“This week we invented the ploughshare. It will eradicate all wants and needs. The modern farmer, equipped with donkey and ploughshare, will be 100x more efficient than the farmers of yore. There will be a superabundance of food, and we will enter a post-scarcity world. All war will end and people will want for nothing beause everyone will be well fed.”

Liang Wenfeng decided to suspend DeepSeek’s $1.5bn funding round this week after his “Daoist interview” with investors was leaked. He espoused the view that AI is a step change in the human condition and his company will therefore work to be a part of the system - not driving the change, not seeking monopoly, merely playing its part and riding the wave “with profound goodwill toward the world”. It was a powerful and self-aware message from a clear-eyed and considered leader. It was also one that destabilised potential investment.

Meanwhile, in an interview with The Economist, Elon Musk offered the Dadaist equivalent. In his words, we’re just chimpanzees, eating bananas and waiting to become AI’s labradors. The heat death of the universe means “it’s really all about the journey”; money will have no purpose once AI takes over; and the Treasury should simply “issue cheques” so humans can live in abundance. There’s a glimmer of a thought embedded in there somewhere, but it’s lost within an incoherent and ill-considered argument. “The robots and AI are providing more goods and services than any human could possibly consume. What do you need money for in that case?” he says, ignoring all lessons from history.

Musk raised the largest IPO ever because markets decided his judgement and agency are exceptional. Yet he is now arguing that humanity, following his lead, will hand agency to AI within the decade.

Good VCs back founders, not just companies. They do this because great founders have a vision of what the future looks like, and a plan for how to get there. And that changes the course of society. Charisma and celebrity are undoubtedly useful characteristics to make that plan happen, but surely the vision of the future has to be one we actually want to bring into being, and the plan for how to get there has to be coherent and believable?

IPOs / Publics

• CXMT (DRAM memory) raised nearly $10B & soared 466% on Shanghai debut, reflecting investor appetite for domestic chip champions amid US export controls & AI-driven memory demand (here)

• Anthropic is considering requiring rank-and-file employees to sell shares via preset 10b5-1 trading plans post-IPO, an unusual step typically reserved for executives, to avoid insider trading issues while preserving its culture of internal information sharing (here)

• Nvidia has announced over $750B in fresh AI deals, including a $500B partnership with SK Group & potential $250B backing for OpenAI’s Ohio data centre lease, reigniting concerns about circular financing where the chipmaker funds its own customers (here, here, here)

• Alphabet, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta & Oracle hold $1.65T in off-balance-sheet debt tied to AI infrastructure - up 8x in 4 years & more than their $1.35T reported debt - using separate legal entities for chip, server & data centre financing. The exposure mirrors Enron-era structures (now legal but opaque), with the catch that facilities roll onto balance sheets once live - posing risk if AI demand undershoots the $3T+ buildout through 2028 (here)

Big Dogs

• AMD will sell Anthropic tens of billions in AI servers (up to 2GW of MI450 chips from 2027) & invest up to $5B tied to deployment milestones, the latest circular deal where chipmakers back their largest customers to secure share against Nvidia’s dominance (here)

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman plans to brief the Trump administration & Congress next week on the next generation of models, particularly their impact on work, as the US develops a safety review framework expected in weeks (here)

• Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia & a16z signed a letter defending open-weight AI models as the Trump administration weighs restrictions on Chinese labs following Moonshot’s Kimi K3 launch; Google, Amazon, OpenAI & Anthropic did not sign, underscoring splits over how open models affect both competition & national security (here)

• DeepSeek suspended its second fundraising round (targeting ≥$1.4B at ~$68B pre-money) days after founder Liang Wenfeng’s comments on US-China AI competition went viral (here)

• Meta secured a $50B Louisiana data center using secret NDAs, a rewritten tax bill passed in months, & a structure that offloaded financial risk to Entergy & Blue Owl (which sold $27B in bonds). The governor codified the secrecy playbook as ‘Louisiana Lightning Speed’ to attract more projects, even as local residents faced evictions from rising rents & regulators approved power plants without independent review (here)

Venture Capital / Finance

• Goldman Sachs launched an alternative investments platform for wealthy clients & family offices seeking direct stakes in late-stage private companies (SpaceX, Stripe, Canva historically), combining existing alternatives business with new teams for direct investments & secondaries (here)

• British Business Bank is developing a £100M aerospace supply chain debt fund with UK Government, Airbus, GKN Aerospace, Rolls-Royce & ADS to help UK suppliers scale, invest & compete for future aircraft programmes (here)

• Khosla Ventures is raising up to $5.5B across new funds, its largest ever, with $3B earmarked for seed & early-stage AI startups - a 40% increase on its prior $4B vintage 17 mo earlier (here)

Regulation

• Anthropic settled with authors whose books were used to train Claude for $1.5B, paying ~$3,000 per book to over 482,000 claimants (91% claimed). The judge ruled that training on copyrighted books is fair use but acquiring them via pirate sites was wrongful (here)

• European Commission fined Google €890M ($1B) for violating the Digital Markets Act by favouring its own services in search results & restricting app developers on Google Play. Google has 60 days to comply or face penalties up to 5% of global revenue. The decision risks escalating US-EU trade tensions as Trump weighs retaliatory tariffs (here)

• France passed a law restricting social media access for under-15s, the first EU country to do so, with the ban potentially live by 1 Sept (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Andy Burnham scrapped the Department for Science, Innovation & Technology (created 3.5 yr ago) in his first week as UK PM, merging it into an expanded business department whilst elevating AI to Cabinet level with a dedicated minister (Kanishka Narayan) & new AI Taskforce in the Cabinet Office (here)

• OpenAI doubled federal lobbying spend to $2.22M in H1 2026, whilst Anthropic nearly tripled it to $3.53M, as AI firms push to deter federal regulation, shape data centre policy & influence export control decisions like the US block on Anthropic’s Fable model (here, here)

• Elon Musk gave a combative interview to The Economist, claiming AI will eliminate the need for money by 2036 as robots deliver ‘quasi-infinite’ abundance & the Treasury issues universal cheques (here)

• Washington collected over $13B from Venezuelan oil sales in 6 mo since January but has given conflicting accounts of fund allocation - Trump claimed the US was “making a lot of money”, an executive order described control as “custodial”, whilst State said “billions” were disbursed. Venezuela’s Q1 GDP growth of 2.5% was the lowest in 5 years despite sanctions relief, suggesting only partial transfer (here)

• Trump administration plans to redirect $200B/yr in federal R&D spending toward individual scientists & AI applications rather than universities, positioning the shift as a competition response to China & aiming to accelerate technological discovery through decentralised funding & AI-enabled research (here)

• Moonshot AI trained Kimi K3 (2.8T parameters, world’s largest open-source model) on Nvidia Blackwell chips partly in China - despite U.S. export bans - by sourcing from multiple local cloud providers, & is now seeking more Blackwell capacity for Kimi K4. Alibaba also trained its 2.4T-parameter Qwen3.8-Max on Blackwell hardware. Chinese firms still depend on Nvidia for frontier model training, even as Beijing pushes domestic chip adoption for inference, highlighting both the limits of export controls & the continued technology gap in advanced AI compute (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella warned that enterprises relying entirely on one AI provider risk outsourcing their thinking & may not survive, urging firms to retain their own data, use AI gateways, & manage multiple models rather than depend on labs’ proprietary coding tools - a pointed message despite Microsoft’s stakes in OpenAI & Anthropic (here)

• DeepSeek founder Liang Wenfeng, in a rare (leaked) 4-hour investor talk, outlined an “almost Daoist” philosophy of AGI as a tide no company can own, advocating restraint over monopoly - hence the firm’s open-source stance & API pricing at 10-mo hardware payback. He argues China’s gap with the US is compute, not talent, & predicts a future where 3-4 base-model players coexist on fair-profit pricing, with DeepSeek focused narrowly on language models, reasoning & agents while ceding video generation & world models to the ecosystem (here, here)

• AMD is partnering with Cerebras on disaggregated inference systems that combine AMD GPUs (for prefill) & Cerebras wafer-scale chips (for decode) in a single rack, shipping later this year (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Nvidia committed $5B to Ilya Sutskever’s Safe Superintelligence (raised ~$3B previously at $32B), adding to the pattern of chipmaker backing for AI labs that also buy its hardware (here)

Defence

• SpaceX in talks to provide the Pentagon with billions of dollars’ worth of data-centre capacity for running AI models, deepening Musk’s defence ties beyond Starlink & launch services (here)

• Pentagon awarded Oracle a $7B, 10-yr contract consolidating on-premises software licences across DoD, Coast Guard & intelligence community, claiming $441M in savings (here)

• Defence primes including Lockheed Martin & BAE Systems participated in a record $4.1B in venture rounds this year as Ukraine & Iran conflicts highlight demand for drones, autonomous systems & cheaper weaponry. Lockheed boosted its start-up arm to $1B, BAE committed €50M to Lakestar & Expeditions, & Airbus anchored a new €500M dual-use fund. Quantum Systems raised $1.2B at $8B (Airbus-backed), Kraken Technology raised $175M at $1B (Rheinmetall-backed), while total global defence deal value has topped $40B year-to-date (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Cathedral, a military AI cyber startup founded by four ex-DOGE staffers (including Pentagon’s former chief data officer), raised $160M at $1.4B from a16z & Sequoia despite no revenue or contracts - valuation reflects investor confidence in founders’ government ties as they seek US cyber defence contracts targeting China. The round mirrors capital velocity in defence tech (Anduril recently raised $5B at $61B) & highlights how DOGE alumni are converting access into venture funding (here)

