NYT : Call My Agent, the Basketball Version

Call My Agent, the Basketball Version
There have never been more basketball stars from France. Two best friends saw it coming decades ago and are reaping the benefits.

Bouna Ndiaye, left, and Jérémy Medjana have led their agency, Comsport, to become the premier agency for French basketball players. They represent the N.B.A. superstar Victor Wembanyama.Credit...

Last spring, in his quest to become one of the greatest basketball players of all time, Victor Wembanyama, a 7-foot-4 Frenchman now in his third National Basketball Association season with the San Antonio Spurs, decided he wanted to do something unusual in the offseason to boost his training regimen. But he didn’t know exactly what. So he and Bouna Ndiaye, one of his agents, brainstormed together.

What if he did workouts standing on his hands — too wacky? What about training like a ninja? Something in the martial arts?

Mr. Ndiaye saw the vision. So he found a 1,500-year-old Buddhist temple in the Henan province of China, where Mr. Wembanyama could live with the monks and train in kung fu. This idea delighted Mr. Wembanyama. In China, he lived in seclusion for 11 days. He shaved his head, he meditated, he contorted his body in ways even people only three-quarters his size might struggle to do.

This was one piece of a busy offseason that Mr. Ndiaye helped orchestrate for Mr. Wembanyama, a once-in-a-generation type of star who was coming off a season that ended early because of a potentially life-threatening blood clot in his right shoulder.

Nearly 30 years ago, Mr. Ndiaye, 59, and his best friend, Jérémy Medjana, 53, started an agency called Comsport, which is now the premier agency for French players at a time when the country’s influence on basketball is exploding. France won the silver medal in last year’s Olympics. Two of the last three top picks in the N.B.A. were French.

The French ascendance has been good business for Comsport. In recent years, the agency has guided its clients through deals worth hundreds of millions of dollars, with Mr. Ndiaye in Dallas and Mr. Medjana in Paris. Now, they represent Mr. Wembanyama, who had played so well this year that there was talk early in the season that he could win the league’s Most Valuable Player Award. The agents’ story will even be told in a movie called “The American Dream,” which was produced by a prominent French production house, Quad Entertainment, and will be released in February.

“You forget the struggle,” Mr. Ndiaye said. “Ten years, you’re not making any money. You keep believing that you’re going to make it.”

When the pair started their agency in the 1990s, they set out to represent players from Africa and France. But there had only been only a handful of players from those areas to make it to the N.B.A.

Then came Tony Parker, who grew up in Normandy, was a 2001 first-round pick and went on to win four championships with the Spurs. Mr. Parker inspired a new generation of French basketball players, including Mr. Wembanyama. France invested in an effective youth system, and talent flourished.

Mr. Ndiaye, who spent his childhood in Senegal and moved to France as a teenager, met Mr. Medjana, who grew up in France near the Belgian border, on a basketball court in the south of France. Both were obsessed with the sport. They started a touring dunk competition called Slam Nation in 1997.

That partnership turned into a sports agency. For a decade, they made only enough money for the agency to stay afloat — not for salaries for themselves, certainly not enough to save anything. Mr. Ndiaye worked odd jobs in construction and cleaned airplanes to help support his young family; Mr. Medjana taught sports at an elementary school and sold knockoff designer clothes and worked shifts at his father’s video rental store.

“My family was thinking: ‘Are you crazy? What are you doing?’” Mr. Medjana said.

As they grew their business, a pipeline from France to the N.B.A. emerged, and Comsport was a key hub. Mr. Ndiaye and Mr. Medjana would scout talent from youth programs and begin developing relationships when the players were teenagers.

“This is such a very competitive business,” said Boris Lelchitski, a sports agent who teamed up with Comsport when it needed a presence in the United States. “The clients and players that they represent are very difficult to even get signed.”

Ian Mahinmi, who played 12 seasons in the N.B.A., remembers Mr. Ndiaye’s coming to his home in France when he was 16. His parents, his uncles and one aunt had gathered to hear pitches from potential agents. Mr. Ndiaye and Mr. Mahinmi’s family bonded over their common roots in Africa. (While Mr. Mahinmi grew up near Paris, his father is from Benin.)

“As soon as he left, we all looked at each other, and we were like, ‘OK, that’s him,’” Mr. Mahinmi said.

In 2005, Mr. Mahinmi became Comsport’s first N.B.A. first-round pick, an important milestone.

But there continued to be challenges. The pair worked with one U.S.-based agent who never paid them. Another time, a client who had been with them for more than 10 years, on whom they had spent resources they were hoping to recoup, fired them before his first big N.B.A. payday.

Mr. Ndiaye said the player, Ronny Turiaf, had told him, “You’re like my dad, but you’ve never negotiated free agency.” He wanted someone with more experience. (Mr. Turiaf declined to be interviewed for this article.)

As a result, Comsport went bankrupt. For seven years, the French government administered a recovery plan for the agency’s finances.

Soon, though, its clients in Europe and the United States started making real money. Nicolas Batum became a first-round N.B.A. draft pick in 2008, Evan Fournier in 2012 and Rudy Gobert in 2013. Mr. Gobert has won the league’s Defensive Player of the Year Award four times.

R.C. Buford, the chief executive of the Spurs, who drafted Mr. Mahinmi in 2005, credits Mr. Ndiaye’s work with helping to bring about the N.B.A.’s modern-day French influx.

“That has to be some reflection of the work that he has done with Batum and Rudy and the other people that he has represented and helped grow,” Mr. Buford said.

In 2015, Mr. Batum, Mr. Gobert, Mr. Fournier and Mr. Mahinmi presented a tearful Mr. Ndiaye with a Rolex watch at his surprise 50th birthday party. The next year, the four signed contracts worth a combined $371 million.

