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Rich Habits Podcast
AMD & Anthropic's Partnership, Robinhood's "Platinum" Card & Vanguard's New Fund
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- [00:01]
Robert Croak
This episode is brought to you by Google Chrome. You think you know a browser, but Gemini and Chrome, that's new. It can help you with practically anything on the web, like restoring a vintage motorcycle from a 50 page restoration block. Or finally, break down that long article you've had open for weeks. Gemini and Chrome is here for it, ready to make anything online make sense. There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up, required compatibility and availability. Various 18 plus. This episode is brought to you by Facebook. So you were scrolling on Marketplace and there it was, the bike you'd been searching for. You sent a message and it turned
- [00:37]
Austin Hankwitz
out the seller was super chatty, kind
- [00:39]
Robert Croak
of funny, and an avid cyclist. The next thing you know, you're in a cycling crew. Well, a community cycling group. The thing about Facebook, you might find more than what you're looking for, from a browse to a bike ride this summer. Find more on Facebook.
- [00:56]
Austin Hankwitz
Welcome back 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's 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 OpenAI gearing up for a eventful IPO, AMD and Anthropic's new partnership announcement, and updates on Trump's tariff. Be sure to stick around to the end where we chat about Robinhood's new platinum card. And I'm not getting it. I don't know about you, Robert, but it is. It's interesting. We'll talk about it. Robert, let's dig into our first story.
- [01:36]
Robert Croak
Sure. Yeah. Story number one, OpenAI is gearing up for an IPO sooner than later. We've all seen it in the headlines. And OpenAI added two new independent board members. David Velez, the founder and CEO of Nubank, the largest digital bank in Latin America, and Robin Vince, the CEO of bank of New York Mellon. Vince is joining the audit committee. And these are not AI people. These are Wall street people. And they tell you exactly what this is all about. Getting the house in order for an IPO that could come as soon as later this year.
- [02:09]
Austin Hankwitz
So, Robert, let's put some numbers around why they need adults in the room. OpenAI just raised their projected spending on computing power to around $750 billion through 2030. That is up from $600 billion earlier this year. And remember that $600 billion is sort of Walk back. Sam Altman originally told people the company was going to spend $1.4 trillion on compute between now and the end of the decade, which was so alarming that their CFO Sarah quietly went behind the backs of management to reassure investors that real numbers will not be 1.4 trillion. It'll be closer to 6 or 700 billion. But now we're seeing that creep back up.
- [02:49]
Robert Croak
Yeah, I love your take of adults in the room because we see all the headlines about Sam and I think it's important for everyone to understand they are putting the right team around him to make sure the guidance is corre so here's where it gets interesting. OpenAI just committed $20 billion to a brand new data center project called Project Camellia in Effingham County, Georgia. 3.2 gigawatts of power from Georgia Power between 2028 and 2032. This is the first site where OpenAI is the leading designer and developer. At every other site, it's Oracle, aws, they're renting that power. Now they want to own and to
- [03:26]
Austin Hankwitz
build it, they've hired Brett Mayo, one of the architects of Elon Musk's Colossus supercomputer over in Memphis. See, Brent Mayo left XAI earlier this year. He reports to Uday Ruderaju, who was just promoted to Chief Technology officer of the computing capacity, who also worked on Colossus. So we got Brett and Uday, who both used to work for Elon, to go build out their Colossus massive data center over in Memphis. But now they're being pulled over to Sam Altman's OpenAI team to. To build this one out, which I think is just like the most open AI thing ever. Steal from Elon and other people. It's.
- [04:01]
Robert Croak
It's interesting, definitely. OpenAI C Sarah Fryer has privately told company leaders she's worried the company can't actually pay for all of this if revenue doesn't grow fast enough. And the revenue picture is not great. For sure, OpenAI has been growing more slowly than anthropic while burning way more cash. And Sam Altman still owns zero equity in the company, which is almost unheard of for a CEO about to take a company public.
- [04:27]
Austin Hankwitz
So, Robert, for people listening right now that might want to be, you know, adding an OpenAI to their IPO watch list later this year, what does it mean for them and their money?
