🍭 Half Of America Just Flinched 📊

Good morning. Half the country just told a pollster they're scared AI will take their job, and the other half is buying SpaceX stock today.

Let’s dive in 👇

🍭 What’s Cookin’:

• Half of Americans fear AI is coming for their household's paycheck

• SpaceX debuts on Nasdaq today at $1.75T

• Google quietly slashed its budget AI plan to $4.99/month

AI Backlash
📊 Half Of America Just Flinched

The Bite:

A Reuters/Ipsos poll of 4,531 U.S. adults found that 53% now fear AI could put them or someone in their household out of work.

The survey, conducted June 3 through 8, showed concern spread evenly across age, gender, and education levels.

73% of respondents said they were worried about increased AI use overall, up from 68% in a similar poll conducted in 2023.

The partisan split ran 61% of Democrats to 47% of Republicans.

The poll landed the same week Palantir CEO Alex Karp publicly warned Silicon Valley executives against bragging about AI-driven job cuts.

Snacks:

• 117,000 tech workers laid off in 2026 so far, nearly matching the full year of 2025 total

• Gen Z anger toward AI rose 9 percentage points year-over-year, per Gallup, while excitement and hopefulness declined

• Karp on TBPN: executives who boast about firing two-thirds of their workforce "might as well sign up for the Bernie Sanders manifesto"

• Palantir cofounder Lonsdale: companies "pretend they're laying people off 'due to AI productivity'" when the real cause is overhiring and slowing growth

• Sanders' AI Sovereign Wealth Fund Act would tax frontier AI companies through equity stakes, with returns flowing to Americans

• SpaceX, Anthropic, and OpenAI are all heading to public markets within the same calendar quarter

Why it Bites:

The numbers aren't surprising. Are they?

Even though the AI industry is heading into the most crowded IPO window in tech history.

With SpaceX just pricing,
Anthropic filing confidentially,
and OpenAI targeting September.

And all these three needing institutional confidence and, in SpaceX's case, 30% retail allocation.

That's not Wall Street money.
It's exactly the same public that just told Reuters they're worried.

Here's the controversy:

Every CEO who frames a round of layoffs as an "AI efficiency win" is doing two things:

• Impressing the investors in the room;

• Arming the politicians outside it.

Karp sees it. Sanders sees it.
The polling now confirms what both already knew.

The real misalignment isn't between AI capability and public understanding.
It's between the earnings-call story and the kitchen-table story.

One says AI makes every employee worth more.
The other says 117,000 people got cut and the stock went up.

Those two stories can coexist in a research note.

They just can't coexist in a voting booth.

Plaid
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Turn any photo, character, mascot, product, or logo into a chunky little cartoon that looks like it escaped from a sticker pack and started a side hustle.

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Use it to:

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Workflow:

1. Hit this link: Bold SketchToon Minis

2. Paste into your AI model

3. Upload your image or describe your subject

4. Watch it cook into a pocket-sized cartoon

   Try the prompt on Snack Prompt

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🧠 You Need to Know

🚀 SpaceX Prices Record $75B IPO At $1.75T Valuation
→ The largest IPO in history priced at $135 per share and begins trading under the ticker SPCX on Nasdaq today, after investor demand exceeded $250B against the $75B raise.

🏛️ Warren Urges SEC To Delay SpaceX IPO Over Governance Risks
→ Senator Warren sent a 12-page letter to SEC Chair Atkins arguing the IPO's rapid MSCI index inclusion could force passive fund investors into SpaceX shares without adequate disclosure on valuation and Musk's controlling governance structure.

💸 Google Cuts AI Plus Subscription To $4.99 Per Month
→ Google dropped its budget AI subscription from $7.99 to $4.99 while doubling storage to 400GB, making it the cheapest paid AI tier in the U.S. market.

📊 Majority Of Americans Now Fear AI Will Cost Their Household A Job
→ A Reuters/Ipsos survey of 4,531 adults found 53% fear AI could put them or someone in their household out of work, with 73% concerned about increasing AI use overall, up from 68% in 2023.

📢 Palantir CEO Warns Tech Against Bragging About AI Layoffs
→ Alex Karp said executives who boast about using AI to cut two-thirds of their workforce "might as well sign up for the Bernie Sanders manifesto," warning that 117,000 tech layoffs in 2026 are fueling political backlash.