And so, when they had the chance to pitch a 15-year-old Mr. Wembanyama and his parents on representing him, five years after they became aware of him, Mr. Ndiaye and Mr. Medjana could tell them that they had done almost everything: They had represented undrafted players and first-round picks, but now they had also negotiated free agency and built relationships with sponsors. They had also known Mr. Wembanyama and his family for much longer than anyone else who might have competed for his business.

Comsport doesn’t get every French player. In the 2024 draft it represented Tidjane Salaun, whom the Charlotte Hornets took sixth overall, but two other French players went earlier — Zaccharie Risacher, first overall, and Alex Sarr, second — and neither is represented by Comsport.

These days, the pair’s roster has expanded beyond French and African players, but they still scout talent the old-fashioned way, scouring youth tournaments and college programs around the world. In fact, one month after Mr. Wembanyama was drafted first overall in 2023, they found themselves stuck on a Bulgarian highway in a miles-long customs line trying to get to Serbia for FIBA’s U-17 European Championships.

It had been Mr. Ndiaye’s idea that they fly to Bulgaria instead of straight to Serbia, still interested in saving a little money. What’s normally a two-hour trip took seven. Mr. Medjana was furious. Mr. Ndiaye assured him it would be much easier on the way back.

It took eight hours to drive back to Bulgaria, and Mr. Medjana cursed his best friend the whole way. Both missed their flights home.

“I was like, ‘Guys, why are you still putting yourself through this?’” said Issa Mboh, the head of global marketing at Comsport. Their success surely permitted them a chance to relax a bit. “There’s no need anymore.”

He couldn’t convince either of them.

NYT : Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Frie



From: Laurent Chekroun (MAKOR CAPITAL MARKET) At: 11/30/25 19:39:05 UTC+1:00
Subject: NYT : Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Frie
Silicon Valley’s Man in the White House Is Benefiting Himself and His Friends
David Sacks, the Trump administration’s A.I. and crypto czar, has helped formulate policies that aid his Silicon Valley friends and many of his own tech investments.

In July, David Sacks, one of the Trump administration’s top technology officials, beamed as he strode onstage at a neoclassical auditorium just blocks from the White House. He had convened top government officials and Silicon Valley executives for a forum on the booming business of artificial intelligence.

The guest of honor was President Trump, who unveiled an “A.I. Action Plan” that was drafted in part by Mr. Sacks, a longtime venture capitalist. In a nearly hourlong speech, Mr. Trump declared that A.I. was “one of the most important technological revolutions in the history of the world.” Then he picked up his pen and signed executive orders to fast-track the industry.

Almost everyone in the high-powered audience — which included the chief executives of the chipmakers Nvidia and AMD, as well as Mr. Sacks’s tech friends, colleagues and business partners — were poised to profit from Mr. Trump’s directives.

Among the winners was Mr. Sacks himself.

Since January, Mr. Sacks, 53, has occupied one of the most advantageous moonlighting roles in the federal government, influencing policy for Silicon Valley in Washington while simultaneously working in Silicon Valley as an investor. Among his actions as the White House’s artificial intelligence and crypto czar:

  • Mr. Sacks has offered astonishing White House access to his tech industry compatriots and pushed to eliminate government obstacles facing A.I. companies. That has set up giants like Nvidia to reap an estimate of as much as $200 billion in new sales.
  • Mr. Sacks has recommended A.I. policies that have sometimes run counter to national security recommendations, alarming some of his White House colleagues and raising questions about his priorities.
  • Mr. Sacks has positioned himself to personally benefit. He has 708 tech investments, including at least 449 stakes in companies with ties to artificial intelligence that could be aided directly or indirectly by his policies, according to a New York Times analysis of his financial disclosures.
  • His public filings designate 438 of his tech investments as software or hardware companies, even though the firms promote themselves as A.I. enterprises, offer A.I. services or have A.I. in their names, The Times found.
  • Mr. Sacks has raised the profile of his weekly podcast, “All-In,” through his government role, and expanded its business.

No event better illustrates Mr. Sacks’s ethical complexities and how his intertwined interests have come together than the July A.I. summit. Mr. Sacks initially planned for the forum to be hosted by “All-In,” which he leads with other tech investors. “All-In” asked potential sponsors to each pay it $1 million for access to a private reception and other events at the summit “bringing together President Donald Trump and leading A.I. innovators,” according to a proposal viewed by The Times.

The plan so worried some officials that Susie Wiles, the White House chief of staff, intervened to prevent “All-In" from serving as the sole host of the forum, two people with knowledge of the episode said.

Steve Bannon, a former adviser to Mr. Trump and a critic of Silicon Valley billionaires, said Mr. Sacks was a quintessential example of ethical conflicts in an administration where “the tech bros are out of control.”

“They are leading the White House down the road to perdition with this ascendant technocratic oligarchy,” he said.

Mr. Sacks has been allowed to serve in government while working in private industry because he is a “special government employee,” a title the White House typically confers on experts who temporarily advise the government. He is not paid for his work for the administration.

In March, Mr. Sacks received two White House ethics waivers, which said he was selling or had sold most of his crypto and A.I. assets. His remaining investments, the waivers said, were “not so substantial” as to influence his government service.

But Mr. Sacks stands out as a special government employee because of his hundreds of investments in tech companies, which can benefit from policies that he influences. His public ethics filings, which are based on self-reported information, do not disclose the value of those remaining stakes in crypto and A.I.-related companies. They also omit when he sold assets he said he would divest, making it difficult to determine whether his government service has netted him profits.

A White House spokeswoman, Liz Huston, said Mr. Sacks had addressed potential conflicts. His insights were “an invaluable asset for President Trump’s agenda of cementing American technology dominance,” she said.

