New data shows AI assistants cite independent YouTube creators more than brand-owned content. Founders who adjust their creator briefs now will get pulled into the answers that drive buying decisions.
The property you spent months working on is about to lose you money. What should you do? Sell? Pivot? Invest for long enough and you’re bound to run into this scenario at some point. But not to worry—today, we’re showing you exactly what to do when things go south!
Welcome to another Rookie Reply! We’re back with three more questions from the BiggerPockets Forums. One investor is about to lose money flipping a house and needs a way out or a reason to stay in. Another is about to form a real estate investing partnership but is missing one critical element that could change the entire deal.
And if you’re in the exciting final stages of closing on a rental property, or you’re already sitting with the keys, wondering what on earth to do now that you’re a landlord, we’ve got the answers! Ashley and Tony have been in all three of these situations, and Tony’s in one of them right now!
Ashley:
What if the project you spent five months bleeding into is now worth less than the credit card debt that you actually racked up trying to finish it and you have to decide today whether you are going to sell it or keep it.
Tony:
Or maybe you finally agree to partner with someone who can fund the deal that you can’t buy yourself, but now you’re wondering if a handshake fifty fifty is going to cost you your friendship and your first paycheck.
Ashley:
And once the keys are in your hand and the wire is sent, what do you actually do in those first 30 days before a single tenant walks through the door?
Tony:
Today we’re answering three questions from the BiggerPockets forums that hit exactly where Ricky’s hold the most pressure right.
Ashley:
This is The Real Estate Rookie Podcast. I’m Ashley Kehr.
Tony:
And I’m Tony J. Robinson. And with that, let’s get into today’s first question. So our first question comes from the BiggerPockets forms and it says, “I have a property that I have remodeled that is ready to hit the market. Unfortunately, after crunching the numbers, I will not be making any profit if I actually sell it. In this market and with interest rates rising, does it make sense to hold onto this property and rent it out instead of selling and walking away with no profit? For the experts out there, what would you suggest? Should I refinance and rent it out? The hard money loan balance is about $400,000 and a possible rent in the area is 3,000 to 3,500 or should I just sell it and recoup my investment without any profits? Comments would be greatly appreciated. Well, first, I don’t think this person is a loan, that as the market has shifted.
There’s been more folks who probably lost money on flips. I’ve got to flip right now. I actually asked for just one under contract in the past week on that flip that I’ve been trying to sell.
Ashley:
And remind me, how long was that flip over a year, right? You’re trying to sell it?
Tony:
It was over a year that we had it on the market. Yeah. We’re recording this in May of 2026 and we listed that property right at the end of 2024. So it was like December, I think, or November maybe of 2024 that we listed the property. It was up for a year. I took it off the market and I relisted it about a month ago and now we got some traction, but it’s, I don’t know, I think 30 grand under asking. So we listed at 399, we’re under contract at 370. So I guess I’ll give my just quick story on that because I feel like it’s similar to this because I went through the same mental exercise on this deal. It’s like, okay, well, what do we do? And the basic math was I looked at, okay, do we turn this into a short term rental because the opportunities were there or do I cut my losses and sell it at a loss?
And what I looked at, the property actually could do from a revenue perspective, could do decently well. It’s in a market where the competition isn’t incredibly strong and I’m pretty confident we could go out there and do well. But when I compared the cost of what we would have to spend to both refinance out of my private money note and then also fully furnish the property, it was a much bigger number than if we just sold at a loss. So that was the method I looked at. It’s like, okay, how much am I going to spend to get into this deal? And then if we just sold, what would that look like? And for me, it financially made more sense to go the route of selling and because I was working with private money lenders as opposed to hard money lenders.
The lender who was in the last lien position, he’s investing or he gave me the funds through a retirement account so he doesn’t need the funds today anyway and he was fine refinancing that shortfall into a longer note as well. Even though we’re losing money on this deal, I don’t have to write a big check at closing. We’re just kind of spreading that loss out. I think it was like a 36 month note or something like that. So he’s getting a slightly higher interest rate. He’s still getting a return on his capital without having to redeploy it. And I’m saving myself from having to write a big check at closing. So that was the math that I went through is like, okay, what’s the total cost for refinancing and keeping? What kind of return do I think I’ll get there? What’s the total cost for me if I just sell this at a loss and what makes the most sense?
