🚢 Take to the seas! 🏨

Tuesday saw two bits of news showing that the future of hospitality may very well be at sea. The first was Carnival, jumping 8% after the world's biggest cruise operator posted a record second quarter and raised its full-year outlook. The second story was perhaps even more interesting, with Hilton International announcing it would make its first foray into the cruise business, following the likes of Marriott and Four Seasons

(Aaron P./Getty Images) Presented by Hey Snackers, Hertz recently announced that it was partnering with AI startup UVeye to install more than 100 AI-powered damage scanning systems. An "MRI for cars"? What could go wrong? Now, we're beginning to get the answer as customers report huge charges for barely visible dings and small scuffs. And those who want to fight the AI scan's finding have to, of course, engage with an AI chatbot to even begin disputing the fees. Risk appetite is back as Middle East tensions look to be getting farther and farther away in the rearview mirror of your robotaxi. The Nasdaq 100 closed up 1.5% to hit a fresh closing high for the first time since February, the S&P 500 rose 1.1%, and the Russell 2000 gained 1.3% on the day. "TREMENDOUS VALUE" Take to the seas! Tuesday saw two bits of news showing that the future of hospitality may very well be at sea.  The first was Carnival, jumping 8% after the world's biggest cruise operator posted a record second quarter and raised its full-year outlook. The second story was perhaps even more interesting, with Hilton International announcing it would make its first foray into the cruise business, following the likes of Marriott and Four Seasons. "Even with the price increases we have achieved over the last few years, our tremendous value compared to land-based alternatives has supported our ability to continue demonstrating remarkable resilience amid heightened volatility," Carnival CEO Josh Weinstein said in a statement. For what it's worth, "tremendous value compared to land-based alternatives" belongs in the Louvre.  Over at Hilton, customers will be able to choose from 29 suites across five decks when booking on the Waldorf Astoria Nile River Experience, a press release said.  To quote the bard, everything's better out where it's wetter, out on the sea. THE TAKEAWAY This doesn't mean that Hilton is getting into the cruise business a whole — the company said the new experience was less about keeping up with the competition as much as revisiting its Egyptian "floating hotel" concept from the 1960s — but it is a sign that one of the most robust businesses in hospitality is now capable of floating hotels. Go Deeper: How the cruise industry converted its aging fleets into floating money factories Presented by StartEngine OWN StartEngine: Riding Tech IPO Tailwinds Into This Week's Deadline You may have seen the headlines: the tech IPO market is finally showing signs of life. Chime just went public, following strong IPOs from Circle and eToro.1 And that could be great news, not just for Wall Street, but for accredited investors. Why? StartEngine.  This alternative investing platform doesn't just offer exposure to pre-IPO companies like OpenAI, Perplexity, and Databricks.2 StartEngine (and its investors) can potentially benefit when these companies succeed. Investors are paying attention. StartEngine pulled off $30M in revenue in Q1 2025, its biggest quarter ever (based on unaudited financials).3 Now StartEngine is preparing to close its current fundraise this week. If you want to tap into pre-IPO value while supporting the future of fintech, join more than 5K+ investors who have already committed $13.8M in this round. View opportunity.4 F-AI-R USE Judge rules Anthropic training on books it purchased was "fair use," but… When AI companies like OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta were racing to build and train new large language models, they scrambled to find enough text to train their systems on. Countless web pages, photos, YouTube videos, Disney movies, and book texts were slurped up to feed the models, adding billions and billions of tokens. Then the lawsuits began. Even before companies like Reddit lawyered up, the legality of the process was on the minds of some AI company employees, like Meta researchers who raised concerns while training its Llama model, only to be told that the use of a corpus of pirated texts was approved by "MZ." On Monday, a California court decided a case partially in favor of AI firms, with far-reaching consequences for all the companies that were sucking copyrighted material into their models. But it wasn't a total win. The judge said training the models was "fair use" for the books Anthropic purchased and scanned. What about the "over seven million copies of books" that Anthropic admitted were pirated? The judge ruled that was not fair use and warrants its own trial. THE TAKEAWAY The case is the first of its kind in the US and lays out a potentially legal way for AI companies to safely train their models using copyrighted works — as long as they purchase them. That said, there are still many other cases pending and many factors at play before the industry has clear rules on whether that cool Darth Vader pic you made used the dark side of the force. Read more THE BEST THING WE READ TODAY Just 32 countries have an AI data center, but half are concentrated in just 5 of them The US and China control a huge majority of the AI data center compute power, while the entire continents of South America and Africa have almost none at all. The US, which tops the list, also has another advantage in its chips. AI data centers country by country MOVES Yesterday's Big Daily Movers  Cryptocurrency Chainlink jumped after announcing a partnership to allow Mastercard cardholders to purchase crypto assets Lyft rose 6% after an upgrade to "buy" from TD Cowen  Both the bitcoin mining company Hut 8 and Coinbase rose as Hut 8 doubled its bitcoin-backed credit facility What else we're Snackin' Why Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives says a defanged Iran is extra bullish for tech stocks Waymo launches in Atlanta, trying to take the wind out of Tesla's sails Microsoft is pushing Copilot, but everyone just wants ChatGPT, even if it's got drawbacks Polymarket, where users can use crypto to bet on real-world outcomes, is raising $200 million in a funding round for a $1 billion valuation Stephen Miller, a top Trump aide, discloses a stake in Palantir  Snack Fact of the Day Last year, ~75,000 tourists visited Venice per day, outnumbering residents by 1.5x. Wednesday Earnings expected from Micron Technology, Paychex, General Mills, and Winnebago Industries May new home sales Advertiser's disclosures: 1 Source: Ron Shevlin, "The Chime IPO May Kickstart A Fintech Investment Comeback," Forbes, June 14, 2025 2 The underlying companies held by StartEngine Private Funds LLC, and StartEngine Private LLC (together, "StartEngine Private") are not participating or involved in the offering. The availability of company information does not indicate that the company has endorsed, supports or otherwise participates with StartEngine Private or any of its affiliates. StartEngine Crowdfunding LLC purchases shares from current and former employees, early investors, and advisors of the companies and sells the shares to StartEngine Private for each offering. When you make an investment in a company on StartEngine Private, you are purchasing an interest in a series of StartEngine Private Funds LLC or StartEngine Private LLC, each a Delaware limited liability company (together the "Series LLCs"), which were created to hold shares of privately held companies. An investor will not directly own or hold shares of the private company but instead will own member interests in a series of the Series LLCs, which either directly or indirectly, will hold shares in the company. There may not be a one-to-one economic parity on the value of the Series LLCs interests and the underlying shares. 3 Based on our Q1 2025 Form 10-Q. This revenue growth has been driven by StartEngine Private, a new product line that offers funds in late stage companies. This product line has driven over $24.6 million of the $30 million in revenue from Q1 2025. To understand the impact on margins, see financials. 4 This is a paid advertisement for StartEngine's Regulation A offering. For more information, please see the most recent Offering Circular and Supplements and Risks related to this offering.  This Reg A+ offering is made available through StartEngine Crowdfunding, Inc. No broker-dealer or intermediary is involved in offering. In addition, as described in the Offering Circular, the Company retains the right to continue the offering beyond the Termination Date, in its sole discretion. Investing in private company securities is not suitable for all investors. This investment is highly speculative, illiquid, and involves a high degree of risk, including the possible loss of your entire investment. It should only be considered a long-term investment. There is no guarantee that a market will develop for such securities. Was this email forwarded to you? 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