Stanford Dropout❌ a16z Grad✅

Together with

Good Morning,

Raymond James poached four senior bankers from Jefferies, Anthropic unveiled a more cost-efficient Opus model ahead of its IPO, AI staff are complaining of mental toll over doomio fears, Europe's biggest firm has no sales in Europe, and a16z founded a new academy for ambitious high school grads as an alternative to traditional four-year college.

We're just a few days away from the LIT Cup Tournament in Nashville, where we're bringing together Nashville's finance, business, and tech leaders for a weekend of padel and an intimate happy hour. We'd love to see you there. RSVP info below

Meet Stuut, the a16z-backed AI coworker for order-to-cash. Finance teams at Honeywell, ZoomInfo, and NCR Voyix use it to increase cash flow 40% on average. Your firm should check it out.

Let's dive in.

Before The Bell

Learn more about the Litquidity portfolios and subscribe to the strategies on Autopilot.*

Markets

• US stocks closed mix yesterday, though tech stocks rose as AI FOMO kicked in on Meta's Muse success and Trump's address to the UN and meeting with Iran officials

  • Nasdaq-100 climbed to a new ATH in its first since June

• US Treasury sold 2Y bonds at a 4.787% yield, the highest since the May 2024

Earnings

• What we're watching this week:

  • Today: General Mills, Cracker Barrel

  • Thursday: Costco, Darden Restaurants

• Full calendar here

Prediction Markets

• Markets are almost certain of ANOTHER Fed rate hike this year, with just three months to go

• Deposit $10 and get a $20 bonus with code LIT on signup, only on the Polymarket US app

Headline Roundup

• Europe's biggest firm ASML has no sales in Europe (BBG)

• a16z founded a new academy as an alternative to college (TC)

• US meets with Iranians despite annihilation threat (BBG)

• Howard Marks says US displays total lack of fiscal discipline (BBG)

• Riskiest stock lose edge as rates rise (BBG)

• Meta's Muse drags down stocks that depend on 'consumer inertia' (BBG)

• Hedge funds ditch basis trade as bond gaps vanish (BBG)

• Derailed IPO plans rattle US market ahead of Anthropic debut (BBG)

• Virtually all top tech leaders will attend Trump-Xi dinner (BBG)

• Anthropic unveiled more cost-efficient Opus 5.5 model before IPO (BBG)

• Alibaba deepened AI push with new chip and bigger model (RT)

• AI staff complain of mental toll over fears of threat to society (FT)

• Apple is developing a new fitness tracker to rival Whoop (BBG)

• EU antitrust chief says SpaceX rival won't get free pass (BBG)

• Goldman Sachs named Simon Lyons as co-head of UK IB (RT)

• Raymond James poached four senior bankers from Jefferies (RT)

• Ethan Allen launched a new CEO search amid activist pressure (WSJ)

• CarMax cut 4% of corporate staff in third job cut (WSJ)

A Message from Stuut

Your cash is sitting in someone else's bank account.

Every day an invoice goes unpaid, you're financing your customer's business for free. Stuut is the AI coworker that runs the entire order-to-cash process, from credit to collections to cash application to payments, working your receivables over email, SMS, and voice.

Finance teams at Honeywell, ZoomInfo, Verifone, NCR Voyix, and PerkinElmer use Stuut to:

• Increase cash flow 40% on average

• Cut DSO by over 47%

• Eliminate 70% of manual AR tasks

It plugs into SAP, Oracle, NetSuite, Microsoft Dynamics, Sage, QuickBooks and more. Live in 3 days, cash flowing in 7.

Deal Flow

M&A / Strategic

• Billionaire financier Todd Boehly secured US support for his bid for the $10B international assets of sanctioned Russian oil firm Lukoil, threatening Carlyle's deal

• Royal Caribbean is nearing a deal to acquire all-inclusive retreat company Sandals Resorts International at a $6B valuation

• PE firms CD&R and Warburg Pincus are in advanced talks ​to acquire Canaccord Genuity's UK wealth arm Canaccord ‌Wealth for over $1.35B

• IDP ​Education, the administrator of the IELTS English-language exam, rejected a sweetened $494M takeover offer ‌from Blackstone despite a 55% premium

• A South African consortium led by Neal Froneman, the ex-CEO of miner Sibanye-Stillwater, is working with Rothschild on a South Africa Formula One bid as it develops a $410M racing complex

• XRG, the international energy investment company of Abu Dhabi's ADNOC, is exploring an acquisition of a stake in the Shell-led LNG Canada export project

• Russia's top aluminum producer United Co. Rusal International is seeking to sell assets in Jamaica and Guyana to focus on other regions

VC

• AI training data startup Snorkel AI raised a $350M Series E at a $3.5B ​valuation led by Insight Partners and S32

• Finnish AI cloud startup Verda raised a $190M Series B at a $1B valuation led by Emergence Capital

