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Meet the High School Kids Cutting $25,000 Venture Checks
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By Marc Vartabedian, WSJ Pro
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Good day. Like many ambitious high school seniors in their fall semester, Leana Zhou has a lot on her plate: college applications, demanding classes and club activities.
Oh, and don’t forget her $25,000 venture investments.
For her first deal, Zhou spent about six months writing reports on dozens of prospective investments, dissecting artificial-intelligence revenue models and documenting founder leadership traits before landing on a Canadian AI mortgage-financing startup named Pine. When the deal closes, possibly by year’s end, it will be a relief, she said.
“Sometimes I finish all my work on Saturday and then I have all day Sunday to sit down and just do nonstop Mehta-scholar work,” Zhou said, referring to the venture program her school launched last year to give students a dose of real-world investing.
Such is the life of the teenage venture capitalist at the Harker School in Silicon Valley. Tech luminaries past and present have sent their children to the exclusive private school, founded back in 1893.
Robinhood Markets Chief Executive Vlad Tenev has a son at Harker; Zoom Communications founder and CEO Eric Yuan’s daughter graduated in 2024; Terry Gou, founder and former CEO of electronics goliath Foxconn, sent two children there. It is also not uncommon for tech titans to pop in. (Once, former Harker science teacher Priscilla Chan brought her then-boyfriend Mark Zuckerberg to a school picnic.)
Read the full story here.
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And now on to the news...
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A SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket lifted off this month from Cape Canaveral, Fla. CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH/EPA/SHUTTERSTOCK
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Potential IPO. SpaceX told employees it is preparing for a possible public offering next year, confirming a potential listing for a company that has built formidable rocket and satellite businesses since Elon Musk founded it in 2002.
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“The thinking is that if we execute brilliantly and the markets cooperate, a public offering could raise a significant amount of capital,” Bret Johnsen, the company’s finance chief, wrote Friday in a message to SpaceX staff.
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Johnsen said that whether a listing would happen and when it might take place remain “highly uncertain,” according to the message, a copy of which was reviewed by The Wall Street Journal. He didn’t discuss a valuation the company could target in an IPO.
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SpaceX executives are starting the process to select Wall Street bankers to advise it on an IPO, the Journal also reported. Investment banks are scheduled to make their initial pitches this coming week in what is known as a bake-off.
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$800 Billion
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Potential valuation of SpaceX at a new stock price of $421 a share
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Inside the Invitation-Only Stock Market for the Wealthy
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This year’s largest stock sale wasn’t on the New York Stock Exchange or its uptown rival, the Nasdaq Stock Market. Instead, it was a $40 billion offering by OpenAI that was available to only the investors handpicked by the firm’s executive team, including Sam Altman himself. Fewer than 50 investors snagged shares. For most Americans, the universe of stocks they can invest in is rapidly shrinking. The number of public companies in the U.S. is half of its peak in the late 1990s. That’s not a problem for the rich.
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CEOs to Keep Spending on AI, Despite Spotty Returns
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Chief executives of some of the world’s largest companies are all-in on artificial intelligence, though many haven’t yet seen meaningful returns on their investments. After a year in which trillions of dollars worth of AI investments buoyed global markets and the economy, 68% of CEOs plan to spend even more on AI in 2026, according to an annual survey of more than 350 public-company CEOs from advisory firm Teneo.
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Exits
Joy Parenting Club, which gives its members 24/7 access to certified parenting experts, said it acquired Heba Care, a technology platform that supports families navigating complex health and development needs. This acquisition follows Joy’s $14 million Series A round in November.
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Parallel, a teletherapy and special-education provider for K-12 schools and districts, said it raised a $20 million Series B round led by Valspring Capital. This latest round will help accelerate Parallel’s national expansion and advance its clinical technology, the company said.
Allonnia, a Boston-based environmental biotech startup, raised roughly $20 million in a Series A extension round led by Viking Global Investors and Bison Ventures.
Kilo Code, an open-source coding agent, said it raised $8 million in seed funding. Cota Capital led the round.
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Investors are increasingly on alert for any hint of AI infrastructure projects taking longer than expected. JEENAH MOON/REUTERS
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