In today’s newsletter I ask the question: Should the U.S. government take an equity stake in AI companies? Also, LeBron James is leaving the LA Lakes but isn't retiring just yet, SpaceX might launch their own mobile phone service, Rocket Lab is acquiring Iridium, Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce may or may not be doing something big at Madison Square Garden, PlayStation announces they will stop making games on discs in 2028, Trump Accounts will go live over the 4th of July weekend, and Alphabet just joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Let’s get into it!

Sam Altman, the co-founder and CEO of OpenAI, has been in talks with the U.S. government about giving the government a 5% equity stake in OpenAI, which could be worth an estimated $42.6 billion dollars based on the company’s latest funding round that valued OpenAI at $852 billion dollars. Should the U.S. government be in the business of taking equity stakes in private and publicly traded companies?

For the last year Sam Altman has been having private, some might even say secret, talks directly with President Trump about OpenAI giving the U.S. government a 5% equity stake in the company. Now that this news has come out Sam Altman is suggesting that other AI companies, including Anthropic, Alphabet’s Google, Meta’s Facebook, and SpaceX’s xAI, should give the U.S. government roughly 5% of their equity to be put in what he is suggesting would be a U.S. government-run Public Wealth Fund to share AI wealth with American citizens.

The idea of a Public Wealth Fund isn’t new. Plenty of countries around the world have created them, including Norway’s Government Pension Fund Global which holds over $2.1 trillion dollars from the country's oil and gas revenues, China’s Investment Corporation (CIC) that manages over $1.56 trillion in assets, and Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund called the Public Investment Fund (PIF) which has around $1.21 trillion and its total assets including a 4% equity stake in Saudi Aramco and the Al Nassr soccer team in the Saudi Pro League.

Under President Donald Trump his administration the Department of Commerce and the Department of Defense have taken equity stakes in a number of both private and publicly traded companies through both financial and strategic investments. On July 10, 2025, the Trump administration’s Department of Defense announced they purchased $400 million dollars in preferred stock in MP Materials to build a secure, domestic supply chain for rare earth metals, and provided the company with a $150 million dollar loan for MP Materials to help build a heavy rare earth separation plant in California. On August 22, 2025 the Trump administration converted $8.9 billion in unpaid CHIPS Act and Defense Department grants into equity in U.S. chip maker Intel, which gave the U.S. Treasury a 9.9% stake in the company that today has ballooned to around $51.5 billion dollars. On May 21, 2026 the Trump administration announced a $2 billion dollar investment in 9 quantum computing companies, including IBM foundry subsidiary Anderon, chip manufacturer GlobalFoundries, D-Wave Quantum, Rigetti Computing, Infleqtion, Atom Computing, PsiQuantum, Quantinuum, and quantum startup Diraq.

After those investments the Trump administration was on a roll, and they began to amp up their investments, securing a 10% equity position in USA Rare Earth backed by $1.6 billion dollars in funding, a $1 billion dollar convertible preferred equity deal with rocket engine manufacturer L3Harris Missile Solutions, a 10% equity stake in mining firm Trilogy Metals for an Alaskan critical minerals project, a 40% stake in a joint venture smelter with Korea Zinc that they backed with $210 million dollars in subsidies, a 5% equity stake in Lithium Americas for the Thacker Pass project, and a $150 million dollar preferred equity stake in Atlantic Alumina Company.

I can understand most of those investments, as they fall into either nation defence, securing access to critical rare earth minerals, or investing in quantum computing to ensure that the U.S. becomes the leader in that sector, but taking equity stakes in U.S.-based AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Meta, and xAI doesn’t seem necessary both Google and Meta are already profitable publicly traded companies and SpaceX owned xAI just had the biggest IPO in history raising $75 billion dollars and is today valued at $2.09 trillion dollars. Both OpenAI and Anthropic have filed confidentially to go public with the SEC, and each sport a valuation of close to $1 trillion dollars each and have no problem raising all the funding they need from the public markets.

So why would any of these companies want to give a 5% equity stake in their company to the U.S. government? The only reason I can think of is political, and since this is the Business Behind The News, I’ll just leave it at that.

