Hi there, 

Here is this week in charts.

Uh oh. Chegg’s stock plunged this past Tuesday after the educational platform said that OpenAI’s ChatGPT was hurting new customer growth. Shares closed down nearly 50% following the earnings call statement by CEO Dan Rosensweig. The company isn’t sitting still though. This month, it plans to launch a beta version of CheggMate, a ChatGPT-powered chatbot that will use Chegg’s content library to help students with their homework. We previously discussed generative AI’s rising market influence here and dive into one of the space’s hottest sectors in this research brief.

Cruisin’ for a bruisin’. Cruise, General Motors’ robotaxi division, lost $561M on $30M in revenue in Q1’23. These results are fueling growing concerns around the viability of robotaxi companies, which have struggled to commercialize their solutions in the face of rising costs and regulatory uncertainty. Investors have poured more than $20B into the space, with 6 companies drawing $1B+ each, so there’s a great deal of venture funding to be lost if the road to commercialization remains blocked. We use CB Insights funding and valuation data to analyze the market for robotaxi companies in this research brief.

Aches and pains. In the latest episode of the recent banking crisis series, regulators seized and sold First Republic Bank to JP Morgan earlier this week. Together with Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank, the 3 banks collectively held $532B in assets. Notably, this amounts to more than the $526B (adjusted for inflation) held by the 25 banks that collapsed at the peak of the 2008 financial crisis. While the banking sector continues to suffer blows, challenger banks in the startup realm, like N26 and Revolut, are running into challenges of their own. We dive into valuation pressures and the future of challenger banks in this research brief.

Connected fitness hitting a wall. Lululemon is looking to sell MIRROR, its connected fitness hardware business. Activity among other fitness equipment players indicates this sale could be costly. Peloton’s current market cap of $3.3B is 59% below even its pre-Covid IPO valuation of $8.1B and connected strength training equipment startup Tonal saw its valuation drop 63% during a recent fundraising round. We use CB Insights revenue, valuation, and other data to determine how much Lululemon stands to lose and how it could potentially recoup its investment in this research brief.

Our top minds are creating decks & models. More than 40% of Harvard working seniors go into finance or consulting, up from 6% in 1971. The nonprofit and public service sectors, on the other hand, secure less than 4% of these Harvard grads. This largely reflects a fundamental shift in the outlook of college students. The importance of “being well-off financially” to college freshmen overtook the importance of “developing a meaningful life philosophy” in the late 70s and continued to climb in the years that followed. (Note: if you want to argue with me about the top minds/Harvard comment, please don’t bother. Yes, I know there are smart people all over and not just at Harvard. Thanks.)

What kind of art is this? TBH, it’s pretty — but it's a rubbish visualization.  

I love you. 

Anand

@asanwal

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