The Social Community forThe Most Important Thing

All those companies who’ve put off their IPOs in the past couple of weeks weren’t crazy. A little-known data center builder, Accelevation (that’s not a typo) Holdings, braved the market and came off the worse for it. After pricing its IPO at $18 on Tuesday—below its $20 to $24 tentative range—Accelevation saw its stock fall for two straight days to Thursday’s close of $16.59. It has to be said that Accelevation is no prize. The company loses money and is carrying $647.8 million in debt against $28 million in cash on its balance sheet. It planned to use the money raised from the offering to reduce that debt, but only by about a quarter. And as its business is building data centers, including cabling and cooling, its growth depends on the AI boom. That’s a very hot business right now, with everyone seemingly jumping into the market, but it won’t last. Still, even for healthy companies, this market may not be forgiving, thanks to steadily rising interest rates, among other things. That won’t necessarily stop more appealing companies from going public, however. Bloomberg reported on Thursday that Anthropic, the most hotly anticipated IPO of them all, is targeting its offering for mid-November. The market by then may be in a different place altogether. In an appearance on #The Information ’s TITV on Thursday, Circle CEO Jeremy Allaire recalled that Circle made public its IPO paperwork in early April 2025, the day before President Donald Trump announced worldwide tariffs, sparking a big market selloff. By the time Circle actually went public later that spring, Trump had backed down a little on the tariffs and the market had recovered. “No one can predict what’s going to happen tomorrow,” Allaire said. https://www.theinformation.com/newsletters/the-briefing/ouras-ipo-delay-signals-broader-market-stall?utm_campaign=article_email&utm_content=article-17920&utm_medium=email&utm_source=sg&rc=gzsl71

C ybersecurity stocks have surged in 2026—the S&P Kensho cybersecurity index is up 41% compared to 11% for the S&P 500—driven by investor optimism around AI security threats. However, companies like CrowdStrike and Okta trade at historical premium multiples despite limited evidence of AI-boosted revenue. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/crowdstrike-okta-trade-big-premiums-despite-unproven-ai-payoff?offer=rtsu-engagement-25%2Crtsu-featured-articles-pro&utm_campaign=%5BClaude%5D+RTSU%3A+Crowd&utm_content=15123&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio&utm_term=10481&rc=gzsl71

Nica took a screenshot of the discussion · 3 weeks ago

Anthropic, OpenAI and other upstarts are grabbing a bigger share of corporate software budgets (https://www.theinformation.com/articles/new-data-show-anthropic-openai-upstarts-eating-software-budgets?offer=rtsu-engagement-25%2Crtsu-featured-articles-pro&cio_link_id=eyJlbWFpbF9pZCI6ImRnU2kwUVlEQUplSkJwYUpCZ0dneWxXbjRqQmxrQUdSRHBaS092bz0iLCJocmVmIjoiaHR0cHM6Ly93d3cudGhlaW5mb3JtYXRpb24uY29tL2FydGljbGVzL25ldy1kYXRhLXNob3ctYW50aHJvcGljLW9wZW5haS11cHN0YXJ0cy1lYXRpbmctc29mdHdhcmUtYnVkZ2V0cz9vZmZlcj1ydHN1LWVuZ2FnZW1lbnQtMjUlMkNydHN1LWZlYXR1cmVkLWFydGljbGVzLXByb1x1MDAyNmNpb19saW5rX2lkPUNJTy0tTElOS0lEXHUwMDI2dXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPSU1QkNsYXVkZSU1RCslNUJOTCU1RCtSVFNVJTNBXHUwMDI2dXRtX2NvbnRlbnQ9MTUzMDdcdTAwMjZ1dG1fbWVkaXVtPWVtYWlsXHUwMDI2dXRtX3NvdXJjZT1jaW9cdTAwMjZ1dG1fdGVybT0xMDQ5OSIsImludGVybmFsIjoiYTJkMTA2MDM4NjRhOTc4OTA2IiwibGlua19pZCI6MTExMjk4fQ__2516cdde8da43c578ea97c8bc1900b555aca890edd984c90df3064f929cf74b3&utm_campaign=%5BClaude%5D+%5BNL%5D+RTSU%3A&utm_content=15307&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio&utm_term=10499), new data show. #Data is beautiful