Jessica Hoffman, a spokeswoman for Mr. Sacks, said that “this conflict of interest narrative is false.” Mr. Sacks has complied with special government employee rules and the Office of Government Ethics determined that he should sell investments in certain types of A.I. companies but not others, she said. His government role has cost him, not benefited him, she added.

At a White House dinner for tech executives in September, Mr. Sacks said he was grateful to work in both technology and government. It was “a great honor to have a foot in each one of these worlds,” he said.

‘David’s House’

Mr. Sacks’s road to the White House began in Silicon Valley.

He arrived in the tech heartland in 1990 as an undergraduate at Stanford University, where he met fellow students including Peter Thiel. Mr. Sacks later joined Mr. Thiel at a start-up that became the electronic payments firm PayPal, alongside Elon Musk.

After eBay bought PayPal for $1.5 billion in 2002, the men invested in one another. Mr. Sacks helped fund Mr. Musk’s rocket company, SpaceX, as well as Palantir, the data analysis firm co-founded by Mr. Thiel. In turn, Mr. Thiel backed Yammer, Mr. Sacks’s business communications start-up that was sold to Microsoft in 2012 for $1.2 billion.

In 2017, Mr. Sacks began Craft Ventures, a firm that has invested in hundreds of start-ups, including some owned by his friends. He also started the “All-In” podcast three years later with friends and fellow investors Jason Calacanis, Chamath Palihapitiya and David Friedberg.

Mr. Sacks became a major player in Republican politics in 2022, when he donated $1 million to a super PAC supporting the Senate run of JD Vance, a former tech investor who worked for Mr. Thiel.

Last year, Mr. Sacks hosted a $12 million fund-raiser for Mr. Trump at his San Francisco mansion. The dinner made an impression on the presidential candidate.

“I love David’s house,” Mr. Trump said on “All-In” two weeks later. “What a house.”

After the election, Mr. Trump’s team asked Mr. Sacks to join the administration. He said he would, as long as he could continue working at Craft — and got his wish.

“It’s exactly what I requested,” Mr. Sacks said of his dual position in December.

Allying With Nvidia
Mr. Sacks opened the door of the White House to Silicon Valley leaders. Among the most prominent visitors was Jensen Huang, Nvidia’s chief executive.

Mr. Sacks and Mr. Huang, who had not met before Mr. Sacks joined the administration, forged a tight bond this spring, said three people familiar with the men, who were not authorized to discuss their interactions.

Both stood to benefit. Mr. Huang, 62, wanted government clearance to sell Nvidia’s highly coveted A.I. chips around the world, despite security concerns that the components could bolster China’s economy and military. Mr. Huang argued that restricting exports of Nvidia’s chips would push Chinese companies to develop more powerful alternatives. And spreading Nvidia’s technology would expand the A.I. industry, aiding the A.I. investments owned by Mr. Sacks and his friends.

In White House meetings, Mr. Sacks echoed Mr. Huang’s ideas that the best way to beat China would be to flood the world with American technology. Mr. Sacks worked to eliminate Biden-era restrictions on Nvidia and other American chip companies’ sales to foreign countries. He also opposed rules that would have made it difficult for foreign companies to buy U.S. chips for international data centers, five people with knowledge of the White House discussions said.

Free of those restrictions, Mr. Sacks flew to the Middle East in May and struck a deal to send 500,000 American A.I. chips — mostly from Nvidia — to the United Arab Emirates. The large number alarmed some White House officials, who feared that China, an ally of the Emirates, would gain access to the technology, these people said.

Ms. Hoffman said Mr. Sacks developed his thinking by talking to many people, not just Mr. Huang, and “wants the entire American tech stack to win.” None of his holdings benefited from the Emirates deal, she said.

Mylene Mangalindan, an Nvidia spokeswoman, said Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick was the company’s primary contact for A.I. chip sales abroad.

Mr. Sacks trumpeted the Emirati deal on “All-In” in May. “I would define winning as the whole world consolidates around the American A.I.” companies, he said.

There was one last obstacle to that goal: removing a U.S. ban on direct chip sales to China.

In the White House, Mr. Sacks promoted the idea that the ban inadvertently helped China by diverting chip sales to Huawei, a Chinese rival to Nvidia, four people familiar with the discussions said.

In July, Mr. Sacks and Mr. Huang took their argument to an Oval Office meeting with Mr. Trump. Before the meeting ended, Mr. Trump cleared Nvidia to sell its chips to China.

The Sacks Portfolio
The White House has praised Mr. Sacks, saying he minimized his financial conflicts of interest.

The ethics waivers that Mr. Sacks received said he and Craft Ventures had sold more than $200 million in crypto positions, including investments in Bitcoin, and were divesting stakes in A.I.-related companies including Meta, Amazon and xAI.

Mr. Sacks had started or completed sales of “over 99 percent” of his “holdings in companies that could potentially raise a conflict of interest concern,” the White House said.

Ms. Huston, the White House spokeswoman, said Mr. Sacks was “recused from participating in any matters that could affect his financial interests until he was able to divest of conflicting interests or until he received a waiver.”

But Mr. Sacks’s waivers provide an incomplete picture of his wealth and do not say when he sold his holdings in Meta, Amazon and other companies.

What is clear is that Mr. Sacks, directly or through Craft, has retained 20 crypto and 449 A.I.-related investments, according to The Times analysis.

Of the A.I.-related investments, 11 were designated in one waiver as “A.I. Interests.” The other 438 were classified as software or hardware makers, even though they promote A.I. offerings or services on their websites. In one example, the waiver categorized Palantir as “software as a service,” while the company’s website says it provides “A.I.-Powered Automation for Every Decision.” Forty-one of the companies have A.I. in their names, such as Resemble.AI and CrewAI.

