NEW DATA ACQUISITION: Axis enters the chat! Axis Robotics is a San Francisco startup founded in 2025. They build a data engine that generates robot-manipulation training data at scale through a crowd of contributors rather than its own robot fleet. It has four parts: - a task-generation engine that randomizes diverse atomic tasks - a browser-based simulation-teleoperation interface where anyone remotely drives a simulated arm to produce motion trajectories - a mobile app for zero-hardware egocentric real-world capture (i.e. filming a task with a phone) - and a processing pipeline that cleans trajectories, applies domain randomization and adds dense language annotation, with human-gated DAgger intervention loops. It packages the output as customized "Task Packages" sold to robot hardware makers, physical-AI model companies and industrial-automation firms (named partners include Booster Robotics, Manycore Tech, Feagine Robotics, Dexmal, Lotus Car, Geely Auto and SomaStacks). I find it interesting that two of its four components need no robot at all: a browser interface where anyone drives a simulated arm to produce trajectories, and a phone app for egocentric real-world capture with no rig. You do not need an ALOHA setup or a fleet, only a browser and a phone, which is what lets it claim a six-figure contributor base.

$FIGR Figure closed its acquisition of Kiavi! They get the platform, and Sixth Street gets their loan book (and commits to do quite a bit of lending via Figure). This is a huge acquisition which is going to help Figure not only maintain their ~100% growth rate for the next 6+ quarters, but continue to grow into their long-term vision. Kiavi accelerates Figure's "Year of First Lien" push, and is Figures first large third-party acquisition ($538m). Here's a few bullet points: - This acquisition is immediately EBITDA accretive. - In 2025, Kiavi was doing $250m in revenue and $100m+ EBITDA. - Management anticipates this will add $100-$200m in Democratized Prime volume monthly. - Management has guided that 40% of the Consumer Loan Marketplace will be first liens, with $7b in volume added. - Management also expects $35m in cost efficiencies to be realized within 24 months from the integration of Figure's tech within the Kiavi platform. - The unlevered FCF payback of this deal is expected in less than 4 years (my opinion: it may be fewer than 3). - Adaptor, their AI uniformity tool, is being showcased here. It helped Agora auto assets transition rapidly, it's one of the reasons their flywheel is accelerating so fast (and partners are skipping that intermediate step as alluded to on the earnings call), and it's being used here to "impose uniformity to disparate originator data schemes across all asset types in Figure Connect and Democratized Prime." TAKEAWAY: Figure was already thriving, and this acquisition is likely to help them maintain 100% Y/Y growth for the next 1.5 years. Q4 is going This is a great acquisition to help them accelerate in the first lien category, across two different lending products: residential transition loans (RTL) and debt-service-coverage-ratio (DSCR). Both should do well managed by Figure, especially the shorter-term RTL's: that's a category they should absolutely dominate. @mcagney, Figure's co-founder and executive chairman said to Kiavi employees: "You’ve built a market-leader by getting into the weeds, having the highest quality bar, being obsessed with data, and executing every single day. That builder mindset is exactly what drives the Figure team, and it’s what will power our next combined chapter. Welcome to Figure. Together we soar!"

Imagine Celestial ($MRVL acquisition) was public. The valuation would probably be astronomical in US markets (if I had to guess, $6-10B) Because 2028 revenue projections were $500m (q4 annualized runrate), 2029 revenue projections were $1B. And because Celestial is a core part of hyperscaler CPO programs. Celestial's 2026 Q2 earnings would have been: - Close to $0 revenue (Marvell said "revenue and earnings since the acquisition were not material") - Losing -$12.5M/quarter ($50M/year) Would people who knew what they were talking about looking at qualification cycle players say... 1. based on Celestial's Q2 P/S numbers and because it was losing -$12.5M a quarter... That it's a worthless meme stock? Or 2. with CPO hyperscaler opportunities for 2028, it should be valued at $6-10B? And I think that's a core cultural disagreement between US / EU cultures + markets. If you knew how to evaluate qualification cycle players, which number actually matters? I'd argue overwhelmingly the latter.

Every financial media acquisition I've watched has failed. New owners change what worked, the audience leaves, deliverability craters. Media companies throw off great cash flow and rarely sell for much. That's why I run MarketBeat to keep the cash flow, not to sell the company.