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starbucks explored buying chipotle. spacex wants to finance a major nvidia chip purchase. and here's how stablecoin payments work behind the apps businesses already use.
3 things worth your time
1. starbucks explored buying chipotle. its CEO already knows the place.
on thursday, the financial times reported that starbucks had worked with advisers on a potential chipotle takeover. brian niccol ran the burrito chain from 2018 to 2024 before taking the top job at starbucks. chipotle shares closed roughly 6% higher that day.
starbucks' global network could help chipotle expand overseas. but starbucks is still spending heavily on staffing and store improvements to fix its own business. buying another chain could mean more borrowing or issuing more shares while that work is underway.
starbucks declined to comment on the takeover report and said it remains focused on its turnaround. no deal has been announced.
2. spacex wants to finance a major nvidia chip purchase.
spacex is in talks to raise $40 billion to buy AI chips from nvidia, according to reuters. the proposed package includes about $10 billion in bank loans and $30 billion in bonds (loans from investors). the financial times reported that apollo is expected to lead the financing.
the proposed financing would let spacex buy computing hardware now and repay lenders over time. no financing agreement has been announced.
3. how businesses accept crypto without holding it themselves.
stablecoins are crypto tokens designed to track the value of another asset, usually the US dollar. USDC, for example, is designed to be worth $1. that makes it useful for payments: the amount isn't supposed to swing around like bitcoin's price.
the business receiving a payment doesn't always need to deal with the crypto. with stripe's shopify integration, a customer pays USDC from a crypto wallet. stripe can convert it into the merchant's local currency and deposit it in their bank account. the customer uses crypto. the shop owner receives ordinary money.
citi and coinbase announced a similar setup on september 28: businesses using citi's checkout service will be able to accept stablecoins, with coinbase converting the payment and citi settling the money. businesses won't need to hold or manage the tokens themselves. the payment providers handle that part behind the scenes.
one more quick thing
openAI published hundreds of new math research papers.
on tuesday, openAI shared mathematical research manuscripts produced by an internal AI model. some include proofs that a computer can check step by step- others still need verification.
the release also sparked discussion among ethereum co-founder vitalik buterin and researcher justin drake about wallet security. crypto relies on math that makes transactions easy to verify but private keys extremely difficult to work out. researchers are considering whether AI could change that over time. no such breakthrough has been demonstrated for bitcoin or ethereum, and buterin cautioned against rushed wallet moves.
see you thursday.
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