In one of the waivers, the White House said many of the software companies “do not currently use A.I.-related applications in their core business in any material way,” but added that “many of them are likely to at some point in the future.”

Policies that Mr. Sacks supported at the White House have laid the groundwork for his investments to flourish.

The A.I. Action Plan promoted domestic production of autonomous drones and other A.I. inventions for the Pentagon. Mr. Sacks has stakes in defense tech start-ups such as Anduril, Firestorm Labs and Swarm Aero that make drones and other products, according to his filings. In September, Anduril announced a $159 million contract with the U.S. Army to build a new type of night vision goggles with A.I.

Shannon Prior, an Anduril spokeswoman, said the company had a relationship with the Army before the A.I. Action Plan and that it received the contract because its founder, Palmer Luckey, is “the world’s best virtual reality headset designer.” Ms. Hoffman said it was an “obvious idea” to include the military use of A.I. in the policy plan.

This spring, Mr. Sacks also backed a bill called the GENIUS Act to regulate stablecoins, a type of cryptocurrency designed to maintain a constant price of $1. Mr. Sacks promoted the legislation on CNBC and worked to advance it through Congress.

After the bill passed in July, Mr. Sacks called it “historic” and “momentous” on “All-In.” It is poised to significantly expand the stablecoin business.

One of Craft’s crypto investments is BitGo, a company that works with issuers of stablecoins. BitGo celebrated the GENIUS Act on its website and promptly capitalized, declaring that its service “fit perfectly” with the new guidelines. “The wait is over,” the site said.

In September, BitGo filed for an initial public offering. Craft owns 7.8 percent of the company, according to financial filings, which would be worth more than $130 million at BitGo’s 2023 valuation.

BitGo declined to comment. Ms. Hoffman said the GENIUS Act’s passage “contained no specific benefit for BitGo.”

Since Mr. Sacks joined the White House, A.I. companies have continued to announce new investments from Craft. In July, Vultron, a start-up that develops A.I. software for government contractors, celebrated $22 million in new financing and heralded the contribution of “Craft Ventures, co-founded by White House A.I. adviser David Sacks.”

The funding was secured before Mr. Sacks joined the administration, said Mac Liu, Vultron’s chief executive. “We mentioned David in the announcement because he’s a big name in A.I.,” he said.

Mr. Sacks remains on the board of Glue, a start-up that he helped found that offers an A.I.-assisted chat platform. In October, Glue announced $20 million in new funding, including from Craft.

Mr. Sacks had left corporate boards before joining the Trump administration, but stayed on Glue’s because “it was allowed,” Ms. Hoffman said. The funding was completed last year, she said. Glue did not respond to a request for comment.

Going ‘All-In’
In an “All-In” episode in March, two of the podcasts’ hosts, Mr. Friedberg and Mr. Palihapitiya, stood outside the East Wing.

They had been “running around” the White House, Mr. Palihapitiya said, as the show spliced in photos of them walking through wainscoted rooms and joining Mr. Sacks in the portico dividing the East and West Wings.

The podcasters then interviewed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent about economic policy. Days later, they returned with a nearly two-hour interview with Mr. Lutnick. Two months after that, they interviewed the secretaries of agriculture and the interior. In September, “All-In” posted a video of a private Oval Office tour with Mr. Trump.

Mr. Sacks’s government work has boosted the profile of the podcast, which is downloaded 6 million times a month. Its annual conference in Los Angeles generated roughly $21 million in ticket sales this year, up from $15 million last year, based on its $7,500 ticket price and public attendance estimates. In June, the podcast introduced a $1,200 “All-In”-branded tequila.

Mr. Sacks has forgone A.I. and crypto-related revenues, such as from sponsorships, but can share in sales from tequila and event tickets, Ms. Hoffman said. Jon Haile, the podcast’s chief executive, did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Sacks’s personal business and policy work came together at the July A.I. event in Washington, which he tapped “All-In” to host.

But Ms. Wiles, the White House chief of staff, did not want the administration to appear to endorse the “All-In” brand, two people with knowledge of the summit said. They said she called for the addition of a co-host. Mr. Sacks went to the organizers of the Hill and Valley Forum, an annual conference for tech and government officials, Ms. Hoffman said.

Visa and the New York Stock Exchange sponsored the A.I. summit. The organizers declined to disclose what the companies paid. Ms. Hoffman said “All-In” lost money hosting the event, and that “no V.I.P. reception occurred.” The New York Stock Exchange declined to comment, and Visa did not respond to a request for comment.

Mr. Sacks opened the event by describing his White House experience as “incredible” and hailing the administration’s work on A.I. and crypto. Then he handed off hosting duties to his “All-In” partners, who interviewed Mr. Huang of Nvidia and White House officials onstage.

In the keynote speech, Mr. Trump described Mr. Sacks as “great” before signing executive orders to speed the building of data centers and exports of A.I systems.

Then he handed Mr. Sacks the presidential pen.

WSJ : America Loves a $13 Lunch Bowl. Don’t Bet Against It.

America Loves a $13 Lunch Bowl. Don’t Bet Against It.
Consumers may be struggling, but they still want fresh and fast offerings from restaurants like Cava and Chipotle

It has been a rough stretch for the makers of healthy—but fast—lunch bowls. After years of riding a wellness wave, they’ve suddenly found themselves squeezed between rising costs and a jittery consumer.

Younger consumers are looking for places to trim. For some, that means fewer carne asada burritos and harissa bowls. Chipotle, Cava and Sweetgreen SG -2.11%decrease; red down pointing triangle have all reported softer results in recent quarters. Their stocks show the damage: So far this year, Chipotle is down around 44%, Cava about 56% and Sweetgreen about 80%.


