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| | | | | In Hungary, mothers who have raised four or more children are exempt from paying personal income tax for life. |
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| | | Oracle's AI rally drives media consolidation New data shows how AI models are being used Nvidia buys 4% of Intel Newsletter exclusive: Inside America's $24B protein obsession
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| | The House of Ellison: Building an Empire in Tech and Media | It's been a big month for the Ellisons — on Wall Street and in Hollywood. | On September 10, Oracle's stock jumped over 30% after the company reported strong earnings and increased demand for its cloud and AI services. This pop briefly made 81-year-old Larry Ellison the richest person in the world. The next day, The Wall Street Journal reported that Larry's son, David Ellison, was preparing a bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Then last week, Oracle, along with other investors, emerged as a potential buyer of TikTok. | | Buying Warner Bros. Discovery would be David Ellison's second big media acquisition this year. Last month, he merged his production company, Skydance, with Paramount, telling reporters he aimed to upgrade Paramount+'s recommendation algorithms and remake the company into "both a media and technology enterprise." | In line with that tech-driven vision, Skydance-owned CBS News recently announced plans to acquire Bari Weiss' digital media company, The Free Press. | Social media may also soon be under the Ellisons' influence. Oracle is leading a U.S. consortium — including Silver Lake and Andreessen Horowitz — that's expected to take control of up to 80% of TikTok's U.S. operations. With 183 million U.S. monthly users, the app has more reach than Facebook or Instagram. | So … who are the Ellisons? Larry co-founded Oracle in the 1970s after landing a CIA contract to build a database program with the code name "Project Oracle." Today, he still owns 40% of the company, serves as CTO, and has close political ties to Trump and other GOP leaders. He helped fund Elon Musk's Twitter takeover and has poured money into Republican-aligned super PACs. | David Ellison dropped out of USC film school to pursue acting and eventually founded Skydance. He went on to produce Top Gun: Maverick and other blockbusters. | If the TikTok and WBD deals close, one Trump-aligned billionaire family could control CBS News, CNN, and TikTok. What made that possible? A surge in Oracle's stock, fueled by AI. This boom is now so powerful that it's redistributing power not just in tech but across the media industry. |
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| | | | The true impact of Ellison's control of media goes beyond the consolidation of media: It will accelerate AI adoption in Hollywood and drive significant job displacement. | I don't wish for this to happen, but I generally find the people who work in Hollywood believe themselves to be really f*cking precious. If SpongeBob SquarePants hires three writers instead of 14, they find that to be a cultural crime. | Bob Iger and David Zaslav came of age by being really good and thoughtful to talent and not wanting to piss off the actors' unions. Essentially, Iger was this very charming guy in a cashmere sweater trying to appease everybody. David Ellison is honey badger. Honey badger don't care. He's going to try and create the equivalent of movies like The Fantastic Four for $20 million, not $200 million, using technology and AI. |
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| | | | | In 1983, there were 50 companies that controlled 90% of American media. Today, it's about six companies. And beyond that, they are increasingly controlled by a handful of ultrarich families. | The Murdochs own Fox and News Corp, the Sulzbergers control The New York Times, Bezos owns The Washington Post, Bloomberg at Bloomberg LP — the list goes on. | And now, the Ellisons: Paramount today, maybe Warner Bros. Discovery next. The question is, what does America look like when the media is controlled by these billionaires and, let's face it, by their children? This is the rise of nepo media. |
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| How People Use ChatGPT vs. Claude vs. Gemini | New data from OpenAI and Anthropic is shedding light on how people around the world are actually using large language models (LLM), and the differences are striking. | Anthropic's Claude is primarily used for computer and mathematical tasks, such as coding support. In contrast, OpenAI's models are more frequently used for educational support and writing assistance. | ChatGPT's top use case is practical guidance — 28% of queries are about schoolwork, workouts, or everyday advice. Its role in the workplace has fallen: In 2022, 47% of prompts were work-related; today, just 27%. | Claude skews professional. Coding alone accounts for 36% of prompts (vs. 4% on ChatGPT), with another 7% in scientific tasks. In total, about 43% of Claude usage is work-related. That's by design: Anthropic trained Claude to be safe for work. | This split is reflected in their revenue mix. At OpenAI, about 75% of revenue comes from consumers (the $20/month Plus plan), while enterprise accounts (roughly $60 per seat, per month) make up the remaining quarter. For Anthropic, only ~15% of its revenue comes from consumers, while 85% comes from enterprises. | Meanwhile, Google's Gemini has steadily gained share. Its new image generator, Nano-Banana, briefly pushed it past ChatGPT to the top of the App Store. But its real advantage lies in distribution. Google is already integrated into the lives of 90% of global internet users. | AI is being woven into the tools billions already use: drafting emails in Gmail, managing files in Drive, analyzing data in Sheets. | | At the company level, Google is using AI to reinforce its core businesses: search and advertising. Users are already adapting — the number of Google queries with 8-plus words has jumped 7x in the past year, a sign that people are starting to treat search like an LLM. Despite this shift, Google still trades at a discount to other AI growth stocks. | Who called this months ago? Oh yeah, we did. | |