Worries that Waymo will take business from Uber have pummeled the stock this year. But sellers are overlooking the value of its delivery business. #The Most Important Thing Sellers are overreacting. Uber can still sustain rapid growth and expand its profit margins while staying competitive in the autonomous-driving race #Auto Future in the years to come. https://www.theinformation.com/articles/uber-bears-taken-wrong-turn?offer=rtsu-engagement-25%2Crtsu-featured-articles-pro&utm_campaign=%5BClaude%5D+RTSU%3A+Uber&utm_content=14538&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio&utm_term=10159&rc=gzsl71

Two Chinese DRAM ventures launched in 2016 with government backing. A decade later, ChangXin Memory Technologies (CXMT) and Fujian Jinhua (JHICC) offer sharply different stories about what it takes to build a memory chip business under U.S. technology restrictions. #Podcasts We ❤️ #🇨🇳 ChinA.I. 🤖🧠🦾🤖 #Artificial Intelligence #A Glance of China 行摄中国 https://voiceofcontext.substack.com/p/how-us-tech-restrictions-helped-build?utm_source=multiple-personal-recommendations-email&utm_medium=email&triedRedirect=true

Anthropic’s economists think we can maybe keep our jobs What happened:  Anthropic economists released a new interactive model (https://www.anthropic.com/institute/econ-scenarios?ref=platformer.news) of AI-based economic disruption. The model takes in predictions about the trajectory of AI capabilities and outputs scenarios about how the economy and jobs will fare in 2030 as a result. The researchers present a “moderate,” a “substantial,” and an “extreme” scenario. Interestingly, the team’s “extreme” scenario, which predicts GDP growth rising to a truly bonkers 15.4% per year in 2030, would lead to an 8.9% increase in unemployment from AI.  Meanwhile, their “substantial” scenario, which relies on AI predictions based on a recent survey of 10,000 Americans, predicts a still-high 5.4% growth rate in 2030, but only an 0.7% increase in unemployment from AI. The forecasts are substantially more conservative than the warnings CEO Dario Amodei has issued regarding AI-related unemployment. Last year, Amodei told Axios (https://www.axios.com/2025/05/28/ai-jobs-white-collar-unemployment-anthropic?ref=platformer.news) that he worries about a scenario where “Cancer is cured, the economy grows at 10% a year, the budget is balanced — and 20% of people don't have jobs.” Why we’re following: It’s interesting to see Anthropic’s economists being (relatively) optimistic here. One reason why: they expect AI-related economic growth to increase demand and wages for manual labor, offsetting losses in computer-based work like software engineering. One of the authors' main conclusions, though, is that, given a range of all seemingly reasonable parameters, “the range of outcomes is wide.” So we could see a scenario with substantial growth and modestly higher unemployment, or crazy growth and crazy unemployment.

D J took a screenshot of this post and discussion · 3 weeks ago

"After experiencing Cybercab for the past few days in Austin, I think the biggest thing people are missing is the zero-sum game built into Uber. #Auto Future You have two people sharing one environment, with different preferences. The driver likes the temperature at 66. I want 72. If I get more comfortable, he gets less comfortable. He likes his music. I want mine. He wants the windows open. I want them closed. I take a few extra minutes getting to the car, and those are minutes another human spends waiting for me. There’s this constant little tug of war. My comfort and convenience can come at the expense of his. And I don’t blame the driver. It’s his working environment. He’s in that car all day. Of course he has preferences. That’s why I just let him play whatever music he wants. I don’t want my comfort to come at his expense. We’ve gotten so accustomed to this that we barely notice the tension anymore. Then you take a Cybercab. I set the temperature to 72. Nobody gets less comfortable. I play my Spotify at the volume I want. Nobody has to give up their music. I grab my Starbucks and take a couple of minutes to walk over, within the pickup window. Nobody is sitting there getting irritated with me. The car has no competing preferences. That is a profound change in the experience. I can optimize the ride around what makes me comfortable without asking another person to sacrifice what makes them comfortable. And you feel it. You get in, lean back, and relax. There’s no negotiation. No wondering whether your request is going to annoy someone. That whole layer of social tension disappears. I think this is a huge part of Cybercab’s value. Removing that zero-sum dynamic changes what the service feels like at its core. Once people experience that, I think a lot of them are going to have a very hard time going back to Uber." https://x.com/davelee/status/2097809911635697767?s=20&_bhlid=2a318119323655c0bd0c50e5a407c04c1585a51d