Companies point to the same culprits: student-loan payments, higher rents and a softer job market that are pushing younger consumers back into their kitchens. And when young people stop spending, fast casual feels it first. Roughly 75% of the customers for these chains are Gen Z or millennials, notes David Henkes of Technomic.

Near term, expect slightly shorter lines at your local Chipotle or Cava as the worker earning $70,000—or the newly laid-off Gen Zer—decides to make lunch at home. Let’s face it, though: Longer term, America’s growing appetite for fast-casual restaurant chains isn’t going anywhere.

The bowl occupies a rare pricing sweet spot: genuinely fresh food for only a couple of dollars more than fast food—and still far less than a sit-down entree once you add tax and tip. Yes, you can get a burger, fries and a soda for $10.79. But is that really a better deal than a $13 bowl of fresh greens, whole-grain rice, grilled chicken, tahini and pickled cabbage? More Americans seem to think not.

What started as the lunch of well-paid office workers is now something that anyone—a hairdresser, a college student, a delivery driver—might grab on a break. In 2008, fast casual made up just 6% of the restaurant industry. Today it’s about 15% of the restaurant market, according to Technomic.

Cava might be the best way to bet on the group. After its shares peaked around $150 late last year, the stock now trades around $50 a share—not far from its post-IPO level in the summer of 2023, even though it’s a far bigger company since then.

Consolidated revenue is on track to climb 21% to a projected $1.17 billion in 2025, according to analysts’ estimates on FactSet. The store base has grown from 309 at the end of 2023 to 415 as of the last reported quarter, with management opening restaurants as quickly as it can.

The problem—and the reason the stock has reset—is simple: Investors don’t like when guidance goes in the wrong direction.


Cava last quarter cut its same-store sales outlook and overall profitability for 2025. Chief Executive Brett Schulman blames the lower growth figure partly on “the honeymoon effect,” in which new restaurants open hot and then settle into more normal volumes.

That dynamic is real. But it doesn’t change the fact that growth is cooling from high levels, and investors have adjusted their expectations accordingly.

Dwelling on the lowered, near-term growth risks missing the larger story.

Consumers are excited about each Cava store opening, and the company is opening restaurants quickly. On average, units opened in 2025 are trending above $3 million in annual sales. This is higher than the chainwide $2.9 million average and far ahead of the year-one $2.3 million target, notes Sharon Zackfia of William Blair. Those locations earn back their roughly $1.4 million build costs in about two years on average, an unusually fast payback in the restaurant industry.

That strength is showing up both in legacy markets and brand-new ones. This is why analysts think Cava can grow well beyond 1,000 restaurants.

If the chain eventually matches the store density it already has in the Washington, D.C., area, Zackfia estimates it could support something closer to 2,000 locations nationwide. “Five years from now, nobody is going to be talking about the fourth quarter of 2025,” she said. “The business will be much bigger by then.”

Scaling to over 1,000 restaurants won’t be easy, and plenty could go wrong if it isn’t done right. It’s about execution: every bowl, every line, every shift.

Cava’s Schulman is blunt about the stakes: “No deal, no discount, no marketing campaign can get you out of bad operations. If people have bad experiences, they’re not going to come back.”

At the same time, Cava needs to continue broadening its appeal to the masses. That’s not easy in an economy where McDonald’s and Taco Bell are waging a price war. Cava can’t just roll out an $8.99 bowl without undermining its brand.

What it can do is keep raising prices at a slower pace than inflation. Since 2019, Cava has lifted prices less than 17%—about half the 34% industry average and well below the 27% rise in inflation, Schulman says.

The per-person average—which can include drinks and sides—is just over $14, but in many markets bowls run $10.65 to $12.95. Cava also offers things like tiered status—perks for people who visit more often—free pita chips and letting customers cash in points for avocado.

Cava may never be the cheapest lunch in town, but both its bowls and stock offer solid value.

FT : Swiss voters reject 50% inheritance tax for the super-rich

Swiss voters reject 50% inheritance tax for the super-rich
Overwhelming majority opposed wealth tax in contentious referendum

Swiss voters on Sunday overwhelmingly rejected a proposal to impose a 50 per cent inheritance levy on the super-rich, in a contentious referendum that came as governments around the world wrestle with how to tax the wealthy.

More than 80 per cent rejected the initiative, with about 42 per cent of the population participating by Sunday afternoon. Opponents of the measure had feared that a narrow defeat would invite other similar tax proposals in years to come.

The referendum, one of the most divisive in recent Swiss political memory, comes amid a global split between countries competing to lure wealthy families with fiscal incentives and those seeking to tax what they see as excessive fortunes.

The proposal from the far-left Young Socialists party would have introduced a federal inheritance and gift tax of 50 per cent on estates and transfers above SFr50mn (£47mn), marking a dramatic break from Switzerland’s tradition of decentralised, low-burden taxation. Revenue would have been earmarked for climate-related spending. 

The federal government opposed the initiative, warning it would damage Switzerland’s appeal as a stable home for internationally mobile wealth. The proposal was originally drafted to be retroactive — a clause that provoked a fierce backlash from business groups and tax lawyers and was later softened.

The move prompted deep anxiety among Swiss family offices and wealthy residents, some of whom were reviewing relocation options this year ahead of the vote, the Financial Times reported in June. Economists and lawyers warned the measure could affect succession planning for family-owned companies whose wealth is tied up in illiquid assets.

Frédéric Rochat, managing partner at Swiss private bank Lombard Odier, said the unequivocal result showed “Swiss common sense had prevailed”.

