WHAT’S INSIDE:

Feature: AI-driven fear spills from software into finance

Top Tech News: Markets Fall, Chip-making Access FTC v Apple News, Musk's Debt Warning, Fast-Track for Satellites, OpenAI Brockman's Trump donations

Company Watch: Modal Labs talks a $2.5B raise, Anthropic closes a $30B round at $380B, Apptronik hits $5.3B Samsung starts shipping HBM4, Robinhood.

Buzzy Tools: Coinbase agentic wallets, Nothing ships customizable “Essential Apps,” Qwen-Image 2.0 and GLM-5, Amazon eero Signal

Buzzy Tech: IsoDDE drug prediction, Aurora self-driving trucks beat humans, ByteDance “SeedChip” with Samsung, and AI arbitrator pilots.

Crypto: CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee, White House stablecoin meeting deadlocks, Uniswap + BlackRock/Securitize BUIDL (UNI pops), Robinhood L2

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Top Technology News

Markets Fall —  U.S. stocks, precious metals, commodities and cryptocurrencies fell harshly on Thursday, investors fled to USD, Treasuries, and Swiss franc.  

China's Inflation Puzzle — China's consumer inflation rose 0.2% in January, signaling deflation concerns. Policymakers are likely to adopt looser monetary policies.

Chip-making Access — U.S. lawmakers urge the State and Commerce Departments to impose export controls on semiconductor manufacturing equipment, citing national security.

Apple News Scrutiny — The U.S. FTC is investigating claims that Apple News censors conservative content.

Musk's Debt Warning — Elon Musk cautions that the U.S. faces potential bankruptcy with a $38.5T debt, as interest payments surpass military spending.

Fast-Track for Satellites — The U.S. Senate Commerce Committee has advanced a bill to speed up satellite approvals to boost broadband access.

OpenAI Politics — OpenAI faces internal backlash after President Greg Brockman's substantial donations to Donald Trump's campaigns.

The SaaS-ination Escalates To Wealth Management

Tech Buzz Editorial Feature

Last week Anthropic's new tools hammered software, credit firms, and legal tech stocks. Monday brought down insurance brokerages. Tuesday? The wealth managers crashed. The tech-heavy Nasdaq 100 is careening toward its worst week since April's tariff shock. Which multi-billion dollar sector tumbles next week?

Markets have been roaring. US equity markets crossed $1 trillion in daily turnover. January averaged a record $1.03 trillion, a 50% jump from last year with over 19 billion shares traded daily.

Yet rising AI anxiety is punishing stocks across sectors in real time. The market reacts instantly to perceived threats, triggering massive sell-offs. AI has definitively entered its disruptive destruction phase.

The Wealth Manager Wipeout

An AI tax tool sparked Tuesday's wealth-management selloff as investors feared automated advice could eviscerate the business. The innovation puts the entire industry in AI's crosshairs.

Investors unloaded fast. Raymond James Financial plunged 8.8%, its worst day since March 2020. Charles Schwab sank 7.4% and LPL Financial lost 8.3%, both hitting their worst sessions since April.

Alternative asset managers, investment banks, and business development companies are taking hits as investors flee software stocks. Panic spread after Anthropic's tools threatened everyone from Oracle to Datadog to FactSet Research. The fear? Finance firms could face steep losses from sour loans tied to these software creators.

Asset manager gauges are down over 6% this week. The Invesco Global Listed Private Equity ETF lost more than 7%. The VanEck BDC Income ETF dropped 5.6%, its biggest decline since October.

Blue Owl Capital, which focused on financing software businesses, is suffering most. The stock hit an 11-session losing streak, its longest since going public in 2021, down 26% and touching lows not seen since August 2023. BDCs that pool private credit loans fell to multiyear lows. Blue Owl's tech-focused BDC trades at record bottoms.

Credit Markets Wobble

AI disruption fears are hitting the $1.5 trillion US loan market where software accounts for $235B. Many software loans carry low credit ratings, increasing default risks. Significant debt comes due soon, raising refinancing concerns. However, a large systemic disruption isn't expected near-term, and a default spike seems unlikely.

Wall Street dealers are increasing trading costs for corporate bonds from private credit funds worried about exposure to software firms. Approximately 20% of these portfolios link to software businesses that have seen share prices crater.

Deal Activity Freezes

The software stock carnage is disrupting M&A as volatility makes valuations unreliable. The software stock index dropped about 25% since October, making buyers and sellers cautious. IPOs stalled. Companies postponed listings. Concerns rise about impacts on the US loan market where software firms are major borrowers.

AI disruption fears threaten big banks by eating into M&A and IPO activity. Goldman Sachs lost nearly 6% and Morgan Stanley fell 5% since Tuesday, their worst three-day performances since November.

Boutique investment bank earnings serve as good barometers for capital markets disruption. Evercore CEO John Weinberg said on Wednesday's earnings call they don't see disruption near or medium-term. But if market conditions stay choppy long enough, all bets are off.

"It would be unrealistic to say if the markets got very disruptive that it wouldn't impact our business," Weinberg said. "Certainly it can."

Looking Ahead

Some professionals see the private market rout as overdone, particularly since it's too soon to know the severity.

"If this were a true inflection point for BDCs, we'd expect to see broad earnings erosion and accelerating credit stress," said John Cole Scott, president of CEF Advisers, who bought BDC positions during the selloff. "The recent price weakness looks more like sentiment spillover than broad balance sheet impairment."

AI software disruption could create new winners. Highly diversified portfolios may benefit if those winners offset poor investments elsewhere, Morgan Stanley analyst Michael Cyprys noted.

