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Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

Table of Contents

• How the AI Super-Rich Are Spending Their Billions

• The Cold, Hard Truth About ‘Nugget Ice’

• Inside the Exoskeleton Clinic Helping People Walk …

• How Do We Recycle the ‘Unrecyclable’?

• The Private Credit Party May Soon Be Over

• Poll of the Day: Dignified. Respectful.

• Poll of the Day: Three Day Weekend, Baby!

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.52% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.51% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$UBS ( ▼ 0.35% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 0.07% )  $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.89% )  $PTON ( ▼ 6.04% )  $MIDD ( ▼ 2.57% )  $WEN ( ▼ 0.23% )  $RNLSY ( ▼ 0.78% )  $BBDC ( ▲ 0.86% )  $OWL ( ▼ 4.58% )  

How the AI Super-Rich Are Spending Their Billions

You successfully coded your way to a billion-dollar fortune before your 26th birthday. Now comes the hard part: spending it without looking like an idiot. I’ll leave it up to you, dear reader, to tell me whether you think the latest generation of billionaires has been successful on that front. Let us know in today’s poll! 👇🏻

According to UBS $UBS ( ▼ 0.35% ) data, the total number of billionaires worldwide grew 13% year-on-year to 3,302 in the 12 months ending in April, with more than 1,000 of them living in the U.S. As a direct reflection of concentrated tech wealth, the median price of a single-family home in San Francisco jumped nearly 25% year-on-year to $2.1 million in June (compared to June 2025).

This overnight wealth, which includes early employees and investors from hardware giants like Nvidia $NVDA ( ▼ 0.07% ) and AI firms like Open AI $OPEAZZX ( ▲ 0.89% ) , is making waves in high-end markets. British manufacturer Princess Yachts has already sold five units of its new 90-foot X90 superyacht (costing upwards of £10 million each) to U.S. buyers before its official launch.

The newly minted AI super-rich are aggressively rewriting the rules of luxury, trading traditional opulence for high-performance neurosis. First rule of the AI club: Skip the brokers and the “theatre of traditional private aviation.” If you can’t book a jet on WhatsApp in under 30 seconds using Bitcoin, what’s even the point? Charles Robinson, founder of EnterJet, told the Financial Times, “If it takes more than a few minutes to get quotes and confirm, many will lose interest.” Once on board, do not expect old-money comfort. “The private aviation golden standard of yesteryears, sipping champagne on crisp linen, has largely gone out the window with this cohort,” Robinson adds, noting they demand artisanal Acqua Panna and health-conscious snacks instead. “They’re flying privately for efficiency and discretion — not to impress socially.”

When they do touch down, the new round of AI billionaires require custom toys. Standard luxury cars are too pedestrian. They want bespoke paint jobs like a bright blue and orange Rolls-Royce Cullinan. Ed Somner Bogard, founder of EMJ Exclusive, explains, “Our client is never going to drive somewhere with his Rolls-Royce and someone has the same car.” Others opt for Lamborghinis and Ferraris because, as Stefano Cossalter, a product line director, puts it, “This kind of car, at the end of the day, is like a toy.”

Even on water, these kids refuse to relax. Yacht dealer Jeff Brown notes that these overnight multimillionaires aren’t looking for lazy "gin palaces." “These clients are into fitness and they’re out doing stuff. They’re not sipping a Mai Tai on the deck,” he says. Instead, they buy rugged, high-speed machines equipped with Starlink connectivity and a Peloton $PTON ( ▼ 6.04% ) bike bolted to the rooftop flybridge.

I’d be perfectly happy with a lazy old gin palace and some crisp white linens, personally.

Quote of the Day

The Cold, Hard Truth About ‘Nugget Ice’

As a species, we have split the atom, mapped the genome, and built artificial intelligence. Yet, the peak of American culinary desire is chewing on frozen water. That’s right. We’re now in the “Nugget Ice” era, where restaurants are weaponizing “textured ice” to get you through their doors.

Once a niche delicacy, this soft, porous ice has become a full-blown cultural obsession. Why? Middleby $MIDD ( ▼ 2.57% ) CEO Tim Fitzgerald explains that "people just love Nugget Ice. It's just kind of the feel, texture of it, how it absorbs the flavor of the drink into the ice." 

Yes, we are now paying premium prices for beverages specifically because the ice is soft enough to act like a flavored sponge. Far from a fleeting social media fad, Fitzgerald insists nugget ice is "definitely a long-term trend" that has clawed its way from a tiny fraction to "about 20 to 25 percent" of the overall ice market. Major chains like Dunkin, Taco Bell, and Wendy’s $WEN ( ▼ 0.23% ) are rushing to install these machines, desperate to capitalize on our insatiable appetite for "dirty sodas" and colorful "refresher drinks.”

But don't worry, there is deep corporate strategy behind your brain freeze. Middleby is targeting a massive $17.5 billion ice and beverage market, upgrading these freezing units with high-tech automation. From an operator's perspective, Fitzgerald notes that nugget ice machines offer a "huge amount of advantages," including significant sustainability perks like saving water.

Now you know!

Inside the Exoskeleton Clinic Helping People Walk Again

While Silicon Valley burns gigawatts of power training AI to write mediocre corporate emails, a robotics company called Wandercraft is using the tech for something shockingly practical: Helping people walk again.