So that was my thought process on that specific deal.
Ashley:
So I think it has to do a lot with what you are, first of all, the numbers. What did the numbers look like in each scenario? So how much money would you actually be losing if you sell the property and how much money would you be losing a month if you rent it out? Or maybe you’d actually be making money. So you need to find out how you could refinance it, what your mortgage would be and kind of break down the numbers from there. That’s the first step you have to do is run the numbers in each scenario and say they’re both a loss. So with that loss, are you able to maintain that loss and pay that difference that you owe for the mortgage every single month or for the expenses and then wait it out and maybe in a couple years be able to sell the property or do you have cash savings that you could go ahead and dump into the property, maybe you’re taking a lower mortgage on the property.
So I think really running the numbers, then also kind of looking at what you are comfortable with doing. Do you even want to be a landlord? Do you want to have tenants in place? So I think you have a lot of questions to look at for the numbers and then just for yourself personally too is what you actually want to deal with. Maybe you would rather take the loss and sell it because you don’t want to be a landlord and you don’t want to have tenants in the property. Coming up, what happens when your partner brings 100% of the money and you bring 100% of the work? Is fifty fifty actually fair or are you about to give away your first paycheck? We’ll break it down right after this quick word from our show sponsors. Okay. Welcome back. So today’s question it says, “Hey guys, I’m getting close to closing on a deal with an equity partner.
This will be my first partnership so I have no frame of reference. What’s the best way to split our equity if he’s providing the down payment and I’m managing the asset on my own? I want to be fair to both of us. Thanks for your time.” Okay. I think there’s one piece of this question that is missing that is not being considered. You have one person bringing the capital for a down payment and then you have somebody that’s going to be doing the SWAT equity and managing the asset. But what about the leverage? What about the mortgage? Whose name is the debt going into? Are you both going to be on the debt? Is just the person providing the capital going to be on the debt? Because that is some, I guess I don’t know how to phrase this. What’s the word I’m looking for, Tony, where it’s not like it’s something you’re providing to the deal is the person who’s signing on the debt who has the good credit, the good debt to income and is taking the risk of the debt on this property too.
So for example, say Tony provides the down payment, Tony’s also going and getting the debt in his name and I’m going to manage the property.
I have less skin in the game, I would say. As in if I decide this property is not working out, I don’t want any more of it. I walk away, I didn’t lose any capital, I don’t risk the mortgage payments not being paid. If they don’t get paid, “Well, it’s not my name on the debt. I just lost the time that I was managing the property.” So I do think that’s a third element that really needs to be considered in this as to whose name is going on the debt also.
Tony:
Yeah, it’s a great point, Ash. And I think once you have that solidified, the fifty fifty, I think it is a fair structure for a lot of deals because even for the person who’s carrying the debt and is bringing the capital, the extent of their work is really done once the property closes and really all they had to do was obviously that there’s some pain in qualifying for the loan and doing all that stuff, but for the most part their work was signing some documents. But for you as a person who’s going to continue managing this property, your work will persist for however long you own that property. So if you own it for five years, 10 years, 30 years, you are the person who’s signing up to agree to manage that deal. So there’s a lot of work that goes into that. So honestly, I think fifty fifty is pretty fair in that scenario.
I think one thing I will recommend is that, especially if you’re doing this on a first deal, I wouldn’t necessarily start an actual business with this person yet. Don’t stand up in an actual LLC together Just test the first deal with you guys separately each owning your ownership. You’ve got your entity that owns 50%, they’ve got their NC that owns 50% and use that as a way to kind of date. And then if you guys like that experience-
Ashley:
So a joint venture agreement.
Tony:
Exactly, right? It’s like a JV between your entity and theirs and then only if you guys enjoy that process, then maybe stand up and entity together. But I see some folks who are just like super trigger happy on like setting up all these additional LLCs and it sounds cool on paper, but it does I think add a certain layer of complexity. But on that note, Ash, I think whatever structure you and this other partner decide on, make sure you get it down in writing Ash and I co-authored a book for BiggerPockets called Real Estate Partnerships so you can read that book to get a better sense of what those agreements typically have inside of them. But I think the more clarity you can have on what the structure looks like and getting that memorialized in some way, the less chance there is for friction moving forward.