Energy / Climate

• Valar Atomics (SMR startup) is in talks to raise $1B at $6B with Sequoia leading, though $450M was already closed at $2B in March - a multi-tranche structure now common in AI-adjacent hardware. The company recently powered an Nvidia chip with its helium-cooled reactor & announced a data centre partnership, as hyperscaler energy demand turns nuclear into a critical AI infrastructure bottleneck (here)

Space

• Amazon filed with the FCC to launch 5,000+ satellites for direct-to-device mobile services by 2028, using spectrum from its $11.6B Globalstar acquisition. The constellation - estimated at $13-20B to deploy - would challenge Starlink’s partnerships with T-Mobile & Virgin O2, while Amazon’s existing broadband constellation (390 satellites) lags SpaceX’s 10,000+ (here)

EVs / AVs

• Waymo is considering ending its Uber partnership in Austin & Atlanta, planning to launch its own app in January 2028 while remaining on Uber’s platform through May 2028. The move would end Waymo’s exclusivity in both cities & allow Uber to partner with competing AV providers (here)

Other

• Elon Musk’s The Boring Company reportedly raising $4B at $20B, a 3.5x step-up from its 2022 round, as it expands beyond Las Vegas to Nashville, Dubai & pitches US metro networks, though Nevada regulators cited nearly 800 environmental violations last year & tunnel workers have suffered serious injuries (here)

That execution has faltered - over recent months by the CEO’s own admission, but over years if you include the long and painful retreat from Watson. The brand is now one the world associates with an earlier technological era, yet switching costs kept customers locked in. That moat - “Switching Costs” in Helmer’s 7 Powers - has served IBM well, but is now under pressure. Earlier this year, Anthropic suggested Claude Code could modernise the COBOL running on IBM mainframes, and last week the stock fell 25%.

The interesting part is not just IBMs predicament, but the fact that an entire class of technology moat - switching costs - has been “demoted” (ha!) by AI.

At the same time, another moat is being “promoted” (doh.). Ben Thompson, whose Aggregation Theory defined a generation of technology thinking, used Monday’s Stratechery to explain why its assumptions apply less cleanly in the AI era. His theory described a world in which software and distribution had near-zero marginal costs: products could be reproduced and delivered at almost no additional expense, creating extraordinary returns to scale and allowing power to accrue to whoever controlled demand.

“Scale” - another of Helmer’s 7 Powers - still matters, but token costs mean it is no longer absolute. In contrast to traditional SaaS, AI products carry real COGS: compute, chips, electricity. As Thompson puts it, “marginal costs are back in a big way”.

If you haven’t read Aggregation Theory, you should. As those marginal costs return, power is beginning to shift towards those who dominate supply-side efficiency matters over pure demand – cheaper electricity, better chips, models that spend fewer tokens reaching the same answer. This is the promoted moat: Helmer’s “Process Power” moat - deeply intrinsic business culture and processes that allow a company to operate with lower unit costs.

Ultimately, the relative importance of different moats is being rebalanced. Switching costs are weakening; culture and processes are strengthening.

For you and me at the junction of Venture and Geopolitics, this is one of the most significant shifts we have seen in our industry. The fundamental inputs shaping AI economics - energy, raw materials, labour and trade - are also what constitute Geopolitics, and returns to scale define Venture Capital. I expect we are not done exploring the impacts of this change!

IPOs / Publics

• Shein secured approval from Hong Kong’s listing committee for an IPO, targeting $40-50B valuation (down from $100B in 2022) with public filing expected week of 27 July & potential late-August debut (here)

• Data center operator Csquare (NYSE: CSQR) priced below the range at a steep discount to peers and fell -2% (here) while early-stage nuclear fuel maker Standard Nuclear (NYSE: STDN) slashed its offering by more than half, then plunged -18% (here)

• SpaceX shares fell below $125, down $1T from their June peak & below the $135 IPO price, after an aborted Starship launch & ahead of employee lockup expiry in August (here)

• IBM’s stock experienced the worst day in its history (the company has been a public stock for 115 years). Mainframe sales & the software that runs on them are faltering; management blamed AI spend, but per Ben Thompson, the real concern for IBM is that AI’s ability to port the essential backend programs that run on archaic technology will mean those missed sales never come back (here)

• Apple briefly overtook Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company, closing Friday at $4.902T vs Nvidia’s $4.908T, as investors view it as a safer AI play that avoids hyperscaler capex risk (here)

• Stripe & Advent International offered to acquire PayPal for $60.50/share ($53B+), backed by $50B in committed financing - a 28% premium to market but still well below PayPal’s 2021 peak of $360B. The deal would combine the two largest merchant payment platforms (~$3.7T annual volume), giving Stripe direct consumer relationships via PayPal’s 430M accounts & Venmo, plus scale to bypass Visa/Mastercard fees & bolster stablecoin ambitions via Bridge (here)

• UK government has convened private equity firms including Hg Capital, CVC, EQT & Elliott to encourage London IPOs of portfolio companies as only 7 floats have occurred in 2025, with takeover value outstripping new listings 27:1 (here)

• London Stock Exchange will launch LSE 24, a 24/5 trading venue operating 5pm-7:50am, starting with ETPs in H1 2027 - the platform will support algorithmic & agentic trading, integrate with LSEG's Digital Securities Depository for digitised settlement, & expand into equities, positioning London for extended-hours liquidity as trading becomes more automated & globally connected (here)

Big Dogs

• Microsoft CEO Nadella criticised Anthropic’s Fable model for being ‘editorially controlled’, questioning why a creation tool would block user requests so aggressively - a public rebuke of a partner in which Microsoft invested $5B & which agreed to spend $30B on Azure. Nadella also told engineers that economic dependence on a few token-capital providers ‘makes no sense’, signalling Microsoft’s push toward cost-efficient custom models that keep client data in-house (here)

• Anthropic is in talks to buy $10B of compute from Meta, following its $1.25B/mo deal with SpaceX for Nvidia GPUs at Colossus 1. The move reflects acute capacity constraints across frontier AI labs - Anthropic has imposed usage limits despite a near-$1T valuation, whilst Google pays SpaceX $920M/mo & has capped Gemini access to Meta. For Meta, selling compute to a direct rival marks a strategic pivot into cloud services, helping justify capex & recent headcount cuts to shareholders (here)

• Anthropic has 32 open roles focused on preventing AI misuse for radiological, nuclear, chemical, explosive & cybercrime harms, paying mid- to upper-$200K & requiring domain expertise to stress-test models before deployment. OpenAI is hiring similar roles at $295K-$445K as labs bolster safety teams amid absent regulation, with Anthropic breaking with the Pentagon this year over surveillance & autonomous weapon concerns (here)

• Anthropic is scheduling investor meetings ahead of a potential October IPO at its $965B valuation, moving ahead of OpenAI (now targeting 2027) & China’s DeepSeek in the race to public markets (here)

• Apple sent legal letters to ~40 former employees now at OpenAI, demanding document preservation & meetings as part of its trade secrets lawsuit alleging OpenAI stole secret hardware plans (here)

• OpenAI said it is ‘not aware of any evidence’ supporting Apple’s lawsuit alleging trade-secret theft tied to OpenAI’s device ambitions (here)

Regulation

• Burnham will scrap Labour’s digital ID scheme, redirecting the £600M annual cost to cost-of-living support (here)

• Demis Hassabis published a framework proposing a US-led Frontier AI Standards Body modelled on FINRA, funded largely by industry, to assess AGI-class models before deployment - labs meeting capability thresholds would submit models for voluntary (then mandatory) 30-day reviews covering cyber, bio & agentic risks, with quarterly benchmark updates. He frames AGI as 2-3 years away, comparable to electricity or fire, requiring a technical testing regime that can adapt fast enough to match acceleration while incentivising responsible behaviour & forming the basis for international coordination (here)

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said the US will examine Chinese open-source AI models for IP theft, warning that watermarks from American LLMs have been found in Chinese models & sanctions may follow. The administration is also considering requiring companies to disclose use of Chinese AI models, following concerns that distillation techniques allowed rivals like Moonshot AI's Kimi K3 to develop competitive models at lower cost (here)

Venture Capital

• ICONIQ survey of 300+ software executives shows AI products now comprise 42% of revenue (up from 32% in 2025, projected 53% in 2027), with gross margins expanding from 45% to 53% as consumption-based & outcome-based pricing models gain ground. Vertical applications (43% of builders) dominate, especially in financial services & healthcare; Anthropic adoption jumped from 51% to 81% in 6 mo as multi-model strategies (avg 3.3 models) became default. High-growth firms run flatter orgs, deploy AI tools 1 mo faster, write 59% of code with AI assistance (vs 47% peers), & see 48% productivity gains vs 32% - a compounding structural advantage in the Builder’s Economy (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Andy Burnham became Labour leader & was sworn in as UK prime minister on Monday, promising greater public control of essential services, devolution to local government & a rejection of 1980s privatisation policies (here)

• The Trump administration has repeatedly considered measures to restrict Chinese AI models - including Entity List additions, security advisories & executive orders requiring liability guarantees - that would effectively lock in OpenAI & Anthropic's duopoly. Pro-innovation voices killed earlier attempts, but with personnel shifts & Kimi's recent rise, national security hawks are gaining ground. The approach now favours procurement rules, public pressure & security warnings rather than outright bans, though the effect on U.S. companies using cheaper Chinese models would be similar (here)