- [04:35]
Robert Croak
It means this is a very important IPO setup in tech right now and it's a mess. You've got a company projecting $750 billion in compute spending, a CFO who's worried they can't afford it, a CEO with no equity and mounting conflict of interest, scrutiny and revenue growth that's falling far behind its biggest competitor. For your portfolio, the direct beneficiaries of OpenAI's spending spree are clear. Nvidia for the GPUs, Oracle for the cloud contracts, Amazon for the AWS deal. But the bigger questions investors need to Is this what happens when this company goes public and Wall street finally gets to see a full set of financials? Because Austin right now we're watching a company spend three quarters of a trillion dollars on a bet that AI revenue will eventually catch up to the AI infrastructure costs. And the bank analysts, the same ones who just put AI CapEx as their number one systemic risk in the B of a fund manager survey, are going to tear those numbers apart when they become public.
- [05:34]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, but I think the, the board additions are smart. Right? Velez knows consumer Finte scale, and I think that's very much where Chat GPT is, is headed. Didn't Chat GPT just come out with like their Chat GPT money or, you know, something like that? Right, right. So like, like getting this product in the hands of as many people as possible. They just added a board member that's done that. Right. New bank. Vince spent 26 years at Goldman Sachs running a $52 trillion custody bank. So when, when you think about IPO and getting the right people in the room for a successful ipo, they're definitely trying to do that. But adding that governance doesn't fix the fundamental tension, which is Sam Altman want so much money that does not yet exist. And Sarah, their CFO is like, maybe we should not be doing that. Right. So, like, it's a little, you know, kind of back and forth there between them. So something that I'll certainly be watching as the months go by, something that I'm also watching, Robert, is Anthropic. Anthropic just made two major moves this week that tell you the company is doing everything they can to win this AI race and maybe the IPO before open AI, who knows? But they're, they're definitely trying to think outside the box. Play some, play some chess while everyone else plays checkers. So let's start talking about here this AMD and Anthropic deal. So AMD and Anthropic, they signed this deal worth tens of billions of dollars for these AI servers under those terms. Anthropic will purchase up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's latest generation chip, the Mi 450, starting in the first half of 2027. AMD is investing $5 billion directly into Anthropic as deployment milestones begin to hit. So this is AMD's first investment into the company. Circular financing. Did someone say that? I think, I think I heard that in the, in the podcast sphere here.
- [07:18]
Robert Croak
Yeah. But I agree with you. Anthropic's been doing it right. They're definitely playing the long game and I think they're doing a really good job. And let's look at the facts. They've been compute star for months. Demand for cloud exploded so fast that they had to throttle back users and rate limit their own API. People were seeing outages, business couldn't get enough capacity. So Anthropic went on a shopping spree and I think they did it at the right time.
- [07:42]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah. Earlier this year they signed new deals with GPU for their TPU access, with Amazon for the Trainium chips. They took over SpaceX's Colossus 1 data center in Memphis. Right? That's 220,000 Nvidia GPUs. Now they've got AMD. So anthropic, to your point Robert, is building this very much diversified supply chain for their chips and their AI infrastructure. AMD CEO Lisa Su put it pretty straightforward here. She said you can't just wake up one morning and say I want a gigawatt of compute tomorrow. Tomorrow you have to plan 12, 18, 24 months in advance for this stuff. And that's exactly what this is. Right? Anthropic is locking in capacity through 2027 and beyond, just like they've done again for the Googles, the Amazons and Space. Anywhere they can see that compute, they're going to lock it down because they've got the demand for it.
- [08:32]
Robert Croak
And here's the most important part people will miss. AMD is also in talks to provide a financial backstop for Anthropic's future data center leases. This is a growing pattern. Google already backstopped some of Anthropic's center deals to help them access TPUs. Large tech companies with investment grade credit ratings are essentially co signing the leases of AI startups that can't raise capital at favorable terms on their own. So the chip companies are so desperate to win these AI customers that they're not just selling hardware, they're financing the entire operation. We've all heard it, Circular finance, everyone's lending to each other. I think it's great for the overall growth of the sector, but time will tell and here's where it gets even more interesting. Austin. On the same day Anthropic announced it's doubling its spending on the 2026 midterm elections to $40 million. They committed another 20 million to public First Action, a political group pushing for government imposed safeguards on AI models and transparency requirements for developers.