“Swiss people like to see their country’s policies remain stable [and] predictable,” he said. “They reject base populism that makes unnecessary noise.”

A “Yes” vote would have been a “significant change” to the Swiss tax landscape, said Philipp Zünd, tax expert at KPMG in Switzerland.

“Swiss voters have reinforced Switzerland’s reputation as a stable business hub,” he said.

The Swiss vote lands at a moment when governments’ approaches to wealthy individuals have diverged sharply.

In some financial centres the race to attract rich families is accelerating. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Hong Kong and Singapore are offering tax concessions and light-touch regulation to draw single-family offices — the private investment vehicles of the global super-rich. Hong Kong, which hosted an estimated 2,700 family offices in 2023, aims to attract 200 more by the end of 2025.

Elsewhere, countries are tightening rules or increasing levies. Italy has drawn a surge of arrivals under its flat-tax regime for foreign income, centred on Milan, but the government announced in October it plans to increase the levy by a further 50 per cent to €300,000 from next year.

In her first Budget last year, UK chancellor Rachel Reeves hit the super-rich by confirming the abolition of “non-dom” status, which allowed UK residents who declared their permanent home as being overseas to avoid paying UK tax on foreign income and gains.

Swiss lawyers said the referendum proposal had undermined Switzerland’s chances of attracting tax exiles from the UK following the non-dom change, with many opting for Italy rather than Switzerland.

Meanwhile, in late October the French parliament voted to reject a Socialist proposal for a tax of 2 per cent on wealth of more than €100mn. Another proposal for a 3 per cent tax on wealth over €10mn was also rejected.

FT : OpenAI’s lead under pressure as rivals start to close the gap

OpenAI’s lead under pressure as rivals start to close the gap
Three years since the debut of ChatGPT, the $500bn start-up is facing significant challenges to its dominance in AI

OpenAI’s huge early lead in the race to dominate artificial intelligence is under the greatest pressure since ChatGPT’s launch, as rivals Google and Anthropic gain ground in the cutting-edge technology.

Three years on from the debut of its popular chatbot, the $500bn start-up is grappling with the reality of soaring data centre costs, the technical challenges of remaining at the frontier of AI and the constant battle to retain key talent.

It is also facing a resurgent Google, with the release last week of Gemini 3, Google’s latest large language model, which is considered to have leapfrogged OpenAI’s GPT-5 and achieved gains from the model training process that have eluded OpenAI in recent months.

“It’s quite a strong difference with the world we had two years ago where OpenAI was leading ahead of everyone else,” said Thomas Wolf, co-founder and chief science officer of open-source start-up Hugging Face. “It’s a new world.”

Even before the launch of Gemini 3, OpenAI’s chief Sam Altman told staff in a memo last month that the company would “need to stay focused through short-term competitive pressure . . . expect the vibes out there to be rough for a bit”. The memo was first reported by The Information.

A year ago many had written off Google’s flailing efforts to narrow OpenAI’s colossal lead. Fears that its cash-cow search engine would be cannibalised by ChatGPT and other new AI powered search apps such as Perplexity left parent company Alphabet’s stock price lagging far behind its Big Tech rivals in the AI-driven rally through 2023 and 2024.

But Google’s turnaround began earlier this year, after a confident slate of updates at its IO developer conference in May and the viral popularity of its Nano Banana AI photo-editing tool this summer. This helped boost monthly users of the Gemini mobile app to 650mn, up from about 400mn in May.


The developments have seen Alphabet’s shares surge in recent months, with its market capitalisation now approaching $4tn for the first time, amid confidence on Wall Street that Google can combine its dominant positions in search, cloud infrastructure and smartphones to serve new AI capabilities to billions of existing users.

Koray Kavukcuoglu, Google’s AI architect and DeepMind’s chief technology officer, told the Financial Times that the Big Tech group had “pushed our performance quite significantly” by training its AI models using Google’s own bespoke chips.

“Being able to connect with consumers, customers, companies, at that scale is really something that we can do because of that full stack integrated approach that we have,” he added.

That “full stack” includes its custom tensor processing unit chips, which allowed Google to train Gemini 3 without needing to rely on the costly Nvidia chips that most of the AI industry uses. “I think we have a unique approach there,” said Kavukcuoglu.

Google “always had these muscles to flex”, said Michael Nathanson, co-founder and analyst at MoffettNathanson, an equity research firm, adding that the IO event showed that “they really managed to find their product footing”.

“The pressure has definitely flipped to Sam Altman and his ability to monetise and keep all the plates spinning,” said Nathanson.

AI researchers and users have been quick to praise Google’s advancements. The model outperformed GPT-5 on several key benchmarks.

Marc Benioff, Salesforce chief executive, said in a post on X: “Holy shit. I’ve used ChatGPT every day for 3 years. Just spent 2 hours on Gemini 3. I’m not going back. The leap is insane . . . It feels like the world just changed, again.”


Publicly, OpenAI has welcomed the competition. “We’re always excited to see progress in the field — competition pushes the whole ecosystem forward,” said Mark Chen, OpenAI’s chief research officer.

“Our models continue to set the standard in performance, reliability, and real-world usefulness, and we will continue to release even more capable models,” he added.

But internally employees are feeling pressure to compete on multiple fronts with deep-pocketed rivals with tens of billions of dollars to throw at building AI. “The arc of any fast-growing start-up is not just going to be up and the right,” said one person close to the company.

Some experts say OpenAI has overextended itself in its pursuit of scale at all costs. The group has spent the past year pushing out new products at a breakneck pace, from automated computer programming tools to its viral video app Sora.

“OpenAI is getting spread too thin. It’s impossible for them to do it all well,” said a partner at a Silicon Valley venture capital firm that has backed several AI model developers but not OpenAI.

