Nvidia heads to the debt market... Is SpaceX more valuable than Amazon?... Fox makes a deal to buy Roku... The value of their data... Stansberry Innovations Report subscribers are enjoying the gains...
The biggest AI player is turning to debt...
For two years now, we've written that as long as the "hyperscalers" and AI giants powering the bull market continue financing their growth with the cash they bring in, there isn't much to worry about.
Big Tech has kept on committing to Big Spending, with the total climbing past $700 billion this year...
But, increasingly, these businesses – like Meta Platforms (META), Amazon (AMZN), and Oracle (ORCL) – are turning to debt to afford it. Most recently, Alphabet (GOOGL) – one of the biggest players in AI – went to the equity market for a capital raise.
Now the very biggest player in AI is doing the same.
Without much warning, AI behemoth Nvidia (NVDA) disclosed yesterday that it was raising $25 billion in the U.S. debt market. According to a company filing, Nvidia is doing it via seven tranches of notes, ranging from 2028 notes paying 4.25% to one in 2056 offering 5.625%.
This is the company's first foray into the investment-grade bond market since the summer of 2021 – just before the AI boom really took flight. Since then, Nvidia has brought in so much cash from selling its chips and AI infrastructure, it hasn't needed to think about raising additional money. Now, it does.
The messaging and the hard numbers...
A Nvidia spokesperson cautioned against reading too much into the debt raise. In its filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), the company says the proceeds are for "general corporate purposes, including the repayment and refinancing" of its roughly $8.5 billion in outstanding debt.
Reuters cited an anonymous source saying the goal of the sale is to "establish a liquid benchmark to its cost of credit" – in other words, set market rates for its borrowing – rather than fund capital expenditures.
Still, even if that's true, Nvidia is tapping the debt markets – and for the first time in five years. And that raises questions about the company's own thoughts about its future and the continued health of the AI boom in general.
This debt raise alone eclipses the roughly $13 billion of cash and cash equivalents on Nvidia's books as of last quarter.
The other part of the story, though, is that Nvidia brought in nearly $82 billion in sales last quarter and announced a new $80 billion stock-buyback plan. And it reportedly found plenty of buyers for its debt. Investor demand for the bond sale was $85 billion, almost 4 times more than it needed.
So it's not all doom and gloom... The AI spending cycle can keep going for a while, it seems, so long as liquidity holds up of course. But the big AI names are turning more to debt than they have before.
SpaceX pops again...
This IPO has been absurd from the start. And today, things reached a new level...
SpaceX (SPCX), for a few hours, became more valuable than... Amazon?
SPCX was up as much as 13% intraday, which gave the company a $2.8 trillion market cap, making it the fifth most valuable U.S. company ahead of Amazon ($2.6 trillion) before SpaceX faded into the close. It gained 5%, putting its market cap back slightly below Amazon.
But still.
One is a company that delivers nearly everything, everywhere in the United States, contributes hundreds of billions to the U.S. economy each year, provides massive cloud infrastructure, and generated $743 billion in revenue over the past year...
The other one brought in about $19 billion in revenue over the same period – mostly from its enterprising Starlink technology – while losing about $5 billion due to heavy investments in AI operations.
As of today's close, that means SpaceX is trading at almost 150 times trailing-twelve-month ("TTM") revenue. As our Whitney Tilson says, a more reasonable valuation would be "around 10 times TTM revenues – which I still think is extremely generous."
This market doesn't care about what we think, though...
As we've been predicting, the conditions for a typical IPO "pop" – and then some – have been in place for SpaceX. Expect the same from the IPOs of Anthropic and OpenAI that are likely coming soon. And that's exactly what we're seeing...
SpaceX shares are now up about 50% in three trading days...
The stock has low float and unprecedented retail investor interest and access.
Leveraged funds (to the upside and down) on the stock already exist, too. Options activity on the stock started up today. And SpaceX is about to join the major U.S. indexes, which will unleash billions more of passive investments.
We'll repeat what we wrote yesterday: If you're playing this casino game, you might be able to keep it rolling in the short term... But as a long-term investment, we can't think of a worse time to buy a stock, especially a mega-cap.
Early investors will have more and more chances to "unlock" and sell their shares as time goes on. And given the valuation SpaceX is trading at now, it's hard to imagine insiders won't happily sell.
History suggests a pattern. Since 2006, the top 15 U.S. IPOs averaged a decline of 50% at some point during the first year of trading. On average, they finished their first year 33% below their IPO price.
A 33% decline from SpaceX's IPO price would be around $90 per share, or a roughly 55% decline from today's levels.
Listen, I love the reusable rockets Elon Musk and SpaceX have developed. And Starlink is great at delivering Internet to rural areas.
But we can't find any reason SpaceX stock should be trading as if it's more valuable than Amazon. Instead, we see all the signs of a classic early investor "cash out" story to play out in the months to come.
