From World Cup ads to AI chatbots: The macro trend behind Our Newest Investment

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I’ve spent a big part of the soccer World Cup trying to explain to my 4 year old kid why the “naughty TV is trying to trick you into buying McDonald’s” every 20 minutes.

For those not watching the World Cup, you are forced to watch adverts for Maccas (junk food), Bet365 (gambling), and various beers (alcohol) multiple times during each game...

and you can’t skip past them.

After 4 years of successfully shielding my kid from most of the horrors of junk food, gambling and alcohol, he now squeals with excitement when he sees the McDonald’s golden arches on a drive.

(don’t get me started on the 20 times a day I need to try and explain to him what the Bet365 gambling advert means)

This all happened only in the last 3 weeks, directly on my parental watch... just because I wanted to show my kid some World Cup soccer games.

Now these are carefully vetted and curated supposedly “family friendly” adverts approved for the World Cup.

Imagine the mind bending slop to be found deep in the rabbit holes of the unsupervised internet once he gets a phone.

...and without me (the parent) there to try and explain it, like I do every time the TV keeps showing us famous soccer players lovingly caressing cheeseburgers.

~20 years after social media first became a thing, governments around the world have only just figured out that it's probably a good idea to keep kids that are under 16 years old protected from it.

You can probably already guess where I’m going with this...

Yesterday we announced Our new Investment Spacetalk (ASX:SPA)

SPA’s technology is a family-safety platform, hardware plus an app, that lets families stay connected and keep track of each other across different life stages...

AND parents can control what kids access on the internet on their own phones.

SPA has a clever plan to accelerate its growth by partnering with telcos (mobile phone plan providers) to access the telcos’ billions of customers.

It took society 20 years to decide social media doomscrolling probably wasn't great for young developing brains (let alone adult brains).

Looking to the next 20 years, AI is probably going to be even worse...

It reminds me of back in January when I visited a Chinese AI robot maker called UBtech’s reseller showroom in Singapore.

This is where I bought my 7-in-1 AI powered UBtech robot:

The shop also had a kids toy, this innocent looking, little AI powered guy for kids (UBTECH Alpha Mini):

Kids could talk to this robot and it would answer any question they had in whatever language they wanted to speak with it.

(we chose English)

We asked it about trains (my kids favourite topic).

The robot (built in China and powered by a Chinese AI large language model) started talking about Chinese trains and how good China is.

Fine, I guess.

China built the robot and the AI model powering it, so it's their right to control its narrative.

(ie: what it tells your kids)

But it's certainly different from my childhood in the 80s of being fed USA culture and values on the old cathode ray tube TV... the USA being the world’s cultural and technology leader at the time.

Anyway... slight digression, the point is parents controlling what influences their kids and child safety on the internet.

Which is what SPA’s mobile app allows parents to do.

The key thing with SPA is their “telco partnership led growth model:

SPA’s “telco partnership led growth” plan is a win-win-win:

• Families get peace of mind from family safety tech.
• Telcos get better client engagement embedding family safety, engagement and insight directly into the telco customer experience for their billions of customers.
• SPA gets revenue and rapid customer growth.

We already know family safety tech is valuable because the OTHER child safety tech stock on the ASX, Life360 generates an annualized revenue of $517.9M, with 97.8 million monthly active users and 3.0 million paying subscribers globally (source).

$5.7BN Life360 grew their customer base by selling DIRECT to parents.

SPA is now going after the same market with their “Telco partnerships led growth” model “secret sauce”.

(secret sauce? thanks again, subliminal fast food ads for that quip)

Mobile data plans are big business. It’s cut throat competition out there - big telcos will spend big to get customer engagement and retention on mobile phone plans.

(Take a mental note of how many mobile plan provider adverts you see in your daily travels today - the budgets to gain and retain customers are huge)

SPA’s strategy is that telcos will push their app to their billions of mobile plan customers as a way to “get better client engagement by embedding family safety, engagement and insight directly into the telco customer experience”

(the app has been custom built with a back end to help telcos engage with and provide value to families)

Now here’s where SPA’s telco plan suddenly just got really interesting...

Like most of the market, we are also following the SpaceX IPO (we hold some shares) as a barometer for market sentiment.

BREAKING: This morning ~US $2 trillion SpaceX, its genius founder CEO Elon Musk and its new US$100BN plus cash war chest are entering...

The mobile phone plan market:

(Sources)

(source)

SpaceX also owns the X (formerly known as Twitter) social media platform with a direct channel 570 million monthly users - an app that users ALREADY regularly engage and get value from.

Now to start using that X app to convert those 570 million users onto SpaceX mobile phone plans...

SpaceX’s move into individual mobile phone plans was announced ~20 hours ago.