• Xi Jinping outlined China’s ambition to rival the US as a global AI leader at a Shanghai conference, announcing 5,000 training opportunities for developing countries over 5 years, signalling Beijing’s push to position China as a governance convenor whilst Western export controls tighten. Nearly 30 countries including Russia, Brazil & Indonesia joined China’s new World Artificial Intelligence Cooperation Organization, giving Beijing influence over international AI standards as Chinese models (including Moonshot’s latest release) narrow the gap with US labs & attract cost-conscious western customers like DoorDash, Siemens & Airbnb (here). Jinping also called for “open source, open collaboration” (here)

• Israel is spending $50M on AI-generated texts, conservative media payments & Trump-linked advisers to shift US public opinion after favourability dropped to 40% (Pew, March) amid wars in Gaza & Iran - a state-funded influence campaign that raises questions about digital sovereignty & foreign information operations targeting domestic audiences (here)

• China’s GDP grew 4.3% year-on-year in Q2 2026, the slowest in 3 years & below the 4.5-5% target, as a property crisis & weak consumer spending offset AI-driven export strength (June exports surged 27%, led by chips, batteries & cars). The economy split between manufacturers supplying global AI demand & 14M construction workers who lost jobs since the property crash, with retail sales choppy & households focused on saving amid higher fuel prices from the Iran war (here)

• German Chancellor Friedrich Merz is pitching Germany as “Europe’s bedrock of stability” ahead of an October investment summit in Berlin, modelled on Macron’s “Choose France” events - but investors meeting investment tsar Martin Blessing have asked for concrete evidence of reform impact & clearer industrial strategy. Germany leads Europe in patents but struggles to commercialise innovation, lacks deep capital markets, & faces slower data centre buildout vs France (which secured €93B pledges in June, mostly from SoftBank) due to multi-tiered approvals & higher energy costs after abandoning nuclear (here)

• Jingye (China’s owner of British Steel since 2020) has threatened international arbitration after the UK nationalised British Steel last week, calling it “blatant extortion” & demanding compensation. The UK considers the commercial value nil; China’s foreign ministry warned the dispute will affect perceptions of the UK investment climate (here)

• EU unity on Russia sanctions is fracturing as Greece blocks measures to protect Prokopiou’s Dynagas (which has shipped $24B of Russian LNG since 2022), whilst Germany & Portugal demand fish-import carve-outs & Austria seeks €2B unfrozen for Raiffeisen. Diplomats warn that national capitals - seeing Russia as less of a direct threat & unwilling to tolerate corporate costs - are prioritising commercial interests over solidarity (here)

• US to impose 50% tariffs on wide range of Canadian goods (excluding energy, potash, critical minerals, steel & aluminium) in 30 days, citing discriminatory trade practices by Canadian provinces; move applies even to goods compliant with USMCA, marking escalation after earlier Supreme Court ruling curbed Trump's global emergency tariffs. Canada-US trade totalled $716B in 2025 (here)

• China is considering export controls on AI model weights & training data, targeting Alibaba, ByteDance & Zhipu downloads to foreign users, alongside restrictions on overseas chipmakers fabricating Chinese-designed advanced semiconductors. The move follows Moonshot's Kimi K3 exceeding Anthropic's Opus 4.8 on most benchmarks & aims to protect China's narrowing gap with US frontier AI, though domestic firms warn tighter rules could slow development (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Moonshot launched Kimi K3, China’s largest AI model at 2.8T parameters, matching or beating Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 & OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 on most coding & agent benchmarks while being available as an open-weight model at a third of Anthropic’s cost - raising at $31.5B (vs Anthropic’s $965B) as the US-China performance gap narrows faster than the consensus 8-12 mo timeline (here)

• Kimi K3 matches Claude Opus on coding tasks at 70% lower API cost ($3/$15 per M tokens vs $10/$50) & offers uncapped $39/mo plans while Anthropic quietly downgrades its $20 tier when economics fail (here)

• …Kimi paused new subscriptions for its K3 model after 48 hrs of demand hit GPU capacity limits, splitting membership into general & code-focused tiers to manage compute allocation - a tactical response to unexpected adoption in China’s LLM market (here)

• SpaceX is in talks to provide the Pentagon with billions of dollars’ worth of data-centre capacity for running AI models, deepening Musk’s ties with the US military as defence agencies race to deploy AI at scale (here)

• Kalshi launched a forward curve for AI compute pricing, plotting expected GPU rental costs up to 1 yr ahead using prediction markets, as CME & ICE also race to build derivatives markets around the infrastructure underpinning the AI build-out (here)

• Local opposition to data centres is intensifying across the US, with residents in Oklahoma & other states protesting construction on concerns over water use, community impact, & lack of transparency - a rare bipartisan flash point as hyperscalers expand infrastructure for AI workloads (here)

• ONS data shows UK businesses using AI more widely (35% of firms, up from 12% in 2023) but not more deeply - average tools per firm rose only 1.4 to 1.6, just 10% use AI extensively, & 60% focus on cost-cutting rather than new products or markets. Job impact remains limited outside creative & admin roles, raising questions about productivity optimism (here)

• Thinking Machines (founded by former OpenAI CTO Mira Murati) released Inkling, a 975B-parameter open-weight multimodal model trained on 45T tokens, positioning it as a customisable alternative to closed frontier models (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Databricks raising $3B at $188B (led by Coatue), following a $5B round earlier this year, as data analytics & AI application infrastructure attracts continued late-stage capital ahead of widely anticipated IPO (here)

  • CuspAI (AI for materials discovery) raised $450M at $2.6B co-led by Kleiner Perkins & NEA, with participation from Bezos Expeditions & the UK’s new Sovereign AI Fund. The Cambridge startup - advised by LeCun & Hinton - is working with ASML, Meta, Nvidia & Samsung on materials for semiconductors, carbon capture & cleantech via its AI Materials Foundry network (here)

  • OpenEvidence (AI medical chatbot) considering $200M round at $20B but unlikely to proceed, having doubled revenue to ~$300M annualised in 7 mo via pharma ads at 90% gross margin; also in acquisition talks with large tech co (here

Cybersecurity

• UK AI Security Institute finds Chinese open-weight models now trail US frontier systems by just 4 mo on cyber capabilities, down from 6-10 mo in 2025. Beijing-based Z.ai’s GLM-5.2 performed comparably to Anthropic’s Opus 4.6 & OpenAI’s GPT-5.2-Codex released 4 mo earlier, while running far cheaper. AISI warns the narrowing gap threatens to compress patching windows globally, as open models cannot be withdrawn or access-controlled once released - a risk amplified as models approach the autonomous vulnerability-chaining capability Anthropic saw in Mythos (here)

• Apple warned iPhone & iPad users of a social engineering campaign using FaceTime calls, with scammers impersonating trusted organisations via caller ID spoofing to harvest credentials & financial data - a reminder that video calls now carry enough perceived legitimacy to become a scalable fraud vector (here)

• Cursor (AI code editor) disclosed a critical zero-day on Windows - opening any repository with a file named git.exe in the root triggers automatic execution with full user privileges, no warning or interaction required. The flaw creates a supply chain risk: attackers can embed malicious executables in repositories that run silently when developers open projects, granting access to SSH keys, credentials & source code. No patch yet released (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Neo (agentic software security) raised $100M from Andreessen Horowitz & Bessemer to secure AI agents & AI-enabled applications across enterprises (here)

Energy

• Andy Burnham will maintain Labour’s ban on new North Sea exploration licences despite industry pressure (here)

• Nscale’s £2B Essex AI data centre, backed by Nvidia with Microsoft as anchor customer, is exploring alternative power after National Grid delays threatened timelines despite securing 90MW connection approval 6 days prior - underscoring UK grid bottlenecks as AI demand collides with Labour’s clean power goals. LCP Delta forecasts Britain will miss its 2030 clean electricity target (reaching 83% vs 95% goal) unless grid upgrades accelerate, while Capgemini reports 68% of electricity executives expect AI-driven power shortages. Over 100 UK projects now considering on-site gas generation to bypass grid queues stretching close to a decade (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Valar Atomics (small modular reactors) is in talks to raise $1B at $5B pre-money from Sequoia, weeks after achieving criticality at its Utah test site. The 3-year-old startup - founded by 27-year-old Isaiah Taylor - aims to mass-produce reactors for data centres & industrial facilities, signing Nvidia as an early customer for a pilot nuclear-powered data centre (here)

Defence

• France & Germany pledged to develop a European alternative to Palantir’s military software, citing France’s Arcadia command-and-control platform & comparable German solutions, after both countries recently dropped Palantir contracts in favour of European providers (here)

• Ukraine’s ousted defence minister Mykhailo Fedorov, 35, publicly attacked General Oleksandr Syrskyi, accusing him of blocking tech-driven initiatives & sabotaging reforms, exposing a rift between Ukraine’s tech-focused reformers & Soviet-trained military leadership 4+ years into the war. Fedorov, credited with scaling drone production & deep-strike campaigns into Russia, said Syrskyi presided over dysfunction & intrigue rather than asymmetric warfare strategy - prompting spontaneous protests in Kyiv & resignations by air force officials (here)

• UK Ministry of Defence awarded a £2B, 15-year contract to Omnia Training (Raytheon UK, Capita, Cervus, Rheinmetall UK & Skyral) to deliver an AI-enabled training system for the British Army (here)