Just writing things down in general, I think helps a lot when you get into some of those situations. But I think in general guys, fifty fifty is a fine structure, but at the end of the day, there’s no right or wrong answer. It’s whatever you and that other person both feel is fair and there’s a million different ways you can skin the same cat. We always talk about Ash’s first deal where she like gave that person a sweetheart deal. It was like they got whatever, like equity percentage, but they also got paid back. It was a great deal for them. So there is no right or wrong answer. It’s just making sure you guys are both happy, you’re both protected and you’ve really thought through all the different scenarios and how you’ll handle those before they actually happen. All right. So we’re going to take a quick break before our last question, but while we’re gone, if you have not yet, be sure to subscribe to the Real Estate Rookie YouTube channel.
You can find us @realestaterookie. And if you want to be a guest on the podcast, head over to biggerpockets.com/guest and you might just be the next Ricky that we interview for the rest of the audience. We’ll be right back after this. All right guys, welcome back. Our final question comes from the BiggerPockets forms and it says, “I just closed on my first investment property.” Congratulations. On paper, the numbers worked. I walked through it with everyone I consider an advisor, but the moment I saw the wire amount on the closing statement, reality finally hit. Now I’m sitting here with the keys and I’m torn. Should I spend the first 30 days setting up systems, getting the LLC insurance and bookkeeping dial them before listing it or should I race to find a tenant so the property isn’t bleeding money? What do you wish you’d done in those first 30 days that you didn’t?
Well, first congratulations. Like I said, it’s always a great thing to, I think to have the property closed on, but some of these things I hope you would’ve gotten done before closing, like insurance. That’s typically something you want in place during your due diligence period during your closing period is when you’re setting up insurance. Yeah. If you don’t have proper insurance on the property, that would be the absolute first thing that I would go tackle is getting the right policy in place because even if the property’s vacant, you still want to make sure that it’s properly insured. So that’s the first thing that jumps out at me, Ash. I don’t know what your thoughts are on that piece.
Ashley:
Yeah. So I’m going to go even further back before you even close on the property, like just making sure that you’ve switched all the utilities in your name. And then when you have actually closed, confirm that you have account numbers, what your account numbers are. I keep a utility sheet for each of my properties and when I switch the utilities into my name, I’m putting the provider, their contact information, anywhere I log in, what the login is, my account number, maybe where the meter is located for the utility service, any information like that so I can always easily access it. So I think for me, one of the biggest things is going through your property and documenting your property because if you own that property for 10 years, like I have a property, I’ve had the same tenant in there for 10 years that I’ve owned this property.
I have not been in that unit since I walked to the property 11 years ago before I actually closed on it. I could not tell you where the HVAC is. I could not tell you where the electrical panel is. I could not tell you what type of flooring is in that unit. Now any property that I’ve bought within the last several years, I can look up all of that stuff because I’ve documented it and I make myself a sheet and it’s just my unit information sheet. So every time I close on a property, I’m going through and writing down as much information about it. I’ve actually put it at biggerpockets.com/resources and you can download it there for free, but just I’m documenting my property and things that I may need to know in the future. If I send a handyman out to a property, I’m able to tell them exactly where the water shut off is.
Or if my tenant calls and says water is shooting all over, I’m telling them where the water shutoff is. So I think that is a really big thing that a lot of people miss and don’t do and then they kind of scramble when it comes time to actually need that information. Or just like you said, setting up the insurance, Tony, that should be done before closing on the property. But if you are scrambling to do that, the insurance is going to have questions about the property that you should have some of that information for such as when was the roof last updated? What type of roofing is on there? Is it metal? Is it shingles? Things like
Tony:
That. I think going back to the core part of this question though is what should they do first? Setting up all those things or going after their tenants. I think there’s probably a reality where you can do both, right? There’s Pareto’s principle, like the 80 / 20 rule, 80% of your results come for 20% of your actions. And I think you’ve got to find that 20% that’s going to move the needle 80% for you in this situation and getting your tenants in place is probably one of those things that’s going to move the needle. We don’t want you sitting on this property for weeks and months without generating any revenue, but we also want to make sure that you have threat insurance in place and things like that. So I would tackle both of those things simultaneously. So yeah, go set up your listening and distribute it whatever platform you want to go to, like go find your tenants, Facebook, marketplace, whatever tools are out there, but go start listing the unit.