- [09:34]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, that puts Anthropic now directly at war with OpenAI's political operation. Because on one side, to your point, Robert, you got the Anthropic supported Public First Action backed by Anthropic and their CEO who personally donated a million dollars and for that AI regulation. But then on the other side, you have the Leading the Future coalition here. Right. So Public First Action Coalition Leading the futures on the other side, that's funded by OpenAI and Andreessen Horowitz who are pushing for industry friendly rules with fewer and fewer barriers. Right. So more AI, more stuff, more can get done. Leading the futures raised about 75 million. Public first says they've raised about 80 million. So these groups are spending millions now on advertising in dozens of primaries across the country to help persuade voters to thinking like, hey, maybe I should vote for this specific person because they believe in AI regulation or I should vote for this person because with more regulation, you know, China's not regulating and China's going to go win this AI race if we regulate. So let me go vote for someone that doesn't want the regulation. Right. It's just there's a lot of this kind of propaganda getting shared right now. And you know, it just goes to show it's not organic. Right. The companies that clearly have a profit interest in one thing or another getting figured out are the ones making the donations to these different types of coalitions. If it's the Leading the future from OpenAI or public first action from Anthropic and their CEO, it's like they want something to get done or they wouldn't be putting money in the pot here.
- [11:02]
Robert Croak
Yeah, I think Public first is the way to go in my opinion, because the last thing we want to see is this being completely regulated by the government and then all of a sudden it's a lobbying war to who wins. And you know, you mentioned these loose fit rules. We definitely need guidance in AI and we need to understand the complexities of it as a whole. But having someone that is, you know, bipartisan, I guess you would say that's not connected to it all or not benefiting it directly from it. All I think is better. And in a New York congressional primary, Public first backed state lawmaker Alex Bores who was co authored the New York's AI safety bill. Leading the future spent millions to oppose him, which is interesting. And Boris finished second but lost to another pro regulation candidate. So the regulation side won anyway.
- [11:49]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, we'll see how that shakes out. I lean toward the government can't do anything right. And the last thing we should trust the government we with is to think that they can understand and regulate a brand new technology. And I mean you go look at what just happened a couple months ago with the White House labeling Anthropic this national security risk. They shut down two of the models over security concerns. Anthropic is of course suing them for that. Critics say that Anthropic wants to weaponize regulation to hurt their competitors. I think that's probably the case. Anthropic is the big fish. Anthropic is literally stealing so many ideas and applications. Think Claude design, think you know, Claude science. Like all the different types of, you know, their, their competitors that are running on their APIs, they're, they're taking that proprietary data and then building their own products with it and then they're saying oh no, you should go regulate the industry. So now as they regulate them as a whole, Anthropic has either so much money that they can navigate those regulations compared to the other AI startups out there or AI companies that exist that don't have that same experience in money and war chest to navigate regulations so they get regulated out of the industry and go bankrupt. Which means Anthropic now is you know, turning into duopoly monopoly. So I actually disagree with you Robert. I think less regul regulation right now. I think the, what's it called, leading the future is the way that this should go. Because if you have, you know, these big fish that are, that are really leaning toward regulation, they want regulation, they, they then get to say yeah we can help write that regulation for you. You know they're, they're the ones that are asked for the regulation of course are going to be the ones that have those favorable terms. And then once they regulate their competitors out of existence, anthropic selling one standing I guess next to a duopoly with OpenAI. While all that to be said Anthropic server saying no, it's the safety concerns. We're genuine about it. We, we safety which like don't get me wrong, I have safety is like very, very real and very, very important. But you know, it's, it's just hard to take that seriously for a company that is literally like taking and stealing proprietary information. That's why Alex Karp went on cnbc, you know, going on this rampage, talking about like we've had so many people that are coming to us, like we're using Anthropic's API, but we don't feel safe using it anymore because they're taking all of the information, the proprietary information we're using when it comes to running our business to go create their own businesses. Right. So it's just, it's very interesting and, and I just don't know, is at a point now only three years into this, two and a half, three years into this new technology, despite, you know, the, the, the AI czar, you know, being David Sachs who's co founder of PayPal, and being someone who very much understands, you know, artificial intelligence, like just despite those types of things, like, I just don't know the solution, but I don't know if that solution should be, let's just regulate, regulate, regulate, regulate forcing AI startups and AI companies that want to be on the bleeding edge of bioscience and cancer research and you know, all these other different things that we know AI can do to then just get regulated out of existence. Wasn' York State, Robert, that didn't they come out with something that said essentially you can't ask, you know, AI for medical advice because it's not a real doctor. It's like that's the dumbest thing I ever heard in my life. People of course should have access to medical, you know, information and the ability to, to do that research themselves. But like that's the regulation that hurts people. So like, I just, I just think it's nuts.
