Friday's Fast Five: Week of 5.31

Will The Antitrust Lawsuit Against Live Nation Break Its Hold On Ticketmaster? (Forbes):  DOJ’s complaint, filed in New York federal district court, claims that Live Nation-Ticketmaster unlawfully exercises its monopoly power in violation of Section 2 of the Sherman Antitrust Act. DOJ requests as relief that Live Nation divest itself of Ticketmaster and terminate various allegedly anticompetitive arrangements with third party businesses. In effect, DOJ is asking for a breakup of the company and a complete overhaul of its business model.

Is Nvidia too Big to Fail? (The Irrelevant Investor): Nvidia reported earnings last Wednesday. In the three sessions since, as of this writing, it has added $484 billion in market cap, or one UnitedHealth Group ($465B). UNH doesn’t get a lot of love because health insurance isn’t a sexy business to talk about. But UNH is a monster. It’s the 15th largest company in the United States. And Nvidia got all that market cap and more in just three sessions.

Chicago to Offer Most Generous Subsidies in U.S. to Save Its Downtown (The Wall Street Journal): Chicago gave birth to the skyscraper in the late 19th century. Now, local developers and politicians are trying to keep many of today’s office towers from dying off. The city is going beyond any other in providing public subsidies to convert obsolete office space into apartments and hotels, despite enormous budgetary challenges. Even Chicago’s politically progressive mayor signed on last month.

Pixar's Golden Ages Are In The Past (Sherwood): For more than a decade, Pixar produced an almost unbroken string of movies that managed to do the rare quadruple: win acclaim from critics, make a lot of money, and land with kids and adults. However, amidst a turbulent movie landscape which has seen a pandemic, the rise of streaming, a writers’ strike, and a shift in consumer taste, the storied production house has struggled to recreate the magic.

Musk's $6 billion AI startup follows OpenAI's game plan (Axios): Elon Musk and his investors are betting $6 billion that bigger AI will continue to be better AI. Musk long ago parted ways with the other co-founders of OpenAI — but his AI startup, xAI, is borrowing OpenAI's "if you build it larger, it will get smarter" strategy.