AI, something that we are big proponents here. Miles on the show is finding the picks and shovels of big secular growth trends. Right. Who's really going to benefit from a $200 billion, you know, market with GLP1s? And you actually wrote a piece earlier this year about why the GLP1 boom now demands a new aesthetic playbook. There's millions of people who are losing weight rapidly on drugs and experiencing real tissue depletion. So my question is, are GLP1s creating now an entirely new healthcare market that maybe didn't exist five or ten years ago?
Miles Harrison
Absolutely. If you think about weight loss and if you think about taking a GLP one, we're having so many amazing results, you know, for people who are using it for weight loss. And they're seeing massive gains in terms of how their, you know, weight is disproportionately just dropping off every day. So what are they seeing, though? They're. They're seeing weight being lost around their stomach or in the middle where they want to lose the weight, but they're also seeing weight being lost in other areas, areas that maybe they don't want weight loss. Fat pads in the face, for example, some body contouring areas, areas where they probably wouldn't want to lose weight. So GLP1s were initially built to treat metabolic disease. And what they're actually doing is creating this, you know, massive downstream patient population at scale. And, you know, this volume loss gives loose skin match, doesn't really match what people expected. It's not a niche. But, you know, now 1 in 8 US adults is on a GLP1. So we've talked about that. 200 billion 1 in 8 on a GLP1, and 63% are going out into an aesthetic practice or a plastic surgeon or dermatologist looking for a solution. These are new patients. So this a big upside, I think, for plastic surgeons and for injectors who can help them on that journey. So I've lived through, you know, aesthetics. It's been an amazing market genuinely. We've had some great tools for 20 plus years, but not really, you know, new tools. Right. So I would say that they're just different components of the same thing. So a lot of good renovation and a lot of good, good marketing. And access certainly has been dramatic, you know, with private equity coming in and building out big chains. So access has been there, our pricing has been competitive with new companies. But you know, ha. Hyaluronic acid injectables are really just, just fillets, right? They just, they're volumizers and biostimulators are there as a foreign body object. They just inject and they cause a foreign body object response and that's inflammation. And that inflammation helps create, you know, the collagen that you've lost and the elastin that you've lost over aging. So when this happens rapidly, you need, you need something to come in, but you need something to last. So the tools today were never actually designed for the GLP1 patients. You can argue, you can modify, but it's not really solving the purpose. They were added for adding volume and therefore a structural framework, but not for the structural framework that's collapsed. So you have this big demand, a real gap and what I believe is extracellular matrix. So a tissue regeneration, an approach where you can bring cells, signals and structure through an injectable, which we have really is the next category. This is a Botox like moment. Botoxin, you know, back in, in the day was, wasn't for as a neuromodulator for freezing the forehead and for the Glabella lines. Botox was actually for strabismus as an eye product and that's a $9 billion category. I think regenerative tissue opportunities like ECM based approaches we have will be the next category and they will work the same way that biostimulators did back in the day and neuromodulators once did. I don't think GLPs have created a new pharmaceutical market. They've created a patient population that the next generation of aesthetic medicine is going to built around.
Austin Hankwitz
I want our listeners to bring out a notepad and start writing down numbers here. So you said that 1 in 8American adults are on a GLP1. And then of that 1 in 8American adults on a GLP1, you said 63% of them or 60% of them or so are going in actively looking for, you know, different ways to make their appearances look better. Now that They've lost weight, which is tens of millions of Americans. Like if you actually do the numbers on that. And so it's your hunch that of these tens of millions of Americans, those people are also going to go want to look and find a solution for tissue regeneration and really fortify their body and the weight in the good places versus like the fat that they originally like tried to lose. Right. So like that's your hunches that these tens of millions of people that are actively every year looking for and spending money on ways to make their bodies look better after they've lost weight are also going to say, light bulb moment, I need to go do some tissue regeneration stuff as well.
