Morning Brew Daily - Oura Unexpectedly Delays IPO & Phoebe Bridgers Bans Phones From Her Shows

Episode Date: September 30, 2026

#944: Oura delays its IPO due to market uncertainty while Anthropic prepares for a potential blockbuster IPO. Trump launches an AI-powered website to streamline all federal services. The Senate just passed a monumental sports bill that changes athlete compensation. Phoebe Bridgers bans phones during her concerts and she’s not the only musician who’s doing it. Finally, OpenAI launches its own cute AI agents.  Learn more at https://advertising.roku.com/mbd Vote for MBD at the Signal Awards! https://vote.signalaward.com/PublicVoting?utm_campaign=signa5_entrant_finalistnotification_092926&utm_medium=email&utm_source=cio#/2026/shows/genre/business  Toby’s rec: https://taketest.xyz/vocab-cat Neal’s rec: https://www.atvbt.com/21-facts-about-throwing-good-parties/?ref=thebrowser.com  Subscribe to Morning Brew Daily for more of the news you need to start your day. Share the show with a friend, and leave us a review on your favorite podcast app. Listen to Morning Brew Daily Here:⁠ ⁠⁠https://www.swap.fm/l/mbd-note⁠⁠⁠ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Good Morning Brew Daily show. I'm Neil Fryman. And I'm Toby Howell. Today, why you'll never see a video of a Phoebe Bridgers concert. Then the smart ringmaker aura shocked the market by delaying its IPO. It's Wednesday, September 30th. Let's ride. Sometimes you've got to give yourself a pat on the back, and we're doing just that on this international podcast day.

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ORA, a company that tells you if you're ready to take on the day, is telling investors, it's not ready to take on the public markets. The smart ringmaker was supposed to go public yesterday at a valuation of around $15 billion, but surprised everyone by postponing its IPO instead, citing uncertainty. in the market. Companies try to set up their debut for the ideal time, hoping to begin trading under the most bullish conditions possible. So postponing to wait for greener pastures is not out of the question. But what had people scratching their heads is these are pretty dang green pastures were in. The tech focus NASDAQ 100 hit a record high last week and is up 3%

in September. While the S&P 500 is up 12% for the year, the time appears to be now, aura. Plus demand was there with the IPO shaping up to be four times over. oversubscribed. But it's also not that hard to find warning signs too. The 10-year treasury yield is at its highest level since 2007, and September's consumer confidence reading was the lowest since 2014. CEO Tom Hale, humble brag that ORA has, quote, the luxury of choosing our moment, given the strength of its business. So, since the vives were slightly off, it opted for a different moment instead. Orra isn't alone in their choice either. One nuclear and one insurance company also recently postponed their debuts, citing market conditions.

I wouldn't elevate this to the level of a Toby's trends quite yet, but it is telling to see a strong business, see a market near all-time highs and still say, uh-uh, we're good. Yeah, market whispers like Axios is Dan Primak, who have sources inside, said that this was basically because Oro wasn't able to get the price that it wanted, wanted to raise as much as $2.2 billion, valuing it at $15.6 billion. Investors just seemed to balk at that valuation. It also comes at a time when Apple is releasing its upgraded health app, which does a lot of the same things that ORA's app does as well. So they're seeing increased competition in this space. Everyone is releasing a health tracker. They're trying to get a $16 billion valuation.

There's some hairy things going on with oil and treasury yields. Yes, stocks are very much near an all-time high, but maybe those are few of the reasons why ORA backed away is because they wanted to be valued at something. Investors weren't giving it to them. So they're just going to wait it out. ORA does have the luxury of being in a very strong position, too. They posted revenue of $1.2 billion over the past nine months ending June 30. So that is up 74% from the same period a year earlier. It has 5.7 million paying members at this point. And they're riding a pretty broad adoption curve right now.

US wearable adoption has jumped from 13% to nearly 50% over the past decade. I'm wearing two right now. and I know other people actually no, no order ring, just a wedding ring. Flex. Flex right there. But clearly this is becoming a category that people are more comfortable with. So that's why it was kind of shocking to see them balk at this. The other potential elephant in the room is Anthropic.

