What I Read This Week…
What I Read This Week…
Google is in talks to acquire cybersecurity startup for $23 billion, Crowdstrike software update led 8.5 million Windows devices to crash, record-low U.S. birth rate is driven by women having no kids
Read our Deep Dive on U.S. Defense
Caught My Eye…
Google is in advanced talks to acquire cybersecurity startup Wiz for around $23 billion, potentially making it Google's largest acquisition to date. Founded in 2020, Wiz has grown rapidly, reaching $500 million in annual recurring revenue within 4.5 years. Google's willingness to pay 46x forward revenue underscores the value of cloud security for cloud service providers, as even one significant cybersecurity breach could severely damage their reputation and revenue growth. The potential exit for Wiz’s investors at a high valuation is also a positive signal for venture capitalists, as it could begin to reestablish an exit pathway for private market investments and reinvigorate startup funding across all stages of venture capital financing.
A recent update to CrowdStrike’s Falcon Sensor software led around 8.5 million Windows devices to crash. The consequences of this outage were far-reaching, including major U.S. airlines grounding flights due to communication issues, banks being unable to process financial transactions, and news organizations being unable to broadcast their content. What happened? The Falcon Sensor update installed a flawed driver on Windows devices that attempted to access a memory address outside its allowed range at the kernel level of the operating system. This invalid memory access at such a core level of the operating system triggered a critical error, resulting in the "Blue Screen of Death" on affected Windows systems.
The U.S. birth rate has fallen to a historic low of 1.62 births per woman in 2023. A new analysis of the Census Bureau's Current Population Survey reveals this decline is primarily driven by an increasing proportion of women choosing to have zero children. This trend spans all demographics, including race, income, education level, employment status, and geographic region. Several factors contribute to this phenomenon, including the rising costs of raising children - such as housing, childcare, education, and general living expenses - which are deterring prospective parents. Moreover, younger Americans view children as one of many paths to a meaningful life. When weighed against other personal and professional ambitions, the investment in child-rearing often appears less worthwhile.
Other Reading…
The Secret Service Must Admit its Failures to the Nation (Washington Post)
Trump Taps Ohio Senator J.D. Vance to be his Vice President (Politico)
Donald Trump Raised More Money than Joe Biden in Second Quarter (Financial Times)
Can America Afford its Debts? (The Economist)
Old VC Funds Breathe New Life into Secondhand Stakes Trading (PitchBook)
What Elon Musk's Texas Relocation Plan for SpaceX, X HQs Could Mean for CA (ABC News)
Israel Strikes Houthi Targets in Yemen After Drone Attack on Tel Aviv (BBC)
Russia’s Vast Stocks of Soviet-Era Weaponry are Running Out (The Economist)
Feared in the West, China’s Manufacturers Struggle at Home (WSJ)
On X…
No longer pursuing this.. maybe they buy crowdstrike now ;)
Your Learn With Me "System" needs to become an automated RAG/LLM AI product for the financial markets. e g.
Finetuned OSS 400B LLM with OSS embedded vector database with post-training on curated Financial domain synthetic data, all packaged into a step by step pipeline for customers to cover use cases on analyzing new markets or comparing companies. Would be used by your team initially. E g. 1. Upload financial documents (into DB for RAG w encoding) 2. Choose collection of raw, corporate-specific financial writing that will be auto-prepped for further fine-tuning. 3. Perform fine-tuning. 4. etc