- [14:53]
Robert Croak
Yeah, I love that take Austin. And I think it's really smart because I feel like there needs to be regulation, but if it's all in the government's hands, it's going to take years, it's going to slow down innovation and it's really going to hurt the US as a whole. So I don't know the answer either. And you're probably right, it's better to put it in the government's hands. But maybe there's a world where separate committee can be put together to be able to handle all this and then at least present it to the government. Because I automatically, my brain goes to the fact that the, the Clarity act still hasn't gotten approved, still isn't finished in Crypto and crypto's been around for, you know, 10, 12 years and we're still trying to figure out how to lay the groundwork there. And we can't get both parties to agree on that either. So I don't have the answers either. I just want it to handled correctly. So we see all of this in innovation. Stay inside of the US Economy because I think everyone's crushing it right now, but we definitely have to have those guardrails of protection. So I know that was really long winded, but I appreciate your insight there. What does this mean for you and your money?
- [15:56]
Austin Hankwitz
Let's break that down before I break that down. Yes. And it's cool to see Last week the CEO of Google DeepMind came out with titled A Framework of Frontier AI and the Dawning of a New Age, which is essentially them trying to build their own, you know, INRA of sorts, right? A regulating body that all of these frontier AI labs and all these hyperscalers, it's not regulated by the government, but it's like regulated by every single person that participates in this game. It's like let's all look each other in the eyes and say, can we all agree that this is what we're going to be doing and this is not what we're going to be doing and we will be doing these things and these are the benchmarks. Here's how we're like, you know, the processes and the protocols and we can all agree upon that without like actual legislation being passed to slow us all down. So I think that's really cool that that that's taking place and that took place you July 14, I think it was last week. So regulation's cool when it's like regulation's gonna help people like the faa, right? It's like, of course we need, can't just build airplanes and let people ride on them, right? We have to have some sort of regulation. I agree, but you know, it's just when, when one or two people or one or two of these businesses that are trillion dollar businesses, right, have all of the, the cookies, all the poker chips, right? They've got, they got everything they need to like regulate their competition out of existence. It's just, I, I, I just don't agree with any of that. So what does this anthropic deal with AMD and their midterm spending mean? It means that they're simultaneously diversifying their chip supply across four different architectures that Robert was alluding to. They're getting chips from companies to finance that infrastructure and they're spending tens of millions of dollars, $40 million to help shape the regulatory environment that their competitors operate inside on. So they're not just competing, Right? They're playing chess while their competitors are playing Candyland. Now for your portfolio, here's what that means. AMD. Really exciting. I am up 364% on my AMD position, which is incredible. Hope you guys are part of the Rich Habits network. When we talked about AMD, you know, 18, 24 months ago, Lisa Su, she's been clawing for that market share from Nvidia and AI for two years now. And landing anthropic is, you know, a really big deal. It's a major validation for that company. But don't sleep on Nvidia either. Robert and I talked about, you know, Nvidia was trading at like a 194, $195 a share recently. I was like, dude, I gotta go jump in on this. What's going on? This is the cheapest valuation in years. Like I just. These chip companies like the market right now. It seems like Robert is like trying to, trying to figure out like the difference between like good semiconductor companies that are durable and have like long term profit potential and then like the semiconductor companies that, whose profits are cyclical. And that's what we saw with the sox, right? The, the SOX index, the, the semiconductor index scope, you know, is up 112, 115% in like two and a half months period of time from the, of, I think it was March 30th all the way through the top in like mid June. And so that was when all these investors said, hey, like let's just go buy semiconductors. We're also excited, it's going to be great. But then you start to realize that semiconductor profits are very cyclical in nature and investors were treating them as permanent. And so now as the SOX comes down, I think it's down 20, 30%. Individual names inside of that index, Intel, Marvell, Applied Materials, MTSI, like all these names, they're down 25, 35, 45% from their highs. And so I think that is the market saying, okay, wait a second, there are names like ASML holdings, like an Nvidia, like an amd, like a Micron, like a, you know, Taiwan Semi, that are really cool and we want to have them and want to own them because those are durable profits that are going to, you know, experience these tailwinds. But these other names, just because they have the word semiconductor in the title of their corporate name, or they have they mentioned semiconductor on their earnings call. Maybe those aren't the names that should be trading at these, you know, exuberantly high valuations, historically speaking, because their profits aren't as durable as we had thought.
