Good morning.

It’s Tuesday, February 4. The most aggressively average day of the week.

On this day in 2004, a little website called Facebook launched as TheFacebook.com. A harmless college project. A few profile pics. Some poking. Nothing serious. Fast forward and here we are: ads, algorithms, oversharing, doomscrolling, and your aunt arguing in the comments. 

Grab your coffee, fake your productivity, and enjoy today’s issue. Thanks for being a loyal subscriber. Truly. You’re the reason this exists.

Today’s stories:

• Scientists discover entirely extinct life branch

• People ski while being dragged by horses

• Nvidia’s $100B OpenAI deal quietly stalls

• Spielberg completes EGOT achievement

• Europe quietly minted five new unicorns

• AI doorbells now help find missing dogs

• Silver starts trading like a meme stock

• Fitbit founders launch family health AI

• China kills futuristic car door handles

• Elon merges rockets and AI empires

• NYC finally declares AC a necessity

• iPhone sales smash records again

  and more…

Stocks pulled back as investors dumped tech and rotated into more economy-tied names.

The S&P 500 slid 0.84% to close at 6,917.81. The Dow dipped 167 points, or 0.34%, finishing at 49,240.99 after briefly climbing as much as 0.5% to hit a fresh intraday record above 49,650. The Nasdaq took the hardest hit, dropping 1.43% to 23,255.19.

Tech did most of the damage. Several Magnificent Seven names sank, with Microsoft and Meta falling more than 2% each, Apple edging lower, and Nvidia sliding nearly 3% as its AI rally continued to unwind. Software stocks stayed under pressure too, with ServiceNow and Salesforce tumbling nearly 7% apiece as investors extended their early-2026 exit from high-growth tech.

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SpaceX And xAI Become One Very Expensive Thing

Elon Musk announced that SpaceX has acquired his AI startup xAI. Yes, he bought his own company. Synergy. The deal combines rockets, satellites, and the Grok chatbot into one massive operation. Space and artificial intelligence. Together. Forever. The merger values SpaceX at $1 trillion and xAI at $250 billion. Casual numbers. Totally normal. The move strengthens Musk’s data-center ambitions as the AI race heats up against rivals like Google, Meta, Amazon-backed Anthropic, and OpenAI. In short: Elon Musk just fused AI and space into one very expensive vision board.

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Nvidia and OpenAI’s mega deal is very not happening. Last year, Nvidia and OpenAI announced a very loud plan. Nvidia would build massive computing power and invest up to $100 billion so OpenAI could train its next-gen AI models. Fast forward. The deal is stalled. Very stalled. Insiders say people inside Nvidia started having doubts. Big ones. The talks never made it past early stages, despite last September’s big reveal at Nvidia HQ. The plan was wild: Nvidia builds at least 10 gigawatts of compute, OpenAI leases the chips, everyone claps. OpenAI expected it to wrap up quickly. It did not. Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang is now gently rewriting the story. He says Nvidia will “absolutely” invest in OpenAI’s latest funding round. Just… not $100 billion. Not even close. Calm down. Privately, Huang has reminded people that the original deal was nonbinding. Translation: vibes, not contracts. He’s also reportedly not thrilled with OpenAI’s spending habits and is very aware that competitors like Google and Anthropicexist. Meanwhile, OpenAI is still trying to raise up to $100 billion from multiple partners. Amazon and SoftBank are circling with very large checkbooks. So the $100 billion Nvidia deal isn’t dead. It’s just… spiritually canceled.

Is silver a meme trade? Silver just stopped acting like a metal and started acting like a meme. Prices surged, collapsed, and whipped around so hard that traders started comparing it to GameStop in 2021. Market watchers say this is what happens when an asset stops trading on fundamentals and starts trading on the internet.  Meme assets usually share a few traits: wild price swings, retail investors piling in, and social media narratives doing all the heavy lifting. Silver now checks every box. Analysts now say silver is retail’s new favorite toy. The excitement is all over Reddit, especially in forums like Silverbugs, where people post stacks, price targets, and memes.

