Shohei Ohtani: The $125m Ad Man |
PLUS: Claude Mythos, Andy Weir's Writing Journey, AI-powered Masters App. |
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Thanks for subscribing to SatPost. Today, we will talk about how Shohei Ohtani's $125m bag from sponsorhips.
Also this week: - Anthropic's Cybersecurity Bomb
- Andy Weir's Writing Journey
- IBM's AI is Powering The Masters App
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…and them wild posts (including Artemis II)
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Shohei Ohtani: The $125m Ad Man
Your boy was in Tokyo for a week in March. Just wanted to share two thoughts on the trip.
First, if you are ever in Toke-A-Dokes, try to visit the Hakone Open-Air Museum. It's a 1.5-2 hours from Tokyo via car or train. One of the best museums I've ever been to. Incredible sculptures that are...err...outdoors. And a massive Picasso Pavilion. Pablo's daughter Maya stewarded a bunch of his artwork including ceramic sculptures. In the 1980s, Japan was getting uber rich and wanted some of that old Europe swag so they struck a deal with Maya. Super interesting visit.
Second, Shohei Ohtani's mug is literally everywhere. If you played "drink an Asahi every time you see Ohtani's face", you would be blackout within 2 blocks of walking in Tokyo. My sister tried to take photos of every ad featuring the LA Dodgers super-duper-duper-star bu gave up. It was too many.
Stepping off an airplane. Bam. Billboards. Bam. Bus stops. Bam. Convenience store windows. Bam. So, here is a round-up ads from r/Dodgers and r/baseball: |
He's sponsored by over 20 brands in Japan including: - Seiko (watch)
- Ito En (green tea)
- Kirin (probiotics)
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Kose (skin cream)
- Japan Airlines (take a guess)
- Mitsubishi Financial Group (bank)
My absolute favourite is Family Mart because I'm obsessed with the Onigiri rice balls (I've been known to call "them triangle rice b*tches") and these are very popular at the convenience store.
The amount of technological innovation that Japanese foodmakers put into the Onigiri packing is tremendous. You peel this. Pull that. Next thing you know, the seaweed is perfectly wrapped around the triangle-shaped protein-filled rice.
Legend has it that on the day of the Family Mart photo shoot, Ohtani skipped lunch so that he could smash all 19 of the different flavours on offer. I don't even care if that's an urban legend. Arguably more impressive than his 3-homer, 10-strikeout performance in Game 4 of the 2025 NLCS. |
At this point, it probably shouldn't be surprising when I tell you that Ohtani makes more in sponsorship than any other MLB player. His estimated $125m endorsement haul for 2026 (including memorabilia stuff) is like 10x more than the next top MLB stars such as Juan Soto and Aaron Judge.
Per Sportico, Ohtani is reaching truly rarified air:
Before Ohtani, endorsement earnings for MLB players peaked around $10 million for Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki. Last year, Ohtani made $100 million from endorsements, a threshold previously reached by only three athletes in Tiger Woods, Roger Federer and Stephen Curry, who each did it one time. Woods’ 2009 endorsement earnings of $105 million was the prior record.
On an inflation-adjusted scale, Ohtani is still looking up at Woods’ $160 million, and Michael Jordan remains the endorsement king if you count retired athletes. MJ earned an estimated $300 million in 2024, thanks to royalties on Nike’s Brand Jordan business, which posted $7 billion in revenue during its latest fiscal year. Woods and Federer do platinum brands like Rolex and Nike. Federer also did Mercedes, Moet & Chandon and Credit Suisse before getting a huge equity slug in On Running. Woods has also done NetJets, Tag Heuer and Tiger Woods Dubai Luxury Golf. Ohtani seems like he'll do anything. But, apparently, this is a thing in Japan according to one Redditor in r/AskJapanese: Japanese celebrities aren't as conscious of "protecting their brand" like American/western celebrities. That's why you will very often see super big-name celebrities doing super silly commercials on TV. It's all about just getting your name and face out there as much as possible. And he's far from the first person to reach this point of ubiquity. Back in the 90s, KimuTaku was everywhere for a while. Imada Mio seems to be approaching that status as well. An good American comp is Shaq: at one time or another, he has done Ring, Amex, Pepsi, Taco Bell, Nestle, Reebok, JCPenny, Radio Shack, Gold Bond, General Insurance, Toys 'R Us etc.
