The transaction reshapes ContextLogic following its post-IPO collapse and the 2024 sale of its former e-commerce assets. The firm is now repositioning itself as an owner of specialist businesses with strong cash generation, supported by BC Partners Credit's $150m strategic commitment and the company's $2.9bn of net operating losses and tax assets. US Salt supplies high-purity evaporated salt for food, pharmaceutical, and water treatment markets, which have remained resilient through economic cycles. Its management team, led by CEO David Sugarman, will continue in place under the new ownership structure. Abrams Capital will roll over substantially all of its existing stake in US Salt and become the largest shareholder in ContextLogic after completion. Ted Goldthorpe, Head of BC Partners Credit and Chair of ContextLogic's Board, said: 'We are very excited to partner with David Sugarman and US Salt to drive value for all shareholders of ContextLogic through its defined growth strategy. US Salt's outstanding management team, resilient business model, consistent track record of growth, and runway for future expansion ' including M&A ' distinguished it as an exceptional company.'...
Our synthetic data generation series continues with a walkthrough the different types of rephrasing methods. We dive in Gemini 3 Deep Think. The opinion section discusses some new ideas about the future of AI evals. The focus of model development shifted noticeably this week. For the past two years, the primary lever for performance gains has been scaling training data and parameter counts. However, the simultaneous releases from Google, Amazon, and Mistral suggest the industry is hitting the point of diminishing returns for pure scale. We are now entering a phase defined by 'inference-time compute' and architectural specialization. The most technically significant release is Gemini 3 Deep Think. While previous iterations focused on code generation and creative writing, Deep Think introduces a fundamental architectural change in how the model processes queries. Instead of the standard immediate next-token prediction, Deep Think utilizes a 'parallel thinking' process. It explores multiple reasoning paths and self-corrects before generating a final answer'a method likely involving reinforcement learning on search trees, similar to the techniques used in AlphaProof. This effectively productizes 'System 2' thinking: slower, deliberative logic....
The acquisition strengthens LogicMonitor's ability to monitor internet performance and user experience. Catchpoint operates more than 3,000 probes worldwide that track outages and network disruptions in real time. Chief executive Christina Kosmowski said the combined platform targets a market opportunity exceeding $25bn. Catchpoint co-founder Mehdi Daoudi said the system can detect outages before companies announce them, noting that it spotted an Amazon Web Services disruption 16 minutes before Amazon confirmed the incident. Catchpoint's investors include Battery Ventures and Sapphire Ventures. Vista bought LogicMonitor in 2018 for about $415m through its Vista Foundation Fund III. The firm later sold a minority stake to PSG Equity and Golub Capital, valuing LogicMonitor at about $2.4bn. The Santa Barbara-based business provides AI-powered monitoring tools for enterprises, managed service providers, and mid-sized companies. Subscribe to our Newsletter to increase your edge. Don't worry about the news anymore, through our newsletter you'll receive weekly access to what is happening. Join 120,000 other PE professionals today....
Presidential pardons are in fashion in the United States, even for people who haven't yet been found guilty of a crime. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is a well-known Americanophile. Now he, too, wants a preconviction pardon, a never-go-to-jail card. Because Netanyahu faces Israeli, not U.S., charges, he had to seek relief from Israel's president, Isaac Herzog, rather than from Donald Trump. But Trump has already weighed in. In a letter last month, he urged Herzog to issue a pardon. The case against Netanyahu is 'political, unjustified prosecution,' Trump wrote, concluding with his standard line to an implied underling: 'Thank you for your attention to this matter.' The police began investigating Netanyahu in 2016. He went on trial in 2020 on charges of fraud and breach of trust in three separate cases, and bribery in one of them. One charge held that he used his office to help a billionaire, from whom he and his wife received gifts that included a steady supply of expensive cigars and champagne. Another alleged that he granted regulatory favors in return for favorable coverage on a popular news site....
