"U.S. prosecutors are asking about private markets valuations, DOJ's Clayton says"

What authority would they be claiming? Not the '33 or '34 Acts so probably some sort of fraud statute. Or maybe Federal Trade Commission false advertising, tee hee.

From Reuters, June 3:

Manhattan's top federal prosecutor ​said on Wednesday he and his staff are ‌asking questions in the private asset marketplace about valuations, as concerns rise about opacity in those processes in private credit and ​private equity.

 

Regarding "marks and transparency of marks, we can ​do a better job," U.S. Attorney for ⁠the Southern District of New York Jay Clayton ​told the Bloomberg Global Credit Forum.

 

Scrutiny has intensified on ​the valuations asset managers place on securities that rarely trade, partly pushed by increasing efforts among investment firms and some governments ​to channel more retail investor money into private assets.

 

Clayton ​said that in a market where multiple participants have the same ‌asset ⁠marked at different levels, it was important to ask questions, "particularly if they're making fees."....

....MORE 

 

Meanwhile, at the federal supermax prison in Colorado:

Guard:   "What are you in for?" 

 

Inmate: "Truth in advertising to hedge funds." 

Guard:  "Oooh, sorry bro, you're never getting out. They'll find a way to keep you here forever" 

"Is Scott Bessent Working to Crash the Yuan?"

From Rod Martin, June 2:

He helped break the Bank of England. Now Trump’s Treasury Secretary is using that experience for the United States — and China should be terrified. 

More than a year ago, both before and after Donald Trump announced his “Liberation Day” tariffs, I told you that China could not win a trade war with the United States. My reasoning was straightforward: China’s economy is far weaker than its official numbers pretend, its demographic collapse is leading it off a cliff, and its only way out — even in the short term — is exports, particularly to the U.S. market.

Not long after I started sounding that alarm, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent gave a long-form interview explaining Trump’s tariff strategy. Buried inside it was something far more important.

China, he said, has the most imbalanced economy in modern history. It is trapped in a deflationary recession — perhaps depression — and trying to export its way out. Its own people do not trust the yuan. They want to get their money out. The Chinese Communist Party will not let them.

That sounds like normal economic commentary. It isn’t. Bessent was describing the anatomy of a currency regime under pressure.

If you understand who Scott Bessent is and what he once did, that should run shivers up your spine.

In 1992, Bessent was a leading member of the team at Soros Fund Management that “broke the Bank of England.” Britain was trying to defend the pound inside Europe’s Exchange Rate Mechanism. The official line was confidence, stability, managed order, and responsible policy. The SFM team saw something else: a government defending a position reality no longer supported.

Soros got the legend. Bessent helped him execute. Trump watched, and learned the lesson.

Speculators do not destroy sound currencies by magic. They attack when governments defend lies. They see the contradiction before politicians admit it, before central bankers explain it away, before the press corps discovers it three years too late and pretends it was obvious all along. Britain broke. The pound fell. The Bank of England lost.

Now Bessent is Trump’s Treasury Secretary, and the currency under pressure is not the pound. It is the yuan.

So here is the question the Enemedia will not ask, and probably won’t even think of: is Scott Bessent working to crash China’s currency?

Not by announcing it. Serious men don’t announce the trade before they make it. By doing something much larger: strengthening the dollar, hardening the American financial system, using tariffs to stop China from exporting its depression into our markets, and forcing Beijing’s unsustainable economic model into the open.

Presidents hire people for a reason. Trump did not put Scott Bessent at Treasury because he needed another Wall Street résumé. Trump hired a man who had helped break a major currency from the inside, who understood the role of confidence, leverage, capital flows, interest rates, debt, and political denial, and who knew that governments do not lose control of currencies because traders are clever. They lose control because reality finally catches up with the lie.

Bessent is not incidental to Trump’s China strategy. He is one of its central weapons.

China is not Britain in 1992. The analogy is not exact, nor does it need to be. Britain was defending a currency arrangement markets no longer believed. China is defending something far bigger: the fiction that an overbuilt, overleveraged, export-addicted dictatorship with too little domestic consumption and evaporating foreign direct investment can keep growing forever while its own people are trapped behind financial walls and its customers are shutting their doors.

That fiction is embodied, crystallized in the yuan.

The yuan is not a normal currency. It is not the dollar. It’s not even the euro. It is a managed instrument of Communist Party control. A real reserve currency requires trust. It requires convertibility. It requires deep and open capital markets. It requires the rule of law. It requires confidence that the government will not trap your savings the moment they become politically inconvenient.

China cannot offer any of those things without ceasing to be Communist China.

This is the place where all of China’s contradictions meet. Beijing needs a weak yuan because its economy is built around exports. If Chinese goods get too expensive abroad, factories slow, unemployment rises, debt problems worsen, and the Party’s claim to competent rule erodes. But Beijing also needs a strong yuan because the moment ordinary Chinese believe their currency will fall, they will try to get their savings out even faster than they already do. That means tighter capital controls, more fear, more distortions, and still less trust....

....MUCH MORE 

There's a lot going on in the world 

"EU Parliament to switch to French search engine from Google in tech sovereignty push"

From Reuters, June 3:

The European Parliament will switch to French ​search engine Qwant from Google it said on Wednesday, underscoring Europe's push to reduce its reliance on U.S. technology ​in favour of local alternatives.

The ​European Commission will later on Wednesday ⁠announce measures on chips, cloud computing ​services and AI as part of ​its "Buy and Use European" drive....

....MORE 

 

Having a sovereign cloud is a good idea. Chips? Maybe not. 

Capital Markets: "War and New Tariff Threat Strengthen the Dollar"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

While what has been dubbed China Shock 2.0 as the Chinese model moves into higher value-added goods is important, the most immediate challenge facing investors is the double shock from the US in the form or tariffs and war. And both are impacting the capital markets today. More clashes between the US and Iran have been reported, which are underpinning oil prices and lifting bond yields. At the same time, the US is threatening new tariffs of at least 10% on imports from 60 trading partners over how goods allegedly from forced labor are handled. This levy would ostensibly apply to Canada, Mexico, the EU, Taiwan, and UK, while China, Japan, India, South Korea, Brazil, and Switzerland would face a 12.5% tariff. A public comment and review period is planned to run into early July before implementation. 

The US dollar is firmer against most of the G10 currencies. The two exceptions are notable. The Norwegian krone is the strongest and may be helped by the gains in oil prices. The yen is the other exception.  While comments by BOJ Governor Ueda saw the swap market lift the chances of a rate hike later this month, officials said little new about the weakness of the yen. The greenback tested JPY160 without moving above it, which is its best level since the late April intervention. It is hovering a little below it ahead of the North American session....