Anthropic might be just sucking all the oxygen out of the IPO market. They are full steam ahead with their IPO, their prospectus leaked to Reuters. and we got a peak under the hood. They're seeking a $2 trillion valuation, which is eye-popping. And maybe that is why ORA is like, all right, maybe there's not going to be that much left over for us at a measly $15 billion valuation if trillions are flowing into anthropic. There's some very interesting things under the hood, though, of this leaked prospectus,

namely that they said that AI could produce catastrophic or existential risks to humanity. Talk about a vibe killer when it comes to. to going to public. That was mentioned. But then they also saw some financials, Reuters did. And Anthropic reported a net loss of $42 billion last year with revenue of just $8 billion. So $2 trillion valuation with those numbers has some people scratching their heads a little bit. But again, that is a big, big elephant in the room and maybe why ORA felt a little crowded out. You can't talk about the upcoming IPO market and all of these companies, maybe backing away without that anthropic IPO, which is perhaps coming in November.

Open AI delayed, we talked about delaying of IPOs, but Open AI did that a few weeks ago, citing safety concerns they pushed theirs into next year. It looks like another companies are doing the same, but not anthropic. Looks like that's going to become in November, and that could exceed SpaceX as the biggest one of all time. Moving on, the Trump administration launched a new AI-powered website that aims to be your one-stop concierge for navigating the federal government. When you head to America.gov, you'll encounter a chatbot that is supposed to help you do everything from renew a passport to enroll in government programs like Medicare. Joe Gebbya, the Airbnb co-founder who led the project, said the chatbot would modernize constituent services like never before and set a standard, quote, you'd expect of a superpower.

AI teaming up with a dot-gov URL is like an unstoppable force meeting an immovable object. Artificial intelligence has been heralded as the next industrial revolution, potentially testing humanity itself, while government websites have a reputation for testing nothing but your time and patience, who could forget the disastrous rollout of HealthCare.gov during the Obama years. The Trump team hopes to avoid a repeat of that by leaning on veterans from the private tech sector, like Gebia, to avoid a boondoggle by a technological illiterate government. That relationship with tech was on full display yesterday when, in conjunction with the America.gov launch, Trump posted a gaggle of tech leaders at the White House for lunch,

including Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Dario. Amadeh. As fears of AI safety heat up, the leaders signed a voluntary accord that focuses on four self-policing mechanisms to keep the technology from spiraling out of control. When asked whether the document was binding in any form, Trump replied, it's morally binding. Let's go back to America.gov for a second because the promise of this site is very, very tantalizing if they can execute. There are 29,000 government sites sprawling across, you know, the apparatus that is the U.S. If you can collapse that into a single search bar, obviously that is a better system than than one that we are currently under.

Now, is that actually going to be the case? So far is off to a bit of a rocky start. We have both tried to access it repeatedly over the past 24 hours. It is still down. It doesn't work at all. Like nothing happens. It says chat is unavailable right now. I said, help me get Tobit shut up.

Mine's actually even glitching harder. When you type it in, it has a suggesting question over it. I can't even see what I'm typing. So that is hurdle number one. Does it actually work? Hurtle number two is people who did actually get access to it and were able to get it working, said that it mostly just directs you to visit other government websites. And yes, the government will say that's just the early stage right now.

But when you promise something about collapsing all these sites into one search bar and then all it does is reroute you to the site that you were trying to avoid, is that really a step forward? Is that really AI transforming the government? those are the big question marks right now. Marco Rubio did his best Steve Jobs impression. It looked like a tech rollout yesterday with us America.com. And one of the things that he pledged was that got people excited was starting next year. Americans will be able to apply for a passport fully online.

You just type in, how do I apply for my first passport? Then you can upload your passport photo. No more going to CVS for those super awkward photos and mailing things in. This is a will be perhaps a fully online. line thing. Now let's move to the second part of this story, which is about all the tech CEOs that were in the White House in Washington, D.C., yesterday. I mean, it was a who's who, Jensen Huang, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, Dario Amadeh. Sam Altman wasn't there, which for reasons we'll probably talk about later on. And the theme that you hear from the Trump administration around AI, as all

these safety concerns heat up, is we think that industry can self-police. That's also what you hear from NVIDIA's Jensen Huang. Others say we need regulation from the government, but Trump The Trump administration has over the past few weeks, as these concerns have heated up, just said, I think that industry can do this by themselves. They will take it upon them to self-regulate. And that's what you saw with this document that was signed by six executives. There's no legally binding anything. They just said that we'll put some monitors in place. We'll take care to be careful.