The San Francisco-based company has pledged to spend $1.4tn over the next eight years on computing power, striking huge deals with Nvidia, Oracle, AMD and Broadcom. That is orders of magnitude more than OpenAI’s current sales, requiring its partners to use debt to finance the build-out.

“That’s a really, really tremendously risky bet for any company to make,” said Sarah Myers West, co-executive director of the AI Now Institute, a non-profit.

OpenAI’s biggest challenge is finding a big enough revenue stream to sustain that extraordinary investment.

The company believes it can attract hundreds of millions of paying subscribers to ChatGPT in the coming years. But its near-term plan to spin up more revenue from advertising, something Altman has hinted it will explore with Sora, will take it into a market already saturated by big players such as Meta and Alphabet.

ChatGPT has yet to dent Google’s strong lead in the ad market, and the start-up is only just starting to integrate ads and shopping features into its chatbot.

Meanwhile Anthropic, which was founded in 2021 by former OpenAI staffers and is currently raising a new round that is expected to value the company at more than $300bn, has built a large and fast-growing enterprise business.

Anthropic’s Claude chatbot has been overshadowed by the massive consumer hit of ChatGPT. But its long-standing focus on AI safety has helped Anthropic create a more reliable tool for corporate customers, its backers argue, and its coding tools are widely seen as best-in-class.


With more than 800mn weekly users, OpenAI still has a hugely dominant market share in overall chatbot usage but people are now spending more time chatting with Gemini than ChatGPT, according to data from web analytics company Similarweb.

The launch of Gemini 3 pushed Google’s AI app higher in the US and UK iPhone app store rankings. Still, ChatGPT has held on as the top AI app, according to Sensor Tower, which tracks mobile usage.

Erik Brynjolfsson, author and professor at the Stanford Institute for Human-Centered AI, said that it was too soon to count OpenAI out, with its vast array of new applications a good way to find new revenue sources that will fund its core research capabilities.

“All these companies have a surplus of very profitable opportunities all around them,” he said. “There’s room for multiple companies to do extremely well because the opportunity is so large.”

>>> Investor Synthesis Note: DroneShield Limited (ASX: DRO)Date: November 30, 2

Investor Synthesis Note: DroneShield Limited (ASX: DRO)

Date: November 30, 2025
Ticker: DRO (ASX)
Sector: Counter-Unmanned Aerial Systems (C-UAS) / Defense Technology1
Conversion Rate: A$1.00 $\approx$ US$0.64


I. Executive Summary: Governance Risk Creates M&A Opportunity

The November 2025 events—marked by executive share sell-offs and operational missteps—have created a significant governance gap at DroneShield, causing a sharp devaluation. This volatility, however, presents a strategic M&A entry point for large defense primes seeking to acquire a pure-play, market-leading C-UAS company at a steep discount. The underlying business fundamentals, driven by urgent global and Asia-Pacific demand, remain robust.


II. The Governance Crisis & Valuation Reset

The executive departures and disclosure errors have created a governance risk that has repriced the company.
Event Impact on Investor Confidence Magnitude (USD)
Executive Share Sale Crisis of Confidence: CEO & Chairman sold entire holdings. ~$45 Million ($\text{A\$70M}$)
Contract Error Transparency Issue: Mistakenly announced a "new" contract. ~$4.9 Million ($\text{A\$7.6M}$)
Market Cap Plunge Valuation Reset: Wiped out two-thirds of value from peak. >$2.0 Billion ($>\text{A\$3.1B}$)
Key Takeaway: Any strategic buyer will require heightened due diligence ("no cooked books") to validate the $1.63 Billion ($\text{A\$2.55 Billion}$) sales pipeline and ensure forward guidance is accurate.


III. Growth Driver Spotlight: Asia-Pacific (APAC) Exposure

DroneShield’s Australian base and deep integration with allied nations in the APAC region provide a critical, high-growth revenue channel, reducing reliance solely on North America and Europe.
  • Massive APAC Contract: In April 2025, DroneShield announced a package of five contracts totaling $20.6 Million (2$\text{A\$32.2 Million}$) from a sophisticated Asia-Pacific military customer and close ally of Australia.3 This was a repeat order and demonstrated the customer's move from small trials to a large-scale rollout of both vehicle-mounted and fixed C-UxS systems.


  • Australian Sovereign Capability: The company's products, like the RfPatrol Mk2, are manufactured with an 85% Australian supply chain and are being deployed through the Australian government's Land 156 program for the Australian Defence Force.4 This "sovereign capability" is highly prized by regional allies.

  • Regional Geopolitical Tensions: The APAC region is projected to exhibit the fastest CAGR in the global anti-drone market due to rising defense modernization and escalating geopolitical tensions.6 This confirms that the company is ideally positioned to capitalize on sustained regional defense spending.


IV. Financial & M&A Outlook

The core C-UAS sector presents a "highway of growth," with the global C-UAS market forecast to reach $12 - $15 Billion by 2033.
  • Urgent Civilian Orders: Incidents at European airports and critical infrastructure sites drive quick, high-margin orders, while the larger, complex anti-missile shield systems (like those Taiwan is modeling on Israel’s Iron Dome) are multi-year deployments that still require immediate C-UAS technology as a foundational layer.
  • M&A Logic: The current ~$1.15 Billion ($\text{A\$1.8 Billion}$) market cap is a significant discount from its $3.2 Billion peak. A large defense prime seeking to gain immediate, market-dominant exposure to the booming APAC and C-UAS sectors can now acquire the company's patented AI technology and established customer base at an opportunistic valuation.