Miles Harrison
Well, they're going to say I need to go and get a volumizer. And then they're going to go to a practice and they can have something to last six to nine months or they can have something that is clean and natural beauty. It's your own tissue being regenerative. Our product is a hydrogel and collagen based product. So when you inject that, it's a, it adds volume as volume, just like an ha will. But then it doesn't go away. What happens is cells and signals and that structure provides an environment for tissue regeneration. So you maintain the volume so you're not losing volume over time. You're not going to have to re inject in that same area. That's our hunch, that's what we're working on, our preclinical work, right?
Austin Hankwitz
No, I just want to be really clear when you say tissue, like when I think tissue, I think like muscle tissue or like, you know, organ tissue and stuff like that? Is, is that the type of tissue that people are losing whenever they're on these GLP1s? And that's the type of tissue that they need to get back without gaining a proportional amount of fat across their bodies. Is that what you're saying?
Miles Harrison
Tissue generations, where we're coming from in terms of wound care and burns, that's where the, you know, 11 publications, 12 years of history, of design of this product was to conform. An irregular wound, a dehiscent wound, a surgical wound, a tunneling wound, you know, all these very tough wounds. So that's where we're coming from. So we're not talking about organ regeneration here. So we're just talking about a volumizer. Right now we can use certainly in aesthetics as it's tissue, agnostic tissue, meaning, you know, dental periodontitis, meaning dermal, subcutaneous. And why do we Know that we've already shown on our website. You can see in the preclinical work that it's tissue agnostic, where we inject. We are seeing cell reorgan and we're seeing some vascularization. That's veins. Right. And we're seeing adipose tissue being laid down certainly in the subcutaneous. So this is phenomenal. So you're regenerating your own tissue that's providing the volume, that maintains the volume, and that's natural and clean beauty as far as I'm concerned.
Robert Croak
And I want to click back on this even one more time. So I'm sure of this because this is exciting for me, of what I'm trying to do to, you know, stay youthful and all that. You talk about volumizer, so I assume this can be utilized in the face to restore volume as well. Right. Because you mentioned Botox and all these other things. Right.
Miles Harrison
So we've done rheology and we are, you know, we're on par with one of the top brands in the market. So it's important. You know, we have fine lines. The nasal labial folds that come down here from the side of the mouth is the crow's feet, you know, up here. So, yes, in your facial areas, but there's volume loss here. The fat tissues, the fat pads here. You need to get some rounding jawline. Right. So this product will work across those, but also across the. For the body. Right. So if you think about other areas, like cellulite. Right. So you've got the dimpling, you could smooth that and certainly any other pockets. So whether it's aesthetics or correction or glp, one impacted, you know, sagging skin. Absolutely. This is where you can inject.
Robert Croak
I love it. Miles. This is exactly right in my wheelhouse of what I'm trying to learn, too. So this is going to be great, great for our audience because this is such a big sector. So I want to talk through this a little bit more technical for my next question. You have the CXU platform, a liquid extracellular matrix scaffold with applications across wound care, aesthetics, dental, even breast reconstruction. With your breast program at Wake Forest is connect you building a product, a platform, or both? And what is the difference for our listener?
Miles Harrison
Sure. So we're. We're building a platform, so your listeners should be informed about the fact that this is one formula that can go across multiple areas. So in essence, it's a platform. What you should understand is that to get this product to market the fastest way and the way that we've Been focused for many years is through wound care. So we will do a 510k, which is FDA route, to get a class 2 medical device on the market. So the 510k is the regulator signature app. Once that goes in, then that informs us on everything else that we want to do within the platform. It informs us from a manufacturing scale up, informs us from our chemical composition, informs us from the bench to commercial. So what we're able to do then is use that as we get into other markets, but at the same time as we get an approval. The fastest way to get an approval is a predicate. We'll use our own predicate then to get into the other markets using our predicate, which will be in wound care. That's. That's the thinking that we have right now, as I said, said got it.
Austin Hankwitz
I guess, you know, wrapping things up here. What does the next five years of connect? You look like you guys just listed on the NASDAQ. Congratulations. That's so cool. You got this week, Four's partnership, you know, 510K submission planned for wound care. Like you were just alluding to, like, where is this company headed perhaps in the next four, five, six years, let's call it, by the end of the decade, it's 2030. What's connect you working on?
