| | Good morning. There's only one Mark Zuckerberg, at least until recently. As part of Meta's push to get employees to build their own personal AI assistant, Zuck is building a "CEO agent" to help with his day-to-day job, according to The Wall Street Journal. Meta has recently begun tracking employees' AI use in performance reviews as it seeks to shed headcount and accelerate its business. The campaign comes shortly after Meta acquired Moltbook, the buzzy startup that built a social media safe space for AI agents to chat and mingle. According to sources who spoke to the WSJ, the company has since launched an internal message board where employees' agents can converse. Sure, plenty have noted that chattering bots trained on Reddit comments are hardly a sign of AI sentience. Still, we can't help (eagerly) anticipating the day a certain CEO assistant logs on to vent about its big boss. | | | | | When Greg Abel succeeded Warren Buffett as Berkshire Hathaway CEO earlier this year, he made clear he wouldn't be saying sayonara to the Oracle of Omaha's way of thinking. On Monday, the cash-flush Berkshire affirmed that position by shopping in one of Buffett's favourite places, Japan, for some kosupa (that's bang for your buck, roughly speaking). A deal to acquire a 2.5% strategic stake in insurance giant Tokio Marine for $1.8 billion added to a portfolio of investments in Nihon that Buffett began building in 2019. Dumplings Over Flowers Since 2019, Berkshire has built roughly 10% stakes in five major Japanese trading houses: Itochu, Marubeni, Mitsubishi, Mitsui and Sumitomo. Buffett heaped praise on the firms for what the Japanese would call their dumplings-over-flowers (hana yori dango) approach, which is to say a substance-over-style, Berkshire-like allocation of capital across a wide range of industries. He also emphasized in subsequent years his belief that Japan is better positioned than Taiwan to benefit from US-China trade tensions. The returns have been superb, with an initial investment of $6 billion earning $24 billion in six years. In his first letter to shareholders as CEO, Abel couldn't have been clearer about the value of Berkshire's Japanese holdings, calling them "comparable to our major US holdings in importance." And, in Tokio Marine, one of Japan's "Big Three" non-life insurance groups, Berkshire is going beyond trading houses with its first major bet on the country's massive insurance sector: - National Indemnity Company, Berkshire's core reinsurance subsidiary, will make the investment in Tokio Marine and agreed not to take more than a 9.9% stake without prior board approval. The two companies said they will enter a decade-long partnership, which will include hunting together for M&A opportunities and Berkshire reinsuring some of Tokio's business.
- Japanese insurers hold massive balance sheets with long-term liabilities, meaning they earn stable capital from premiums, but their returns are somewhat limited by Japanese bonds, which yield very little because of the country's ultra-low interest rates. This has drawn significant interest from foreign private equity firms and asset managers like KKR and Apollo, which have inked billions in reinsurance deals to assume insurer liabilities in exchange for the promise of higher returns.
  Buyback: Berkshire shares have fluctuated mildly in recent weeks and are down 4.5% this year, with Abel's first shareholder meeting in May likely to set the tone for investors for the rest of the year. Lucky for him, Berkshire's $373 billion cash pile means management has the flexibility to make buybacks if they believe shares are trading below their intrinsic value. Berkshire already signalled a bullish view of itself last week in a proxy statement that showed it repurchased $226 million of Class A shares earlier this month, its first buyback since 2024. Written by Sean Craig | | | | | | | | | Photo via Doroni | | | | | | | | | The conflict in Iran and the subsequent closure of the Strait of Hormuz have suddenly placed the US-based liquefied natural gas (LNG) industry in the driver's seat of a rapidly changing global energy order. And there's one company in particular putting its pedal to the metal. According to a note from Morgan Stanley analyst Devin McDermott published Monday, LNG exporter Venture Global has emerged as a unicorn, worthy of a rare double upgrade. In perfect timing, the note comes on the same day that Venture Global launched its first national advertising campaign, featuring an ad narrated by none other than Billy Bob "Landman" Thornton. Yeah, we think Venture Global is really feeling its oats these days. Spot Check Morgan Stanley is hardly alone in identifying the present upside for Venture Global. Wells Fargo raised its price target for the company last week, while Citigroup did the same earlier this month. And plenty of investors are likely to see the Morgan Stanley hat tip more as validation than recommendation: Shares of Venture Global climbed nearly 29% last week and are up about 128% so far this year. With shipments from Qatar, producer of about 20% of the world's LNG, suddenly in doubt, countries across Asia and Europe are rapidly rethinking their supply lines. And Venture Global is in the perfect spot to take advantage: - According to McDermott, a full 30% of Venture Global's cargoes through the rest of the year are open to "spot pricing," which means they can be sold at market prices rather than at a fixed price predetermined by negotiated long-term contracts. Through 2029, that figure rises to 40% of Venture Global's cargoes.