For decades, the standard medical assumption was that if you lost the ability to walk, life gets lived from a wheelchair. But Wandercraft’s founders watched walking robots and decided humans should get in on the action. They built robots for rehab and for the home, wearable robotic suits designed to let patients ditch the crutches entirely. Armed with 12 motors and sensors that feed into AI balance algorithms, these suits allow users to squat, lean, and do everyday activities like petting dogs, which user Caroline calls her “personal favorite.”

Naturally, strapping a paralyzed human into a heavy, self-guided metal chassis comes with some corporate sweat. “Definitely the biggest challenge when developing [the robots] was the safety of the patients,” notes Wandercraft’s co-founder.

And because every hardware startup needs an industrial side-hustle, Wandercraft is using the exact same balance code to build a humanoid robot deployed at Renault $RNLSY ( ▼ 0.78% ) that can carry a 90-pound payload. Why stop at helping humans walk when you can build the robots that might eventually out-walk us?

Despite the sci-fi vibes, Caroline insists “there is no need to have fear about it.” And Wandercraft's choice of New York for its first U.S. clinic wasn't just purely altruistic: “We have a huge investor base here in New York,” they admit. Nothing really heals quite like proximity to venture capital, eh?

Song of the Day: LOVA, ‘Leave It Beautiful’

“Leave It Beautiful” by Swedish indie-pop artist LOVA is a critically acclaimed 2025 bittersweet pop single that explores the mature and empowering theme of walking away from a relationship while keeping fond memories intact. So, it’s just like this newsletter.

How Do We Recycle the ‘Unrecyclable’?

We all love the comforting ritual of tossing a plastic tub into the recycling bin, pretending we’re personally saving the polar bears. But here’s the cold, capitalist truth: Your recycling bin isn’t a public service, it’s a business.

As TerraCycle CEO Tom Szaky points out, “profitable garbage companies are only going to recycle what they can make money at.” That means cardboard boxes and aluminum cans are in, but a staggering “95% of objects cost more to collect and process than the results are worth.” And unless someone is making a buck, your toothbrush, cosmetic tubes, and chip bags are heading straight to the landfill.

Fortunately, recycling is one of the few things left in America that hasn't been completely polarized. Szaky notes that whether you are right-wing or left-wing, everyone agrees “waste is bad and recycling is good,” calling it “the first sustainability lesson we learned as children” which “tends to [be] very apolitical.”

So how do we recycle the "unrecyclable"? TerraCycle's business model involves convincing corporate giants to fund the cleanup of their own junk. Take disposable vapes, the pinnacle of modern consumer convenience. Consumers love puffing on them and immediately throwing them away. But as Szaky dryly describes, “what you're throwing out is a nicotine-containing electronic device with an embedded battery.” If you toss that into a standard recycling shredder, you create a fire hazard. In fact, vapes have been “the leading causes of recycling center fires globally.”

TerraCycle’s solution is a highly regulated system to strip the batteries and recycle the plastic, ultimately turning trash into everything from ASIC shoes to park benches. Sure, moving to “reusable systems” where we don't make garbage in the first place is the ultimate leapfrog step. But this is America.

The Private Credit Party May Soon Be Over

For years, the financial elite whispered a beautiful lie: Private credit was a magic money machine. It promised juicy yields, steady growth, and total immunity from public market tantrums. Naturally, pension funds, insurers, and wealthy individuals dumped trillions into it. What could possibly go wrong with lending massive piles of cash to heavily indebted software companies back when interest rates were near zero?

Well, interest rates went up. Now, the private credit landscape is looking less like an exclusive country club and more like a high-stakes salvage yard. Souring loans have climbed to levels last seen in 2017, reports the Financial Times, leaving some funds looking downright sickly. As Mitchel Penn, an analyst at Oppenheimer, told the paper, “Underwriting wasn’t as good as it should have been... They weren’t as picky.” 

Translation: When money was free, everyone got a loan, regardless of whether they actually had a viable business model.

Now, the denial phase of the grief cycle is wrapping up. David Golub, co-chief executive of Golub Capital, admitted we are in a “credit cycle,” noting, “Others denied it for a while. I don’t think there’s a lot of denial any more.” 

Barings' $BBDC ( ▲ 0.86% ) Bryan High explains that higher borrowing costs have “starved some businesses from investing,” forcing them to use “all the cash they are generating to pay interest to lenders.”

But don't expect direct lenders to panic. Blue Owl's $OWL ( ▼ 4.58% ) Craig Packer cheerfully insisted “credit metrics are healthy and the issues we are managing remain isolated.” Understood. The ship isn’t sinking; it's just experiencing water ingress. Meanwhile, Oaktree’s Armen Panossian is waiting in the wings, “maintaining ourselves in a more defensive and risk-averse posture” to “lean into the market” once the volatility peaks. After all, what’s a corporate bankruptcy if not a great buying opportunity?

As I mentioned, this is America.

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Poll of the Day: Dignified. Respectful.

Poll of the Day: Three Day Weekend, Baby!

We asked: Would you rather work three long days or five shorter ones?

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Three day weekend, baby! (460)
⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Five. I like my working weeks just as they are, thank you very much. (59)
519 Votes via @beehiiv polls

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