Rocket Lab just announced they are acquiring the satellite communications company Iridium Communications in a deal worth $8 billion dollars. Shares of Rocket Lab, led by CEO Peter Beck, popped 9% while shares of Iridium skyrocketed 20% to $53.75 a share on the news acquisition. Rocket Lab is structuring the deal as a mix of stock and cash, with Iridium shareholders receiving $27 dollars per share in cash plus a variable number of Rocket Lab shares depending on their stock price, for a combined cash and stock price valuing Iridium at $54 per share.

This acquisition of Iridium by Rocket Labs sets the company up for a competition with Elon Musk’s SpaceX Starlink and Jeff Bezos' Amazon Leo.

The combined Rocket Lab and Iridium will sport a healthy balance sheet with $520 million dollars in annual revenue from the launch provider service and $790 million dollars in annual revenue and robust free cash flow from Iridium’s satellite business.

Following Rocket Lab’s acquisition of Iridium the combined company will have a market cap of approximately $61 billion, which is less than the $75 billion dollars that SpaceX raised in their IPO, and far short of SpaceX’s $2.07 trillion dollar market cap, but it’s a start.

I’ve been really tempted to write an article about the rumored wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce, but I’ve held back because instead of gossiping about “Will They or Won’t They” I’d rather focus on the economics of a supposed celebrity wedding that may or may not go down this 4th of July weekend at Madison Square Garden.

Let’s start with what we know. Someone has rented out Madison Square Garden from June 29 and July 7, 2026 for a cost of $1 million dollars per day, and they hired Winick Productions, a New York-based event planning company founded by Elliot Winick, to handle the logistics of hosting whatever this event might be. They also filed for and received a permit from New York City to close the streets around the venue, which isn’t an easy feat to pull off, as well as to erect a giant outdoor tent that’s designed to hold up to 1,000 people, and they’re putting it just outside of Madison Square Garden. The event planner even hired 70 dedicated detectives from surrounding precincts to handle security, at a cost of between $140,000-$280,000 for (2) 8-hour shifts, for the supposed 100 guest rehearsal dinner on Thursday night, and the rumored wedding reception for 1,100 people on Friday night.

Now let’s talk about what we don’t know. How much could the wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce cost? There’s no way that info is ever going to leak, but we have a pretty good idea of what it costs for a celebrity wedding. Some luxury wedding planners charge between $15-$20 million dollars for a celebrity event, which includes the cost of renting the venue, photography and videography, lighting (which is apparently a must for good photos), catering, providing luxury bathroom facilities, and that’s before you even get to hiring famous musicians for entertainment. The price tag for premium venue lighting and sound production can run between $150,000-$300,000 dollars, but to do that for Madison Square Garden we’re talking about it costing closer to $1 million dollars. And you can’t forget the flowers, which would obviously be custom designed and could cost between $500,000-$1,000,000.

If that all sounds outrageously expensive and luxurious, then you’re not wrong, but with a net worth estimated to be over $2 billion dollars, and the entire entertainment and sports world watching, can you really put a price tag on the celebrity wedding of the year?

PlayStation has announced they’ll stop making discs for new games beginning in 2028. Consumers can just download them from the PlayStation store, or from game developers directly. Love buying new games on discs? Well, you're pretty much the only one still doing that. Roughly 85% of new games sales are downloaded digitally, you know because it’s 2026!

PlayStation still sells an estimated 70 million games on disc per year. Those games usually find their way into the used video game ecosystem, which is estimated at $7.2 billion dollars in annual revenue, and is expected to reach $13.8 billion by 2034.

With the end of video game disc production I’d be worried for gaming retailers like the meme stock GameStop, if it wasn’t for their hoped for acquisition of eBay (which is never going to happen). So yea, they’re probably hosed.

