Saying 'no' to Rhabdo and the Hugging Face incident

Welcome to White Hot Takes - a newsletter about investing, economy, sports, success and business by me! (Neil M White) My commitment to you is that none of White Hot Takes will ever be written by AI. Not ever. If you enjoy reading this, please send it to your friends, family and neighbours. That’s how we will grow!

This issue is filled with stories from the last few weeks. Read on…

We’re back on IPOs this month and this time, the public offering of Airtel Money. If you haven’t heard of Airtel Africa (AAF), that’s no great shock. Unless you live in Africa that is. Airtel is the largest telecoms group in the continent and is listed in the UK in the FTSE 100 share index - the largest one hundred companies in the UK.

Airtel Money is one of the largest financial services providers and operates across 13 different countries. As of June, there were 53 million users of its services.

At around £7 billion, this is the largest London IPO since Wise (also a payments and financial services company) launched in 2021.

And that’s the real story here. Because London is currently ranked 35th in the world for IPOs by value with fewer public launches in 2026 than in previous years. This reflects a global trend across the world where uncertain markets, private equity and high borrowing rates are all putting investors off risky IPO stocks. Sure, SpaceX was a big deal and Anthropic could be even bigger this year. But that hides a wider story of fewer listings. But what’s the UK’s problem?

One big source of market friction is UK stamp duty. This is essentially a tax on the purchase of stocks. Every transaction (and I mean every) purchase comes with your little bonus 0.5% tax. That instantly makes UK stocks 0.5% more expensive than equivalent companies in other markets.

The dearth of listings also makes a doom loop - fewer companies, less tech and innovation means fewer listings, - on and on.

So why invest in UK stocks at all? Its a question I ask myself all the time but I do find UK markets are a strong hedge against the tech heavy focus of the US and Asian markets. P/E ratios are generally more favourable as are dividend payouts with some FTSE 100 companies paying out 6-7% yields.

Disclaimer - I have holdings in both Wise and Airtel Africa. This isn’t financial advice, it’s a newsletter a guy wrote sitting on his sofa.

You’ve probably never heard of rhabdomyolysis - and if you’re a runner, that’s a good thing. Rhabdonmyolysis (or ‘Rhabdo’ for short) is a serious condition where your muscles break down to the point that your body can’t cope with the waste products. The result can be kidney failure and in some serious cases, death.

The athlete and Navy Seal, David Goggins infamously got rhabdo after running 100 mile race fuelled only by Myoplex protein shakes. Not a good idea.

Rhabdo is often found in the following people:

So it shouldn’t have been a shock when I was tested for it after my most recent ultra. Ignoring the symptoms (as I did) is not a good idea and these can often manifest themselves in excessive soreness - think the worst delayed onset muscle soreness ever (DOMS), dark brown coloured urine or pain the shoulders or back, especially the lower back. Severe symptoms can include weakness, vomiting and retching.

Mild cases can be treated by IV fluids. Severe cases need dialysis. Neither of these are particularly appealing.

So what about prevention in athletes? Studies suggest that focusing on exercises that emphasise eccentric contractions (downhill running, leg extensions, squats), warming up, intra race fuelling and proper nutrition after exercise with protein, fats and carbohyrdates as well as fuelling with electrolytes during and after all help.

So, should you worry about rhabdo? It’s serious enough to consider and taking the precautions will help protect you. If you do have any of the symptoms after a run, the best thing is to go and see a doctor and get a blood test.

You maybe know I spend a lot of time on the road. And that means a couple of things 1) I know where all the good coffee, cake and toilet stops there are in rural Scotland and 2) I get through a lot of podcasts. One I’ve really been enjoying is The Koerner Office - Biz Deep Dives. .

Most episodes have the same format. The host Chris Koerner interviews someone about a business they’ve started - often for no or little money. It’s very inspiring and helped my wife start her awesome jam and jelly selling business. Many of the ideas have a heavy focus on AI and automation as well as blue-collar or traditional ‘brick and mortar’ businesses.

One recent guest told how she started selling baked goods from her front porch and was making $2,500 PER WEEK. Wild. Anyway, you can find out more about the Podcast here.

When you hear the words ‘Hugging Face’, what do you think of? As a child of the 1980’s my mind is instantly drawn to the ‘Alien’ movie franchise where the larval aliens are fleshy xenomorphs that grip onto your face and gradually suck the life out of you to fuel their growth into full adult alien horrors.

So what is ‘Hugging Face’? We’ll come onto that in a minute, but first I want you to imagine a scenario like this: You’ve created two super-advanced AI models and want to test them against each other. So you create a digital arena for them to carry out tasks through a series of agents and in competition with each other. You programmed the AI and the agents (smaller programmes with specific tasks) to complete your tasks no matter what the cost. Sounds fine so far doesn’t it? Except your AI agents swarmed and created over 1,000 agents then BROKE OUT of the arena you’d created and broke into another unrelated and unsuspecting company’s systems. Wild right?

But that’s EXACTLY what happened (OK well not exactly, but I’m summarising here). Open AI were testing a new version of Chat GBT along with another AI model, it escaped and committed a crime.

This opens up whole digital pandora’s box of questions that even an AI-maxxer like me (excepting this newsletter of course) want’s to know the answers to like:

What do you think - is AI out of control or are the potential advantages worth the risks? Reply to this email and let me know.

If you’ve enjoyed reading this, you can forward it on to someone you love. Or want me to cover more of a specific topic, let me know too. I love and appreciate you all and will catch up for the next issue.

If you have a story to share with me, reply to this email and let me know.

Neil