Miles Harrison
Well, I think we will be talking about GLP1 patients and the benefits that they're going to be seeing with this, with this portfolio, this product. I think we're going to be talking about the fact that there are not going to be the need for breast implants, but there could be the need for resorbable breasts, a natural resorbable breast that instead of having silicone, you can have a product that is fully resorbable. I mean, that's remarkable. And I think that, you know, longevity is playing a lot of roles in every conversation that people have. And longevity is really around regeneration. So I think the technology that we're bringing fits squarely into that. Whether that's in dentistry, veterinary in 3D bioprinting, whether it's in breasts, you know, designing a breast, a resorbable breast, or whether that's injectable for Mohs surgery, it goes right across so many verticals. So I think regenerative medicine is, is here to stay. I think we're going to see a lot more competition coming, which is great for patients, certainly. And I think that, yeah, this, the people no longer want to mask something or cover something in wound care. They want it to actually regenerate and the tissue to get better. And I think we can bring something will really, really help those who suffer from that.
Austin Hankwitz
This is awesome stuff. I just. I get so excited, Robert. Literally, you know, we've had conversations on the side because I know you've been. You've been really dialing your health over the last, let's call it like, 12 to 18 months. Yeah. And we've had conversations on the side where you've, like, listen, Austin, like all the best doctors I've talked to say if you can just live for another five, seven, 10 years, we're going to have so much technology now with biotech that living longer and being healthier is going to be so much easier than it is today in 2026, or even 10 in, you know, 2016. Like, it's. It's going to be just so much better. And talking with people like Miles here who are on the front just building this stuff and doing their best, like, it's. It's so fascinating to me. And so, Miles, like, thanks again so much for just cluing me in on this because, you know, you hear a lot about AI and biotech and GLP1 and Retta true Tide this or whatever's going on and sexy and fun on Instagram at the time, but this is real tech that's. That's really moving and grooving in the right direction, and I'm just glad that I'm alive to witness it.
Miles Harrison
Yeah.
Robert Croak
And I've been giddy about this interview for days now just because I am living through it right now. I'm trying to get my A1C in order. I'm trying to, like, figure out how to get the volume back in my face and keep my skin looking good. But it's crazy to think with all of what you're building, Miles, and what's happening in the biotech and medical field, that I might be able to live another 50 years of healthy life. 40, 50 years of healthy life life pretty easily. That excites me because I want to keep doing this with Austin for many decades to come here in the Rich Habits podcast. And it's guests like you that make it so exciting to share all this information with our audience.
Miles Harrison
Well, Robert, I think, you know, you're one of those who is getting hold of their own health and working it out. Right. Which is fantastic. The other thing you can do is, you know where you're going to go with your health, so you can. There's a prognostic way rather than the diagnostic way, so you can start to Inform yourself, what can I do to help myself going forward now, now, rather than to support the eventual, maybe loss of loose skin, you know, so get to it sooner earlier, you know, and that's what we see. That's what we've seen in aesthetics over years and that's what we're going to see across many of these other verticals that we're talking about.
Robert Croak
Wow.
Austin Hankwitz
Thanks again for joining us, Miles. Really appreciate it, man.
Miles Harrison
Thank you. Appreciate your time.
Robert Croak
Welcome back, everyone. What an awesome conversation with Miles. Austin. Let's dig into our radar points. Starting off today, is the Iran ceasefire actually over? On Wednesday morning, President Trump stood at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey and said for me, I think it's over. Talking about the 60 day ceasefire with Iran. The deal struck on June 17, it was supposed to suspend hostiles and let diplomats negotiate the free passage through the state of Hormuz. The deal is now apparently dead. Trump told reporters, we're going to hit them hard again tonight and I'll give them little warning. We're going to hit them hard again tonight. So, Austin, I just want this to be over.
