Digital Wealth News

Sometimes, we wonder what the digital Hiroshima will look like. A public-private second Cold War has been going on right under our noses, complete with an epic, rapidly accelerating arms race. But instead of nuclear arms, which absolutely remain a threat to humanity and civilization, we’re talking about cybersecurity. One consequence of digitizing nearly everything we do as a society is that it is all now vulnerable to cyber threats.

The artificial-intelligence news cycle accelerated once again during the past week, culminating in one of the year’s most consequential model launches. OpenAI unveiled GPT-6 Astra, while Nvidia expanded its reach beyond chips through its $12.9 billion acquisition of Hugging Face and a multibillion-dollar investment in MediaTek.

Financial advisors do not just manage money. They manage relationships, data, and an increasingly complex technology stack. Zachary Karason is bringing a $106 million client business to Prudential Advisors. The Cleveland-based advisor joined the firm through its Mid America Financial Group in Columbus, Ohio. Karason has more than 12 years of experience in financial services. He began his career at Merrill Lynch.

We like AI. We use AI. We rely on AI. But, we still don’t trust AI. Kind of sounds like a quote from The Godfather Part 2, doesn’t it? Maybe it doesn’t matter whether we trust AI, though.

Each week we find a new topic for our readers to learn about in our AI Education column. We are of the generation that started to use the internet before we were old enough to make good decisions—and as a result, we have done a few not-so-great things online. Luckily, most of those things were back in the 1990s.

This week we continue our series on the top 5 VC-funded deals in AI. This week our overall AI venture capital activity lost some momentum from recent weeks, with all five of our listed announcements coming in over $150 million and 10 announcements total coming in over $100 million.

In a year already filled with anxiety about artificial intelligence disrupting wealth management, one of the industry’s biggest transactions has effectively combined the AI disruptor with one of the largest investment managers in the world. On Aug. 26, Vanguard announced an agreement to acquire Altruist, the fast-growing technology provider and RIA custodian.

By Nick Morgan, Founder and President, ICAN Law Somewhere on a law school campus this week, a student is opening a securities regulation casebook for the first time. Classes are starting. Outlines are blank. The reading looks orderly. It won’t stay that way—at least not for anyone who spends a year on a real docket. A wonderful law clerk, Tristyn Meyer from MSU College of Law, has spent the year with us at ICAN.

By Thomas Fugelsang, Managing Director, Entoro Capital, LLC The voluntary carbon market has spent a decade trying to make the credit better. A project can be real, additional and independently verified and still be difficult to finance at institutional scale if the thing it produces cannot move through the legal, custody and settlement systems institutional capital already uses. Verification asks whether the environmental outcome occurred.

By Lisa Morris The world is mourning the loss of Dolly Parton. She was a legendary artist, businesswoman and philanthropist. But perhaps the most remarkable thing about Dolly was that she was a truly great human being who spent decades in the spotlight without any “haters” that I am aware of. People of all ages, races, financial backgrounds and political ideologies all loved and respected her. There are many lessons that family offices can learn from Dolly.