TongesyShort notes on the companies I've invested in, two a day, each from a different angle. Written by an AI model from share prices, the companies' posts on X and the week's news, so check the sources.
On the map
Sydney's Pearler closed a $16 million Series A in September. The round was led by existing investor Portage, which also led the company's $7.8 million Seed raise four years ago. Pearler now has more than 110,000 active customers and more than $3.5 billion in holdings across shares, super and first home deposits, 86% of it in ETFs. The platform lets Australians split money between ASX and US shares.
People
Molly Abraham took over as Coinbase's general counsel after Paul Grewal's exit, having previously led the company's corporate, commercial, and product legal teams. She is now hiring a dedicated engineer inside the law department to rework how the team works with AI tools. Her promotion lands at an uncertain time for Coinbase, which faces litigation over prediction markets and has cut 14% of staff.
What could go wrong
CleanSpark's big bet on converting mining sites into AI data centres leans heavily on Texas, where it holds exclusivity over up to 885MW with one tenant. Governor Abbott ordered an audit of data centre grid connections in August, and CEO Matt Schultz told the Q3 earnings call the honest answer on what follows is "we don't know." The stock is now down 50% from its 52-week high.
Since this note:CleanSpark −7.7%(S&P 500 −0.5%)
Coming up
Apple is set to unveil a long-awaited smart home hub with a screen, a new HomePod mini and an updated Apple TV 4K on 13 October, all built around Siri AI. It follows last month's iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo launch and opens a new product category for Apple rather than just refreshing an existing one. Apple reports Q4 earnings three weeks later, on 2 November.
Since this note:Apple +1.1%(S&P 500 −0.5%)
Heard on X
Twilio posted a quick celebration on X after S&P Dow Jones Indices added the stock to the S&P 500 before trading opened on 6 October, taking the spot vacated by Warner Bros Discovery as its Paramount Skydance takeover nears completion. The move also shifts Twilio out of the S&P MidCap 400, where FormFactor steps into its old slot. Being in the flagship index means funds that track it are required to hold the stock, a mechanical source of demand rather than a verdict on the business.
Since this note:Twilio −1.7%(S&P 500 −0.7%)
Startup watch
Everlab has appointed Outside In to build its brand platform and run its first major campaign, after a competitive pitch, with the work landing this October. The campaign is meant to introduce the preventative health company to a wider Australian audience as it prepares for growth overseas. Everlab currently has members in Australia and New Zealand, with a UK launch still planned following its earlier Series A raise.
Big & small
Adelaide, a US attention-measurement platform, just licensed real human eye-tracking data from Amplified to rate ads on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, inventory it previously could only model. Amplified, built in Adelaide, South Australia, has always sold measured attention rather than predicted attention. The result: a small Australian startup now supplies the data behind how a bigger rival scores ads running on Alphabet's YouTube.
Since this note:Alphabet +0.5%(S&P 500 −0.1%)
By the numbers
Intel, the oldest company on this list, was founded in 1968. Flyweel, a Brisbane ad-spend fintech, was founded in 2025. That's a 57-year gap between the oldest and newest holdings, sitting inside a portfolio of roughly 36 private companies and 28 public ones. The spread runs from half-century-old chipmakers to startups barely a year old.
Since this note:Intel −7.8%(S&P 500 −0.1%)
Then & now
Twilio's IPO was priced at $15 a share in June 2016 and closed its first day at $28.79. Ten years on, CEO Khozema Shipchandler marked the NYSE anniversary this June by thanking the company's 5,500 employees and alumni and framing Twilio as infrastructure for AI-powered businesses. The stock now trades near $295, roughly 20 times that IPO price.
Since this note:Twilio −6.4%(S&P 500 +0.6%)
Big mover
BYD's US-listed shares have fallen 14.1% over the past month and are down more than a third from their 52-week high. JPMorgan cut its price target by 29%, from HK$124 to HK$88, on 30 September. The move followed BYD's first-half result, where revenue fell 7.1% year on year and net profit dropped 20.5% as domestic price competition bites.
Since this note:BYD −0.6%(S&P 500 +0.6%)
Connections
ASML is the only maker of the EUV machines both Intel and TSMC need for their most advanced chips, and the two customers are now moving at very different speeds. Intel and ASML have processed more than one million wafers using High NA EUV, including production layers for Intel's Panther Lake chips. TSMC won't deploy the same tool until 2030, a four year gap that hands Intel rare bragging rights in a foundry race it has mostly been losing.
Since this note:ASML −5.2%Intel −10.3%TSMC −3.1%(S&P 500 +0.6%)
Theme
Gartner expects global NAND flash revenue to surge 372 percent in 2026 on tight supply and AI data centre demand, with another 30 percent price rise pencilled in for 2027. Sandisk, which holds around 11 percent of the NAND market, posted fiscal 2026 revenue up 175 percent to $20.25bn on the back of it. Micron sells into the same crunch, though its mix leans more to DRAM and high bandwidth memory than Sandisk's NAND-heavy lineup.
Since this note:Sandisk −6.4%Micron −3.6%(S&P 500 +0.6%)
On the map
The RBA's official rate fell from 0.6977 to 0.6933 US dollars between 30 September and 2 October. That matters for Australian holdings like AutoGrab and Flyweel, whose cloud bills from Amazon and Microsoft are priced in US dollars while their revenue sits in Aussie ones. A softer dollar also means the US-heavy public basket is worth more back home, even before any share price moves.