- [19:39]
Robert Croak
Yeah, I love that take and I agree with you 100%. You and I deal with it every day in the Rich Habits network where people are asking, what's the next Nvidia trade? What's the next Palantir trade? What's the next Micron trade? Meanwhile, we're looking at Nvidia and we're buying more of it as we're online filming going, man, this is still so cheap and we love Amazon and we still really like some of these stocks that have been around for years and years. And I think it's just people are too quick to move on from some of these companies like Nvidia that are just really in the heart of it all and really do have a long, bright future ahead of them. And the biggest takeaway for me about Anthropic itself is this is a company that went from 1 billion in annualized revenue to roughly 30 billion just in the last 15 months. And they're not waiting for the market to come to them. They're locking up chips, financing infrastructure and spending tens of millions to write the rules of the game. And when this company eventually IPOs, and it will this year, it's going to be one of the most consequential listings in market history. The question for investors is whether all of this spending translates into durable competitive advantage.
- [20:45]
Austin Hankwitz
Couldn't agree more, Robert and I just saw online, actually, Anthony, the Roppic is rumored to be doing $75 billion in annualized revenue right now, which is absolutely bonkers if you ask me.
- [20:59]
Robert Croak
So, Austin, let's get into story number three. The tariff truce is over. And this time, Trump has a new playbook. For the last five months, businesses in America got something rare quiet on the tariff front. And that's about to end. Let's back up. In February, the Supreme Court struck down most of Trump's second term tariffs, ruling he overstepped his authority using a 70s emergency to impose these levies. Trump immediately replaced them with a temporary 10% tariff on nearly all U.S. imports. But that duty is legally limited to 150 days. And that clock runs out today, Friday the 24th, as we film this episode.
- [21:36]
Austin Hankwitz
So what happens next? U.S. trade Representative Jameson Greer went on CNBC on Tuesday this week and said that a new tariff action is coming. So here's what we know first the replacement tariffs. So the administration is shifting the legal foundation from emergency powers to Section 301 of the Trade act of 1974, which is widely seen as the more legally bulletproof way to do this. They opened a tariff investigation in 60 different economies earlier this year. In the preliminary findings, proposed a 10% tariffs on over a dozen trading partners, Canada, Mexico, EU all that plus a 12 and a half percent tariff on more than 40 nations, including China, India, Japan and South Korea. So all that said, the tariffs would probably cover 99% of US trade in unlike these temporary measures that were taking place beforehand, section 301 tariffs can stay in place indefinitely. So that's what they're trying to figure out here. Right? Let's go from emergency power to something that can keep tariffs implemented indefinitely here across 40 different nations covering 99% of US trade. Like holy smokes.
- [22:42]
Robert Croak
And before the Supreme Court ruling, the average UF tariff rate was about 17%. So under the temporary measures, it dropped to around 11%. And once the new Section 301 tariffs are fully in place, trade analysts expect we go right back to to that 17% tariff. Drew DeLong, a former State Department official now at Kearney, says many companies have been kind of lulled to sleep on the tariff front for the last five months.
