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Welcome Back To The Arena, GameStop
00:21:49
GameStop made an unsolicited ~$56B bid for eBay as Ryan Cohen eyes a commerce empire. Anthropic finalizes a $1.5B JV with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs, Amazon opens its logistics network to outside companies, and a Harvard study finds AI outperforms ER doctors at triage.
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Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride home for Monday, May the fourth. Be with you 2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today GameStop made an unsolicited $56 billion bid for eBay. Anthropic finalizes a one and a half billion dollar joint venture with Blackstone and Goldman Sachs. Amazon opens its logistics network to outside companies and a Harvard study finds AI outperforms ER doctors at triage. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Today's episode is brought to you by Doppel Disguises are getting pretty good these days, and I'm not just talking about when you throw on a pair of glasses and a hoodie and hope you won't be recognized. We're talking about the kind of disguises that end up in your inbox, on your phone or on the web, blending in as your everyday internal email, casual text message or normal website. Doppel strengthens team resilience by giving employees the tools and defenses they need to protect themselves from increasingly sophisticated social engineering threats. Their digital risk protection takes it one step further by keeping an eye on every channel to connect patterns and shut them down fast. From deepfakes to bad links to impersonation attempts, Doppel helps you stay ahead of these threats with their AI native social engineering defense platform. Learn more at D o P E L.com that's-o P E L.com so this is going to sound a bit weird, but I swear it's true. GameStop has made an unsolicited 56 billion doll dollar offer to buy eBay after building around a 5% stake in eBay. They're offering $125 a share in cash and stock, a 20% premium on May 1st closing price. EBay's stock reacted to this this morning by jumping only about 4% to around $108, so well below GameStop's $125 a share bid. In a sign investors see let's call it hurdles to completing this deal, GameStop's stock also dropped more than 10%. Quoting the Journal GameStop Chief Executive Ryan Cohen told the Wall Street Journal on Sunday that GameStop built a roughly 5% stake in eBay and was offering $125 a share in cash and stock, roughly 20% as a premium to its closing price on Friday. EBay should be worth and will be worth a lot more money, cohen said in an interview. I'm thinking about turning eBay into something worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Cohen said GameStop has a commitment letter from TD bank to provide up to $20 billion in debt financing to help make the deal possible. GameStop delivered an offer letter to E and released a copy of it following the Journal's report on the details of the bid. Cohen wrote in the letter to eBay chairman Paul Pressler that GameStop started building its eBay position on February 4th. It said its offer consists of 50% cash and 50% GameStop shares. EBay said Monday morning its board and financial advisors would review GameStop's unsolicited proposal. It said there were no discussions with or outreach from GameStop before receiving the offer. EBay added that it will review the offer quote with a focus on the value to be delivered to eBay shareholders, including the value of the GameStop stock consideration and the ability of GameStop to deliver a binding, actionable proposal. If eBay isn't receptive, Cohen said he was prepared to run a proxy fight and take the offer directly to its shareholders. The window for shareholders to nominate director candidates at ebay ahead of an annual meeting scheduled for this June has already closed, according to the company's proxy materials. Cohen told the Journal that putting his video game retailer and eBay under one roof could create opportunities to cut costs and improve earnings. The two companies have some overlap already, including a focus on selling collectibles such as trading cards. There is nobody who is more qualified, based on my experience, to run the ebay business, cohen said, referencing his time at Gamestop and previously Chewy, the online pet product marketplace he co founded. Ebay was valued at around $46 billion at the time of the bid. GameStop has around $9 billion in cash on its balance sheet to put toward the deal. It wasn't immediately clear how it would come up with the rest of the money needed for a $56 billion acquisition. It is possible Cohen could tap outside investors such as Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds to back the deal, people familiar with the matter said. Some Wall street analysts are already skeptical, though, that Cohen could pull off an acquisition. Investors have embraced ebay's focus on collectibles and other niche