• Go.AI, an on-premises AI infrastructure provider for regulated industries, raised an $85M Series A led by Updata Partners

• Firecrawl, a startup that scrapes and structures web data for AI agents, raised a $75M Series B led by Smash Capital

• Ramona Optics, a bio tools company advancing massively parallel computational imaging, raised a $25M Series A led by ARCH Venture Partners

• Outerlimit, a decentralized security and authorization layer for agentic AI, raised a $16M pre-seed round from AlbionVC, Evolution Equity Partners, and Crane Venture Partners

• Atum, an open payments network startup, raised $13.5M from Variant, PayPal Ventures, Abstract Ventures, and others

• Monetary Metals, the global Gold Yield Marketplace platform, raised $10.5M in an equity financing from existing shareholders and strategic investors

Access the complete VC deal flow and data on Fundable

IPOs / Listings / Issuances / Block Trades

• Olympus Partners-backed data center infrastructure company Accelevation Holdings is seeking to raise $720M at a $5.4B valuation in its IPO

• RNA-based drug developer ADARx Pharmaceuticals is targeting ​a $1.75B valuation in its IPO; AbbVie will invest $100M in a concurrent private placement for a 5% stake

• Binance took a $100M stake in stablecoin giant Circle and expanded its partnership

• Spanish tungsten miner Abenojar Tungsten is considering a London IPO

Debt

• Food distributor Sysco drew $90B of orders for its $17B bond sale meant to back its $29B acquisition of Jetro Restaurant Depot

• Bank of America, Citigroup, and Apollo are reaching out to investors for their $49B debt sale backing Paramount's $110B takeover of Warner Bros

• AMC is seeking to raise $4B in junk debt to overhaul its capital structure

• Banks led by Goldman Sachs kicked off a $1.1B junk bond sale to finance construction of a CoreWeave data center sponsored Blue Owl

• Mumbai plans to raise $1B in debut bond sale in Q1

• Polish aluminum products maker Grupa Kety may refinance $525M of bridge debt with a debut bond sale for its $515M acquisition of Italian peer Metra from KPS Capital Partners

Bankruptcy / Restructuring / Distressed

• Struggling Florida high-speed rail Brightline is set to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with a deal for $350M in new loans from munis insurer Assured Guaranty

Funds / Secondaries

• Real estate investor PCCP raised over $5B across its latest equity and credit funds

• Kazakhstan's SWF FOF QIC, IT Park Ventures, Mirae Asset, and SparkLabs Group established SparkLabs Mirae Silk Road Fund, a new VC fund focused on Central Asia

Crypto Sum Snapshot

• US is investigating Binance over potential Iran sanctions violations

• World Liberty's crypto ties enriched Trump as investors lost out

Crypto Sum compiles the most important stories on everything crypto. Read it here.

Exec's Picks

• Tax season is a nightmare, and if you've got non-W2 income (K-1s, carry, a rental) you probably relate. If you're tired of a firm that only reacts, check out OLarry. They offer year-round advisory and filing all for one flat fee. Some friends have already switched. Get a free consultation.

• a16z announced the launch of a new school, providing an alternative to traditional college for ambitious young builders. The Horowitz Andreessen Academy operates on a unique philosophy and offers tremendous advantages such as direct access to top tech companies, who in turn will be creating the curriculums and providing resources to the academy. You can read about their vision here and here.

  • They also got a cool marketing video and a podcast episode about the whole thing.

Upcoming Events

The LIT Cup Tournament | Friday, 9/25 - Sunday 9/27 | Nashville

• The annual LIT Cup is also back at Sensa Padel in Nashville for a weekend of padel, drinks, our favorite DJ, and tournament action among players across four divisions.

• We're hosting an intimate happy hour for Nashville's tech, finance, and business community on Friday followed by a weekend of nonstop courtside action.

• This is a great opportunity to connect with industry peers, get in your padel reps, or simply enjoy an atmosphere among Nashville's best at Sensa's incredible riverside complex!

  • For the Friday happy hour, RSVP here

  • For tournament play, register here

  • For the weekend spectator + after party pass, RSVP here

Meme Cleanser

Merch Store: Visit our merch store to shop our latest apparel, shoes, bags, accessories and more.

Litquidity Ventures: Accredited investors & qualified purchasers within the Litquidity community can gain access to alternative investments such as venture, late-stage growth, and private equity through Litquidity Ventures. Interested? Fill out this form.

☎️ Book a call with Lit: Want to pick Litquidity's brain on business advice, insights, or just chat to say what's up? Buy his time here.

Launch your own newsletter: Have great content ideas and looking to launch your own publication? We highly recommend beehiiv to get started.

*DISCLAIMER: Investment advice provided by Autopilot Advisers, LLC ("Autopilot"), an SEC-registered investment adviser. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Investing carries risks, including loss of principal. As always, be smart out there. Litquidity is compensated to promote AutoPilot. Compensation details available upon request.