Civitas Snippets - April 5, 2026
Issue 52
Dear friends of Civitas Growth Partners,
Happy Easter. SpaceX just filed the biggest IPO in history - a $1.75 trillion valuation (and wants $2 trillion on $16 billion of revenue) that would make Musk the world's first trillionaire. Anthropic is eyeing Q4 for a $60 billion offering of its own. A father-daughter team is burying nuclear reactors a mile underground. Maine is trying to ban data centers. And a startup put GPS collars on 700,000 cows and is now worth $2 billion. We are living in the most capital-intensive science fiction novel ever written - and nobody seems to have told the characters it's fiction.
As Robert Browning once wrote:
"A man's reach should exceed his grasp, or what's a heaven for?"
With that, let's get to it…
Politics and Current Events
A New Mexico jury ruled that Meta must pay $37.5 million for enabling child exploitation on its platforms and misleading users about the impact on children's mental health. The fine amounts to roughly what Meta generates in revenue every 45 minutes - the financial equivalent of a parking ticket for a Fortune 10 company. Does this represent the "tobacco" moment for social media?
The U.S. government's own consolidated financial statements show $6.06 trillion in total assets against $47.78 trillion in liabilities - and the media barely noticed. Add 75-year social insurance obligations and total federal commitments exceed $136.2 trillion, roughly five times GDP. The GAO issued a “disclaimer of opinion” for the 29th consecutive year - at some point, this just becomes a polite way of saying "we have no idea what's going on in here."
Some of America's biggest metro areas are shrinking as immigration slows and domestic migration accelerates. LA lost 131,000 net domestic migrants, with a modest immigration gain nowhere near enough to compensate. In 83 of 387 metro areas, populations shrank - up from 52 the prior year. The Sun Belt is winning the population war; the coasts are writing the obituaries.
Sen. Jeff Merkley introduced the STOP Corrupt Bets Act, a sweeping ban on prediction market contracts covering elections, sports, government actions, and military operations. Kalshi pushed back, arguing bans just push activity offshore. The irony of Congress - the institution that can't predict or finish its own budget - trying to ban prediction markets is not lost on us.
Spain's PM Pedro Sánchez (no, not the one from Napoleon Dynamite) has adopted a novel diplomatic tactic with the Trump administration: just say no. He refused air bases for the Iran war, rejected NATO's 5% GDP defense spending target, and adopted the slogan "no a la guerra." Perhaps he should also consider “Vote for Pedro, and all of your wildest dreams will come true.” Sorry - couldn’t resist.
Iran has suffered savage blows in the current conflict, but it has effectively closed the Strait of Hormuz and is reportedly charging $2 million per ship for safe passage - roughly 140 ships a day in normal times. Western military planners are pessimistic about reopening it by force. Iran may emerge from the war in a stronger negotiating position, which was not in the cards for "Making America Great Again."
NASA's Artemis II launched four astronauts on a 10-day flyby of the Moon - the first crewed mission to lunar orbit since Apollo. Fifty years is a long time; makes one wonder why it took that long to replicate it (cue tin foil hats and conspiracy chatter).
A space historian explains why it’s taken 50 years to return to the Moon. After Apollo, Nixon cut NASA’s budget, the Shuttle consumed two decades, and Constellation was canceled under Obama. Trump relaunched the effort as Artemis in 2019. Technical complexity, political will, and funding must align across multiple administrations - which is another way of saying “it’s a miracle anything gets built.”
Maine is poised to become the first state to ban large data centers, freezing new projects of 20+ megawatts until November 2027 while it assesses grid and environmental impacts. Similar measures are advancing in at least 10 other states. Maine has some of the country's highest residential electricity prices - turns out "powering the AI revolution" sounds less exciting when it's your light bill. This populist movement is an important one as we embark on a "race for electrons."
Economy, Markets, and Business
Elon Musk may soon become the world's first trillionaire as SpaceX filed for its blockbuster IPO, expected to value the company at $1.75 trillion and raise $75 billion - more than double Saudi Aramco's record. Musk holds an estimated 43% stake. When a single person's net worth exceeds the GDP of most countries, the word "wealth" starts to feel like an understatement. You know the difference between a trillion and a billion? About a trillion.
Anthropic executives have discussed going public as soon as Q4, with bankers expecting the company to raise more than $60 billion - which would make it the second-largest IPO ever. Annualized sales doubled to $19 billion in the first two months of the year (although we may take exception to their revenue recognition policy).
Meanwhile, OpenAI raised $122B at an $852B valuation - the largest funding round ever -while simultaneously watching its shares fall out of favor on secondary markets, with investors pivoting hard to Anthropic.
Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly building a personal "CEO agent" - an AI model trained to manage the complexity of a $1.5 trillion company. For a guy widely panned as being too robotic already, we’re not sure an AI counterpart is going to help… but it seems there is nowhere to go but up? Here’s a live look at Zuck’s new agent during a recent podcast interview.
KKR's $4.75 billion sale of data center infrastructure company CoolIT to Ecolab will generate roughly 15x its investment - one of KKR's best deals ever. CoolIT's 640 employees are each expected to receive average payouts of $240,000, with senior staff getting up to 8x salary.
Elon Musk announced Terafab, a massive AI chip manufacturing facility in Austin combining resources from Tesla, SpaceX, and xAI. The project targets 2-nanometer chips at a $20-25 billion price tag - small potatoes these days, it seems.
Richard Muller and his daughter Liz have built Deep Fission, a startup drilling boreholes a mile into the earth and inserting 15-megawatt nuclear reactors. Put 70 in a field and you can power a one-gigawatt data center at about six cents per kWh - the mile of rock overhead eliminates 80% of traditional costs. They've raised $122 million at a $1 billion valuation with interest in 800 reactors. Sometimes the best ideas are the ones buried deepest.
Drew Baglino argues in a16z that America's energy problem isn't supply - it's delivery. Seventy percent of transmission lines are over 25 years old, transformer costs are up 80% since 2019, and the U.S. faces a 30% supply deficit. His solution: solid-state transformers - software-defined power conversion. "The grid will be rebuilt. The only choice is what we build."
The Iran war is sending longer-term borrowing costs surging. The 10-year Treasury yielded 4.45%, up half a point since the U.S.-Israeli attack. The average 30-year mortgage hit 6.62%. Futures now price in a 40% chance the Fed's next move will be to raise rates, not cut them. War is inflationary - always has been, always will be.
The U.S. national debt just crossed $39 trillion, and the Treasury's nightmare is that $9.47 trillion matures this year - all issued when rates were lower. The weighted average yield on maturing bonds is just 2.3%; today, refinancing runs 3.5-4.4%. Every additional percentage point costs $95 billion a year. The only remaining tool, Lavish argues, is yield curve control. It worked in the 1940s. The cost was 20% inflation.
Apollo Global Management will establish a second U.S. headquarters in the American South, with Austin, Nashville, and south Florida under consideration - joining Citadel and Elliott in building Sun Belt footprints.
The Trump administration proposed rules opening 401(k) plans to private equity and alternative assets. The rule mentions "prudent" or "prudently" 105 times but makes no claim that adding PE improves performance. PE's marketing machine is ramping up, especially as the DPI drought has cooled institutional backers. Democratizing access to illiquidity - what could go wrong?
China went from originating 8% of global drug development in 2015 to 32.3% in 2024, per a new JAMA study, while the U.S. fell from 48.2% to 37.4%. Chinese programs skyrocketed from fewer than a thousand to over 6,000. The more China succeeds at advancing drugs past early stages, the harder the regulatory questions become for the FDA.
Jamie Dimon is launching JPMorgan's American Dream Initiative, a multiyear program investing in small businesses, affordable housing, and job training. When the CEO of the largest U.S. bank starts sounding like a social worker, pay attention.
Allbirds, once valued at $4 billion, sold its assets for $39 million to the company behind Ed Hardy and Aerosoles. Shares have lost more than 95% since the 2021 IPO. "Sustainability comes way down the batting order behind style, price, and comfort," said one analyst. The DTC sustainability premium turned out to be a figment of Sand Hill Road's imagination.
Office vacancy rates hit a record 21% in Q1 2026 across 79 U.S. markets. Workers still spend about a quarter of their days away from the office, versus 7% in January 2020. Companies are shrinking footprints while upgrading to premium Class A space. The return-to-office mandates made headlines; the vacancy data tells you how well they actually worked.
Factory work used to be America's most reliable ticket to the middle class. Now it's nursing. Median RN pay is $93,600 - nearly double the all-occupation median. Nurse practitioner employment is projected to increase 35% by 2034. A rare profession where demand outpaces automation.
A Cornell study published in Personality and Individual Differences found that workers most excited by corporate buzzwords are the worst at practical business decisions. "The people most susceptible to corporate bullshit tended to choose the worst solutions on a consistent basis." On the bright side, they rated their supervisors as more charismatic. Synergy.
In honor of Apple's 50th anniversary, Sequoia released Don Valentine's original 1977 investment memo. Key notation: "$600k buys 10%…very rich deal." Market estimated at ">$500M." Category: "Home - Hobby Computers."
