#104 – Markets, Golf, Netflix, SpaceX, AI Fear, Over-Taxation

Cameron Young tied on 18. Longest drive on 18. 365. Full pause. Birdy on 17, the hardest hole. 

CAl FTB: Terrible

Facts of life: Your Thoughts define you

  • Your thoughts shape you. Your habits build you. Your choices define you. 

Miami

  • Beautiful and no state tax. Everyone moving there. 
  • Mansions and yachts, but lots of normal people too.  
  • Ken Griffin.  Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg and Priscilla Chan have purchased a $170 million, 30,000-square-foot mansion on Miami’s exclusive Indian Creek Island, known as “Billionaire Bunker”. The under-construction, 2-acre waterfront estate includes 9 bedrooms, 15 bathrooms, and a 1,500-gallon aquarium. This record-breaking March 2026 purchase adds to his portfolio and reflects a trend of tech elites relocating to Florida. 

Stock Market

Netflix still has a high PE ratio. 

AI Fear

  • I’ve listened to a few podcasts featuring Marc Benioff in the last year. He is 100% all-in on AI. 
  • The idea that SAAS will be completed disrupted by AI is over-hyped. Jensen Huang put it well: AI will not invent a new hammer or screwdriver; they’ll just use what exists. Analogy is to SaaS companies in general. 
  • Large Corporations (think Fortune 1000) are not goint to ditch big SaaS companies, like ERP (Workday, Oracle, SAP), Security, CRM, Analytics, Microsoft Office, etc…  
    • They are not going to switch out CRM (SalesForce) and tell a 10 person AI team to build from scratch. No way.  
    • On the other hand; if you are a start-up with 10-20 employees, you might build your own CRM tool.

Long story, short: The AI replacement fear is over-hyped. 

Netflix

Netflix Loses Bidding War to Paramount! 

Tesla

Interview with Elon

    • Tesla has most advanced Real-world AI
    • Starting scale production of CyberCab in April
    • Tesla Semi coming this year

SpaceX

  1. SpaceX acquired XaI
  2. SpaceX will go public.  
  3. SpaceX will merge with Tesla. 

Notes on mergers: 

  • Share trade merger
  • DSP for qualified LT Tesla Shareholders. 

Love this take from Travis on Autonomous driving. TSLA for the win. 

XAi 

Rebuilding Xai from ground up.   

XaI will be a financial behemoth

𝕏 Money has already been live in closed beta internally within the company. A limited external beta is expected soon, and they’ve already secured money transmitter licenses in over 40 states plus DC. 𝕏 Payments is registered with FinCEN. Visa is officially partnered. You’ll be able to fund your wallet instantly, send peer-to-peer payments, move money to your bank, and eventually use a debit card.

This will probably start as a simple wallet where you can send money as easily as sending a DM. With this technology, you can pay creators, pay subscriptions, pay whatever bills, shop inside the app, get paid inside the app, and much more. 

Then, there will be high-yield savings, you can invest, you can get loans, have money market accounts, maybe even treasury access, cool smart cashtags that let you see live stock prices in your timeline and execute trades seamlessly, crypto integration, potentially full asset management… the list goes on and on… Elon literally said this is meant to be the central source of ALL monetary transactions.

Andrej Karpathy on Elon’s management style

AI 

OpenAI 

In late February 2026, OpenAI closed a massive $110 billion funding round, valuing the company between $730 billion and $840 billion, marking it as one of the most valuable private companies globally. Backed by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank, this capital is designated for significant infrastructure expansion, including computing power, ahead of a potential IPO. 

  • Amount Raised: $110 billion.
  • Valuation: Approx. $730 billion – $840 billion.
  • Key Investors: Amazon ($50B), Nvidia ($30B), SoftBank ($30B).

This round represents a massive escalation in the AI capital race, following a previous $40 billion injection from investors in 2025. 

Anthropic Claude

In early March 2026, The Pentagon designated Anthropic a “national security supply chain risk” after the company refused to remove Claude’s safety guardrails prohibiting uses like autonomous weapons or mass domestic surveillance, leading President Trump to order federal agencies to cease using the technology and prompting a phase-out for defense-related work.

 

  • Anthropic responded aggressively by filing lawsuits against the administration 
  • consumer growth, surging to the #1 free app on the Apple App Store in the US, with record daily sign-ups, free users up over 60% since January, and paid subscribers 
  • Anthropic’s most recent funding round was a Series G that closed on February 12, 2026, where the company raised $30 billion in capital.

