Le Studio Monthly - may
💻 News of the Month
📉 US Stocks
April 2021 was the US stock market’s worst month since March 2020 (when the world shut down due the pandemic). The S&P dropped 8.8%, the Dow 4.9%, and the Nasdaq, 13.3%.
Cathie Wood’s ARK Innovation fund had its worst month ever, falling 26%. The fund includes Zoom (down 82% from an all-time high), Roku (–80%), and Coinbase (–67%).
🕊 Elon vs Twitter
Elon Musk sold ~$8.4 billion worth of Tesla stock as he prepares to put up $21 billion of his own money to buy Twitter. He also secured $7.1 billion in additional funding for his $44 billion acquisition.
For reference, here are some of his backers:
Prince Alwaleed bin Talal: $1.9 billion. The Saudi royal, who is one of Twitter’s largest backers already.
Larry Ellison: $1 billion. He’s the megarich founder of Oracle and he has a stake in Tesla worth more than $14 billion.
Sequoia Capital: $800 million. The VC giant is a major investor in Musk’s SpaceX.
Binance: $500 million.
Andreessen Horowitz: $400 million. Ben Horowitz, a general partner at the VC firm, said “we believe in Elon’s brilliance to finally make [Twitter] what it was meant to be.”
It also seems like Elon will be pretty hands-on. Already the chief executive of SpaceX and Tesla, Musk is expected to become the CEO of Twitter for a few months when the deal closes this fall (CNBC). As a reference, Elon tweeted nearly every day for the past 4 years (WSJ).
Elon Musk presented a pitch deck with his plans for Twitter. Goals include: 5x’ing revenue by 2028, cutting the company’s reliance on ads by 50%, and generating $15m from a payments business.
🔷 Metaverse
Meta’s Reality Labs division (metaverse segment) grew revenue 30% year over year in Q1, from $534 million last year to $695 million in 2022. But it lost nearly $3 billion also, up from $1.8 billion the year before.
🤰🏾 Roe v. Wade
A draft opinion from the Supreme Court was leaked. It revealed that Senators were about to strike down Roe v. Wade, i.e. leave abortion legislation up to individual states and strip away abortion rights for millions of Americans. The Supreme Court confirmed the report was legit and launched an investigation into who orchestrated the unprecedented leak. This is extremely concerning for women all across America.
👼🏼 School Shooting
19 children and two adults have been killed after a gunman opened fire at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, near San Antonio. It’s the deadliest school shooting since Sandy Hook Elementary, in 2012. Guns surpassed car accidents as the No. 1 cause of death among children in 2020 in the US, jumping nearly 30% between 2019 and 2020 (New England Journal of Medicine) It was the 27th school shooting this year, which means one has occurred roughly every 5 days in 2022.
🦠 COVID-19
The US hit the 1 million death milestone just 27 months after the first Covid-19 case was confirmed (NBC News). 1 million is approx. the population of San Jose, California, and is the highest recorded death toll from the virus out of any country.
⚙ Wearables
According to the Economist, wearables could take modern health care to the next level. They provide several important services:
Early diagnosis
Personalized treatment
Managing chronic disease
🔫 NATO
Sweden and Finland said they will apply for NATO membership, in order to double the length of the military alliance’s border with Russia. “We cannot trust anymore that there will be a peaceful future next to Russia on our own,” Finland’s Prime Minister Sanna Marin said.
🚀 SpaceX
SpaceX reportedly raised a new round of funding, nabbing another $1.5 billion to bring its valuation up to…$125 billion.
👎🏾 VC Downturn?
Several opinions point to a drastic VC downturn expected in the coming months.
🔢 Data of the Month
🥕 Food Waste
According to the UN Environment Programme, food waste makes up 8%-10% of greenhouse gas emissions, and accounts for $940B in annual economic losses globally. A bunch of startups are trying to solve the issue.
🌿 Green deal
California’s power grid was powered 100% by renewables on April 30. The state’s goal is to reach 100% clean energy by 2045.
💲 Jiggle, Jiggle
The world’s richest 500 people have lost more than $1 trillion in net worth this year (Bloomberg).
🥩 Meat business
Upside Farms raised the biggest-ever funding round for a lab-grown meat company: a $400 million Series C.
🔵🟡 Ukraine Aid
The Senate approved a $40 billion military and aid package for Ukraine. Once signed by President Biden, it will bring the US’ total financial commitment to Ukraine to nearly $54 billion.
📞 Social media numbers in the US, with TikTok becoming more and more important.
🔎 Finds of the Month
Climate tech that could actually make the difference.
A people’s map of the US.
A short but sweet ESG glossary.
Interesting in learning how do we spend time as we get older? Check this website.
The supremacy of Netflix:
🕔 LONG-FORM Article
Interesting short stories that will have a big impact on your life.
If you want a good cry, read these animated stories about the last texts people who died of COVID sent. It’s heartbreaking.
🔉 Podcast of the Month
A good episode to listen to on Spotify where the founder of FTX talks about how he uses expected value to make large bets and thinks about the world’s problems.
🙌🏼 Thanks for reading! See you next month!
⭐ We'd also love to hear more of your feedback. Tell us what you think and what you want to see in the future in this digest at m.plata@tamar.capital- cheers !