Splitsville

Corporate breakups and spinoffs are back on Wall Street — but are investors up for the ride?

Presented by Hey Snackers, OpenAI now expects to burn through around $115 billion through 2029 — a full $80 billion higher than the company had previously estimated. Just how much is that? We created a list of stuff that costs less than OpenAI's cash burn, which includes Apple's total current assets, the last 34 quarters of Walmart profit, 11 seasons of NFL TV deals, and more. No news was good news for US stocks on Monday. The S&P 500 rose 0.2% in what was its fourth-smallest intraday range of 2025, as did the Russell 2000, while the Nasdaq 100 gained 0.5%. Tech was the standout S&P 500 sector ETF, while utilities was the big loser. BREAKUP Corporate breakups and spin-offs are back on Wall Street — but are investors up for the ride? Bankers love to put companies together, helping executives piece together acquisitions in pursuit of scale, synergies, and seriously huge advisory fees. And they also don't mind doing the opposite.  Indeed, corporate America's hottest new trend in dealmaking is breaking up. Spin-offs among S&P 500 companies are running at their fastest pace since 2016. So far this year, plenty of household names opted to split themselves apart: industrial giant Honeywell is dividing into three, while Warner Bros. Discovery said in June it would separate its TV networks from streaming and studios.  Keurig Dr Pepper plans to separate its soda and coffee businesses after completing its $18 billion acquisition of JDE Peet's.  And Kraft Heinz will spin off its grocery arm, shedding Kraft-branded staples like boxed mac and cheese and frozen meals. What's fueling this corporate uncoupling? According to the WSJ, a big driver is activists pushing back against bloated empires. Their argument? Fast-growing divisions get dragged down by sluggish ones, and those much-hyped "synergies" from megamergers hardly show up. That logic has led to some past megamergers being undone. But whether these corporate divorces actually pay off is another story. THE TAKEAWAY In the first 18-24 months following the split, companies spun off do tend to outperform the S&P 500 by ~10%, according to Trivariate Research — but those early gains might not hold up over longer time horizons. Since its 2015 launch, the S&P US Spin-Off Index — which tracks $1 billion+ S&P 500 companies spun off in the last four years — has lagged behind the main S&P 500 Index. Read more Presented by Simple The Reason Chair Yoga has Gone Viral Rolling straight from bed to your desk might be more harmful than you think, but the developers of the viral weight loss app Simple have a smart solution. Their Chair Yoga program is designed to strengthen your body in just 10 minutes a day. Chair workouts combine low-impact yoga with proven principles of mobility training, plus, they're great for beginners, seniors, or anyone easing into movement. If you've been looking for a plan that makes building strength feel achievable, not stressful, then welcome to Simple.  Take the quiz to start your personalized plan; they're offering 50% off! AVGO GO GO The luminary of the AI trade this month is perennial survivor Broadcom As Broadcom enjoys a rush of new orders from a major new customer (reported to be OpenAI), it's also reveling in a flood of traffic into the stock. On Monday, traders continue to bid up shares in response to the brighter outlook for 2026 revenues, which sent the stock up 9.4% on Friday. The chip designer is basking in a flood of price target hikes from Wall Street, with Bank of America, JPMorgan, Argus Research, Citigroup, Bernstein, Deutsche Bank, Morgan Stanley, Barclays, Piper Sandler, Rosenblatt Securities, Wells Fargo, and Susquehanna upping their view on how high shares can go since the company reported earnings last week. Separately, Taiwanese industry outlet DigiTimes is reporting that orders from several other leading tech companies for custom-made Broadcom chips (or ASICs) are "already in the pipeline," though that report has not been corroborated by our own or any other publication's reporting to date. One weird thing, though: When Broadcom announced it booked that big client, shares of their major AI chip rivals tanked. The judgement of the Invisible Hand was that this was nearly a zero-sum outcome: $130 billion of market cap erased from Nvidia and Advanced Micro Devices, and a $135 billion increase in Broadcom's market value. But looking at this from the perspective of near-term cash flows, the market's view seems off. THE TAKEAWAY Assuming the reporting around OpenAI and Broadcom is accurate, these orders for ASICs don't look to be displacing what the ChatGPT creator was going to spend on Nvidia's GPUs, but are just in addition to it!  The money's not coming out of Jensen Huang's pockets, it's coming out of OpenAI's coffers. Their spending budget is just getting bigger, and Broadcom's the big winner. Read more THE BEST THING WE READ TODAY Solana is getting a "new heart" in its biggest upgrade ever The Alpenglow upgrade revamps solana's consensus engine to decrease transaction finality from 12.8 seconds to 150 milliseconds, bringing the blockchain network closer to its goal of being an on-chain Nasdaq. Why it matters Presented by Simple User Lost 86 Lbs With This At-Home Challenge Can you really transform your body in just 28 days? 18M users think yes. Research shows that convenience and consistency are key to fitness success. That's why this at-home challenge will help you lose weight and tone up fast, join Simple's 28-day Wall Pilates challenge. Snacks readers get 3 months free! MOVES Yesterday's Big Daily Movers  Echostar skyrocketed after SpaceX purchased a pair of spectrum licenses in a $17 billion deal. Meanwhile, would-be rivals like AST SpaceMobile, Crown Castle, American Tower, and T-Mobile traded lower.  AppLovin and Robinhood* rallied on their S&P 500 inclusion. Volkswagen jumped about 4% higher after reportedly closing in on its own, separate tariff deal with the US. What else we're Snackin' Lululemon is now the worst-performer in the S&P 500. Can sports sponsorships turn Lululemon's sales into Lululemon-ade? Tariffs finally crept into retail's latest earnings results. These were the winners and losers. Since the launch of a very popular AI chatbot, gold is outperforming the Nasdaq 100. The latest trend in tattoos is not driven by size, but status. Here are the Trump ties among the tech leaders who had dinner at the White House. Over 18 million people have chosen to ditch traditional diets with the Simple app's science-backed weight loss method. Ad Snack Fact of the Day Healthcare-related industries are forecast to grow the most in the coming decade. Tuesday Earnings expected from Oracle, GameStop, and Synopsys   *Robinhood Markets, Inc. is the parent company of Sherwood Media, an independently operated media company subject to certain legal and regulatory restrictions. Was this email forwarded to you? Don't miss out on future stories — subscribe to Snacks and get your daily dose of financial news straight to your inbox.  Craving more insights in your inbox? Subscribe to Chartr and The Wrap for quality reads. 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