🏓  Pickleball, meet your match

👋  Good morning. Employers have decided peanut butter belongs on toast, not payroll. Fewer are dishing out “peanut butter raises” — those spread evenly across the workforce — with just 32% planning standard pay increases in 2027, down from 36% this year, according to Payscale data. With the average salary bump expected to land at 3.5% next year and a shift to merit-based raises, guess it’s time to show up and show out. 

NEWS FLASH 

🐶  Teaching an old dog new tricks: New York startup Kindred Companion Sciences claims it successfully used CRISPR gene editing to breed two beagle puppies lacking the protein that causes most human dog allergies. The startup says the pair of pups, now nearly two years old, are healthy and could pave the way for hypoallergenic pets and service animals without relying on selective breeding.

🕷  BMW, the ultimate driving-customers-to-insanity machine: Starting last week, when some BMW drivers turned on their cars, the screen in the center console instantly morphed into an ad for the new Spider-Man movie. The automaker hailed it as a “special surprise” and drivers had the option to skip it, but that didn’t stop BMW owners from raging about the intrusive ad online — hopefully with enough vinegar that it’ll delay the inevitable in-vehicle commercial barrage for the rest of us.

🗣  One of those rare AI use cases that’ll make nobody angry: Aussie startup Laronix developed a way to restore the natural speaking voices of patients who’ve had their larynx removed. All its AI tool needs is at least 10 seconds of audio of the patient’s pre-op voice and it can create a faithful reproduction, delivered via wearable prosthesis.

MORE NEWS TO KNOW

• CarPlay sets sail: MasterCraft's new pontoon boats will support CarPlay and Android Auto, giving boaters access to navigation, messaging, music, and a marine mapping app from the helm. 
  

• Shopping is decreasingly a human task, apparently: Amazon says it 2x’d the number of Alexa for Shopping users over Q2. Better yet for Amazon: orders led by its AI assistant were, on average, worth 40% more per order.
  

• Want to cosplay as a VC? Robinhood will open a fund next week allowing retail investors to buy shares in Y Combinator-backed startups. The accelerator program has famously launched 100+ unicorns. 
  

• Packaging with a twist: Italian startup Alkelux is turning waste from licorice production into an antimicrobial packaging additive that can extend the shelf life of strawberries from three days to up to nine.
  

FROM OUR FRIENDS AT MINDSTREAM 

An AI Martha Stewart?

Sure, why not.

Stewart has entered her tech founder era with Hint (Home Intelligence), an AI-powered app that organizes everything from appliance manuals and insurance policies to maintenance schedules and inspection reports into one searchable home-management system.

👉 Read more on Mindstream.

THE BIG IDEA

Move over, pickleball — padel is the latest obsession

You've finally joined the bandwagon, and another cool wagon rolls into town.

You've mastered your third shot drop on the pickleball court, when along comes padel, another racket sport that's suddenly all the rage.

Borrowing elements of tennis and squash, padel is poised to be the Next Big Thing, and entrepreneurs are betting big on the game, per The Wall Street Journal.

The proof is in the padel

Invented in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1969, padel became massively popular in Spain and Argentina thanks to a prince.

• The 66-foot-long courts are walled with glass and mesh.
  
• Dense rackets have holes instead of strings.
  
• Balls look like tennis balls but smaller and less bouncy.
  
• The game is mostly played in doubles and has similar scoring to tennis.

Easy to learn and accessible to all ages, padel is fast-paced, sociable, and, most importantly, fun.

While pickleball has dominated US headlines, padel is giving it a run for its money.

• Played in over 150 countries by ~35m players
  
• Over 1m players domestically in 2025
  
• USA Padel membership grew ~50% YoY

Padel will be included in the Asian Games later this year, the European Games next year, and possibly the 2032 Olympics.

Padel in a power plant? That's a padeling

Entrepreneurs are quickly capitalizing on the sport's growing popularity, retrofitting unconventional locations with courts, from parking lots and mall roofs to a former power station in Philly.

• Installing a court can cost ~$50k and up.
  
• Last year, startup Epic Padel raised $10m to build clubs across the country.
  
• Court rentals can range from $30-$100+/hour, while club memberships can range from $100-$400/month.
  
• Pro Padel League raised $15m from investors this year, and CNBC airs select matches.

But rapid growth doesn't always guarantee success — Sweden and Chile expanded their padel facilities rapidly but recently saw mass closures.

Plus, you never know when another bandwagon might roll into town.

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HIGHLY RECOMMENDED

“Measure twice, cut once,” and other expert advice for boosting your paid ad conversion rate. 

NEWSWORTHY NUMBER

Number of guests at CLASS Soirée Steakhouse’s first nude, five-course dinner experience, tickets for which reportedly sold out within a day. The adults-only dinner series, which will be held monthly, priced at $250 for men and $150 for women, is how the 8-year-old Florida restaurant plans to stand out at a difficult time for the restaurant industry.

“As a restaurateur in this rough environment, we have to be remarkable,” CLASS chef Maurad Ali told Axios.

And it seems to be working — given how many people have expressed interest in having a "remarkable" meal, Ali says the restaurant is already planning on expanding the offering with a second event. 

AROUND THE WEB

📅  On this day: In 1996, NASA and Stanford researchers announced that they found signs of Martian life in an Antarctic meteorite. 

🌐  That’s spooky: Everything a webpage knows about you without asking.

📊  Game: A daily estimation game. 

🐶  Bored?: Scroll through a long doge. 

🦝  Aww: Shotgun!

SHOWER THOUGHT

We know humans experience time at approximately the same rate because of how approximately close our reaction times are. SOURCE

Today's email was brought to you by Singdhi Sokpo and Danny Jensen.

Editing by: Sara "What’s all that racket?" Friedman.

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