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Happy Thursday, Future Party. If you’re still starting or ending messages with “lol,” don’t worry — you’re just a millennial. While younger generations question its usefulness (and, yes, it officially became a word in 2011 — thanks, Oxford English Dictionary), millennials defend it as both tone-setter and punctuation mark rolled into one tidy phrase. Some things really do define a generation… lol.
DAILY TOP TRENDS
Oracle’s Larry Ellison Is Now The Richest Man In The World
Courtesy of Oracle
Larry Ellison, co-founder and chairman of Oracle, became the richest man in the world after the software giant’s stock popped 43% yesterday after posting unprecedented cloud revenue.
The Big Picture: The surge in cloud revenue suggests Oracle’s fortunes may now be tied to AI, with companies like OpenAI, Nvidia, and Meta emerging as key clients. Oracle is taking on significant debt to expand its data-center footprint — a gamble that the AI boom will lead to enough riches for those companies to actually pay their contracts.
Behind The Bump: Oracle may handle some pretty boring aspects of the tech industry, but the company’s quarterly earnings call yesterday had people very excited.
The company announced four cloud-computing deals worth hundreds of billions of dollars, including a five-year, $300 billion contract with OpenAI for 4.5 gigawatts of power (enough to power four million homes) — marking the largest cloud deal ever signed.
CEO Safra Catz says more deals are on the way, with $455 billion in outstanding contract revenue still on the books.
Oracle reported that its cloud revenue rose 28% to $7.2 billion and projects it will reach $144 billion by 2029 — a very ambitious target.
All of that came as a big surprise to investors, sending the stock up 45% in its biggest single-day gain since 1992. (Oracle’s been at this game a while.)
The Future: Larry Ellison, who owns about 43% of Oracle, saw his fortune balloon by $100 billion, lifting his net worth to $393 billion — about $8 billion more than Elon Musk. According to the Bloomberg Billionaires’ Index, Ellison had the largest single-day net worth increase in modern history.
Next Quarter: While it once seemed farfetched that Oracle could acquire an American version of TikTok on its own, it certainly has the capital to do so now… even with $100 billion still in debt. After all, what’s one more multi-billion dollar gamble?
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Entrepreneurs Make Creators Part Of The Business Plan
Smartphone suit-up // Illustration by Kate Walker
Creator-economy firm Stealth Talent is connecting “ambitious startup founders” with creators to build companies together.
Why It Hits: Transitioning from digital creator to entrepreneur has become one of the best paths for influencers to sustain their careers — elevating the profiles (and fortunes) of names like MrBeast, Emma Chamberlain, and Ryan Kaji. And in today’s business environment, partnering with creators isn’t just a trend; it’s an expectation.
Behind The Partnerships: Stealth Talent wants to make businesses social media-ready.
The company will place creators inside startups to help them build out their marketing, product launches, and online presence, giving them “instant cultural cachet,” per founder Phil Ranta.
In exchange, creators receive ownership stakes and executive roles (and, by default, a front-row seat to how startups are built).
Stealth Talent already has 40 creators on its roster with a combined 80 million followers across platforms.
Standouts include Cozy Ivan (a lifestyle ASMR chef with 11 million TikTok followers) and Legendary Jay (a special-effects expert with 3.7 million followers on TikTok and 2.6 million on YouTube).
Final Deal: Ranta, a veteran of once-powerhouse digital creator firms like Fullscreen and Studio71, told Tubefilter that “many of the top creators I worked with in 2012 are no longer professional content creators today. Some quit, some burned out, but others simply lost their relevance.” Stealth Talent wants to change that. One of its first creator placements was with a new supplements brand founded by a “top athlete.”
Prediction: Soon, every small startup could go viral thanks to creator partnerships — because in this model, commerce is the content.
DEEP DIVES
Read: THR profiles comedian and growing media mogul Nate Bargatze in the run-up to his Emmys’ hosting gig this weekend.
Listen: The Town chats with The NYT’s Jim Rutenberg about the end of the Succession-like drama over ownership of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.
Watch: Forbes highlights the richest women on the Forbes 400 list, including the wealthiest woman in the world — Walmart heir Alice Walton.
32.2% of you voted Comedy Central in yesterday’s poll: Which of Paramount’s cable brands do you think has the best chance at a revival?
“I’m drawn to comedians on YouTube these days — we could all use a good laugh to escape the chaos. If Comedy Central brings back strong stand-up, I think it can be revived.”
“MTV is geared primarily toward one age group — mainly Gen X — but comedy is ageless and appeals to all generations.”
“I’d like to see MTV return to being more of a music station. As a parent, Nickelodeon was a godsend — I loved watching shows like Pete & Pete, Doug, and Are You Afraid of the Dark? with my kids. It was such fun.”
“One word: SpongeBob.”
Let’s keep the conversation going. Join our Poll Of The Day newsletter, 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.
QUICK HITS
→ Entertainment / Media
💻 Vimeo is being acquired by Italian tech company Bending Spoons for $1.38 billion.
🎥 Angel Studios, the distributor of Sound of Freedom, is going public via a SPAC deal with Southport Acquisition Corp.
🎧 Spotify is finally releasing HD lossless audio for Premium subscribers — four years after it was announced.
→ Technology
👓 Amazon is developing two pairs of AR glasses — one for the consumer, another for delivery drivers.
🚗 Lyft and May Mobility have rolled out their first autonomous rideshare vehicles in Atlanta.
📰 Reddit is making it easier for publishers to share and monetize articles directly on the company’s platform.
→ Fashion / E-commerce
💰 Klarna’s stock jumped 16% in its debut, valuing the BNPL firm at $17.5 billion.
📱 Retail trading platform Robinhood debuted its own social network to track and follow user trades.
🪙 Turns out the new “no tax on tips” rules also apply to digital creators, podcasters, and streamers.
Let us know how we are doing...
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Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.