Good morning, I hope you enjoyed the first version of the new newsletter! I was very happy with it! Feel free to respond to this email and let me know what you think, that is much appreciated!

Enjoy your weekend!

X Nils

MARKETS
Nvidia has done it again!

What happened?
Yesterday after the New York Stock Market closed, Nvidia, the sweetheart of every investor posted its lastest quarterly earnings. And it did not disappoint. Although the market was a bit sceptical beforehand, Nvidia beat the markets expectations of most analyst. Also, it announced a stock split of 1-to-10 and raised divided payments.

Why is it important?
That Nvidia exceeded market expectations showed the market that the AI boom is still going strong. Especially the data center business unit, which includes the sales of AI chips, grew 427% year over year, to $22.6 billion

What is next?
Can Nvidia keep this up? That is of course the big question going forward. Especially as the CFO of Nvidia stated that 40% of it AI business sales are from large cloud providers (Microsoft, Amazon and Google). All of these companies are also investigating building AI chips themselves, so can Nvidia find other buyers for their new chips?

CHOCOLATE
Your Toblerone is expensive for a reason, and it is not inflation..

What happened?
The US-based company Mondelez, was given a fine of €337,5 million by the EU commission for restricting cross-boders trade. The maker of Oreo, Toblerone and Milka restricted wholesale buyers of chocolate to buy chocolate in another EU country where Mondelez chocolate is cheaper.

Why is it important?
Especially with inflation staying higher than expected, these practices can drive prices up even more. The EU Commission calculated that if these practices where abandoned, it could save the EU consumer about €14 billion annually. And honestly, who doesn’t want cheaper chocolate?

What is next?
The fine of Mondelez could be higher, but because it cooperated in the investigation and acknowledge the breach of competition law, it got a 15% reduction of the fine. Mondelez stated that these were “historical and isolate incidents” which it already resolved before the investigation from the EU Commission started. So, don’t expect that your Toblerone will get cheaper anytime soon…

FESTIVAL TICKETS
The Department of Justice is coming for some free festival Tickets

What happened?
The Department of Justice (DOJ) in the US sues Live Nation-Ticketmaster and wants to break up the company. The DOJ states that Live Nation has dominant market position and that is crushes any possible competition that it raises fees what leads to higher ticket prices for fans

Why is it important?
Splitting up Live Nation and Ticketmaster, who merged in 2010, will have far reaching consequences for the company, but also for the fans, as this will bring more competition to the market. Also on the other side of the tickets, at the side of the venues and promotors, where Live Nation is accused retaliation on them once they treathen the market position of Live Nation.

What is next?
Live Nation responded that it will fight the case of the DOJ and that is doesn’t have a dominant market position in the ticketing market. This lawsuit will probably take years and could even go up as high as the Supreme Court. I’m sorry, no cheap chocolate but also no cheap festival tickets yet.

VENTURE CAPITAL
DeepL receives fresh cash to compete with Google Translate

What happened?
DeepL, the German translation start-up, secured $300 mln in fresh funding against a valuation of $2 billion. The round was led by Index Ventures, but also included ICONIQ Growth, Teachers’ Venture Growth and other venture capital firms.

DeepL is a AI language providers that provide business with a suite of tools for writing and translating documents. Peronally, I used their tool when I worked as a lawyer (before the whole AI boom) and it back then it already was very impressive!

Why is it important?
First, because DeepL is a serious competitor for Google Translate, especially as it focuses more on the B2B side of the business. With their AI models focused more on translation, they should be more accurate and therefore have less hallucinations.

Second, we don’t hear often about European Start-Ups getting these high valuation, especially not in the AI world. It is both good for business, but also inspiring for the other entrepreneurs that you can build unicorns here in Europe!

What is next?
With their fresh investment, DeepL hopes to stay on top of the whole AI boom, especially in the language AI sector and they hope to grow their business evenmore the upcoming years.