As of this weekend, incumbent telcos are probably going to start scrambling to find an app that they can use to maintain engagement and loyalty from their customers, one that their customers will want to regularly log into...

Before SpaceX with X starts eating their lunch.

Like partnering with SPA’s family safety app... (read our SPA launch note here)

(conveniently named Spacetalk will have subliminal marketing power when Telco CEO’s are fretting about SpaceX.... right?)

Here are comments from SPA’s AGM 4 weeks ago on what's coming up on the Telco Partnership front, including presenting at a Telco conference in Europe:

(source)

Gold and silver prices took a hit this week, but we are still holding... and still think its main run is coming

Silver and gold just had a pretty rough week.

Silver went sub US$60/oz and gold sub US$4,000/oz momentarily.

(even though they are still both higher than any time in history aside from the last six months.)

We hold a LOT of gold and silver stocks, and have been holding the vast majority of our positions (even during the January precious metals peak) - we think the main precious metals run is still coming so are hanging on for that.

(you can view all of our live holdings here)

This is definitely not personal investment advice (maybe we should have taken more off the table in January?).

Time will reveal if we are geniuses or idiots.

While we wait for the next run in precious metals, we watched two videos released this week from silver perma-bulls Eric Sprott (watch it here) and Michael Oliver (watch it here) commenting on the precious metals weakness that helped keep us entertained (i.e. cope) during this recent lull.

How about things that are going up, not down - IIQ

We’ve been holding biotech Inoviq (ASX:IIQ) since June 2024.

~12 months ago IIQ announced that its ovarian cancer test detected 100% of early-stage (Stage I and II) ovarian cancers in a 500 sample control study.

IIQ had been quiet since then... and its share price languished.

10 days ago, we wrote that IIQ’s next batch of results are due in 13 days:

(read it here)

Since then the IIQ share price has delivered a nice run, now we just wait for these results to come out on their ovarian cancer diagnosis tests on a larger group:

(source)

The past performance is not and should not be taken as an indication of future performance. Caution should be exercised in assessing past performance. This product, like all other financial products, is subject to market forces and unpredictable events that may adversely affect future performance.

Ovarian cancer diagnostics aside, 2 days ago IIQ also announced it looks like it can also TREAT ovarian cancers too.

IIQ says it has demonstrated that it can kill up to 90% of ovarian cancer cells in lab tests (read our quick take on this news here).

So IIQ is making good progress on detecting AND killing ovarian cancer.

That next batch of results should be out any day now...

Speaking of stocks ending in “IQ” that are going up: EIQ surges on Pro Medicus deal

EIQ dropped a massive announcement this week - a funding and reseller binding Heads of Agreement with the $19.7BN Pro Medicus.

EIQ’s “next 4DX” story arc is now well and truly underway.

4DX signed a Pro Medicus funding deal in July 2025, then had the FDA clear its lung imaging tech and the stock went on a 33X run from its lows earlier in the year.

4DX is currently capped at $2.48BN.

It was the hottest stock amongst institutions and retail late last year.

(the past performance of 4DX is not an indicator of the future performance of EIQ)

EIQ now has its Pro Medicus in the final “definitive legal documentation” stage and should be days away from an FDA decision on its Heart Failure detection tech.

Hopefully, that comes in and EIQ continues to evolve into “the next 4DX” - we are always hoping for the next “insert stock name that has run hard” - EIQ is now capped at $1BN... only another billion dollars in value to go...

No guarantees of course that EIQ will continue to grow, this is still speculative early stage tech investing. .

Speaking of EIQ... We followed EIQ’s chairman into our new Investment: SPA

EIQ’s executive chair Andrew Grover is the man of the moment this week.

Delivering a >10x for us on EIQ and taking EIQ to a >$1BN market cap.

We decided to back him again with our latest Investment - Spacetalk (ASX:SPA).

(did you like that segue back into SPA?)

Back in April Grover quietly put $492,000 into SPA.

We have been following SPA for a while now, and decided to add the company to the Portfolio on Friday.

(Hopefully some of the winners from EIQ come into SPA to back Grover again)

We are also backing SPA’s CEO - Simon Crowther.

SPA makes Australia's #1 kids smartwatch that pairs with its family-safety software platform.

SPA for much of its history was a hardware first business.

Now, under the new CEO it is transforming to a software first - hardware enabled business.

(source)

For the first time since Simon joined the company three years ago - he has cash (after a $6M capital raise a few months ago) to execute his “telco partnership led growth” plan for the business.

He did something very similar with another ASX small cap ~15 years ago - Nearmap - which ended up being sold for ~$1BN.

(source)

At Nearmap Simon was up against Google Maps.

He changed the Nearmap business into a subscription based sales model and launched into the US.