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, same here. Here, man. Well, let's talk through the chain of events. Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps attacked three commercial tankers in the Strait of Hormuz earlier this week. Then the US retaliated on Tuesday night by striking over 80 Iranian targets sent com confirmed. And then Iran escalated things even further, launching ballistic missiles and drones at Bahrain and Kuwait. Two US Gulf allies who had nothing to do with the original dispute. And now Kuwait confirmed that they intercepted two ballistic missiles and 13 drones. And Bahrain confirmed interceptions of its own. Now Iran's parliament released a statement saying the US must and I quote, recognize the new Iranian order in the strait of Hormuz. That is a sovereignty claim over a waterway that carries 20% of the world's oil supply every single day. This is nuts and I'm over it. I have to wrap it up. I can't do this anymore. But more specifically, Robert, what does this mean for everyone listening right now and their money?
Robert Croak
Yeah, it means you're right. We have to get this over with. This is a geopolitical risk repricing event. For months, oil has been falling back towards pre war levels and the market was pricing in a soft landing where energy costs weren't a variable anymore. And that assumption might now be wrong. If crude oil stays above that $80 a barrel for any sustained period, it feeds directly into inflation expectations. And if inflation expectations rise, the Fed has less room to pause, let alone cut Rates. Remember we just got the June jobs report last week and only 57,000 jobs were added. This is the biggest miss of the year. And investors were starting to believe the labor market was cooling enough for a rate relief. And this oil shock throws that entire thesis into question. And I know this seems like a lot of gloom and doom, but Austin, walk us through it.
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, so when you think about your portfolio and we've kind of played this energy game all year long, Inside the Rich Habits Network. But energy stocks are the obvious near term hedge. If you're someone that's like freaking out about volatility, XLE, Exxon, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, they all benefit from a higher crude oil per barrel price. But the bigger risk is what does this do to consumer spending, corporate margins, rate sensitive sectors like real estate in small caps? You know, Robert, we just hosted Inside the Rich Habits Network, our weekly live stream that takes place every Tuesday. And I had shared a chart with everyone that had illustrated how oil right now, as of I guess like a week ago, was one of the most short shorted names with 40% of managed money, like money managers being bearish on oil and shorting it, the third highest reading in 15 years. So now what I said is, I said, wait a second, when everyone. Right, 40%, right. That's, that's a lot. Third highest reading in 15 years. When a lot of people have a consensus view of something being bearish and bad, that usually marks a local bottom for that specific name. That said, I don't know how high oil might go from here, but if you kept a couple oil names in your portfolio like we have this year, maybe it's, it' a good hedge right now against market volatility.
Robert Croak
Yeah, great breakdown Austin, because we all know the markets don't like uncertainty. And right now, every single day it seems like there's volatility around all of these headlines. And this has been the biggest narrative we've faced with this Iran war and all the uncertainty around oil.
Austin Hankwitz
Now let's jump to our second story today, Robert, which I think is an exciting one, which is the SK Hyex IPO taking place this Friday. So on Friday, a company that most Americans have never heard of is expected to begin trading on the NASDAQ under the tickerson symbol S K H Y. The company is SK Hynix and the listing is set to raise $28 billion, making it one of the largest share offerings in modern history for comparison. And I know SpaceX was massive, but let's talk about it for a second right, SpaceX IPO raised 85 billion. SK Hynix is going to be 28 billion. So you know, about 50 billion short, but still pretty big if you ask me.
Robert Croak
Well, this leads to what we talked about a few weeks back leading into the SpaceX IPO of where is all of this liquidity going to come from? And this is a big IPO even though we're looking at SpaceX just, you know, from a couple weeks ago. And SK Hynix is a South Korean semiconductor company and it is arguably one of the single most important suppliers in the entire AI supply chain. And I like that you alluded that most people don't even know what it is. It's kind of like reminds me of Taiwan Semiconductor. They're one of the backbones of AI, but because they're not in the United States, they're just not followed as much. And they make these high bandwidth memory hbm and these are the specialized chips that sit on top, top of Nvidia's GPUs and make AI training possible without SK Hynix's memory chips. Nvidia's H200 and B200 processors are just looked at as expensive paperweights. I love that headline and I'm going to say it, but yes, that's interesting to see. But without this memory, the processing units inside the Nvidia chips simply cannot access or transfer data at the speeds required for modern AI and these LLM workloads.