categories why disrupt things the turn Bernstein analysts said about ebay in a note to clients. Cohen built a big stake in GameStop in 2020 and criticized the company for moving too slowly toward e commerce. He started gaining a cult like following among retail investors online and proceeded to make a number of other activist bets, including at Bed, Bath and Beyond. GameStop gained even greater fame during the meme stock craze of 2021, in which individual traders bid up the retailer's stock. In 2023, the company named Cohen, who was already serving as chairman, as its new CEO. Under Cohen's watch, GameStop has closed hundreds of stores and exited much of its international business. It has pivoted toward higher margin items such as trading cards, retro games and consoles that strike a nostalgic chord with shoppers. Cohen said he saw ways to integrate GameStop's bricks and mortar stores with ebay's online operations to help scale both companies. The stores could become locations to collect and authenticate items from ebay sellers, for example, he said. He also said he believed ebay should be doing more around live Commerce, where brands sell directly to shoppers via real time video streams. It could be a legit competitor to Amazon, cohen said about ebay. Ebay has already been taking steps to cut costs with a strategy that includes embracing artificial intelligence tools to help streamline its buying and selling processes. In February, the company said it would be cutting around 6.5% of its global workforce, or roughly 800 employees. And quoting Bloomberg, about 136 million shoppers globally made purchases on eBay in the 12 month period ending March 31. Shoppers spent about $80 billion annually on the marketplace. EBay itself is in the midst of a turnaround, one that is going well, bernstein analysts wrote. But to the extent there are any challenges or volatility from categories like collectibles, this would put further strain on the math. We see real challenges to structuring this deal, end quote Sources tell the Journal that Anthropic is finalizing a deal for a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Hellman and Friedman and others to sell AI tools to private equity backed companies. Quote the new company is expected to act as a consulting arm for Anthropic and help teach businesses, including the private equity firm's portfolio companies, how to incorporate AI across their operations. Anthropic, Blackstone and Hellman and Freeman are anchoring the deal and are each expected to invest roughly $300 million, according to people familiar with the matter. Goldman Sachs is putting in around $150 million, the people said. General Atlantic, Leonard Green, Apollo Global Management, GIC and Sequoia Capital are also involved. All told, about $1.5 billion is expected to be committed, the people said. OpenAI has also been in talks to form a rival joint venture with private equity firms that spreads adoption of its own AI tools. Both AI juggernauts are focusing their efforts on selling AI tools to businesses and see those backed by private equity firms as a prime target, given that many are already focused on improving efficiency and costs. Anthropic is widely seen as the industry leader in the enterprise market, though OpenAI is working hard to catch up. Anthropic is eyeing a public listing that could take place as soon as this year. The company's revenue skyrocketed in recent months thanks to the success of its coding tool Claude Code. At the same time, as mentioned, OpenAI, Bloomberg is reporting, has raised more than $4 billion at a $10 billion pre money valuation for the deployment company, a new joint venture that will aim to do the same thing. Amazon has debuted Supply Chain Services, which lets companies use its logistics network to move, store and deliver everything from raw materials to final products, quoting Reuters. Amazon Supply Chain Services will allow companies across industries such as retail, healthcare and manufacturing to use the tech giant's freight network spanning ocean, road, rail and air to move, store and deliver everything from raw materials to final products. With this, Amazon will unlock a new growth opportunity for its E commerce unit, building on a service that supports thousands of independent third party sellers worldwide. It also marks a potential shift in a U.S. logistics industry long dominated by FedEx and UPS. Shares of both companies were down more than 6% each on Monday, while Amazon climbed 1% with a fleet of more than 100 cargo planes behind only FedEx and UPS. Along with a vast network of warehouses and sorting hubs, Amazon's move could make it a key logistics player and intensify competition on pricing and speed. The move is Amazon trying to convert logistics from a cost burden into an infrastructure product, said Parth Telsania, CEO of Equisites Research. For UPS and FedEx, this is not immediate disruption, but it is a structural warning shot, especially in E commerce heavy lanes, where Amazon