From Mouse House To Lake Show

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Happy Thursday, Future Party. If you’re a fan of movie marathons, Neon has a challenge for you: sitting through a 36-hour loop of its upcoming Alex Ullom movie, It Ends. Starting August 21 at 7pm at the Metro Private Cinema in NYC, four four-person teams will be invited to join the marathon. They’ll be rewarded 25 cents for each minute they stay — up to $540. Whichever team has all its members make it through the entire 36-hour screening will get an additional $500 per person. Deadline reports that the marathon comes out to watching the movie about 25 times, so whoever joins better end up really liking the movie.

Thrive Capital’s Josh Kushner and former Disney CEO Bob Iger are paying $12.5 billion to buy the Los Angeles Lakers from controlling owner Mark Walter.

Why It Hits: The Lakers are the trophy asset among trophy assets in the world of sports, thanks to their championship history, starry fanbase, and cultural power. The record sale is further proof that the bidding for sports rights, demand for sports experiences, and endless sponsorship deals still have room to grow… with even more franchises expected to command valuations once reserved for corporations.

Behind The Deal: Even without LeBron James, the Lakers are still the hottest team in sports.

Final Shot: Iger, who rejoined Thrive Capital after his second stint running Disney, has been building his post-Mouse House career in the world of LA sports. He and his wife, Willow Bay, bought Angel City FC a couple of years ago. With the Lakers season kicking off in October and the women’s World Cup happening next summer, Iger is slated to get a starring role in the coverage as if he never left Hollywood.

For Kushner, the Lakers deal is a great headline change from where his name had recently been popping up — as the buyer of Gianni Infantino’s much-maligned plan to sell a stake in FIFA. Talk about shifting the narrative.

Prediction: It’s only a matter of time until ESPN, which Disney owns, greenlights a 30 for 30 segment on Iger.

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Nvidia and several Wall Street firms have cooked up a way to boost chip financing for startups trying to enter the crowded AI market.

The Big Picture: All roads run through Nvidia in the booming AI market… but it’s getting harder and harder to lease the chips needed for compute. Nvidia has been backing many of these deals on its own, sparking criticism of circular financing. Nvidia hopes the tie-up with Wall Street will buffer that criticism, but it could also put too much of the financial system’s weight on the company’s shoulders.

Behind The Plan: Nvidia and Wall Street firms are pitching chips as investable assets.

Closing Thoughts: The loans will be backed by Nvidia’s chips themselves — a big bet that the chips will hold their value over the long term, despite the company’s endless advancement of the tech. That’s a major paradigm shift from how chips were once viewed, with one prominent Nvidia investor hilariously telling WSJ that “historically, that’s an asset that’s had the shelf life of lettuce.” The Wall Street firms say the rabid demand compared to supply is what has changed that perception.

But that’s the main issue — the whole scheme is built on the idea that the AI market will be ever-growing for the foreseeable future. While AI is making company valuations soar, there still isn’t enough return on investment to call it a stable market. If things go south and demand for Nvidia chips suddenly dries up, the financial bottom could fall out.

There’s a reason why famed short investor Michael Burry (of The Big Short fame) said that it’s time for people to read up on Enron.

The Future: Despite the risks, expect these SPVs to be a hot commodity that leads to some big short-term gains — at least at first.

The AI Digest is the weekly email for professionals who are tired of the endless hype around AI and just want to know what they need to know.

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26.9% of you voted No, location doesn’t really matter in yesterday’s poll: Should major Hollywood studios stay based in California?

“It would be interesting to see what films, especially those with lower budgets, do. Moving can help state economies as well.”

“Much of film and TV production is already in places like Georgia and Vancouver, BC, so why not?”

“I selfishly want them to stay because I work in Hollywood and live in LA, so the more activity that stays here, the better for me. But CA needs to become more competitive with tax breaks, cheaper labor, and more agreeable unions. Runaway production has been the result of poor policy here. If the majors move out of state, I would blame California for dropping the ball more than the companies for doing what makes the most economic sense for their businesses.”

“People underestimate the huge communities of skilled artisans — lighting, electrical, sound, makeup, special effects — that fill the towns around Hollywood. Yes, that’s growing elsewhere, but Hollywood has been building its talent base since the silent-movie era. It will be hard to replicate such a deep bench.”

“Maybe it’s traditionalist for me to say this, but I do think that preserving the legacy of Hollywood and the systemic positioning of Los Angeles as the fulcrum of the entertainment industry is worth fighting for. Moving the studios out of Hollywood does nothing but put thousands of people out of jobs (if not just needlessly forcing them to relocate) at a time when we need to be doubling down on and reinvesting in our city as a means to rebuild after the mess left by COVID, the strikes, and decades-long streaming wars.”

Let’s keep the conversation going. Join Poll Of The Day, so your opinions can shine. Discover how your views line up with your peers’, check out cool insights, and have some fun. It’s data with personality.

💸 Alex Cooper’s Unwell Media is now worth $500 million after receiving an investment from Patrick Whitesell’s WTSL.

🎧 AI music-generation platform Suno has struck a deal with BMG as it builds a model based on licensed songs.

🎙️ Barack Obama is starting a podcast to discuss great books.

🦾 Anthropic announced that it will start watermarking Claude-generated text, so everyone knows when AI had a hand in it.

📱 Apple is adding a cryptographic watermark to iPhone photos to prove they came from a real camera, not AI.

🔋 Form Energy, a battery startup that creates energy through “reversible rusting,” has raised $750 million in new funding.

🤳 Facebook has rolled out a standalone Creator Studio app, which gives creators insights into how to grow their followings.

📺 Spotify is starting to broadcast some of its video podcasts on Twitch.

🎓 Arizona State University is collabing with ReelShort on a class that teaches students to write for microdramas.