Austin Hankwitz
So Robert alluded to SK Hynix makes these HYN high bandwidth memory specialized chips and the company actually controls over 50% of the global high bandwidth memory market HBM. They've secured 70% of Nvidia's next generation HBM, four orders. So think Blackwell, Veru, Rubin, like, like Nvidia needs SK Hynix and their HBMs to ensure that the chips that Nvidia is building in these stacks for large language models and AI generators training is actually useful. And their head of sales said on their most recent earnings call that client requests for HBM chip supplies over the next three years already far exceeds our production capacity. SK Hynix is already trading on the Korean Stock exchange. They hit a $1 trillion market cap on May 27th. Now they're hanging around a trillion, a trillion three depending on the day. But it is definitely something I'm keeping an eye on. Robert?
Robert Croak
Yeah, this could be a really good IPO for everyone listening and following along because I think it is going to sneak under the radar a little bit because everyone' talking about anthropic OpenAI, SpaceX and all that. And this is a really good one for everyone to watch. And when looking at it, Q1 2026 revenue came in at about $35.5 billion and profits surged fivefold year over year. The stock is up over 200% year to date on the Korean exchange and Goldman Sachs, ubs and every major bank has rated them as a dominant player in AI memory through at least 2027. And the US listing isn't a traditional IPO, it's an ad. What does that mean? It's an American depository receipt, meaning SK Hynix is issuing new shares that will trade on the NASDAQ while also remaining listed in Seoul, Korea. Trading is expected to begin Friday, July 10th. So keep an eye on it.
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, South Korean stock market's been on an absolute tear and an absolute roller coaster at the same time. The Kospi is up a ton this year, driven almost entirely by SK Hynix and Samsung. Korean retail investors. Investors have been pouring money into these 2 and 3X leveraged ETFs on chip stocks. And regulators are beginning to be worried if this has turned into some sort of, you know, AI mania taking place over there.
Robert Croak
Yeah, I feel like AI mania is taking place just about everywhere where there's development in this sector. So SK Hynix wants access to institutional capital that doesn't panic sell on overnight KOSPI swings. We've seen that happen a lot. And they want to be valued more like Nvidia Idea on fundamentals, not leveraged ETF flows. And they also want US passive fund inclusion. If SKHY gets added to major US indices, the same automatic buying machine that just added SpaceX would start flowing into SK Hynix. Austin. That was a lot. What does this mean for you and your money?
Austin Hankwitz
Well, right now, Nvidia gets all the headlines and all the excitement, but the company is building the actual memory. The actual chips that make AI physically possible have been trading at a fraction of Nvidia's multiples over the years, partly because they were stuck on foreign exchanges that American institutions couldn't easily access. So when SK Hynix starts trading on the NASDAQ, American fund managers, ETFs, retail investors, all the above will be able to buy one of the most critical AI memory suppliers as easily as they can buy Nvidia or AMD. Even if they eventually get added to the NASDAQ 100, that's hundreds of billions of dollars of index tracking pools and funds that start automatically buying this stock. Now what's interesting though and I saw a chart on X about this is that we are in a memory shortage. So I want to make sure we're on the same page here. Samsung and SK Hynix have been able to quadruple their profits year over year because they were able to raise prices on their products by 30, 50, 80% to their customers. And their customers had to pay those higher prices because of the shortage. They were the only ones selling memory. But in the back half of 26 and the first half of 27, I've seen rumblings by banks online, specifically on X talk talking about how we'll be in a surplus. So I don't know if that same pricing power is as durable as investors might think. So if you are looking into an SK Hynix IPO or you're looking into Micron and looking into these names to add it to your portfolio today, just be weary as to how important the surplus versus contraction and restriction around their products and how that could impact the durability of their pricing.
Robert Croak
Yeah, I think that's a great point for everyone to understand. Is AI overhyped at end the this point? Is there a chance for this bubble that we're hearing about any of those things? But I think for me, for people's portfolio, the question should be simple. Do you want exposure to the AI trade at the infrastructure layer or the application layer? SK Hynix is as infrastructure as it gets. With 50% of the HBM market share, 70% of Nvidia's next gen orders and demand exceeding production capacity for the next three years. The AI trade is definitely globalizing and the NASDAQ is becoming the world stock exchange. And every major major AI company on earth wants to list here because that's where the capital is.