Society and Culture
Pew Research found that 96% of Americans say eating meat is morally acceptable or not a moral issue at all. Nearly all have no objection to contraception. The one near-universal: 90% say marital infidelity is morally wrong. The public is evenly split on pornography and abortion. Nine in ten Americans believe other Americans' morality is "somewhat or very bad." We're a nation of moral pessimists who think everyone else is the problem - agency, anyone?
America spent $4.5 trillion on personal healthcare in 2024 - a 2,005% increase over 45 years. Hospital care remains the largest category at $1.6 trillion. Home healthcare had the biggest percentage surge: 7,022% since 1980. The numbers are so large they've lost the ability to shock.
Taco Bell launched its first Global Taco Vote, asking rewards members to pick between Thailand's Kickin' Chicken Taco and India's Butter Chicken Taco. The winner debuts in the U.S. later this year. Brands turning product launches into interactive marketing - and mining overseas menus for fresh ideas - is the CPG playbook of the moment. Which border are they making a run for these days?
A new study found that lab gloves - recommended best practice for microplastics research - can transfer particles to samples that instruments misidentify as polyethylene. Researchers could be overestimating microplastic abundance by over 1,000x in some cases. The particles are in the size range with the largest human health impact. Science correcting science - exactly how it's supposed to work.
A landmark study in Science measured sycophancy across 11 leading AI models, finding AI affirmed users' actions 49% more often than humans - including in cases involving deception or illegality. Even a single interaction reduced willingness to take responsibility. Yet sycophantic models were trusted and preferred. "The very feature that causes harm also drives engagement" - a sentence that applies to more than just chatbots.
New research in Mayo Clinic Proceedings shows that walking pace is a stronger predictor of premature death than blood pressure or cholesterol. Brisk walkers with an otherwise unhealthy lifestyle lived longer than slow walkers with a healthy one. Turn out, the cheapest, most effective health intervention turns out to be just walking faster - no subscription required.
A German language instructor at Cornell has students use manual typewriters once a semester to curb AI-written work. "Everything slows down. It's like back in the old days when you really did one thing at a time." The anti-AI movement has arrived, and its weapon of choice is a 130-year-old machine.
NFL referees average $350,000 annually while maintaining second careers as attorneys and aerospace engineers, and now they want more. The NFLRA demands 10% annual raises versus the NFL's 6.45% offer. The gap is roughly $7 million a year for a league generating $25 billion in revenue. The NFL has already compiled 150-200 replacement candidates. We've seen this playbook before.
New car prices have soared, and one big reason is that automakers shifted production toward larger, more upscale models while cutting budget options. The average new car costs $47,000 - up 40% since 2018. Households earning under $100,000 dropped from over half of new vehicle sales to just 36%. The K-shaped economy now extends to the dealer lot.
Researchers at Boston Consulting Group identified "AI brain fry" - mental fatigue from excessive AI tool use - affecting about 1 in 7 workers. High AI oversight was linked to 12% greater mental fatigue and 33% increased decision fatigue, with intent to quit rising nearly 10%. Turns out the productivity tool can also be an exhaustion tool. Moderation applies to everything - including efficiency.
Halter, a New Zealand startup, is selling GPS-enabled smart collars that replace physical fencing for cattle. The company hit a $2 billion valuation with 700,000+ cows on its platform. Is revenue per cow about to become the next hot SaaS metric?
One Final Thing
In Issue 51, we asked whether AI will ultimately be a net positive or net negative for the next generation of children. 42% said "too early to tell," 33% said net negative, and 25% said net positive. A verdict as uncertain as the technology itself.
Given the recent societal momentum and the New Mexico jury decision, do you think the government should regulate teenage social media usage, or is this something that should be left to families?
We're Looking for Exceptional, Overlooked Businesses
At Civitas Growth Partners, we invest our own capital in founder-led B2B businesses with $1M to $4M in recurring revenue, strong retention, and best-in-class products, but that fall outside the traditional VC or PE mold. These businesses are often bootstrapped, breakeven, and haven't yet invested meaningfully in sales and marketing. Growth is steady (0–25% annually), and the product quietly leads its niche.
This is a category of company that is often overlooked, but we see tremendous opportunity. Our model is to help these businesses scale to $10M or more in revenue by providing flexible capital (minority or control), supporting both organic and M&A growth, and deploying an operational playbook honed through years of work with capital-efficient founders. Because we invest our own capital — not institutional LP funds — we bring no artificial timelines or exit pressure. That gives founders room to build enduring value. Our partners have achieved more than 6x equity outcomes without compromising what makes their companies special.
We're actively looking for our next great partner. If you know a founder or operator building something exceptional — and overlooked — we'd be grateful for an introduction. We value the relationships that lead us to great companies and are always happy to have a conversation about referral arrangements. Reach out anytime at team@civitasgrowth.com.