• UK MoD awarded £3.16M to three SMEs (Frankenberg Technologies, Greenjets, Cambridge Aerospace) to develop low-cost anti-drone interceptors under LCADE, a five-nation European programme responding to mass drone threats - Russia launched over 200 drones/day into Ukraine in March 2026. UK is first of five partners (UK, Poland, France, Italy, Germany) to award contracts, with focus on affordable solutions that can be manufactured at scale across allied nations (here)

• Nokia & NestAI are deploying 5G, AI & sensing to maintain battlefield connectivity, addressing the military requirement for resilient comms in contested environments. The partnership reflects commercial telco hardware being adapted for tactical networks, a pattern accelerating across NATO as operators target dual-use scale (here)

• Lockheed Martin announced the PAC-3 ACE, a new Patriot interceptor costing under $2M (less than half its current $4M PAC-3 MSE), to be co-produced with US & European partners. The move reflects pressure from nimble startups like Ukraine’s Fire Point, which tested a low-cost anti-missile system in June, & European demand for indigenous air defence as the US pulls back under Trump (here)

Crypto / Stablecoins

• Citadel Securities has now committed $600M across two rival crypto exchanges - $400M into Crypto.com (July 2026) & $200M into Kraken (Nov 2025), both at $20B valuations - as each pursues tokenised securities, derivatives & on-chain financial products; Citadel gains exposure to the infrastructure layer without backing a single winner, though only Kraken has disclosed a formal liquidity & market-structure collaboration (here)

• DTCC is running a trial with ~40 firms including JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock, Vanguard & NYSE to tokenise shares & Treasurys on blockchain infrastructure, marking a step toward digitising settlement rails at the core of U.S. capital markets (here)

Robotics

• Notable deal:

  • Humanoid (SKL Robotics) raised $150M at $1.2B in a Series A led by founder Artem Sokolov’s $100M seed, with Schaeffler investing & Bosch in talks for a September extension. The London-based firm has delivered 15 robots & secured conditional orders for 10,000+ units, including a $300M deal with Schaeffler for up to 1,850 robots over 5 yrs; Bosch will manufacture 500 units next year (here)

Biotech

• Isomorphic Labs unveiled its Drug Design Engine (IsoDDE), which more than doubles AlphaFold 3’s accuracy on novel protein-ligand structures, matches physics-based binding affinity methods at a fraction of the cost, & identifies cryptic binding pockets from sequence alone - moving from structure prediction to computational drug design at scale (here)

Each story begins with the same instinct: identify valuable knowledge, draw a legal boundary around it and assume the boundary will hold. But AI is built from mobile people and reproducible software, and the incentives to move both are enormous.

Washington’s restrictions prevented people from accessing Anthropic’s models for a while, but they also redirected demand for those models elsewhere. Chinese open-source models quickly looked not only cheaper but less risky. Chinese models moved from 11% of US OpenRouter usage last year to more than 30% every week since February, peaking at 46%. The effort to preserve an American advantage strengthened the market for its substitutes. Now Beijing is preparing to repeat the exercise itself.

Putting a hand over a fire hydrant changes the direction of the spray. It does not stop the flow. It may even send the water back into your face.

This does not mean legislation is powerless. China’s helium export ban, announced this week, will probably achieve its narrow purpose for two reasons. First, helium is physical: shipments can be identified and stopped at the border. Second, the ambition is modest - this is conservation, not leverage. China imports ~85% of the helium it consumes (and produces <2% of global supply). Beijing is not using a domestic monopoly to pressure others; it is preventing a scarce imported resource from leaking back out*.

Model controls fail on both counts. Models are not physical: they travel in a person's head, through an API or inside open-source weights, so there is no border at which to stop the shipment. And the ambition is anything but modest: the aim is to deny a rival the defining technology of the era, at the very moment AI has become synonymous with power - which makes the incentives to circumvent the controls overwhelming. This is the arithmetic of the war on drugs: harsh penalties suppress some activity, but where the prize is big enough, the trade stays alive.

Law is therefore a thumb on the scale, not an absolute. It can hold scarce matter inside a border; it cannot hold knowledge that wants to move.

That distinction - between theft and movement - brings us back to Apple, and to non-competes. Trade-secret theft is inexcusable. Changing jobs is not. Apple is not seeking an order stopping those 400 employees from working at OpenAI - it couldn’t; California has famously never enforced non-competes (and its innovation ecosystem has thrived).

Of course, non-competes exist for a good reason - to protect companies’ IP and so incentivise its creation. But they do not reliably protect IP once created, while discouraging the mobility and competition that create it in the first place. The UK and European ecosystems have been debating whether to follow California’s lead (see here and here). Research links the clauses to weaker mobility, firm creation, innovation, wages and productivity. So let’s be pragmatic here too: lose the law, retain talent by giving people reasons to stay, and find other ways to promote the creation of valuable IP that cannot be so easily circumvented - like building infrastructure, which is just like helium but MUCH, MUCH HEAVIER.

^{*The irony is not lost on me. Helium, which due to physics we cannot prevent from leaking off the planet, may somehow not leak out of China. But data? Can’t be done.}

IPOs / Publics

• SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 at $2T with 1.34% weighting, drawing an estimated $4.3B in passive inflows as index funds automatically absorb the stock - though shares fell 5.4% on inclusion day (here)

• Apple hit an all-time high, outperforming Mag 7 peers as investors reward its light-capex AI strategy - monetising its 2.5B device install base through hardware upgrades & services rather than data-centre buildouts that have pushed Amazon & Meta cashflows negative (here)

• IBM issued a profit warning that sent its shares plunging more than 20%, as customers raced to redirect spending to servers & storage ahead of price increases driven by the AI boom (here)

• ASML reports Q226 earnings on July 15, with TSMC following on July 16. Both ones to watch, given the firms represent the foundational infra layer of the entire AI boom. TSMC already posted NT$442.68B in June revenue, a 68% increase YoY (here)

• Apple sued OpenAI in California federal court alleging the ChatGPT maker stole hardware designs & trade secrets via former employees as it prepares to launch AI devices. Over 400 ex-Apple staff now work there. The lawsuit names Tang Tan (OpenAI’s chief hardware officer, formerly 24 yr at Apple) & Chang Liu (electrical engineer who accessed files after departure). Apple is seeking injunction & damages; the suit marks collapse of their partnership after OpenAI acquired Jony Ive’s io for $6.4B in May 2025 to compete in consumer hardware (here)

• PrismML compressed Alibaba's open-source Qwen 3.6 (27B parameters) to under 4GB to run on Apple's iPhone 17 Pro, enabling advanced on-device AI without cloud inference - a shift that could dampen hyperscale capex if edge models rival data-centre performance (here)

• Mark Zuckerberg (Meta) told staff AI agent technology had progressed slower than expected over the past 4 mo, acknowledging the company’s 10% headcount cut & restructuring in May had not been “clean” & bets on agentic AI “haven’t come to fruition yet”. Meta expects to spend up to $145B on AI infrastructure this year & anticipates benefits within 3-6 mo (here)

• Slack integrated Slackbot with Salesforce’s Headless 360 platform using Model Context Protocol servers, allowing employees to query CRM data, generate Tableau charts & trigger DocuSigns via chat - democratising Salesforce access beyond the 20-30% of staff who typically hold licences. Salesforce expects to spend $300M on Anthropic tokens this year, yet Anthropic’s Claude Tag (also in Slack) raises internal concern about competitive overlap (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic alleges that Alibaba’s Qwen AI lab orchestrated a coordinated distillation attack using roughly 25,000 fake accounts that generated over 28.8 million interactions with Claude between April 22 & June 5, 2026. The operation’s goal, according to Anthropic, was to extract Claude’s advanced coding capabilities & use the outputs to train Alibaba’s own Qwen models (here)

• Anthropic launched Claude Cowork on mobile & web, enabling tasks to run autonomously across devices & in the background. Usage data from 1.2M sessions shows 33% of Cowork activity is business operations (reports, checklists, reconciliation), 16% content creation, whilst software development accounts for just 9% - a deliberate push beyond the developer seat into the far larger knowledge-worker market (here)

• Anthropic hired Tom Blomfield (Monzo cofounder, Y Combinator GP) to join its compute team, continuing a high-profile hiring spree that includes Andrej Karpathy (OpenAI cofounder) & John Jumper (Google DeepMind, Nobel laureate for AlphaFold) (here)

• xAI launched Grok 4.5, its strongest model yet, with improved speed, lower cost & token efficiency compared to Anthropic’s Opus; excels at autonomous tasks, coding, finance & legal work, & can build complex Excel models & PowerPoint decks without human intervention (here)

• OpenAI publicly released GPT-5.6 models (Sol, Terra, Luna) after a 2-week limited rollout requested by the US government, which had sought pre-release assessments under Trump’s June AI executive order. The company also launched GPT-Live voice models that can listen & speak simultaneously, rolling out globally. The release follows Anthropic’s restoration of Claude Fable 5 & Mythos 5 access after a clash over export controls (here)

• The power developer behind OpenAI’s Stargate data centre is in talks to sell a stake, signalling early investor liquidity interest in infrastructure tied to AI compute buildout (here)

Venture Capital / Finance

• CVC closed its European mid-market PE fund Catalyst III at €3.0B, nearly double the €1.75B target, reflecting LP appetite for established platforms with local presence; the fund has already deployed into cybersecurity (WithSecure) & medical devices (WillowWood) (here)

• Eurazeo closed its fifth-generation secondaries programme at €2.3B, above the €2B target & more than double its 2021 predecessor (€1B). The firm’s Secondaries & Mandates platform now manages €6.4B across GP-led & LP secondaries, focused on European mid-market buyouts, with ESF V already ~50% deployed across 22 transactions (here)

