April 19, 2026
NBA playoffs tipped off yesterday and it's a loaded Sunday slate. Celtics-Sixers, Thunder-Suns, Pistons-Magic, Blazers-Spurs. Whether you've got a bracket on the line or you're just here for the buzzer-beaters, enjoy the day with friends and family.
In more serious news, what a week in the markets. The Dow ripped 3.2%, the S&P 500 jumped 4.5% to a fresh record, and the Nasdaq notched its 13th straight green day, the longest streak since 1992. Crypto caught the wave too. Bitcoin clawed back above $74K. It's still a long way from the $126K all-time high, but this best week it's had in a while. You can get swept up pretty easily when everything's green. But, the reason Joey and I started mogul still rings true in times like this. Real estate isn't trying to out-rally stocks or crypto. It just keeps producing cash flow through the rips, the pullbacks, and everything in between.
Alright that's enough from me. Let's get into it.
- Alex Blackwood
🛰️ Amazon Strikes $11.57B Deal for Globalstar to Take on Starlink - Amazon has agreed to acquire satellite firm Globalstar in an $11.57 billion deal, significantly boosting its push into space-based internet and challenging Elon Musk’s Starlink. The acquisition adds Globalstar’s satellite network and spectrum to Amazon’s growing constellation, helping accelerate plans to deploy thousands of satellites and roll out direct-to-device services that connect phones without cell towers. Analysts see the move as a major step for Amazon to catch up in the fast-growing satellite internet race, where Starlink currently dominates.
🧠 Anthropic Adds Novartis CEO to Board Amid Healthcare Push - Anthropic has appointed Vas Narasimhan, CEO of Novartis, to its board as it deepens its expansion into healthcare and prepares for a potential IPO. The move highlights the AI company’s growing focus on life sciences, where it is already partnering with major drugmakers to speed up development and clinical processes. Narasimhan’s experience overseeing dozens of new medicines is expected to help guide Anthropic’s efforts in applying AI to complex, highly regulated industries.
🏙️ NYC Moves to Tax the Ultra-Rich's Backup Homes - Governor Kathy Hochul and Mayor Zohran Mamdani unveiled a proposed pied-à-terre tax on NYC second homes valued above $5 million, targeting roughly 13,000 properties owned by out-of-town billionaires and global elites. The administration projects at least $500 million a year in recurring revenue to help close the city's $5.4 billion budget gap, though real estate industry groups warn it could chill luxury sales and cost construction and maintenance jobs.
From Sneakers to Silicon: The Allbirds AI Fever Dream
If you were around in 2018, you remember the Allbirds era. Every venture capitalist and tech worker in a Midtown vest wore those gray wool slippers like a uniform. Fast forward to this week, and that same brand just completed the most desperate pivot of 2026. They are not even a shoe company anymore. They gutted their footwear assets to become NewBird AI, a shell company focused on buying and leasing out GPU compute power.
The market reaction was pure, unadulterated chaos. On Wednesday, the stock went on a vertical tear, peaking at $24.31 for an intraday jump of over 876%. But the "Allbirds to the moon" crowd got a reality check almost immediately. As Futurism recently reported, the stock is already in a freefall as investors realize that a shoe brand might not be the next Nvidia. After that initial pump, the stock is now crashing back toward the basement. It turns out the market has a very short memory for meme stocks.
The GPU Gambit
The actual strategy here sounds like a plan cooked up on a crypto subreddit. Allbirds offloaded its brand and footwear designs to American Exchange Group for a relatively small $39 million. They took that cash and a $50 million credit line to go shopping for high performance chips. The idea is to offer GPU as a Service to developers who are desperate for processing power. There is one massive problem with this logic. $50 million might sound like a fortune, but in the world of AI infrastructure, it is nothing. While giants like Oracle and CoreWeave are spending billions to build massive data centers, Allbirds wants to compete with a fraction of that budget. This is like opening a neighborhood lemonade stand and trying to put Starbucks out of business
Peak 2026 Irony
The skepticism is coming from all sides, and for good reason. It is hard to imagine a team that spent a decade obsessing over the moisture-wicking properties of merino wool suddenly mastering the cooling requirements of a server farm. Then, you have the sheer hypocrisy of the rebrand. Allbirds built its entire identity on being carbon neutral and environmentally friendly. Now, they are pivoting into an industry that is famous for its massive electricity consumption and environmental impact. They effectively traded their sustainability mission for a chance to ride the AI hype cycle.
The Aftermath
We are seeing the line between real business and speculative tech hype completely dissolve. When a footwear brand decides its best bet is a data center, it tells you everything you need to know about the current state of the economy. Whether this was a genuine attempt at a turnaround or just a way for early investors to exit during a pump and dump is still up for debate. For now, the Wool Runner is officially a Code Runner, and the retail investors who bought at the top are left holding a very expensive, very empty shoe box.
Every once in a while, a deal crosses our desk that checks every box. And, The Calloway is that deal.
Ten bedrooms. Five bathrooms. A pool. A corner lot in one of Phoenix's most overlooked submarkets. And best of all? We found it off-market, through our Phoenix deal-flow partners, before it ever hit a broker's inbox. Spanning over 2,700 square feet, the property is being delivered as a gut renovation with 3 ensuite bedrooms, a backyard pool, and co-living focused amenities including dual refrigerators, two sets of laundry units, and top-end finishes throughout.
The deal is underwritten to an 8.21% Year 1 cash yield on $84K of stabilized income. We expect a 12.0% average yield over the hold and a 12.1% annual levered IRR. Projected levered profit lands around $377K, a 2.2x multiple on invested equity.
Now, you can invest in a cash-flow-driven co-living asset in one of our favorite rental markets. This offering is expected to close out in the next few days. Invest now before you miss out on this top tier asset.
Pixar almost died more than once before Toy Story ever made it to theaters.
That's the first thing Ed Catmull wants you to know, and it's why the rest of the book lands. Creativity, Inc. is his forty-year account of co-founding Pixar, surviving Steve Jobs, and shipping a dozen of the best animated films ever made. The highlight reel is a lot messier than the Oscars suggest. Catmull is the guy who kept the lights on.
The real subject isn't movies, though. It's management. How do you build a company where smart, ego-driven people tell each other the truth about the work, even when the truth is "this isn't good enough yet"? Catmull's answer is the Braintrust: a rotating group of directors who give each other brutal, unfiltered feedback with one non-negotiable rule. But, you can't dictate the fix. The person whose name is on the movie still has to figure it out. It sounds obvious. It is extraordinarily hard to actually build.
Running mogul, this one hits close to home. Every founder says they want a candid culture. Almost none have actually designed the mechanisms that make candor cheaper than polite silence.
Pick it up if you lead people, build things, or have ever sat in a meeting where everyone could feel the problem and nobody would name it.
⭐ 4.9 / 5.0 in my book (no Braintrust required)
Ray Tomlinson chose it to separate the user name from the computer name.
Written by Alex Blackwood & Larry Cummings
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