Austin Hankwitz
It certainly is. And NASDAQ if you're listening, I'd love to come check you out. We've been in the New York Stock Exchange a dozen times now. Would love to go check out the NASDAQ. Email us@rich habits podcast gmail.com. all right Robert, our final story. The U. S. Treasury warning us about an AI bubble. So the not us, which is a non partisan news outlet, obtained a draft internal report from the Treasury Department that compares the current AI market to the dot com bubble. Career treasury analysts wrote a report for Secretary Scott Besant, Fed Chair Kevin Warsh and federal financial regulators warning that AI firms are now more deeply entrenched in the US economy than their dot com predecessors. And if the bubble pops, the damage would be systemic.
Robert Croak
Here's what the analysts found. The AI sector is increasingly concentrated within a small number of firms. It's heavily reliant on private market funds financing as well. It's massively invested in physical infrastructure data centers that only pay off if growth targets are met. Supply chain disruptions, geopolitical tensions, electricity bottlenecks and utility shortfalls could all stall this momentum. We've been talking about this for a very, very long time, finding those picks and shovels within those sectors. And if AI companies can't monetize their products fast enough, the effects would ripple through the big banks, the hedge funds, private credit markets, chip manufacturers, cloud providers, and even util entire financial ecosystem.
Austin Hankwitz
Now this part stood out to me, Robert. So the analysts that wrote this report noted that fewer retail investors are backing AI than backed the dot com stocks of the late 90s. Thinking about, on the surface, okay, that just means that less retail investors might get torched if things go bad. True, maybe, but it could also mean that the AI trade now is dominated by institutional investors. Right? They've had to raise this money from someone. And if retail's not buying, the pensions, the endowments, the hedge funds, the banks, those. Those people are giving them money. So if AI and growth AI and all this stuff starts to, you know, stumble, those losses hit institutions that the rest of the economy now depends on. The analyst wrote that a sustained AI downturn would have a greater impact on institutional investors, fundamental to economic stability than the dot com crash did on retail investors.
Robert Croak
Yeah. Two weeks ago, June 25, Treasury Secretary Besant stood in New York and praised the hyperscalers for spending 7,750 billion dollars on AI build out this year. He compared it favorably to the.com era and asked, could we do at least that? Can we do maybe more? At the G7 meeting, when other leaders raised concerns about AI safety and job losses, Besant told them, quote, the biggest risk to AI is China getting ahead of us.
Austin Hankwitz
Now the weird part though, Robert, is while he's saying that his own analysts sitting in his own building are writing the report that we're talking about right now, saying the biggest risk is the bubble popping. Treasury department spokesperson dismissed the report as unvette in that representation of the agency's policies and views. And they said the official position of the secretary in the US treasury is that AI will be a key driver of America's new golden age. Which like, yeah, true, that's great, but also like, really interesting to see kind of how this like, back and forth is going.
Robert Croak
And just on July 7, the bank of England released its own financial stability report warning that an AI crash should cause a 2.2% drop in UK GDP and plunge Britain into a recession. And Governor Andrew Bailey flagged flagged cyber vulnerabilities, high leverage in AI sectors and correlated investor behavior as systemic risks. Senator Elizabeth Warren has proposed a bill requiring financial firms to disclose their AI exposure to the treasury and for the agency to report how the financial system would be affected by this AI downturn that they're talking about.
Austin Hankwitz
Sounds to me like a lot of scare tactics and mumbo jumbo and people are just doing their jobs of like let's think of complete downside, the worst part of this. But what's your take Robert? What does this mean for you and your money?
Robert Croak
It's a tough one because we see all the CapEx spending, we see all of the advancements in AI. There's so much build out and in infrastructure happening in the United States. But let's be clear what this is and what it isn't. This is not a prediction that AI is going to crash. The treasury analysts themselves said AI companies are more mature, more profitable and have healthier balance sheets than.com era firms. I think Austin, about a year ago we did a whole big thing about this because back in the dot com era I lived through it. There just wasn't the revenue, there was a lot of hype and hyperbole around these companies, but there just wasn't the revenue and profits that we see today. But here's what it is. It's the first time the US government's own financial analysts have formally documented the systemic risks of the AI trade.