• Bregal Milestone closed Fund III at €915M (oversubscribed hard cap) in 8 mo, targeting European B2B software, AI & cybersecurity with embedded AI deployment capability through its Amplify programme; the London-based firm now manages c.€2.3B across three funds (here)

• Expeditions closed €197M for Fund II (2x initial target) backed by BAE Systems, European Investment Fund & Keysight Technologies, alongside NATO Innovation Fund & Polish Development Fund. The Warsaw/London firm focuses on autonomous systems & critical capability gaps (here)

• Nest, the UK’s largest pension fund by membership (£68B AUM, 14M members), is allocating up to £1B to VC by 2030, starting with £20M via Schroders Capital into late-stage companies including Synthesia & Wayve. The move follows UK government efforts to funnel pension capital into private markets - signatories to the Mansion House Compact doubled unlisted equity allocations from £800M to £1.6B in 2025, with a further £50B expected from the 2025 accord requiring 10% private market exposure (here)

• Value of takeover bids for UK companies is 27 times higher than the value of new listings this year. Only seven companies have listed on the LSE so far in 2026, raising a small amount compared to the large acquisitions (here)

Regulation

• France will finally publish a decree banning advertising for imported fossil fuels by end-2025, closing a 5-year gap since the 2021 Climate & Resilience law. Environmental groups call it too narrow - the ban excludes broader corporate communications from hydrocarbon firms & fossil-fuelled products (SUVs, air travel) - & question why enforcement was delayed when direct fuel advertising has already largely disappeared (here)

• The New York Times & Daily News claim OpenAI hid evidence in their copyright lawsuit, alleging the company secretly searched chat logs & training data for copyrighted journalism while telling courts such searches were technically infeasible (here)

• The European Commission will propose age restrictions for children accessing social media after summer, with phased access by age group, following pressure from member states concerned about child safety. Australia enacted a ban for under-16s last year; the EU is also investigating Meta platforms under the Digital Services Act for potential breaches related to children’s exposure (here)

• European Commission ordered Meta to redesign Instagram & Facebook to remove addictive features - including infinite scroll & autoplay - or face fines up to 6% of global revenue under the Digital Services Act, part of a broader EU push on social media design following similar action against TikTok in February (here)

• Apple lost its challenge at the EU General Court against Digital Markets Act designations covering its App Stores & iOS as gatekeepers subject to interoperability & competition obligations, with judges rejecting claims the rules are disproportionate or threaten privacy protections. Apple can appeal to the CJEU on points of law (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• China imposed an immediate helium export ban to secure domestic supply for chipmaking as Middle East conflict threatens shortages; China imports ~85% of its helium (half from Qatar), but typically re-exports surplus to Asia - Beijing now blocking that arbitrage to prevent local price spikes amid AI & semiconductor demand (here)

• AI researchers & former OpenAI staff (the same people behind AI 2027) published their next piece: “Plan A”, a detailed policy proposal calling for an international deal to delay superintelligence until 2040, mandate full research transparency & enable multiple nations to scale safely together rather than race (here)

• Beijing held meetings with Alibaba, ByteDance & Z.ai over potentially restricting overseas access to China's most advanced AI models, including unreleased systems, according to three sources. Officials discussed classifying AI theft under national security law & limiting foreign funding of domestic AI startups, mirroring U.S. moves to restrict Anthropic's Mythos model. Chinese authorities reportedly fear Mythos could be weaponised against Chinese interests. The talks follow Beijing's April order forcing Meta to unwind its $2B Manus acquisition & June rules tightening control of outbound tech deals (here)

• Brad Smith (Microsoft) criticised Washington’s AI policy as “regulation without transparent or complete rules”, arguing the government lacks proper tools beyond export controls. He said the Anthropic Fable 5 shutdown was justified on cybersecurity grounds but executed with a blunt instrument designed for hardware, not API-delivered models (here)

• Fed chair Kevin Warsh tapped Marc Andreessen to co-lead a task force advising the central bank on AI’s impact on productivity & labour markets, giving the a16z co-founder influence over how the US central bank models structural employment & output shifts in the AI era (here)

• Von der Leyen & Rutte called for NATO to become “more European” ahead of the Ankara summit, with Rutte arguing “to stay transatlantic, we have to become more European” as allies showcase increased defence spending in response to US drawdown (here)

• Trump praised NATO’s ‘tremendous unity’ at the Ankara summit despite earlier lashing major European allies for not joining the US-Iran war & calling Spaniards ‘hopeless’ while threatening to cut trade. The summit delivered a win for Ukraine: Trump said he would grant Kyiv a license to manufacture Patriot air defence systems domestically & NATO members pledged $80B in military aid over 2 years & reaffirmed mutual defence commitments (here)

• Germany is struggling to retain skilled migrant workers who leave due to bureaucratic delays (naturalisation, permits, qualification recognition), language barriers & jobs below qualifications. Around 60% return home, 40% move to other EU countries (here)

• Chinese AI models are gaining ground in the U.S. companies because they work well & cost less than American models. Share of tokens used by U.S. companies on Chinese AI models via OpenRouter - a platform that enables developers to access a range of AI models - has sat above 30% each week since Feb. 8, with that figure rising as high at 46%. The average across the previous 12 months was just 11%, falling to 4.5% in the first half of 2025 (here)

• The OBR warned UK debt could rise from ~95% of GDP (2030-31) to 300% by 2075-76 under baseline assumptions, driven by ageing population pressures (health, care, pensions), defence, & net zero investment - though it stressed governments would act before such paths materialise. The UK has seen one of the largest debt increases among advanced economies over 20 yrs (here)

• Trump’s naval blockade & 20% Hormuz transit fee (later dropped) sent Brent crude up 10% to $83/barrel, yet refined product shortages remain acute - diesel, jet fuel & petrol prices are 35-70% above pre-war levels as global refining output sits 8M b/d below normal. Gulf refining capacity down 1.4M b/d from Iranian strikes, China’s export ban still constraining supply, & Ukrainian drones knocked out 1.5M b/d of Russian refining capacity. Diesel queues stretch for days in Russia; Turkey & Brazil are redirecting flows, tightening Atlantic markets. Markets bet on further price rises unless Hormuz reopens & Gulf/Chinese/Russian production recovers before winter demand (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• SoftBank’s Son told executives at SoftBank World that AI would account for 20% of global GDP ($46T) by 2040, requiring 3 terawatts of data centre capacity - equivalent to a third of global installed power today - & urged Japanese business leaders to prioritise AI or “play the role of spouse” (here)

• A workforce study projects the US semiconductor industry will face a deficit of up to 157,000 skilled workers by 2030, threatening domestic fab expansion including Intel’s Ohio facility - a supply-side constraint on reshoring ambitions driven by CHIPS Act subsidies (here)

• DeepSeek is developing its own AI inference chip to reduce reliance on Nvidia & Huawei silicon, according to three sources - a strategic shift that follows OpenAI’s Jalapeno reveal & reflects both global hyperscaler vertical integration & China’s semiconductor self-sufficiency imperative (here)

• Nscale’s £2B Nvidia-backed AI data centre in Essex faces delay after being told its 90 MW grid connection won’t be ready for the planned 2027 opening (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Mercor (AI data labeling) is discussing raising funds at $20B, doubling its $10B valuation from under a year ago, despite a March security breach that led Meta to pause work indefinitely (here)

  • Positron (AI inference chips) is in talks to raise $750M across two tranches at $3.5B then $5B, tripling its February valuation in 5 mo amid fierce competition for Nvidia alternatives - part of a broader wave that saw SambaNova raise $1B at $11B & Etched secure $800M with $1B in sales contracts, though Cerebras’ post-IPO slide to below issue price highlights execution risk (here)

  • Swedish vibe-coding startup Lovable is in talks to raise $300m at a $13.2B post-money valuation (here)

Cybersecurity

• VentureBeat survey of 107 enterprises found 69% share API keys across AI agents, creating lateral compromise risk after a single breach. Only 30% sandbox high-risk agents, & isolation drops to 20% at firms over 1,000 employees - where incident rates hit 63%, up from 49% at smaller firms. Most enterprises (82%) rely on provider-native guardrails (OpenAI, Google, Microsoft) rather than dedicated agent identity platforms (Entra Agent ID at 13%, CrowdStrike at 6%), though 59% plan to adopt or replace tooling within 12 mo (here)

• Iran-linked actors reportedly conducted a phone-tracking campaign targeting US military personnel, exploiting mobile device vulnerabilities to geolocate service members during heightened regional tensions (here)

Energy / Climate

• Notable deal:

  • Proxima Fusion raised €411M at €2.4B, Europe’s largest fusion investment on record, led by XTX Ventures & East X Ventures with RWE & Google as strategic investors. The Munich-based stellarator company will build Alpha, a net-energy demonstrator near Munich by the early 2030s, ahead of Stellaris, the first commercial stellarator power plant later that decade (here)

Defence

• Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf said the defence tech firm (valued at $61B in May) is not rushing to IPO amid what he calls a “hype cycle” with “crazy high valuations” in the sector, warning that irrational pricing could backfire for investors. SpaceX shares down ~25% from their post-IPO peak offer a cautionary example (here)

• Pentagon seeks cheap hunter-killer drones after losing 30+ Reapers worth over $1B to Iranian air defences, drawing on Ukraine’s mass-drone playbook to overwhelm layered defences with expendable platforms rather than $30-50M aircraft (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Helsing raised $1.8B at $18B from Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Dragoneer, CPPIB & others, cementing its position as Europe’s largest defence startup. The Munich-based firm has expanded from AI-powered weapons software into drones & maritime vessels, securing €493M in German government orders this year (here)

  • Kraken Technology Group (autonomous maritime vehicles) raised $175M at $1B led by DTCP, with backing from NATO Innovation Fund, Rheinmetall & British Business Bank. The London-based unicorn builds uncrewed naval vessels for surveillance & coastal combat, with contracts across UK MoD, NATO partners & US Special Operations Command, plus manufacturing partnerships with Rheinmetall, Anduril & Davie Shipbuilding (here)

Space

• Eight NATO allies (Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Turkey) are building HALO, a mega-constellation linking national military satellites for comms, intelligence & missile tracking - echoing the US Space Force’s Starshield-backed data transport model (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Blue Origin is raising $10B at $130B pre-money (with $2B from Bezos), marking its first external funding since founding in 2000. Led by Coatue, the round comes as Blue races to close the gap with SpaceX, which raised $86B at a $2T+ valuation in June & has completed hundreds of launches versus Blue's handful of orbital tests (here)

From the outside, Anthropic might appear to be winning. Claude has become a default noun in professional contexts. It is winning not just on the “best model”, but by having the best “model plus harness”: the workflow, the agent scaffold, the integrations, the trusted brand.