- [23:06]
Austin Hankwitz
And you need to know if those companies are in your portfolio because right. If those tariffs start coming back up, you better be ready. But let's talk about Canada, Robert, on Monday. And here's why it's important, because it comes back to tariffs. Same topic. But now Canada with tariffs. Monday, Trump announced an additional 50% tariff on $20 billion worth of Canadian goods. Wine, hockey sticks, CE dairy. While things like energy, potash fish and critical minerals are exempt from those tariffs, the stated justification is that Canada is discriminating against American products, specifically Canadian policies requiring companies to invest in auto production in Canada rather than the US in bans that several Canadian provinces have now imposed on American liquor. Who doesn't want Jack Daniels? You Canadians are missing out on Jack Daniels. Come on, baby.
- [23:59]
Robert Croak
And 20 billion out of the 383 billion in total Canadian exports to the US may sound small, but the legal mechanism Trump used is what has trade lawyers paying so much attention. He invoked Section 338 of the Tariff act of 1930, an obscure provision that has never been used before to impose tariffs.
- [24:18]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, it gives the President power to levy duties on countries discriminating against US companies. And it's a lot more flexible than Section 301 that we were just talking about no month long investigations required. No public, public comment, nothing. It's just presidential discretion. And Ryan Majeris, a former Commerce Department official, said it could attract serious legal challenges. But in the meantime, the tariffs go into effects in 30 days if nothing changes. So Jack Daniels, y' all miss. I mean, come on, Robert, gotta get it.
- [24:46]
Robert Croak
Can you imagine the behind the scenes meetings of Trump yelling at his legal team, saying, go find me another law that we can, you know, implement to, to beat these guys. We got this. And they're just finding these laws from 100 years ago, saying this one could try that. I can't even imagine the research of how they're trying to beat the system that America created, you know, and it's just so crazy to think. But Canada's economy is already feeling it. Before this latest round, Canada's central bank projected growth would be 1.5 percentage points lower this year due to those tariffs, leaving projected GDP growth at just 1.1%. And Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney said he and Trump would accelerate trade talks in the coming weeks ahead of the Aug. 19 deadline, when the new tariffs would kick in.
- [25:33]
Austin Hankwitz
And Robert, this one's pretty funny. He just threatened steeper duties on Canada over the wildfire smoke that was coming across. I know I've got a couple uncles in Wisconsin. I've got friends in New York. I mean, they were going through it on Truth Social. He said, we're holding Canada responsible for not properly maintaining their forests. He told reporters that after speaking with Carney at Sunday's World cup final. Maybe they should pay us some damages or something. Maybe we should do some tariffs because of these wildfires. I guess. My goodness.
- [26:01]
Robert Croak
For most Americans, the bottom line is this. Federal Reserve economists have estimated Trump tariffs raise core goods prices by about 3.4% through February, pushing overall core inflation up by about 80 basis points.
- [26:14]
Austin Hankwitz
So what does this all mean for you and your money, Robert?
- [26:17]
Robert Croak
I would say there's three things to watch the temporary 10% tariff expires, and we find out exactly what replacement 301 levies look like. If the average US tariff rate jumps back towards that 17%, that's a meaningful headwind for any company with a global supply chain, and it flows straight through to their consumer prices. Also, Trump is using these tariffs to force the USMCA renegotiation. And the Aug. 19 deadline creates a window for a deal. If they reach one, the tariffs could get pulled. If they don't, you're looking at 50% duties on a targeted list of Canadian imports on top of everything else. And we know the markets don't like uncertainty. And if Trump can successfully use that obscure 1930s trade law to impose tariffs unilaterally without investigation or comment, period, that changes the calculus for every trading partner and every multinational. It means tariffs can come at any time for any stated reason within 30 days. Notice that kind of uncertainty is the thing that makes CFOs delay capital investments and hiring decisions and causes so much unrest in the markets.
