🌶️ Hot Fudge Sunday for 2025-06-01
This week's digest covers market movements post-Memorial Day and exciting new tech acquisitions.
🙏 Big thanks to our sponsor, NexusTek! 🙏
Welcome to the latest Hot Fudge Daily. Each day of the week you get thematic value.
- 🌶️ Spicy Edition Sunday FREE (Hot Fudge Sunday weekly newsletter captures the best of Hot Fudge Daily and the most clicked links for the week.)
- 📈 Markets Monday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: What is moving markets and why does it matter for the week ahead?)
- 🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Get fast unfiltered thoughts on news of the day with just a dash of snark.)
- 🤪 Wacky Wednesday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Catch up on the wild and wooly memes from a variety of deep web #random channels.)
- 🔙 Throwback Thursday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Examine recent news in a thought provoking Shot and Chaser format.)
- ✅ Final Thoughts Friday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: A clear eyed look back on the week that was and could have been.)
- 🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday $ (Hot Fudge Daily: Steady and sober unpacking of the slow news day where muted press releases and disclosure stories try to get buried before the weekend takes all the attention.)
🙏 And a big thanks to all our sponsors! 🙏(Scroll to the end…)
This week continues our new shortened format. Thanks again to readers for all the helpful replies and survey feedback.
Last week
Last week was a shorter week due to the holiday weekend.
It was nice to see NexusTek recognized for a 7th year in a row!
NexusTek Named to CRN Solution Provider 500 List for 2025
/PRNewswire/ -- NexusTek, a top national cloud, managed IT services, and cybersecurity provider, announced today that CRN®, a brand of The Channel Company, has...
Next week
Are you going to be in NYC next week on June 11-12?
An amazing business leader event is coming to NYC on June 11.
#builttoscale #businessstrategy #leadership #scalingup #growthmindset… | NexusTek
Get Ready to Elevate Your Business! Join NexusTek & The Hedaya Capital Group as we host Built to Scale, a high-impact panel and networking event presented in partnership with our sponsors Microsoft & Pax8. We’re bringing together a powerhouse panel of industry leaders—Isaac Braca, Irwin Dayan, Jack Ades, Bobby Christian, and special guest Victor Braca—who have built, scaled, and successfully exited high-growth businesses. They’ll share proven strategies, creative growth tactics, and th...
Also, if you are an owner/operator in Hospitality / Leisure / Travel, let me know if you’d like to be invited to an invitation for an exclusive event in NYC on June 12! 🎟️🛥️🌃
(or, if you know someone in NYC that might be interest — please forward this newsletter along)
Hot Fudge Daily Digest
📈 Markets Monday for 2025-05-26
U.S. stock markets were closed on Monday, May 26th 2025 in observance of Memorial Day.
🔥 Hot Takes Tuesday for 2025-05-27
Two hot takes on the market.
Tuesday arrived with tech stock movement after Monday markets being closed for observance of Memorial Day.
Tuesday also arrived with two acquisitions that were long overdue: Red Canary and Informatica
Techmeme: Zscaler agrees to acquire Red Canary, a provider of managed detection and response services, for an undisclosed sum; the deal is expected to close in August (Greg Otto/CyberScoop)
By Greg Otto / CyberScoop. View the full context on Techmeme.
Techmeme: Salesforce agrees to acquire cloud data management company Informatica for ~$8B, set to close in its FY 2027, one year after an earlier deal fell through (Bloomberg)
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
🤪 Wacky Wednesday for 2025-05-28
Each Wednesday I go through dozens of Slack communities.
I then select the most interesting shared link.
This will always be a safe for work link. 🙈
🔙 Throwback Thursday for 2025-05-29
🤖 + 💰 One story caught my eye this week was the recent Series A raised by Chalk AI. Who? These folks:
Techmeme: Chalk, which lets enterprises input proprietary data into AI and ML models quickly for inference, raised a $50M Series A led by Felicis at a $500M valuation (Anna Tong/Reuters)
By Anna Tong / Reuters. View the full context on Techmeme.
Chalk AI is interesting because of the origin story and founding team background but also because while some companies are building on top of Snowflake, Databricks, etc. it is companies like Chalk AI looking to be the companies that come after Snowflake, Databricks, etc.
