This week’s world famous news haiku competition is about how your summer vacation is a “retirement killer.” Send me your entry—to haiku at cheddar dot com—by noon ET Thursday, for consideration by your Cheddar peers. (Don’t worry if/when you get a bounceback email. The mailbox is working, it’s just been inundated with haikus lately!)

Matt Davis — Need2Know Chedditor

News you Need2Know

• Should Kids Be Banned From Social Media?

• The Robots Are Leaving the Lab

• Why Warren Buffet is Pausing Gates Donations

• Would-Be Nvidia Rival Hits $5 Billion Valuation

• White House Lifts Ban on Anthropic Models

• Poll of the Day: Empire State of Mind

What’s the Stock Market Up To, Eh?

$SPX ( ▼ 0.22% )  $DJI ( ▼ 0.03% )  $NDX ( ▲ 1.59% )  

Companies Mentioned in Today’s Newsletter

$META ( ▲ 8.81% )  $BRK.A ( ▲ 0.29% )  $AUDVF ( ▼ 7.62% )  $NVDA ( ▼ 1.25% )  $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.03% )  

Should Kids Be Banned From Social Media?

As the debate over youth online safety intensifies, a global push to restrict under-16 users from social media is gaining undeniable momentum. Fortune's business editor, Nick Lichtenberg, noted in an interview with Cheddar that "Australia really was the first country to introduce a ban on social media for kids under 16," and then the jolly olde English followed suit.

Unsurprisingly, Big Tech is pushing back. Lichtenberg explained that giants like Meta $META ( ▲ 8.81% ) and TikTok argue these policies are a "mistake" that "will actually push kids into more harmful places of the internet and other platforms that are really, really unsafe." Although they would say that, wouldn’t they?

Beyond corporate resistance, enforcing strict age limits presents technical hurdles. Lichtenberg highlighted the practical challenge, explaining that "you'd have to reverse engineer a lot of the way that just our iPhones work" to accurately verify "who really is looking at this content on their phone."

So, will the U.S. be the next country to implement a ban? While some industry insiders predict an American ban is inevitable, Lichtenberg expects a middle ground: "My hunch... is that there will be some sort of compromise... where maybe a ban will look like it's possible, but there won't be an outright ban." Ultimately, how society views these platforms is fundamentally shifting, with Lichtenberg predicting that "social media is going to be thought of as cable TV was back in the 1980s."

I assume he means only your rich friends had it and you never got to watch MTV?

Quote of the Day

The Robots Are Leaving the Lab

The robotics industry is undergoing a transformation. As AI advances, robots are quickly moving from isolated experiments into real-world applications. Jeff Burnstein, President of the Association for Advancing Automation (or “A3,” which makes me think of an Audi $AUDVF ( ▼ 7.62% ) , but that’s beside the point), notes that combining AI with improved hardware makes this a pivotal moment: "I've been in this industry over four decades, so I can tell you this is the most exciting time ever,” he told us in an interview.

While the rise of robotics sparks fears of job displacement, Burnstein emphasizes that automation is actually essential for U.S. industry, particularly when it comes to re-shoring manufacturing. "We can't re-shore manufacturing at scale, without investing heavily in automation," he said, citing a current shortage of 500,000 manufacturing workers. Far from stealing jobs, he points out a long-standing historical trend: "Whenever robot sales go up, unemployment in America actually goes down.”

Really? Hmmm. I did not know that.

Beyond the factory floor, Burnstein predicts a future where humanoids operate safely in public spaces. "We're going to see them in restaurants and hotels and maybe even our homes in the not too distant future," he said.

To keep up with global competitors like China, Burnstein warns that America must take decisive action. "We have to, in the U.S., have a national robotic strategy," he said, to ensure the country leads the way. Ambitious! Bleep! Blorp!

Why Warren Buffet is Pausing Gates Donations

For the first time in two decades, billionaire investor Warren Buffett is hitting pause on his annual midyear donation to the Gates Foundation. The 95-year-old Berkshire Hathaway $BRK.A ( ▲ 0.29% ) chairman typically donates billions of dollars worth of shares every June or July as part of a "lifetime" pledge, but this year, he is holding back.

The reason for the delay? Buffett is waiting for the results of an independent review into the Gates Foundation's ties to the late convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. The foundation has retained the law firm Wilmer Hale to conduct the investigation, with findings expected to be released this summer.

The situation has severely impacted the long-standing friendship between Warren Buffett and Bill Gates. According to reports, their relationship "has been strained following the release of the Justice Department’s files on the Epstein case." In a March CNBC interview, Buffett revealed that he hasn't even spoken to Bill Gates since the files became public. He explained his delay by stating that he "wanted to wait and see what more he learned from the Epstein files before making his annual decision on giving in late June."

