AI | Sam Altman has rarely wanted to talk about revenue at OpenAI, repeatedly saying it’s one of the least interesting things about the company. This month, though, he tossed out a figure: at least $13 billion in annual revenue. Altman brushed off critics who express “breathless concerns” about revenue, many of whom, he implied, would be just as eager to buy OpenAI if given the chance. 💅🏽 Those questions will persist for Sam as long as revenue is >> spending. OpenAI’s committed AI-infrastructure spend reportedly totals around $1.4 trillion, equating to roughly 30 GW of data-center capacity, including announced deals with AMD, Broadcom, Nvidia, Oracle, and others. How he plans to finance this, Altman wouldn’t say, but private markets appear ready to fund OpenAI at almost any cost, bolstering its valuation and keeping the company out of public markets, even as Altman says an IPO is probably inevitable. On the public side, Nvidia surged again, becoming the first company in history to exceed $5 trillion in market capitalization, after crossing $4 trillion less than four months ago. The stock is up more than 1,500% over the past five years, propelling Jensen Huang into the ranks of the world’s ten richest people. Startup valuations are racing to keep pace: a handful of AI software companies are chasing Jensen, with Mercor reportedly quintupling its valuation to $10 billion in a $350 million Series C, just nine months after a $100 million Series B in February.

ECONOMY | All signs point to a slowdown as the Fed cut rates again this month and the federal government slid into a shutdown. 🛑The closure has now surpassed 30 days. As Americans press Congress to reopen, big-company CEOs are doing the same. The stakes are broad: ~42 million people risk losing SNAP benefits, and more than 65,000 SMBs that contract with the federal government face ~$3B in delayed spending each week. The FAA has shifted into crisis mode; at one point last weekend, ~80% of controllers were absent from New York–area facilities. With only a few more days, this shutdown could become the longest in modern U.S. history. Meanwhile, opportunists are circling: scammers are posing as government officials, and a furloughed IRS lawyer is living out his dream of being a hot dog vendor. 🌭 On monetary policy, the Fed lowered rates by 25 bps for the second time this year. The move wasn’t a surprise and reportedly passed on a 10–2 vote. Even before the shutdown, evidence had been building that downside risks to growth justified more aggressive rate cuts. Still, inflation remains above the 2% target; the latest CPI print put annual inflation around 3%, lifted by higher energy costs and categories affected by tariffs. As for the long term, visibility is limited. An economic downturn feels less like an “if” and more like a “when.” 😵‍💫

VENTURE CAPITAL | Seed at any price? That’s the question many fund managers and LPs are asking, on Twitter/X, to each other, and in private. Pre-seed and seed have traditionally been the sandbox for small or specialist firms writing early checks, taking on risk, and trying to make their own magic through mentorship and conviction. When those bets hit, the outlier returns offset high loss rates. But in the last 18–24 months, early-stage dynamics have shifted fast. Large multistage firms have moved earlier, leaning hard into seed. At the same time, companies are staying private longer, pushing realizations further out for seed managers and intensifying pressure to deliver timely DPI to LPs. The influx of deep-pocketed entrants has changed first-round mechanics: bigger checks, higher entry valuations, and thinner ownership. More capital is chasing the same early equity, forcing traditional seed managers to compete directly with the industry’s largest funds for allocation. Which begs the question: at what price do you write the check? As deals consolidate, it can feel like funding accrues to a narrow profile: repeat founders, “obvious” outliers, or companies sprinting from zero to $1M ARR in a quarter. But what about everything outside those boxes? Where are the less legible companies being built that may drive outlier returns later? That uncertainty is what many VCs are wrestling with now, especially as early-stage consolidation compounds.

GLP-1 | It’s hard to dodge the celebrity chatter around Ozempic and its modern weight loss cousins. Goldman Sachs pegs the anti-obesity meds (AOM) market at about $6B annually this year and expects it to grow 16× to more than $100B by 2030, putting roughly 16% of Americans on some form of AOM. Brands are racing downstream to make these drugs as accessible to the consumer as possible. This month, Hims & Hers rolled out “GLP-1 microdosing,” doubling down on compounded takes on Novo Nordisk’s winners. Hims & Hers started selling compounded Wegovy last year, which earned them a friendly FDA letter about their marketing practices. 📩 Outside of the D2C players, Big Pharma wants a piece of the consumer pie without sacrificing margins. Eli Lilly cut a deal with Walmart to sell Zepbound at cash pay nationwide starting in November, priced at about $350 to $500 per month, compared with about $1,000 elsewhere. In Q2 2025, 35% of Zepbound prescriptions were already fulfilled through Lilly’s direct-to-consumer pharmacy “LillyDirect” making the Walmart partnership a natural expansion to bolster those prescriptions. Not to be left on the sidelines, Novo Nordisk inked a deal with Costco to set up its own cash-pay arrangement for Wegovy. Pharma is muscling to elbow out DTC copycats like Hims & Hers in the accessibility race, and consumers are happy to pay whatever price is lowest at the checkout line.

