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Here's what we're serving up today:

• Ashton Kutcher’s AI Fund💰

• CashApp puts the “Cash” in the “App” 🪙💵

• Asteroids ☄️

Ashton Kutcher’s AI Fund💰

Ashton Kutcher, Hollywood’s heartthrob turned venture capital hotshot, has raised a jaw-dropping $243 million as his VC firm Sound Ventures hits the high note.

It seems like he’s ready to jam with the foundation model layer businesses with this massive AI fund and guess who’s already in their AI supergroup?

• OpenAI (Father of ChatGPT - Needs no introduction)

• Anthropic (OpenAI’s rival - Google has invested $400M here)

• StabilityAI (The company making Text-To-Images)

All have Sound Ventures in their bankroller list and those are some serious AI heavy-weights. Kutcher doesn't seem to be joking around!

“That 70’s Show” star has been dabbling in AI for the past 7 years but he says this is AI’s inflection point.

• Kutcher said AI could be “the most significant technology we will experience since the advent of the internet”. Tell us something new Kelso!

• He also said that it was the launch of GPT that had him falling head over heels with AI though he admits he's seen his share of hype cycles - looking at ‘ya Crypto!

We’re not supposed to tell you this but we actually caught Ashton talking to ChatGPT -

Kutcher, Guy Oseary and Effie Epstein - the fund’s general partners are hoping to blend tech and entertainment like a sweet AI smoothie.

With a decade of investing under their belt and a lineup of hits like Airbnb and Uber, we’re pretty sure that Ashton’s got this!

CashApp puts the “Cash” in the “App” 🪙💵

Block's (formerly Square) got the fintech world buzzing with their first-quarter earnings, smashing expectations like a piggy bank, thanks to their Cash App mobile payments platform.

The company reported some pretty impressive figures overall:

• Total Revenue: $4.99B (+26%)

• Gross Profit: $1.71B (+32%)

The segment putting the “cash” into the company’s “app” was rightly Block’s finance app - CashApp. CashApp's gross profit skyrocketed by 49% to $931 million!

Their report card was like a list of straight A’s as they aced almost every subject.

• Bitcoin purchasing unit (Yes, there is still Crypto hype) grew by +25% to $2.2B.

• Subscription services grew by +42% to $1.4B with gross margins of 81%. Yikes! Is that for real?

The earnings call show that it would have been a smooth Q1 for Block if it were not for the short-seller Hindenburg “block”-ing their road to success.

Hindenburg had released a report accusing Block of inflating user metrics and ignoring shady Cash App activity which had sent it’s stock tumbling down.

You mean shady sh*t like this?

Even though they’re making a comeback, their stock is still down 3.8% this year. What’s your take on Block(NYSE:SQ)? Buy or Sell?

☄️ Asteroids ☄️

Marissa Mayer says Yahoo should’ve bought Netflix. Former Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer now thinks snatching up Netflix or Hulu back in the day would've been a way better move than dropping $1.1 billion on Tumblr - Ah, the classic game of "shoulda, coulda, woulda" 🔍🎬

Hacked verified Facebook pages are pretending to be Meta and buying ads from... you guessed it, Meta! It's like a digital hall of mirrors, but with malware lurking around the corner. Oh, the irony! 📓🐱

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