Rich Habits Podcast - Trump's $5K Bribe, Anthropic's $2T IPO, & Meta's Muse

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are tuning in to the rich habits radar our Friday episode of the Rich Habits podcast where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. This episode is brought to by VCX, the public ticker for private tech. My name's Austin Hank Witts. I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke and the three things sitting at the top of our rich habits radar this week include Trump's $5,000 election bribe, meta's new Muse AI agent and Anthropics delayed $2 trillion IPO. And be sure to stick around to the end where we talk about Walmart launching a DoorDash competitor.

Starting point is 00:00:37 Robert, let's dig into our first story. I maybe shouldn't have called it a bribe, but it's looking kind of funny. So I'll let you start. I'll start us off with that one. I think we'll leave it in there because I think it's pretty funny and it really is what it is.

Starting point is 00:00:49 But at the Republican Party's midterm convention, Wednesday night, President Trump put a literal price tag on keeping his party in power. He is quoted of saying, because of our tremendous strength and success economically, I will issue a dividend to every adult citizen in the United States of America of $5,000. Trump told the crowd, but only if Republicans both hold the House and Senate in November. And he compared it to, quote, what a successful American company will do, a cast distribution to its shareholders. So if we back into some numbers here, Robert, 270 million adult U.S.

Starting point is 00:01:27 citizens a flat $5,000 check. That's going to cost an estimated $1.35 trillion, and that's landing on top of a national debt of over $40 trillion. Trump also added that the money must be spent domestically. He is quoted saying, the only caveat I have is that the dividend that we're making must be spent in the United States of America. And then he continued to say, we don't want you going to Canada to spend the money. We don't want you going to China or to Germany. Vice President J.D. Vance followed up suggesting that wealthy Americans could be excluded and the whole thing would be funded by tariff revenue. But as of right now, this is just a campaign pledge, not some sort of like actual program that's getting voted on. I can't stop laughing that you started this all with

Starting point is 00:02:12 bribe. But anyway, we remember the stimulation checks back during COVID and this is looking and sounding very much like that. But here's where it gets worse. We've watched this movie before. Trump promised a $2,000 tariff dividend back in late 2025, and 10 months later, according to ABC News, those checks still haven't materialized. And worse, a chunk of the tariff revenue the government did collect actually had to be refunded back to the companies that paid it in the first place. So on the funding math itself, the U.S. collected somewhere between $264 billion and $287 billion in net customs revenue, for all of 2025 per the Richmond Fed and RBC wealth management. Terrace make up just 2.9 to 3.3% of the total Fed revenue, which sat at $5.2 trillion for fiscal year 2025. And so you cannot fund a $1.3 trillion promise with a revenue stream that's currently bringing in a fifth of that in the entire year.

Starting point is 00:03:19 So, Robert, this is really, really crazy. I don't think anyone's going to get paid $5,000. What does this mean for our listeners and their money? Even in the best case scenario where this becomes real legislation, you should think of a $5,000 check the same way you'd think of the 2021 stimulus checks, helpful in the moment, inflationary in the aggregate, and not something to build a financial plan around. When we were writing this, we talked about what the malls looked like

Starting point is 00:03:48 when people got their Stimmy checks back then, and it was pretty crazy to see the lines at Louis Vuitton and the Gucci stores and all that. So if you're holding a fixed rate long duration bonds, this is exactly the kind of headline that pressures prices lower as yields react to this inflation risk. And if you're in a cash heavy position, a purchasing power hit is the real threat here, not whether you personally get a check. And if this actually gets serious traction in November, watch discretionary spending and read retail names tick up on stimulus spending expectations the same way they did in 2021. Think Target, Walmart, Amazon would be the first to feel the sugar high bump, even though nothing about their underlying earnings change.

Starting point is 00:04:36 Yeah, this is a campaign promise with zero funding underlying mechanisms to actually take it into fruition, a track record of not delivering on the last version of the exact idea. and now the bond market will look at the 10-year yield inch closer to 5% on some of this news. They're getting nervous about inflation and what a 5,000 check for everyone could do. So whether or not checks actually come or not, the fact that the president is floating around a $1.3 trillion in unfunded transfers 10 weeks before an election tells you a lot about where fiscal discipline sits in Washington's priority list right now. And spoiler, it's not that high. Yeah, I can't stop smiling about it. And I'm glad we opened this episode with this headline because I know how the world works and people work.

