Hello and welcome to Alts Cafe.
A curated pour of the week’s most important alt investing stories, customized and brewed to your liking.
Highlights:
- Sports: AO Ventures backs U.S. padel with an investment in Padel Haus
- Prediction Markets: MLS signs a commercial deal with Polymarket, bringing prediction markets directly into pro sports marketing
- Startups & VC: Zipline charts global expansion with $600m in new funding to scale drone delivery beyond healthcare into mainstream logistics
- 🇰🇪 International Investing: Kenya’s stock exchange records its first IPO in over a decade
- Music & Film: Half of all paid music streams now come from just four countries
- Crypto: NYSE is building a tokenized stocks and ETFs trading platform that will allow for 24/7 settlement of trades.
- Collectibles, Culture and Luxury: A rare T206 Honus Wagner card is headed to auction with a $3m estimate
- Private Equity & Private Credit: Goldman Sachs just raised $2.8B for a new private equity co-investing vehicle
- Real Estate: Invitation Homes is acquiring homebuilder ResiBuilt to vertically integrate build-to-rent supply
- Precious Metals and Gems: USA Rare Earth shares jumped after the Commerce Department took an equity stake
- Artwork: Art Basel says private sales, digital buying, and Middle East demand are driving the 2026 art market
- Farmland: The U.S. dairy herd has climbed to near a 30-year high
- Wine, Whiskey & Spirits: Spirits producers are sitting on a glut of aging inventory
Table of Contents
International Investing
Around the world…
- 🇰🇪 Kenya’s stock exchange records its first IPO in over a decade
- 🇳🇬 Nigeria’s PiggyVest paid out $1.2B to savers as fintech apps quietly become the country’s de facto savings accounts
- 🇹🇭 Thailand finalizes rules for spot Bitcoin ETFs, giving retail investors direct brokerage access to BTC
- 🇦🇺 A major Australian pension fund is trimming U.S. dollar exposure as macro capital rotates away from the U.S.
Sports
- AO Ventures backs U.S. padel with an investment in Padel Haus
- College football’s billionaire era is as NIL turns into a straight arms race
- Tennis Channel is betting on a pickleball and tennis crossover strategy to merge two fast-growing audiences
- Italy’s Napoli Basketball is pushing for NBA Europe or EuroLeague expansion
- The Savannah Bananas’ first report shows rapid growth and $100K player pay
- Boxing reform moves forward, setting up a potential UFC-style consolidation of the sport
Inside the Australian Open
The AO is one of the most watched sporting events on the planet, but it didn’t start that way. A few decades ago, it was an afterthought.
We explore how the Australian Open went from Grand Slam underdog to the most modern, forward-thinking tennis tournament on the planet.
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In fact, just a few days ago, AO Ventures announced their first ever padel investment in Padel Haus, a fast-growing operator building luxury padel clubs around the world.
Prediction Markets
- MLS signs a commercial deal with Polymarket, bringing prediction markets directly into pro sports marketing
- Nevada sued Polymarket to shut down its sports contracts
- The NFL won’t allow prediction market ads during the Super Bowl, drawing a hard line between betting and “financial” contracts
Startups & VC
- Zipline charts global expansion with $600m in new funding to scale drone delivery beyond healthcare into mainstream logistics
- European climate fintech Cloover raised $1B+ turn heat pumps and solar installs into an asset class
- BitGo debuted publicly and closed its first day near a $2.6B market cap, one of the few pure-play crypto infrastructure listings
StartEngine financials + Reg CF struggles
StartEngine is valued at $2 billion, and reported ~$92m in revenue L12. But most of that is transaction volume from their private SPV business.
This is totally GAAP-compliant, but it’s like the equivalent of an ecommerce company reporting GMV as revenue. Sounds big, tells you very little.
We’re almost 10 years into Reg CF and the tone is basically: this is way harder than everyone thought.
