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PE giants arm Claude to take on McKinsey. Hello and welcome to Alts Cafe. A curated pour of the week's most important alt investing stories, customized and brewed to your liking. Table of Contents Highlights. * Startups & VC: 28 new unicorns arrive in April, 26 of them AI. AI startups raised $255 billion in Q1 alone, topping all of 2025. * Real Estate: Dubai hotel occupancy is projected to fall to 10% in Q2 from 80% pre-war, as Brookfield and Alshaya launch a 480,000 square foot Dubai project, betting against Iran war risk-off * Private Equity & Private Credit: Anthropic forms a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman, Apollo, Sequoia, and GIC to go after McKinsey * Crypto: BlackRock readies two tokenized money-market funds on Ethereum * International Investing: South Korea overtakes Canada as the world's seventh-largest equity market * Music & Film: Cannes opens with only 9% of competition films from the US * Artwork: NYC Spring Art Week opens with Sotheby's "The Now", Frieze, and TEFAF testing market depth * Sports: Amazon's $19.8 billion NBA deal kicks off the biggest content investment in company history * Collectibles, Culture and Luxury: An 1879 Coiled Hair Stella gold coin sells for $2.1 million, one of fourteen known * Prediction Markets: a16z notes crypto VC capital is rotating into prediction markets as the next vertical International Investing. Around the world... * 🇰🇷 South Korea overtakes Canada as the world's seventh-largest equity market on the AI memory boom * 🇨🇳 Trump heads to Beijing with AI chip exports on the table, Jensen Huang notably left off the trip * 🇳🇬 OPay targets a US listing at a $4 billion valuation * 🇲🇽 Mexico's MIP Real Assets eyes over $12 billion for renewable energy and highways Startups & VC. * 28 new unicorns arrive in April, 26 of them AI. AI startups raised $255 billion in Q1 alone, topping all of 2025. * Robinhood's public venture fund attracts 150,000 retail investors after disclosing OpenAI exposure * Cerebras lifts its IPO range to a $48.8 billion valuation, 20x oversubscribed * DeepSeek raises over $3 billion at up to a $50 billion valuation led by China's Big Fund * Ramp talks to raise $750 million at a $40 billion valuation, double its level six months ago * HawkEye 360 IPO pops 30% on day one as a bellwether for SpaceX * Suno raises another $250 million at a $5 billion valuation * Brazil's Enter becomes Latin America's first AI unicorn at $1.2 billion * Span partners with Nvidia to host $500,000 of GPUs in family homes, subsidizing utility bills * VC firms are hiring AI agent associates with backstories to replace junior analysts * Brain-computer interface startups have absorbed $3 billion since 2024 with Neuralink at just 21 trial patients Sports. * Amazon's $19.8 billion NBA deal kicks off the biggest content investment in company history * Bruin Capital takes a 15% stake in Matchroom at over £1 billion Prediction Markets. Music & Film. * Cannes opens with only 9% of competition films from the US * Red Hot Chili Peppers sell their recorded catalog to Warner for $300 million, anchoring Warner-Bain's $1.2 billion iconic catalogs fund * Universal sells half of its Spotify stake for $1.4 billion, sharing proceeds with artists * SAG-AFTRA's tentative AMPTP deal sets the first contractual rules for AI synthetic performers * Five studios and Apple are bidding on EA's Battlefield film rights in the year's biggest IP war * Sphere Entertainment posts Q1 revenue up 38% on Wizard of Oz and residencies * The US Copyright Office hikes registration fees 43%, pricing out indie artists * Udio admits scraping YouTube audio to train its AI music model New film lending platform. Alts recently launched a platform for investing in film bridge loans:film.alts.co Want to invest in film bridge loans? These are serious institutional-grade opportunities. Demand is high, and you need to qualify before investing. 