If you spent last week watching earnings, you saw the headline numbers.
We were watching something underneath them.
Because every record print raises a question that never shows up on an income statement: who actually owns the asset, and who has to run it once the deal is done.
That gap is where private markets still pay you for being right.
This week we curated three companies that live inside it.
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🚀 BlackRock takes 80% of Meta’s 1 GW El Paso data center.
💰 Moonshot AI raises $3.5B at a $35B valuation.
🔁 Whatnot in talks at roughly $20B, near double its last round.
📈 Index Ventures raises $2B after the Wiz payout, with $3.5B now deployable.
🏛️ A divided Fed holds and refuses to signal a path. Michael Burry warns of a volatility-driven “bloody mess.”
Buying and Operating Established Cash Flowing Businesses in the Southeast
Dan Trenary spent close to 30 years in technology and service management. His wife, Becky Trenary, joined ServiceNow among its first few hundred employees and watched it reach nearly 30,000. They built EmpowerTN together.
The firm acquires established operating businesses along with their facilities, equipment, and teams, across automotive services, food and beverage manufacturing, and construction materials. Long operating histories, recurring demand, and in some cases institutional and government relationships that support revenue visibility.
Letters of intent in place on more than one current acquisition
Target businesses carry strong historical cash flow, supporting SBA underwriting
Explicit mission to create local jobs and support underserved communities
Company LinkedIn | Schedule an Intro Call
The Agentic Execution Layer for Business Operations
Most AI stops at chat, search, and summaries. The work still does not move.
Companies already bought the software. ERP, CRM, accounts payable, email, documents, banking, e-commerce. What they never bought is anything that moves work between those systems, so employees remain the middleware.
InfinixIQ connects them and deploys proprietary agents that learn the process, route approvals, execute the task, update the source system, and measure the result. Founder and CEO Greg Cucino is on his fifth company, with four prior exits across AI, manufacturing, and B2B services to strategic acquirers, IPO, and private equity.
Commercialized with paying clients and a building pipeline
Sits across systems of record rather than replacing them
Deterministic execution, not summarization
Buyer sits with CFOs and operators, where automation budget already exists
Company LinkedIn | Schedule an Intro Call
The Solution for Wireless Dead Zones
Every wireless technology in use depends on open air or open water. That leaves the environments defense and autonomy care about most with no connectivity at all.
Saltenna’s PLASMONIX transmits along the boundary between two materials, water and air, metal and soil, rock and concrete, instead of through open air. Long range, high bandwidth links underwater, underground, inside metal hulls, and in GPS-denied sites.
Founded in 2017 by physicist Dr. Igor Smolyaninov, and run by Dendy Young (CEO), the company spent years proving the physics through defense-funded programs rather than lab demonstrations. The Air Force, Army, Navy and US Special Operations Command are all customers.
$9M+ in non-dilutive US Department of Defense contracts
US Army SBIR Phase I award and EAR designation, opening NATO and allied sales
5 km of transmission in salt water, live 1080p video underwater
Through-hull transmission across three decks of a US Navy vessel, and signal through 21 feet of limestone
6 granted patents, with more than 50 in the pipeline
Company LinkedIn | Schedule an Intro Call
EmpowerTN → ownership where an operator is retiring
InfinixIQ → execution where systems never talked
Saltenna → connectivity where communications was assumed impossible
The common thread is not the technology.
It’s who carries the execution risk once the deal closes.
Capital tends to reward the party willing to own that, and to reward them for longer than expected.
Founder stories drop Friday.
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Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational purposes only and does not constitute investment advice or an offer to buy or sell securities. Private investments carry risk, are illiquid, and are intended for accredited investors only. Investments involve the potential loss of principal. Returns, quarterly distributions, and IRRs are estimates and not guaranteed. Past performance is not indicative of future results. Always perform your own due diligence before making any investment decisions.
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