Happy Monday, Munchers! 🙏

Hope you lot had a lovely and restful weekend. The skies were painted with strokes of rain here in Dubai - something that we see once in a blue moon. Kick-ass weather with even more kick-ass company got 2023 off to a great start.

As always, here is your daily dose of the news that matters, from Wall Street to Dalal Street - in 4 minutes and 58 seconds.

Over the weekend, the folks behind GPT went for a mammoth fundraise, Samsung saw semiconductor demand slump, and Celsius's CEO got into some trouble. 🔥

Let’s dive in.

What’s hot, what’s not?

Market Commentary

• Europe is packing on LNG imports as the competition for fuel heats up, and the fattest rat is the warmest. They bought 58% more fuel in 2022 than 2021, and that trend looks to continue.

• Jack Ma gave up control in Ant Group - his voting shares shrunk from 50% to 6.2%. He's also been pulled away from the limelight since talking smack about the CCP. Who knows, maybe that's also got a part to play. 🤷🏼

• Weakening labour markets in America are spelling lovely news for stocks. The Fed can slow down with rate hikes and can start thinking about a pivot, and stocks can start to fly. 🤦🏼

Story Roundup

1 - GPT's gurus go for a fresh fundraise. 💸

The whole world has been texting away to GPT, and it's minting millions for the big boys.

Their parent company OpenAI is going for a monster fundraise - selling ~1% of the company for $300 million.

That's a $29 billion valuation.

Revenue for 2022 came in at ~$80m (from reports) and is growing at an insane pace.

But that's not all - 2024 revenue is projected at $1 billion.

OpenAI also struck a deal with Microsoft. They're gonna integrate GPT into Bing to make searches more conversational and relevant.

This is big stuff - since Google could finally have a worthy opponent. Google thinks so too, and management issued an internal "Code Red" after GPT's release.

There's a small chance that AI wrote this newsletter too. 🤷🏼

2 - Semiconductor slump strikes Samsung's profits. 📉

A slowing global economy is crushing chip demand, and taking Samsung's bottom line with it.

Their operating profit slid 70% for Q4.

Samsung is the world's largest chipmaker, and they publicly acknowledged that this demand decline was greater than expected.

Wall Street is betting that the problem is gonna get worse in this quarter as customers clear inventories and suppliers continue to hike output.

A year back, people could barely get their hands on semiconductors. Today, there's an insane oversupply of them.

Supply glut killed the supply chain. 😬

3 - Celsius CEO gets in some hot water. ♨️

The guy behind Celsius and their $1 billion deficit has been slapped with a lawsuit, and the charges are pretty hefty.

Alex Mashinsky has been accused of defrauding hundreds of thousands of investors and breaking New York's securities laws.

Regulators think that he promised financial freedom, but took investors down the path of ruin.

If that wasn't enough, he withdrew $10 million of his own money from Celsius a week before they went bankrupt.

And when they did go bankrupt, they had a $1 billion-sized hole in their balance sheet.

Risky business. 🤦🏼

4 - EY wants to splash some cash on M&A. 🤝

EY wants to buy out it's buddies, and it's gonna spend BIG.

They're setting aside $2.5 billion to fund an acquisition spree for their consulting arm.

It's a much needed cash injection, as EY preps to split their business down the middle and break up it's audit and consulting arms.

This war chest is gonna allow EY consultants to battle for market share with it's Big-4 rivals.

They will also spend $400 million on a new brand for their consulting business, which is gonna have a new name.

Pricey stuff. 🫰🏼

5 - Warm winter saves Europe from Putin's energy gambit. 🥵

Russia's energy attack may have failed, big time.

A few months back, Putin and Co. were playing a very tactical game of 3D chess with their gas pipelines.

This put a lot of stress on Europe, as they were running straight into a ice-cold winter season without the gas needed to power it.

Mother Nature has a different plan - and a 'warmer' winter means that gas demand isn't as high as expected.

Gas reserves are robust and prices are back to pre-war levels.

Looks like we were all just panicking. 😅

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!

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Cheers, and have a lovely day. 🙏

Aryaansh