gm.
three stories since monday, plus two quick hits.
the 3
1. the AI agent race exploded this week.
on monday, personal AI agent startup instinct raised $1 billion at a $10 billion valuation from sequoia, benchmark, and coatue. a month ago instinct was valued at $2.5 billion. the numbers behind the raise: 14 employees, $1 billion in transaction volume over six months, growing 10% a day, zero marketing spend. 40% of users have shared a personal credit card with the agent within three weeks of joining. users text or call instinct, and the agent uses its own phone and computer to complete tasks end to end (booking trips, ordering groceries, cancelling subscriptions).
on tuesday, openAI launched dots at devday. it's openAI's personal agent, always-on, connected to 4,000 apps through ChatGPT, running on their new GPT-6 astra model. the pitch is close to meta's muse: your assistant handles everything (bookings, purchases, workflows) autonomously. the live demo froze on stage during the keynote.
what to watch: the personal AI agent space now has four serious players (meta's muse launched sep 8, google's gemini spark launched in may, openAI's dots this week, and instinct). they all pitch the same thing: an assistant that runs your inbox, books your travel, and shops for you. what will actually differentiate them: distribution (meta has apps and hardware), model quality (a moving target between openAI, anthropic, and google), or user experience (instinct's 10%-a-day growth suggests they've found something).
2. goldman sachs just brought its $100 billion treasury fund into crypto.
on monday, goldman opened its existing ~$100 billion treasury fund to institutional crypto firms for the first time. crypto companies (like exchanges and trading desks) can now park cash inside the fund between trades and earn yield until they need to move it. the fund is not open to retail.
what's notable: unlike other big wall street firms that created crypto-native versions of their treasury funds (blackrock and franklin templeton both launched blockchain-based versions this year), goldman kept the fund exactly as it is. crypto firms are getting the same institutional product wall street already uses.
context: this is a real step in the "traditional finance meets crypto" story that's been building all year. goldman was one of the last big banks to warm to crypto, and here it is opening a $100 billion fund to the industry.
3. nvidia just announced the biggest stock buyback increase in US history.
on monday, nvidia added $150 billion to its stock buyback authorization, bringing the total to $235 billion. it's the largest single buyback authorization increase in US corporate history.
jensen huang's rationale: nvidia's stock is trading at its lowest earnings multiple in a decade. even at its multi-trillion-dollar valuation, jensen thinks it's less expensive than it should be.
the signal: buybacks reduce share count, which mechanically lifts earnings per share. at nvidia's scale, adding $150 billion to the program tells the market that management sees more upside in its own stock than in any alternative use of capital.
two more quick things
oura postponed its $2.2 billion IPO.
on tuesday, smart-ring maker oura pulled its planned IPO despite the deal being roughly four times oversubscribed. oura is profitable and growing 90% year over year. the delay is being blamed on market uncertainty: AI spending concerns, resumed rate hikes, and bond yields at a 19-year high. per Renaissance Capital, oura is the seventh IPO to postpone in Q3.
a "raincoat pikachu" pokemon card just sold for $8.4 million.
on tuesday, a raincoat pikachu card (one of only 100 made as a prize for a 2015 pokemon art academy contest) sold at auction for $8.4 million, the second-highest price ever paid for a pokemon card (behind logan paul's $16.5 million pikachu illustrator sold in february). context: other PSA 10 copies of this card (PSA 10 is the top grade a card can get) have sold for $12,600 in july 2024 and $19,200 in june 2025. that means the market for this card is up roughly 440x in 15 months.
see you monday.
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