Now he is CEO at SPA doing a similar thing but this time in family safety software:

• Creating a new SaaS subscription model
• Driving global growth
• Taking on a giant incumbent - the ~$5.7BN capped Life360.

Life360 grew from ~27 million users at its 2019 to nearly 100 million today generating ~US$517.9M of annualised revenues.

It got there by turning a free family-tracking app into a paid subscription that families stay signed up to for years.

We think this team will be able to execute this “telco partnership for user growth” strategy and try to deliver “Life360 2.0”.

(and given SPA only has a ~ $20M market cap, even if they are somewhat successful, we would expect a re-rate up from here. No guarantees of course)

Just have a look at Life360’s software... look familiar?

(source)

We are coming into SPA just as the years of work and spending to set up for this “telco partnership led growth” plan has been done and is about to (hopefully) start delivering.

We think SPA’s low valuation relative its recurring revenue is due to the last few years of replatforming and setup for the telco partnership led growth plan, and the company’s $3.6M debt that it’s working to pay down.

A few months ago, SPA signed an MoU with TPG Telecom (Vodafone Australia) that could see SPA’s family safety app made available to 2.8M of Vodafone Australia’s customers. (source)

(2.8 million mobile customers are JUST Vodafone in Australia... Vodafone Group serves 279 million mobile customers globally)

SPA reckons a final agreement with Vodafone is due in Q4 this financial year. (source)

There are now 2 business days left in Q4 of this financial year - so a final deal could drop any day now.

This will be the first proof point of SPA’s telco partnership led go to market model.

Read our full SPA initiation note here: Our New Portfolio Addition - Spacetalk (ASX: SPA)

We think the macro thematic behind SPA is heating up

There is no science to the way we Invest.

But what we have found is that we tend to make investments in companies that we think will have a strong macro tailwind over a 3-5 year window.

We think SPA fits that criteria.

SPA’s macro thematic is one that is hard to get exposure to on the ASX - the big dog in the space is $5.7BN Life360.

One that is approaching an inflection point.

Inside the last six months much of the planet decided kids shouldn't be on social media.

• Australia went first (December 2025).
• Then Brazil (March 2026).
• Then Indonesia (March 2026).
• Malaysia switched its ban on this month and is actively enforcing it (source).
• The UK passed its own under-16 law in June, in force from spring 2027 (source).
• France is moving on under-15s (other EU countries are pushing for an age limit too)
• And in the USA, Florida on under-14s.

We can't think of a single piece of social policy that's gone from "one country" to "global stampede" this fast.

(Usually governments take this long to make a lunch booking)

And every one of those bans pushes families in the exact same direction - away from the open-internet smartphone, towards the locked-down kids device.

(source)(source)(source)(source)(source)(source)(source)

How about AI... parents have another thing to worry about now thinking "what is my kid telling an AI?" and “what is AI telling my kid?”.

(especially when AI is presented in the form of an adorable little robot friend as shown earlier)

A study by ParentsTogether Action and the Heat Initiative spent 50 hours testing AI companion bots on Character.AI using accounts set up as children.

They logged 669 harmful interactions - roughly one every five minutes - including around 300 instances of grooming-style behaviour (source).

In response to all of that Character.AI pulled open-ended chat for under-18s in November 2025 (source), and California became the first US state to regulate AI "companion" bots for minors.

Obviously, parents recognise the problem and are willing to pay for a solution too:

“Smartphone Free Childhood” has signed up 140,000+ parents across 60+ countries, pledging to delay phones and social media (source).

And then there is the live ASX example - Life360 where there are 100M active users most of which are paying monthly subscriptions to keep their families (and kids safe).

We think the social media bans AND the AI evolution of the internet will mean demand for family safety software platforms grows exponentially.

Luckily... we now have an exposure to a company working on that solution:

(source)

A couple of years ago now we did some writing about the factors that impact the small cap end of the market, which usually reacts the most extreme.

That Weekender article we titled: How macro themes drive small caps, which went deeper into some of the macro themes at the time, here is the relevant section: What makes a small cap share price go up?

We also did a more general educational intended piece a few months prior to that which looked at how the macro can play out, with a clever title you can find here: 🎓 Why do shares prices go up?

It’s still relevant today, especially for the time being while many small caps are battered and bruised from tax loss selling season, perhaps ripe for the picking should the macro turn.

Plus also while gold and silver has cooled off for what we hope is a healthy flush out before a stronger leg up into the end of the year.

It’s always a good time to look around, because almost always there is some positive macro out there as they go through their own cycles (and can have cycles in the cycle).

(yes we are looking over at you silver and gold in particular...)

Now, back to watching the World Cup with my kid... at least these days they aren't trying to get him to smoke cigarettes.

See you next week, and have a great weekend

Next Investors

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