In fact, it is just 18 months since Chalk AI got Seed funding.
Announcing our $10M seed to accelerate machine learning
We’re proud to announce we’ve raised $10 million in seed funding led by General Catalyst, Unusual Ventures, and Xfund to build the data platform for machine learning and generative AI.
✅ Final Thoughts Friday for 2025-05-30
🤖 + 🔮 The story that caught my eye this week was a tale of two white collar worker realities… the banal and the existential threat of AI to gainful employment. However, I suspect the truth may not be somewhere in the middle… but is instead playing in another small town nearby in an empty lot just waiting to be discovered.
Techmeme: Tools like Microsoft Copilot are helping execs, managers, and staff quickly catch up on work after a vacation by triaging emails and summarizing Slack threads (Jo Constantz/Bloomberg)
By Jo Constantz / Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Techmeme: Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says AI may wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobs and spike US unemployment to 10%-20% in the next one to five years (Axios)
From Axios. View the full context on Techmeme.
🔮 Sneak Peak Saturday for 2025-05-31
Ah, the Friday news dump. Let’s see the memes!
By Friday, everything seems to be reaching the peak of getting news turned in before a deadline or dread-line. It sometimes seems like we reach a fever pitch in news coverage throughout the week.
Peak 🏔️ vs. Peek 👀
Then there is a trope, cliché, or bromide about slow news days and the quietly mentioned news updates sent on a Friday — to try and sneak it past wider coverage. Or, in a nutshell, peak patronizing publishing.
A long list this week…
Techmeme: Docs and sources: Builder.ai faked business with Bengaluru-based VerSe, which runs the Dailyhunt news app, by “round-tripping” sales worth ~$60M from 2021-2024 (Bloomberg)
From Bloomberg. View the full context on Techmeme.
Techmeme: Two rival Amazon influencers seek to dismiss their 2024 copyright case, where one accused the other of posting similar promotional content for the same products (Mia Sato/The Verge)
By Mia Sato / The Verge. View the full context on Techmeme.
Techmeme: Filing: the US SEC voluntarily dismissed its 2023 lawsuit against Binance and CZ that accused them of diverting customer funds, misleading investors, and more (Jonathan Stempel/Reuters)
By Jonathan Stempel / Reuters. View the full context on Techmeme.
#OpenToWork Weekly
I participated in a #NeverSearchAlone #JSC after rebooting Cuthrell Consulting and joining NexusTek.
I added those #OpenToWork from my LinkedIn network to this newsletter. Over time, we've grown an Alumni 🎉 section for those that transitioned to their next career adventure.
Alumni 🎉
Those in my network that are #OpenToWork:
Elizabeth Quintanilla - Fractional CMO, Digital Marketing Consultant & Coach, Marketing Gunslinger
Barbara Hadley, EdM, SPHR - Strategic HR Leader | Employee Engagement Expert
Andrew Webber - Proven Leader | Consumer Product Innovation & Scaling
Lida Tohidi - Award-Winning Product & Marketing Leader | Startup Advisor
Nathan Clyker - Strategic Sales & Business Development | IT Solutions Expert
Gina (Gina Minks) Rosenthal - Global Product Marketing Manager | Technical Content Strategist
Janel Van Beek - Business Strategist & Master Coach | Leadership & Change Expert
Tamera Rousseau King - Technical Program Manager | Agile Product Owner | People Leader
Ricardo Perez - Virtualization Architect | PowerFlex & VxRail Specialist
Mike Berteletti, CISSP - Experienced IT Professional | Infrastructure & Security
Matthew Leib - Data Center, Cloud & Storage Architect | Technical Writer & Analyst
Michael Joffe - Global Technology Leader | P&L Management | SaaS & OEM
Colleen Coll - Event Technology & Digital Media Specialist | Live Reporting
Thomas Chatham - Engineering Leader | SaaS & Converged Infrastructure
Sam Aiello, Ph.D. - Cybersecurity & Technology Strategist | Pre-Sales Leadership
Note: Some images via Unsplash
Disclosure
I am linking to my disclosure.
Cuthrell Consulting LLCAttn: Jay Cuthrell1903 Live Oak St #92Beaufort, NC 28516-0092
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