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| | | | What's so interesting about this study is that the whole bull case on AI is that it's going to transform work by making us so much more efficient. But what we're learning with this is … it's not really affecting your work life; it's mostly just affecting your personal life. Maybe ChatGPT replaces your subscription to NYT Cooking or your personal trainer. The creative destruction is happening in the realm of your personal life, which makes you wonder, is AI going to be this gigantic cash cow that we thought it was? |
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| | Why Nvidia Took a 4% Stake in Intel | Nvidia is investing $5 billion for a 4% stake in Intel, buying shares at $23.28 each — above the $20.47 per share the U.S. government paid for its 10% stake last month. | | Nvidia and Intel will collaborate to develop chips for personal computers and data centers. Intel specializes in CPUs, which power general computing, while Nvidia focuses on GPUs, which specialize in narrower tasks like processing vast quantities of data. | AMD and ARM, which compete with Intel in the market for CPUs and servers, sank as much as 6% and 7%, respectively, on the news. | The deal still doesn't resolve Intel's biggest problem: its foundry, or chip-manufacturing business. TSMC manufactures Nvidia's chips, and this deal does not give any of that business to Intel. | Intel's foundry division lost $13 billion in 2024, and in the most recent quarter, CEO Lip-Bu Tan told investors Intel may have to discontinue its manufacturing efforts if the business doesn't improve in the next technology cycle. If that happens, Intel would have to admit that a substantial portion of its $100 billion in foundry assets is no longer economically viable. | |
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| | | | For 11 days of revenue, Nvidia will gain direct access to Intel's most valuable remaining asset: its clients. Intel still powers about 63% of the world's servers, supporting most major data centers, cloud hyperscalers, and enterprise IT systems. | This partnership lets Nvidia plug itself into the largest and most-entrenched computing ecosystem on the planet. That's critical given Nvidia's current revenue profile; nearly 39% still comes from just two customers. |
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| | Newsletter Exclusive: From Cold Foam to Cottage Cheese: Americans are Overdosing on Protein | Each year, 45 million Americans go on a diet. Every few years, the U.S. experiences dietary whiplash, villainizing a certain food group and celebrating another. Enter, a new source of revenue for food entrepreneurs. The latest obsession? Protein. | In a 2024 survey of Americans, 71% said they were trying to consume more protein, up from 59% in 2022. | The number of high-protein drinks on the market jumped by 122% from 2020 to 2024. Sales of cottage cheese are up 20% to 30% this year, and protein snacks are growing at three times the rate of the overall snacking industry, accounting for $24 billion in revenue in 2024. Fairlife's high-protein milk sales have increased 31% in the past 12 months. | Protein has long been a staple for athletes and bodybuilders. Now, its mainstream boom is fueled by the rise of GLP-1s. | Research reveals that up to 60% of weight lost on GLP-1s can come from lean muscle mass, not fat. Consuming protein can help counteract those effects. | | Protein has been injected into bars, shakes, pasta, popcorn, soda, chips, and ice cream. Protein Pints sells a pint every 3.5 seconds, Starbucks is about to launch "protein cold foams" and "protein lattes," and Lunchables packages now emphasize that the products have 12 grams of protein each. The David bar, backed by health guru Peter Attia, made $1 million in its first week, and Patrick Schwarzenegger started a protein bar company, Mosh, with his momthat is on track to gross $20 million this year. Even Khloé Kardashian launched Khloud Protein Popcorn. | To be clear, infusing your popcorn with protein is … not necessary. Americans are already consuming more protein than they need: The average man in the United States is overshooting the federal protein recommendation by more than 55% and the average woman by more than 35%. | | Is chasing the next diet trend a good idea for businesses? | The answer lies in an unfortunate paradox: Because 95% of diets fail long term, people keep spending money on new fads. When the diet of the moment fades, opportunistic businesses can identify a new culprit to blame and a new magic fix to sell. | But there is reason to believe that GLP-1s could change that story. GLP-1s are the most effective weight loss drug in history and pairing them with protein helps reduce muscle loss. | The high-protein craze may endure longer than the all-grape or all-cabbage-soup diets. But if the GLP-1 science is overoptimistic, history guarantees that fresh diet fads (and new opportunities for fat profits) will take protein's place. |
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| | | Over the next six months, we're going to see a wave of blockbuster M&A deals as companies flush with cheap capital go big-game hunting for IP, talent, and supplier relationships. Bankers are going to make a ton of money. |
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| | | Check out the latest China Decode, where Alice Han and James Kynge break down China's latest stock rally, why Beijing financed a dam in Ethiopia, and what's behind the global rise of Labubu. |
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| | | Derek Thompson's 25 most interesting ideas I'm Bob, an endangered species $450,000 per child: Why big families have become a luxury in the U.S.
| Prof G Media recommends: Money with Katie, a data-driven newsletter that offers breakdowns of economic policy, personal finance tips, and insights into how money shapes culture. |
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