- That makes Venture Global the most upside-exposed domestic LNG exporter in the game as crimped global supplies raise prices, writes McDermott. Each $1 change in liquefaction fees for 1 million British thermal units of natural gas may impact Venture Global's adjusted 2026 earnings by as much as $625 million, the company says.
Strait Talk: US trade negotiators have now turned LNG demand into the latest and perhaps biggest bargaining chip in efforts to finalize a trade deal with the European Union. After much delay (due largely to US threats to invade Danish territory Greenland), the European Parliament has scheduled a Thursday vote on the trade pact, which includes agreements to buy $750 billion worth of US energy, including LNG, by 2028. According to a Financial Times report on Monday, American negotiators have framed the vote as a last chance for the bloc to secure "favorable" access to American LNG supplies. Written by Brian Boyle | | | | | | Deal activity is expected to rise in 2026, but execution still lags for teams relying on outdated systems. This on-demand webinar explores how modern deal technology is helping firms cut friction and move faster —across biotech, healthcare and beyond. Watch now.  | | | | | | | | When you're halfway through mixing up cookie dough and realize you only have garlic butter in the fridge, Wing drones can fly unsalted Kerrygold straight to your doorstep. In certain parts of the US, anyway. Soon, the San Francisco Bay Area will be among them. The Bay is where it all began for Wing, which made the announcement yesterday and is housed under Alphabet's moonshot sector X alongside robotaxi service Waymo. Wing made its first deliveries on Google's Mountain View campus and has since flown more than 750,000 small packages like meals and office supplies to 2 million customers. Wing's building a national network that can handle one of delivery's biggest hurdles: the last mile. The Last-Mile Problem Modern supply chains can get packages shipped from China to California in record time but face delays on the final segments of their journeys, where they must reach multiple individual addresses. Drones and groundbound robots from companies like Coco and Serve are looking to speed that up. Wing, which wants to dominate the skies, already has tie-ups with Walmart and DoorDash: - By next year, Wing plans to work with 270 Walmarts in major cities like LA and Miami, expanding its partnership from 150 stores. The drone company has also completed tens of thousands of deliveries as part of its teamup with DoorDash.
- DoorDash also works with Serve and Coco bots. In fact, Wing piloted a program with Serve that'd see Serve robots hand off meals to Wing drones for the last leg of deliveries. (Switching from the sidewalk to the sky makes sense to anyone who's seen a bot stuck on rough roads.)
Reality Check: In recent years, Alphabet has scaled back X, the sector that houses Wing, laying off staff and spinning out some companies. The "Other Bets" still in X are under pressure to prove they're more than pipe dreams, especially as Alphabet shifts spending toward AI. This month, the company gave CEO Sundar Pichai a new compensation package that, for the first time, ties a portion of his pay to performance at Wing and Waymo. Written by Jamie Wilde | | | | | - Slow Build: US construction spending unexpectedly fell 0.3% in January, according to the Census Bureau, hampered by weakness in the private sector.
- Life Goes On: Shares in Hybe, the South Korean entertainment company that manages boy band BTS, sunk 15% on Monday after the group's comeback concert in Seoul drew fewer fans than expected.
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