Good morning.

It’s Friday, January 16. The email week is over. You made it. 

NYC woke up sunny today, which feels personal. Like the city decided to gaslight us into believing winter isn’t that bad. Same cold, better lighting. We’ll take it.

Today is the birthday of Lin-Manuel Miranda, born in 1980, the brain behind Hamilton, aka the Broadway phenomenon that turned history into bars and made theater kids unstoppable. Also celebrating: Sade (born 1959). Effortlessly cool, eternally unbothered. 

Have a great weekend. Do the bare minimum. Enjoy the sun. Forget about Monday until it attacks.

Today’s stories:

• Longevity molecule restores memory in aging brains

• California’s wealth tax sends billionaires packing

• Soho House escapes Napa for quiet vineyards

• Someone finally fixed umbrellas using origami

• Amazon’s Saks investment may be worthless

• Weight-loss pills could boost airline profits

• Zoe Saldaña becomes box office queen

• VR gives prisoners practice for real life

• AI video startup hits unicorn speedrun

• Boeing beats Airbus, politics included

  and more…

Stocks bounced Thursday after two rough sessions, with chips and banks doing the heavy lifting. The Dow jumped nearly 300 points, powered by gains in Goldman Sachs and Nvidia, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq both eked out modest gains.

The rally cooled into the close after a much hotter morning, when all three indexes were up close to 1%. Momentum faded, but green stuck.

Chip stocks led after Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company posted another record quarter and said it plans to spend up to $56B in 2026 — a clear vote of confidence in the AI buildout. TSMC popped over 4%, semis followed, and Nvidia tacked on another 2%.

AI’s still driving. The gas pedal just eased a little.

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Silicon Valley Billionaires Threaten to Flee California

Silicon Valley billionaires are spiraling over California’s proposed wealth tax. A ballot measure could slap a one-time 5% tax on billionaires. Retroactive. That detail sent people packing. Larry Page reportedly dropped over $170 million on homes in Miami. Sergey Brin might be next. Florida continues its billionaire loyalty program. Roughly 250 billionaires would be affected. Hedge fund billionaire Bill Ackman called it “catastrophic.” Elon Musk reminded everyone he already pays a lot in taxes and also already left California for Texas. Critics say the tax could scare rich people away. Supporters say billionaires still pay lower effective tax rates than regular workers. Even with a 5% hit, Musk would still have hundreds of billions left. Anyways, the money is mobile, the panic is loud, and Miami keeps winning.

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Saks went broke, Amazon wants its money back. After Saks Global filed for bankruptcy (yes, that happened), Amazon says its $475 million investment is basically dust. Gone. Vaporized. According to court filings, Saks burned through hundreds of millions in under a year and didn’t stick to the deal. Quick recap: when Saks bought Neiman Marcus for $2.7 billion, Amazon put in $475 million. In return, Saks would sell luxury goods on Amazon and pay hefty referral fees. There was even a shiny “Saks at Amazon” storefront. Luxury, but make it Prime shipping. Now Amazon says the equity is “presumptively worthless” and wants a judge to reject Saks’ bankruptcy plan. Reason: the plan adds new debt and pushes Amazon further down the line to get repaid. Translation: Amazon might get nothing. Amazon says it hopes things get fixed. If not, it’s threatening “drastic” moves, like asking for a trustee to step in. Judge already approved $1.75 billion in emergency financing so Saks doesn’t immediately collapse. The drama is ongoing.

Boeing finally pulls ahead of Airbus. Boeing beat Airbus on aircraft orders last year. First time this decade. It only took a few scandals, years of grounding, and intense political support. Boeing booked 1,075 net orders. Airbus landed 1,000. Not dramatic, but technically a win. Boeing also delivered 600 planes, its best year since 2018. Airbus still delivered more overall, but that’s not the headline today. The turnaround came after the Federal Aviation Administration eased restrictions on the 737 Max and raised production limits. Boeing is slowly being trusted with sharp objects again. Politics did the heavy lifting. Countries placed massive Boeing orders while trying to stay on good terms with Donald Trump and avoid tariffs. Alaska Airlines placed its largest Boeing order ever. Qatar Airways followed with a $96 billion deal during a Trump visit. Timing was immaculate. Boeing shares are up about 45% over the past year as investors buy into the recovery narrative. Airbus leadership openly admits Boeing benefited from political backing. No one is confused.

AI video startup Higgsfield becomes a unicorn. The company raised another $80 million on top of its earlier Series A, bringing the round to $130 million total and valuing Higgsfield at $1.3 billion. Not bad for something that mostly makes the internet move faster. Higgsfield builds tools for creating and editing AI-generated video. It was founded by Alex Mashrabov, a former Snap exec who previously sold his startup AI Factory to Snap for $166 million. He knows the playbook. The growth numbers are loud. Higgsfield claims over 15 million users less than a year after launch and says it’s running at a $200 million annual revenue pace. That figure doubled in about two months. Startup math, but still impressive.

