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- Market Munch 🍎 | 22 June 2023
Market Munch 🍎 | 22 June 2023
Amazon gets in hot water, SoftBank gets the guns out, and Dropbox goes all-in on AI. 🔥
Aryaansh Rathore
June 21, 2023
Happy morning, Munchers! 🙏
As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 49 seconds.
Yesterday, Amazon got into a fight with regulators, Masa Son stacked his cash up, and Dropbox got an AI fund ready. 🔥
Let’s dive in.
What’s hot, what’s not?
Market Commentary
Inflation in the UK stayed strong at 8.7% and core inflation actually crept up too. Things are not looking good across the pond.
Policy easing is picking up in the East. China slashed their benchmark lending rates but told markets to remain cautious. Things are NOT set in stone yet.
US stocks slipped after the Fed said that we have “further” to go with rates.
Story Roundup
America’s antitrust regulator slapped a big lawsuit on Amazon for being deceptive.
It turns out that Amazon has purposely made it hell to quit your Prime membership.
And to make things worse, they’ve been actively trying to “manipulate, ceorce, and trick users” into buying Prime memberships.
These things are called dark patterns - and they are hated by regulators and consumers alike.
The FTC is looking pretty angry, so they won’t let this rest just yet. 😤
Funding winter is for scaredy-cats.
After 3+ years of cash hoarding and asset sales - SoftBank wants to get back on strike.
Yesterday, Masayoshi Son announced his grand visions to become an architect for the future of humanity.
They’re currently sitting on a cash pile of over $35 billion. That’s all dry powder, waiting to be deployed into hyper-growth companies.
SoftBank’s last P&L statement came in super red - they lost almost $34 billion last year.
They’ve splashed cash in over 500 companies so far - make it another 500, and they’ll definitely have a few winners.
It’s a numbers game! 🚀
This is a LEGITIMATE slide from Softbank’s annual report explaining it’s billion-dollar losses. 💀💀💀
No one wants to sit on the sidelines of the AI race.
Dropbox just launched a $50 million AI fund - because it’s so much easier to pay someone to do the actual AI part for you.
Their first product is an internal one.
It’s called Dash - a unified search dashboard that lets you scan all your documents from third-party apps - from Word, Powerpoint, and Excel to Gmail, Docs, and Notion.
This sounds really simple, but they want to bring Dash to a point where you can ask it any question about your business and have a perfect answer ready.
Bananas. 🍌
Remember the 30-under-30 lady who swindled JP Morgan out of $200 million with a bunch of fake emails? (if not, find the sauce here)
Turns out that it won’t hurt too much.
JP Morgan apparently took out an insurance policy during the Frank deal.
It’s a “representations and warranties” policy and applies during fraud cases.
In lawyer speak - if Frank lied about their business (which they did) - JP Morgan is entitled to their money back.
Brilliant. 💀
Imagine a Google Maps for space.
That’s exactly what Peak XV’s first check is going towards.
The company that was previously known as Sequoia India is now splashing cash on a startup called Digantara - a space data and infrastructure business.
Digantara will use this money to build out it’s commercial space awareness satellites - which is just IIT-speak for satellites with big sensors to track things in space.
They’re working very closely with ISRO and benefitting big from the Indian government’s liberalization of space.
Take-off… 🚀
Hope you enjoyed this issue of the Market Munch. If you've got any feedback - good or bad (😏) you can hit reply to this email. Thanks a ton for reading!
Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏
Aryaansh