To make a mountain of moolah, you’ve got to raise a mountain of moolah to burn. That is how the saying goes, right?

On Friday, OpenAI announced a record-breaking $110 billion haul, lifting its valuation to $730 billion, more than double what it was a year ago. Participation from Nvidia and Amazon made it the latest so-called circular deal, in which money-losing artificial intelligence startups are financed by their own customers. Later the same day, OpenAI announced a deal with the US Department of Defense to provide AI services after a dispute between rival Anthropic and the Trump administration.

Under Pressure

OpenAI’s latest fundraising round follows a $30 billion raise by Anthropic, which was valued at $380 billion. Nvidia and Microsoft, another OpenAI investor, were among the participants. In January, Elon Musk’s xAI raised $20 billion, with Nvidia also in the round. All three AI startups, which have spent billions to scale, have a long way to go before making good on the upside for their hyperscaler investors. Some analysts, pointing to fears the stock market is overindexed on AI, have argued these deals could lead to intensified losses if the AI startups don’t deliver.

One option for raising more growth capital is a public offering, which OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI’s new parent, SpaceX, are all reportedly weighing. In fact, Amazon’s $50 billion investment in OpenAI’s new round encourages it: The money comes in tranches, with $15 billion up front and $35 billion “in the coming months” upon OpenAI meeting unspecified milestones or completing an IPO or a “direct listing of equity securities.” OpenAI CEO Sam Altman said he understands “where the concern comes from,” but the scale of the deals demonstrates they’re not circular:

• “Revenue for us [and] for other companies in the industry is growing extremely quickly, and that’s how the whole thing works,” he told CNBC. “I don’t think it looks circular, even though the need to finance this does require a lot of parties to do deals together.”
• On the growth front, OpenAI said ChatGPT has 50 million paying consumer subscribers, up from a reported 35 million in July 2025, and 9 million business subscribers, up fourfold from September. It also issued a joint statement with longtime investor Microsoft, reaffirming their previously rocky relationship as OpenAI cozies up to Amazon.

Deal or No Deal: OpenAI announced its agreement with the Pentagon mere hours after President Donald Trump ordered government agencies to phase out the use of Anthropic products within six months. Anthropic refused to sanction the use of its technology in mass surveillance of Americans or deadly fully autonomous weapons systems, which led Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth to designate the company a “supply chain risk.” Anthropic said it plans to sue. On Saturday, Altman deemed Hegseth’s decision an “extremely scary precedent” and, in a blog post, OpenAI said its deal with the Pentagon enshrines red lines similar to those in Anthropic’s. However, Altman said, the lines could change.

Workin’ nine to five might make you a livin’, in Dolly’s words, but it’s often not enough to build a retirement.

During his State of the Union speech last week, President Donald Trump proposed a way to change that: expanding access to workplace retirement plans for the estimated 56 million workers who don’t currently have one, nearly half of the private sector workforce.

The details of Trump’s proposal are fuzzy, and the same goes for how it would be put into place. (Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent suggested it could happen through the budget reconciliation process, which Congress used to pass the One Big Beautiful Bill Act last year.) But if accounts do come to fruition, they could achieve a longtime goal of industry advocates and policymakers on both sides of the aisle. They could also offer a massive opportunity for the firms behind the scenes of retirement saving, such as Fidelity Investments, the nation’s largest 401(k) plan recordkeeper.

Sticky Savers

Federal workers can currently save for their golden years in 401(k)-style Thrift Savings Plans (TSPs), and Trump said during his speech that the new savers would get “access to the same type of retirement plan offered to every federal worker.” But even brokers and managers who aren’t in the TSP system (BlackRock and State Street currently manage the funds offered) would benefit once millions more people start saving, says Teresa Ghilarducci, an economics professor at The New School and a proponent of universal retirement accounts. The reason? Those new wealth builders would likely start investing in assets such as a home, putting money toward education and making higher retirement contributions.

And if the government taps outside help to run these accounts, as one of the giants of retirement services, Fidelity is among a handful of wealth managers that would likely be in the running:

• Fidelity oversees a whopping $17.5 trillion of customer assets. It directly manages $6.8 trillion as of the third quarter of 2025, up 18% year-over-year. The company also continues to expand its retirement offerings, introducing its Roth Self-Employed 401(k) late last year.
• Fidelity is famous in part for helping revolutionize how Americans save for retirement and for popularizing target-date funds. But, like many firms that made their names before investors traded on smartphones, it’s having to implement changes to keep up with young investors. Most recently, the company launched its first stablecoin.

Worth It? Recordkeeping is often a low-margin business, explains Spencer Look, an associate director for retirement studies for Morningstar. Companies would need more details on the requirements for servicing these new accounts and their design (particularly whether there’s auto-enrollment) to determine whether it would be advantageous to take them on.

Hey fellas, maybe that upcoming, semi-secret trip to Turkey can be just tourism and leisure after all. You know, like you’ve been claiming all along.

If you have no idea what we’re talking about, consider yourself lucky.

On an utterly unrelated note: After decades of stalled progress, US pharma firms appear closer to cracking the code of preventing male (and female) pattern baldness, according to MarketWatch.

Economics of Aesthetics

As blockbuster GLP-1 drugs like Wegovy and Zepbound have proven, there’s a lot of money in helping people look and feel good. And while keeping hair doesn’t come with quite as many health benefits as losing weight, it’s still a large addressable market (one possibly made larger by the surge in GLP-1s, which can cause temporary hair loss).

Roughly a quarter of men suffer from male pattern baldness by age 21, two-thirds by age 35, and 85% by age 50, according to the American Hair Loss Association. Some 40% of women experience thinning hair by age 50, too. With such a large market and signs of advances in medical treatment, investors, like future patients, are increasingly putting more skin in the game:

• In October, startup Pelage Pharmaceuticals completed a $120 million Series B funding round as it moved into Phase 3 trials of a new treatment. Meanwhile, shares of Veradermics, which is working on a new form of minoxidil (an existing treatment), have climbed 20% after an IPO earlier this month, and Cosmo Pharmaceuticals has advanced roughly 8% this year after positive Phase 3 trial data for its treatment in December.
• The newcomers could rattle the lock held by current versions of FDA-approved hair-loss prevention drugs minoxidil and finasteride, which can come with difficult side effects and aren’t typically covered by insurance providers.

Race Against Time: We know what (some of) you are thinking: When, if ever, will these drugs hit the market? Pelage still has to begin Phase 3 trials, while Veradermics is expecting Phase 2/3 trial data later this year. But Cosmo has said it may actually submit its treatment for FDA approval before the year’s end. To our balding brethren out there: Hold the line. Avoid unnecessary stress. Massage your scalp. The enemy may be advancing, but, for the moment at least, there are signs of something that for too long has felt unfamiliar: hope.