....MUCH MORE 

"The real story behind NVIDIA’s Unitree deal is not the robot—it is a massive bet on what is coming next" (NVDA)

From India's Financial Express, June 1:

Nvidia's decision to build its new humanoid robot platform around Unitree indicates a major push into robotics, autonomous systems and the future of physical AI. 

Artificial intelligence may be driving Nvidia’s record growth today, but the company increasingly sees robotics as the next frontier. From humanoid robots and autonomous machines to self-driving cars and robotic factories, Nvidia is positioning itself as the technology backbone of what CEO Jensen Huang calls the era of “physical AI.”

Now, Chinese humanoid robot maker Unitree has landed one of its most significant endorsements yet. Nvidia has selected Unitree’s H2 humanoid robot as the foundation of the first robotics system it is selling to leading research institutions, including Stanford University and ETH Zurich.

The new platform combines Unitree’s nearly six-foot-tall H2 humanoid robot with Nvidia’s Jetson Thor computing system, powered by the company’s latest Blackwell GPU architecture. Rather than simply supplying chips, Nvidia is now packaging hardware, software and simulation tools into a complete robotics development platform for researchers.

ALSO READ

The Nvidia effect: How 2 Korean memory giants drove a 213% market rally

For Unitree, the partnership provides access to some of the world’s most prestigious robotics laboratories. For Nvidia, it is another step toward a future where robots become a major driver of growth beyond traditional artificial intelligence applications.

ALSO READ

Nvidia salaries revealed: AI and engineering roles pay nearly $500,000 a year

A market Nvidia believes could be enormous 
Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has been increasingly vocal about the potential of robotics. Last year, he told shareholders that robotics, alongside artificial intelligence, represented Nvidia’s largest growth opportunity.

“We have many growth opportunities across our company, with AI and robotics the two largest, representing a multitrillion-dollar growth opportunity,” Huang said. He has also outlined a future where robots become as common as computers and smartphones are today.

“We’re working towards a day where there will be billions of robots, hundreds of millions of autonomous vehicles, and hundreds of thousands of robotic factories that can be powered by Nvidia technology,” Huang said.

The company expects rapid expansion in robotics over the next five years as advances in AI make machines more capable of understanding, reasoning and interacting with real-world environments....

....MUCH MORE 

If interested see also the backgrounder at the South China Morning Post, March 23:

Inside Unitree’s landmark IPO: what to know about China’s humanoid giant

And at TechNode, June 2:

Unitree IPO approved, Meituan-backed group emerges as top shareholder

"AI revolution is ‘50x bigger’ than the dot-com boom: SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son to CNBC"

I assume Mr. Son is aware the term "dot.com" does not have the best connotations.

From CNBC, June 1:

• Softbank CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC that the AI revolution will outpace the dot-com boom in the 2000s.
• “This is the biggest revolution of technology and realization that mankind ever experienced,” Son said.
• The Japanese investment giant announced on Friday a 75 billion-euro investment to build AI infrastructure in France.  

The AI revolution is 50 times bigger than the dot-com revolution in the 2000s, SoftBank  

CEO Masayoshi Son told CNBC Monday.

“I think this is like more than 10x, probably 50x bigger than dot-com,” Son told CNBC’s Arjun Kharpal in Paris, a day after the company announced that it’s investing 75 billion euros ($87 billion) to build AI infrastructure in France, including 5 GW of AI data center capacity.

The SoftBank chief said the dot-com crash experienced a painful burst, which proved to be just a small bump in a much bigger long-term growth story.

“This is the biggest revolution of technology and realization that mankind ever experienced, so this is just like the beginning of the internet,” Son added.

Son referenced the fall of auto and electronics stocks in the 1929 Wall Street crash, saying, “There’s always a correction.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Possibly related:

March 2008 - Markets, Risk and Gambler's Ruin

June 2012 - Repost: Dreamtime Finance (and the Kelly Criterion)  

March 2014 -  Expected utility, the Kelly criterion, and transmogrification of truth 

November 2019 - SoftBank’s problems aren’t so surprising if you understand this one thing about the company

Throughout the manic phase of SoftBank and the Vision fund there was almost no mention of the fact that at the start of this century Masayoshi Son was the richest person in the word:"But Son’s fairytale didn’t last long. After the dot-com bubble burst, his company Softbank’s shares plunged 75 percent in two months and was 93 percent lower by the end of 2000.
The business almost went bankrupt and Son ended up losing USD 70 billion, the highest ever recorded financial loss for a person in history."

—MoneyControl, October 13, 2017

We had a couple posts around the time of the above that touched on the craziness but not the past history:
SoftBank In Talks To Acquire U.S. Treasury
Sprint, T-Mobile Plunge: SoftBank Calling Off Merger, Will Use Cash to Buy Canada

See also semi-varience, after the jump....

February 2020 -  The First Time SoftBank's Masayoshi Son Went Broke

As a side note: If the British government had not refused to allow Nvidia to purchase Arm Holdings, Mr Son would not have had the opportunity to do so and his claim to fame would have been his position as the largest investor in WeWork. 

My favorite Son quote was his advice to Adam Neumann of WeWork (Softbank's investment in WeWork eventually totaled $16 billion):

“I told Adam not to be proud that WeWork was growing organically without a large sales force or spending big marketing dollars,” Softbank boss Masayoshi Son told Forbes after Softbank’s first investment in 2017. “Make it ten times bigger than your original plan. If you think in that manner, the valuation is cheap.” He added, “It can be worth a few hundred billion dollars.”

That may be some of the worst career advice ever. But probably not the worst:

an internship at the white house will be amazing on your resume. 😳

— Monica Lewinsky (she/her) (@MonicaLewinsky) July 14, 2019

"Famed short-seller Andrew Left convicted of securities fraud in landmark case"

From Markets Insider via MSN, June 1:

• A federal jury found Andrew Left of Citron Research guilty of securities fraud.
• Left, who took the stand in his own defense, could face years in prison.
• The Los Angeles trial was closely watched because of potential consequences on Wall Street.

Short-seller Andrew Left was convicted Monday of securities fraud for a lucrative tweet-and-trade operation — a verdict that could have consequences on Wall Street....

....MUCH MORE 

 Good.

RAND: "Aligning Forecasting Methods to Support Intelligence Community Analytic Tradecraft"

From the RAND Corporation, May 11:

Forecasting is hard. Accurate forecasting is harder still. But why forecasting? In support of policymakers dealing with uncertainty, intelligence analysts perform three principal functions: They form judgments, prepare forecasts, and generate insights. A key aim of this paper is to show how better alignment between forecasting methods and structured analytic techniques (SATs) will enhance analysts’ judgments about the future—thereby improving the decision-support advantage that policymakers expect from intelligence.

