Early delivery because ... well, summer Friday. Have a great weekend!

It's been a week since President Trump issued an executive order to encourage 401(k) investment in private equity, and the biggest surprise so far is how quickly the rest of his administration has activated.

Why it matters: There will be a steep learning curve for all participants, but it can't really begin until the White House does its foundational work.

Driving the news: The Labor Department on Tuesday rescinded a Biden-era statement that cautioned retirement plan fiduciaries against including private equity in 401(k) plans.

• According to DOL, that statement "had a chilling effect on the market and took a dismissive view of alternative assets and the capabilities of plan fiduciaries."

But wait, there's more: Also on Tuesday, the Council of Economic Advisors published a 31-slide presentation on the implications of 401(k) plans including alt asset options.

• Not surprisingly, it finds there to be "significant benefits." Not only for retail investors and PE fund managers, but also for the broader economy.
• Per the report: "We estimate that a full loosening of the cap would lead retirement plans to allocate around 20% of their portfolio to private equity, which translates into an extra $35 billion in aggregate output, or around 0.12% of GDP."
• One big caveat is that much of the CEA's underlying data is based on PE funds with vintages running through 2014, which may not fully capture the more recent DPI disappearance.

Flashback: All of this is a far cry from what happened during Trump 1.0, when the Labor Department issued guidance to smooth the path for PE participation in 401(k) plans.

• That initiative came near the end of his term, and quickly was overwhelmed by campaign politics and left to wither on the vine (before Biden took office and reversed Trump's policy).

Look ahead: The Labor Department and SEC still have plenty of work ahead of them, much of which comes with February 2026 deadlines. So far, however, they seem to be eager for the task.

Intel (Nasdaq: INTC) is in talks to sell an ownership stake to the U.S. government, per multiple reports.

Why it's the BFD: This isn't your grandfather's capitalism.

• It also comes just weeks after the Trump administration bought $400 million of preferred shares in rare earths miner MP Materials.

Zoom in: The investment would be used to help the Silicon Valley chipmaker prop up its domestic manufacturing ambitions, including a large hub planned for Ohio.

By the numbers: Intel shares spiked by more than 7% on the news, giving it a $105 billion market cap.

The bottom line: All of this comes after a week in which President Trump called on Intel CEO Lip-Bu Tan to resign, citing his investment ties to China, but then softened after a face-to-face meeting.

• Cohere, a Toronto-based LLM model developer, raised US$500m at a $6.8b valuation. Radical Ventures and Inovia Capital led, joined by AMD Ventures, Nvidia, PSP Investments, Salesforce Ventures, and Healthcare of Ontario Pension Plan. axios.link/3V0Gg17

• Cognition, a New York-based AI coding startup, raised nearly $500m in Series C funding at a $9.8b valuation led by Founders Fund, per the WSJ. axios.link/4fCDtol

• Lambda, a San Jose, Calif.-based cloud infrastructure company backed by Nvidia, is in talks to raise at a $4b-$5b valuation, per Bloomberg. axios.link/4mdWRdL

• XOPS, a SF-based autonomous IT company, raised $40m led by Activant Capital and FPV Ventures. xops.io

• Sola, a New York-based AI co-pilot for robotic process automation, raised $17.5m in Series A funding. A16z led, joined by from Conviction and YC. axios.link/45AZIqk

• Palabra AI, a London-based speech translation engine, raised $8.4m in pre-seed funding. Seven Seven Six led, joined by Creator Ventures. axios.link/4mDamna

• OneCrew, an SF-based provider platform for paving contractors, raised $7.5m in Series A funding. Stage 2 Capital led, joined by Entourage and Bienville Capital. axios.link/41Kwrbl

Financial sponsor activity is up — driven by the need to generate distributions and the fast pace of innovation.

48% of sponsors in our Investment Banking client survey (June 2025, n=730) now cite generating liquidity and returns as a main driver for 2H M&A.

Learn more in our latest report.

• Advent International is in talks to buy listed Swiss chipmaker U-blox for more than $1.2b, per Bloomberg. axios.link/45BzjII

• Affinity Partners, led by Jared Kushner, is buying an 8% stake in British digital lender OakNorth, per Sky News. axios.link/3V6Ihc0

• Apollo and Motive Partners are forming a new private-market services provider, via the merger of fund administrator Alchelyst and Apollo spinout Lyra Client Solutions, per the WSJ. axios.link/3UZqnbg

• Arlington Capital Partners acquired GovOS and merged it with two portfolio companies — Avenu Insights & Analytics and Intellectual Technology — to form a govtech group named Neumo, per Axios Pro. axios.link/45CkINk

• Gridiron Capital acquired ABC Legal Services, a Seattle-based provider of service of process and court filing solutions, from Aquiline. abclegal.com

• Hidden Harbor Capital Partners invested in McHale, an Upper Marlboro, Md.-based residential landscaper. mchalelandscape.com

• Invicti Security, an Austin-based portfolio company of Summit Partners, acquired Kondukto, provider of an application security posture management solution seeded by ScaleX Ventures. invicti.com