NEW YORK, NEW YORK – OCTOBER 22: Taye Diggs attends American Ballet Theater’s 2025 Fall Gala at David Geffen Corridor on October 22, 2025 in New York Metropolis. (Photograph by Théo Wargo/Getty Pictures)
Welcome to Black Wealth Watch, the place we spherical up the largest tales in Black enterprise and financial information every week – the wins, the setbacks, the offers being made, and the conversations we must be having about cash, energy, and who really will get a seat on the desk.
This week we noticed one other harsh actuality: as a Black feminine founder you are able to do all the pieces proper and nonetheless be pressured out of your organization, a Shark Tank investor who simply took a really grown-up step into skilled sports activities, and Taye Diggs doing what extra Black entertainers ought to do by taking their possession severely. Moreover, two Yale college students raised $5.1 million earlier than graduating, and Meta determined that for those who work there, your IT enterprise is now owned by the corporate. Intrigued? Preserve studying.
Adwoa Magnificence is pressured to liquidate
First Ami Cole, now this (silently cries). The Black-owned magnificence area is having a brutal season and Adwoa Magnificence is the most recent model we’re dropping. Julian Addo launched it in 2017 with $80,000 of his personal pocket and earned it a spot in Sephora shops within the US, UK and Canada. This week, a choose ordered it liquidated (Chapter 7) after a dispute with lender Aurous Monetary that included a state of affairs in November the place a big retail fee was despatched to the lender at a time when Addo mentioned he had no enterprise there, bringing the corporate down in a method from which it has by no means recovered. She documented all the pieces publicly on Substack. She instructed Magnificence Impartial that she’s already constructing one thing new and is admittedly enthusiastic about what’s subsequent. The model could also be gone, however Julian Addo shouldn’t be.
Rashaun Williams simply closed a $450 million sports activities fund
If you recognize who Rashaun Williams is, you noticed this coming. If not, get acquainted. Williams, the Shark Tank investor and minority proprietor of the Atlanta Falcons, has argued for years that minority possession in skilled sports activities is among the most undervalued and intentionally closed-off investments in that class. This week, Harbinger Sports activities Companions, the Atlanta-based agency he co-founded with Steve Cannon, Mark Cuban and Jonathan Mariner, introduced that it had accomplished its first fund with greater than $400 million from long-term capital sources searching for sustained publicity to skilled sports activities. What units Harbinger other than exterior capital making an attempt to claim itself is that his total administration staff has already sat on the possession desk of a significant league franchise. The market is beginning to see what Williams noticed first, and $450 million is the receipt, so give the person a spherical of applause.
Taye Diggs is in his possession period
We like to see expertise turn into the proprietor…or let’s consider, the very best man for the job? On April 30, Taye Diggs and companions Autumn Federici, Shelby Stone, James Black and Troy Brookins introduced Microhouse Movies, a mobile-first vertical storytelling platform anticipated to launch this spring. Filmmakers pay nothing to make their work, set their very own costs and acquire their very own income by a system by which viewers use the app’s foreign money to unlock episodes. The staff got here collectively after collaborating on the microdrama Tides of Temptation, and so they’re betting that the infrastructure behind the vertical content material issues simply as a lot because the content material itself. In an area the place creators are always squeezed, Diggs is constructing an alternate.
Two Yale seniors raised $5.1 million earlier than commencement
Yale seniors Nathaneo Johnson and Sean Hargrow wish to communicate together with your startup. The 2 based Sequence, a social media app that lives solely inside iMessage: You ship it a textual content, describe who you are making an attempt to attach with, and it returns a set of swipeable potential matches with no downloads required. They closed a $5.1 million pre-seed spherical with backing from Pear VC, Venmo co-founder Iqram Magdon-Ismail, Reddit CEO Steve Huffman, and GPTZero founder Edward Tian. Johnson says the platform has already expanded to college students in additional than 700 faculties, with early retention charges greater than main social platforms at a comparable stage. They hadn’t even graduated but. Respect to those younger kings.
Meta makes use of worker keystrokes to coach AIIn case you’re working at Meta proper now, it may be time to begin interested by your subsequent transfer (actually). The corporate has deployed an inside monitoring software known as the Mannequin Functionality Initiative that captures staff’ mouse actions, keystrokes and intermittent recordings of what seems on their screens, powering its AI growth pipeline. Staff have raised issues internally concerning the quantity of delicate data a system like this might sweep up, and people issues are official. Meta says the information is strictly for constructing higher AI fashions and isn’t tied to efficiency evaluations, however that assurance is completely different when it comes from an organization that has constructed its total enterprise mannequin round amassing knowledge about folks. Apparently, 2026 is the yr AI modifications the way in which we work, and if it begins right here, think about what else lies forward.