Music & Film
- Half of all paid music streams now come from just four countries
- Suno’s CEO stirred debate after saying AI music tools could “Ozempic” the industry’s middle class
- Vimeo is laying off staff after its billion-dollar sale to Bending Spoons
Crypto
- NYSE is building a tokenized stocks and ETFs trading platform, pushing blockchain rails into traditional equities
- Bermuda is courting digital asset firms, positioning itself as a regulatory-friendly crypto hub
- Grayscale filed to list a BNB ETF on Nasdaq
- Robinhood and others are facing pressure as state regulators push back on tokenization and prediction-style products
Collectibles, Culture and Luxury
- A rare T206 Honus Wagner card is headed to auction with a $3m estimate
- Rafael Nadal’s Roland Garros final match shirt is going to auction
- An original Apple Computer founding document sold for $2.5m at Christie’s
- Steph Curry’s 2022 Finals game-worn jersey sold for a record $2.45m
- Mike Ditka’s iconic Bears sweater from Super Bowl XX hits the block
Auto I Asset Sale
We’ve just locked in a great result for the Auto I Fund with the successful sale of the Ferrari 512M.
The exit delivered a net return of 8.7% in just over 100 days, which works out at around 32% annualized. 🙌
With capital now recycled, we’re already lining up the next opportunities. First up is the Mercedes SLS AMG. Alongside this, we’re assessing the Ferrari 360 Challenge Stradale
More updates to come as capital is redeployed and the next exits take shape.
NOTE: The Auto I fund is closed. But Auto II is planned for August/September.
You must be an Altea member to invest.
Private Equity & Private Credit
- Goldman Sachs just raised $2.8B for a new private equity co-investing vehicle as institutions look to skip fund fees and invest alongside GPs
- Private equity firm Highlander Partners is acquiring Tapatío hot sauce
- EQT is buying secondaries giant Coller Capital for $3.2B, doubling down on LPs selling private fund stakes for liquidity
- CVC is seeking $2.75b for its sports franchise strategy, packaging pro teams and leagues into an alt asset class
🌶️ PE firm acquires Tapatio (hot sauce is on fire)
From a zeitgeist perspective, hot sauce buzz has been extra high lately:
- Today, Absolut announced a new spicy vodka called Absolut Tabasco, boosting a partnership that began in 2017
- Just yesterday, McDonald’s released a new hot honey sauce.
- Apparently National Hot Sauce day was Jan 22. Instacart shared some data at the state level.
- And in the biggest news of all, PE firm Highlander just acquired Tapatio.
The thing is, hot sauce isn’t actually growing that fast.
The CAGR forecast for the chili sauce market over next decade is 6.6% – nothing to scream about, but well above the 4.1% for other CPG (consumer packaged goods)
Real Estate
- Invitation Homes is acquiring homebuilder ResiBuilt to vertically integrate build-to-rent supply
- Asia-Pacific property markets are seeing liquidity return after a two-year freeze
- Stan Kroenke quietly became the largest private landowner in the U.S., assembling a portfolio bigger than some states
- Private real estate lending is gaining share
- The “Fresh Prince” mansion just hit the market
Precious Metals
- USA Rare Earth shares jumped after the Commerce Department took an equity stake
- De Beers is cutting diamond prices amid weak demand and rising lab-grown competition, pressuring natural stones as synthetics keep gaining share
- Energy Fuels is acquiring Australia’s Strategic Materials in a $300m rare earths takeover
Artwork
- Art Basel says private sales, digital buying, and Middle East demand are driving the 2026 art market
Farmland
- The U.S. dairy herd has climbed to near a 30-year high
- Ivory Coast will buy 100,000 tonnes of surplus cocoa to prop up prices after a sharp selloff, effectively acting as a buyer of last resort for the country’s key export crop
- Institutional research points to renewed interest in frontier and emerging market agriculture as allocators look for land, food, and commodity exposure outside traditional equities
Wine, Whiskey & Spirits
- Spirits producers are sitting on a glut of aging inventory across whiskey and premium categories
See you next time, Stefan
Disclosures
- This issue has no sponsors and contains no affiliate links