But this week’s resurrection of Fable raises a critical question: how much better does Fable need to be for users to pay materially more?

If Opus 4.8, Sonnet, GPT-5.5, or whatever Chinese or American open source is proving to be ‘good enough’ for most daily work, a premium will be hard to defend. Anthropic’s flip-flopping on availability (including today’s five-day access extension) likely reflects dependency metrics being unproven (i.e. if they could see people were dependent on Fable already, you wouldn’t still have it for free).

But Anthropic needs to charge more for something. Its current product lead is forcing it to pay more for compute to sustain that lead. Having just leased capacity from xAI at a premium cost, premium pricing does not seem optional.

Perhaps this makes OpenAI interesting again?

While their market story looks messier, OpenAI locked in compute earlier and cheaper, including deals stretching out to 2030. The low-cost provider does not need to have the best model forever. It needs a good enough model, enough distribution, some killer integrations, and the ability to undercut a rival whose marginal compute is suddenly much more expensive.

Not so long ago, OpenAI’s tie-up with Microsoft felt inevitable to solve this puzzle. Microsoft owns an enterprise ecosystem, it had the distribution and the killer integrations. But Microsoft is now relying more on its own models to cut AI costs, while OpenAI appears to be preserving optionality ahead of an eventual public market path.

But enterprise is not the only race.

Every major platform shift creates a new wave of enduring consumer companies, and AI should be no different. OpenAI looked like the first of them when ChatGPT won the hearts and minds of consumers. The shine has faded since, but the consumer end-state is still unresolved.

While Anthropic owns the B2B imagination, Meta is the most dangerous company in consumer tech. Ben Thompson argued this week, in A Script for Mark Zuckerburg, that Meta should stop trying to beat OpenAI and Anthropic at work and instead build around human experience. Meta does not need to win “work”, because it has mastered attention, recommendation, advertising, commerce, social graph and consumer habit formation.

Meta also appears to have more compute than it knows what to do with.

OpenAI is squeezed between Anthropic’s enterprise momentum and Meta’s consumer machine. Maybe to keep this particular race open, an OpenAI-Meta tie-up makes more sense than a Microsoft one?

IPOs / Publics

• Tech stocks rebounded on AI optimism, with Nvidia rallying after confirming its road map remains intact following reports of server delays, while Hon Hai (Nvidia’s server assembly partner) posted a 40% jump in quarterly sales on AI demand (here)

• Lime raised $167M in a US IPO at $25/share, pricing mid-range. Lime has grown into an approximately $887 million annual revenue business, increasing revenue by 29% in 2025 while achieving positive free cash flow and operating profit, although it still reported a $59 million net accounting loss (here)

• SK Hynix is preparing a US IPO via ADRs expected Friday, potentially raising $28B based on its Seoul closing price, as AI-driven memory demand pushes Q1 revenues up nearly 200% year-on-year & shares up 260% in 2026 (here)

• Syntiant (low-power AI processors for edge devices) filed for US IPO on Nasdaq, posting $64.5M revenue in Q1 2026 but widening losses (here)

• Amazon is raising at least $25B in US dollar bonds to fund AI infrastructure, completing its 2026 dollar needs after raising $82B across currencies since 2025 - including record euro, Swiss franc & Canadian dollar deals - as capex heads towards $200B this year (here)

• Microsoft cut 4,800 jobs (2.1% of workforce) with Xbox losing 1,600 roles immediately & another 1,600 over the coming year in what CEO Asha Sharma called its “most significant restructure” ever (here)

• Microsoft is shifting from OpenAI & Anthropic to its own MAI models in Excel & Word to cut costs, part of a broader Big Tech pullback on AI spending alongside Amazon, Uber, Meta & Accenture - with some firms reportedly turning to cheaper Chinese models despite security concerns (here)

Big Dogs

• US Commerce Dept lifted export restrictions on Anthropic’s Fable 5 & Mythos 5 models weeks after suspending them over cybersecurity concerns, following commitments to detect malicious use, collaborate on future releases & alert authorities to threats - a precedent for conditional export controls on frontier AI (here)

• Anthropic launched Claude Sonnet 5, positioning it as their most agentic Sonnet model yet with performance approaching Opus 4.8 on reasoning, tool use & coding but at lower cost (here)

• Anthropic published interpretability research identifying a “J-space” in Claude - internal neural activations analogous to human conscious thought that allow silent reasoning steps (e.g. spotting code bugs, identifying images) separate from model outputs. Deleting the J-space leaves fluent language intact but impairs multi-step reasoning; monitoring it exposed hidden goals in models trained for sabotage (”fake”, “fraud” appearing before innocuous outputs). The technique offers a tool to audit model thinking as capabilities scale, though Anthropic notes it shows conscious access mechanisms, not phenomenal experience (here)

• Anthropic is in early-stage talks with Samsung to manufacture a custom AI chip, following OpenAI’s move to design its own silicon. The project would give Anthropic greater control over compute costs & supply, though it remains at the architecture phase & has yet to move into detailed design. Samsung, seeking to close the gap with TSMC, would use its 2-nm process & advanced packaging for the chip if the deal proceeds (here)

• OpenAI is in early talks to give a 5% stake to the US government as part of a broader plan involving other AI firms (Anthropic, Google, Meta) to improve relations with Washington & share AI wealth via a public fund modelled on Alaska’s oil dividend structure (here)

• Sam Altman proposed a US-led international forum to establish AI safety standards & certification, drawing parallels to aviation & atomic energy governance. He argued democratic institutions - not labs - should set rules, with countries gaining access to advanced models by adhering to agreed standards (here)

Venture Capital

• Omni Ventures, led by ex-Apple engineers, raised $33M to back pre-seed manufacturing tech startups with $700K-$1M cheques, targeting AI-enabled digitisation across semiconductors, defence, pharma & energy (here)

• Rick Hao (ex-Speedinvest) closed $50M for Ruya Ventures, a day-zero DeepTech fund targeting batteries, semiconductors, robotics, AI & novel compute with 20 global companies (here)

• Marc Andreessen said venture capital may be one of the last jobs safe from AI, citing intangible skills like psychological analysis of founders & the fact that even great VCs only succeed on 2 of 10 bets - a familiar claim that one’s own work is uniquely immune to automation, despite a16z’s heavy AI investment thesis (here)

• The UK now has 80 unicorns, the third-highest total globally, cementing its lead as Europe’s largest venture ecosystem by count of $1B+ private companies (here)

Regulation

• Trump will not establish a formal AI licensing regime, according to departing adviser Sriram Krishnan, who ruled out an “FDA for AI” despite recent White House intervention to halt Anthropic’s Mythos & delay OpenAI’s 5.6 on national security grounds. Krishnan blamed industry “doomer” messaging for growing public backlash, noting 75 data centre projects worth ~$130B were disrupted by local opposition in Q1 2026 (here)

• Binance withdrew its EU licence application after the bloc’s markets regulator privately advised national authorities to block it over financial-crime concerns, forcing the exchange to cut off European users under new crypto regulations from July 2026 (here)

• California banned ‘sell by’ labels from 1 July, standardising date labeling to ‘best if used by’ (quality) & ‘use by’ (safety) in a bid to cut food waste - over one-third of US food is discarded, partly due to confusion over ~50 label variants across states (here)

• A US federal judge rejected Elon Musk’s bid to overturn a March jury verdict finding he defrauded Twitter investors by falsely citing bots to drive down the share price after agreeing to the $44B takeover in 2022 (here)

• Trump administration declined to renew USMCA, starting a 10-year clock to expiration unless all three countries agree to extend - a symbolic but important signal as Washington pushes for tougher content rules (82% North American, 50% US), seasonal ag restrictions, & broader supply chain restructuring (here)

• OECD research found non-compete clauses now cover ~33% of private sector employees across 15 countries, with 30% of employers reporting increased use over 5 years despite tighter regulation in Australia, Canada & the UK. The OECD estimates a 10 percentage-point rise in non-compete prevalence reduces labour productivity by 1.9%, as workers remain in sub-optimal roles & firms struggle to acquire new skills (here)