Recommendation: The governance vacuum is a short-term risk, but the intrinsic value of the technology and the APAC growth opportunity make DroneShield a highly compelling, time-sensitive M&A target.


breakdown of the information regarding technology, accounts, and the legal/suing risk:

1. Technology Issues

There is no widespread evidence or confirmed reports of fundamental technology failure in their deployed systems. On the contrary:
  • Market Confidence: DroneShield's systems, which use AI-driven RF sensing and electronic warfare, have been utilized by militaries globally, including in the Ukraine conflict.1 The fact that the company continues to win repeat orders from major customers (including the large Asia-Pacific military customer) strongly suggests that their technology is effective and meets operational needs.

  • Evolving Threat: The main technological risk mentioned is the constant evolution of drone threats.3 One specific report noted concerns that the company's radio-frequency jamming systems might struggle against newer fibre-optic-guided drones being deployed on the battlefield.4 However, DroneShield management has countered this by citing experts who describe these fibre-optic drones as "sluggish and rarely used."

  • Conclusion on Tech: The company is seen by analysts as having a competitive and in-demand product portfolio.6 The technology risk is the inherent R&D cost required to stay ahead in a rapidly evolving threat environment, not a current failure of existing deployed systems.


2. Account and Financial Issues

The primary issue is one of disclosure and control, not evidence of "cooked books" on the scale of a full accounting scandal (like the one unfolding at Corporate Travel Management, which involves massive restatements).
  • Contract Error: The key financial error was announcing a 8$4.9 million ($\text{A$7.6 million}$) contract as "new" when it was actually a revised or reissued order due to an administrative change on the customer's side.9 The company quickly retracted this, but the damage to confidence was done.


  • ASX Scrutiny: The company has been sent a long, detailed letter from the ASX (Australian Securities Exchange) compliance team asking questions about the massive share sales and the contract error.


  • Remedial Action: In response, DroneShield has announced significant actions to improve governance:


    • They are rolling out new ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) and CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software in early 2026 to automate and strengthen order processing and reduce manual errors.


    • They have engaged external auditors and advisers to conduct an independent review of their disclosure and financial control processes.


    • They plan to increase their contract disclosure threshold from 14$\text{A\$5 million}$ to 15$\text{A\$20 million}$ from 2026 to focus investor attention on only the most material contracts.


  • Conclusion on Accounts: The issue is a severe governance failure and disclosure mistake, leading to doubts about the reliability of their order-to-revenue tracking. There are no public reports confirming an ongoing investigation into accounting fraud or massive revenue restatements by a regulatory body like ASIC (Australian Securities and Investments Commission).

3. Are the Managers Going to Be Sued?

While no formal class-action lawsuit or regulatory charges have been publicly announced, the risk is significantly elevated following these events:
  • Regulatory Scrutiny: The ASX's deep scrutiny of the share sales and the retracted contract is a precursor to potential regulatory action. The proximity of the retracted contract announcement to the share sales creates a challenging optics issue, even if the sales followed official trading rules.


  • Lawsuit Risk (Class Action): Whenever a stock experiences a massive, rapid decline following a governance crisis, the risk of a shareholder class-action lawsuit against the directors for breaching continuous disclosure obligations or misleading the market becomes high. The goal of such a suit would be to recover investor losses tied to the stock plunge.
  • CEO Absence: CEO Oleg Vornik's decision to not attend scheduled events following the crisis further fueled concerns and provided a poor image of leadership handling the situation.

Current Status: As of now, the managers have not been charged or formally sued in connection with the share sales or disclosure errors. However, given the scale of the share sales ($\sim \$45$ Million) and the resulting market plunge, legal action remains a material risk until the independent governance review is complete and the regulatory bodies (ASX/ASIC) conclude their inquiries.

1. 🔍 Status of the ASX Inquiry

  • Ongoing Scrutiny: The Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) initiated a "Price Query Letter" and subsequently an "ASX Aware Letter" in mid-November 2025. This is a formal process where the ASX demands detailed explanations from the company regarding significant changes in price, disclosure compliance, and trading activity (specifically the director share sales).


  • Company's Response: DroneShield has provided detailed responses, stating they believe they have fully complied with their disclosure obligations. They assert they were only notified of the share disposals after the market closed on November 12, 2025, and that the directors followed the approval process under the company's trading policy.


  • No Public Timeline: The ASX does not typically announce a conclusion date for these compliance reviews. The process is one of back-and-forth communication until the ASX is satisfied or decides to take further action (which could involve a referral to ASIC, issuing a formal reprimand, or imposing conditions).
  • Likely Duration: Given the complexity of the massive share sales, the retracted contract, and the associated governance review, the ASX's oversight is likely to remain a shadow over the company for several more weeks, if not months.

2. Risk of ASIC/Legal Action (Suing)

  • No Public ASIC Investigation: There is no public information confirming that the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC) has launched a formal investigation into the directors for insider trading or accounting fraud. However, ASIC is the body responsible for corporate law enforcement and can investigate matters referred by the ASX or those involving continuous disclosure breaches.
  • High Lawsuit Risk: As noted previously, the risk of a shareholder class-action lawsuit is high. The rapid disposal of all fully-paid shares by key executives, in close proximity to a confusing contract announcement, is exactly the kind of event that triggers shareholder loss claims.

3. The Technology and Accounts

  • Technology is Sound: The consensus remains that the company's core technology is effective and in high demand (supported by repeat large orders globally). The operational success of the technology is not the issue.
  • Accounts are Under Review: The issue is a governance and disclosure failure, not a confirmed case of "cooked books." The company's announced move to new ERP/CRM software and an independent review of disclosure policies is a direct attempt to reassure the market and the ASX that their financial controls will be tightened.


The key uncertainty for investors right now is the delay in restoring governance confidence, which will persist until the ASX inquiry fades and the independent review results are released.