already has density data and delivery speed advantages. Talsania said Amazon's expansion takes aim at the business to business shipping market, a prized high margin segment for logistics firms where deliveries tend to be denser, more predictable and less expensive to serve than consumer shipments. The company boasting a fleet of over 80,000 trailers and more than 24,000 intermodal containers will also offer distribution, fulfillment and parcel shipping services, allowing businesses to take advantage of its speedy two to five day delivery timelines and as well as warehousing and inventory forecasting capabilities. Companies can use these solutions across all sales channels, including their own website, social media and physical stores, Amazon said, adding it has already signed on consumer goods maker Procter and Gamble, industrial heavyweight 3M and apparel firm American Eagle Outfitters. The move also takes a leaf out of Amazon's cloud computing units. Playbook Amazon Web Services was launched in 2006 to revamp the company's own IT infrastructure, and it later evolved into the world's biggest cloud services provider. End quote. Sure, AI is everywhere, but that doesn't mean enterprise value is a given. In a recent survey, PwC found the amount of CEOs who reported revenue gains or cost reductions from AI is nearly equal to the amount who say they're still stuck. So what's causing the issues? PwC boiled it down to clarity. Leaders aren't clear about what's hype, what's reality, or where AI can actually create measurable impact. To help change that, PwC is offering their AI expertise and data. They explore how to tune out noise around AI and get clarity on what successful adoption looks like. Learn from the experts by heading to pwc.com US Brewai that's pwc.com US BrewAI. I love this job. I love doing this podcast for you every single day. It's the best job I've ever had. But that does come with planning, scheduling, recording, distributing. I don't know. No thank you. That's where Gusto comes in to save the day. Gusto is online payroll and benefits software for small businesses. It's all in one remote, friendly and incredibly easy to use so you can pay, hire onboard and support your team from anywhere. They tackle annoying logistics so you can focus on the more fun parts of your job, like doing your job. With Gusto, you can run unlimited payrolls for one flat monthly price. They've got options for nearly every budget so you can keep your finances and your bandwidth in check. Try gusto today@gusto.com brew and get three months free when you run your first payroll. That's three months of free payroll. @gusto.com brew
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the Wired newsroom is known for award winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On WIRED's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building challenging and reshaping the future? Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance? Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday, wherever you get your podcasts.
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An analysis of 1.6 million poly market accounts since November 2022 has found that just 0.1% of users get 67% of the profits, with the highest frequency traders seeing the most success. Quoting the journal, Kalshi and its competitor polymarket advertise themselves as life changing tools for regular people, implying everyone has a fair chance to score. I was about to be unable to pay my rent, but I got two years of rent through Kalshi's predictions, gushed one woman in a Kalshi ad on TikTok. But for most users, the reality is nothing like that. Instead, casual traders are bleeding cash while a small number of sophisticated pros, including trading firms with access to vast streams of data, eat their lunch, according to a journal analysis of platform data and interviews with traders on polymarket, the Journal found 67% of profits go to just 0.1% of accounts. That means less than 2,000 accounts netted a total of nearly half a billion. Doll Journal analyzed 1.6 million polymarket accounts that have traded since November 2022. There are at least 2.3 million total accounts on the site. On Kalsheet, two losers vastly outnumber winners. Spokeswoman Elizabeth Diana said there are 2.9 unprofitable users for each profitable one based on data from the past month. She said the number is subject to change as the exchange grows. The company doesn't make public comprehensive data on users profits and doesn't share its total number of users. Total trading volume on both platforms has rocketed to $24.2 billion in April, up from 1.8 billion a year earlier, according to analytics firm the Block. Proponents say the markets don't count as gambling and that they harness the wisdom of crowds to accurately predict future events. Federal Reserve research shows Kalshi is an effective tool to forecast economic trends. Traders have been shelling out for access to big data streams from third party providers