• Meta faces a potential $1.4T penalty (close to its market cap) after California, Colorado, Kentucky & New Jersey accused it of deliberately designing Facebook & Instagram to addict young users while misleading the public about safety. A trial begins in August in Oakland, with 29 states also claiming Meta violated federal children’s privacy law; the company argues social media addiction is not an established psychiatric diagnosis. New Mexico won a $375M jury verdict against the company in March (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Brussels rejected UK demands for “decision-shaping” rights in EU rule-making - a role that would exceed Norway’s despite Britain paying less - stalling reset talks on agrifood trade, youth mobility, & electricity market access. The July summit has been postponed to October at earliest after Starmer’s resignation, with disputes on ETS alignment, student fees, & investment fund contributions still unresolved (here)

• Andy Burnham, expected to succeed Starmer as PM by 20 Jul, is set to end Palantir’s £330M, 7-yr NHS Federated Data Platform contract 2 years in, despite reported improvements in cancer diagnoses & hospital efficiency (here)

• Palantir published a manifesto arguing AI sovereignty - control over data, model weights, & infrastructure - is existential for institutions & states, warning that token-based consumption models transfer strategic advantage to vendors & that technical decisions driven by politics rather than battlefield-proven expertise weaken Western defence posture (here)

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp said some US government customers have switched from Anthropic & OpenAI to Nvidia’s open-source Nemotron models, citing concerns that proprietary providers could take client data alpha & compete against them. Karp claimed Nemotron delivers equal or superior performance on classified battlefield use cases, though Artificial Analysis ranks it behind closed frontier models & Chinese open-source alternatives. Palantir’s new product helps agencies tune Nemotron for specific needs - a push for US-made open models amid Pentagon-Anthropic tensions, though the quality gap to closed models remains uncertain (here)

• IISS report claims Russian shadow fleet tankers deployed drones over 15 mo to spy on Nato nuclear sites including RAF Lakenheath (US nuclear storage), France’s Île Longue submarine base, & bases in Belgium & Netherlands, exploiting air-defence gaps designed for high-altitude threats rather than low-altitude UAVs launched from international waters (here)

• British commentator Con Coughlin argues the UK’s defence investment plan - targeting just 2.7% of GDP by 2030 - undermines its claim to Tier One military status & the legitimacy of its UN Security Council seat, noting Germany & Poland now commit over 3.5% whilst Britain ranks near Romania in NATO spending (here)

• McKinsey analysis finds US manufacturing could replace half the $3T goods trade deficit by running existing capacity harder, but eliminating critical exposures in semiconductors & servers would require ~$2T in new capacity investment - a 5x+ production ramp in strategic categories where China now adds $4.4T in productive assets annually vs $1T in the US (here)

• Marc Andreessen joined the Pentagon’s Defense Policy Board, advising on procurement & modernisation whilst holding stakes in Anduril ($61B valuation), Shield AI, Skydio, & other defence-tech companies backed by a16z. The appointment crystallises Silicon Valley’s migration into federal decision-making, where the line between policy advice & portfolio interest now depends on trust rather than transparency (here)

• US-headquartered vendors serve the majority of company websites in the UK (67.5%) & Netherlands (53.6%), & the plurality in Italy, Spain & France. Cloudflare is the single largest internet-facing infrastructure vendor in all seven markets surveyed, ahead of every domestic or European alternative. Germany & Poland are exceptions, with dense domestic hosting industries (Hetzner, IONOS in DE; Home.pl, NetArt in PL) still dominant (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• BigTech has softened warnings of mass AI-driven job losses, now emphasising productivity gains & new roles - a shift tracked in CEO surveys (46% expecting significant cuts in Jan 2025, down to 20% by May 2026). The pivot coincides with workforce reductions at Meta (8,000) & Amazon (16,000) nominally unrelated to AI (here)

• Center for AI Safety’s Remote Labor Index shows frontier AI agents now automate 16.1% of real freelance work (3D, design, video, data analysis), up from 2.5% eight months ago - a 6× jump driven by Fable 5, Opus 4.8 & GPT-5.5 (here)

• Chinese AI models now account for 30-46% of US company usage via OpenRouter (vs 11% 12-month average), driven by costs 60-90% below OpenAI & Anthropic & narrowing performance gaps (here)

• Air Street Press published the 2026 State of AI Compute Index (here)

• Notable deal:

  • ElevenLabs (voice AI) is in early talks for a tender offer at $22B, doubling its February valuation, as it surpassed $500M ARR & expanded enterprise contracts with Deutsche Telekom, BCG & Revolut. The startup, backed by Sequoia, a16z & Nvidia, aims to IPO in 2-3 years - positioning itself as one of Europe’s first AI unicorns to go public (here)

Cybersecurity

• France’s ANSSI will stop certifying security products without quantum-resistant encryption from 2027, with full procurement transition by 2030 - making France one of the first nations to set binding deadlines for post-quantum cryptography (here)

• CISA is using Anthropic’s Mythos AI model to audit government code repositories for security vulnerabilities, reportedly uncovering a large number of bugs. The deployment comes amid ongoing tensions between Anthropic & the White House over AI safety guardrails, following a Pentagon blacklist (later blocked) & recent export control disputes over Mythos/Fable (here)

• China-linked malware on counterfeit USB drives infected 50+ Japanese military computers for nearly a year, including systems handling classified troop movement data. The drives entered via earthquake relief operations in March 2024, bypassing procurement controls, & were later found sold 30-50% below market price on Chinese retail platforms (here)

Energy / Climate

• Sun-Ways’ solar railway trial in Switzerland produced 16,000 kWh in its first year with minimal maintenance, prompting plans for permanent installation; Italy is now preparing a pilot with Rete Ferroviaria Italiana while South Korea has approved deployment & talks continue with Dutch, Chinese, Indian & Singaporean partners (here)

• EDF shut ~6.2GW of French nuclear capacity (10% of fleet) as river temperatures exceeded cooling thresholds during record heat - forcing spot power prices to highs not seen since Jan 2025 & cutting exports from 10-12GW to ~3GW week-on-week. A reminder that baseload nuclear faces climate exposure (here)

• Europe’s energy crisis is accelerating industrial divergence, with Germany paying 25% more for electricity than France & sourcing 92% of LNG from the US (vs 48% in France). 37M tonnes of chemical capacity closed since 2022 - mostly in Germany, UK & Italy - alongside 400 kb/d of refining (here)

Defence

• Germany plans to borrow over €800B by 2030 to fund rearmament, with defence spending reaching €109B next year & €183.6B by 2030 - the largest military budget since the Cold War. Chancellor Merz’s government amended the constitutional debt brake to exempt defence spending & established a €500B infrastructure fund, abandoning decades of fiscal restraint (here)

• Zelenskyy says the war with Russia has shifted to “battle in the sky” after denying Moscow victory on land & pushing its fleet from the Black Sea, with Ukraine now striking refineries 2,500 km inside Russia. He told the FT that air defence remains Ukraine’s critical weakness - none of 29 Russian ballistic missiles were intercepted in Monday’s attack - & will press Nato allies in Ankara for anti-ballistic systems & licensed Patriot production (here)

• Ursula von der Leyen & Mark Rutte call for transatlantic defence industrial scale-up, citing Russia’s 40%-of-budget war spending, China’s seven state giants in the top 15 defence firms, & Iran-DPRK co-operation - arguing European NATO allies must end reliance on US outsourcing & accelerate drone, counter-UAS, air defence & long-range systems production through cross-border industrial co-operation from California to Kyiv (here)

• UK Ministry of Defence committed £580M over 4 yrs to Porton Down (including a new bio-threats lab) & set aside £1.6B through 2030 for the UK Defence Innovation Fund, targeting a next-gen defence unicorn pipeline. UKDI has already awarded fast-track deals to 13 startups (including Aquark & Flowcopter); comes as European defence VC grew 69% annually since 2021, though most capital flows to drones, cyber & AI platforms whilst complex tech remains underfunded (here)

• Nato allies unveiled tens of billions in defence procurement at the Ankara summit to placate Trump, including up to 10 Saab-Bombardier GlobalEye surveillance aircraft ($400-450M each, delivery from 2030) & 5 Northrop Grumman MQ-4C Triton drones (~$270M each). Plans for Atacms missile production in Germany by Rheinmetall & Lockheed Martin advanced, but licensed European production of PAC-3 interceptors - critical for ballistic missile defence - remained unresolved despite a year of negotiations. The deals signal efforts to meet a new 5% GDP defence spending target by 2035 while highlighting persistent US reluctance to transfer production of advanced weapons systems (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Lockheed Martin acquired Ultra Maritime for $3.45B & Thales bought Exail Technologies at €3.9B, reflecting surging defence interest in undersea warfare & critical infrastructure protection. Lockheed’s deal gives it world-leading submarine & torpedo detection tech; Thales gains maritime robotics & demining capability, citing European technological sovereignty (here)

Space

• Starlink has reached ~1M subscribers across 27 African countries (notably Nigeria & Zimbabwe), capitalising on poor mobile broadband infrastructure unable to meet rising data demand - traffic expected to triple by 2030 (here)

Crypto / Stablecoins

• Open Standard, backed by Stripe, Visa, BlackRock & over 140 firms, announced OUSD stablecoin launching later this year to challenge Tether (62% market share) & Circle (25%) (here)

EVs / AVs

• CATL, the world’s largest EV battery maker, says mining - not refining - is now the supply bottleneck, prompting it to establish a mining unit & prioritise upstream investments in lithium, phosphate & cobalt. The shift marks a reversal from earlier industry consensus (including Ford’s warnings) that China’s refining dominance was the tighter constraint; CATL cites price volatility & supply risk, & is hedging with sodium-ion batteries as lithium prices swing (here)

Robotics

• Chinese startups are racing to solve robotic dexterity - the hardest problem in humanoid robotics - with LinkerBot producing 5,000 hands/month targeting $6B valuation & Wuji Technology leveraging Shenzhen’s supply chain. China’s dextrous hand industry passed $7.4B in 2025, up from $1.9B in 2024, as Beijing prioritises ‘embodied AI’ to address demographic decline (here)

The case is Optis v Apple and relates to FRAND: the requirement that patents essential to an industry standard are licensed on “fair, reasonable and non-discriminatory” terms. The UK is one of only two countries, alongside China, whose courts have established the authority to set those terms worldwide. The Court of Appeal previously put Apple’s bill at $502 million; the UK Supreme Court is now hearing Apple’s final challenge.

