In today’s newsletter I discuss how AI company stock options millionaires in San Francisco are buying 7-figure homes with stock options, Fiat launches their new car Topolino in the U.S. for $13,995 dollars, xAI has now officially rebranded as SpaceXAI, Blue Origin is raising $10 billion dollars, the broadcast rights for the 2030 FIFA World Cup are going to be an insane fight between online streaming companies, the trailer for Mobland Season 2 on Paramount just dropped and I can’t wait to watch Tom Hardy do what he does best, 140 companies have formed Open Standard and launched a new stablecoin called Open USD that is pegged to the U.S. dollar, and the NBA will pick expansion team owners in Las Vegas and Seattle by the end of 2026.

Let’s get into it!

The real estate market in San Francisco has always been out of this world, but thanks to the AI bubble we’re now seeing housing prices, and how deals are being paid for, starting to get real scary from a bubble perspective. I’m talking about homeowners trading their luxury 7-figure real estate properties for equity in private AI firms like OpenAI and Anthropic before they’ve even gone public, which both are expected to do later this year.

Let me paint you a picture. The median price for a single-family home in San Francisco is around $2.2 million dollars, which is up 22% year-over-year. And those homes are going fast, with the average home selling in about 18 days for sometimes as much as 25% above its asking price. In the first half of 2026 over 144 homes sold for at least $1 million dollars over their asking price, which represents a nearly 1,700% increase compared to the same period in 2025. One homeowner even went as far as to create a LinkedIn page (which has been removed) just to market their $8 million dollar home, and then sent DMs to Anthropic employees offering to trade the property for equity in the private AI company. So yea, the housing market in San Francisco is HOT!

The primary driving force behind San Francisco’s insane housing frenzy is the employees and investors of private AI companies like OpenAI and Anthropic. Both companies sport valuations of over $1 trillion dollars, and have filed to go public later this year. They recently watched over 4,400 SpaceX employees become millionaires overnight when the company IPOed at a $1.77 trillion dollar valuation, and now they want it on that generational wealth. And surprise: they’re not content to just sit around and wait for that to happen. They’re taking matters into their own hands and looking to buy real estate before their golden goose’s eggs have even hatched.

Some of these AI companies’ employees are rushing into the breach without reading the fine print on their stock options. According to real estate tax attorney David Shapiro, most private companies place strict limits on how their employees’ stock options can be transferred before a company IPOs. In most cases, employees can’t transfer their stock option ownership without explicit approval from the company’s board of directors.

You know what two companies both have these rules in place? Yup, you guessed it: OpenAI and Anthropic.

So it’s unclear if employees holding stock options worth millions on paper even have the legal right to sell or exchange those shares for real estate before their companies go public. Imagine being that homeowner who traded their 7-figure home in San Francisco for stock options in OpenAI or Anthropic, and coming to find out the transaction was worthless, you’ve now lost your home, and all you’re left with is some shoddy real estate contract that isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on. Talk about a wakeup call.

But there’s no denying that employees of OpenAI and Anthropic are sitting on a staggering amount of equity, and that soon to be minted wealth is already having an insane impact on real estate in San Francisco and its suburbs. Let me break it down for you.

OpenAI’s employees hold around $135 billion dollars in equity in the company, while Anthropic’s employees hold an estimated $63 billion dollars in equity. If that doesn’t blow your mind, this insane stat will. The combined wealth of employees from both of these companies could hypothetically purchase nearly one third of all the residential real estate in San Francisco, where the entire housing market is estimated to be around $692 billion dollars.

That might sound incredibly exciting, and you’d think the economy and real estate bubble in San Francisco could just go on forever, until you think back to when the dot-com bubble burst. Then you can begin to imagine what could happen if-or-when the AI bubble bursts and all these homeowners who traded their multimillion dollar homes for equity in AI startups finally realize they way overpaid, and their properties are now worth a fraction of the inflated price they thought they were worth before their companies even IPOed.

I told you real estate in San Francisco is scary!

Blue Origin is raising their first external funding round to raise $10 billion dollars at a pre-money valuation of $130 billion dollars. To date Jeff Bezos has provided all funding for Blue Origin, but now he’s looking to take the aerospace company to the next level. Leading the funding round is Coatue Management, which is investing $4 billion dollars. Jeff Bezos is also investing $2 billion dollars in his own funding round, which is odd but you do you Jeff. The remaining $4 billion dollars of the funding round is up for grabs, but I’m guessing the round will be oversubscribed seeing as how recent aerospace companies, like SpaceX and Rocket Lab, have been pulling in whatever funding they need lately.

So what is Blue Origin planning to do with all these new loot they raise? Well, launching rockets isn’t cheap, so they are looking to scale manufacturing of their heavy lift New Glenn, as well as to fund the development of their Blue Moon lunar lander for the Artemis program. Blue Origin still has a long way before they reach a valuation of competitor SpaceX, but Jeff Bezos plays the long game like a Chess Master, and shouldn’t be underestimated.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup has been such a hit for Fox that the broadcasting rights bidding for the 2030 FIFA World Cup are about to get pretty spicy as some heavy weight digital streaming giants like Netflix, Disney, YouTube, Amazon and Apple have all expressed interest in buying the domestic rights to stream the games, and it won’t be cheap either. Industry execs estimate the price tag for the 2030 FIFA World Cup broadcast rights could be close to $2 billion dollars, and they’re looking to lock up the next couple of FIFA World Cups while they’re at it.

