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Monday, November 9, 2026

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DoorDash and Google

DoorDash and Google.

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Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology.

From X

@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Newbury Street II $NTWO, the SPAC taking robot-safety maker FORT Robotics public, just lost 82% of the cash in its trust to redemptions at its October 28 extension vote, before the merger filing (S-4) is even public! Holders of 14.2M of its 17.25M public shares cashed out at $10.85/share, or $154.3M, leaving 3.05M shares and ~$33M in the trust. The vote also pushed $NTWO's deadline to close the FORT merger from November 4 to February 4, 2027. $NTWO's PIPE (a private placement that funds at the merger close) is now bigger than the trust, at $41.25M after Tiger Global, a FORT investor since 2022, added $10M on October 21. Tiger is also leading a ~$10M round with Mark Cuban Companies that goes straight into FORT, outside the SPAC. On today's commitments, the trust and the PIPE add up to ~$74M at most before fees, vs. the $200.8M of trust and PIPE money the August 2026 investor deck assumed with no redemptions. PIPE investors can also meet their commitments by not redeeming shares they already hold, so cash at close could come in below ~$74M even with no more redemptions. In my September 16 deep dive, I called this vote's redemption rate the first read on how much of the trust reaches FORT, and the trust is down from $185.1M (as of June 30) to ~$33M. So I read the deal as turning into a private round with a Nasdaq listing attached, since the PIPE now brings in most of the cash. PIPE investors get in at ~$7/share once the free shares from the SPAC's sponsor and FORT are counted, vs. $10.85 for the holders who just redeemed. How much of the ~$33M do you think is still there after the merger vote? I'd rather see three numbers in the S-4 before the merger vote: 1) Revenue: FORT's audited 2025 revenue and its 2026 revenue through at least Q2. 2) New money: How much of the $41.25M PIPE is fresh cash rather than shares already in the trust. 3) Fees: How much of the deck's $19.0M of deal costs remains, against ~$74M of cash at most.
@AsifSuria

Asif Suria on X

When we write about insider transactions for our weekly Insider Weekends articles, we are often focused just as much as the insider buying the stock as the company they are buying. Earlier this year, when writing about insider purchases at GeneDX $WGS, we wrote the following about Keith Meister of Corvex Management and his excellent track record with insider purchases. Last night we noticed that he picked up an additional $51.74 million worth of $MGM stock now that the acquisition saga with People $PPLI is over.
@aleabitoreddit

Serenity on X

Cyberoffense/defense is probably going to eat up a TON of compute and end up a continuous compute-intensive arms race. Even $AMZN CEO thinks cybersecurity would take up 20% of tokens consumed for the next year. It's literally a problem of how much you throw at compute for vulnerability discovery + model capability, from of my chats w/ Horizon3. And this is going to become a nation state issue, as seen with the implications already with PHP to vulnerabilities with banks/infrastructure from AI swarms. But people see this and throw money at $CRWD, $NET, and others, which I was saying was a bubble. If it's a compute issue, the economics go to the infra, from neoclouds to $NBIS to networking like $AAOI. We'll likely see swarms go wild from aggressor nation states in the next few years. And any country, whether that's Japan or EU that don't have their own capabilities might suffer severe damage. US spent $11T+ cumulatively (inflation adjusted) on Nuclear weapons and we're like ~$1.8T into the the "cyber-nuclear weapon" equivalent of that And this is not even including the endless other economic implications from AI in other fields from advancing cancer discovery to workforce automation with physical AI. It's hard to measure AI sustainability if $50K in compute spend from a foreign actor can take down $10B of your own infrastructure. AI has become a bipartisan national security issue, and even Democrats would not want China overtake the US in this field.
@StableBread

Fajasy on X

Toast's $TOST President and CFO Elena Gomez, who took it public in 2021, is leaving on December 31, the same day its CRO steps down to retire. She gave notice on October 28, and the board named SVP of Finance Michael Senno to succeed her the same day. Senno joined $TOST in 2022 after running investor relations at South Korean e-commerce company Coupang $CPNG, and his bio lists no prior CFO job. CRO Jonathan Vassil, who has led $TOST's sales since 2017, gave notice on September 28, and no successor has been named. The day after Gomez gave notice, the FTC and eight states sued $TOST, alleging the restaurant software and payments company hit customers with (1) hidden and unauthorized fees, (2) add-ons they didn't ask for, and (3) subscriptions that are hard to cancel. $TOST says the law the FTC sued under doesn't apply to negotiated business contracts, and it plans to fight the case in court. Nothing in the filings ties either exit to the lawsuit, and both executives stay on as employees into 2027, so I read the exits as planned, not forced. But two of $TOST's five executive officers leaving the same day, as an FTC fight starts, is a lot of change at once. None of the executive turnover shows up in the numbers yet: $TOST just reported its most profitable quarter ever, with $169M of net income and $240M of adjusted EBITDA, above its $210-220M guide. $TOST also raised its full-year EBITDA guide for the third time this year, to $840-850M from $775-795M in February. Hardware is still the soft spot: Its gross loss widened to $85M from $57M a year ago, and the $225M lost through September already tops all of 2025. Gomez said in May the memory-chip cost hit would be bigger in 2027 than in 2026, and Senno will own the 2027 numbers. At ~$32/share after hours, $TOST trades at ~20x this year's raised EBITDA guide, down from ~22x at $34/share in my August 10 update. With a new CFO, no named sales chief, and an FTC suit, I'd rather see three things before calling the exits a non-event: 1) Guide: Whether Senno's first, for FY2027 in February, is as conservative as this year's quarterly guides for 22-24% recurring gross profit growth, which $TOST beat with 27-28%. 2) Net adds: Whether net new locations stay above the 30,000/year my thesis needs without Vassil, after ~25,000 through September. 3) FTC: What the Q3 10-Q says about possible losses, and whether $TOST changes its contract terms.
@aleabitoreddit 1 click

Serenity on X

With $AXTI, even if demand was cut 50%, they'd still likely be sold out. Since customers are asking for 3x+ their contracted volumes. I'd argue InP substrates are just as severe as lasers. In just 90 days, $AXTI literally went from: Q2 backlog: $100m Q3 backlog: $500m+ With an extra $300-$400m+ from ordinary business, not multi-year agreements from $LITE / $COHR. I'm sure there's some double ordering but the materials are just so cheap relative to overall BOM, that it's spare change.

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Floor & Decor 3Q26: Business Update

Floor & Decor’s 3Q26 sales rose 3% while comparable sales fell 1.4%; it cut 2027 openings to 10-15 as high mortgage rates pressure…

FND $5B
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MTMTY · short

Metlen Energy & Metals PLC

Metlen Energy & Metals faces a 40% short case centered on its overpriced aluminium, alumina and Greek power businesses.

MTMTY $6.8B
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