This paper was developed for U.S. government analysts, intelligence practitioners, and national security managers interested in learning how forecasting methods can leverage traditional analytic approaches and enhance tradecraft across the Intelligence Community (IC). The authors examine how forecasting approaches to probabilistic reasoning, uncertainty quantification, and structured question design complement the analytic principles established in IC Directives. Rather than introducing a new analytic paradigm in this paper, the authors emphasize interoperability: how forecasting can be integrated within existing IC analytical frameworks, such as scenario planning, Red team analysis, and other SATs. That is, the authors frame forecasting as a supporting discipline that can be integrated to complement and enhance, not replace, established tradecraft. It is thus positioned as an additive capability that enhances analytic rigor, strengthens the expression of uncertainty, and complements existing IC methodologies, such as scenario planning and related SATs with forecasting applicability....

....MUCH MORE (download page for the 28 page PDF) 

Flashback: China Began Hoarding Personal Protective Equipment Months Before The Covid-19 Pandemic Was Declared

As noted introducing May 28's "For the Public, Covid Is No Longer a Mystery":
Over the next six months there will be a lot of information coming out regarding coronavirus, Covid-19 and the responses thereto. A lot....

From The Telegraph, October 8, 2022:

China ‘began stockpiling PPE months before Covid outbreak’
China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts say  

China began severely restricting the export of personal protective equipment (PPE), such as gowns and masks, months before notifying the world of the outbreak of Covid-19, it has emerged.

PPE exports to the US fell by around 50 per cent between August and September of 2019, in a significant drop which raised alarm bells at key US government agencies.

China also started to buy up global PPE stocks in Europe, Australia and the US around the same time, experts said.

The fall in PPE supplies exiting China, the world’s biggest manufacturer of PPE, raises new questions about the true timeline of the emergence of SARS-CoV-2.

An altered timeline would significantly challenge the theory that the pandemic originated from a seafood market in Wuhan, where the first cases emerged in December 2019.

The anomaly was uncovered by former US government officials including Dr Tom McGinn, a Senior Health Advisor at the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and Colonel John Hoffman, a Senior Research Fellow with the Food Protection and Defence Institute whose career spans decades in US government and military.

The pair were unconvinced that the virus had started at the Wuhan Wet Market in December 2019, after and began looking for an alternative theory.

After scouring a Customs and Border Protection database which tracks goods entering the US, they noticed China had started hoarding PPE far earlier than the initial date of the outbreak.

“You can go and look about three years back [at import data]”, said Colonel Hoffman. “This is not the normal up and down that occurs”

The pair presented the information to DHS’s Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office, which declined to investigate, saying the drop reflected normal supply fluctuations.

However when Col Hoffman contacted one of America’s biggest hospital networks, HCA Healthcare, the organisation confirmed it was highly unusual.

Surgical gowns on backorder in September 2019

A representative of HCA, which operates around 200 hospitals and 2,000 clinics, reported surgical gowns and drapes went on backorder in late September 2019, leaving hospitals scrambling.

“I asked HCA folks if this had happened anytime recently”, Col Hoffman added.

“The answer was no—they could not remember ever seeing so much of this stuff on back order.”

David Asher, a former State Department official who played a key role in the pandemic response and now a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, says the shortage was also caused by Chinese government efforts to buy up global PPE stocks in the US, Europe and Australia.

“It was a persistent uptick [of Chinese purchasing]”, said Dr Asher. “And it was significant enough that my colleagues at DHS heard about it from American companies that manufacture PPE, and most importantly from US hospitals reporting they weren’t able to get the normal supply of masks, gloves, gowns and goggles”.

China’s campaign to snatch up global PPE stocks and ship them back to China at the start of the pandemic in January and February 2020.

But earlier purchasing efforts from August and September 2019, call into question whether the Chinese were aware of an outbreak earlier....

....MUCH MORE 

And closer to contemporaneous but lacking the September 2019 dating, from Top Class Actions, April 10, 2020:

Medical Workers Say China is Hoarding COVID-19 Supplies  

Possibly also of interest, May 20's "U.S. probing whether Chinese companies cut production of shipping containers before COVID pandemic" 

"3 things businesses need to know from Nvidia’s Computex 2026 keynote" (NVDA)

Well, among other things ARM Holdings stock was up 15.7% yesterday, bringing the one-month gain to 96.32%:

 

TradingView 

And Marvell was up $14.43 (+7.04%) to $219.43 and another $48.64 (+22.17%) in this morning's pre-market trade after Mr. Huang said MRVL would achieve a trillion-dollar market cap.

Nvidia's CEO says a lot of things.*

From TechFinitive, June 1:

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang kicked off Computex 2026 with a sonic boom of a bang this morning by claiming that it is going to reinvent the PC in exactly the same way that Apple reinvented the phone.

“Remember, 15, 20 years ago, we used to have an idea called a phone,” said Huang during the two-hour keynote speech. “Today, when you think about your phone, the one thing you don’t do with it is make phone calls. You do just about everything else. So that phone means something very different to you than a phone of the past.

“I am certain that what is going to happen here is that the PC ten years from now, and the PC you think about today… is going to be completely different,” he said. “Here’s my theory. [Just as] many houses have home theatres, lawnmowers, dishwashers, I can totally imagine that someday there’s an AI supercomputer in your house.”

Naturally, an AI supercomputer that will be running on Nvidia silicon. It’s no coincidence that Huang also announced RTX Spark, an AI-focused chip that will run Windows. More of that later in this article.

Huang’s vision is that rather than our current idea of a PC that you sit in front of, clicking and typing, in this future world the PC will be “running all of your agents, it’s running all of your assistants, and it’s doing all kinds of things for you all the time”.

But that’s the future, one that sets the direction of travel for Nvidia and perhaps the entire PC industry. Against that backdrop, here’s a run-through of five immediate announcements that we think businesses, enterprises and large organisations should take note of.

AI supercomputer on every enterprise desk

While Huang’s vision of an AI supercomputer in every house seems a little distant, it has already announced an AI supercomputer for every desk in an enterprise. This echoes Bill Gates’ successful prediction, made in 1993, of a computer in every home.

The enterprise AI supercomputer in question is the Nvidia DGX Station for Windows. Based on the Nvidia GB300 Grace Blackwell Ultra Desktop Superchip (Nvidia is not afraid of superlatives) it can pack up to 748GB of memory and provides up to 20 petaflops of FP4 performance....

