Aug 21, 2025 5 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ Labubu Viral Wave

More Stories: Graphite Era Disruption, New Market Makers

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

A new generation of market makers is emerging, reshaping industries from toys to tech with the same audacity: nothing sacred, everything up for grabs.

BRAND

Plush Monster Eats Barbie’s Lunch

👀 What’s the move: Pop Mart’s Labubu isn’t just another toy — it’s a $1B cultural export machine. In six months, sales hit $670M, a 688% YoY jump, outselling Barbie and Hot Wheels. The playbook: scarcity via blind boxes, viral fuel from K-pop royalty (Lisa), and fashion-world co-signs from Cher to Kim K.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Labubu isn’t selling toys, it’s selling status. Pop Mart cracked the code by merging luxury drop culture with childhood nostalgia. The plush monster became a soft-power weapon — China’s answer to Barbie, but wrapped in a hypebeast strategy. The winners? Pop Mart and the Chinese cultural export machine. The losers? Legacy Western toy giants who still think brand equity beats TikTok virality.

⛵ Key takeaway: Labubu proves the future of toys isn’t play — it’s fashion, fandom, and FOMO monetized at scale.

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NEW TECH

Graphite Era Faces Disruption

👀 What’s the move: Group14 has secured $463M from SK, Porsche, Microsoft, and others to scale its silicon-anode factories — the long-promised upgrade to lithium-ion batteries. Pure Silicon delivers nearly 10× the capacity of graphite, but for decades it remained stuck in the lab. Group14’s SCC55 silicon-carbon anode overcomes the fatal flaw of pure silicon (shattering during charge) with a porous scaffold that allows the material to expand without crumbling.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Graphite — today’s default anode — is cheap and stable but maxed out on performance. Group14’s blend delivers up to 50% more energy density and sub-10-minute fast charging, already validated in millions of smartphones. For EVs, that means longer range and quicker refuels, while also undercutting China’s graphite chokehold. Although the cost is still higher than graphite, the gap is narrowing as production scales and supply chains mature. This isn’t incremental chemistry — it’s a materials reset that redraws both cost curves and supply chains.

⛵ Key takeaway: Backed by industrial giants like SK, ATL, and Porsche, Group14’s silicon anode tech now has the firepower to put graphite’s century-long reign on notice.

FINTECH

Kraken Buys a Trading Bot That Speaks Human

👀 What’s the move: Kraken just scooped up Capitalise.ai, an Israeli no-code automation startup that turns plain English into executable trades across crypto, equities, forex, futures, and options. Once wired into Kraken Pro, users can type “buy BTC if it drops 5%” instead of wrestling with APIs or scripting languages. It’s about lowering friction for retail and semi-pro traders while expanding Kraken’s toolset beyond vanilla order books.

💡 Why it’s not boring: Capitalise.ai’s value is in translation—bridging the gulf between human intent and machine execution. For Kraken, it’s not just a UX upgrade; it’s a moat. If AI-driven automation keeps retail stickier and pulls in crossover traders from TradFi, Kraken Pro stops being just another exchange terminal and starts looking like Bloomberg Lite for crypto. In a market where liquidity is mobile, embedding automation is how you anchor users.

⛵ Key takeaway: Kraken isn’t buying AI hype—it’s buying lock-in. Natural-language bots might be the new market makers.

STARTUP SPOT

🔋 Group14
“Silicon anodes, lithium upgraded.”
Drop-in SCC55® silicon-carbon anode: +50% energy density, <10 min fast-charge, displaces graphite in EV & electronics.
→ Founded 2015 (Rick Luebbe, ex-EnerG2); DOE $100M+ support; $750M+ OEM deals; Aug 2025 raised $463M Series D from SK, Porsche, Microsoft; now controls global BAM plants.

🧠 Capitalise.ai
“Trade in plain English.”
No-code NLP platform turns everyday text into executable strategies across crypto, equities, FX, futures, options.
→ Founded 2015 in Israel by Amir Shiovich & Shahar Rabin; used by brokers; Aug 2025 acquired by Kraken to power natural-language trading in Kraken Pro.

🤖 FieldAI
“One brain, many robots.”
Embodied-AI foundation models (FFMs) for humanoids, quadrupeds, industrial bots—risk-aware autonomy in unmapped, dynamic environments.
→ Founded 2023 by Ali Agha (ex-NASA JPL/DARPA) + DeepMind/Tesla/SpaceX alums; Aug 2025 raised $405M Series A at $2B valuation from Gates Frontier, Bezos Expeditions, Intel Capital, Temasek; live deployments in construction, energy, logistics.

BAY AREA MEMOS

Google has unveiled its Pixel 10 lineup, powered by the new Tensor G5 chip and featuring Magic Cue, a proactive on-device AI assistant, with prices starting at $799.
The startup TinyFish has raised $47 million to expand the deployment of its AI-powered autonomous web agents for enterprises.
Goldman Sachs predicts a stablecoin gold rush is on the verge of unlocking a multi-trillion dollar payments market.
Masimo is suing US Customs, accusing the agency of improperly allowing Apple to re-enable the banned blood oxygen feature on its watches.
Robotics software startup FieldAI has raised $405 million to develop its AI platform that enables robots to navigate complex environments without maps.

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