Gnosly

- OpenAI Cuts Valuation to $1.25TRN

- Public Market Meltdown: GOOG Loses $500BN in 12 Hours

- DoorDash Buys Instacart for $17BN

- Kalshi Raises $1BN and Cognition Eyes $80BN Valuation

My notes with Jason Lemkin and Rory O'Driscoll

1. Kalshi Has Departed the Social Good; They Are a Sports Gambling Market

Kalshi started out as a prediction market with some social utility and has since become a sports gambling market growing like a weed. Sports betting is regulated state by state, and Kalshi is pushing through on a national basis, which is why Utah is suing. VCs will put a lot of money into what is working.

2. Why I Would Invest in Cognition at $80BN

At $80B, Cognition looks market-correct, and coding agents remain the one thing that never stops working. Cognition got lucky buying the Windsurf team and IP, but its momentum is too strong to sit out. With the fund up 5X on paper, the pitch is to put its last $2B into Cognition.

3. Why I Would Invest in Serval over Cognition and Baseten

ServiceNow is an old guard with a sales-led CEO, while Serval has an amazing product and the best enterprise adoption Harry has seen. A 10X looks very likely at Serval, but far harder at Baseten at $30B or Cognition. The catch is Serval only raised $150M, so a fund that must deploy capital still has to do Cognition.

4. Where Is the Risk in the AI Trade Right Now?

If AI demand is as strong as people think, every GPU and data center will be needed, and CoreWeave's bonds will be money. If demand falls short, the first to suffer will not be Google or Amazon with their big balance sheets, but companies like CoreWeave.

5. Why Large Foundation Model Companies Will Acquire in the Robotic Space.

Foundation model companies will either build or buy a robotics model. An LLM sells to the 81 million knowledge workers in the US, and a robotics foundation model lets the same company address physical workers too, doubling its TAM in the prospectus. That lure means there could well be acquisitions in the space.

6. Agents Are an Existential Risk to DoorDash

DoorDash said AI agents sent only several hundred orders against 3 million deliveries a day, which Jason called a dumb comment. Agents can tell users which restaurants deliver themselves or offer pickup, cutting out platform fees. Rory counters that ordering dinner through an agent is not much easier than using the DoorDash app.

7. Why Pricing Pressure Hit Anthropic in Q3.

Anthropic's GAAP revenue went from roughly $5B in Q1 to $11B in Q2 and $17B in Q3, so quarter-on-quarter growth fell from about 100% to about 50%, still 5X year-on-year. Jason puts the slowdown down to pricing pressure, with OpenAI selling somewhat equivalent products for 30% off, while demand on OpenRouter has not declined

$MSFT

* Market Cap: $4.1T

* TTM Revenue: $346B (+19% YoY)

* TTM Operating Cash Flow: $196B (+28% YoY)

$AAPL

* Market Cap: $5.1T

* TTM Revenue: $418B (+12% YoY)

* TTM Operating Cash Flow: $145B (-5% YoY)

Apple overtook Microsoft in operating cash flow back in 2011. Microsoft reclaimed the lead in 2019. Today, Microsoft is generating significantly more operating cash flow while growing faster. Revenue scale matters.

The US and Israeli militaries have drawn up plans for renewed strikes on Iran, according to the New York Times. The United States is ready to resume major combat operations against the country when ordered by Trump, NYT reported. The strikes will be “short and intensive,” the US newspaper said, citing unnamed Pentagon officials and military leaders. The build-up includes thousands of US air and naval forces on more than 12 ships at bases in the Middle East. Targets are likely to include Iran’s energy energy infrastructure, nuclear facilities, and missile and drone arsenal, the NYT said. It is unlikely that several US bases in the region that were destroyed by Iran will be rebuilt, the newspaper said.

The Iranian navy says that two more oil tankers have hit naval mines in the Strait of Hormuz and caught fire. In a statement published by state broadcaster IRIB, the navy said “ignoring maritime warnings and entering prohibited areas without coordination are reported to be among the reasons for the fires in these two oil tankers”. The navy has now reported blazes on at least five tankers in total attempting to cross the waterway through “unauthorised routes” in the past 24 hours.

Jason Miller's thoughts on this:

• September 2026 saw imports of these goods reach $86.9 billion, which was up 16.2% from August's $74.8 billion. Year-over-year, imports are up 151% (they were $34.6 billion last year).

• Compared to 2023, which was the year when large language models started to become popular, imports are up 457%. That number isn't a typo.

• For anyone wondering, adjusting for price changes—notoriously hard with hi-tech products—using the import price index for this category of goods doesn't change the narrative conveyed by the nominal data.

Implication: Import data showed AI capex continued unabated through Q3. I continue to wonder just how much more room for growth we have for AI capex, and I believe 2027 will be the year when growth rates slow dramatically.

He said the firing of US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth could signal Trump’s desire to end the conflict, but cautioned against drawing firm conclusions, pointing to former President George W. Bush’s dismissal of Donald Rumsfeld shortly before announcing a troop surge in Iraq.

Beauchamp warned that US forces in the region remain at levels similar to February, meaning another major strike against Iran cannot be ruled out. “It’s fairly obvious that he [Trump] wants a way out, and Iran needs to be careful not to mock him too hard or push for too many concessions,” he said. “On balance, I think a strike is still very likely, but it is unlikely to be an extended campaign given the low levels of US munitions.”

Source: Car Industry Analysis (X), citing BestSellingCarsBlog website