1) Step 1: Take its course and pass the quiz. 2) Step 2: Fill out a short Qualification Form. 3) Step 3: Alts'll confirm your accreditation status and send you an NDA to sign. Crypto. Collectibles, Culture and Luxury. * An 1879 Coiled Hair Stella gold coin sells for $2.1 million, one of fourteen known * Quincy Jones's Patek Philippe heads to Christie's Geneva at $1.8 million high estimate * Italy's Credem Bank keeps a "cheese cathedral" of Parmesan wheels as loan collateral, an unbroken record since 1953 * The US Mint debuts a Steve Jobs $1 coin in its American Innovation series Private Equity & Private Credit. * Anthropic forms a $1.5 billion joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman, Apollo, Sequoia, and GIC to embed engineers in PE portcos * Apollo's Torsten Slok says credit defaults are falling and no full credit cycle is in sight * BlackRock, Blue Owl, and Blackstone all cut software exposure in private credit funds as AI bites * The VC secondary market hits an annualized $112 billion, yet 81% of value sits in just 20 names * Carlyle structures an $8.5 billion credit package to seed its next flagship buyout fund and pay old LPs * ILPA brands continuation vehicles "conflict vehicles" as LP pushback intensifies * iCapital now controls roughly 80% of the RIA alts marketplace Anthropic's $1.5B joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman, Apollo, Sequoia and GIC. This is the week's most underrated story. The largest alternative asset managers on earth are no longer just buying AI exposure, they're building a captive consulting arm to deploy Claude engineers inside their portfolio companies. It quietly turns AI into a PE operating-value lever and signals that the next phase of value creation in private markets will be AI-driven workflow redesign, not financial engineering. Real Estate. * Dubai hotel occupancy is projected to fall to 10% in Q2 from 80% pre-war, as Brookfield and Alshaya launch a 480,000 square foot Dubai project, betting against Iran war risk-off * The Duke of Westminster offloads £700 million of US real estate, pivoting to indirect exposure * Detroit's Ford Building, once the city's tallest, opens at $2.5 million, down from $16 million in 2017 * Industrial leasing surges 28% year over year on AI driven data-center demand * Blackstone files a $1.75 billion data-center REIT IPO, with Brookfield's CSquare and DayOne also eyeing listings * Providence bans self-storage, grouping it with prisons and slaughterhouses The Franco policy still shaping Spanish real estate. You may have seen Alts has a new SPV investing in Valencia, Spain. Its co-founder Wyatt lives down the road in Jávea and had a great issue breaking down why Spanish property is so weird - and why that's actually the investment thesis. Spain's real estate market traces back not to market forces but to a war that ended 87 years ago. Franco's regime built Spain around homeownership as ideology - subsidizing developers who sold rather than rented, writing mortgages for working-class buyers, and ultimately producing a country where 74% of people own their home and public housing accounts for less than 2% of total stock. That policy created four persistent anomalies: an abnormally high homeownership rate, coastal premiums concentrated along the regions that resisted Franco hardest (Catalonia, Valencia, the Balearics), Benidorm's famous forest of high-rises (the result of a mayor who rode a Vespa to Madrid to get Franco's permission for bikinis), and one of Europe's worst squatter problems - a direct consequence of never building a functional rental sector in the first place. Build-to-Rent is gaining traction in Spain precisely because the rental infrastructure that should exist never was. Less than 2% public housing, minimal institutional landlords, and surging demand have created a structural gap widening since 2008. That's the macro tailwind behind its BTR project in La Malva-rosa - and it's not going away anytime soon. Artwork. * NYC Spring Art Week opens with Sotheby's "The Now", Frieze, and TEFAF testing market depth * The S.I. Newhouse collection heads to Christie's at a $1 billion estimate, potentially the largest single-owner sale ever * Akira Ikezoe lands in both the Whitney Biennial and MoMA PS1, only the second artist to do so * The Venice Biennale jury resigns en masse as the EU pulls €2 million in funding Farmland. * Fresh tomato prices jump 40% year over year on Florida freezes and Mexico tariffs * Whey protein concentrate prices are up over 50% since January as the protein boom hits supply walls See you next time, Stefan Disclosures. * This issue was sponsored by Bonum Consilium. * This issue contains no affiliate links. Stefan von imhof. As the CEO of Alts, Stefan lives and breathes alternative asset analysis and valuations. His alternative investing newsletter has grown into Alts.co - the world's largest alt investing community, with over 200,000 investors. His favorite alternative investments are holiday rentals, cash-flowing websites, and especially his collection of 300 vinyl records. Originally from Boston and Santa Barbara, CA, he now lives with his wife in Australia.