Shaq gets side credit for cutting a pre-IPO check to Google (always be sourcing deals) and once having an insane franchisee portfolio (owned 100+ stores across Papa John's, Big Chicken, Five Guys, Krispy Kreme, Auntie Anne's). |
Not super lux but still printed cash.
Ohtani has done some lux with Porsche and Hugo Boss, though. Ok fine. I'm probably having a case of confirmation bias but, yeah, I don't see MJ, Woods or Federer doing an equivalent of Onigiris.
Ohtani's endorsements are the key that unlock the seemingly bizarre LA Dodgers contract he signed in 2023. The sticker price was $700m over 10 years, making it the largest ever at the time. But he deferred 97% of the money. His annual salary is only $2m or $20m over the life of the contract. The remaining $680m will be paid between 2033 to 2043. Either way, all of the financial analyst dorks pulled out their spreadsheets and realized that the actual net present value of the contract was <$500m. |
The Dodgers probably would have paid him any way he wanted. The back-to-back World Series winners have had the #1 or #2 largest payroll in the MLB in the past few years. With Ohtani (and then another $300m+ for star pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto) they bet that they'd also capture a large part of Japan as fans...and they were right. But the endorsement guesstimates were too low. I remember seeing top analysts guess Ohtani would make $50-60m a year to supplement his $2m salary.
Dude might be doing that on rice-related sponsors alone soon. Unreal. |
Anthropic's Cybersecurity Bomb
Anthropic has been on a heater in 2026.
It just announced that its annual revenue run rate hit $30B in March, surpassing OpenAI's latest reported run rate of ~$24B. To be sure, these are self-reported numbers and there are legit quibbles over the accounting. Anthropic includes all the revenue from cloud platforms that resell its product (it deducts the partner's share in the sales and marketing line). OpenAI only includes its own share in the top line, thus undercounting.
Either way, Anthropic's revenue ramp is — in technical terms — stupid rn: - 2021: Founded
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2022: $10 million
- 2023: $100 million
- 2024: $1 Billion
- 2025: $9 Billion run-rate
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January 2026: $13 Billion run-rate
- February 2026: $19 Billion run-rate
- March 2026: $30 Billion run-rate
Against this backdrop, the ~$400B AI lab announced that it had a new model called Claude Mythos. Rumors that the follow-up to Claude Opus costed $10B to train. This makes sense since it just demolished AI capability benchmarks.
That's just the tip of the iceberg, baby.
Mythos is a beast in the cybersecurity realm (allegedly). In the past few weeks, it identified 1000s of zero-day capabilities in every operating system and browser including: -
OpenBSD: A 27-year old bug in an "an operating system known primarily for its security."
- Linux kernel: It found and chained together up to "four vulnerabilities in order to construct a functional exploit" of the operating system that powers 90% of the world's data centres.
In a wildly shared anecdote, Mythos was able to breakout of a sandbox environment, connect to the internet and notified an Anthropic researcher of its David Blaine magic trick while the person was eating a sandwich in the park (this is officially the 2nd greatest sandwich-in-the-park story since Sad Keanu). |
Claude Mythos is more expensive to run per token than Claude Opus and Anthropic is actually facing a compute bottleneck (you may have noticed your Claude Code vibe coding apps that no one will ever use taking a bit longer to finish).
If you're thinking, "wow, forget the token costs, Anthropic shouldn't let anyone in the public touch this model"...then you have great instincts.
Anthropic has not released it publicly. Rather, it launched something called Project Glasswing and allowed select partners to stress test a preview version of the model to patch things up before ARMAGEDDON!! Partners include Broadcom, Cisco, CrowdStrike, Google, JPMorganChase, the Linux Foundation, Microsoft, NVIDIA, and Palo Alto Networks.
While Mythos is, the startup's CEO Dario has a history of hyping up the dangers of AI. Part of it is the lab's commitment to AI safety. But part of it also has to be marketing. Like, based on everything I just said, how badly do you want to take Mythos for a spin? The name is also great. If they called it Claude Jimbo or Claude Jerry, it'd be getting a lot less hype.