And that's that. It was also just funny to see all these AI leaders in the same room as President Trump. The interviews were going viral of Dario Amade, kind of like, dissociating while Trump is. talking a little bit. And then also the seating chart went super viral as well because of course Trump posted that on a true social and people are saying this is kind of a way to approximate who is closest to the administration, literally physically by who's sitting closest to Trump. On his right was Jensen Huang. On his left was Elon Musk. And then at the ends were anthropic. Daria Amadeh was pushed pretty far towards the end. So again, it's a seating chart.

How much do you really want to look into it? But some people were saying it shows the administration opinions and feelings towards these companies by literally how close they were sitting to Trump's seat at this dinner. Moving on, college sports in the NIL era has become the Wild West, so Congress is stepping in to try and tame it. The Senate passed the Protect College Sports Act this week in a bipartisan attempt to bring some rules back to a college system that has been transformed by NIL payments, runaway transfers, and conference realignment. During that period of change, supporters say the NCAA has lost its teeth. It would be not enough. if college sports could somehow magically fix itself, Senator Ted Cruz said, but this is a matter of

law, federal law, and it is only Congress that can fix it. The bill seeks to bring some guardrails back by granting the NCAA limited antitrust protection, which would give it a chance to establish some nationwide guardrails, replacing those that have been litigated away. Among the toothier rules would be slowing down the transfer portal by giving the NCAA power to impose transfer limits again. It would also cap conferences at 20 schools, allaying fears that a few super leagues would emerge leaving outsiders fighting for scraps. It also explicitly preserves the rights of student athletes to make money off their name, image and likeness, but bring some more tangible regulations around things like how they interact with agents.

Supporters of the bill, which include the NCAA, think that some rules need to come back to replace the free for all that college sports has become. But critics say all this law is doing is giving institutions more control over athletes again. Neil, Senate passes does not mean that this is becoming a law just yet because the House is in recess until after the midterms. But President Trump strongly supports it saying it would, quote, save college sports in colleges themselves. So it does have some powerful backers. Supporters are tapping into this general sentiment that a lot of college football fans are feeling that things are spiraling out of control. You might down the line have just two conferences, the Big Tenet and the SEC.

You've seen these transfers go wild with rent to quarterbacks coming in for one season, then absconding for another team and then going to another team after that until they're like 26. You have crazy conference realignment where you have UC Berkeley playing Clemson in a, you know, in a conference matchup, people declaring for the draft and then coming back just to play college football. So that's why Ted Cruz is one of the main backers of this bill saying, if we don't act, we're just going to see 30 to 50 competitive football programs in this country. and the remainder of the programs go under. So what they rolled out, however,

was basically a reassertment of the NCAA back over college football and college sports for a few years now after those stinging defeats in the courts was the NCAA losing its grip on the power of college sports and players were empowered to get money from NIL and move colleges and things like that. But now this is basically restoring the power dynamics that we had for much of the past few decades.

And that's exactly the issue that people have, because on the table, too, are things like coaching pay and athletic department budgets. And one big amendment to this bill that did not pass was trying to cap coaching salaries at $5 million a year and limiting contract buyouts as well. That amendment was defeated. So a lot of people seize on that and saying, like, if you really want to, you know, get a handle on the ballooning costs and the money that is flowing into the college sports system, and yet you don't want to actually regulate coaching pay, which is one of the biggest expenses on any athletic department's budget. But you do want to regulate what student athletes can do,

whether they can move schools or not. That seems like you're just going for the same power grab that you had in years gone by, and you're not actually trying to solve this issue. Corey Booker, too, who played football at Stanford, say, it is a bill for the control and power of the NCAA and member institutions. So he kind of read between the lines here and says, This is not necessarily, yes, probably some rules need to come back to the college system, but I don't know if the best way to do it is by just giving the NCAA all the power back again.

