Good morning. And Happy New Year, with apologies to Larry David.
A lot’s happened over the holiday break, so let’s get right into it. —Andrew Nusca
P.S. I’ll be at CES today and tomorrow for our 11th annual Brainstorm dinner in Las Vegas. I’ll be chatting with Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon about chip things and colleague Allie Garfinkle will be leading a star-studded panel discussion about agentic AI. Shout if you’re in town—and re-up your Fortune Brainstorm membership so you don’t miss rad things like this.
Want to send thoughts or suggestions to Fortune Tech? Drop a line here.
New Polymarket account bet $30,000 on Maduro ouster
The running question about Polymarket and its peers is: Are so-called prediction markets truly a new type of asset class, or just gambling by a different name?
And moreover: Should insider trading be a bug…or a feature?
Traders on Polymarket added more fuel to the fire late Friday night after they began to increasingly bet that Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro would be removed from his post by January 31.
Prior to the rise, the chance of that happening had hovered around 5%. Just before 10 p.m. Eastern time, it jumped to 8.5%. Then it jumped to 12.5%.
Then the U.S. ordered American commercial aircraft out of Venezuelan airspace.
In what felt like the blink of an eye, tens of millions of dollars on Polymarket were riding on Maduro’s departure. One account in particular—created less than a week ago—invested more than $30,000 the day before the action and quickly turned a more than $400,000 profit.
Fair? Polymarket and rival Kalshi explicitly ban insider trading in their U.S. rulebooks— “No Person shall take action or direct another to take action based on non-public Order information, however acquired,” reads Polymarket’s—but enforcement is another ballgame.
That job goes to the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC. Like the SEC, it regulates trading on material nonpublic information, or MNPI; like the SEC, it is operating under a Trump administration that has discouraged the enforcement of existing rules. —AN
The U.S.-China robotaxi rivalry descends on London
Given the simmering trade war between the U.S. and China, it has been difficult to see whose robotaxi tech will triumph in a head-to-head match.
That will change this year in semi-neutral territory: London.
Alphabet-owned Waymo is already road-testing its autonomous Jaguar vehicles in the British capital, having begun last month.
Meanwhile, Beijing-based Baidu is preparing to launch its Apollo RT6 vehicles in London in the first half of the year, with platform help from the two leading U.S. ride-hailing platforms: Uber and Lyft.
If you’re keeping track at home, Waymo is also partnered with Uber and Lyft. You can be matched with a Waymo vehicle using Uber in Atlanta, Austin, and Phoenix; you’ll be able to do the same via Lyft in Nashville later this year.
Which makes for some interesting storylines in London, as sports broadcasters like to say.
How will both countries’ robotaxi operators outmaneuver each other for market share? How will they manage data privacy concerns that are stricter than those at home? And how will their rolling hardware sufficiently navigate London’s Roman roads and medieval meanderings? Strap in. —AN
Cisco in ‘advanced talks’ to acquire Axonius
Cybersecurity, so hot right now!
The enterprise tech giant Cisco is in advanced discussions to acquire the Israeli cybersecurity firm Axonius, according to a report from Calcalist, the Israeli financial news outlet.
The reported purchase price? A cool $2 billion.
Axonius—which is led by co-founder Dean Sysman and technically headquartered in New York City—has raised hundreds of millions of dollars from investors such as Accel, Silver Lake, Bessemer, Iconiq, and Alkeon.
The company’s asset management platform promises to pull together data from various corporate systems into a single, cloud-based source of truth. It’s similar to what’s on offer from Israeli peer Armis, which ServiceNow agreed to buy for $7.75 billion two weeks ago.
It’s been a wild ride at Axonius lately. Despite its growth, the company laid off more than 10% of its 900 employees in November (“to sharpen our focus,” the company said). It also acquired Israeli medical device security specialist Cynerio in July. —AN
More tech
—Starlink offers free broadband in Venezuela through February 3.
—New startup perk: Free nicotine pouches for productivity.
—Biz Stone’s latest startup raises $29 million. It’s behind the “intentional” social media app Tangle.
—Palo Alto Networks may acquire Koi. A reported $400 million for the Israeli cybersecurity startup. (OK, three’s a trend.)
—PwC leans into crypto. Trump’s embrace of the industry helped speed things along, U.S. chief Paul Griggs says.
—Reddit overtakes TikTok in U.K. In a sea of slop, humans seek humans.
—Ilya Lichtenstein released from prison early. The hacker behind the Bitfinex crypto theft gets out courtesy of a new U.S. prison reform law.
