ambitious plan to cultivate new firms, including by mobilising public funds and putting a minister in charge of startups. In May the country’s economy ministry released fresh guidance encouraging startups to consider a buy-out as an exit option. Such attention has improved the image of startups. One founder notes that younger employees increasingly prefer working in fast- moving, new firms rather than the stodgy, seniority-based ones their parents worked for. Helpfully the tse has begun cracking down on tiny, poorly performing firms. Last year it announced a plan to delist firms unable to maintain a market capitalisation of ¥10bn after being public for five years, up from ¥4bn over 10 years, though the rule will not take effect until 2030. “We want to make [an ipo] the starting point, not the end goal,” says Yamaji Hiromi, the exchange’s boss. Japan has further to go. Having one decacorn operating at global scale might create a motivated acquirer of promising young companies, notes Mr Fisher, who draws a comparison with Silicon Valley’s titans buying startups founded by ex-employees. Japan’s 20th-century startup pioneers built huge businesses from lowly beginnings. Today’s founders will need the same drive to make it to the big time.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/13/japans-downbeat-startups-need-a-lift
The world’s biggest fast-food chain is moving into pubs Why China’s Mixue Bingcheng is serving up beer Aug 13th 2026 Even in the most remote corner of China a frothy Fulujia beer is waiting for you. The company, whose name translates as “Lucky Deer”, has opened more than 3,200 mini-pubs across the country since 2021, making it the world’s largest bar chain. More impressive than its scale are its prices. A pint is poured for as little as 5.9 yuan ($0.87), whether it is served in a big city or a border town. Fulujia premises are small but uniform micro-watering holes that have 20 beers on draft and a bijou seating area. They often sell bar snacks such as fried pork and edamame beans. When asked why prices are so low, the proprietor of a recently opened Fulujia in Lushui, a town in the deep south-
west, says it is because the company is owned by Mixue Bingcheng, a tea and cold-drinks mega-chain that has around 60,000 outlets worldwide. Last year it overtook McDonald’s, the American burger giant, to become the world’s largest fast-food operator by number of locations. Mixue bought a controlling stake in Fulujia in October. Both are run on similar franchise models. Franchisees pay an upfront cost of about 60,000 yuan for everything that is needed to launch a mini-pub, such as beer pumps and branded decorations (though rent and renovation costs are not included). They are exempt from paying royalties for three years. The secret to Mixue’s success is its mastery of supply chains. It is often described as a logistics company rather than a fast-food chain. The efficiency with which Mixue has been able to move supplies has kept costs for consumers remarkably low—its marquee drink is a four-yuan lemonade. Fulujia uses the same logistics networks to ship its beer from Henan province, where both Mixue and Fulujia are based, to its franchisees, who do not pay transport costs, even when they are as far away as Lushui, more than 2,000km from the brewery. A franchising model coupled with a highly efficient supply chain has turbocharged the openings of Mixue outlets—roughly 40 a day appeared in 2025. The effects have been similar for Fulujia. Nearly two-thirds of its 3,200 bars have been launched since Mixue bought its stake late last year. This also appears to be working for the group’s café chain, Lucky Cup, of which there were at least 10,000 in China at the end of last year. The model is enjoying some success outside China, too. Mixue has around 5,000 outlets abroad, making it by far the most successful Chinese fast-food chain outside the country. It has also opened Lucky Cup branches in Malaysia and Thailand. Fulujia has not yet announced plans to go overseas. But with pubs in New York and London serving up painfully expensive pints, cheap Chinese brews would be sure to receive a welcome from drinkers.■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/13/the-worlds-biggest-fast-food-chain- is-moving-into-pubs
Is the LA Lakers’ sale a sign of sports investment gone mad? $12.5bn price tag is highest ever for an American sports team Aug 13th 2026 WHAT IS A worthy consolation prize for a billionaire investor whose attempt to buy a stake in fifa’s football World Cup recently blew up in his face? Answer: pivot sharply and snap up one of America’s most valuable basketball teams, the Los Angeles Lakers, instead. In a $12.5bn deal announced on August 12th, Joshua Kushner, founder of Thrive Capital, an investment firm, will become the Lakers’ controlling shareholder, with Bob Iger, an ex-CEO of Walt Disney, as his wingman, insiders say. The price tag is the highest ever for an American sports team, reflecting institutional investors’ feverish appetite for sports franchises.