As a part of bidding for the new broadcasting rights FIFA is packaging both the English and Spanish language broadcast rights together into a single combined package in order to spur competition for the broadcast rights.

Fox paid $485 million dollars in 2015 with no other competitors submitting bids for the English-language broadcast rights to the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Telemundo, which is owned by NBC, spent $600 million dollars for the separate Spanish language broadcasting rights. Because no other broadcasters submitted bids, it’s estimated that Fox may have paid less than half of what the tournament's true market value of between $1-$1.5 billion dollars was. Talk about a steal!

The trailer for Mobland Season 2 on Paramount just dropped, and it looks like North London's largest crime family The Harrigans are back, with the new season ready to drop on September 18, 2026 with Tom Hardy reprising his role as Harry Da Souza. There was a big of a kerfuffle a few months back about an onset “disagreement” between Dame Helen Mirren and Tom Hardy alleging he was being a pre-Madona on set and making the crew wait for hours for him to be ready. There was even talk of kicking him out of the show, but then social media did their thing and it looks like the overwhelming support for Tom Hardy was enough for studio execs to back him once they realized there’s no show without him. So I’ll be looking forward to Mobland returning in September, and judging by the trailer it promises to be pretty hectic for the Harrigan crime family.

Auto maker Stellantis, owner of 14 iconic automotive brands including Jeep, Dodge, Alfa Romeo, Maserati, and Peugeot to name a few, has launched a new EV quadricycle called the Fiat Topolino in the U.S. with a retail price of $13,995 dollars.

The vehicle, which is honestly more like a go kart with 4 bike tires, has an 8 horsepower electric motor that is powered by a 5.4 kilowatt hour lithium ion battery that can be fully charged in just 5 hours using a 2.3 kilowatt alternating current plug, otherwise referred to as trickle charging. The vehicle has a top speed of 19 miles per hour, and can drive up to 46 miles on a single charge. So bad for road trips, but great for picking up groceries.

While the world of crypto has been on a seemingly slow decline into oblivion and obsolescence, at least if you watch the crypto markets like I do, but in the world of high finance a coalition of more than 140 financial and tech companies have formed what they are calling the Open Standard and launched a new stablecoin called Open USD that is pegged to the U.S. dollar.

The project is led by CEO Zach Abrams, who previously co-founded the stablecoin infrastructure firm Bridge, which was acquired by Stripe in February 2025 for $1.1 billion dollars. Partners in the new venture and stablecoin include Visa, Mastercard, American Express, and Discover, Bank of New York Mellon, Standard Chartered, Google, Shopify, IBM, Coinbase, Ripple, Solana, and Anchorage Digital.

This new venture and stablecoin are designed to directly challenge the economics of the $300 billion dollar stablecoin market, so you know no big deal. The stablecoin industry is expected to be a $4 trillion dollar market by 2030, and everyone wants a piece of that stablecoin pie!

AI company xAI has officially completed their corporate rebranding to become SpaceXAI, folding its operations directly under parent company SpaceX. They just updated the company’s profile across social media platforms, and officially changed their handle on X to @SpaceXAI and debuted a new profile pic.

This is the final step in the acquisition of xAI by SpaceX in the all-stock transaction, which valued xAI at $250 billion dollars, and parent company SpaceX at $1 trillion dollars before their historic IPO in June 2026.

As the NBA explores expansion teams in Las Vegas and Seattle, former Walt Disney Company executive Bob Iger and Thrive Capital founder Joshua Kushner (yes, of that Kushner family) have hired investment bankers to explore a potential majority stake bid for a NBA expansion team in Las Vegas. Their bid would be structured through Thrive Eternal, a permanent capital vehicle created by Thrive Capital to acquire cultural assets and iconic brands; you know, like NBA teams.

An NBA expansion team doesn’t come cheap, with some estimates putting the price tag at between $7-$10 billion dollars per team, with the NBA targeting the 2028–29 season for the 2 new franchise teams to begin playing in the newly expanded 32 team league. NBA league commissioner Adam Silver has said that the board of governors will review all expansion team proposals for both Las Vegas and Seattle, and make their decision by the end of 2026.

But they aren’t the only ones interested in sinking a 3-point shot to acquire a new franchise team. Bill Foley, owner of the NHL’s Vegas Golden Knights hockey team, has announced he’s pursuing the NBA expansion rights for his own Las Vegas basketball team, and plans to locate his franchise at the T-Mobile Arena. Then we have former Phoenix Suns owner Jerry Colangelo leading an ownership group called the Las Vegas Jacks who may end up submitting a bid in the range of $12.5-$13 billion dollars in order to ensure they shoot their winning shot before the buzzer.

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The Business Behind The News is written, edited, and published by Chris Thompson.