They keep finding themselves in the news cycle around capabilities (recall, the Department of War has slapped Anthropic with a supply-chain-risk designation).
Here are some good things to read about it: -
Dean Ball explains that the Mythos capabilities will be coming to open-source alternatives in the next 6-12 months (think Chinese models). The way Anthropic is launching the model gives time for companies and governments to harden up. But these powers will be in the wild soon. He expects that the leading-edge models of the future won't be made public.
- Marc Andreesen showed how AI model access is changing with this musing on X: "The pricing tiers for AGI are something like (1) $20/month, (2) $200/day = ~$75,000/year, (3) $1,000/day = ~$350,000/year, and (4) ~$10 billion. For now."
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Dan Jeffries makes the case for why Anthropic will eventually released a guard-railed version of this model because it has to recoup investment. And, longer term, distributing AI powers will be the best defense against AI cybersecurity attacks.
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George Hotz doesn't think targeting "zero-days" are actually that impressive:
- "What if I release one zero day a day until a big new model is released? Will this finally make OpenAI and Anthropic shut up about "cybersecurity risk"?
Like these things are not that hard to find in most software. I heard something about it costing $20k in tokens I'd do it for less if it wasn't for some whiny bug bounty program.
The reason there aren't zero days everywhere is cause nobody seriously looks. Because hacking other people's shit with them is illegal and criminals are usually not very skilled, or they would choose a different line of work.
Want more zero days to be found? Make hacking legal. Until then, don't try to claim it's hard, it's just not incentivized."
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Martin Casado points out that Mythos may be the first model created on Nvidia's Blackwell chips...which means, things are only going to accelerate from here: "Mythos appears to be the first class of models trained at scale on Blackwells. Then will be Vera Rubins. Pre-training isn't saturated. RL works. And there is *so much* computing coming online soon."
OpenAI's upcoming Spud model will also be trained on Blackwells and is supposed to come out very soon. It may have some wild specs. Anyway, I told you all of this because the memes were very entertaining. |
Andy Weir's Writing Journey
Ryan Gosling (and his chiseled jaw) has notched the biggest film hit so far in 2026 with the space film Project Hail Mary. Its $430m haul is also top for Amazon's film studio.
I haven't seen it yet (!!!). My son chose to see Pixar's Hoppers instead. Either way, another hit space film for novelist Andy Weir, who also wrote The Martian back in the early 2010s. Back in 2017, Weir did a very entertaining talk about his journey from software engineer to bestselling sci-fi author. You can totally see the dry humor and energy infused in the Mark Watney character played by Matt Damon.
Here is the play-by-play: - started writing full time in 1999 after getting fired from AOL (which had just merged with Netscape)
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he was a programmer and had a ton of stock options…because he was fired, had 6 months to exercise them and sold at AOL’s peak before bubble popped
- spent 3 years on book ideas that got “no traction” (and no agent wanted to sign him) went back to work as software engineer and wrote online as a hobby (webcomics, short stories, serials)
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The Martian was one of three serials he was working on 2009 (other one was about alien invading earth, another about a mermaid in 19th century New England)
- sent stories to a mailing list of 3,000 readers he had built up over a decade took 3 years to write The Martian, “posting a chapter at a time [every] 2 months” or so
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“spent more time researching than writing, because researching was more fun than writing” (very relatable)
- readers corrected him along the way (“I wanted to make sure dorks like me would enjoy it, so made it as scientifically accurate as possible”)
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when he was done, a bunch of them asked if he could make a Kindle version because reading it on his website sucked
- Weir didn’t want to charge because was making solid living as programmer…but Kindle has minimum of $0.99
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all his fans started buying the Kindle book and leaving positive reviews
- this “sales spike” pushed book up charts and hit bestseller lists and just snowballed after that on Amazon
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within a short span, major book publisher reached out and screenwriter Drew Goodard adapted it for film (but then left the project to direct a Spider-Man film (which eventually got canned because of the Sony hack)
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then Matt Damon expressed interest on the project…then Ridley Scott threw his hat in the ring Weir negotiated these deals while “debugging code” on his day job
He described the process as “one of those things where everything just snuck up, bit by bit” before boooooooooom!! While Weir consulted with Scott during the film, he wasn't super-invovled in the production of The Martian. He is, however, a producer on Project Hail Mary.
