Happy Friday.
The current thing in tech and business is Bernie Sanders releasing a video of himself talking to Claude.
Today’s lineupMenswear Enthusiast R.F. Kenmore at 12:00 PM
Arc Boats Co-Founder and CEO Mitch Lee at 12:20 PM
Lightspeed Venture Partners Partner Bucky Moore at 12:30 PM
Reddit Co-Founder and CEO Steve Huffman at 1:00 PM
Bezel Co-Founder and CEO Quaid Walker at 1:30 PM
Bilt Founder and CEO Ankur Jain at 1:45 PM
5 Companies Bezos Could Buy With His $100B Megafund
Image: Alamy$100B for a new megafund instantly makes you think SoftBank. Like most investment funds, SoftBank has some huge winners and a few black eyes. Masa is high vol. He’s been the world’s richest man (briefly during the dot-com boom) and he’s also held the crown for “the man who lost the most money in human history” after losing $76B in two years.
I like the idea of an American SoftBank, especially one focused on revitalizing American manufacturing. There are a million reasons why this is an important project (job creation, economic independence, national security, etc.), and Jeff Bezos seems like a great operator to take the reins and actually deliver here. Like Masa, he’s been through the ups and downs of the dot-com boom and bust cycle (he lost ~85% of his net worth in two years), but he not only kept Amazon alive, he also kept Blue Origin (founded in 2000) alive and has never given up on a project that felt far behind SpaceX for its entire existence.
What makes Bezos uniquely equipped to take on this type of project is the nature of his business over the last few decades. He’s never really had the zero marginal-cost luxuries afforded to other pure-play internet magnates. Amazon has always interfaced with the physical world and had to focus on operational efficiencies to scale. In 2012, Amazon bought Kiva Systems, which turned into Amazon Robotics and the more than one million robots that are deployed across the operations network. Fulfillment centers, warehouse automation, inventory flow, last-mile delivery and more all require tight integration between hardware and software to run smoothly. Bezos clearly loves this stuff and you can see it on his face whenever he gives a tour of an Amazon warehouse or Blue Origin facility.
So what should he buy? There aren’t many clues yet, just that the fund will be focused on buying manufacturing companies, but let’s review some options that he could potentially put on his shopping list.
Lear - They manufacture seats and electronic systems for the automotive industry. $23.3B in 2025 revenue. Market cap is around $5.4B. The business is operationally complex and AI can be applied across plant scheduling, supplier forecasting, visual inspections, and more.
BorgWarner - Similarly scaled auto supplier. $14.3B in 2025 revenue with a market cap of $9.5B. More focused on propulsion and power-related systems, but opportunities to grow into more industrial power applications. They already sell turbine generator systems for data centers.
Hexcel - Leading producer of carbon fiber reinforcements and resin systems for aerospace. Guiding to ~$2B in revenue for 2026, market cap is $5B.
Goodyear - Not only do you get blimps, which have to be important if you’re trying to go blimp for blimp with Sergei Brin, but it’s a classic AI-for-manufacturing case. Big plants, repeatable processes, critical quality control issues, opportunities for downtime optimization. 2025 revenue was $18.3B and market cap is currently $1.8B.
Rockwell Automation - On the bigger side, but sits right at the intersection of factory automation, software, and controls. The business is already dedicated to industrial automation so it’s less of a turnaround, but could be an important control point for pushing AI into thousands of factories. It’s expensive at $40B but potential in the budget.
This is all mostly a wild guess at this point, the fact that Bezos could potentially link to this Project Prometheus means there’s a chance this whole project will be much more aligned to the traditional software singularity path, and there’s always a chance we get an Elon-style megacorp with Blue Origin involved at some point. Either way, it’s a big move from an experienced operator with lots of opportunity ahead. Will be fun to follow along.
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