The Rundown - Discord Confidentially Files for IPO, Elon Musk’s xAI Raises $20 Billion

Episode Date: January 7, 2026

Market update for January 7, 2026Follow us on Instagram (@TheRundownDaily) for bonus content and instant reactions.In today’s episode:storage stocks surge after Nvidia’s Jensen Huang highlights memory demandDiscord confidentially files for a U.S. IPO as the tech IPO market heats upElon Musk’s xAI raises a massive $20B with backing from Nvidia and CiscoMobileye jumps on its $900M humanoid robotics acquisitionDeckers slides after analysts downgrade Hoka’s growth outlookWeb traffic data shows ChatGPT losing ground to Google’s Gemini

Public.com presents the rundown. Your daily market update in under 10 minutes. My name is Zaid Admani, and today is Wednesday, January 7th. In today's episode, I'll tell you why data storage stocks are soaring right now. Also break down the latest fundraising numbers from XAI. Then stick around to the end of the show to find out how much traffic is down at ChatGPT since Gemini 3 was launched. We got a great show for you today. Let's go.

Stocks were set in records on Tuesday with the S&P 500 and NASDAQ both gaining 0.6%. That was enough to push the S&P to its first record close of 2026. The Dow Jones continues to outperform as well, jumping 1% yesterday and closing about 49,000 points for the first time ever, which is cool, but like I still don't care about the Dow. Now, what I do care about, though, is what's happening with memory and storage stocks, because these companies are absolutely ripping right now. Yesterday, Sandist was up 28%. Western Digital was up 17% and Seagate was up 14%. You know, if you've ever went to buy a hard drive or a flash drive or an SD card,

you've probably heard one of these companies, but the big reason that they're ripping right now is because of comments from Nvidia's CEO, Jensen Huang. At Nvidia's keynote at CES on Monday, Jensen stressed that AI isn't just about GPUs anymore, it's also about memory and storage. He said the storage market is largely unserved and could become one of the biggest hardware markets on the planet as AI usage expands. Those comments from Jensen sent these storage stocks flying yesterday.

Now, there was already hype building around these names. These were some of the best performing names last year as well. And it looks like the rally isn't slowing down anytime soon. I think we might have to do a deep dive on these storage companies because storage prices increasing from AI will impact other things like the price of phones and computers. So that might have to be a future deep dive that we do. Now, speaking of things that are ripping, investors continue to rush into metals like gold, silver,

and copper. Gold is near record highs right now, and both copper and silver did hit record highs yesterday, with silver hitting $80 an ounce for the first time ever. So there is a pretty interesting setup in the market right now. This market rally is broadening out beyond just mega cap tech names. But at the same time, investors are still hedging by buying hard assets like gold and silver due to geopolitical uncertainty. Now remember, on Friday, we are getting the December jobs report, which will be the first big macro data point for the year.

We'll break down that jobs report and everything else happening in the markets every morning. So if you're new here, it's a great time to get subscribed to the podcast to stay in the loop. Let's run through some headlines, starting with Discord. Discord has confidentially filed for an IPO, officially kicking off the process. but the company is still debating internally whether they actually want to go public. Discord was founded back in 2015. They built their identity as a place for gamers to hang out over text and voice chat. But since then, they've grown way beyond just gaming.

They have more than 200 million monthly active users now, with servers covering everything from investing to music to random niche hobbies. The company was last valued at around $15 billion in a 2021 funding round, and they famously turned down a $12 billion acquisition offer for, Microsoft that same year. In hindsight, I bet they wish they took that deal because I'm not sure how much Discord is going to be valued at once they hit the public markets. Now, over the past year, Discord has clearly been IPO curious. They switched CEOs back in April of last year as part of a plan to put the company on path for an IPO. They've also stepped up their plans to monetize their

massive user base by rolling out new commerce experiences for gaming communities. But like a lot of social platforms, Discord is also dealing with PR and regulatory challenges, particularly around child safety. The company is currently facing a lawsuit alongside Roblox over safety features, and U.S. government officials have also criticized the platform, alleging that it's being used by extremist groups to recruit and radicalize young Americans. So the company is facing some challenges, and we'll see if they decide to move forward with an IPO this year. Zooming out, though, this filing is a sign that the IPO is still open when it comes to tech companies. In 2025, tech IPOs raised more than $15.6 billion on U.S. exchanges, which is more than double

the total from 2024. That also marked a rebound from a brutal three-year slum. One of my predictions for this year is that this is going to be the biggest IPO year of all time, especially with SpaceX and Anthropic potentially hitting the public markets. Let's shift gears and talk about X-AI. Elon Musk's AI company just raised $20 billion, and this deal more than doubles XAI's valuation from last year to around $230 billion today. This funding round included some big-time names like Nvidia, Cisco, Fidelity, along with Middle Eastern sovereign wealth funds. You know, just like the other AI companies, XAI is burning a ton of cash right now, roughly a billion dollars a month to build massive data centers and buy GPUs.

