Franco Denari

Frasca Executive Dispatch | Wednesday: AI (Enterprise / Leadership) At Affinnova we used genetic algorithms to help Fortune 500 brand teams choose packaging and product concepts. The algorithm was never the hard part. The hard part was persuading a brand group to let the result overrule a call it had owned for a decade. The clients who changed who signed off got the value. The ones who kept the old sign-off got a very good report. 1. OpenAI released GPT-6 Sol and Luna on 22 September and cut API prices in half against the previous tier. The company says the new rates are permanent, not introductory. Frontier-grade reasoning just became a line item a procurement desk can approve without a meeting. 2. The same day, The Information reported that Amazon, Microsoft and Figma are discounting or bundling AI features to hold customers. FICO's CIO, Mike Trkay, said dozens of his vendors have added AI at no extra cost at renewal, and that a contract charging separately for it is one he would no longer sign. 3. A PYMNTS Intelligence study published the same day found that firms with AI embedded narrowly and firms with it embedded widely use it on roughly the same number of tasks. The returns diverge anyway: 55% of the narrow group report one, against 93% of the wide group. The deep adopters also report nearly twice as many barriers. They are not finding fewer problems. They are finding more of the company. What this rhymes with: Affinnova. The optimisation was for sale. The willingness to act on it was not. Second-order effect: when every competitor rents the same intelligence at the same falling rate, the model stops being the differentiator. Decision rights, clear ownership and an approval path that does not assume a person retyping data become the advantage. For institutions: stop benchmarking which model you bought. Ask which decisions it is allowed to make, who changed their sign-off to let it, and what your operating plan assumes about the cost of intelligence. AI doesn't replace experience. It compresses it. — Rob Frasca | COSIMO Digital | cosimodigital.com Capital markets, rebuilt on-chain, amplified by AI #EnterpriseAI #AILeadership #FutureOfWork

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Keurig Dr Pepper Inc. has secured $7B in private-equity capital to support its $18B acquisition of JDE Peet's, a move that will ultimately create the world’s largest pure-play coffee company. The investment — co-led by Apollo and KKR with participation from Goldman Sachs — comes at a critical moment, as KDP looks to ease investor concerns about its planned separation into two standalone businesses. The company also announced #leadership changes, including a new search for the CEO of the upcoming coffee spinout. With CEO Tim Cofer reaffirming shareholder value creation and a refreshed approach to structure, KDP is signaling confidence and long-term vision despite volatility. The #acquisition, expected to close in early 2026, will combine powerhouse #portfolios across coffee, ready-to-drink beverages, and iconic brands like Snapple, 7UP, and Sunkist — while activist pressure from Starboard Value adds even more intensity to the story. Learn More: https://lnkd.in/eTYa5XGa #Hospitality Branded Hospitality Hospitality Headline Sudhanshu Priyadarshi Derek Hopkins Justin Whitmore Fabien Simon Mark Rowan David Solomon

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With Chobani's latest $650m equity raise & $20B valuation, its solidifying itself as a true juggernaut in the food & beverage space. Revenue over time: - 2020 - $1.4B - 2025E - $3.8B The company is expecting about ~$800m in EBITDA (20% EBITDA margin) this year and is fetching premium multiples on a sales and profitability basis

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Almost $20 billion deployed into alternative proteins. Taste, texture, and price still have not solved the consumer problem at scale. Bain & Company's Green Technology Performance Index just called it - alternative proteins critically underperformed the expectations investors set in 2015. Beyond Meat pivoted to new formats and rebranded to save growth. Oatly lost 96% of its market cap in five years after expanding manufacturing too fast and choking on North American supply issues. The problem was never the science. It was the margin structure and the consumer proposition. Plant-based burgers cost more to produce than ground beef at scale, require premium retail placement to move, and taste different enough that most consumers do not repeat. You cannot build a category on trial alone. Velocity dies when the second purchase never happens. Now look at where capital is actually flowing. Precision fermentation raised $100 million in the first half of 2026 - more than all of 2025. Biomass fermentation pulled $99 million, up from $60 million, through fewer but larger deals. That shift is not sentiment. It is investors backing a different margin equation. Precision-fermented casein solves the functional protein problem plant-based could not touch. Formo is weeks away from an FDA no-questions letter using E. coli to produce casein that is highly soluble - which opens clear high-protein beverage formats that currently rely on whey. Those Vegan Cowboys just expanded into bovine caseins optimized for functional cheese and nutritional products. New Culture secured a second patent for animal-free mozzarella and is prepping a foodservice launch. These are not consumer brands. These are ingredient plays selling B2B into existing supply chains. The investor lesson here is not that alternative proteins failed. It is that the capital went to the wrong layer of the stack first. Consumer brands built on unproven ingredients with worse economics than the products they replaced were always going to struggle. Ingredient companies solving formulation problems for manufacturers who already have distribution and repeat purchase built in - that is a different build. The category disappointed because investors funded the brand layer before the infrastructure layer was ready. Fermentation is getting the second look because it fixes the input cost problem instead of asking consumers to pay more for a worse experience. The question now is whether precision fermentation can scale production and hit price parity before the next hype cycle burns out.

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Randian Capital a Shareholder of Snap Inc. Publishes Open Letter to Board and Management, and Announces Snap Investor Town Hall On 4/6 at 7PM EST live on X "Snap’s governance structure—in which public shareholders have effectively no voice—is among the worst we have encountered across public markets. The Company’s governance and capital allocation practices together represent a textbook case of how to prevent the formation of a durable, long-term shareholder base. "Snap’s stock currently trades near an all-time low, having declined over 80% since the IPO (based on IPO close price to 3/30 closing price). Shareholders—many of them retail investors who believed in the Company’s vision—have endured years of value erosion with no credible path to recovery in sight. If the Board does not act with urgency, we believe Snap faces a real risk of permanent impairment and irreversible decline." #governancearbitrage #valuecreation #corporategoverance https://lnkd.in/gJRcfuVG

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