The highly anticipated launch, by some people, of Trump Accounts will go live on July 4, 2026 for children under 18 years of age thanks to the One Big Beautiful Bill Act that signed into law the dedicated savings program for children. The law known officially as Public Law 119-21 created this new type of tax deferred investment vehicle for children that functions like a traditional retirement account for kids who are under 18 years old. Parents, legal guardians, or really generous uncles and godfathers like me, can complete IRS Form 4547 to create an account for any child, as long as they can convince the kid’s parents to give them access to the kid’s Social Security number. Upon successful creation of a Trump Account individuals can fund it to the tune of $5,000 annually, or employers can chip in up to $2,500 dollars per year which also counts toward the $5,000 annual contribution limit. What really sweetens the deal is the U.S. government will kick in a one time only contribution of $1,000 dollars for U.S. citizens born between 2025-2028.

Because the U.S. government doesn’t trust the youth of the nation to make good financial decisions the Treasury has mandated that all funds must be placed into low cost index or exchange traded funds, in an effort to prevent Junior for day trading the government’s contributions away.

What fun is that!?!? But fret not, because Junor will get access to those funds when he turns 18, and the Trump Account automatically converts into a traditional IRA that they then make whatever foolish investment decisions they want. Isn’t freedom great!

Alphabet just joined the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA or known as the Dow), which propelled the blue chip benchmark to a record breaking close above 52,000 for the first time in its 130 year history! Alphabet, or forever to be referred to as Google by me, replaced Verizon Communications in the Dow because the index wanted better exposure to the fast-growing AI and cloud computing industries, and Verizon's low share of $44 meant its stock price had almost no impact on the index's performance. By including Alphabet, which has a $4.35 trillion dollar market cap, in the DJIA Alphabet will have a 4% weight in the index which will better reprice the price movements of the tech sector.

The total market cap of all the companies that make up the Dow Jones Industrial Average is approximately $22.4 trillion dollars, a massive figure that represents the combined value of all outstanding shares for the 30 large companies listed in the index.

By adding Alphabet to the Dow everyday schmucks, I mean investors like you and me, will now have better exposure to the artificial intelligence, cloud computing, and digital advertising sectors of the broader tech industry.

SpaceX’s President Gwynne Shotwell casually mentioned during the company’s roadshow ahead of their historic $1.75 trillion dollar IPO that SpaceX is considering launching their own standalone mobile phone network in the U.S. using their Starlink satellites to provide connectivity worldwide. This caught mobile phone companies like Verizon and AT&T by surprise, and must have made T-Mobile more than a little nervous since they have a partnership agreement with SpaceX’s Starlink to provide their customer satellite communication when they’re out of cell phone coverage. Nothing like your partner mentioning they’re about to compete with you before launching the world largest IPO in history.

The total addressable market (TAM) for mobile phone services in the U.S. is valued at over $357 billion dollars, and globally you’re looking at over 9 billion active mobile subscriptions worth between $640-$900 billion dollars annually.

So yea, it’s a pretty big market that SpaceX has their eyes on. It also doesn’t hurt that nearly 97% of adults in the U.S own a cell phone, and based on my unscientific survey of every kid I know under 18 has a cell phone, I’d say it’s a pretty big opportunity for SpaceX and my bet is they’ll have a double digit share the mobile phone market in the U.S. before the end of the decade.

LeBron James surprised the entire sports world when he announced he wasn’t retiring after 23 years in the NBA, like so many pundits predicted. Instead he’s leaving the Los Angeles Lakers after 8 years, but he casually didn’t share what team he’ll be playing for next. Such a boss move. That’s why he’s King James!

Even crazier is LeBron James is leaving $59.5 million dollars on the table by walking away from his contract with the LA Lakers.

So what team will LeBron James play for next? You’re guess is as good as mine. Some are saying he’ll go to play with Stephen Curry and Golden State Warriors, or the Miami Heat for a chance to play with the recently traded Giannis Antetokounmpo, while others trumpet the familiar “going home” song in hopes he’ll return to the Cleveland Cavaliers.

Whatever team LeBron James chooses to play for, it’ll probably end up being the team he retires from after earning more than $581 million dollars during his career on the court.

Was this email forwarded to you? Did you not hate it?

Then consider subscribing to The Business Behind The News. The only newsletter that brings you the business behind the news, with a healthy dose of sarcasm - all delivered to your inbox once a week in an easily digestible 5-minute read.

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