Taxes

NewYork City

Fareed Zakaria

Here are the top four tax issues drawing the most criticism for NYC Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s proposals:

  • 9.5% blanket property tax hike — Proposed as a last-resort increase to close the budget gap, criticized as regressive and burdensome on middle-class homeowners, co-op/condo owners, and renters.
  • Additional 2% income tax surcharge on high earners — Targets individuals earning over $1 million, accused of fueling wealthy flight and class warfare rather than sustainable revenue solutions.
  • Corporate tax increases — Aims to raise rates on profitable companies to match neighboring states, slammed by business groups for risking economic harm and driving companies out of NYC.
  • Sharp estate tax exemption cut — Seeks to drop the exemption from ~$7 million to $750,000 with higher top rates, viewed as unfairly hitting middle-class inheritances instead of just the ultra-wealthy.

CA Fraud

Nick Shirley Doing his Thing again in CA

Wealth Tax

https://x.com/stevenfiorillo/status/2033352518802026741

  • According to IRS migration data, New York has lost $111 billion in net adjusted gross income over the last decade from residents moving to other states. 
  • California lost $102 billion over the same period. 
  • Florida gained $196 billion. 
  • Texas gained $54 billion. 
  • Between 2018 and 2024, 
    • The San Francisco Bay Area lost 156 corporate headquarters. 
    • Los Angeles lost 106. 
    • New York City lost 27. 
    • Meanwhile Dallas alone gained 100, Austin gained 81, and Nashville gained 35. T In-N-Out Burger is opening a 100,000-square-foot eastern headquarters near Nashville and is leaving California. These aren’t outliers anymore as this is becoming the new normal.

It’s not just corporate headquarters moving. Entire financial ecosystems are relocating. Citadel, one of the most profitable hedge funds in the world, moved its headquarters from Chicago to Miami in 2022 and has been building out aggressively ever since. They’re constructing a massive new waterfront headquarters in Miami’s Brickell financial district. Elliott Management moved to West Palm Beach. 

  • Goldman Sachs $GS is building a $500 million campus in Dallas designed to house over 5,000 employees.
  • JPMorgan Chase $JPM and Wells Fargo $WFC have both invested hundreds of millions into massive new campuses in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. 
  • NYSE Texas a reincorporation of the 143-year old Chicago Stock Exchange officially launched in Dallas in early 2025. The Texas Stock Exchange which is a brand new national securities exchange backed by over $160 million from BlackRock $BLK , Citadel Securities, and Charles Schwab $SCHW is set to begin trading by the end of this year.

When you have that level of financial infrastructure being built in a single metro area, that’s not a trend it’s an ecosystem being constructed from scratch to compete directly with New York. 

Almost 1,700 millionaires changed their address out of New York in 2024 alone. Millionaires paid 44.6% of all personal income tax collected in the state last year. 

Ken Griffin and Stephen Ross just launched a $10 million campaign called “Ambitious Accelerated” to recruit more businesses to what they’re calling Florida’s “Tech Gold Coast.” They’re not waiting for New York to figure it out. They’re actively recruiting our talent, our capital, and our tax base.

That’s what makes this moment so critical. We are in the middle of the most competitive environment for jobs, businesses, and investment that this country has ever seen. 

 Texas entered its latest legislative session with a $24 billion surplus while having no personal or corporate income tax. Think about that for a moment, no personal or corporate income tax and they have a $24 billion surplus. 

Florida added more new businesses than any other state in 2024, with over 266,000 formed in a single year. These states didn’t create an attractive business landscape out of thin air. They made deliberate policy choices to create environments where businesses want to operate, where employers want to hire, and where working people can actually build something without the ground shifting underneath them every budget cycle.

This matters because of what it means for everyday people. When a company relocates its headquarters, it doesn’t just move a sign, the entire company leaves, from the executive team to the support staff.

Here’s the part nobody in Albany wants to hear. The people who leave don’t just take their tax returns with them. They take their fundraising networks, philanthropy, job creation, and spending to a new economy. 

WSJ on Billionaires leaving. 

  • Google co-founder Larry Page recently made headlines by spending $188 million on three Miami mansions. 
  • Ken Griffin relocated himself and the headquarters of his Citadel hedge fund from Chicago to Miami. The venture capitalists Peter Thiel and Keith Rabois bought homes in Miami Beach and opened an office for their venture capital fund in Miami, too. Jeff Bezos moved from Seattle to Miami, assembling a $200 million plus compound.
  • Mark Zuckerberg gone

Washington State passes 9.9% tax on income over $1m. 

  • Howard Schultz leaving
  • Bezos already gone

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