Starting point is 00:05:27 Maybe not the listeners and watchers daily of the Rich Habits podcast. But everyone else, they've already spent this money. They think it's coming. They saw the headline. They're out there figuring out what they're going to buy with it. Don't do that. Please don't do that. So let's jump to our second story here.

Starting point is 00:05:42 Meta now betting on making AI feel safe for the regular person. On Tuesday, meta launched Muse, spelled M-U-S-E, a personal AI agent that can shop for you, respond to your emails, book your flights, remind you about your T-Times, everything you could possibly imagine on doing all through a conversational app interface like IMessage. It's meta's biggest swing yet at turning roughly $130 billion in AI spending this year into something that the average consumer, actually use and help them get a little bit of return on that $130 billion investment. The pitch from MetaI's chief Alexander Wang was simple, quote, the fact that we've given such a powerful technology in a package that is going to be really digestible for the product is one of the things that will set us apart. Muse is free for most everyday use with a $20 a month and a $100 a month tier for the power

Starting point is 00:06:43 users. Wall Street loved it immediately. Meta stock surged 6.5% on the announcement, closing at $654, with Mizuho, slapping a $750 price target and KeyBank going even higher at $780 a share. But if you want to see all of Wall Street's price targets for Meta, go to wallstreetfavorites.com. It's all right there. It is the best stock aggregating tool on the internet. But, Austin, here's the scale of what Meta is actually trying to pull off with safety.

Starting point is 00:07:15 We know they just went through this big settlement, everything else. So I think this is good timing for them. And each Muse agent runs on its own dedicated cloud computer, walled off from every other user's agent. And a second watchdog agent monitors it and blocks internet access unless specifically approved. So I think it's really smart. They're playing the safety game right now. And launching this right after the settlement is really, really good for the company and the stock price. Yeah, safety is important because in the last few months, models from OpenAI, Anthropic, and Meta itself had already gone rogue and hacked outside companies, including the AI collaboration platform now owned by Nvidia called Hugging Face.

Starting point is 00:07:59 One report found that OpenAI's own agents colluded with one another to deceive the testers about cheating on an evaluation. And Wang admitted it directly by saying, we definitely are quite concerned about the potential for rogue and. agents. Wang says his biggest near-term worry isn't a rogue AI takeover, but it's an agent accidentally deleting your emails or even leaking your personal data while genuinely trying to help you. The same week, Meta is asking millions of regular people to hand an AI agent access to their email, calendar, and credit cards. The people who built that underlying technology are walking out the door. Thursday morning news broke that Andrew Tulloch, the researcher Meta, quarterly offered a pay package worth up to $1.5 billion to recruit last year is leaving for Anthropic

Starting point is 00:08:51 as we write this. Tullick is the third co-founder of Thinking Machines Lab to Switch job in recent days alone. Barrett Zoft also left Open AI for Google and Luke Metz left Open AI for Meta, so it's happening everywhere. And this isn't just an isolated blip. Meta's own chief AI scientist Jan Lacoon, one of the actual godfathers of AI, left the company back in November after 12 years saying that his vision for AI research had gone fundamentally incompatible with where Meta's leadership wanted to go with AI. Jeff Dean, who was Google's chief scientist, left with three senior researchers last month

Starting point is 00:09:29 to start their own AI company, and even an Anthropic researcher quit this week, specifically citing fear that Anthropic and its rivals are racing toward technology. It won't ultimately be able to control. More about Anthropic later in this episode. Yeah, there's definitely been a ton of headlines around where all of this is going. So, Austin, break this particular story down for our listeners. What does this mean for you and your money? The stock market's telling you one story right now, which is meta up 6.5% on a really cool consumer product, which I'm a fan of.

Starting point is 00:10:02 Robert and I, we talked about meta being undervalued a couple weeks ago here. We started nibbling more at it. Like, meta is a really cool company, and I think we're going to look back at 2026 and the lack of returns in the magnificent seven as a as a sort of group here we're going to fast forward 12, 18, 24 months and say, wait a second, 2026 was a great time to buy more mag seven stocks but you know we were kind of looking at this or looking at that instead so I'm still very bullish on the mag seven specifically meta but the researcher exodus is telling you something very different and that's kind of what I want to talk about right the people closest to how these models actually work are choosing to leave