....MUCH MORE 

In March 2024 Huang literally shone the spotlight on Michael Dell at the March GTC confab. It took a while for the market to catch on but catch on it did:

 

5 years—TradingView 

As the old-timers used to say: "Pay attention or pay the offer." 

Capital Markets: "Market Continues to Tempt Japanese Intervention, while PBOC Signals Gradual Yuan Appreciation"

From Marc to Market:

The capital markets remain hopefully that the US and Iran will reach an agreement. Oil is a little softer and bond yields are lower. However, in Polymarket, the odds that the Strait of Hormuz is open by the end of the month is at around 22%, down from around 35% last week. The odds it is open by the end of next month is 41%. It briefly was below 40% yesterday for the first time in around three weeks.

The dollar is mostly a little softer but within well-worn ranges. The dollar continues to ease slowly against the Chinese yuan. Against the offshore yuan, a new three-year low was recorded today even as the PBOC set the dollar’s fix slightly higher. Meanwhile, the greenback is trading in a narrow range near yesterday’s high against the Japanese yen (~JPY159.75), which is the highest the it has been since the April 30 intervention....

....MUCH MORE 

A.I. "Mistral to explore designing own chips, CEO says, as it ramps up infrastructure build"

From CNBC, May 28:

• Mistral’s semiconductor ambitions underscore the company’s bid to control more of its infrastructure as it competes with OpenAI and Anthropic.
• The French startup also announced a new data center in France designed specifically for inferencing.
• “Europe is lagging behind when it comes to [the] buildout of infrastructure, and so we are investing to close that gap,” CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC.

French startup Mistral AI is exploring designing its own chips and may eventually develop them, CEO Arthur Mensch told CNBC.

It is the first comment made by Mensch about Mistral’s semiconductor ambitions, underscoring how the company is looking to control more of its infrastructure as it competes with U.S. heavyweights OpenAI and Anthropic.

“Of course, it is interesting,” Mensch said about the prospect of Mistral developing its own chips, adding that the company is not ruling it out.

Mensch said that custom chips allow a company to “lower the cost of deploying tokens to meaningful extents.” Tokens are units of data processed by AI models.

“Owning the chips may come, I think it should come at some point, but for now we are relying on Nvidia, which is a great partner to us, and we’re testing a few things here and there,” Mensch told CNBC.

Mistral, which is valued at nearly 12 billion euros, develops AI models but is also investing in building data centers with Nvidia chips. The Paris-headquartered firm is often seen as Europe’s answer to OpenAI and Anthropic.

The company is focused on enterprise and counts companies such as chip equipment giant ASML among its top customers.

If Mistral were to develop its own chips, it would follow in the footsteps of the big American hyperscalers such as Amazon and Google, which have designed and deployed their own semiconductors in their data centers.

Custom chips, also known as an application-specific integrated circuit, are seen as a way for hyperscalers to have more control over their hardware and software integrations, potentially offering a differentiated product from competitors.

Data center expansion 
Mistral announced on Thursday a new data center in France designed specifically for inferencing, which is the actual process of running AI models....

....MUCH MORE 

What's Up (Down) With GE Vernova? (GEV)

It's been a bad month for GEV:

 

TradingView 

Down 12.70% since May 1 and even more since the April 23 all-time highs ($1,181.95 intraday, $1,149.53 closing).

However! The fact that I'm posting this likely means the stock is at or very near an intermediate-term bottom, $950.54 down $17.78 (-1.84%) at today's close. ($939.00 intraday low)

That's the way this blogging stuff works and I have no idea why. 

First up, from EnergyWatch, May 28:

GE Vernova sees more states putting up barriers to energy projects 

”We are seeing more and more states that are clearly putting up barriers,” says the company’s chief executive at a conference.

GE Vernova fell 1.9% on Wednesday at midday in the US after CEO Scott Strazik expressed caution regarding the outlook for data center and wind energy projects at a conference organized by investment firm Bernstein.

Regarding the outlook for data centers, the chief executive stated:

“We are seeing more and more states that are clearly putting up barriers. And we have customers who are struggling to get their projects completed,” he said, according to Bloomberg News.

However, the CEO does not foresee canceled orders from customers.

In the wind business, “the pipeline is very significant, but it is very difficult to convert the wind power pipeline into orders, while there is also significant economic uncertainty surrounding issues like tariffs,” says Strazik.

He still expects GE Vernova to deliver 1,500 wind turbines in 2026, “but I don’t think we can expect to see these orders until there is clarity on tariffs in the US.”

In the German market, Siemens Energy fell 4.1% on Wednesday, and in Denmark, Vestas plunged 7.4%....

....MORE 

And at Investor's Business Daily, May

AI Leader GE Vernova: Data-Center Customers 'Are Struggling To Get Projects Across The Line'  

AI data centers are indeed receiving community pushback, but GE Vernova (GEV) sees little risk to its AI-led energy equipment and services backlog, management said on Wednesday. GE Vernova stock fell modestly but is near a buy point.

Artificial-intelligence data centers make massive demands for computing power and suck up vast amounts of energy. GE Vernova's electrification segment especially targets the energy infrastructure needs of AI data centers. It is a leader in that market.

Big Tech firms like Amazon (AMZN) and Microsoft (MSFT) are behind the AI data-center boom.

AI Data Centers: 'Struggling To Get Projects Across The Line'

At a Bernstein industry conference on Wednesday, Vernova's top executive acknowledged that community opposition to data centers is real, while soothing fears about a risk to growth.

Some customers are "struggling to get projects across the line" as "more and more states" push back, GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik said. However, he described lease cancellations and project delays as "quite normal" in the power industry.

Strazik added this type of "typical" pushback is assumed in realization rates. He explained: "So when (customers) sit down with us and project the next number of years of growth, they'll often show us many, many more projects than they are securing equipment for. They know there is a number of projects that, for one reason or other, either they will choose not to develop, or externalities beyond their own control will make it difficult to make happen."

As such, Vernova sees low risk to the backlog. In fact, Strazik likened the current power cycle to the "1945 after World War II" era.

In both periods, economic growth and the issue of national security or energy independence boosted overall power demand.

For Vernova, realization rates mean the pace at which the order backlog — a record $163 billion now — turns into realized revenue....

....MUCH MORE 

And finally, the judge who told GEV they had to continue working on an offshore wind project, via a preliminary injunction a month ago today reaffirmed the order.

From The New Bedford Light, June 1:

Judge rules again for Vineyard Wind in its dispute with GE Vernova
The turbine supplier remains barred from exiting its contract with the wind project. 