- [27:21]
Austin Hankwitz
Yeah, the companies that benefited from calm, no tariff, just like, you know, what we've had for the last four or five months. Now think retailers, automakers, anyone importing from, you know, countries on that 60 economy list that we were alluding to, they might get repriced in the markets. And the Fed, which has already been threading the needle on inflation, just got handed another variable that they can't control, which is, you know, tariffs cause everything to go up in price. So it's going to be interesting, Robert, but we've got some very exciting radar points that we're going to share with you in this episode. I've got three. Robert's got three. But before we jump to our radar points, Robert, let's give a shout out to this episode sponsor.
- [28:00]
Robert Croak
Yes, definitely. Support from the show comes from vcx, the public ticker for private tech. For generations, Americans 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 the greatest innovation of all, the US Stock market.
- [28:16]
Austin Hankwitz
It didn't matter whether you were a factory worker in Detroit or a farmer in Omaha, anyone can own a piece of the great American companies. But now that has changed. Today, our most innovative companies are staying private rather than going public. And the result is that everyday Americans are excluded from investing and getting left further and further behind, while a select few reap all of the benefits. Until now.
- [28:36]
Robert Croak
Introducing vcx, the public ticker for private tech. VCX by fundrise gives everyone the opportunity to invest in the next generation of innovation, including, including the companies leading the AI revolution, space exploration, defense tech and so much more.
- [28:51]
Austin Hankwitz
So visit getvcx.com for more information. That is getvcx.com carefully consider the investment objectives, risks, charges and expenses. This and other information can be found in the Fund's prospectus@getvcx.com this is a paid sponsorship. So Robert, why don't you kick us off with your radar points.
- [29:11]
Robert Croak
I would love to. I'm going to start off with Republicans released the new crypto bill text with Trump blessed, ethics provision included and Senate GOP leaders are eyeing a floor vote as soon as next week. We can't wait for that one. We need to see this thing get moving and Senate Republicans on Wednesday circulated a landmark cryptocurrency bill unveiling the changes to the so called Clarity act ahead of a potential floor vote next week and the new language which needs bipartisan support to pass. The Senate does not currently have sign offs from the Democrats and we need that. The bill would overhaul a wide range of federal financial regulations to incorporate crypto trading and finally lay the groundwork. The 616 page draft includes a White House approved ethics provision that would put in place new rules related to how federal officials can engage with digital assets and get us on the right track in the crypto situation. My second radar point I thought was off kilter a little bit for me, but very important to share Warren Buffett's Called Bill Gates Epstein Ties Distasteful and Pulls out of the Gates Foundation Warren Buffett Warren Buffett spent two decades as the single largest benefactor of Bill Kate's philanthropy, the Gates foundation having donated about $48 billion. And earlier this month he walked away due to concerns that the Gate Foundation's ties to the convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein is a relationship that Buffett had recently called distasteful and wanted nothing to do with it. I really wanted to get that in there because I think that case kind of just disappeared and it's great, great to see big people like Warren Buffett doing something about it. And my last one today is also a little bit about the crypto space, but also how it relates in the AI sector. Sandy Call, head of Digital Assets and Innovation at Franklin Templeton, has a message for anyone who thinks Nvidia stock covers the AI exposure and she states it doesn't. Kahl published a paper Tuesday stating that agentic AI software that acts, pays and decides on your behalf without checking with you at every step will run on credit crypto rails, not Wall street ones. Franklin Templeton currently manages around 1.8 trillion in assets and she states blockchain will be pivotal in allowing agentic AI to realize its potential for customer transactions and the growth of agentic AI is likely to become the killer use case that drives blockchain adoption. The asset manager said.
- [31:34]
Austin Hankwitz
I like those. First is the you know what you talked about with the ethics provision included in the the the new you know, crypto bill text. I saw that after that came out on polymarket, the odds now of the Clarity act getting signed plummeted from 49% just in, you know, last week, two days ago all the way now down to 37% up from 31%. So we'll see if the Clerdiac gets signed. But I, I don't know what's going on over there. And Warren Buffett calling Bill Gates Epstein ties distasteful. I think that's the kindest way I've ever heard anyone describe what Epstein and Bill Gates and, and everything I distasteful is a very kind way to put what happened there. So interesting you included that one. But I, I'm, I'm glad that we're not funding that anymore.
- [32:20]
Robert Croak
No, for sure.