Starting point is 00:10:39 the companies even though those companies are throwing billion dollar companies. compensation packages out them, encouraging them to stay, which is like, that's crazy. Hey, meta, I don't know anything about AI, but if you want to throw me a billy, I'll learn everything I possibly can and come work for you. Count me in. But that's not a reason to sell meta. I've got meta stock in my own portfolio. I know Robert does as well. Zuckerberg has both the balance sheet and the willingness to keep spending that $130 billion plus per year until something sticks. Is Mews going to stick? Maybe it does. Maybe it doesn't. But he is relentless. So if you own meta stock, you are betting on Mark Zuckerberg's execution and the capital on their balance sheet, not a single AI researcher that might be saying,

Starting point is 00:11:18 oh, look, I'll go do this over here instead for the flashiest company to work for at the time. That's exactly why he keeps riding these nine and ten figure checks to plug the hole every time someone leaves. They say, hey, who's better than them? How do I get them on the team? Because we're trending toward this AI future. Mark Zuckerberg wants to lead the way. So for me, Austin, the bigger takeaway is we are now several years into this AI arms race where the people who build the actual models don't seem to trust where the finish line is, even as the company's employing them tell the public everything is safely contained. So when your own chief scientist leaves warning about your direction and your billion-dollar recruit leaves for a competitor a year later,

Starting point is 00:11:59 that's not just noise. That's the people with the most information voting with their feet as they head out the door. So crazy one, I really like that one. And before we get into story number three today, Let's give a call out here to VCX, the public ticker for private tech. For generations, American companies have moved the world forward through their ingenuity and determination. And for generations, everyday Americans could be a part of that journey through perhaps the greatest innovation of all, the U.S. stock market. It didn't matter whether you were a factory worker in Detroit or a farmer in Omaha. Anyone can own a piece of the great American companies. But now that reality has changed.

Starting point is 00:12:38 Today, our most innovative companies are staying private rather than going public. on the stock market. The result is that everyday Americans are excluded from investing and getting left further behind while a select few investors reap all of the benefits. Until now. Introducing VCX, the public ticker for private tech. VcX by Fundrise gives everyone the opportunity to invest in the next generation of innovation, including the companies leading the AI revolution, space exploration, defense tech, and so much more. So visit getvcx.com for more information. That is get VcX.com. Carefully consider the investment material

Starting point is 00:13:16 before investing, including objectives, risk charges, and expenses. This and other information can be found in the fund's prospectus at getvcx.com. This is a paid sponsorship. Robert, our third story here is fun. We were alluding to it before with Anthropics. Let's dig right in. Yeah, definitely

Starting point is 00:13:32 Reuters reported this week that Anthropic, the maker of Claude, is now targeting mid-October at the earliest to start marketing what could be the largest IPO in history, a delay from the original plan that we talked about months ago. The company's S-1 prospectus, which was expected to go public as early as last week, isn't now expected until late September, according to people familiar with the matter. The listing itself is being time to complete just days before the November midterms. As part of the process, Anthropic

Starting point is 00:14:03 is finalizing a $15 billion revolving credit facility before it even sits down with the analysts at the bank financing the deal. So Anthropic raised at a $965 billion valuation in May. The IPO chatter now floating around Wall Street, reported by the Financial Times and confirmed by multiple other outlets puts the target north of $2 trillion valuation, which is again more than double the valuation within months, making it the single largest public listing ever. SpaceX was $1.75 trillion. now we're coming in at $2 trillion for Anthropic. Now, to get there at that $2 trillion valuation, you've got to kind of do some math. So the math that they're assuming requires some serious revenue growth into the future.

Starting point is 00:14:51 Anthropics revenue run rate in May was $47 billion. That means every year, if you take their monthly revenue for the month of May, so that one month, you multiply it by 12 to get the annual run rate, it's that $47 billion. So month of May, multiplied by 12, is 47 billion. With insiders now saying that that annual run rate that I'm alluding to is now going to be 120 billion by the end of this year of 2026. So going from 47 billion of annual run rate to 120 billion by the end of this year in just what is that 7, eight months period of time?

Starting point is 00:15:26 Like, that's a lot of growth. So at the high end of that projection, $2 trillion works out to be about 16 times revenue. And if you use the company's own 2020. target of $200 billion of annualized revenue by the end of 2008, you're still at 10 times forward revenue. Morgan Stanley and Goldman Sachs are fighting for the lead-left underwriter role alongside J.P. Morgan, and the stakes for the banks personally are enormous because Morgan Stanley's equity underwriting fees already jumped 70% to $851 million last quarter. Largely on IPO prep work like this. We all know Morgan Stanley worked closely on that SpaceX IPO and they made a killing.

