Hi! Nothing beats the feeling of your barber absolutely butchering your fresh haircut and asking your feedback on it right after. On the topic of grooming let's have a fun riddle now shall we:

A thin white veil, it's missing on a whale,
Like speed to a snail, its pale to a male;
On salons and on sale, children clip it like a tail,
To women it's an ale, won't help you read any braille.

If you haven't guessed it yet, the answer is nails. That's right, so surprise your wife by getting her nails done this week on the occasion of Nail Day. And don't forget to ask your kids to clip their nails, with that being said let's get started with our regular!

Today’s special:

A Federal Failure: The federal workforce isn’t really thriving in the U.S. right now.

The Venture Vultures: AI & machine learning is eating up venture capitals worldwide!

Celsius Is Hot: Celsius is well on its way to become America’s mainstream energy drink…

For a workforce once synonymous with stability, the mood among U.S. federal employees is starting to look anything but secure.

Starting off with the overall sentiment: the share of federal workers classified as “thriving” has slid to 48% in 2025, down from 58% in 2024 as per Gallup. It’s not just a dip rather a steady unwind and it’s not happening in isolation. State and local government workers now sit slightly ahead of the curve at 50% in 2025, while the broader U.S. worker average parallels the federal employees at 48%.

Federal workers have slumped from spearheading the pack to lagging behind, and that isn’t unfounded. Afterall, employees are now working at the backdrop of a political leadership which strives in strife with chaos and only 7.5% of employees believe political leadership creates high motivation.

Policy signals are only adding to the uncertainty, and this time the numbers are doing most of the talking. It’s a fact that the federal workforce didn’t just decline, it cascaded down by 271,000 employees in 2025 alone, a roughly 9% drop from the start of the year. That translates to a total headcount from 3 million in January 2025 to 2.74 million by November.

But why those workers left matters just as much as the question of how many left. The bulk of the exits weren’t traditional layoffs, in fact about 25,000 employees were actually terminated. Much of the mass exodus took place in October with 162,000 employees officially off the books. If this were an exam then the score for government-wide employee engagement failed to make the passing grade at just 32 out of 100, while 58.2% of employees say their engagement has worsened over the past year.

On a departmental level, things aren’t any different, at the Department of the Treasury, engagement falls to 22.9, and the morale of 70.2% employees is on a decline. Peeking over at Health and Human Services, the score drops even lower to 20.4, with 14,417 employees (15.6%) calling it quits early 2025. Even the “best” performers aren’t thriving anymore for instance, the Department of the Army which tops large agencies with a score of 48.1, yet nearly 49.5% of its workforce reports a worse experience than the year before.

Venture capital has always chased the next big thing but in 2025, it did a lot more than just chase AI, it went all chips in on it.

Investors had already funneled a staggering $192.7 billion into AI startups, by October 2025. This was enough to put the sector on course to absorb more than half of all global VC dollars for the first time ever.

As per Crunchbase, AI funding skyrocketed to $211 billion in 2025, an 85% jump from $114 billion in 2024, a new record the sector had seen hitherto and by extension dethroning its forty peak of 2021. In other words, AI isn’t just leading venture capital, it is ‘venture capital’, accordingly so it accounted for 50% of all global funding last year. When it comes to quarterly revenue by Q4 2025, AI deals had climbed to $72.4 billion, outpacing rest of the market at $66.2 billion.

If 2025 could be defined in a few lines, it would read as the year where ‘AI rewrote the record books’, and it was more or less a year of funding frenzy. Global venture funding hit $97 billion in Q3 alone, up 38% year over year, with much of that growth driven by blockbuster AI rounds. About half of the total global venture funding went into the pockets of AI companies.

In fact, AI startups captured $45 billion in that single quarter, particularly there were three startups which commanded the highest venture investments. Anthropic secured a massive $13 billion; xAI followed with $5.3 billion and lastly Mistral AI raised $2 billion.

However, the capital wasn’t spread evenly, with more than 30% of quarterly funding going into mega-rounds of $500 million or more, and only 18 companies soaked up a third of all investment as per the Crunchbase. AI isn’t just bringing in more capital it’s attracting bigger checks and fewer winners. The result is a market where missing out on the AI wave increasingly means you’re missing the venture funding altogether.

Not long ago, Celsius was just another underdog brand with its self-proclaimed calorie burning capabilities in the beverage market. Today, it’s starting to look a lot more like a top contender which has endeared itself to gym goers and fitness enthusiasts.

In 2025, the company pulled in a record $2,515 millions in revenue, up more than 85% year-over-year, one of the fastest growth rates in the beverage industry. It’s more than just sales climbing; earnings also jumped 85.7% to 26 cents per share, comfortably surpassing expectations, as demand continues to increase alongside distribution.

Celsius is becoming more than just a single flagship product, much of its success is being driven by an expanding portfolio. Alani Nu, one of its recent acquisitions, pulled in roughly $370 million in quarterly sales. The result is a company that’s not just growing fast, but reshaping market rankings along the way with revenue charts.

What’s determining Celsius’ growth is how often and where people are actually drinking it. About 32% of consumers are drinking energy beverages more frequently. And those occasions are multiplying fast about 37% of consumers now drink Celsius with meals, while a third consume it socially, thereby enabling Celsius to transcend its functional use and integrate itself into everyday lifestyle.

International revenue reached $22.1 million, up 9% year-over-year, all thanks to its continued rollout in markets like the U.K., Ireland, and France. While in the U.S., momentum remains equally strong as retail sales rose 24.4% in Q4, pushing Celsius to roughly 20% market share in the ready-to-drink energy category

Moreover, the company accounted for 33% of the growth in the U.S. zero-sugar energy drink segment, becoming one of the main drivers of the category itself. A big part of that expansion comes from its partnership with PepsiCo, which invested $550 million in the company. A deal which has been lucrative for Celsius’ to widen its retail footprint making it available in 250,000 locations. In addition, the company is continuing its run, and it’s expected to increase shelf space for its core brand by 17%.

The competition is neck and neck for sure, but can you take a guess which one is America's favorite food delivery app?

[Answer Below]

Answer Here

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