A judge in Boston has again denied GE Vernova’s request to leave the Vineyard Wind project. He affirmed his April ruling that temporarily bars the turbine supplier from exiting its contract to service and maintain the turbines.

GE Vernova submitted a request for Judge Peter B. Krupp to reconsider his preliminary injunction, arguing that Vineyard Wind achieving commercial operation and activating its power purchase agreements (thereby locking in a decadeslong revenue stream) belies the project’s earlier argument that it was in great financial and operational peril....

....MUCH MORE 

It is in times like this that the value of sales/earnings/cash flow becomes important for one's sleep hygiene. 

Nvidia Just Set The Second-Largest Market Cap Gain In History (NVDA)

If my abacus is working correctly today's gain is just under a third-of-a-trillion-dollars, $320 billion.

That is second only to:

Nvidia,  July 31, 2024  - $327 billion.

But exceeds the other contenders:

Nvidia, Feb 22, 2024 - $277 billion

Nvidia  May 23, 2024 - $218 billion

Apple  June 11, 2024 - $215 billion

—Visual Capitalist,  Ranked: Top 10 Single-Day Market Cap Gains

The headline this morning from WCCFTech was: "Taipei's "Computex 2026 Will Be NVIDIA’s Biggest Event Of The Year. Here’s What To Expect" (NVDA)" 

And Sunday:

"Nvidia, Microsoft preparing AI PCs, source says" (NVDA; MSFT; DELL) 

Motorola Solutions To Buy Anti-Drone Tech Co. For $1.5 Billion (MSI)

From Globes (Israeli business news), June 1:

Motorola Solutions to buy Israeli co D-Fend for $1.5b 

The Ra’anana-based startup, which has developed counter-drone technology, will become the most expensive-ever acquisition of an Israeli defense company.

Motorola Solutions (NYSE: MSI) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Israeli counter-drone technology company D-Fend Solutions for $1.5 billion cash. This is the biggest ever acquisition of an Israeli defense technology company.

Motorola Solutions has been active in Israel since the 1960s and has hundreds of employees in Israel developing communication and liaison systems for the police, the army and security organizations. The Israeli acquisition will bring Motorola Solutions into the drone market in an activity that will continue to operate from D-Fend’s headquarters in Raanana, with the startup's 250 employees to move to Motorola in exchange for tens of millions of dollars in bonuses and shares.

D-Fend has developed a drone interception system that swiftly locates drones, takes control of them remotely using radio waves, and lands them safely in a place where they will not cause collateral damage. Despite the variety of potential military applications on the battlefields of Lebanon and Ukraine, the company’s technology is mainly used for civilian facilities: airports, border stations, stadiums and strategic facilities that require special protection....

....MUCH MORE

The company is not a startup so we changed the headline.

"Prediction market traders eye up to $260,000 salaries at hedge funds"

But if you are working at a hedge fund where are you going to get your material non-public information?

Maybe that's why the salary is as low as it is.

From FinancialNews, London, May 24:

AQR Capital Management is joining the rush of financial heavyweights into event-based markets 

Hedge funds and proprietary trading firms are floating salaries of up to $260,000 to build out prediction markets desks, as an event-betting craze sparks a battle for talent among institutional adopters.

Cliff Asness’ AQR Capital Management is the latest US trading giant to set up a prediction markets unit, with the hedge fund currently hiring for a vice-president to build quantitative models to trade around professional sports.

The role is expected to have a salary of between $235,000 to $260,000, alongside an annual discretionary bonus, according to AQR’s job listing. It is seeking candidates with skills in computer science as well as “familiarity with the basic rules of major sports”, including the top US leagues for baseball, basketball, American Football and hockey.

Asness, AQR’s billionaire co-founder and chief investment officer, has previously criticised the “gamification” of markets but said last year that recent developments in sports betting had thrown up opportunities for his $189bn money manager.

AQR’s job listing says the successful candidate will sit within a “quantitative research team focused on prediction markets”, with a supervising portfolio manager. The firm declined to comment further.

“The multi-manager platforms didn’t get to where they are by ignoring inefficiency,” said Sean Sweeney, managing director at hedge fund recruitment firm CW Talent Solutions.

“They built entire businesses on finding it before the market caught up. Prediction markets are the next frontier of that same logic.”

Alongside direct trading on prediction markets, the platforms offer rich data on real-world events with which hedge funds may look to bolster their bets in other markets.

Chicago-based DRW, one of the world’s largest proprietary trading firms, has also been hiring for a new desk focused on platforms such as Polymarket and Kalshi in recent months.

DRW is offering an annual base salary of between $175,000 and $200,000 for a prediction markets trader, according to one job listing currently on its website....

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Fifty grand a month and half the profits seems fair. 

"Ranking Venture Investors"

From the Social Science Research Network, May 27:

Abstract

We develop a new ranking algorithm of venture capital (VC) firms and individual VC investors. Our algorithm emphasizes the importance of valuation, dilution, net profits, value add, and human capital decay. For illustration, we apply the methodology to rank the top 100 US-based individual VCs and top 100 US-based VC firms for 2023, drawing on more than 230,000 investments by over 13,000 VCs. Our rankings differ sharply from the Midas list published by Forbes: only 42 of our top 100 individual VCs appear on the 2023 Midas list, and the correlation of rankings among investors ranked in the top-100 by both lists is approximately 0.27. We attempt to replicate the Midas methodology and find significant inconsistencies that cannot be explained by methodological differences alone. 

SSRN download page 

SEC Statement: By Commissioner Hester M. Peirce "Climate Change: Statement on Proposed Rescission of Climate-Related Disclosure Rules"

From the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, May 29:

Commissioner Hester M. Peirce
May 29, 2026

The Commission has struggled with the climate disclosure proposal for years. Today we are proposing to rescind the rule that the Commission adopted in 2024. I support the rescission proposal and look forward to hearing feedback from the public.

I understand why some people strongly support a climate disclosure rule from the SEC. Many people believe that climate change is an existential threat that justifies commandeering any tool to address the problem. Among the tools they eye is the corporate disclosure framework. Climate disclosure advocates point to other jurisdictions that have turned to their securities disclosure regimes for information about greenhouse gas emissions and other climate-related issues. They have watched as those coopted disclosure regimes have reshaped not just what companies disclose, but the products they make and the way they make them. Designing securities disclosure to be a lever of change, however, exceeds the authority Congress gave to the SEC. Congress directed us to establish a disclosure regime that helps investors understand the company’s fundamental business and financial characteristics. As I have explained elsewhere, the target audience of our disclosures is investors as a class.[1] Investors as individuals are not a uniform group, but as a class they share a common interest in financial returns. That defining characteristic of investors must focus our mandated disclosures.