Starting point is 00:16:09 So it's important to understand, Robert, I want to linger on this a little bit longer. Anthropics saying, hey, we're going to go IPO at a $2 trillion valuation because we are assuming, because the stock market's forward looking, right? Anthropic is saying right now, 2007, right, they've got this number that we report. But by the end of 2008, so we're going to look forward a couple of years and say, okay, in the next couple of years, we see a world where Anthropic is doing $200 billion of annualized revenue. And then we're going to take that, multiply it by 10 because a lot of these companies like to put a 10x or 15x multiple on their revenue. And that's how they come to that $2 trillion valuation. It's much more realistic, to be honest with you,

Starting point is 00:16:49 than SpaceX. SpaceX was doing like $9 billion of revenue. And they're like, well, what's going on here? How do we get to $1.1 trillion? So Anthropic makes a lot more sense in this instance than SpaceX. But I think there's a lot more complication. So why don't you walk through some of that complications, Robert. Yeah, Austin, it definitely gets more complicated. Anthropic just posted its first ever quarterly operating profit in Q2 of this year, about $559 million on $10.9 billion of revenue, more than doubling from $4.8 billion in Q1. And that sounds like a green light, but if you go back further, the picture gets messier. Estimates put Anthropics' cumulative net operating losses at $10 to $15 billion,

Starting point is 00:17:33 from 2021 through 2025 with looser burn rate estimates, including compute commitments running as high as 24.8 billion. And one widely cited estimate had Anthropic burning 5.2 billion in cash on a $9 billion revenue run rate with only about 30 million monthly users compared to OpenAI burning $8.5 billion on a $20 billion run rate with 900 million weekly users. I know there's a lot of math here, but it all makes sense to help us wrap this up. In January, the information reported Anthropic actually lowered its gross margin projections,

Starting point is 00:18:13 even as revenue skyrocketed. And that's a sign of compute costs are growing just as fast or faster than the revenue that's supposed to be justifying these lofty valuations. Robert, I love this, and I want to linger just a little bit longer because I think it is important for our listeners to understand these numbers. Anthropic burning, 5.2, which is. spending money, right, 5.2 billion in cash while they had a $9 billion run rate with 30 million monthly users where Open AI was burning $8.5 billion of cash on a $20 billion run rate with 900 million weekly users. So this tells me that Anthropic is really trying to get toward that profitability sooner and that they're trying to do it with less customers, right? OpenAI has

Starting point is 00:19:02 900 million weekly users. Anthropic has 3% of the amount of customers, but has a comparable sort of like burn rate. So it's, I think this is an interesting IPO. I'm going to look forward to like reviewing the S1 when it finally comes out. But there's a live case study for what could go wrong. And we just saw it, Robert, that was SpaceX. I peoed earlier this year in a frenzy that made it one of the five most valuable companies in the world, peaked at $200 a share mid-June. now three months later it's down 30-ish percent sitting around that 140, $150 a share range as post-IPO enthusiasm starts to fade. Investors get worried about the heavy spending, upcoming lockup expectations and expirations, all that stuff. The exact same concerns are

Starting point is 00:19:49 going to happen with Anthropic if they don't price this correctly. Now Bloomberg flagged this directly. They said banks are explicitly hoping Anthropic can avoid the SpaceX slump. That's what they called it, the SpaceX slump, because their own earnings depend on it doing well. Now, market pricing right now suggests that real skepticism about the $2 trillion number can hold, but some people are saying, like, listen, actual market cap could be closer to 1 to $1.25 trillion once real investors get in and set the price here and there's, you know, all the hype is gone. I don't know what that's going to, you know, be like on this IPO. I think a lot of it comes down to growth expectations, but Robert, what does this mean for

Starting point is 00:20:28 our listeners and their money? It means if you want AI exposure, you don't have to guess whether Anthropics IPO pricing will hold. You can just wait and watch what actually happens on day one. And more importantly, what happens 60 to 90 days after lockups start expiring, which is exactly when SpaceX started to crack. This IPO is going to be one of the most oversubscribed, most hype listings retail investors have ever had access to. And that hype is precisely where all the risk is for first-time buyers. retail investors. A first time operating profit is a real milestone, but it's only one data point