Apple accidentally breaks another record. The company sold $85 billion worth of iPhone in Q1, up from $69 billion a year earlier. Same product line. Much larger pile of cash. CEO Tim Cook called the demand unprecedented and sounded extremely relaxed about it. China delivered a major boost. Apple set an all-time iPhone revenue record in Greater China, driven largely by excitement around the iPhone 17. The new model outperformed its predecessor and did not slow down. Sales in the region jumped from $18.5 billion to $25.5 billion. Store traffic grew by strong double digits. Apple noticed. India also showed up. Apple posted record quarterly revenue there across iPhone, Mac, iPad, and services. Cook described it as a terrific quarter in one of the world’s largest tech markets. The momentum was not limited to Asia. Sales increased across every region. The Americas and Europe both posted solid growth. Bottom line: Apple had a great quarter. The iPhone did exactly what it always does.

January produced five new European unicorns. January dragged on forever and somehow produced five new European unicorns. Startups across Europe, from Belgium to Ukraine, raised funding at valuations above $1 billion. Time slowed down. VC money did not. Two fine-print notes still apply. “European” remains flexible thanks to legal gymnastics, and valuation still does not equal success. It equals optimism with a term sheet. Now, the five new unicorns:

Aikido Security
Belgium-based cybersecurity company Aikido Security hit unicorn status after a $60 million Series B led by DST Global. Valuation landed neatly at $1 billion. The company builds a platform that unifies security across the entire software lifecycle and is already used by more than 100,000 teams. 

Cast AI
Headquartered in Florida, rooted in Lithuania, spiritually European. Cast AI crossed the $1 billion valuation mark after a strategic investment from Pacific Alliance Ventures.
The company helps businesses run more workloads on fewer GPUs, which suddenly makes everyone pay attention. 

Harmattan AI
Founded in 2024 and already worth $1.4 billion. The French defense tech startup raised a $200 million Series B led by Dassault Aviation. Harmattan AI already works with French and British defense ministries and Ukrainian drone maker Skyeton. Autonomous defense is officially having a moment.

Osapiens
German ESG software firm Osapiens raised a $100 million Series C, pushing its valuation past $1.1 billion. Founded in 2018, the company now serves over 2,400 customers worldwide, helping large companies survive sustainability reporting, compliance rules, and supply-chain stress without losing their minds.

Preply
Preply became a unicorn at a $1.2 billion valuation after a $150 million Series D. The language-learning platform has Ukrainian founders, a major team in Kyiv, and offices across Europe and the U.S. 

Scientists Discovered a New Extinct Form of Life

Scientists may have discovered a completely new, now-extinct form of life. Prototaxites were giant land organisms that lived hundreds of millions of years ago. They looked like massive smooth trunks, up to eight meters tall. No leaves. No branches. No roots. Just towering mystery pillars. Since their discovery in the 1800s, scientists have argued nonstop about what they were. Giant fungi. Algae. Plants. None of it ever fit. A new study suggests the answer is simpler and stranger. Prototaxites belonged to an entirely unknown branch of life that no longer exists. Researchers studied a fossil from northeastern Scotland using lasers, 3D imaging, and AI. Inside, they found an internal structure far more complex than fungi, with multiple tube types and dense branching hubs. Then came the chemistry. Fossilized fungi usually leave traces of chitin. Prototaxites left none. AI comparisons showed its chemical fingerprint does not match any known living organism. Translation: it wasn’t a plant, fungus, or anything still alive today. Early Earth clearly experimented. This one didn’t make the final cut.

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China is done with fancy door handles. China just banned hidden car door handles. The fancy kind. The ones that pop out, slide out, or need electricity to exist. All because of safety concerns. Apparently doors should open like doors, not like a tech demo. Starting January 1, 2027, cars sold in China must have real mechanical handles. Inside and outside. No glitches. No waiting. No guessing where to press. Cars already approved get a grace period until 2029. Everyone else needs to grow up and add a handle. This matters because China is the biggest car market on Earth. If China says jump, car brands ask how high and in what font. Electric cars made hidden handles popular “because aerodynamics”. Less drag. More range. More “look how smooth my car is.” China looked at all that and said: cool, but we’d like people to get out of the car during emergencies. Sleek lost. Safety won. Doors are doors again.