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, no, it definitely is. And I think, you know, if I'm someone listening right now and I'm like, oh my gosh, is the secretary telling me that the AI bubbles here and we're all going to get cooked and torched and it's over? Like no, not at all. Like I think a lot of this is just noise. And as some someone who owns the S and P and the NASDAQ and a ton of Nvidia and AMD and Micron, like I'm just ride the wave baby, like this. Obviously the entire earth is being rebuilt right now with AI in mind and Nvidia is going to be a $10 trillion company sometime in my life. AMD will be a $5 trillion company sometime in my life as that continues. So four major hyperscalers spending hundreds of billions of dollars in capex. That money's got to flow to something it's flowing to Nvidia, to the SK, Hynix, the data center, REITs, the utilities, construction fleet, firms like that's GDP growth if you like it or not. If you own the S&P 500, you're already massively exposed to AI through the Mag 7. The question isn't whether is AI real, it's obviously real. The question is whether the hundreds of billions of dollars that the Magnificent Seven is spending on capital expenditures is going to be sustained if revenue growth does not keep pace. We've seen great revenue growth. Alphabet is a wonderful example of this, so I think it's great. Last thing, I'll leave you here with Robert as we talk talk about this. Nvidia right now at $194 a share, whatever it is today, is now trading below 20 times their 2026 earnings expectations and below 15 times their 2027 earnings expectations, which is the cheapest valuation since 2019 and the lowest valuation multiple of the AI boom. Literally, when I was writing this with Robert, I was like, oh, I need to go buy more Nvidia stock. And I put 10 grand into Nvidia at 194. Now, who knows where it's going to go in the short term. I, I don't care. But I'm thinking about the next three, five, seven, ten years into the future, hopefully a four and a half trillion dollar valuation. Nvidia bodes well for my portfolio in the future as obviously they're going to grow their earnings so much over the coming years. Nvidia is still the AI platform layer across GPUs, networking software, robotics, physical AI. People selling quality stocks out of their portfolio because they're bored and they're looking for the next, you know, Micron or the next insert other company here that goes up by 200% in three weeks. Like that is a terrible mistake. Do not make that mistake. Know what you own and dollar cost average into durable blue chip stocks and ETFs and index funds in your portfolio.
Robert Croak
I love that so much because how many times in the Rich Habits network does someone DM us or ask us live, what's the next Palantir? What's the next Nvidia? And now it's what's the next Micron? They're always chasing the next when we still love these companies. I think AMD is cheap, I think Nvidia is cheap, I think Amazon is cheap. There's so much opportunity in front of people, but they're always chasing the next thing. And I just love that you brought that up and broke that down for us. So Austin, before we go to our radar points, support from this show comes from vcx, the public Ticker for Private Tech. For generations, American companies have moved the world forward through their ingenuity and determination. And for generations, everyday Americans could be a part of that journey through perhaps the greatest innovation of all, the US Stock market.
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Robert Croak
Yeah, your radar points are fire today because I think about like we've been talking about GLP1s and the picks and shovels and how to make money in that sector and Eli Lilly is just right at the forefront of that. But then also you think about Hollywood moving forward. You know, these actors that are used to getting 20, 30, $50 million of film, I feel like they're going to be cooked and we might see a lot more of them in TV commercials coming soon. So we'll see more people that are A and B listers doing these insurance commercials sooner than we think. So let me just go through my radar points real quick. Austin SpaceX is now included in the NASDAQ. They officially joined the NASDAQ 100 index on July 7th of this year trading under the ticker symbol SPCX. The Arrow Aerospace giant that everyone knows made its debut June 12, 2026 for their IPO and was fast tracks the index. We're keeping an eye on it. We think SpaceX is going to be a great long term buy, but just not yet. For me, I want to see that price come down a little bit more. Now here's my favorite one. Today 43% of Gen Zers claim that they need a side hustle to survive. Surveys indicate that anywhere from 48 to 57% of Gen Z actually maintain active side gigs with these ventures accounting for up to 57 of their total income, which is just a crazy stat to me. So for many the wages from their primary nine to five job are just no longer sufficient to keep up with the rising cost of living. I see this a lot with my younger employees and we see these headlines a lot, but I was shocked that 57% of their total income is coming from the side gigs, not their primary job. And my last radar point today is Jeff Bezos. Blue origin is raising $10 billion at $130 billion pre money valuation according to NYT Dealbook, making the first time in the company's 26 year history that Bezos has taken outside funding. Until now. Bezos has personally bankrolled the entire operation and this is something we need to keep an eye on because this is very, very important after the SpaceX IPO. And it's also interesting because Austin and I have been talking for a long time about Rocket Lab and AST Space Mobile valuations and the stocks and what they bring to the table in this space race that's going on right now. So we'll keep an eye on those for the future.