And then while you’re waiting for folks to come in, you can go work on, “Okay, let me put the lease together. Let me go sit down with a real estate attorney for my market to put the lease together or go grab one of the bigger pocket state specific leases and use that as a starting point. Yeah, double down to make sure that your entity structure is set up correctly, set up your business bank account.” But you’ve really got to, I think, be doing both of those things simultaneously. I don’t think it’s in either this or that it’s both.
Ashley:
Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today on this episode of Rookie Reply. I’m Ashley, he’s Tony, and we’ll see you guys on the next episode.
Help us reach new listeners on iTunes by leaving us a rating and review! It takes just 30 seconds and instructions can be found here. Thanks! We really appreciate it!
Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [email protected].
Space Exploration Technologies, better known as SpaceX, had a huge initial public offering (IPO) earlier this month, making founder Elon Musk the first trillionaire. However, since its splashy debut, the stock had fallen to $147.11 on June 23 and, even after a rebound, is below its opening day’s closing price of $160.95.
The sky isn’t the limit for aerospace and defense industry stocks, and there are several less-risky stocks than SpaceX, including companies with strong track records of earnings-per-share (EPS) growth.
Howmet Aerospace (HWM 1.71%) and TransDigm Group (TDG 0.40%) have earnings growth profiles that easily outpace larger aerospace and defense companies. Over the past five years, Howmet’s EPS have risen by more than 540% while TransDigm’s have jumped more than 270%.
Here are three reasons to buy each stock.
Image source: Getty Images.
Howmet Aerospace has established itself as an elite, high-moat supplier of industrial and aerospace ecosystems. While delays in new aircraft production by major original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) have constrained the broader industry, they have created a massive windfall for Howmet’s aftermarket business. Commercial airlines are flying older fleets longer to meet robust travel demand, so more aircraft require intensive maintenance and engine overhauls.
In the first quarter, Howmet reported revenue of $2.3 billion, up 19% year over year, and earnings per share (EPS) of $1.44, up 71%. In 2025, Howmet’s commercial aerospace spare parts sales skyrocketed 48% year over year, bringing spares to roughly 23% of total revenue. Because aftermarket spare parts carry significantly higher margins than initial equipment builds, this structural mix shift is a powerful margin expander.
Today’s Change
(-1.71%) $-4.67
Current Price
$268.47
Market Cap
$109B
Day’s Range
$258.62 – $270.68
52wk Range
$169.45 – $290.63
Volume
268K
Avg Vol
2.5M
Gross Margin
31.71%
Dividend Yield
0.18%
Beyond aviation, Howmet is emerging as a critical pick-and-shovel play on the artificial intelligence and data center land grab. Data centers require massive, uninterrupted amounts of electricity, driving a secular surge in demand for industrial gas turbines to back up power grids.
Howmet’s gas turbine segment delivered 39% year-over-year revenue growth in the first quarter. Management expects its roughly $1 billion gas turbine business to potentially double over the next three to five years, giving the company a highly visible, non-aerospace growth engine backed by long-term corporate energy contracts.
In April, the company finalized its $1.8 billion acquisition of Consolidated Aerospace Manufacturing (CAM), expanding its high-value fastening systems portfolio and deepening its lucrative footprint in the defense and space sectors.
The Consolidated Aerospace integration, along with its $120 million purchase of Brunner in February, is projected to add roughly $275 million in revenue and $60 million in adjusted earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization (EBITDA) to the remainder of 2026 alone. This aggressive portfolio optimization, coupled with $450 million in share repurchases executed in early 2026, supports a robust beat-and-raise trajectory that has drawn sizable institutional backing, as institutions own more than 90% of outstanding shares.
TransDigm does not manufacture commoditized aviation parts; it focuses strictly on highly engineered, niche components. Roughly 90% of TransDigm’s net sales come from proprietary products for which it owns the intellectual property (IP).
Even more compelling, the company is the sole-source supplier for approximately 80% of the products it sells. If an airline needs a specific replacement valve, actuator, or cockpit control component for a commercial airliner, it frequently has no choice but to buy it from TransDigm, giving the company practically unparalleled pricing power.