This was also very fascinating from a PR standpoint because maybe you've seen commercials related to this bill. This was very public. Its backers and its critics both flooded the airwaves to try to sway public opinion on this. ESPN got a lot of backlash last Saturday when it gave Ted Cruz about 10 minutes of airtime to promote the bill on college game day. You know, it had a politician on people were like, why is Ted Cruz on my college game day? I'm trying to get ready for the big games. But he was promoting the bill there. And then the converse of that, NAAC president, Derek Johnson, went on SportsC a few days and then criticized the bill.

That was a much smaller audience. But you're seeing a huge PR push, big communications launch from all sides of this bill because I think they're just trying to tap into the sentiment. You know, people are very emotional around college sports and especially college football. Couldn't be me. But that is sort of where we are in this moment in America. The problem for its backers is that, sure, the Senate passed the bill. And this is the farthest that any college sports regulation has ever gotten in Washington, D.C. However, before it heads to President Trump's desk, as we learned in elementary school,

needs to be passed by both members or both chambers of the legislative branch. And, yeah, the House is just not here. They got dismissed. They're chilling. And they're not coming back until November to vote on anything. and it's very much a question mark whether they will approve this in its current form. All right, we're going to take a quick break and talk about phone-free concerts right after this. Every day, shareholders meet to discuss important matters about the companies you invest in.

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Book your stay at greatwolf.com. That's greatwolf.com. Last week, just about every young person I know in New York went to see Phoebe Bridgers, who played three sold-out nights at the Barclays Center. But when I asked to see a video of her playing motion sickness, my favorite song, of course, they looked at me like I was an alien. Didn't I know that Phoebe had banned phones from her concerts? Thus began my education and now yours.

For her 45 date world tour, which began mid-September, the indie superstar has banned phones from her performances. And not as in, please don't use your phone or I'll be disappointed, but more like, you need to put your phone in this sealed pouch to gain entrance. Bridgers is not the first artist to ban phones. high-end comedy clubs have been doing it for years, and a number of prominent musicians have as well. But because of the size of her tour, her largely Gen Z fan base and the absolute nature of the restriction, the phone ban has sparked a major debate over big topics like

memory, scarcity, and what it means to live in the moment. For Bridgers, banning phones aims to preserve her mental health in the spotlight. According to a New York Times reporter who went to the show, about halfway through Bridgers thanked the audience for turning in their phones and acknowledged that she had a rough couple of years as public attention on her grew. She said she felt comfortable performing more vulnerable and personal songs with the understanding that none of it was being recorded and spread across the internet. Toby, kind of feels like a watershed moment in the Gen Z-led device backlash. Absolutely, because people love filming concerts, which it's kind of the worst genre of video ever. Have you ever watched a concert

video back after you took and go, wow, I'm so glad I have that. But according to Samsung, the average British concert gore records 12 and a half minutes of video per show. That is a lot of video time. But I do think artists are kind of in their soul realizing that this is not what they want their experiences to be. They want their concerts to feel like concerts again where everyone is present. They actually think that it increases the value of their show because if you cannot watch it on TikTok or you cannot watch it on Instagram after the fact, it drives up the value of the experience itself. so obviously you want to do that if you are a performer. And then plus some performers said they just felt weird up there.

Canadian DJ K. Trinada was very direct about having the audience film while they were performing. They said it looks mad awkward from where I stand. So from an artist's perspective, yes, there's lots of reasons why I can understand why you would tell people, leave your phones in your pocket. I don't want to see all those screens. I want to see you engaging with me. But the fact that Phoebe Bridgers is saying, You need to put this in a yonder pouch like they do at comedy shows or you basically can't go into my concert unless you put your phone away, not just in your pocket, but in this sealed pouch that you can only pick up after is one of the more extreme things that we've seen because a bunch of artists have said, don't use your phone in my concerts.

I thought what Harry Stiles did was pretty cool. At a recent gig in Manchester, he basically had his fans put their phones away, but instead gave out disposable cameras alongside a note, quote, thank you for really being here with me. dance with all your friends. So you get a disposable camera, which is a very Gen Z thing, but you're supposed to not use your phone. You don't have to put it in a pouch. So Bob Dylan also in his previous tours, as I said, don't use your phones, and we'll have the agent, you know, the security staff in the audience be the police, not necessarily put it in your pouch.