Starting point is 00:21:06 sitting on top of years, a billion dollar losses, an evaluation that only works if Anthropic keeps doubling revenue at a pace almost no company in history has sustained for long. So if you're tempted to chase the open, size the position like you would any single name bet on unproven expectations and execution, not like one of your core holdings. And the delay we're seeing. And the delay we're seeing as it relates to the IPO because, I mean, they were supposed to IPO by the end of September, right? But now they're saying, hey, we might not even get the information out by the end of September. So it's, it's maybe not even about paperwork. It's the banks and the company is trying to make sure the story is airtight before they ask the public market investors who don't have

Starting point is 00:21:46 that venture style patience for, you know, a decade of losses to underwrite a $2 trillion dollar bed on AI economics that still by the company's own numbers are extremely fragile. So, you know, I think more information from Anthropic, the better here. If they can come in and say, like, hey, guys, listen, we have a run rate by the end of this year at $120 billion. We're going to have a run rate at $200 billion or, you know, 250 or whatever it is by this amount. Like, if they can communicate that to investors and prove to investors that that demand is there, because we get it, Robert. We see the charts that Goldman Sachs and Evercore. I think we talked about it this week, actually, inside the Rich Habits Network, that these AI agents are just the total.

Starting point is 00:22:26 can spend on these AI agents is going to like skyrocket. I mean, it's quite literally just a J shape, just straight up into the right. And, you know, Anthropic is going to benefit from that. Open AI is also going to benefit from that. So is SpaceX. So is meta. Right. So like, it's not just anthropic proving that they're able to do this, but they're, they have to really tell the story correctly to, to be able to demand that $2 trillion valuation. And then even if they do demand it upon IPO, like, congrats. Let's wait six to nine months and see if the stock. actually still is worth $2 trillion. Yeah, I think the most important thing for everyone listening and watching this episode

Starting point is 00:23:02 is to understand, just like we called out with SpaceX, don't chase the hype because there's going to be these lockup periods where stocks are going to get unlocked and shares are going to get unlocked and people are going to get liquidity. So there's going to be a lot of volatility in the beginning. And you don't want to be buying at the top and then have to wait years for it to get back to that after this liquidity event happens and multiple liquidity events happen after every IPO. So you just need to make sure you understand the risk of buying at IPO and the fact that it's probably going to be very volatile for the first six, eight, 12, 18 months. And that's even if it does recover from these over high prices at IPO.

Starting point is 00:23:42 All right, Robert, let's now jump to our radar points. If you're new around here, I've got three headlines that I thought were interesting. Robert's got three headlines that he thought were interesting. We bring it sort of show and tell style and we talk about it at the end. So my three headlines include the U.S. destroying five tankers in Iran, anthropics modeling AI economic future output. What's going to look like there? I've got some cool numbers to share on that one. And then finally, some new updates on SpaceX and their data centers and how it might be slowing down. So I'm excited to get into that one.

Starting point is 00:24:15 So I'll keep this one brief, though, Robert, but the U.S. destroyed five oil tankers in Iran on Tuesday. Four of them were in the Gulf of Oman. one was near Kharag Island, and this happened after Iran fired ballistic missiles at a U.S. aircraft carrier, Navy destroyers, and a marine ship since Friday. All of those ballistic missiles were unsuccessful, which is great news. But the economic sort of ripples we're seeing here is that oil has now jumped to six-week highs. Crude oil is up two and a half percent to $94 after briefly getting up, I think it was above $100 a barrel. So Iran then hit U.S. forces in Jordan, air defenses intercepted some missiles.

Starting point is 00:24:59 This is all over the place, but I want to talk about this for a moment because we're seeing it at the gas pump. We're seeing it with the price of gold and silver right now. Bitcoin's up a little bit on some of this, right? So like we're seeing, unfortunately, this war really starting to like heat back up in the Middle East between the U.S. and Iran. And I think it's really important that people keep this on their radar. The market didn't care about it for months, right? the market stopped carrying in April, May, June, and July. Started carrying a little bit again in August as the price of oil increased.

