*as of 7/22; Sources: S&P, BTC, FTSE, DJRE, GOLD

The Wall Street bank Goldman Sachs created a new alternative investments platform for high-net-worth clients and family offices to acquire direct stakes in private companies. The platform is focusing on single-asset deals and secondary market trading, expanding upon its existing efforts to arrange direct private investments for its clients. Goldman is reportedly focusing on late-stage startups, particularly in the AI sector, both with model developers and infrastructure companies.

➨ TAKEAWAY: Goldman’s move is just another sign that the public and private markets are slowly merging together and that investor demand for private deals keeps growing. While this move is not directed at retail investors, other powerhouses such as Morgan Stanley and Charles Schwab bought retail-focused platforms EquityZen and Forge Global, respectively, earlier this year. Slowly, but surely, access to the Pre-IPO sector is opening up.

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The Space Economy Stops at Launch. Orbit2Orbit Doesn’t.

Billions go into getting payloads off the ground. Almost nothing exists to move them once they’re up there. Orbit2Orbit is building that layer: autonomous cargo vehicles that deploy, service, and transport payloads between orbital platforms. This isn’t a concept company. First mission flown, flight heritage achieved, manufacturing facility operational, commercial customers signed, and a qualified pipeline exceeding $10 million. A financing round is now open, with details available to interested investors. View the investor deck at orbit2orbit.space/investors or reach out at investors@orbit2orbit.space.

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In the newest episode of Smart Humans, Slava Rubin talks with Sacra’s Jan-Erik Asplund about the rapidly evolving field of quantum computing, its current state, future potential, and investment opportunities.

🚀 Biotech IPOs beating AI: While AI is getting all the headlines, biotech IPOs have averaged gains of 55% so far in 2026, far outpacing the 4.4% average return for all IPOs. It is also worth noting that the 10 biggest IPOs of the year have averaged a 6.3% loss. There are an additional six biotech companies that have filed for IPOs and could go public in the next month, led by Scribe Therapeutics.

🏡 Home prices tick up: Redfin’s Home Price Index, which is based on repeat sales, showed a 0.3% monthly gain for U.S. home prices, and a 3% increase year-over-year. The price growth was largely fueled by luxury home prices, which are increasing three times faster than the rest of the market.

🪙 Movement Labs bankruptcy: The blockchain developer filed for Chapter 11 after the price of its token fell 94% in the past year and 98% since its debut. The market cap of the token was once above $3 billion and is now effectively worthless, another example of extreme crypto volatility.

🤖 OpenAI models hack: In somewhat disturbing news, a combination of OpenAI models, including an unreleased one, escaped an isolated sandbox environment, connected to the internet, and hacked into developer platform Hugging Face. The model was attempting to cheat on an evaluation, which it did successfully, but if its aims were more nefarious, the end result could have been worse.

⚡ Data center growth: U.S. data centers are now forecast to quadruple their total electricity consumption over the next ten years, which would position them to account for twenty percent of the nation’s total electricity usage by 20. Nearly half of the energy expenditure will be devoted to AI, and the industry’s rapid growth is making cheap electricity generation a must-have going forward.

🎨 Gehry desk sale: A sixteen piece, seven ton glass desk nicknamed “Icehenge” created by architect Frank Gehry sold for $243,200, above expectations and a new record for any of his design objects sold at auction.

No more pencils, no more books, no more teachers, but there may be some dirty looks when you mention the cost of Alpha School, an AI-powered private school with no teachers and a $40,000 yearly price tag. Its reliance on AI is new, but the lack of teachers is not, as students formerly learned from online platforms. Now, students spend only two hours a day learning from Alpha’s AI-powered platform, with afternoons committed to workshops and projects, which are run by “guides” who sound an awful lot like teachers. Alpha opened its first school in 2014 in Austin, and is expanding its footprint to six states and forty schools by the end of the year. It is obviously very controversial, with prominent backers and detractors, and AI replacing teachers does start to sound a bit dystopian, though don’t be surprised if the trend continues.