It's very interesting, though. There is a backlash to this. Not everyone agrees that you shouldn't use your phone. Billy Eilish is one major superstar who says that phones are just a part of our lives now, and that she said when I was young and we go to concerts or festivals, I would film every single minute of it, and then I would watch every single video that I took over and over until I even had the audio of the crowd memorized.

It's not to be poo-pood. It's important part of the culture. It keeps us connected. It does. Yeah, and a lot of the fact that Phoebe Bridger's audience is young, they don't even know a world before phones. So it's just such an integral or just a normal part of life that it feels completely irrational

to try to put that away. Also, if you can't afford a ticket to the show, a lot of her fans are like, hey, I love actually watching your videos after the fact, because it does feel like I had a chance to experience a part of this without shelling out for a ticket price that may be beyond my means. So that is another argument as well. I don't know. In general, I feel like we are shifting that way as a society. It is not out of the question now or weird even to be told to put your phone away at certain events. So the fact that that's becoming more of a norm, I do think that this is just the tip of the iceberg

as people probably will continue to adopt phone-free concerts going forward. I'm all for it. Proud of us for not bringing up golf until this point. But the famous example is that the Masters at Augusta doesn't allow phones. And all these pictures go viral of maybe the 18th green of people watching this most intense put. They're all locked in because they are no phones allowed

as opposed to any of the other. golf tournaments, the other majors, where everyone's looking, you know, they're mediated through their phones for this major, you know, this big, big moment. So it's happening across society. The backlash to phones is real. We'll see how far it goes. Best sporting experience I've ever had. Your best sporting experience you've ever had, Neil's never been to the Masters. All right, let's let's bridge with some final headlines. Open AI is coming after Meda's muse. The company unveiled dots yesterday, its version of an always-on AI assistant that can go off and do stuff for you.

Powered by its new Astra model, you can give dots a job like combing through customer feedback or turning a podcast interview into clips where you make Toby look really smart, and it can work in the background. The timing of this release is no accident. Medus Muse has exploded in popularity by promising to do essentially the same things,

screwing around your digital life to book reservations and cancel subscriptions. Neil, by my count, there's the iMessage-based instinct, a AI assistant startup that just raised at a $14 billion valuation. There's MetaMews, which is still the number one for you up. There's GROCBOT. And now there is dots.

How many AI assistance is one human meatbag need? Maybe zero. Still trying to figure out what to do with mine. It's very interesting how we've progressed in the AI wars. Previously, back in 2023, 2024, it was the chat bar wars. It was chat GPT versus GROC versus Gemini, you know, versus whatever meta, called theirs, Lama, I think it was. And now we moved on to the Agent Wars.

And it was pretty interesting because a lot of these AI leaders said the agent era is coming. A few years ago, we were all a little skeptical. And now it is absolutely here. Pretty interesting to see the different strategy that Open AI and Meta are taking because meta basically flooded the zone, said consumers on Instagram, WhatsApp, like, here's Mews. We want, you know, the average consumer to be able to use this. Open AI is restricting for now dots to probe. business and enterprise users. So you have to pay up to get these particular agents and they're

only available one per now. Right in the future, they said, we want you to sick a million agents on all of your various tasks. But for now, it is restricted to one and just pro business and enterprise users. They think, you know, that is the right equation as they potentially gear up to go public. But very interesting to see this agent battle play out. My issue is when I hear dots, I think of the candy and worse candy to get on Halloween. So there's a little bit of a negative association there for me. All right, up next, your days of crushing a bucket of mullsons with your friends at the bar may be numbered. Yesterday, a U.S. ban on some Canadian imports went into effect, prohibiting things like motorcycles, dairy products, and yes, alcoholic beverages from coming in

north of the border. Totaling $1 billion, the import ban isn't expected to have a significant economic impact. Total trade between the U.S. and Canada is $880 billion per year, but it is a stark symbol of deteriorating relations between the ones friendly news. neighbors after Trump slapped higher tariffs on Canadian goods in the summer, and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney matched them dollar for dollar. There's no signs of this impasse ending. US officials are not eager to come back to the negotiating table, and Canadian trade minister Dominic LeBlanc said, we're not waiting by the phone.