While Congress has told us to consider whether additional disclosure is necessary or appropriate in the public interest the Supreme Court has clarified that we must view “public interest” through the lens of our mission. Unless Congress explicitly has directed otherwise, we do not have the authority to craft boundless disclosure rules to respond to stakeholder demands, investors’ idiosyncratic interests, or our own curiosity. When we proposed and adopted the climate rule, I was concerned that we were exceeding our statutory authority by crafting a highly prescriptive and expansive set of disclosures designed for a purpose other than informing investors. Today’s proposal sets forth these concerns and affords the public the opportunity to weigh in.

Adhering to a merit-neutral, materiality-centric disclosure framework is not only consistent with the SEC’s statutory authority, but also good for the health of our capital markets. An effective disclosure framework helps capital flow to its highest and best use. When money gets to the people who can put it to productive use, society benefits. Allocating capital into the right hands means more cures for disease, greener energy, technologies that make our lives easier and more enjoyable, cleaner water and air, better infrastructure, healthier and more abundant food, and educational tools that empower our children to become the next generation of problem-solvers. This proposal, if adopted, is a step toward restoring our disclosure framework to its intended purpose and thus to helping our capital markets better serve society.

[1] Commissioner Hester M. Peirce, The Art and Science of Materiality: Remarks at SEC Speaks (Mar. 19, 2026), available at: https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/speeches-statements/peirce-remarks-sec-speaks-031926. 

Who Will Buy These Giant IPOs After They Begin Trading? You Will (SpaceX; OpenAI; Anthropic et al.)

Or, more accurately, the index funds in your retirement account will.

First up, from Neue Zürcher Zeitung's TheMarket.ch, May 27: 

"These Monster IPOs Expose the Dark Side of Passive Investing"

SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are rushing to go public. Larry McDonald, founder of «The Bear Traps Report» and New York Times best-selling author, warns that their accelerated inclusion into indices like the S&P 500 amounts to market manipulation. He explains why he prefers to bet on commodities and traditional Old Economy companies. 

Deutsche Version

The impressive stock market rally seems virtually unstoppable. Higher energy prices, rising interest rates, and mounting signs of excess in sectors like the semiconductor industry leave investors unfazed. Fueled by the artificial intelligence boom, the benchmark S&P 500 index continues to hit one record high after another.

With the announcement of SpaceX’s IPO, tech stocks are moving even further into the spotlight. Elon Musk is reportedly planning to list his space company in New York within a matter of weeks. OpenAI and Anthropic, the two largest private AI firms, are likewise forging plans for an imminent debut. These three transactions are expected to break all Wall Street records.

Larry McDonald views this with a sense of unease. «I fear there’s a good chance the market gets overwhelmed,» says the founder of the research service «The Bear Traps Report» and author of the bestseller «How to Listen When Markets Speak». In every cycle, he notes, there is a spectacular deal or IPO that marks the peak. That could be the case now. Furthermore, he points out that AI stocks currently account for nearly 50% of the S&P 500’s market capitalization. 

«If these new heavyweights are added, everyone’s 401 (k) is almost certain to face a deathly overdose.»

The veteran investor and former Lehman trader is particularly troubled by the fact that SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic are slated to be fast-tracked into major indices like the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq 100. In an in-depth interview with The Market NZZ, which has been lightly edited, he explains why he believes this amounts to a raid on the portfolios of many investors. He also outlines why he still anticipates a major rotation of capital into the energy, commodities, and industrials sectors.

The stock market continues to forge ahead undeterred, despite higher energy prices and rising interest rates. How do you explain this impressive rally?

Once again, the stock market is drunk on a narrative. Artificial intelligence is the new everything, and you see it everywhere: on newspaper front pages, at cocktail conversations, and on the balance sheets of Big Tech corporations, which are bloated by massive capital investments. Potential earnings of future years are being prematurely priced in. Investors are betting that AI will yield exponential returns, while the risks such as friction or competition are largely ignored.

 

The headlines currently revolve around the planned mega-IPOs of SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic. What do these three transactions signify with regard to the broader environment?

I fear there’s a good chance the market gets overwhelmed. Every cycle features a marquee deal or IPO that defines its peak. In the credit boom of the 1980s, it was KKR’s takeover of consumer goods giant RJR Nabisco; in the tech, media, and telecom bubble of the late 1990s, it was the mega-merger of AOL and Time Warner; and during the excesses of the housing market, it was the record-breaking sum Sam Zell secured in early 2007 by selling his real estate empire.

 

And today’s counterpart could be these three IPOs?

It certainly wouldn’t surprise me. These monster IPOs amount to a coup of the century. If you do the math, the valuations of these three companies have exploded in a short period. A year ago, they were valued at roughly $760 billion combined: SpaceX at $400 billion, OpenAI at $300 billion, and Anthropic at $61 billion. Those were already hefty figures, but SpaceX’s valuation is now estimated at $1.5 trillion, while Anthropic and OpenAI stand at $1.1 trillion and $825 billion, respectively. That brings the total to around $3.5 trillion. Basically, they tripled in a year, which is pure madness.

 

Why?

Because a group of billionaires is attempting to seize the moment to dump their stakes onto the public at these bloated valuations. What is particularly scandalous is that these companies are to be admitted into major indices through an accelerated entry process. To be included in the flagship S&P 500, for instance, a company must typically be publicly traded for at least a year and report a cumulative profit over the previous four quarters. That these mandates, including standard free-float thresholds, are now being waved is almost criminal.

 

SpaceX just reported a $4.3 billion net loss for the first quarter alone according to its IPO prospectus. Is a company like this even fit for an IPO?

As usual, Wall Street analysts will brush aside such concerns with plenty of wishful thinking. SpaceX’s stated goal is to build a de facto monopoly on space-based data centers; essentially a modern rail system for the AI era. Such a dominant market position would imply immense pricing power, which is intended to make the entire enterprise highly profitable someday and justify the valuation. How realistic this business model is remains to be seen. But the timeline for its realization is quite grotesque.

 

SpaceX founder Elon Musk speaks of two to three years.

Exactly. Even Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, who runs his own aerospace company, concedes that it will likely take twice as long – and even that appears highly optimistic. The fundamental issue, however, is that potential delays will push expected profitability far out into the future. From my perspective, investing in SpaceX right now is akin to buying Amazon in the spring of 2000 at the peak of the dot-com bubble: back then, investors prematurely priced in enormous future earnings potential. Amazon ultimately did turn out to be a phenomenal success story, but its stock initially lost more than 90% during the dot-com crash.