BAGS CHECKED | Southwest’s bags don’t fly free anymore, and yes, passengers hate it, but it did give Southwest its best quarter yet in revenue. The airline topped earnings and revenue expectations as newly introduced bag fees started doing exactly what they were designed to do, with demand firming in July and corporate travel improving from last quarter. Guidance was upbeat but sane: revenue per available seat mile is pegged to rise 1%–3% in Q4, while capacity grows about 6%, even as skeptics warn airlines may be adding seats faster than the economy can fill them. Southwest kept its full-year profit outlook intact—translation: monetization is finally pulling its weight, but the real trick will be growing without overstuffing the overhead bins. ✈️

PREDICTION TROLLS | “Bitcoin, Ethereum, blockchain, staking, Web3.” With that five-word volley, Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong torched live prediction-market bets on what he would say on the company's Q3 earnings call into a master class on how trivially insider-controlled outcomes can be gamed. You can bet on anything now, from Fed moves, Taylor setlists, and CEO buzzwords, but when the resolution hinges on a handful of people holding a microphone, “wisdom of the crowd” morphs into “who feels like saying it.” Layer on crypto rails, patchwork state rules, and thin liquidity, and the edge isn’t math, it’s information. Fun spectacle? Totally. Reliable signal? Only until the next person on stage decides to troll the outcome. Thanks, Brian! 🙂

Minnesota-based VentureMed Group closed a $28M Series C led by S3 Ventures

Stablecoin startup Coinflow raised a $25M Series A 🔐

Cleveland was killing it this month

Indy-based Luster raised a $3M Seed led by High Alpha

Plastomics, a St. Louis-based Ag-tech company, closed a $5.8M round of funding 🚜

Chicago-based Tradepost closed a $4.6M Seed round

Madison-based Cylerity raised a $4M Seed round and secured up to $24M Debt Facility 💰

Silkline closed a $4M Seed round led by Origin Ventures

Bismarck-based Pavewise closed a $2.5M Seed Round led by C2 Ventures

Unemployment in Missouri stayed steady this month at 4.1%, and the National Average did as well at 4.3% ✅

The Midwest Consumer Price Index rose slightly this month at 4.0%, while the national rate is up 2.8% on the year ✅

Palmer Luckey, American Vulcan

The art of understanding what’s going on !! 🧠

second-hand insights 👖

LLM easy buttons and context rot

Zipline’s Keller Clifton on pivoting from toy company to autonomous drone delivery system [45 min]

Uncapped #29 with Coatue’s Thomas Laffont [1 hr 2 min]

Alfred Lin on Sourcery on how one of the world’s most iconic venture funds, distributed over $43B to investors since 2020, and on what it’s like to be the best (so good they split the episode into two parts)

Joined our friends at Cherub for a dinner with a select group of founders on their platform and a few Chic

ago-based investors & allocators. 🪽

Flew to SF to join the team at Afore for their Annual Pre-Seed Summit 🚀

Prepping for Main Street Summit, November 4-6th, and BuildersBackers, November 17th !!

MidxMidwest is also right around the corner, and we can’t wait to see some familiar faces in KC, November 12th & 13th.

If Morning Brew’s CEO Alex Lieberman was planning a 12-month, weekly entrepreneurship class, here's how it'd go...

Actually good fundraising advice straight from a founder

The only market sizing guide founders will ever need

What to include in a data room 🗄

Early Stage Financial Template 💰

Need some examples? Check out these 50 pitch deck examples from successful fintech startups

➡️ +200 Non-VC Funding Sources for SaaS Founders

Thinking of raising some capital? Here’s the Due Diligence Checklist every founder should see 👀

YC's essential startup advice

Brian Chesky on when to hire 🧍🏼‍♀️

Metrics 101: What VCs look at while evaluating startups

Get started to build an outbound sales motion with these 130 SaaS Cold Email Templates

🤖 Why code is no longer a moat

A list of low/no code tools to get your company off the ground 🚀

Marc Andreessen on how to hire the best people

The complete guide on How to Interview and Hire ML/AI Engineers (one of our favorite reads on hiring out there)

One of the largest VC lists with over 18k investors 🫰

Founder who 120 VCs—he closed $2.7M in 5 weeks with demand for $5M+. Here's his step-by-step guide to close a round. 💰

📊 All-In-One Startup Metrics Guide - What to track, when and why

Resource page for founders we made here 📒