As for what you can or should do about this, be sure to watch the new presentation from our Whitney Tilson and Gabe Marshank that they just debuted earlier today. It's all about SpaceX's IPO and the looming disaster they see coming for millions of Americans – even if you didn't buy a single share.
I think you'll find the event informative and worth the time...
Our team raced to put the presentation together, ever since Gabe literally jumped on a table at a recent meeting to describe the story and the moral obligation we had to share it with subscribers. That's what he and Whitney are now doing.
You can watch a replay of it here – for free.
Diving into the week's big M&A news...
Yesterday, Fox (FOX) announced that it has agreed to acquire connected-TV maker Roku (ROKU) in a deal worth $22 billion. At that price, Fox is valuing Roku at $160 per share, a 11% premium to Friday's closing price.
And the purchase is all about market share in streaming and advertising...
In a presentation to go alongside the call explaining the deal, Fox noted that streaming now accounts for 48% of total U.S. TV viewership. And Roku is the clear leader...
According to the presentation, Roku has 44% of total viewership in the "connected TV market" (TVs that come loaded with streaming apps). The next highest market share is Amazon's Fire TV with 14%.
Roku is also known for its portable, easy-to-use HDMI streaming sticks that can plug into other TVs.
This broader trend away from traditional ("linear") TV has shifted ad dollars to streaming for about a decade. As our colleague and Stansberry Innovations Report senior analyst John Engel wrote in his July 2025 issue...
Streaming and digital video are now capturing the majority of combined "TV/video" ad budgets.
By contrast, linear TV ad revenues have been eroding. They peaked in the late 2010s and have fallen each year since. Linear TV ad revenue brought in roughly $72 billion in 2018 and will drop to an estimated $57 billion by the end of 2025.
Not only is the growth in viewership helping shift ad dollars to streaming, but the types of ads themselves mean companies get a higher return on their spend than traditional TV.
As John explained in his issue, traditional TV advertising is a "shotgun blast." All viewers see the same ads. Companies spend millions of dollars to get a good ad slot (like during the Super Bowl) and just hope that it reaches the right folks.
On streaming services, though, those ads can be tailored to the viewer or household that's watching. More from John...
When you open Netflix, Hulu, or YouTube, advertisers can now bid in real time to show you a specific ad, tailored to your interests, age, or even shopping habits. That bidding happens in milliseconds, and the winning ad is served instantly, just for you.
It's exact, personal, and measurable. You and your neighbor might both be watching reruns of Seinfeld, but he'll see an ad for a Ford F-150 and you'll see one for hair-loss pills.
Roku isn't the first foray Fox has made into the streaming space. It has its own streaming app Fox One. And it spent $440 million to acquire free streaming service Tubi back in 2020.
But acquiring Roku's footprint is probably Fox's most significant move in this area yet. Fox CEO Lachlan Murdoch said on yesterday's investor call that he expects to keep Roku and Tubi running as they are now, rather than integrated with Fox's other brands... at least in the short term.
Stansberry Innovations Report subscribers heard it first...
In that same July 2025 issue, John recommended shares of Roku to his subscribers for these very reasons. As John explained, Roku was a leader in the booming "streaming economy," but at the time was being punished by investors.
As John explained, Roku was much more than just a TV manufacturer or streaming service operator...
What really matters is the data that it collects on its viewers. As John wrote in a private note to the Digest team this morning, the data it gets from the 125 million folks who watch TV on Roku devices is a "hidden asset" for the company.
It allows Roku to better target ads to consumers. And given the shift toward digital ads from traditional TV, companies are going to pay up for those insights. This is another way to demonstrate how "data is the new oil."
(Stansberry Innovations Report subscribers and Alliance members can read his full report right here.)
As of yesterday's close, readers who followed John's advice are sitting on gains of 55% in 11 months – more than double the 20% return of the S&P 500 Index over the same period. And at the deal price of $160 per share, that gain jumps to about 75%.
Congrats to John and his team on a great call, and subscribers can stay tuned to upcoming Innovations Report issues for further guidance on the position.
New 52-week highs (as of 6/15/26): Altius Minerals (ALS.TO), Applied Materials (AMAT), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Arm Holdings (ARM), DigitalOcean (DOCN), Cambria Emerging Shareholder Yield Fund (EYLD), Franklin FTSE Japan Fund (FLJP), Global X MSCI Greece Fund (GREK), LXP Industrial Trust (LXP), Seabridge Gold (SA), State Street SPDR Portfolio S&P 500 Value Fund (SPYV), and Twist Bioscience (TWST).
A quiet mailbag today, but we have one housekeeping note to share...
Ahead of the debut of Whitney and Gabe's new presentation earlier today, Total Portfolio subscribers and Stansberry Alliance received direct access to a set of new research related to the presentation. The series of special reports can be found here.
As always, send your comments and questions to feedback@stansberryresearch.com.
All the best,
Corey McLaughlin and Nick Koziol
Baltimore, Maryland
June 16, 2026