Sage strengthens leadership bench with double executive hire. HR and finance software specialist Sage has announced a double leadership appointment, with Krish Vitaldevara joining the business as chief product officer (CPO) and Anand Swaminathan as chief strategy officer (CSO). As CPO, Vitaldevara will oversee the company's global product and platform strategy, innovation roadmap, and delivery as it continues to develop and grow its range of intelligent AI solutions. Meanwhile, Swaminathan will work closely with the rest of the executive leadership team to direct corporate strategy, growth priorities, as well as Sage's long-term value creation agenda. Vitaldevara will join the executive team on May 18, while Swaminathan will begin on June 15, with both based at the firm's office in San Jose, California. Latest Videos From "Krish and Anand are proven leaders with deep experience building and scaling world-class products and businesses," said Sage CEO Steve Hare in an announcement. "Their appointments reflect our continued investment in innovation and growth, and I'm excited about the impact they'll have for our customers, colleagues and partners" A seasoned industry leader, Vitaldevara brings more than 25 years' experience building and scaling AI-first platforms and products for large enterprises and holds more than 30 patents across distributed systems, trust and safety, as well as anomaly detection. He joins the business from Salesforce, where he served as general manager and executive vice president following the company's successful acquisition of Informatica, where he led the integration of products, people, and processes. He has also previously held general manager and senior leadership roles at NetApp, Google, and Microsoft. Commenting on his new role, Vitaldevara said he joins Sage at an important moment for the business as it looks to further strengthen its market position. "Sage has a unique purpose, a strong customer focus and culture, and a compelling opportunity to lead in intelligent, trusted solutions for small and medium-sized businesses," he explained. "I'm looking forward to working with the team to continue evolving the product portfolio and delivering meaningful impact for customers." Swaminathan joins Sage from McKinsey, where he served as a senior partner, advising management teams and boards across industries on AI transformation, technology-enabled growth, and enterprise transformation. Prior to that, he held senior roles within Accenture Digital, where he helped scale the company's global operations and supported growth across strategy, data, AI, cloud, and digital product development. "Sage has a clear strategy and a powerful position in the market," said Swaminathan. "I'm thrilled to join the business and to help shape the next phase of growth, building on Sage's strengths and ensuring we continue to create long-term value for customers, colleagues and shareholders." Follow ITPro on Google News and add The Living Vision as a preferred source to keep tabs on all its latest news, analysis, views, and reviews. You can also follow ITPro on LinkedIn, X, Facebook, and BlueSky.

Penn State plans universitywide operational review, as academic review leads to ending some majors. Published April 21, 2026 at 12:23 PM EDT Penn State has hired the consulting firm McKinsey & Company as part of a sweeping review of operational and academic functions that the university says will allow it to capitalize on areas for growth and identify places for improvement. The announcement comes just as the university made recommendations for ending some undergraduate majors following a lengthy review of its academic degree programs. In an announcement about the internal review, the university says the assessment is "designed to identify opportunity areas that will drive the University's strategic choices over the next 12 to 36 months, including high-impact areas for growth and investment, and ways to position Penn State more distinctly among leading public universities." The analysis by McKinsey & Company Education Practice is expected to take about three months, according to a university spokesman. The university declined to say how much they're paying McKinsey. A spokesman said in an email: "Information will be reflected in the university's standard financial reporting at the appropriate time." According to the announcement, the review will include academic areas such as "online learning, enrollment and admissions, student retention and completion, faculty, tuition pricing, research, and career success." It will look at business areas including advancement, facilities, marketing, real estate and financial management. The university expects online learning through its World Campus to be one of the areas for growth. "This assessment is going to help us identify where Penn State can invest more boldly, differentiate more clearly, and deliver even greater value to our students and to the commonwealth," Penn State President Neeli Bendapudi said in the announcement. "Higher education is changing rapidly, and that change creates real opportunity for institutions that are willing to be clear-eyed about their strengths and deliberate about their choices. We are one of those institutions, and this is our moment to showcase Penn State's extraordinary ability to innovate." Penn State is already doing a universitywide review of its undergraduate degree programs that it says will help it better serve students. Preliminary recommendations from the Academic Program and Portfolio Review are to close 49 of the university's 403 programs, with reasons including low student demand and changes in job opportunities. About half of the programs would be offered through another college, according to the announcement. The university spokesman said in an email that the administration is collecting community feedback through mid-May. That will be followed by meetings with colleges and campuses before final decisions are made in the fall. The initiatives are among the significant changes being made by the university, including closing seven campuses and transferring WPSU to WHYY. Penn State leaders have pointed to fewer college-aged students nationwide, flat state funding and rising costs as reasons for needing to be more focused on students' needs and university priorities.