Spinning out 🚲
  "Grab a water. Grab a towel. Get your life together." Plus: Exploding cars and the greatest semiconductor deal that never was. Let's get into it. 🚲 SPINNING OUT  Words to live by.
Amid rumors that Peloton could be bought by Amazon, Nike or Apple, the fitness company is digging in, hoping it can slash costs to save its business and revive its once-white-hot stock. (Sorry, Wall Street: You may need to put the champagne on ice for a bit.) The news: Peloton, whose shares have plunged more than 80% from their January 2021 peak, is getting a new CEO and laying off a chunk of its workforce.
Still, all of that may not be enough to keep Peloton's activist investors from pouncing. In a statement Tuesday, Blackwells Capital, which had previously called for the company to consider a sale, said the changes don't go far enough, and that it will keep pushing for a "strategic alternatives process to maximize value for the benefit of all shareholders." (Translation: Please just sell to Amazon and make us rich.) Key quote: "Peloton has spent vast amounts of money on stores, factories, warehouses and other facilities to service demand that is now unlikely to materialize. The first step of the new CEO… should be to slash costs to right-size the business," said Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, adding that a sale would "put Peloton on a much more secure footing." BIG PICTURE It's hard to think of another company whose fortunes have been more wildly inflated and rapidly deflated by the shifting winds of the pandemic era. Right out of the gate, in the spring of 2020, Peloton's stationary bikes became the trendiest splurge for gym rats who could no longer go to the gym. In a grim, isolating moment for the world, Peloton peddled the promise of self-improvement, community, convenience, and sorely needed endorphins. Peloton simply couldn't handle the surge in orders. And as the global supply chain got increasingly fubar'd, angry customers were waiting months for their bikes and treadmills. Meanwhile, Peloton tried to scale to match the fevered demand, which is now far more tepid as people have gone back to the gym and created a thriving second-hand market for Peloton's bikes.
MY TWO CENTS It seems unlikely from where I sit that Peloton can regain the buzz it had at the start of 2020 without some new product or radical innovation. It's got to figure out a way to rekindle the fire that made Peloton worth the roughly $2,000 splurge. That's a hard sell to a population tired of staying inside their homes, staring at people on screens, and increasingly venturing back into gyms. #️⃣ NUMBER OF THE DAY $3.6 billion The feds seized $3.6 billion in bitcoin and charged a New York couple with attempting to launder the money, which officials said was stolen in a 2016 hack of crypto platform Bitfinex. Officials said it was the Justice Department's largest financial seizure ever.
💸 PLAN B  Masa Son is a man with a plan. And a plan B.
Within minutes of a blockbuster semiconductor deal collapsing, Son, the CEO of Japanese conglomerate SoftBank, was selling investors on his alternative strategy: An initial public offering for the British chip designer ARM.
ICYMI: In what was supposed to be a $40 billion sale, American chipmaker Nvidia had agreed to buy ARM from SoftBank. But regulators around the world raised competition concerns about the deal, and the companies finally called it off on Tuesday.
SoftBank, which acquired ARM in 2016, cited "significant regulatory challenges" that prevented it from completing the sale to Nvidia. Instead, it's prepping ARM for an IPO.
What is ARM? The British company plays a vital role behind the scenes in tech. As the Wall Street Journal described it, ARM is something of a "Switzerland" to the chip industry, offering its designs to companies like Apple and Qualcomm without favoring any particular one. Regulators worried whether that neutrality would be compromised having ARM under Nvidia, though both companies had promised it wouldn't.
"If ARM falls into US hands, Chinese technology companies would certainly be placed at a big disadvantage in the market," read one op-ed in a Chinese state-run tabloid when the deal was announced.
What happens now? Masa Son is no stranger to disappointment lately. The Japanese billionaire is known for his aggressive and at-times disastrous bets on tech startups (see: DoorDash and Didi, two of last year's biggest IPO flops.)
With the Nvidia deal off the table, Son wants to list ARM's shares publicly, likely on the tech-heavy Nasdaq, early next year. According to WSJ, SoftBank isn't keeping ARM because Son wants outside investors in to be able to cash in and because he wants to give stock-option incentives to Arm's staff.
WHAT ELSE IS GOING ON? 🔥 Yikes: Hyundai and Kia are recalling 500,000 cars and SUVs, telling owners to park outside and away from buildings because of a possible defect that can cause the vehicles to spontaneously catch fire even when not running.
💰 Household debt increased by $1 trillion in 2021, the biggest annual increase since 2007, thanks largely to mortgages and auto loans, according to data from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.
☕ Starbucks fired seven workers who were part of a Memphis store's union effort over what the company called serious safety violations.
📱 TikTok said it would strengthen efforts to regulate dangerous content, including harmful hoaxes and content that promotes eating disorders and hateful ideologies. TWEET OF THE DAY 
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