XAI continues to expand its giant campus in Memphis, Tennessee, which could soon approach two gigawatts, according to Elon Musk. Now remember, XAI also owns X, formerly known as Twitter, and X has been the main marketing tool for GROC, which is XAI's chat bot, the company claims they now reach around 600 million monthly active users across GROC and X combined. But I think there's still some questions on the path to profitability. I like, I personally don't know that many people paying for GROC versus paying for chat cheap. But XAI has no plans of slowing down. They're already training their next big AI model called GROC 5. Now, I should mention the company is facing some scrutiny right now in

multiple countries because users on X are using Grog to generate inappropriate, potentially illegal photos of women without their consent. So obviously that's not great. We'll see how the company responds, but that backlash hasn't stopped them from raising more funds. You know, all occasionally use GROC, especially if I'm on Twitter, but it's not something that I'm using on a day-to-day basis. I do think that GROC has a pretty significant uphill battle when it comes to chat GPT and Gemini. Now, a pretty good fun fact here. I actually went to high school with one of the co-fell Founders of XAI. Shout out to my man Greg. Now, I wouldn't say that we were close friends, but we did have a lot of the same classes, and I did give Greg a ride home once. So,

Greg, if you want to return the favor 15 years later, it'd be great to have you on the rundown, and we can catch up. Let's talk about some stocks making moves today. Mobilized shares are jumping after the chip maker for self-driving cars acquired a humanoid robotics firm called Menti for $900 million. MobileI says that Menti will operate as a separate division, and the goal here is to help accelerate Mentee's path to market. The company expects a proof-of-concept robot to come out in 2026, with commercial sales targeted for 2028.

Now, we talked about MobileE earlier this week. Their main business is making AI chips for self-driving cars. So if they're already building AI chips that help machines see, think, and move, well, then it kind of makes sense for them to get into the robotics business as well. Investors are clearly on board with this vision. Mobilized shares are up more than 10% this morning on this news and up nearly 30% to start the year. Now, on the flip side, Decker's Outdoors, the parent company of Hoka is sliding this morning after getting hit with multiple analysts downgrades. Both Baird and Piper Sandler downgraded the stock pointing to a weaker outlook for Hoka, which has been the main growth engine for the company.

Hoka's revenues grew 11% last quarter, which is a big slowdown compared to the 34% growth Hoka posted. in the same quarter in 2024. Moving forward, Decker's is guiding for only low teens growth for Hokas in fiscal 2006. That's why Piper Sandler cut their price target to $85 a share, while Baird is a little bit more bullish with their price target sitting at $125. Currently, Decker's stock is trading around $102, with shares down more than 4% this morning in reaction to the downgrades.

Let's wrap the show with the fun fact. Web traffic to ChatGPT has dropped 22% since Gemini 3 was launched in mid-November. According to data from similar web, chat GPT, 7-day web traffic went from 200 million down to 158 million in the last six weeks. Gemini's traffic, on the other hand, has remained flat at around 60 million daily web visitors. Now, to be fair, this data only tracks web traffic. It doesn't include mobile apps or API usage or enterprise integrations, which are a huge part of OpenAI's business. There's also a chance that this is just a holiday slowdown with students being off school and people taking time off work. So there's less need for chat GPT to cheat on homework or rewrite emails.

Or it could be an early sign that Gemini is actually making a dent and taking market share from chat GPT. And it could explain why Sam Altman declared Code Red at OpenAI late last year. I got to say, producer Mike's prediction that Sam Altman would get fired as CEO of OpenAI this year is starting to look a little less crazy. All right? Well, all right, guys, that's the rundown for today. Hope you guys enjoyed today's episode. If you did and you have like five extra seconds, consider giving us a five-star rating on Apple, Spotify, YouTube,

wherever you listen to your podcast. And if you are listening on Spotify, don't forget to vote in today's Spotify poll. Leave us a comment on Spotify. All that engagement really does help us out. And it helps other people find the show. Thank you guys so much for listening, watching, and commenting, shout out to Mike and Connor

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