 

According to index providers, however, the fast-tracked inclusion of mega-caps like SpaceX ensures that a widely followed benchmark like the S&P 500 accurately reflects the broader market. How valid is this argument?

That is a nice PR phrase, but my criticism targets a more vital aspect: the dark side of passive investing, as I call it. In my book, «How to Listen When Markets Speak», I devoted an entire chapter to this issue. Today, there are countless funds tracking the S&P 500 and other major indices. Passive investment strategies have reached such a massive volume that the market becomes gameable. If a company is included in a major index, it is practically guaranteed that the stock price will rise sharply ahead of time because passive funds are forced to buy the shares. A textbook example is sportswear manufacturer Lululemon. When its inclusion in the S&P 500 was announced in October 2023, the stock shot up over 10% the next trading day.

 

So you’re saying that an expedited inclusion process for SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic would virtually guarantee sufficient demand?

Throughout my career in the markets, I have witnessed scandals time and again. If you pay close attention, you can usually spot that something is amiss beforehand. Yet, the scandal is only revealed after the fact, public outrage never occurs until it is already too late. A classic case is the Ponzi scheme of Bernie Madoff, one of the biggest scandals in financial history. It only unraveled in late 2008 in the turmoil of the banking crisis.

 

How would an accelerated index inclusion affect SpaceX stock?

Based on its current valuation, SpaceX would debut among the top ten largest constituents in the S&P 500. Projections suggest that under a fast-track framework passive funds tracking the index would have to buy roughly 19% of the publicly traded shares within six months. Furthermore, funds tracking the Russell 1000 and the Nasdaq 100 would likely absorb another 5.5% just weeks after the IPO. If you throw in active mutual funds benchmarked to these indices, passive strategies would have to hold nearly half of all SpaceX shares in public hands. It is mind-boggling, and yet hardly anyone loses a word over it.

 

Why do you fear this story will not end well?

With accelerated index inclusion, the retirement savings of broad swaths of the population – particularly in the U.S – are effectively being hijacked. A disturbingly large portion of American household wealth is already concentrated in AI stocks. This is a classic setup that will culminate in a major scandal during the next market downturn, as the public will be left holding the bag. Before the collapse of Lehman Brothers in the fall of 2008, the financial sector accounted for about a quarter of the S&P 500, which was already considered unhealthy at the time. Today, AI-related tech stocks account for nearly 50%. If these new heavyweights are added, everyone’s 401 (k) is almost certain to face a deathly overdose.

 

Is there even enough liquidity to absorb these three giants IPOs?

That’s precisely my point. Word is that some large sovereign wealth funds in the Middle East are wounded due to the war. In the U.S., various banks have overextended themselves with share buybacks and leveraged buyouts, with Citigroup and Bank of America being particularly heavily exposed. These IPOs could place the system under even greater stress. I therefore believe that this is going to be the story of the year: the ripple effects of these IPOs and LBOs on banking liquidity....

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And at Hedgeye, May 29: 

When Passive Money Meets Mega IPOs | Protect the Pile Episode 13 

In this episode of Protect the Pile, the team covers liquidity-driven market strength, record S&P levels, resilient global equities, and oil’s strange weakness despite tightening inventories. Patrick Kent, Sam Rahman, David Salem, and new HAM portfolio manager Brooks Cutwright discuss index mechanics, free-float rules, profitability tests, and how massive IPOs could reshape passive buying. Sam shares takeaways from Bernstein’s conference, including AI data-center delays, power constraints, and semiconductor momentum. The panel also debates whether energy markets are mispricing crude shortages, potential demand destruction, and late-summer fuel risks. Brooks introduces his index-rebalance background and explains why index inclusion matters....

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Capital Markets: "Oil Gains on Apparent Lack of Middle East Progress"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

The war in the Middle East continues to hang over risk-taking appetites the sword of Damocles. There appears to have been little progress over the weekend, even though a US decision was expected after the meeting in the White House Situation Room at the end of last week. Reports suggest there have been a series of skirmishes over the weekend, and Israel intensified its assault on Lebanon. The US and Iran reportedly are proposing amendments to a draft deal. Both the Washington and Tehran apparently think they have the superior hand. Oil prices are 3-4% higher today. 

The dollar is consolidating mostly within the ranges seen at the end of last week. The market continues to test the resolve of Japanese officials. The greenback is holding above JPY159 and has not settled below there since last Monday. Most emerging market currencies are beginning the week softer, but the Mexican peso is a notable exception and the PBOC set the dollar’s fix at a new multiyear low though the offshore yuan consolidated its recent gains. The first round of the Colombian presidential election saw the outsider De La Espriella finish ahead. Although a run-off will be held later this month, the results will likely be seen as market friendly....

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Based on that first sentence it appears Mr. Chandler thinks faster than he types.

Been there, done that, sayeth [the] typo guy. 

Taipei's "Computex 2026 Will Be NVIDIA’s Biggest Event Of The Year. Here’s What To Expect" (NVDA)

From WCCFTech May 30:

Although CES 2026 was a massive disappointment for consumers, Computex 2026 looks to inject some much-needed excitement back into the beleaguered tech space.

In what is arguably the biggest consumer hardware launch of the year, Nvidia and ARM have already started teasing their highly anticipated N1X laptop chip, an APU based on the same GB10 chip used in the DGX Spark. Now, as Jensen prepares to take the stage at Computex next week, let's take a look at what Nvidia has planned for the show.

Nvidia's Laptop Chip Finally Launches, Packing 20 CPU Cores With An RTX 5070 Equivalent GPU 

Nvidia, Arm, and Microsoft have taken Twitter by storm recently, with a series of cryptic X posts declaring "A new era of PC", accompanied by coordinates pointing to Taipei Music Center. This obviously refers to the much-anticipated N1X laptop APU, packing 20 ARM cores and 6,144 CUDA cores into a single package, all sharing a unified memory pool over a 256-bit LPPDR5X bus. 

In theory, this should put N1X ahead of AMD's strongest APU, but as we've seen with Qualcomm's laptop chips, real-world gaming performance is still hit-or-miss on ARM-based CPUs, not to mention the significant memory bandwidth deficit with LPDDR5X. Another important note is that although the GPU has the same core count as a desktop RTX 5070, power consumption will be significantly lower, so expectations should be kept in check.

