The Daily Dealflow

Who pays $12.5B for basketball?

Hi, and welcome to a new edition of The Daily Dealflow — the 5-minute briefing that gives you clear context on capital flows and market-moving trends across the Americas, from Silicon Valley's garages to Buenos Aires' cafés. Let's dive in.

🏆 Deal of the Day

Josh Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, and former Disney CEO Bob Iger have agreed to buy the Los Angeles Lakers for $12.5B — the highest price ever paid for a U.S. professional sports franchise — The Investor Society.

Why This? Marquee sports assets across the Americas are now priced like scarce infrastructure, and only a handful of buyers can still write the check.

Positive Context:

Secured media-rights revenue makes live sports one of the few content assets insulated from streaming fragmentation, which is exactly what a media operator like Iger is buying.
The repricing is broad, not a one-off: the Hornets sold at $3B in 2023, the Celtics at $6.1B in 2025, and the Seahawks set an NFL record at $9.612B earlier this year.

Yes, but:

Team revenue does not compound at the pace of sale prices; part of the $12.5B assumes real estate, global expansion and rights upside that may never arrive.
Approval is not automatic — the NBA Board of Governors must sign off, and Kushner must divest his Miami Heat stake first, a secondary transaction that could delay closing.

Zoom in: Kushner and Iger were chasing an NBA expansion franchise in Las Vegas before pivoting and approaching Mark Walter with the offer on a Sunday.

The comment: Kushner and Iger said they are "deeply honored for the opportunity to become stewards of the Los Angeles Lakers" in a joint statement to ESPN. theinvestorsociety

💰 Venture Capital

Thrive Holdings (US) – $2B, growth round at a $12B valuation, OpenAI-backed holding company that buys traditional service businesses and runs AI as the operating layer, with SoftBank, D1 Capital and Altimeter participating – Tech Startups.

Kesh (Brazil) – $110M (R$550M), equity plus financing for a proprietary FIDC backed by Grupo Leste, employee-credit platform that returns 100% of loan interest to borrowers as benefits – The Investor Society.

PointsKash (US) – $100M, strategic investment from Hawk Capital Investors, Scottsdale-based payments, loyalty-rewards and digital commerce platform – FinSMEs.

FAZ Cred (Brazil) – $14.8M (R$80M), receivables fund (FIDC) backed by asset manager Patrimonial, private payroll-deduction lender to healthcare and education workers, raised in 60 days – The Investor Society.

Cognition (US) – early talks at a $40B+ valuation, AI coding agent (Devin) reportedly nearing a $1B annualized revenue run rate – Tech Startups.

Reservoir (US) – $8M, Seed led by Asymmetric Capital Partners with Founder Collective and MCJ, AI-enabled heat pump water heaters that operate as grid-connected thermal storage – The Investor Society.

InduPro (US) – $77M, Series B, Seattle biotech developing new therapeutics – FinSMEs.

America is collecting more money but still falling further behind. Through July, federal receipts rose 3% to $4.49T, but spending climbed even faster to $6.28T. That pushed the fiscal-year deficit to nearly $1.8T, up 10% from the same period last year. One of the biggest pressures is interest on the national debt. Net interest costs have already reached $931B this fiscal year, putting them behind only Social Security and Medicare among major federal expenses. July alone added another $432B to the deficit, the largest monthly shortfall in more than five years. Higher revenue simply hasn’t kept pace with Washington’s growing bills. Source: CarbonFinance

🏛️ Private Equity

Decart AI (Israel/US) – ~$6B, acquisition talks with Anthropic covering real-time video models and GPU optimization – Bloomberg Línea.

Vantage Data Centers (US) – sponsor exit under review, with Silver Lake and DigitalBridge weighing an IPO at roughly $100B (~$10B raise) or an outright sale of the hyperscale data center operator – Tech Startups.

Edge Focus (US) – undisclosed new funding, NYC provider of technology, capital and access to consumer credit solutions, capitalizing its lending platform for the next growth phase – FinSMEs.

📈 Public & Capital Markets

Opening Market Figures, Thu 13 Aug, 2026.

Cisco (US) – earnings reaction, shares fell close to 10% despite record Q4 revenue of $17.3B (+18%) and $9.3B in full-year hyperscaler AI orders, as a hardware-heavy mix pushed gross margin guidance to 65%–66% – Quartz.

Grupo Aval (Colombia) – earnings, Q2 attributable net income of COP $577.5B (+16.7% year over year) with ROAE at 12.7%, up from 7.4% in Q1 – La República.

Colombian peso (Colombia) – FX open, the dollar traded near $3,130 as softer U.S. inflation data and falling oil kept the pair inside its lateral range – Valora Analitik.

📅 Web Archive

On this day in 1889, inventor William Gray received a patent for his coin-controlled telephone, helping lay the groundwork for the public payphone and a model in which access to communications infrastructure could be metered and paid for on demand - ⁠AP News

Also on August 13, in 1973, the Institute for Certification of Computing Professionals was founded, an early attempt to formalize professional standards and credentials for a computer industry that was rapidly moving from research labs into mainstream business - Computer History Museum. – ⁠CHM

The energy constraint is now pushing infrastructure offshore: Korean internet group Naver has backed Panthalassa, an Oregon startup designing floating data centers powered by wave energy and cooled by seawater – Tech Startups.

Logistics has quietly become the internet's soft target: CEVA Logistics is still restoring systems at eight European warehouses weeks after a late-July cyberattack, while Uber Freight investigates a separate incident in which attackers claim to hold a million files – Tech Startups.

See you tomorrow,

Jose Kont
The human behind The Investor Society.

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