to have a leg up. Computers use the data and algorithms to predict price movements and manage risk faster than any human. The pros also make use of their scale to make frequent strategic trades, sometimes tens of thousands a day, and book profits on incremental moves with a measure of attention and discipline rarely seen in recreational users. Casual traders have no chance systematically, said Michael Boss, a former professional poker player and a statistician by training on Kalshi boss places 60 trades a minute and modifies his bids and asks 30 times a second. Diana said that many financial markets exhibit similar patterns of wealth concentration and that more users make money on Kalshi than by day trading or on traditional sports books. She said that Kalshi no longer runs the pay my Rent ad. A spokeswoman for polymarket declined to comment on the Journal's analysis. In the case of Peterson, the out of work cook who lost his entire stake, he had fallen for a category rife with sucker bets, mention markets. Professional traders say they don't touch these bets because they are unpredictable and even millions of dollars in data can't them a reliable edge. The mentioned market bets, where users wager on what a person will say during a public appearance, routinely pay out less often than expected, according to the Journal's analysis. Casual bettors are taking bigger risks than they realize, in part because of a phenomenon called long shot bias, in which bettors, driven by excitement, overvalue unlikely events. Monthly trading volume on Kalshi's mentioned markets, which dwarfs polymarkets, has exploded since mid-2025, according to the Block. The bets are popular with the young users the sites are courting, including influencers who promote them on social live streams and other videos touting their wins. End quote. Finally today, according to a new study, OpenAI's O1 model correctly diagnosed 67% of emergency room patients using electronic records and a few sentences from nurses, versus only 50 to 55% success for triage doctors diagnosing the same patients, quoting the Guardian, A groundbreaking Harvard study has found that AI systems outperformed human doctors in high pressure emergency medicine, triage diagnosing more accurately in the potentially life and death moments when people are first rushed to the hospital. The results were described by independent experts as showing a genuine step forward in the clinical reasoning of AIs and came as part of trials that tested the responses of hundreds of doctors against an AI, the authors said. The results, published in the journal Science, showed that large language models have eclipsed most benchmarks of clinical reasoning. One experiment focused on 76 patients who arrived at the emergency room of a Boston hospital. An AI and a pair of human doctors were each given the same standard electronic health record to read, typically including vital sign data, demographic information and a few sentences from a nurse about why the patient was there. The AI identified the exact or very close diagnosis in 67% of cases, beating the human doctors who were right only 50 to 55% of the time it showed the AI's advantage was particularly pronounced in triage circumstances requiring rapid decisions with minimal information. The diagnosis accuracy of the AI OpenAI's Zero1 reasoning model rose to 82% when more detail was available, compared with the 70 to 79% accuracy achieved by the human experts. Though this difference was not statistically significant. It also outperformed a larger cohort of human doctors when asked to provide longer term treatment plans, such as providing antibiotics regimes or planning end of life processes. The AI and 46 doctors were asked to examine five clinical case studies and the computer made significantly better plans, scoring 89% compared with just 34% for humans using conventional resources such as search engines. But it is not curtains for emergency doctors yet, the researchers said the study only tested humans against AIs looking at patient data that can be communicated via text. The AI's reading of signals, such as the patient's level of distress and their visual appearance, were not tested. That means the AI was performing more like a clinician producing a second opinion based on paperwork. I don't think our findings mean that AI replaces doctors, said Arjun Manrai, one of the lead authors of the study who who heads an AI lab at Harvard Medical School. I think it does mean that we're witnessing a really profound change in technology that will reshape medicine. Dr. Adam Rodman, another lead author and doctor at Boston's Beth Israel Deaconess Medical center where the study took place, said AI LLMs were among the most impactful technologies in decades. Over the next decade, he said, AI would not replace physicians but joined them in a new triadic care model the doctor, the patient and an artificial intelligence system. End quote. Nothing more for you today. Talk to you tomorrow.