Shares of Chinese online fashion giant Shein ended flat on its first day of trading on the Hong Kong stock exchange, capping off the company’s convoluted multiyear quest to go public. Shein’s shares opened at HK$48.56 on Tuesday, and dropped as much as 10% before shedding the losses and closing at HK$48.5, according to Hong Kong stock exchange data. By comparison, the benchmark Hang Seng Index dipped 0.93%. As of Tuesday market close, Shein had a market capitalization of $26 billion, a far cry from the height of $100 billion reached during a private funding round in 2022. The company raised HK$13.6 billion ($1.7 billion) in the initial public offering. Shein for years tried to downplay its China roots and position itself as a global company, as its fashionable, ultracheep clothing gained popularity among consumers in the West. The company tried to go public in both New York and London, but the attempts were thwarted by criticism against its labor and environment practices and China’s straining ties with the U.S. Wearing a white, Shein-branded T-shirt like other employees, Sky Xu, the company’s elusive founder and CEO, attended the listing ceremony in Hong Kong but stayed out of the limelight most of the time. He didn’t deliver a speech or participate in the iconic Hong Kong-style gong-striking ritual on stage to mark the beginning of trading. Shein’s employees struck the gong and CFO Leigh Gui delivered a short speech. https://www.reuters.com/legal/transactional/shein-set-lacklustre-debut-after-setbacks-cause-huge-drop-valuation-2026-08-31/

PayPal shares tumbled 12% on Friday after that report....

We don’t know the reasons for Brinkema’s ruling, as the full text won’t be released for a couple of weeks, but during the trial last year (https://url3396.theinformation.com/ls/click?upn=u001.71kYkaWDpGOJSzbGrs4y1TNF0-2FB-2Bh5pDUdkL0JSEoBlb4jj-2FxbVNQ7a6tF-2BOf9jXplTkgygIrP0FBcfpAhPAuUC6KlTh9dPXUMTeApKFqUlXVpowy7XIkkeUdg6quSyagVM2Ki-2FduiAqSJ6OGd8cl4AneHrDIWOyMDN6YSCajN2UzvdOYYi8jXxcfJtrML0Z3zcf-2Fp3irRhnWH4gfUYJkn-2FEfgQ34ffx2wmqZS600QR6bUcW4gALM48-2BmEsFtoYV1nAxquzjjcA9fDVBKiIieA-3D-3DRu80_TjjCSfnLPx3DZexphzWw7nc34vlLOpv8hjFtCyVWfyGdHWuPgLvsvJ7-2FtzHZ4oLKFjJ5pgxvQKcavjRiymSdCWM0y0CZHgMxvFPAm9quRwRbeFxvBu8dY2l1IMPPYS7F4rv8q7vvgHk-2BO-2Fv252KVgPmMn4S5nfdR7DQ5Y-2BEa3vU3OLODu1ydjlYEqeZp16SX76XttQUBnyuL34JPXEAMj5CL9kIFEYFe-2BKMozEaC5ZbywW5X1ZsOHiP0ea6jcqEQiFoyscGh-2FHLBVEw36v-2FR63S2D1u9qhxL2IUXruYHGHt3Vs4i1gcHFEgg3qPKr02tH8aU-2FkK0OXEtdcLSKdNrUTOj69xCkK9LP4r7izR3-2Bx8-3D), she asked whether forcing Google to divest its ad tech businesses could hurt independent websites. It’s a good bet Brinkema took that into account, just as the judge who heard the search antitrust case took into account AI’s impact in deciding how Google should change its ways. Google’s defense was, in fact, that the open web ad market was in decline. It seems the judge listened.  All this is a reminder of the flaws inherent to antitrust enforcement of the tech industry, given how quickly technology-driven markets evolve and how slowly antitrust cases take to wind through the courts.