Welcome, Weekenders! In this newsletter:

• The Big Read: Why Musk wins no matter who wins the White House

• Biotech: A scientist with Bezos’ and Gates’ money—and possibly a better brain chip

• Health and Fitness: Startups eye a gold rush in electrolytes

• Plus: The superbabies from the past look like our future; a baby oligarch runs amok; and the wine flows down Ellis Street.

Round up all the usual suspects!

OK, I’m being a touch silly, but gosh, the Musk set really sticks together, doesn’t it? That was made more evident than ever to me a couple days ago when I read about the new investors headed into xAI, Elon Musk’s AI startup. They’re, well, exactly who you’d expect: Antonio Gracias’ Valor Equity Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Sequoia Capital (courtesy of Shaun Maguire, I’m sure) and a couple others. All of those firms also invested in Elon Musk’s Twitter takeover, too.

Obviously, it’s a marker of their absolute faith in Musk, who can appear quite erratic to the rest of us. They hope Musk will reward their loyalty by turning xAI into the next OpenAI, which most of them haven’t invested in. And, in turn, Musk must surely appreciate the loyalty from faithful backers who won’t panic about casual chaos. 

In other words, they’re thrill-seekers, and I have to hand it to them for wanting to join what promises to be another white-knuckle ride with Musk. They were willing to join him in the Twitter takeover—one of the messiest buyouts ever—and they have watched the company’s revenue decline as he rebranded it as X. And it’s hard to fathom how Musk can ever offer them a meaningful return: He’s busy making X into a subscription-based, internet parlor version of Fox News. It’s not clear at all that such a service could attract a massive audience. For comparison, think about Donald Trump’s Truth Social, which is trying to do something similar. Even with the company trading like a meme stock, its market cap is little more than $6 billion, much less than what Musk paid for Twitter.  

Will xAI do much better? It faces a mountain of competition—including, most notably, OpenAI—and no one in AI has a time-tested business model. Still, it’s easier to imagine xAI panning out than it is a Twitter resurrection led by conservatives. 

I’m curious who else we may learn has invested in xAI. None of The Information’s reporting suggests Musk is having trouble attracting investors to the endeavor—despite all the problems at X and his own stated belief that a Kamala Harris presidency would decimate his business interests (which our Nick Wingfield talks about more in this week’s Big Read). In fact, we’ve reported “strategic investors”—companies in the AI industry—may join the round. (My colleagues guess Nvidia could be one). If we continue to see only the same names that have shown up before, it would seem to reflect Musk’s wish to keep his circle tight, a sensible strategy for a CEO who prefers to operate with unquestioned authority.—Abram Brown

The Big Read 

Elon Musk Will Win No Matter Who Wins the White House

Elon Musk sure is on our minds this week. But, really, how could it be any other way? 

Musk has captured broad media attention beyond the core business press by portraying a potential Kamala Harris victory as a doomsday scenario for him—and has energetically thrown himself into securing the presidential election for Donald Trump. 

Here’s a reality check for Elon. Those fears are overblown: In reality, Musk’s foremost business interests, SpaceX and Tesla, will almost certainly prosper no matter who occupies 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, as our Nick Wingfield reports in this week’s Big Read.

Biotech

The Scientist With Bezos’ and Gates’ Money—and an Innovative Brain Chip

Tom Oxley tends to lapse into philosophy, a long-standing habit. 

“I remember having a conversation with my best friend when we were, like, 14, and it was something to the effect of, ‘Well, there doesn’t seem to be any point to being here—like, I’m not sure why we’re here and what we’re doing here,’” he recalled in one of many conversations with our Akash Pasricha. “And that led me down a pathway of trying to understand what was it all about—thinking about anxiety and pain, thinking about all the things we go through. I just became obsessed with what was happening in the brain.”

Oxley, 44, has carried that inquisitiveness about what’s happening in our noggins from college and medical school in his native Australia to his high-tech Brooklyn laboratory, where he and his startup, Synchron, are at work these days on a brain chip implant. Synchron’s version could be inserted in a far less invasive surgery than the one used by Elon Musk’s Neuralink, the brain chip industry’s highest-profile startup. Oxley is optimistic that his brain chip will evolve and have far-reaching effects beyond the ones he’s seeing in patients at the moment.

Akash asked Oxley why investors like Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos have given him money instead of Musk and Neuralink. “Because people like their skulls, that’s probably the best reason. Because I think the ultimate solution is going to be: People ... want to have their bodies disturbed as little as possible.”

