Hello and welcome to Alts Cafe.
A curated pour of the week’s most important alt investing stories, customized and brewed to your liking.
Table of Contents
Highlights
- Private Equity & Private Credit: SEC chair Atkins says regulators are investigating fraud in private credit
- International Investing: UAE announces it will exit OPEC and OPEC+, the cartel’s biggest defection yet
- Crypto: Bloomberg maps the pre-IPO crypto shadow market for SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic
- Wine, Whiskey & Spirits: House of Rare gets excellent review at Robb Report
- Precious Metals and Gems: Pentagon turns to Malaysia for rare earth processing
- Real Estate: A Supreme Court case could detonate the $14B tax foreclosure industry
- Collectibles, Culture and Luxury: A 17th-century Mughal astrolabe sells for $2.75M at Sotheby’s
- Music & Film: SAG-AFTRA reaches a tentative four-year deal with stricter AI limits
- Artwork: Sotheby’s London expects record bids for its Klimt, Matisse and Freud auction
- Sports: Blackstone steps into sports with a $1.78B Royal Challengers Bengaluru deal as Indian Premier League becomes a private equity playground
- Prediction Markets: Kalshi raises $1B Series F at a $22B valuation led by Coatue
- Farmland: African agriculture pulled in $1.65B in Q1 2026, led by World Bank’s $500M Nigerian smallholder package
- Startups & VC: Anthropic snubbed as Pentagon awards classified AI work to Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia and SpaceX
International Investing
Around the world…
- 🇨🇦 Canada launches its first sovereign wealth fund
- 🇨🇺 Trump readies new Cuba sanctions as the economy buckles
- 🇦🇪 UAE announces its decision to leave OPEC and OPEC+
- 🇨🇳 China set to invest in DeepSeek at a $50B valuation
Startups & VC
- Anthropic snubbed as Pentagon awards classified AI work to Google, Microsoft, OpenAI, Nvidia and SpaceX
- Peter Thiel leads $140M into wave-powered floating data centers at a $1B valuation
- Geothermal startup Fervo Energy targets a $1.3B IPO at $6.5B
- True Anomaly raises $650M at $2.2B as Pentagon Golden Dome work scales
- Anthropic and OpenAI launch joint ventures with PE giants for enterprise AI
- Legal AI Legora hits a $5.6B valuation
- Scale AI wins a $500M Defense Department deal
- Q1 biopharma VC deal value and count fell 29%
Sports
- Blackstone steps into sports with a $1.78B Royal Challengers Bengaluru deal as Indian Premier League becomes a private equity playground
- Zuckerberg and Tim Cook emerge as Seahawks bidders
- Ariel Investments sees a $1B women’s sports team within five years
- Koch family buys 10% of the Giants at a $10B valuation
- Tom Dundon’s group buys 80% of the Trail Blazers above $4B
- Big 12 presidents approve a deal with RedBird Capital
- Drake brings new ownership to Venezia FC alongside a Tim Leiweke €100M raise
- LIV Golf hunts for outside investment, Saudi backing included
Prediction Markets
- Kalshi raises $1B Series F at a $22B valuation led by Coatue
- CFTC chair calls manipulation the biggest issue with sports event contracts
- FanDuel CEO Amy Howe pushed out after five years as Flutter slides
Music & Film
- SAG-AFTRA reaches a tentative four-year deal with stricter AI limits
- BMG and Concord confirm their merger, with Bob Valentine as CEO
- Universal sells half its Spotify stake, generating about $1.4B
- UMG artists could reap millions from the sale thanks to a Taylor Swift contract clause
- SiriusXM in talks to acquire iHeartMedia
- Spotify posts $837M operating profit on 293M subs
- Paramount asks the FCC to bless 49.5% Gulf SWF financing in the WBD deal
- AMC partners with Arena One to bring live concerts to multiplexes
- Netflix gives Greta Gerwig’s Narnia a wide theatrical release
- Oscars rule out AI-generated performances
- WSJ: the $50 movie ticket has arrived
- Letterboxd is shopping for a buyer at scale
- Kaufman Astoria Studios faces foreclosure on a $340M loan
- Anthony Mackie’s Saudi-backed Desert Warrior tracks as one of the biggest box office flops ever
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Crypto
- Bloomberg maps the pre-IPO crypto shadow market for SpaceX, OpenAI and Anthropic
- Bitget’s IPO Prime brings SpaceX tokens to retail on Solana
- Kraken launches Crypto + xStocks bundles
- Telegram takes direct control of TON; Toncoin up 56% on the week
- Bitcoin briefly reclaims $80,000 on CLARITY Act compromise
- Morgan Stanley pilots low-fee crypto trading on E-Trade
- Coinbase eliminates 14% of its workforce
Collectibles, Culture and Luxury
- A 17th-century Mughal astrolabe sells for $2.75M at Sotheby’s
- 2026 Met Gala raises a record $42M with Silicon Valley front and center
- McLaren F1 valued north of $5B after stake sale
- $3M R34 Skyline GT-R Nissan collection heads to auction
- Matthew Perry Friends scripts and SAG award hit the block
- Singapore jails a man who sold a real Rolex thinking it was fake
- Bonsai investment platform Azukari opens its marketplace
Private Equity & Private Credit
- SEC chair Atkins says regulators are investigating fraud in private credit
- Apollo pledges daily pricing for direct lending and asset-backed loans by Q4
- Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square IPO flops 18% on day one
- Blue Owl’s BDCs are battered by redemption requests
- Liquidity sleeves drag on semiliquid PE funds
- Private credit defends its software book as worries pile up
- Platinum Equity’s United Site Services flushes equity into Chapter 11
- First Brands reaches global settlement and liquidation plan
- Private credit pros face compensation cuts of 2.5% to 7.5%
Real Estate
- A Supreme Court case could detonate the $14B tax foreclosure industry
- Nvidia, Pulte and SPAN unveil GPU nodes mounted to home siding as hyperscalers run out of land
- DOJ charges 11 in a $17M LA mortgage fraud scheme targeting elderly homeowners
- US foreclosures hit a six-year high, up 26% year over year
- CRE distress climbs as 12.2% of loans hit trouble; office sits at 17%
- US data center power demand is on track to nearly triple by 2030
- 47% of Americans don’t want AI data centers near their homes
- New home sales rose 7.4% in March; median price fell 6.2% YoY
- South Bend, Indiana tops the WSJ/Realtor housing market rankings
- Office foot traffic notches its strongest March since the pandemic
- Groundfloor is expanding beyond real estate debt
Artwork
- Sotheby’s London expects record bids for its Klimt, Matisse and Freud auction
Farmland
- African agriculture pulled in $1.65B in Q1 2026, led by World Bank’s $500M Nigerian smallholder package
Wine, Whiskey & Spirits
- House of Rare gets excellent review at Robb Report
- Trump and King Charles strike a Scotch whisky tariff deal during state visit
- NYT: in California wine country, sales are down and fraud is rampant
See you next time, Stefan
Disclosures
- This issue was sponsored by Groundfloor.
- This issue contains no affiliate links.
