Private Markets Sector

Goldman Sachs and JPMorgan Chase just posted their biggest quarterly revenue hauls ever, driven by a tsunami of trading and deal-making tied to the global AI spending spree. Think of it like this: when everyone starts building new skyscrapers (data centers, power plants, chip fabs), the construction companies making the deals and moving the money around get rich first. Goldman's revenue jumped 39% and JPMorgan's rose 27%, with equities trading up 72% and 86% respectively—those are the gains from helping clients shuffle massive piles of cash into AI stocks and infrastructure. The banks are advising on AI deals, financing data centers, and taking a cut from the parade of IPOs (like SpaceX's historic offering); CEO David Solomon called it a "three-to-five year capex super cycle" that's still early. (CNBC)

Lucid Motors stock plunged 40% at one point on Tuesday after a report claimed the struggling EV maker was exploring bankruptcy or going private—a classic sign of distress when a company's options have narrowed. Lucid flatly denied the rumor, insisting it has "sufficient liquidity" into next year and hasn't asked bankruptcy consultants AlixPartners to evaluate those options. The real problem: EV adoption is slower than expected, the Trump administration eliminated the $7,500 federal purchase incentive, and the company just missed delivery targets and cut 18% of its workforce. Lucid is backed by Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund but is burning cash fast despite its cutting-edge technology. (CNBC)

TerraFirma, a two-year-old startup founded by former SpaceX engineers, just raised $115 million to scale remote-controlled construction equipment that works like an Xbox controller for bulldozers—bringing rocket-building speed to an industry stuck in the 1990s. The founders worked at SpaceX building Starship and Starlink, where they learned to move fast at scale; now they're applying that same intensity to construction, which has historically been slow, inefficient, and dangerous. The company plans to hire 300 people and build a Texas factory and mission control center, with an eye on eventually bidding for infrastructure projects on the Moon and Mars. This is part of a broader wave of space-economy startups betting that AI-driven infrastructure spending and lunar exploration will create huge demand. (CNBC Tech)