Obviously, the real draw with N1X will be the ability to allocate massive amounts of VRAM to the GPU from the shared memory pool. This will allow users to run intelligent, 100B+ parameter LLMs locally, just as we've seen with Strix Halo in its 128GB config. Nvidia's advantage here will be more robust, day-one support for various AI applications, as despite AMD's massive leaps with ROCm recently, CUDA remains king for crucial consumer use cases such as image and video generation.

In terms of partners for this launch, Dell, Lenovo, and ASUS have each either accidentally leaked confirmation of N1X models or hinted at such. HP hasn't teased (or leaked) anything yet, but they'll likely have models available too. Prices are still up in the air, but given that Strix Halo laptops with 128 GB of RAM retail for close to $3k nowadays, I'd expect a figure north of that for equivalently spec'd N1X laptops.

Vera Rubin, Nvidia's Complete "AI Factory" Platform, Rolls Out....  

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Counterpoint Research also has an overview, May 29:

Computex 2026: Agentic AI & Physical AI Reshaping the Computing Landscape

NVIDIA Remains in Spotlight:

AI is no longer confined to research. From energy and infrastructure to chips, models, and applications, the entire AI industry is rapidly developing. Vera Rubin, the successor to Blackwell, scales from rack-level to cell-level systems and is designed specifically for the era of agent-based AI. NVIDIA also stated that major hyperscale data center operators and system manufacturers are already deploying the platform. NVIDIA is building a complete AI platform, not just selling GPUs. With CUDA-X, MGX, and DSX, NVIDIA is building a complete AI infrastructure platform. NVIDIA also describes AI data centers as "token factories."

Agent-based AI will drive a new wave of computing demand. AI agents are rapidly entering personal computers, enterprise software, and work systems, creating enormous computing demand. This not only presents opportunities for GPUs but also provides new growth opportunities for CPUs in reinforcement learning and AI orchestration. NVIDIA will likely showcase the development of physical AI, including driverless taxis, autonomous vehicles, and humanoid robots.

Taiwan is becoming a key hub for the global AI industry. NVIDIA believes that AI will spawn a completely new industry, just like steam power, electricity, and the internet. Leveraging its semiconductor and supply chain advantages, Taiwan now holds a significant position. (GTC Taipei 2026 Highlights Expectations)

CPU to Become the Backbone of Agentic AI Infrastructure:
Last year, the focus was on core counts, node transitions, and ASICs. This year, we expect the focus to shift toward the CPU, as it is now the backbone of agentic AI infrastructure....

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"Climate tech companies are going public. What’s next?"

From MIT Technology Review, May 28:

Fervo Energy, X-energy, and Solv Energy are all racing to supply more electricity for rising demand. 

This year, there’s been a wave of notable energy companies going public via IPO in the US.

The solar and battery company Solv Energy went public in February, to the tune of $6 billion. X-energy, which is building small modular nuclear reactors, did the same in April, and its stocks surged on its first day of trading to hit a $11.5 billion market cap. Most recently, the geothermal company Fervo Energy went public in mid-May, and its market cap is now about $12.4 billion.

Those are all success stories in the IPO world. And it certainly doesn’t feel like a coincidence that all these companies are racing to provide electricity in an era of rising demand (partly due to data centers). Let’s take a look at how these firms are doing, what this moment says about the grid, and what’s coming next. 

Let’s start with Fervo Energy, a company we’ve covered a lot over the years that’s working to develop enhanced geothermal energy. (We included it on our 2025 list of Climate Tech Companies to Watch.) While conventional geothermal requires finding specific spots with hot rock, water, and fractures to support a power plant, Fervo essentially uses fracking techniques to create the necessary conditions.

The company was founded in 2017, and it raised about $1.5 billion from investors over the years before its IPO.

Fervo’s first commercial project, Cape Station in Utah, is expected to have a capacity of about 500 megawatts. The first unit is set to start generating power for customers by October and the next two units by January 2027.

The new funding from the IPO could help the company scale. Fervo currently has over 600 megawatts’ worth of binding power purchase agreements. And it has leases for land that could together generate more than 40 gigawatts of electricity. (As of 2024, the entire US geothermal fleet had a capacity of just 4 gigawatts.)

The company also has an eye on cutting construction and drilling costs—its Cape Station plant is expected to cost about $7 per kilowatt, which is cheaper than new nuclear power plants but over twice the expense of building a new natural-gas plant in the US. 

X-energy also aims to provide reliable clean power: it’s part of the wave of next-generation nuclear companies working on small modular reactors. The company is building high-temperature gas-cooled reactors, which flow helium over self-contained pebbles of nuclear fuel. These reactors will each generate 80 megawatts of electricity, less than one-tenth the output of larger ones like Unit 4 at Plant Vogtle in Georgia, the most recent addition to the commercial nuclear fleet in the US....

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"Jerry Seinfeld's Agent"

People matter.

From the internet's tiny treasure, Delancey Place, May 22:

Today's encore selection -- from Seinfeldia by Jennifer Keishin Armstrong. 

Jerry Seinfeld's career moved from standup to sitcom due to a wise choice in agents and the persistence of that agent:

"[Jerry] Seinfeld had already made several smart choices in his fledgling career, and among them was to sign with manager George Shapiro.

"Shapiro was inspired to go into show business like his uncle, Dick Van Dyke Show creator Carl Reiner. Shapiro's charm -- kind eyes, a warm smile, and a hint of a New York accent -- made him particularly suited to being a talent manager, endearing himself to both performers and executives. He had spent the early years of his career at the Wil­liam Morris talent agency in New York. There, he'd helped put together TV comedies such as The Steve Allen Show, That Girl, and Gomer Pyle. Now, as a talent manager for young comedian Jerry Seinfeld, he may have been simply doing his job when he told NBC executives that his client belonged on their network. But he was also speaking from de­cades of experience during TV's formative years.

The Tonight Show or Late Night. In 1988, he made his strongest epistolary plea as Seinfeld prepared for his first concert broadcast at Town Hall in New York City. 'Call me a crazy guy,' Shapiro wrote to Tartikoff, 'but I feel that Jerry Seinfeld will soon be doing a series on NBC.' He closed by inviting Tartikoff to attend the Town Hall event. No one from the network came, but Tartikoff invited Seinfeld and Shapiro in for a meeting.

"Seinfeld didn't know his manager had badgered NBC about him. He was still unaware when he and Shapiro headed to NBC's Los An­geles offices on November 2, 1988, to discuss the possibility of a network project with Tartikoff, Littlefield, and the head of late-night programming and specials, Rick Ludwin. Seinfeld hadn't the first idea what he'd do on television -- his main career plan was to be a stand­up comedian for as long as he could....

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