In the second quarter, TransDigm reported revenue of $2.54 billion, up 18.3% year over year, and EPS of $9.20, up 11.6% over the same period a year ago.
Today’s Change
(-0.40%) $-5.37
Current Price
$1327.19
Market Cap
$75B
Day’s Range
$1313.62 – $1331.14
52wk Range
$1123.61 – $1519.35
Volume
37.8K
Avg Vol
396.4K
Gross Margin
57.62%
While manufacturing parts for new aircraft (OEM) is a solid business, the real goldmine for TransDigm is the commercial aftermarket. Airplanes are legally required to follow strict maintenance schedules based on flight hours. Because commercial airlines are flying existing fleets longer to cope with ongoing OEM delivery bottlenecks, TransDigm’s commercial transport aftermarket sales jumped 16% year over year in the second quarter. This aftermarket business is incredibly lucrative, driving a stunning consolidated EBITDA margin of 52.6%, a software-like margin that is rare in heavy manufacturing.
TransDigm, like Howmet, accelerates its growth through a highly disciplined and aggressive acquisition playbook. It buys small, niche aerospace component makers that own proprietary IP, integrates them into its value-driven operating model, and strips out structural inefficiencies.
TransDigm drastically raised its fiscal 2026 revenue guidance midpoint by $420 million (now targeting $10.3 billion to $10.42 billion), fueled heavily by its base business and the integration of highly synergistic acquisitions such as its January purchase of Jet Parts Engineering and Victor Sierra Aviation for $2.2 billion.
Management is also aggressively deploying capital, returning $905 million to shareholders via buybacks in the first half of fiscal 2026 while completing its $960 million acquisition of Stellant Systems to expand its defense aftermarket tech footprint.
The Bank of Canada is being urged to reassert headline inflation as the centrepiece of its policy communications as it prepares to renew its monetary policy framework with the federal government.
7-Eleven is offering a discount when you use the following promo codes:
The post 7-Eleven Promo Codes: $10 Off $20+ Order with Code SUMMER10 appeared first on Danny the Deal Guru.
In step 6 of the 7 Steps to Small Business Marketing Success, John Jantsch makes the case for the part of marketing most founders quietly neglect: the customers they already have. The typical business pours close to 90 percent of its budget into winning new customers and only about 10 percent into keeping, reactivating, and growing the existing ones. Yet a returning customer who buys again and refers others is often worth three to ten times a one-time buyer. That gap is the opportunity this episode sets out to close.
John walks through what he calls the customer experience engine, built on four intentional components: onboarding, repeat engagement, a referral system, and reactivation. He explains why the back half of the Marketing Hourglass, the repeat and refer stages, holds the highest-ROI marketing available to most small businesses, with practical examples that range from seasonal maintenance plans that turn one-time projects into recurring revenue, to reactivation campaigns that bring dormant customers back quickly.
This episode is for small business owners, marketers, and consultants who want more growth from customer retention rather than constantly buying it. If your marketing runs smoothly right up until the sale and then goes quiet, this one gives you a framework for keeping the relationship, and the revenue, going.
John Jantsch is the founder of Duct Tape Marketing and the creator of the Marketing Hourglass and the Strategy First™ approach to small business strategy. He is the author of several books on marketing for small business, including Duct Tape Marketing and The Ultimate Marketing Engine, and he hosts the Duct Tape Marketing Podcast, where he shares practical, real-world strategies for owners, marketers, and consultants. Through Duct Tape Marketing and its network of certified consultants, John helps small businesses install a complete Marketing Operating System.