Austin Hankwitz
I really like that call out on Blue Origin. I mean I'm not saying that they're going to become the next SpaceX or anything like that, but $130 billion valuation and Rocket Lab at 50 billion and they have a very similar business model. It's like, is Rocket Lab undervalued right now? Like I don't know. I think that's interesting. So good call outs Robert. Appreciate everyone hanging out with us on this week's episode of the Rich Habits Radar. Be sure to go check out connect you and all the fun things that they've got got going on. More about that in the links in the show notes below. And don't forget about the seven day free trial taking place inside the Rich Habits radar. I talked about oil being assured name right now by money managers. We talked about that on this episode. But we talked about it for this episode inside our weekly live streams like we are. We talk about so much incredible information. It's a seven day free trial, so join. Get a live stream completely for free. See if you like it. If you don't, that's fine, no problem. But if you do like it, you also get invited to invest alongside Robert and myself. And we are investing in the coolest pre IPO companies. Thanks everyone and we'll see you tomorrow for our Q and A episode.
Rich Habits Podcast – Episode Summary
Date: July 9, 2026
Title: AI & Bioscience w/ Miles Harrison (CEO of Connexeu), SK Hynix IPO & Blue Origin Fundraise
Hosts: Austin Hankwitz & Robert Croak
Special Guest: Miles Harrison (CEO, Connexeu)
This episode dives deep into the intersection of artificial intelligence and biotechnology with special guest Miles Harrison, CEO of Connexeu, before tackling three headline topics: the end of the Iran ceasefire, SK Hynix’s massive IPO, and the U.S. Treasury’s warning of a potential AI bubble. The hosts also highlight rapid advancements in weight loss pharmaceuticals, the AI-fueled transformation of healthcare, and how new markets are emerging from these trends. The episode rounds out with rapid-fire “radar points” on vertiports, AI actors, Gen Z side hustles, the SpaceX–Blue Origin space race, and more.
GLP1s (a class of weight-loss/metabolic drugs) have created millions of new patients with rapid weight loss and associated tissue depletion.
“Now 1 in 8 U.S. adults is on a GLP1, and 63% are seeking aesthetic or surgical solutions. That’s tens of millions of new patients.” – Miles ([11:00], [14:19])
The aesthetic market is shifting:
“GLP1s have created a patient population that the next generation of aesthetic medicine is going to be built around.” – Miles ([14:19])
Existing volumizers and fillers were not designed for the unique needs of GLP1 patients. Connexeu is developing a collagen-based hydrogel that regenerates natural tissue rather than providing temporary volume.
“Our product is a hydrogel and collagen-based product... when you inject it, it adds volume but it doesn’t go away. It enables tissue regeneration.” – Miles ([15:14])
This episode can be enjoyed without prior experience with the podcast; it gives a clear, approachable walk-through of how AI, biotech, and major public/private market moves are affecting your portfolio and daily life.
Robert:
“There’s so much opportunity in front of people, but they're always chasing the next thing… I just love that you brought that up and broke that down for us.” ([41:29])
Austin:
“Know what you own and dollar cost average into durable blue-chip stocks and ETFs and index funds in your portfolio.” ([41:29])
A full, dynamic episode unveiling how AI, biotech, and the rapidly changing finance landscape are re-shaping wealth-building for today and tomorrow.