Health and Fitness

Startups Eye a Gold Rush in Electrolytes

Look, everyone—fresh powder! Powdered electrolytes, that is. A rush of startups has sprung up to purvey the stuff, which, mixed with water, aids recovery from dehydration. Physicians don’t believe we need to be consuming it quite as much as everyone seems to be these days, as Weekend contributor Ashwin Rodrigues details, but that isn’t stopping founders like Jahaan Ansari. His New York–based startup, Gainful, sells electrolytes as part of a monthly subscription plan that includes diet coaching and a session with a personal trainer. He insists electrolytes aren’t just for serious athletes “but also for those who are just trying to get the most out of their day-to-day lives.” 

Abram Brown, editor of The Information’s Weekend section, may begin to run his entire life based on the whims of Buck County pollsters. You can reach him at [email protected] or find him on X.

Attending: Willie Brown’s Booze and Brunch

Election Day should be a national holiday. It would make it easier for millions of people to vote and, well, go to the beach afterward. And besides, all of us—regardless of our political persuasion—deserve a reward for the avalanche of campaign propaganda we’ve been subjected to against our will: mailers, TV ads, social media posts, text blasts in which presidential candidates Kamala Harris and Donald Trump beg for money with phrases like “now more than ever.” 

Man—now more than ever, America needs a drink.

With this in mind, I highly recommend the boozy and free Election Day luncheon hosted every year in San Francisco by Willie Brown, former city mayor. The two-hour block party at John’s Grill, a downtown steakhouse on Ellis Street, starts at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday, and it will feature a who’s who guest list of Bay Area political players. However, anyone is welcome to attend.

By noon, a crowd of hundreds will billow out the doors. The event offers Grade A people-watching on par with the Las Vegas Airport’s. Gov. Gavin Newsom and Mayor London Breed are just a couple notable names that have stopped by in the past. 

It’s truly a sight to behold as political players dish dirt and drown their Election Day agita in surprisingly decent wine—all while noshing on filet mignon, prawns and pasta. 

“I look at this as Switzerland on Ellis Street,” said Lee Houskeeper, a longtime press agent in the city. “This one will undoubtedly be bigger because of the excitement around Kamala.”

Joseph Cotchett, a prominent Bay Area trial attorney, helped fund the lunch with a substantial donation. He expects a record crowd, as many Democrats in town will be looking for an outlet to channel their anxiety over whether Harris, a former San Francisco prosecutor, will defeat Trump.

“This is probably the most important election in your lifetime and my lifetime,” Cotchett said. “I started with John Kennedy, and I can tell you I’ve never seen anything like this.”—Josh Koehn

Reading: When the Kids Aren’t Alright

A couple months ago, The New York Times irritated the internet with (an oddly timed) list of the best books of the 21st century. (Editorially, it would seem that next year—the quarter-century mark—would make more sense; more broadly, no one ever agrees with lists like this, which is what makes them go viral.) One of the Times’ picks particularly caught my eye: Kazuo Ishiguro’s “Never Let Me Go” from 2005 came in at No. 9. Seemed high! 

After picking it up, I got it. “Never Let Me Go,” a melancholy bit of literary science fiction, vibrates with a soft-spoken but increasing relevancy as we get closer to a future that could plausibly include unhappy institutions like the Hailsham school. Disconcertingly, it reminded me much of a Weekend Big Read earlier this year from our Julia Black and Margaux MacColl about the rise of Silicon Valley superbabies. None of those tykes is quite like Ruth, Tommy and the rest, but I could describe them as distant cousins.—A.B.

Watching: Brighton Beach Antics

“Anora” by Sean Baker, who directed one of my favorite recent films, “The Florida Project,” is one of the best movies I’ve seen this year, a fast-paced drama that’s packed with hilarious dialogue and never slows down. As a result, it’s tough to say exactly what genre “Anora” belongs in. 

The film, which won the Cannes Film Festival’s prestigious Palme d’Or, follows the titular Anora, a Russian-American sex worker portrayed in an Oscar-worthy performance by relative newcomer Mikey Madison (“Once Upon a Time…in Hollywood,” “Scream”). On one fateful evening, Anora meets Ivan (Mark Eidelstein—dubbed the Russian Timothée Chalamet—in his first U.S. film). Ivan is a spoiled-rotten 20-something, the son of a Russian oligarch, who’s on an American getaway to let off some steam through heavy drug use and other illegal activities across Brooklyn’s Brighton Beach neighborhood. 

Anora and Ivan quickly get hitched, forcing Ivan’s parents to intervene via a motley crew of hired henchmen, who attempt to force the pair to get an annulment. I won’t spoil the rest, but “Anora” isn’t what you expect. It keeps you on the edge of your seat and proves again that Baker has a unique talent for creating a lot with a little.—Kate Clark

Final Thought

We hope you waited your turn.

Updated: An earlier version of this newsletter misspelled Shaun Maguire's name.