💰 Download Dollarwise- 6.0 Is Now *LIVE* – Big Deals, New Features, Free Trial:
*I CALL HIS SURGAR BABY* – I fully confront her on why she is staying with this POS. Watch here: ➡️
=============================
👉 Checking & Savings: GGet a $200 bonus and earn 3.75% APY on your Savings with Chime®:
🔥 GamerSupps: tasty, cheap ($0.40/serving)! Save 10% with code CALEB:
🔥 Get Your Own *Hammer Financial Score* →
=============================
*Sponsors for This Video*
=============================
(insert sponsors)
=============================
*Education*
=============================
👉 Get access to EVERYTHING I offer all in one place:
⚡️Learn how to budget:
⚡️Learn how to invest:
⚡️Pay off your debt:
=============================
*Check Out My Resources*
=============================
👉 Checking & Savings: Get a $200 bonus and earn 3.75% APY on your Savings with Chime®:
👉 Land a high-paying job with no experience or degree: ➡️
👉 Get FREE MONEY by investing with Public! secure.moneymatchup.com/public-caleb
👉 Find the best credit cards for you with my quiz! cards.calebhammer.com/yt
👉 Get $20 from Acorns for free: ➡️
👉 First 100,000 Mine (formerly Fizz) sign-ups with code HAMMER10 get $10:
👉 Helium Mobile: Use promo code CALEB for a FREE plan ➡️
👉 Protect your online privacy and security for free with Aura: ➡️
=============================
*Chapters*
=============================
00:00 Intro
=============================
Want more content?
=============================
🍿 Caleb Hammer Clips:
🍿 Front Page Documentaries:
=============================
*Connect with me!*
=============================
TikTok:
X:
IG:
Facebook:
=============================
*Want to be a guest on Financial Audit?*
=============================
👉 We film weekdays in our studio in Austin, Texas (in person only)! To apply, visit:
*Some of the links and other products that appear in this video are from companies for which Caleb Hammer will earn an affiliate commission or referral bonus. This is not investment advice.
Sponsorship and business inquiries: business@calebhammer.com
source
New AI guidance for CFP professionals means you can expect disclosure, human oversight, and protection of your financial data.
The global body behind the CERTIFIED FINANCIAL PLANNER designation just told planners how to use artificial intelligence without cutting corners on your money — and the rules give consumers a clearer set of expectations.
On June 24, the Financial Planning Standards Board (FPSB), the nonprofit that owns the international CFP program and sets standards for more than 236,000 CFP professionals worldwide, released a Practice Guidance Note on the use of AI in financial planning.
The message to advisors is direct: AI can speed up the work, but the human planner stays on the hook for every recommendation.
AI is likely already in your advisor’s office, whether you’ve noticed or not. FPSB’s 2025 research, based on responses from more than 6,200 planners across 24 territories, found two in three firms are using AI or plan to within a year.
Planners report using it for client communications (41%), collecting client data (33%), and risk profiling (30%) — the exact tasks that shape the advice you pay for.
That makes AI a consumer issue, not just a back-office one. The same tools that draft your plan faster can also mishandle your data or produce a confident-sounding answer that’s wrong.
The guidance gives you a few reasonable things to ask for and expect from a CFP professional:
A human still owns the advice. FPSB is explicit that AI should support, not replace, professional judgment. Your planner remains responsible for the recommendations. “AI made the call” is not an acceptable answer.
Transparency about how AI is used. The guidance stresses transparency and oversight. You can ask where AI shows up in your engagement (drafting communications, analyzing your data, modeling scenarios) and a planner operating to standard should be willing to tell you.
Your data stays protected. Planners flagged data privacy and cybersecurity as their top concern (47%), and the guidance calls out confidentiality, privacy, and cybersecurity as areas needing special care. That means your financial details shouldn’t be fed into consumer AI tools that could store or expose them.
Accuracy gets checked. The second-biggest planner concern was the accuracy and reliability of AI outputs (42%). The guidance tells planners to verify what AI produces rather than pass it along unchecked. Accuracy has been a problem across the board – from answers to student loan questions to general personal finance queries.
This is global guidance that complements FPSB’s standards. It doesn’t override U.S. law or the CFP Board’s rules, which govern CFP professionals here. So the note sets expectations, not enforcement.
Still, it gives you a useful checklist for a direct conversation with your advisor.
Vetting how an advisor uses AI is part of the same homework you need to do along with vetting how they get paid.
As The College Investor has covered, a CFP can be fee-only or fee-based, and titles alone don’t tell you whether someone is acting in your interest — fee structures run from under 0.30% at robo-advisors to 1%+ at traditional firms, with flat financial plans often running from under $1,000 to $3,000.
Add one more question to the list: how do you use AI, and how do you protect my data when you do?
AI is becoming standard equipment in financial planning. The work you’re paying for — judgment, accountability, and protection of your information — is supposed to stay human. Now you have a reason to ask your advisor to confirm it.