AI is now looking for your dog. Ring, the Amazon-owned home security company best known for doorbells that record everything, is now using AI to help find lost dogs. The company’s “Search Party” feature is available to all U.S. users, including people who do not own a Ring camera. All you need is the app. Search Party uses Ring’s massive network of neighborhood cameras and AI to scan footage for dogs that match a missing pet report. When a possible match appears, the camera owner gets an alert and can choose to share the clip. The feature launched last fall and has already been reuniting more than one dog per day. A rare AI win. Previously, only Ring camera owners could access Search Party. Now anyone can post a lost dog alert and activate the neighborhood surveillance grid. Ring says the goal is to mobilize communities to help find missing pets faster. Translation: your dog is now being watched over by doorbells.

Fitbit founders are back with family health AI. The founders of Fitbit are back, this time focused on family health. James Park and Eric Friedman launched Luffu, an AI platform designed to help families stay on top of health without constant checking in. Their point is simple. Consumer health tools track individuals, but real life health is shared across partners, kids, parents, pets, and caregivers. The data is scattered across apps, portals, calendars, files, and paper. It’s a mess. Luffu pulls everything into one place. Users can track health stats, medications, symptoms, lab tests, doctor visits, diet, and more for the whole family. Info can be logged by voice, text, or photos. The AI runs quietly in the background, learns patterns, and flags meaningful changes like unusual vitals or sleep shifts. 

The Wildest Winter Sport You Forgot Existed

This week, thousands of people are gathering in Boise, Idaho to watch skiers get dragged by horses at 40 miles per hour. This is called skijoring. Skiers race around jumps and gates while holding onto a rope attached to a galloping horse. Flat course. No brakes. Just vibes and horsepower. Skijoring actually has history. It was the first-ever demonstration sport at the Winter Olympics back in 1924 in Chamonix. Somehow, it did not become mainstream. Tragic. Originally, skiers were pulled by reindeer in Lapland. Then horses. Then dogs. Then motorcycles and cars in the 1950s. Allegedly airplanes too, but skiers were advised to let go before takeoff. Reasonable. Europe treats skijoring like a classy winter tradition. Think frozen lakes and fancy events in St. Moritz. America looked at that and said: let’s add riders and chaos. In the U.S. version, the horse has a rider. Often the skier and rider meet for the first time at the start line. Trust is built very quickly. Some are elite skiers. Some are elite riders. All of them are choosing danger for entertainment.

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NYC finally decides air conditioning is a necessity. New York City has decided that air conditioning is important. Revolutionary. A new city law says landlords will have to install and maintain air conditioners if tenants ask. Enforcement starts June 1, 2030. Yes, five years from now. Take a breath. Preferably a cool one. The rule applies to both market-rate and rent-stabilized apartments. Heat waves are getting worse, summers are getting hotter, and hundreds of New Yorkers die every year from heat-related causes. Mostly in apartments without AC. Shocking. Starting March 1, 2028, tenants can officially request an air conditioner. Once approved, landlords have 60 days to install it. During summer, bedrooms must stay at or below 78 degrees when it’s hotter than 82 outside. No more “just open a window” solutions. Landlords pay for the unit and installation. Tenants pay the electric bill. In rent-stabilized apartments, landlords can also raise the rent permanently. Cool air, warmer rent.

Spielberg enters the EGOT group chat. Steven Spielberg is now an EGOT winner. Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, Tony. All of them. Done. He picked up his first Grammy this weekend for producing Music by John Williams, which won Best Music Film. The award was handed out quietly before the main show. Very on-brand humble flex. Spielberg already had four Emmys, three Oscars, and a Tony. The Grammy was the last missing Pokémon. Only 21 people have ever pulled off an EGOT. It’s a very small club. Names include Audrey Hepburn, Mel Brooks, Elton John, Viola Davis, and John Legend. Steven Spielberg has now joined them. Casually. Probably already back to work.

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TikTok of the day: watch here

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