Axios

Nvidia briefly dethroned Apple today as the world's most valuable publicly traded company.

Driving the news: The stock soared in early trading, following the Dow Jones Indices' decision Friday that the chip giant would replace Intel in the Dow Jones Industrial Average later this week. It gave up most of those gains to close up 0.5%.

The intrigue: This year's tight race among Apple, Nvidia and Microsoft in market value reflects the continued momentum of the AI trade.

The ongoing Elon Musk-Jeff Bezos rivalry may be spilling into robotics.

Catch up quick: Bezos recently led a $400 million financing round into Physical Intelligence, an AI startup focused on powering robots.

• He's also put money into humanoid robot startup Figure.

Zoom out: Both investments come at a time when Musk has been more focused on selling a vision of Tesla's future based on personal humanoid robots sitting with families at kitchen tables than on making cheap electric vehicles.

The big picture: The billionaires have been needling each other over their respective space ambitions for about two decades.

As voters make their choice for the next president, the U.S. economy is by most measures stronger than it has been in modern election cycles — but with some exceptions that help explain voter discontent with conditions.

The big picture: Politics — and why people vote as they do — is more complicated than any data series you might download from a government website, and the definition of a "good economy" is in the eye of the beholder.

Private equity firm Shore Capital Partners is in advanced talks to merge a pair of its veterinary practice platforms, via an $8.6 billion recapitalization sponsored by Silver Lake, as first reported by Bloomberg and confirmed by Axios.

Why it matters: This would create one of the country's largest pet services group with over 750 facilities, and is being driven by the pandemic-era boom in pet ownership.

If Donald Trump wins tomorrow's election, the task of filling thousands of political roles will largely fall to Howard Lutnick, CEO of Cantor Fitzgerald and co-chair of Trump's presidential transition team.

• Back home on Wall Street, meanwhile, Lutnick seems intent on reviving the moribund SPAC market.

Driving the news: Cantor Fitzgerald on Friday filed IPO registration for its 10th sponsored SPAC, each of which features Lutnick as CEO.

U.S. homebuyers are now the oldest on record, with the median age of first-timers reaching 38, according to a new report.

Why it matters: That's up from 35 last year and marks a new high in data going back to 1981, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) announced Monday.

Nvidia is among the few companies worth $1 trillion or more. Now the AI chipmaker joins another exclusive club: one of 30 blue-chip stocks in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

Why it matters: This week Nvidia replaces Intel in the Dow, a sign of how much generative AI now dominates the tech sector.

Fairshake, the crypto-oriented political action committee, has over $78 million on hand for next Congressional election cycle, with a new commitment from the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz (a16z).

Why it matters: The $169 million crypto firms deployed in the 2024 Congressional races put blockchain technology onto the agenda of American legislators for the first time.

One thing is clear about Vice President Harris' intent to stick to her old liberal views or govern with new centrist thinking: She doesn't want voters to know.

Why it matters: Harris is the "no comment" candidate — purposely and strategically. She has calculated that it's safer to be vague on policy matters than lampooned as a flip-flopper or left-winger.