Welcome to the Collective.  When was the last time you were on a Peloton? Although the cultural relevance of the company has seemed to be in decline, their Q4 results were undeniable. We’ll dive into what that means for fitness startups below.

Yesterday, we launched our first short-form video podcast clip on all of our socials! In the clip, our first podcast guest Kotryna Jukneveciute of Arête shared an inspiring message of how she overcomes self-doubt.

— Antonio DiMeglio & Leon Li

Peloton Gains Speed

Peloton ($PTON) ended the trading day Thursday up a whopping 35%. The reason? Partly because of a seemingly meager 0.2% increase in sales in their fourth-quarter results. Nevertheless, this was the company’s first time posting year-over-year revenue growth since the holidays of 2021. For reference, the song that spent the most time as #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 during that quarter was Adele’s Easy on Me. Great song, but it’s been a while. 

So what does this mean for fitness startups? First off, it means that fitness has remained ripe for software disruption. As the saying goes, “software is eating the world.” So much so that on the heels of this earnings announcement, Peloton said that they will start charging new subscribers who bought their hardware on the secondary market a one-time $95 activation fee.

Fitness is an undeniable trend for Gen Z and millennials, but the jury is out on whether these generations are willing to bring their habit into their homes with a device like a Peloton. After all, a run club where you can find your next love can’t exist in your basement. (Or can it?)

The results of Wednesday’s poll? TikTok Shop got two-thirds of the votes against the YouTube and Shopify collaboration in our audience’s prediction of the future leading shoppable media platform. The advertising economy’s flip to short-form video content creators may be real, people.

Copycat Training Wheels

So how does a chatbot like ChatGPT or Claude learn? Like you, it must go to “school.” However, when the chatbot’s school is nearly the whole internet and permission isn’t explicitly given from the writers of, well, everything…is this ok?

This is the question that a class action lawsuit against Amazon-backed Anthropic seeks to solve. Led by a group of authors, the class seeks a ruling stating that the company, which created the Claude LLM, has infringed on the authors’ copyrighted works by training the AI model on their works without permission.

Anthropic will vigorously defend themselves in this legal battle, with the broad implications of the case’s impact on the generative AI space set to be enormous. The potential impact for future litigation stemming from this case is relevant well beyond Anthropic and its $4 billion (yes billion) backing from Amazon.

So what does the future look like if the class succeeds? Thankfully, we have an example in our last newsletter: expect more deals like the one between Condé Nast and OpenAI that allowed for an authorized model training and distribution partnership between a publisher and a tech firm. Could this be…a good thing for small and large-scale authors or media companies seeking to gain distribution in a lucrative partnership? Likely yes. This is a suit we’ll keep you posted on.

Thought NIL Has Traveled Too Far? Think Again

A former University of Colorado assistant football coach has said that he met with Saudi Arabian entities in pursuit of NIL funding opportunities between the university’s football program and the nation’s Public Investment Fund (PIF).

Investing in global sports would be nothing new for the PIF, as the fund has purchased Premier League side Newcastle United, attracted global soccer superstars like Cristiano Ronaldo to its domestic league, and invested over $2 billion in LIV Golf. Recently, the PIF-backed Al Ahli reportedly offered 24-year-old Brazilian international left-winger Vinicius Junior a contract worth over €1 billion.

So where does NIL go from here? The message sent to startups or small businesses that wanted to achieve an advantage in local markets by involving themselves with college athletics is this: pay up. What once seemed as a promising new method of hyperlocal marketing may now turn into an international bonanza, and startups should consider whether getting involved in this expensive and niche space is worthwhile at all. 

Nevertheless, there are dollars to be made from the eyes on college sports: ESPN will spend $1.3 billion annually beginning in the 2026-27 season for their college football package.

Kaleidoscope Focused: Key News

1. Vice President Kamala Harris accepted the Democratic nomination for POTUS

2. British tech entrepreneur Mike Lync has passed as a superyacht capsized off Sicily

3. Two Canadian railroads have shut down this week due to a labor dispute

4. A Blue Origin rocket program reportedly faces failures in testing

5. Pumpkin spice latte season began yesterday in its earliest launch date ever

Curated Picks: Weekend Recs!

Watch: Emily in Paris Season 4 on Netflix

Listen: Sabrina Carpenter’s new album Short n’ Sweet

Read: Never Enough: From Barista to Billionaire by Andrew Wilkinson

Grow the Collective

Some special surprises may be in store for our first referrers! 👀

Thanks for reading! Have a great weekend and we’ll see you Monday. In the meantime, stay tuned with us on socials @CoeusCollective.