Don’t Miss These Other Stories:
Editor: Colin Graves
The post Your CFP Is Probably Using AI — Here’s What You Should Expect appeared first on The College Investor.
Anthropic has alleged Alibaba found a cheaper way to close the already narrowing AI gap: Not by stealing servers or smuggling chips, but by using fake accounts and innocuous interactions with Claude to extract its capabilities and train competing systems at a fraction of the cost.
Leading IPO expert Jay Ritter told Fortune that Alibaba’s distillation could either strengthen Anthropic’s IPO story by positioning the company as strategic in the U.S-China rivalry or lead investors to question Anthropic’s future profitability if its frontier AI moat isn’t defensible.
“Both points of view have merit, but I think that second point about affecting profitability would be the dominant one,” he said. “Right now the growth rate of Anthropic’s revenue has been incredible, but how much they’ll be able to sustain that is a big question mark.”
Now Anthropic is turning to Washington for help, with Sarah Heck, Anthropic’s head of policy, urging Congress to penalize China’s behavior through “export controls on advanced American compute.”
For now, the federal government can’t meaningfully undo the potential damage to Anthropic’s competitive edge through export controls, which are designed to restrict hardware like chips and foreign access to tangible software like Mythos and Fable, but are powerless against the kind of distillation attack Anthropic is alleging.
“Querying it through an API is not exporting the model, and that’s what the latest controversy has been about,” Kevin Wolf, a former assistant secretary of commerce for export administration, told Fortune.
But the Trump administration denounced unauthorized distillation in an April memo that called the alleged efforts of Chinese companies to distill U.S. frontier models “unacceptable.” And with the momentum of Anthropic’s new allegations against Alibaba, reviving the idea of updating export controls to better protect U.S companies is on the table, Wolf added.
He mentioned the Remote Access Security Act introduced last year by Rep. Michael Lawler, R-New York, as an example. It’s sitting in committee now, but with more potential to move forward after Anthropic’s request for better export controls on advanced AI.
The bill would crack down on foreign entities like China accessing U.S. tech on a “purposeful, knowing, reckless, or negligent basis” through a cloud computing service if “the use of the item could pose a serious risk” to national security.
Lawler told Fortune in a statement that Anthropic’s capabilities must not fall into the hands of China and “other bad actors.”
“Dangerously, that’s exactly what’s happening right now with Alibaba. The sad part is that we knew this was going to happen,” he added. “I’ve been working on my Remote Access Security Act for years to close one of the loopholes in our export control laws that allows our adversaries to access sensitive technology through the cloud.”
If passed, this bill would apply export controls and fill the void of a Biden-era framework preventing China from accessing AI cloud compute and model weights, rescinded by Trump a few days before it was supposed to go into effect.
Meanwhile, if Alibaba’s AI lab has indeed copied Anthropic, it could actually prove Claude’s value as the original and not concern investors that much about profit, according to Harrison Rolfes, a senior research analyst for private companies at PitchBook, who used an analogy of investors looking at used cars versus new ones.
“They probably want the brand new car that has all the bells and whistles and tech involved, even though it’s a little bit more expensive,” Rolfes told Fortune. “If an enterprise is worried about cost, then yes, they can go get a cheaper model, like a Chinese model, but it’s not at a point yet where these enterprises trust using those models, especially U.S. companies.”
That could bolster Anthropic’s appeal to investors ahead of a highly anticipated IPO later this year that could value the company at $1 trillion.
But by calling on the government for help, Anthropic also faces a balancing act to make sure there’s enough regulation to protect the company’s edge over China but prevent overregulation that might hamper its business, according to Rolfes.
“Right now they want to play it safe by just saying ‘hey, we are on your side, and we want to IPO’ and the moment they can IPO, they don’t have to worry as much with what the government says, they can just let the public decide,” he said.
Update 6/26/26: Offer is back/still around
Original Post 8/13/25:
Direct Link to offer
We just saw a $1,500 after $15,000 in spend offer. Given the card itself earns 2% cash back, that offer is significantly better although I guess not everybody can meet that spend requirement. Capital One pulls all 3 bureaus on applications. Check out these Things To Know about Capital One Credit Cards. The version of the Spark card does get reported to the credit bureaus (only the Plus version does not get reported).