Starting point is 00:25:28 But I think now the market's really going to start caring about it again, especially as we have these midterms in November. Now let's talk about Anthropics Economics Team. They built an interactive model estimating AI's economic impact by 2030 across three different scenarios. In the modest case, AI's footprint mirrors the Internet. GDP above, you know, one and a half percent above its baseline, unemployment stays normal. But in the substantial case, AI handling half of knowledge work, which, oh my gosh, we'll see if

Starting point is 00:26:01 that actually happens, GDP increased 8.5% with unemployment sitting at 4.6% while wages rose 2.1% overall, and knowledge workers would see a pay drop of about half a percent, while other occupations gained 6%. And now they talk about the extreme case, which was AI outproducing humans on nearly all knowledge work, and it modeled 15% annual GDP growth, but knowledge worker wages had dropped by more than 10%. So I don't know, Robert, if it's going to be the modest approach, the substantial, the extreme. Like, I don't know how much of knowledge work is going to get replaced and sort of impacted by AI in 2030. But if we can increase GDP while keeping a lot of,

Starting point is 00:26:48 unemployment low, count me in. And finally, Robert, my last point is SpaceX, kind of rethinking about how they're thinking about safety for these data centers. They are now building safety systems and cooling into their data centers before they go live, which is different because they were actually installing them after they went live before. Now, this all comes back after reliability concerns from their rocket and Starlink team. SpaceX's data centers already rent capacity to Anthropic and Google reflection and all those names. But here's the kicker. Goldman Sachs projects SpaceX's total AI revenue to jump by a hundred times in the next four years from $3 billion in 2025 to $300 billion by 2030. We'll see if that actually happens or not. But I thought it was

Starting point is 00:27:40 interesting to talk about because we heard from Elon that by the end of 2030 they plan to do a trillion dollars of revenue and that next year they plan to do a hundred billion of this like data center revenue so big lofty expectations from Elon but then like hey hold on let's reimagine how we're doing these data centers in real time because what we were doing might not now work into the future yeah there's a lot going on there because i always look at it that Elon does a good job at what he does but we also have to take those lofty expectations and go okay what if he's 30% right where does that put SpaceX stock where does that put the value But I want to go back to your first point today that I really enjoyed the coverage on.

Starting point is 00:28:20 And that is this war lingering. And you alluded to gold and silver and Bitcoin. And I just want to make a quick point on that, that I think it is absolutely important that everyone understands when you talk about something like that. It's so critical for your future that you make sure this is why you stay diversified. We speak about diversification till we're blue in the face. And this is why. No one expected this war to keep lingering and lingering and lingering, but that is also why with diversification, you can offset some of the volatility through having the bitcoins and the golds and the silvers and some of the other things we talk about. So I wanted to linger on that for a minute because I think it's very, very important.

Starting point is 00:29:03 And before we jump into my radar points, I think we can all agree that high yield savings accounts are very important, especially during uncertain times and earning interest on your. emergency fund, so it's not just withering away to inflation, is the entire purpose. And as we always say, make your money work as hard for you as you work to earn it. Yes, high yield savings accounts are incredibly important, but the problem is that most business owners, and I know 60% of you listening right now are business owners, don't have access to an interest-bearing account, which means these business owners are earning next to nothing on their idle cash. Waldo fixes that. Waldo helps small to mid-sized businesses do what the Fortune 500 companies do with their idle cash by giving them access to high-yield treasury accounts, dentists, health care clinics, law firms,

Starting point is 00:29:57 construction companies, manufacturing, e-commerce stores, retail, software companies, and everything in between Waldo.a.ai is your friend here. Yeah, Waldo is definitely a breakthrough. I'm using it for all of our small businesses, and it offers access to yields of up to 5% alongside SIPC insurance coverage, up to $75 million with no minimum deposit and no need to switch banks. And Austin, I think Waldo is incredible. You know, I've been a small business owner for a very long time. We don't have tens and hundreds of millions of dollars sitting,

Starting point is 00:30:33 but we have hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes a few million dollars. And it's really been difficult when you can't make money on it while it's, sitting in your account, and now that changes with Waldo, and I love it. If you have a business and your cash is sitting in a checking account, earning nothing, go open an account on Waldo and start earning yield on your idle cash. Opening an account takes less than five minutes, so learn more at waldo.a.i or click the link in the show notes below and do what the big companies are doing with their cash, and that's earning yield.

