Robots, Rockets, and Air Taxis w/ BLADE CEO (Rob Wiesenthal)
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What headlines kick off this Rich Habits Radar episode?
Welcome back to the Rich Habits Radar, our Friday episode of the Rich Habits Podcast, where every Friday morning we're coming at you with the biggest headlines impacting you and your money. This episode is brought to you by VCX, the public ticker for private tech. My name is Austin Hankwitz. I'm joined by my co-host Robert Croke. And the three things sitting at the top of our Rich Habits Radar this week include humanoid robotics company Agility announcing their plans to go public, More rumors swirling about a mega merger between SpaceX and Tesla. Apple being forced to raise prices on their devices because of AI. And be sure to stick around until the end because we have a wonderful conversation planned with the CEO of Blade, the company owned by Joby Aviation, Rob Wiesenthal.
So Robert, let's jump into our first story.
Yeah, today's episode is going to be awesome and very action-packed around all things that are going on in the markets right now. And a company called Agility Robotics, some of you may have heard of them. They make human-like walking robots. Announced this week, they're going public. The deal values them at around $2.5 billion, and they'll trade under the ticker AGLT. The robot itself is named Digit, it walks on two legs, it's got arms, and its whole job is to move and stack heavy containers in warehouses, the kind of repetitive, back-breaking work people burn out doing.
And this is not some crazy, maybe someday it exists story. These robots are already working on factory floors. Digit is working in Amazon warehouses. It's also at a logistics company called GXO. It's at a car parts maker, Schaeffler. They've got them running at a plant in South Carolina. Even Toyota is using Digit up in Canada. So this is a real product. They got real customers. It's not just a slide deck. This is a real company.
And this is where it gets interesting. They're doing it through a SPAC. That's a special purpose acquisition company. Instead of a traditional IPO process, they're merging with a shell company that's already public, run by a well-known dealmaker named Michael Klein.
The deal brings in over $600 million cash to Digit's balance sheet. And Robert, there's some interesting names that jump out as to who the investors are. Who's fronting this $600 million? Foxconn, the company that actually assembles iPhones, they are a lead investor here, putting in over $200 million for this deal to take place. So the company that's building Apple products is literally betting $200 million on humanoid robots. That could tell you where things are headed.
We've been talking about humanoid robotics for a couple of years now, all the cool companies out there. But in this particular situation, Austin, what does this mean for you and your money?
Humanoid robots, in my opinion, will be one of the biggest investment themes over the next 5, 10, 15 years. We've been talking about it for years now alongside Chris Camillo. We're investors in Figure and Aptronic. And there's a really cool ETF called RoboStrategy, B-O-T, that's listed on the New York Stock Exchange that anyone can buy. They own equity in a lot of these humanoid robotics companies. But a $2.5 billion humanoid robot company going public through a SPAC... Very speculative, right? All of this is speculative. Let's be very transparent here. But this section is very interesting to me. So SPACs, if you guys remember, they were crazy. Everyone loved them back in 2020, 2021. But nine times out of 10, when a company went public through a SPAC, it kind of blew up two or three years later.
So HIMSS, Rocket Lab, and DraftKings, I think, are the only three big SPACs out of 2021 among the hundreds that SPACed in 2020 and 2021 that are actually here today. I think SoFi might have been a SPAC, but, you know, that's four that I can even just think of out of the hundreds of the sexy, fun, cool names, right? So just be careful if this is something that you're looking at. Just take it with a grain of salt.
Yeah, I think we need to ask Chamath if he can come on and we do an episode about all of the SPACs that went by the wayside over the past four or five years.
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Chapters
4 chapters
1
What headlines kick off this Rich Habits Radar episode?
0:00β4:19
2
How is Agility Robotics planning to go public and who is funding Digit?
4:19β20:14
3
What would a TeslaβSpaceX merger mean for shareholders and AI infrastructure?
20:14β47:40
4
Why did Apple raise Mac and iPad prices and how do memory chip shortages factor in?
47:40β54:49
Speakers
3 identifiedMore from Rich Habits Podcast
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Q&A: $10M Inheritance, Living In A Trailer, & 403(b) vs 457(b)
185: Is Your Financial Life Too Complicated?