Buffett is expected to make his final decision later this year, "possibly until when he puts out his Thanksgiving letter." In the meantime, his annual contributions to his family's foundations remain unaffected.

Song of the Day: Wyclef Jean, ‘Winter Is Coming’

This is a moody, vulnerable, and cinematic standout from ‘Clef’s autobiographical hip-hop album Clef Notes, which dropped last week. The single serves as a focal point for an incredibly ambitious 49-track rollout strategy titled Quantum Leap, where the legendary Fugees co-founder plans to release seven albums spanning seven different genres over the course of a year. Critics and fans alike are praising the track as a masterclass in musical evolution that trades trend-chasing for deep, personal reinvention. It’s a lot like this newsletter!

Would-Be Nvidia Rival Hits $5 Billion Valuation

The AI chip market has a fierce new contender. Etched, an AI chip startup founded by Harvard dropouts (wouldn’t you know it?) Gavin Uberti and Robert Wachen has officially reached a $5 billion valuation. It only needs to grow another thousand times to be the same size as Nvidia! $NVDA ( ▼ 1.25% )

Following a massive, unannounced $500 million funding round in December, the company recently revealed it has already booked $1 billion in contract orders for its upcoming products.

Etched aims to solve the industry's biggest AI bottleneck—inference—by providing what the company calls "frontier inference clusters."

“What’s inference?” you ask. Well, AI inference is a trained model applying its knowledge to new data to make predictions. You and I might call it “thinking.” Specialized chips are required because they use thousands of parallel cores to handle trillions of mathematical equations instantly, providing the energy efficiency and real-time speed standard that processors lack.

It is a turnaround for a company whose recent press release framed them as "coming out of stealth." Despite their current success, the founders noted on a 2024 podcast that they initially struggled to secure funding back in 2023. At the time, every major investor passed on their pitch, leaving the startup, like most of us, "operating month-to-month, close to running out of cash." 

Today, however, with backing from AI heavyweights and billionaires like Peter Thiel and Stanley Druckenmiller, Etched is proving that they are ready to take on the industry's biggest giants. I also just took a look at their website and I’ve… inferred… from it that they need to hire some women soon:

White House Lifts Ban on Anthropic Models

And by “Anthropic models,” of course, we mean Anthrophic CEO Dario Amodei and how he models a cardigan:

Jokes. The U.S. government has officially ended a weeks-long standoff with the $1 trillion AI company Anthropic $ANTHZZX ( ▲ 0.03% ) , lifting export controls on its leading AI models. Following the decision, Anthropic is now permitted to re-release its latest model, Fable 5, to the general public, while its enterprise model, Mythos 5, is being rolled out to pre-vetted partners.

Fable 5 and Mythos 5 would make perfect cardigan names, however. It’s indisputable.

The initial ban was enacted by Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on June 12 after the discovery of a "jailbreak" that allowed users to bypass safety guardrails, triggering major cybersecurity concerns for critical industries. So, what changed? According to a letter from Lutnick, the ban was removed because Anthropic "agreed to proactively detect and address security risks associated with the models."

To satisfy regulators, the company made system updates. A source close to Anthropic explained that the group "implemented a new safeguard" specifically designed to address the issues that led to the ban. This new security measure has now been fully tested and approved by the government's Center for AI Standards and Innovation, which is apparently a thing now! Woot!

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Should You Check Your 401(k) Today?

👎️ 

Still a no, I’m afraid. Maybe eventually, but not yet. We’re still like 1.5 and 3% off the June 1 highs for the S&P and the Nasdaq. It could take weeks to break that barrier, or it could take a day. Who knows!

Poll of the Day: Empire State of Mind

Poll of the Day: Wrong Answer…

We asked: This July 4 weekend is set to be 105 degrees. What are your plans?

You answered:

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Cranking my air conditioner to its lowest setting and aggressively praying the mid-Atlantic power providers don't cut my electricity to "stabilize the grid." (111)
🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨🟨 Risking heat exhaustion like a PATRIOT while grilling outside. (109)
🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Googling "climate change" and finding out what that's all about. Sounds interesting, though. (36)
🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Jigsaw puzzles and cocktails in the walk-in freezer, baby. We might wear our fur coats just to rub it in. (42)
🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Playing "Ring of Fire" on repeat and blasting it so loud that my neighbors come over and complain, before I launch a few fireworks into the thunderstorm. 'Merica. (65)
363 Votes via @beehiiv polls

…of course, the correct answer came second, friends. But: Best of luck to you.

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