GLP-1 pills could cut airline fuel bills. Wall Street thinks weight loss pills might save airlines a fortune. Analysts say widespread use of GLP-1 weight loss drugs could quietly cut airline fuel costs. Less weight on planes means less fuel burned. Airlines already obsess over weight. Pitless olives. Lighter paper. Fewer grams everywhere. Now add lighter passengers to the list. Jefferies estimates a 10% drop in average passenger weight could cut total aircraft weight by about 2%, lower fuel costs by up to 1.5%, and boost earnings by as much as 4%. The timing works. The first GLP-1 pill from Novo Nordisk is already on the market, and Eli Lilly is expected to follow soon. Pills mean no injections, more users, and apparently happier airline balance sheets.

Someone Finally Fixed the Umbrella

After 175 years of metal sticks flipping inside out, the Ori umbrella shows up and says: what if we used science. The $249 umbrella ditches steel ribs entirely and folds using an origami-based design. No frame. No wind trauma. No public struggle. The canopy is made from a laminated composite and collapses into a slim 3.5-centimeter smart handle with an OLED display. It looks less like an umbrella and more like something Apple would sell if it rained inside Silicon Valley. The magic comes from Miura-ori, an origami folding method invented by Koryo Miura in 1970. It’s been used in satellites and aerospace tech. Now it’s being used so your umbrella doesn’t betray you on a windy street. The team behind it includes mechanical engineers and origami experts who usually work on deployable space structures. They brought space logic to rain.

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Scientists find a longevity molecule that restores memory. Scientists may have found a molecule that helps aging brains remember things again. Researchers at the National University of Singapore discovered that a natural metabolite linked to longevity restored key memory functions in Alzheimer’s disease models. The compound is called calcium alpha-ketoglutarate, or CaAKG. Not new. Just suddenly very interesting. The study, published in Aging Cell, was led by Brian K. Kennedy. The team found that CaAKG helped repair synaptic plasticity, restore memory-related signaling, protect neurons from early damage, and support healthier cognitive aging overall. Singapore already has one of the world’s longest life expectancies, but many people spend their final years in poor health. This research focuses on changing the biology of aging itself, instead of chasing symptoms one disease at a time. So instead of treating Alzheimer’s after it shows up, scientists are looking at slowing the aging process that makes it possible in the first place. 

VR headsets bring hope inside California prisons. VR headsets are quietly changing life inside California prisons. A Los Angeles nonprofit called Creative Acts is bringing virtual reality into prisons to give incarcerated people something rare: practice for the outside world. And a little hope. Inside Valley State Prison, men sit on folding chairs, put on VR headsets, and suddenly they’re somewhere else. Some visit places like Bangkok. Others rehearse job interviews with virtual hiring managers who are polite, skeptical, or flat-out intimidating. Real life, minus the consequences. For people who have been locked up for decades, technology has moved on without them. ATMs. Online job applications. Even grocery stores feel foreign. VR lets them practice before they’re released, instead of failing in public later.

Zoe Saldaña Wins Hollywood’s Money Game

Zoe Saldaña is now the highest-grossing actor of all time. After Avatar: Fire and Ash pulled in another $1.2 billion, Saldaña’s total box office haul hit $15.46 billion worldwide. That officially puts her ahead of Scarlett Johansson. The math is simple. Multiple Avatar films. Years inside the Marvel Cinematic Universe as Gamora. Guardians of the Galaxy. Avengers. Add in Star Trek and Pirates of the Caribbean and suddenly the numbers stop being polite. Johansson only grabbed the top spot last year after Jurassic World Rebirth did $869 million worldwide. Cute run. Short reign.

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Soho House is building a Wine Country resort. Soho House is opening a luxury Wine Country resort. Just not where everyone expected. No Napa. No Healdsburg. Instead, Soho House is heading to a quiet stretch of Sonoma Valley. Rural. Sleepy. Very intentional. The project is called Soho Ranch House Sonoma and is set to open in 2027. It will sit on acres of vineyards, with 50 cottages and villas, big club spaces, restaurants, and two pools. Founded in London in 1995, Soho House built its reputation as a private club for creatives, celebrities, and people who pretend they don’t care about exclusivity. It now has over 40 locations worldwide and plenty across the U.S., especially in Los Angeles. This Sonoma project is different. It’s the brand’s first full resort-style property, spread across actual land, not tucked into a city. Less scene. More silence. Same members. Translation: Soho House is done fighting crowds in Napa Valley. It wants space, vineyards, and people who say “we discovered this place early.”

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