BDCs should rebound, according to Matt Maley, chief market strategist at Miller Tabak. The question is when.

"With all of the concerns surrounding the private credit markets right now, these stocks could test their 2025 lows as we move through the winter and into the spring months," he said.

Breaking News: Ending Hunger is Now Public!

The first crypto 501c4 nonprofit (WYDE: END HUNGER $EAT) using trade fees to feed those who are hungry has recently:

• Hit it’s all time high market cap following a new year surge to $14.4M FDV 

• Reached the milestone of funding 5000 meals through Food charities

• Secured Charitable Status as Tax-exempt (the 1st U.S. exchange to do so)

Companies To Watch

Latest deals and trending companies

[Open Deal] Modal Labs — The AI inference startup focused on optimizing efficiency and cost is in talks to raise funding led by General Catalyst at a $2.5B valuation, up 2x.

Open Deal: The Wyoming Exchange Building the "New York Stock Exchange for Nonprofits." Watch an investor talk by co-founders on WYDE’s mission & news.

OpenAI — Launched Codex-Spark, a new coding tool powered by Cerebras AI coding-focused hardware, aiming to diversify away from Nvidia GPUs.

Anthropic — Closed a $30B round at a $380B valuation with Blackstone increasing its investment to $1B, adding $200M.

Apptronik — The Austin humanoid robot startup raised $935M in a Series A at $5.3B to partner with Google DeepMind to develop robots using embodied AI.

Robinhood — Reported Q4 revenue of $1.28B, falling short of expectations due to a downturn in crypto trading, but predictions, transaction and Gold revenue showed growth potential.

Zillow — Posted a $3M profit in Q4, reversing a $52M loss from the previous year. Revenue surged 18% to $654M, fueled by sales, rental growth.

Samsung — Began shipping its advanced HBM4 AI chips, offering a processing speed of 11.7 Gbps, a 22% increase from the previous generation.

Buzzy Tools & Tech

The Latest Trending Tools & Cutting Edge Technology Developments

Buzzy Tools

Buzzy Tools To Watch and Try Today

Coinbase — Agentic Wallets unlock AI agent crypto transactions, trading.

Nothing — Essential Apps beta vibe codes customizable phone widgets.

Qwen-Image-2.0 — Advanced image model, cheap & superior capabilities.

GLM-5 — AI model for complex systems, scaling to 744B pm, with efficiency.

Amazon eero Signal — Backup internet via 4G LTE during outages; 5G soon.

Buzzy Technology

Buzzy Tech Discoveries and Breakthroughs Trending Today

Drug Design Engine — IsoDDE doubles predictive accuracy for drug discovery.

Aurora's Self-Driving Trucks — Autonomous trucks run 1,000-mile hauls faster.

ByteDance AI Chip — Developing SeedChip with Samsung, investing 160B yuan in AI.

AI Arbitrator — 20 AI agents run first arbitrations in construction; with human oversight.

Space Race

SpaceX Moon City — Musk shifts focus from Mars to a self-growing Moon city

Shenlong — China advances reusable spaceflight with fourth Shenlong mission.

Cryptocurrency News

The Latest News in Crypto & Blockchain

Open Deal: The Wyoming Exchange Building the "New York Stock Exchange for Nonprofits." Watch an investor talk by co-founders on WYDE’s mission & news.

CFTC Innovation Advisory Committee — The new body to adapt regulations to emerging tech like AI and blockchain, modernizing rules to reflect market realities.

Stablecoin Yield Standoff — A White House meeting on stablecoin yields ended without resolution as banks demanded stricter controls, fearing deposit loss.

Uniswap & BlackRock — Uniswap and Securitize team with BlackRock to boost DeFi liquidity via $2.4B tokenized Treasury fund BUIDL. UNI surged 27%.

BlackRock & Securitize — Partnered with Uniswap to enable direct on-chain trading of the $2.4B tokenized Treasury fund BUIDL.

LayerZero Blockchain — LayerZero unveils Zero, a new Layer 1 blockchain backed by Citadel Securities and Ark Invest, acquiring its native ZRO token.

Robinhood Chain — Robinhood launched a public testnet for its Ethereum Layer 2 blockchain built on Arbitrum, targeting tokenized real-world assets.

Tornado Cash Developer — Roman Semenov is now on the FBI's "Most Wanted" list for charges including conspiracy to commit money laundering.

Standard Chartered's Forecast — Predicts Bitcoin could drop to $50,000 and Ether to $1,400 amid market challenges. Lowers targets for Sol, XRP, BNB, Avax.

Breaking News: $EAT hits All-Time High Marketcap and Meals Funded ($14.4M MC & 5000 meals)

Ending Hunger is public!

The first crypto 501c4 nonprofit (WYDE: END HUNGER $EAT) that has aimed to use trade fees to feed those who are hungry has just hit it’s all time high ($14.4M FDV) the same day it reached the milestone of funding 6000 meals.

Coinbase Listing: $EAT

It was launched on the Wyoming Decentralized Exchange and is now tradable on Coinbase.

About WYDE: END HUNGER($EAT)

• Tradable on Coinbase - TRADE

• The first cause coin with an organizational structure behind it (DUNA 501c4 federally approved tax exempt organization).

• The $EAT team is working with some of the most well-respected nonprofits in America

• Every trade funds verified food banks and operators who impact their local community.

• Holding $EAT provides you with governance in the organization (coming soon)

• Fair launched and fully decentralized.

• Meals Funded so far: 7,500+ / Next Milestone: 10,000

• Current number of holders: 548

Visit www.wyde.org for more information on Wyoming Decentralized Exchange

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