Yeah, a billion sounds like a lot, but again, it is 0.1% of the total bilateral trade between the U.S. and Canada. It's more symbolic than anything. and a lot of it is alcohol. 87% of that $1 billion duty of the ban consists of alcoholic beverages. So most of the big brands like the Blots that you mentioned will find a way around it because they have U.S. bottling operations and they can sell within the U.S. borders. But a lot of the more specialty alcoholic brands from Canada are saying,

this just destroyed our business. You know, like I was having some people in Atlanta start to order my stuff. and now this kind of agreement shuts that down. So in the grand scheme of things, not that big, but when you are a small bottling operation, then it is a big deal for you because you just lost a major customer base. Finally, we close out every Wednesday show

with Suggestion Box, where Toby and I each share a recommendation to get you over the hump of the week. Toby, you've been waiting patiently. You get to go first. All right, my recommendation is for all the test takers out there, and that's to go to the website, taketest.

XYZ. Once there, you will find numerous personality IQ of psychology and vocabulary tests, ranging from five to 50 minutes in length. The one I had all my brew co-workers take was a vocabulary test. It was 30 questions and you group synonyms with their similar words. It is very difficult, but at the end, it gives you your word IQ and the percentile that you rank amongst your peers. Neil, you did not understand my fascination with this because this site is literally all tests,

but tests are fun. Why do you like taking tests? I don't know. If there's a test that, you know, gets shared or it's new, I mean, you immediately take it. Yesterday, this was fun, actually. We took the ESPN Jeopardy test, which is a test I encourage people to take. But yeah, what's your fascination with tests? I really do love measuring stuff.

I mean, it goes back to what we were just talking, the wearables segment. Like, I'm wearing two wearables right now. It's fun to just have data. It's very fun to compete against each other. I was feeling like kind of hot stuff after this vocabulary test because I scored in the 90 second percentile. My vocabulary IQ was 121. But then an editor from the newsletter took the same test. She was 99th percentile 137 IQ.

So I encourage you to take it. We'll link that specific test in the show description. And I want to see how you guys do it. If you can make it through it, it's a bit of a slog. But it's fun. Tests are fun. Yeah, I bowed out halfway through. But I am looking at one of these tests, the Danish citizenship test.

There's so many on this website. It's very fun. It's very fun. See if I can pass as a Dane. All right, my recommendation, maybe as part of your fall rebrand is to host people at your home. Host literally anything, a poker night, bagel brunch, baseball, playoff watch party. Just order a bunch of pizza and have people help you eat it. Don't feel bad about inviting people over.

You're doing a very important public service. You're helping solve the loneliness crisis. Because folks, we're losing our hosting fastball big time. I saw the shocking style yesterday from Derek Thompson who reported that the share. of Americans hosting at home at least once a month fell from 42% in 1975 to just 12% in 2026. That's a 70% decline to help you along your hosting journey. In the show notes, we're including a link to 21 facts about throwing good parties. The most important of all, though, is if you are thinking of hosting something, make sure you invite us.

That's a good point. My apartment's too small deal. What do I do then? I have one couch and rent out a Or rent out of restaurant. Do something. I mean, I did just go. I mean, mine's small too. Let's do it on my roof. There's space there. We're planning right now.

I did see that same kind of Derek Thompson post that you saw. And the more alarming decline to me was Americans who have played cards recently fell from 39% to 13%. So maybe host a card playing party and solve both of those crises at the same time. What's the Howell card game? Yucre. Uker's a big one for sure. hearts if we're not feeling particularly good. Spades came in for a little bit. We've played a lot of card games, but I would say Euchar's number one. All right. That is all the time we have. Thanks for

starting your morning with us and have a wonderful Wednesday. To share your thoughts on the episode or anything else, send an email to Morning Brew Daily at Morningbrew.com or DM us on Instagram at Mbby Daily Show. Let's roll the credits. Emily Milliron is our supervising producer. Raymond Lue is our senior producer. Our producer is Olivia Graham and our associate producer is Olivia Lake. Technical direction by Nina Miller. Hair and makeup is hosting the game night and everyone is invited.

Devin Emery is our president and our show is a production of Morning Brew. Great show today, Neil. Let's run it back tomorrow.