Zuckerberg's Muse, Panic in Turkey, and How to Profit from the Decline of AI
This Week's Highlights on Oninvest
Nearly half a million investors were affected by the collapse of investment funds in Turkey. Photo: Shutterstock.com
This week, Muse—Meta’s AI assistant—took center stage. Just one week after its launch, the personal assistant—which can, among other things, process purchases through connected services—attracted over 500,000 users, received more than 2 million user requests, and topped the U.S. App Store charts. Wall Street analysts are praisingthe AI assistant: Muse could become the most widely used consumer AI app since the launch of ChatGPT. Why has Muse caused such a stir in the market? Read more about “the world’s first personal AI agent designed for everyone” and Meta’s AI strategy in Roman Kutuzov’s column.
Meta's stock rose on the news, while financial sector stocks plummeted. It seems Muse struck a nerve: fears have resurfaced that AI will disrupt the traditional financial services industry. BofA even refers to a “multi-year evolutionary risk.” The e-commerce sector isn’t entirely thrilled about the new assistant either, and Amazon has already blocked Meta’s AI agent .
An Imminent Threat
Meanwhile, AI leaders continue to make apocalyptic statements: they all agree that the threat is inevitable. And a financial apocalypse is also just around the corner: the cost of default insurance for major tech companies has risen 2.5-fold—investors are increasingly worried that trillions in AI investments won’t pay off, yet they’ll still have to pay off their debts. Yulia Petrova wrote about the debt fears plaguing the AI market.
You can already position yourself for a potential decline in AI company stocks. Igor Klyushnev, co-founder of Freedom Holding, for example, offers several investment ideas for such a scenario. He has put together a $10,000 portfolio—ranging from put options to defensive stocks.
And one last thing about AI (last but not least): it seems Elon Musk is building his own energy empire. He speaks openly about his plans to build data centers in space, but he’s trying to keep the construction of a foundry in Texas under wraps.
And his plans are far more ambitious than simply manufacturing parts for internal use: Musk wants to call the shots himself—to create an autonomous natural gas supply system for his data centers.
What else have we been keeping an eye on this week?
AI is one of the topics on the agenda for the talks between Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Donald Trump. No agreements in this area have been announced yet—I’m not even sure this partnership will work out (Xi said only: “It should be a race in which one catches up to the other, not a contest in which one either wins or loses”), but it is known for certain that, as part of its “panda diplomacy,” China is sending two bears to the Atlanta Zoo (Trump, for his part, presented Xi with a sculpture of a bald eagle).
It’s too early for Carlyle to celebrate: a new contender has emerged for LUKOIL’s foreign assets—billionaire Todd Boehly, who bought Chelsea FC from Abramovich. His bid is backed by the U.S. government and billionaires from the Persian Gulf, even though Carlyle had already agreed to the purchase back in January.
In Turkey, the investment fund crisis triggered panic and a stock market crash of more than 8%. Authorities ordered the liquidation of 131 funds with assets totaling over $18 billion. Now, officials are discussing consolidating the assets of troubled funds to return money to investors. It remains unclear how much will be recovered and at what prices the assets will have to be sold. ATLAS Capital analyst Zaman Gabibov believes this is not the final chapter: investors outside Turkey may also feel the repercussions.
In the IPO market, some companies are preparing for their debut, while others are taking a break. Finnish smart ring manufacturer Oura plansto go public as early as next week and raise up to $2.2 billion. Meanwhile, in the U.S., two companies—an insurance firm and a nuclear energy company—postponed their IPOs this week; analysts view this as a warning sign. And what do the Fed, SpaceX, SK Hynix, and Anthropic have to do with this?
Meanwhile, the sentiment in the small-cap stock market has shifted: after a rapid rise in the first half of the year, stocks began to lose ground, and the Fed’s rate hikes threaten to increase borrowing costs. We have outlined four rules to help investors select companies capable of weathering rising interest rates.
This article was AI-translated and verified by a human editor
