Gm Fintech Architects —
Today we are diving into the following topics:
Summary: We explore the growing pains of the machine economy, what things are actually valuable, and which are being broken. AI capital is being mobilized at nation-state scale: $75B SpaceX IPOs, $1.5T OpenAI valuations, $2B+ ETFs that didn’t exist a month ago. DeFi capital is being drained at nation-state scale: $290MM from Kelp DAO, $9B of collateral damage to Aave, a $300MM industry-led rescue called DeFi United. Both stories are about the frontier running unbounded, with stakes for technology higher than they have ever been before. We conclude with the dangers posed by models like Anthropic’s Mythos.
The Machines (AI / private markets): Cursor, SpaceX, Manus, Meta, Ant Financial, Robinhood, Databricks, Revolut, Mercor, Airwallex, Boom Supersonic, Oura, Ramp, OpenAI, Stripe, ElevenLabs, Anthropic, Hiive, Hyperliquid, Roundhill Investments, SK hynix, Micron Technology, Samsung Electronics, Kioxia Holdings, Sandisk, Seagate Technology Holdings, Western Digital, Nanya Technology, Winbond Electronics, BlackRock, NVIDIA, MidJourney, Runway.
The Robot Wall Street (DeFi / crypto / security): Bybit, Kelp DAO, Unichain, LayerZero (incl. LayerZero Labs), Tornado Cash, PeckShield, Cyvers, Aave (incl. Aave Labs), Uniswap, Glassnode, DefiLlama, LlamaRisk, SparkLend, Morpho (Morpho Blue), Mantle, Arbitrum (incl. Arbitrum DAO, Arbitrum Security Council), Consensys, Ether.Fi, Lido (Lido DAO), Solana Foundation, Tron, Euler Labs.
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Analysis
The Machines
The robots are working, financially speaking.
Cursor, the AI developer platform, is being acquired by Elon Musk’s conglomerate of frontier technologies for up to $60B. The SpaceX IPO is supposed to raise $75B at a $1.75 trillion valuation.
Manus, the AI harness built in China and exported to Singapore, was on the path to be acquired by Meta for $2B. It was deemed so strategic to the Chinese government as a technology asset that the acquisition has now been blocked. This reminds us of the failure to launch by Ant Financial and Jack Ma, flying too close to the sun.
Two ETFs launched recently have hit our radar as important signals.
The Robinhood Ventures Fund I, or RVI, has hit an $850MM market capitalization. This vehicle holds a bunch of private company shares, while charging a 3%+ management fee.
Last quarter, the portfolio was Databricks (23.24%), Revolut (14.30%), Mercor (14.23%), Airwallex (7.11%), Boom Supersonic (7.11%), Oura (7.11%), Ramp (7.11%), Cash & cash equivalents (19.78%). It will also now include OpenAI, Stripe, and ElevenLabs. It’s a bit tough figuring out the NAV relative to the floating price, so buyer beware. But this is a liquid vehicle of legitimately good companies, and is showcasing another way that privates can go public.
OpenAI, for example, has traded up massively on the private markets and has since seen its price double again in perpetuals trading on Hyperliquid.
That’s about $1.5 trillion for the ChatGPT maker. Given equal revenue pacing for Anthropic, we expect that it will trade similarly when coming to market, if not better, given the cleaner management and legal structure.
The success of this monetization has long been reflected in the infrastructure, hardware, and components that make AI possible. We first covered this in the launch of our Machine Economy encyclopedia research report.
More recently, this has been reflected in the Roundhill Memory ETF (“DRAM”), which is designed to hold companies that make memory solutions for AI companies. Its current positions are SK hynix (26.78%), Micron Technology Inc (24.36%), Samsung Electronics Co (22.23%), Kioxia Holdings (6.00%), Sandisk (5.03%), Seagate Technology Holdings (4.58%), Western Digital (4.54%), Nanya Technology (3.36%), and Winbond Electronics (1.82%).
The fund has now raised $2B+ since its early April launch — one of the fastest growing financial products in history, competing for asset-gathering speed with the Bitcoin products from BlackRock.
These are the valuable risk-on growth stories of 2026.
They are obviously NOT venture capital or growth investing. The amounts of money involved are nation-state bets on strategic technological capability. To win in AI is to win in the technology cold war. It has more in common with landing on the moon than it does with a founder bootstrapping a company. We cannot compare building a business to the $2B seed rounds of high technology labs, no more than we compare them to the launch of $10B+ valuation blockchain protocols.
The gravity they exude has sucked in most growth-oriented liquidity from the markets. There is no point in comparing NVIDIA to Bitcoin any longer.
The real test of whether these gains are real will come in the IPO wave of SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI. In the media case, we think current prices will hold up or increase. In the optimistic scenario, we can see a 2-5x from here to go into a world with $5T AI behemoths that have swallowed all GDP whole.
In the pessimistic scenario, which we think is a 5-15% probability, everything gets repriced to 10-20x earnings as insiders begin to sell their trillions of holdings. Unlikely but possible.
Behind these flagship names, there is a long list of good, interesting companies. Whether it is ElevenLabs, or MidJourney, or Runway, or the emerging Zero Human Company operating systems, more is coming. Not less, but more! Capital availability for them will rest on whether the bigger players can return cash to other investors.
The Robot Wall Street
Decentralized Finance, on the other hand, has had a tough go.
If DeFi smart contracts are meant to be banks, they are getting robbed a lot.
This is no longer a story of cybersecurity. It is a story of nation-state strategies to survive.