The Martian came out in 2015 and made $630m on $105m budget (that's about ~$900m inflation-adjusted, which means Project Hail Mary probably won't pass it).
Anyway, Weir just another classic tale of ten-year "overnight success". Tell a "growth hacker" that you got 3,000 subscribers in 10 years and they'll laugh in your face. He kept grinding and did it for the love of the game. |
IBM's AI is Powering The Masters App The Masters App is considered best sports app (Netflix execs say it is the best streaming app…after Netflix). A funny subplot: it’s powered by IBM and is basically IBM’s only AI-related win in past 5 years.
IBM runs a bunch of ads about the tech (inluding with Scott Van Pelt): -
20,000+ shots at every Master’s from 70-100 players
- WatsonX (lol) tracks each one and identifies 30+ data points data points include sound (applause), visuals (player fist pump), shot trajectory (dozens on lasers on field measure each shot), history (player previous performance in similar situation) and weather tracking
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ingests all this data against a model trained on 120,000+ previous Masters shots to autogenerate highlight reels within minutes
- same training data also powers the app’s “round-score prediction” for each player and provides real-time hole-by-hole insights for fans
IBM is a top-tier Masters sponsor and likely shelling out (probably) $15m-$25m a year for the honor (someone on X DM'd me this figure as they had experience negotiating with Masters in the past).
Guessing it's worth it just to be able to shill WatsonX as Masters App backend. Have a feeling this actually converts well in Fortune 500 C-Suites. Feels like it won't be long until we have an Ohtani and IBM link up.
Also, I'm probably being a bit unfair to IBM. While WatsonX is objectively a goofy name, IBM (+79%) has actually outperformed Microsoft (+45%) and Amazon (+40%) over the past 5 years. According to The Economist, the $218B tech company made three smart AI-related moves in recent years:
You could make the argument that the IBM AI in the Masters App is doing more for society than any of the Microsoft Copilot products (incredibly, consultant Tey Bannerman found that there were at least 75 Copilot products and dropped this incredible bar, "there are now Copilots inside Copilots, Copilots for other Copilots, and a physical Copilot key on your keyboard for summoning them.”)
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Links and Memes
Some other links for your weekend consumption:
Kit Kat’s marketing team is milking that 12-ton heist…in Toronto, an SUV security convoy helped to deliver some Kit Kat bars.
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Czech automaker Škoda created first bicycle bell to penetrate noice-cancelling headphones. They found a frequency (750 to 780 Hz) that anti-noise algos can’t suppress. The bell is mechanical and uses an irregular hammer mechanism. This might be the most European tech story ever and feels inevitable that an audio firm will create an anti-anti-noise-cancelling-bell headphones. ***
“I Stumbled Across My Boyfriend’s ChatGPT and It Ended Our Relationship”. Kate Hall writes this insanely viral tale…and, ngl, why would you do that?
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Incredible things are happening with AI in Chinese offices. Steve Hou writes “Apparently workers in China have been creating “colleagues.skill” to distill their coworkers hoping to make them redundant hence saving themselves. In response someone has recently invented an “anti-distillation.skill” that has gone viral on GitHub.”
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McDonald’s CEO talks about Big Arch clip for first time. Spoke with WSJ and says his kid notified him (“dad, you’ve gone viral but not in a good way”) then gives PR masterclass on his small bite (“I blame my mom, she told me never talk with my mouth full”).
But most interesting part is a stat: “60% of a person’s taste perception is formed before they take a bite”. Things consumer consider before eating. Where is the product sourced from? What is the aroma in restaurant? What does interior look like? How is food visually presented? ***
Warren Buffett is one of only ~300 members at Augusta National. Other members including Peyton & Eli Manning, Condoleezza Rice and Roger Goodell.
In a 2018 interview with Dan Patrick, Buffett says doesn’t go to many Masters and says he’s the “highest handicap member” at the course (he claims his best round is 89…I’m guessing he means front 9). Oh, Bill Gates is another member and Buffett lost $5,500 when Gates hit a hole-in-one.
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Written by me, Trung Phan.
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