- [32:21]
Austin Hankwitz
All right, Robert. So I got my three raider points here with number one being Robin Hood's new credit card. Number two being Amazon cutting jobs at their AGI unit business unit. And my third point being Blackstone and Vanguard wanting to get you in on these private equity deals. So let's kick off with Robinhood. Robinhood launched this premium credit card back in March in custom immediately called them out because the perks that they offered think like platinum card, things like that had too many catches tied to the perks. So you get a doordash credit but only $10. If you spend more than 50, you get a free Oura ring membership. But you still have to go pay $300 to buy the ring. So Robinhood went back and they tried to fix it all and I think they maybe did. Travel credit went up to $1,000 of like again travel credit there if you buy through the card door dash credits now have no strings attached, auras out. Whoop is in. So we'll see what happens. But at six $195 a year. Again, cheaper than that. Amex Platinum at $895 a year and the Chase Sapphire Reserve card at $795 a year. Robinhood says that over 50, 000 people have already signed up for the wait list at this. Maybe we'll see. I got the Robinhood gold card. I'm getting my 3% cash back. I have absolutely no reason to want to go spend 700 to go have a different Robin Hood card. So I'm gonna stick with my gold card and get that 3% cash back and invest it into the markets every single time. Now let's talk about Amazon laying off an undisclosed number of employees and their artificial general intelligence business unit organization. The team building their Nova foundation models. Company says it's sharpening focus on AI initiatives that matter most, which is just corporate jargon for Some bets aren't panning out the way we thought. This comes on top of now that 16,000 corporate layoffs that Amazon already made back in January. The pattern across big tech is pretty clear right now. Spend more on AI infrastructure, spend less on people. You know, that's kind of been the theme and we'll probably continue to see that theme, unfortunately. Last radar point here. Blackstone, Vanguard and Wellington Management are launching two new funds this week that give everyday investors access to private equity, private credit, real estate and infrastructure investments. Assets that were historically locked behind institutional walls. One fund blends public and private assets. The other is just all privately held hold, you know, privately held companies and assets related to that. Now, the catch is you can only cash out during quarterly windows. Fees run between 1 to 2 and a half percent, much higher than the 0.1% or even, you know, half a 1% you see with Vanguard's VOOS of the world. But Vanguard is going to pitch this as that the the private markets now are just too big to ignore. Jack Bogle said to buy the whole haystack. And the haystack now includes these private markets. So timing's notable. These launch right after investors fled other private credit fund Blue Owl, a great example of that earlier this year, forcing caps on their withdrawals. Blackstone's president's message is you're trading liquidity for premium returns. It's a good, good trade in the past. We're going to keep doing it. Let's see what happens. So I don't know, I'm not jumping in on any of these funds, but maybe it's something we do more research on.
- [35:34]
Robert Croak
Robert, I love those radar points. And just think $695 a year. Let's do the math real quick. They've already got 50,000 signups, so right out of the gate they've got $35 million in revenue just from launching a new wrinkle on credit card. So it's amazing how these companies with these massive bases of audience can just make millions of dollars out of thin air. So I really love that. But what a great episode. Lot going on in the markets. Love doing these Friday episodes to keep everyone abreast of what's going on and what our brains think about all this. And yeah, I'm just super excited about it. And really great radar points.
- [36:10]
Austin Hankwitz
I appreciate that. I completely agree. 6.95. Yes, it's cheaper than that platinum card by Amazon, but like, that's still so much money. I just let me stick to my free card, get my 3 cash back, everybody. Thanks so much for tuning in to this week's episode of the Rich Habits Radar. If you want more of Robert Noston, consider joining the Rich Habits Network, where you can not only join us for weekly live streams that take place every Tuesday and Friday, but you can also invest alongside of us into different startups and pre IPO companies. We're actually doing a fundraise right now for a pre IPO company that we think is really interesting. We've already raised like half a million dollars on it in just 24 hours, which is really cool. So if you want to go check out the Rich Habits Network, please go do link in the show notes below or just search Rich Habits Network on Google. And get excited because we've got Charles Payne on the podcast coming on Monday. So we'll see you for Monday's episode with Charles Payne. Sam.