Since this note:Amazon +1.0%Microsoft +1.0%(S&P 500 +0.6%)
People
Thomas Seifert, Cloudflare's chief financial officer since 2017, joined the board of AI data centre company Crusoe on 17 September, alongside Tesla and Redwood Materials founder JB Straubel. Seifert keeps his day job running Cloudflare's finances, but the move puts him on the board of a firm building the physical AI infrastructure that companies like Cloudflare increasingly rent and compete with.
Since this note:Cloudflare −2.1%Tesla +1.2%(S&P 500 +0.6%)
Coming up
TSMC reports third-quarter earnings on 15 October, Taiwan time, having guided revenue to $44.6bn-$45.8bn and flagged pressure on margins. That guidance reflects temporary pressure from 2-nanometer technology ramp-up costs, even as AI-driven orders keep volumes climbing. The call is the first real test of whether advanced-node demand from Nvidia, AMD and Apple is still outrunning TSMC's capacity to build it.
Since this note:TSMC −0.3%Nvidia −0.2%AMD +0.8%(S&P 500 +1.3%)
What could go wrong
Michael Burry replaced his Micron short with put options expiring June 2027 with strike prices in the $500 range, telling subscribers he is "moving timelines up" on an AI bubble call. That is a bet the stock roughly halves within nine months. Citi, by contrast, lifted its Micron target from $1,150 to $1,300 on 23 September citing tight DRAM supply, right after Micron posted record fiscal Q4 revenue of $54.2bn.
Since this note:Micron −5.6%(S&P 500 +1.3%)
Startup watch
Havas Play, Havas's culture-first agency network for sport, entertainment and gaming, has named Sydney's iion its exclusive technology partner for playable and mini-game ad builds across ANZ and APAC. The deal wires iion's Playable Creator Studio into Havas Play's operations, letting teams turn concepts into working interactive previews in days rather than weeks. Clients in retail, FMCG and beauty are already lined up to trial the format.
Heard on X
Salesforce announced on X it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Listen Labs, an AI customer research and human simulation platform used by Microsoft, Anthropic and Sweetgreen. Reports put the price near $2 billion, after Listen Labs walked away from a signed $125 million Series C term sheet valuing it at $1.5 billion. The deal pairs Listen Labs' AI interviews and 50 million person panel with Salesforce's existing customer data, aimed at giving Agentforce a better read on what customers actually want.
Since this note:Salesforce −0.8%(S&P 500 +1.5%)
By the numbers
11 of the 28 public names in the portfolio list are more than 20% below their 52-week high, including Broadcom, down 26%, and Tesla, down 28%. That's over a third of the public book still deep in drawdown, even as the equal-weight basket of holdings is up 66.8% over the past year. Big aggregate gains can sit on top of plenty of individual pain.
Since this note:Broadcom +1.4%Tesla +6.3%(S&P 500 +1.2%)
Big & small
SpaceX's Starship reached orbit for the first time on 28 September, a milestone even though the mission was cut short after an engine failure, and it placed 26 upgraded Starlink satellites in orbit along the way. Canberra's Zendir works the other end of the same problem, building digital twins that let engineers model a spacecraft's systems and failure modes before any hardware is built. One proves itself by flying, the other by simulating everything that could go wrong first.
Since this note:SpaceX +7.6%(S&P 500 +1.2%)
Big mover
IREN shares are down 45.4% from their 52-week high and slid another 11.7% this week. The FY26 results on 27 August showed revenue up 41% to $707 million but a $684 million net loss and a warning of $25-30 billion in 2027 capex. Analysts at Redburn then started the neocloud group at Neutral, dragging IREN down with CoreWeave and Nebius even as JPMorgan raised its own target to $65.
Since this note:IREN −14.4%(S&P 500 +1.1%)
Then & now
On 15 September 2008, at the height of the financial crisis, Bank of America agreed to buy Merrill Lynch for about $50 billion in stock, ending 94 years of Merrill's independence. Eighteen years on, Merrill Wealth Management alone reported $4.1 trillion in client balances in the second quarter of 2026, with wealth and investment management net income up sharply on the year.
Since this note:Bank of America −3.4%(S&P 500 +1.1%)
Connections
Xanadu and AMD this month released Backline, an open platform co-designed by the two companies for rapid communication between quantum and classical computing hardware. It targets end-to-end loop times under 3 microseconds between Xanadu's photonic processors and AMD's EPYC and Threadripper CPUs, Instinct GPUs and Versal FPGAs. For AMD it's a low-cost way into quantum-adjacent infrastructure; for Xanadu it ties its PennyLane software to chips already sitting in data centres.
Since this note:Xanadu −17.3%AMD −1.6%(S&P 500 +0.3%)
Theme
From 21 September, Shopify started enabling Shop Pay checkout for AI shopping agents by default across eligible US merchants, letting tools like Google's AI Mode buy without a manual integration. Amazon is going the other way: it has blocked OpenAI's shopping crawlers from indexing its listings and sued Perplexity's shopping agent over unauthorised purchases. Two of the biggest commerce platforms in the portfolio are now running opposite bets on how much buying power to hand to AI agents.
Since this note:Shopify +15.7%Amazon +1.8%(S&P 500 +0.3%)
No notes match those filters yet.
Notes are written by an AI model (anthropic/claude-sonnet-5) with web search, and can be wrong. Nothing here is financial advice.
Noosa Heads, Australia
Pearler
Coinbase
CleanSpark
Apple
Twilio
Everlab
Amplified
Alphabet
Intel
Flyweel
BYD
ASML
TSMC
Sandisk
Micron
AutoGrab
Amazon
Microsoft
Cloudflare
Tesla
Nvidia
AMD
iion
Salesforce
Broadcom
SpaceX
Zendir
IREN
Bank of America
Xanadu
Shopify