The sum is a whopping $2.5bn more than Mark Walter, the seller of the team, paid for the Lakers around a year ago, also a record amount at the time. A day earlier a unit of Apollo Global Management, another asset manager, said that it had put $2.6bn of debt and equity behind the owner of the New York Yankees, a baseball team. Does this mean that sports investment is overheating? Messrs Kushner and Iger have compared buying the Lakers to getting hold of the Mona Lisa. The team is indeed one of a kind. No basketball team earns nearly as much from local broadcasting rights as the Lakers. Nor does any American sports team come close to matching its international name recognition and fanbase, according to Ampere Analysis, a media-research firm. Basketball itself has unique attractions for investors. In 2024 the National Basketball Association (NBA) negotiated a nationwide $76bn, 11-year media-rights package with several broadcasters, including Disney’s ESPN and ABC networks (negotiated while Mr Iger was still boss), providing long-term certainty on future broadcasting revenues. The sport appeals to young fans, involves high-scoring games and has plenty of drama, such as this year’s victory by the New York Knicks in the NBA Championship. Its international appeal is also likely to continue to grow. Next year the NBA plans to launch a 16-team league in Europe. But Mr Kushner is also on the rebound. His attempt to lead a $4.2bn investment in the commercial arm of fifa, world football’s governing body, ended in fiasco after a global backlash over the possible sale of the World Cup. Days after the rebuff, he and Mr Iger switched from trying to set up a new basketball team in Las Vegas to buying the Lakers instead. Their investments will be backed by Thrive Eternal, a long-term investment vehicle focused on businesses that Mr Kushner’s firm thinks will withstand disruption by AI (Thrive is also a big investor in OpenAI, just in case). The logic sounds rational. But even without a bidding war he is putting more than twice as much value on the Lakers as another group of investors paid last year for the Boston Celtics, one of America’s most valuable basketball teams. That sounds extravagant.
If the NBA approves the deal, Mr Walter will pocket a fortune. But it is not clear why he was in such a hurry to sell the Lakers. He will apparently retain a controlling stake in the Los Angeles Dodgers, a baseball team, as well as large investments in several other big sports teams. Bloomberg, a news agency, reported that his firm, TWG Global, is trying to raise cash amid scrutiny by federal investigators into loans it received that were put on the books of Mr Walter’s insurance companies. He is also said to be unwell. Perhaps he just saw the merits of a quick flip. ■ This article was downloaded by zlibrary from https://www.economist.com/business/2026/08/13/is-the-la-lakers-sale-a-sign-of- sports-investment-gone-mad
Nvidia’s great silicon showdown The chipmaker’s biggest customers want a piece of its business. It is fighting back with a $500bn deal Aug 13th 2026 The relationship between Nvidia and the hyperscalers—cloud giants such as Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft—used to be straightforward. Nvidia designed and supplied chips; the hyperscalers built data centres using them. For now, the two sides still need one another (see chart). Yet both are preparing for a future in which they lean on each other less.
A sign of impending separation came on August 10th, when Nvidia announced a partnership with six of Wall Street’s biggest investors, including BlackRock and Goldman Sachs, to “mobilise over $500bn” for ai infrastructure. The aim is to help customers, such as smaller ai labs and businesses that face steeper borrowing costs than Google or Microsoft, to find the vast sums needed to build data centres. Under the plan, the consortium will raise pools of capital from institutional investors and lend it to Nvidia's customers at attractive rates to build infrastructure using Nvidia's gear. Infrastructure is expensive: a large data centre costs around $50bn. Most firms do not need anywhere near that scale, but the cost is steep regardless. Nvidia's approach is to use compute as collateral, allowing institutional investors to take part. One challenge is that processors have a shelf life, typically four to five years, which complicates valuing loans made against them. Another is what happens to the infrastructure if demand fails to materialise. Nvidia's response is to backstop as much as a quarter of a project's cost through a mechanism which keeps the company on the hook if the asset backing the loan falls below a certain value. It is ingenious financial engineering from a firm better known for the technical kind.