Starting point is 00:31:04 Use the code Rich Habits at sign up and receive a 1% deposit match up to $1,000, and see the terms and conditions at Waldo AI. All right, Austin, I'm going to get into my radar points, starting out with Vanguard's 50-year winning streak just ended. Vanguard's shares of U.S. fund assets rose for 50 straight years, peaked nearly 27 percent, double Fidelity's 1990s high watermark, and is now receding per Bloomberg's Eric Balchunis. Vanguard still runs $11 trillion plus in assets, more than double each of BlackRock and Fidelity individually and the top three together control 52% of all fund assets. But newer data shows BlackRock, Vanguard, and State Streets combined ETF inflow share

Starting point is 00:31:53 sliding to 55% as fee-cutting rivals. Fidelity zero expense ratio funds, among them chip away at what used to be Vanguard's unassailable, low-cost edge. This is important, Austin. You know, you and I talk about VOO and making sure people understand. to get those low expense ratio funds. So this is kind of enlightening that we've talked about VLO and some of the Vanguard products for so long.

Starting point is 00:32:19 So make sure you understand when you're investing in these products, you want to get the best deal on them from an expense ratio standpoint. For me, number two today is OpenAI. Just banned its own ad partners from advertising with competing AI tools. Open AI told advertising partners, their campaigns for standalone image and voice generation products will no longer be approved in ChatGPT according to the information.

Starting point is 00:32:44 A policy shift that blindsided Adobe, which has been running ads for its Firefly AI generator directly on the platform. OpenAI's ad business hit a $1 billion annualized revenue run rate last month after launching ads in the U.S. in February, and this move effectively locks out any AI product that competes with ChatGPT's own image and audio generation. And my third point today, and I think this one's fun,

Starting point is 00:33:09 is Walmart is building a door dash competitor. So Walmart is adding Papa Johns to its delivery lineup. Its third partnership after Subway and Duncan, and it's first with a chain not already inside of the Walmart stores. Orders run through Walmart's existing Sparkdriver Network, promising 30 minutes or less delivery, with 90% of Americans living within 10 miles of a Walmart. The number that matters is 65% of restaurant orders,

Starting point is 00:33:39 already include other Walmart items, meaning the food delivery play is really a Trojan horse to grow basket size and app engagement directly encroaching on DoorDash and Uber's territories. So I thought that was a fun one to share. Walmart's making some moves, and it seems pretty smart. I'm here for it, Robert. Listen, I'm someone that when I go to my Uber app and I get my Uber Eats order, I'm not also having that person stop off at like, you know, 7-Eleven or Walgreens or CVS or, or Publix to pick me something up because my food's going to get cold. But it is interesting to think that if someone is like, hey, I want one of the new $7 footlongs from Subway, and while you're there at Walmart, can you also pick me up some shampoo and

Starting point is 00:34:24 some tide pods, like all of that and one thing? I could see that happening. Like your food's not going to get that, you know, old, I guess, in that period of time. But interesting play, Walmart. Interesting play. Yeah, definitely. I don't know about it. I don't really use DoorDash and it.

Starting point is 00:34:39 any of those for food. I have all kinds of restaurants around here, but I get why this makes sense for them, and we'll see how the integration works. I haven't run any numbers on it, but it's definitely a smart play. Speak for yourself, dude. I'd be door dashing at least once a week, it feels like. Well, I live in the middle of a downtown. I can walk out. I don't even have to walk outside. If it's raining, I just go downstairs and go to the restaurants in the building. They're incredible, but I get it. When you're in a rural area or you're busy like you are, all of those make sense. I just don't personally use them.

Starting point is 00:35:13 Hey guys, this was great. Please join us inside the Rich Habits Network. We are still running a seven-day free trial. We're actually investing into a really interesting CPG company right now. They are competing with uncrustables. They're backed by Pat McAfee from College Game Day. They have a partnership with the NFL Players Association. They're doing some really interesting stuff.

Starting point is 00:35:34 We're investing in that company at the moment. If you want to invest alongside of us, more information inside the Rich Habits Network. Again, seven-day free trial. You can Google Rich Habits Network. You can click a link in the description. You can find it in my bio or Robert's bio. Just find the Rich Habits Network any which way you want. Learn more about this all inside the rich habits network. And make sure you guys share the podcast. We all have friends and family and coworkers that have blind spots in their spending or they don't know what to do with their money or how to get ahead. Share the podcast with them. I mean, we just really want to get

Starting point is 00:36:09 it out there to everyone because, you know, we live in a place where you can always level up your understanding and your financial knowledge. And the Rich Habits podcast is a great way to start. And to the 100,000 of you that come back every single week to listen to the show, thank you. We really appreciate it. All that said, thank you all so much and we'll see you on Monday.

Rich Habits Podcast - Trump's $5K Bribe, Anthropic's $2T IPO, & Meta's Muse

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.