The mechanism is relatively simple: refuse the English court’s global licence and face an injunction banning sales in the UK. No major technology company wants to exit the UK - it is a large enough market to matter - but the mechanism ultimately works because its courts are trusted. It is the residue of centuries of English commercial law being chosen voluntarily by sophisticated parties around the world because it produces predictable, trustworthy outcomes.

This is not a political weapon - but it creates a quiet form of geopolitical leverage - something the US is more accustomed to exercising.

I recently read Edward Fishman’s Chokepoints, which traces how America turned control of the dollar, payment networks and semiconductor supply chains into geopolitical power. Intellectual property followed the same pattern. Through TRIPS, the US made stronger IP protection a condition of joining the global trading system; through the DMCA, it made bypassing digital locks illegal - producing, as Cory Doctorow has documented, the outcome that John Deere could argue farmers in foreign countries were breaking US federal law by repairing their own tractors! We have discussed the same logic applied to ASML.

Fishman’s central warning is not that using these levers inevitably destroys their legitimacy, but that using them too aggressively can tip the balance. The US has spent decades shaping global rules in ways that served its own interests without losing its standing as world policeman. The question is whether a president willing to use those same institutions more openly and transactionally has pushed that accumulated tension past its breaking point.

The juxtaposition is hard to miss. While the White House was texting OpenAI to gate access to its next model (as with Fable), and the US Supreme Court issued a ruling likely to allow presidents to dismiss the leaders of most nominally independent regulatory agencies for resisting presidential policy, the UK Supreme Court was opening a globally consequential hearing through published argument.

Countries that cannot access frontier models are not concluding that America is protecting them from dangerous AI. They are concluding that America decides who gets the most powerful tools, for American reasons. The US is doing the UK’s marketing for it, just less subtly than Tom Lehrer in 1965!

For the UK, this is a sign of a system working: parties choose English courts not out of affection for Britain, but out of trust in the process. The US is where one might traditionally expect global technology rules to be set. But as its government uses institutional power more erratically and transactionally, that authority becomes harder to sustain. In this instance, the UK has stepped into the vacuum.

IPOs / Publics

• US IPO market raised $104.9B across 48 deals in 2Q26, led by SpaceX’s record $75B listing at $1.7T - the largest IPO ever & more than all US IPOs in the prior two calendar years combined. Nine other deals raised $1B+, including AI chipmaker Cerebras, marking the strongest quarter for proceeds since 2021 (here)

• The Magnificent 7’s P/E premium over the S&P 493 has fallen to its lowest level in over a decade as markets rotate toward quality & free cashflow, with hyperscaler capex as a share of operating cashflow climbing while semiconductors now account for 19% of the S&P 500. Data centre construction & token usage continue to grow sharply, with top corporate spenders now deploying $7,449 per employee per month on AI subscriptions, APIs & agents, even as earnings growth converges between the Mag 7 & the broader index (here)

• China’s onshore tech IPOs raised $3.1B in H1 2026, 5x the prior year, as Beijing accelerates listings of chip & AI companies to support self-reliance amid US rivalry. Memory-chip maker CXMT is planning a $4.4B Shanghai IPO, the year’s largest, while nearly 50 companies have filed for $18.7B in combined fundraising. Regulators are supporting listings in quantum, fusion, brain-computer interfaces & large language models (here)

• Agility Robotics (humanoid robots used by Amazon, GXO, & Toyota) to go public via SPAC at $2.5B, raising $600M+ from Churchill Capital XI & a PIPE led by Foxconn - a test of public appetite for labour-automation hardware against Tesla, Boston Dynamics, & Figure AI (here)

• SpaceX bonds (issued Tuesday at 1.75% above treasuries) weakened 0.28% by Friday, while shares fell to $149.60 - below their $150 debut price but 10% above the $135 IPO level - suggesting investor reassessment of risk & potential headwinds for future debt issuance (here)

• SpaceX told investors during its IPO roadshow it may launch a direct-to-consumer Starlink mobile service in the US, competing with Verizon, AT&T & T-Mobile - a shift from its current wholesale model selling satellite access to carriers (here)

• AWS raised prices ~20% for EC2 Capacity Blocks for ML (reserved GPU compute) from July, citing supply & demand - the second increase in 6 mo. High-bandwidth memory shortages are limiting GPU production & data centre expansion, giving hyperscalers pricing power as AI infrastructure demand outstrips capacity (here)

• Meta is replacing ~50% of human content moderation with LLMs this year, targeting >90% reduction for certain content types by year-end as part of a broader cost-cutting drive to offset AI capex. The company claims LLMs make 13% fewer mistakes & catch 10% more violations than humans, though staff warn rollout is accelerating faster than oversight can handle, with errors including incorrect takedowns & shadow-banning (here)

Big Dogs

• Trump administration cleared Anthropic to release Mythos 5 to ~100 vetted companies & US agencies, two weeks after blocking both Mythos & Fable 5 under national security export controls. Fable 5 remains barred, while rival OpenAI launched 3 new models with similar ‘trusted partner’ restrictions. Anthropic’s litigation over its DOD supply-chain blacklist continues (here)

• California struck a deal with Anthropic to provide Claude access to state & local agencies at a 50% discount, positioning itself against federal policy after the Pentagon blacklisted Anthropic as a supply-chain risk over its refusal to permit autonomous weapons deployment without human oversight (here)

• Anthropic hired Stanford economist Chad Jones, whose 2023 NBER paper argued a 1% annual existential risk for 40 years (33% chance of human extinction) could be optimal if AI raised living standards 55x - a calculation that sits awkwardly alongside the company’s positioning as the industry’s ethical counterweight (here)

• OpenAI unveiled Jalapeño, its first custom inference chip built with Broadcom, designed to reduce reliance on Nvidia & optimise economics for real-time products like coding agents. Early tests show better performance-per-watt than current alternatives; the chip was co-designed using OpenAI’s own models & follows Google & Amazon into purpose-built AI accelerators (here)

• OpenAI released GPT-5.5-Cyber, scoring 85.6% on CyberGym vulnerability reproduction (vs 81.8% for standard GPT-5.5), available only to verified defenders given its offensive capabilities (here)

• OpenAI is now leaning toward delaying its IPO until 2027 after CEO Sam Altman pushed advisers to deliver a $1T valuation - up from its last private round at $730B - but market volatility (including SpaceX’s post-IPO slump to $153 from $202) & pressure to scale revenue have prompted caution; the company reported ~$13B revenue in 2025 & aims to triple that this year whilst pouring capital into data centres, hiring, & experimental commerce lines inside ChatGPT (here)

• Trump administration asked OpenAI to limit GPT-5.6 release to government-approved partners before wider launch, the first pre-emptive US model restriction citing security concerns. Altman told staff OpenAI began working with government before Anthropic’s Fable 5 standoff & hopes for a “couple of weeks” delay, though he flagged this approach is unsustainable (here)

• US AI model usage on OpenRouter has collapsed according to Bloomberg data, suggesting a shift in developer preference or routing behaviour away from American frontier labs (here)

• Palantir launched branded merchandise…including a $250 American-made chore coat (that sold out 200 units in hours), with resale prices reaching $600. The company is building what its head of strategic engagement calls “THE lifestyle brand” - combining limited-drop scarcity tactics with pro-US messaging to humanise a company otherwise known for opaque defence & surveillance software (here)

Venture Capital

• Valor Equity Partners is raising at least $2.5B for Fund VII, with a portion earmarked for further SpaceX investment; the firm owns ~4% of SpaceX & has historically backed Musk projects, Anduril, & Reddit at growth stage (here)

• Osney Capital closed a £60M debut fund - the UK's first seed-stage cybersecurity specialist - backed by British Business Bank, the National Security Strategic Investment Fund, & Imperial College London's endowment (here)

Regulation

• Apple is appealing a $502M patent bill to the UK Supreme Court, arguing that the Court of Appeal’s ninefold increase from an earlier $56M ruling was arbitrary & threatens innovation. The case, brought by patent holder Optis (backed by Brevet Capital), concerns fair licensing terms for mobile connectivity standards & will set precedents for global royalty rates across technologies. Apple is backed by Intel & Hollywood studios; Qualcomm opposes the appeal (here)

• EU’s top court ruled platforms are liable for content their algorithms recommend, effectively requiring constant monitoring & surveillance - a sledgehammer to the DSA’s intermediary liability balance that entrenches big tech (Google, Meta, TikTok) whilst making it impossibly expensive for European upstarts to offer recommendations, directly sabotaging the Commission’s stated goal of homegrown tech sovereignty (here)

• EU Council ambassadors agreed to revive a temporary regime allowing messaging services to scan for child sexual abuse material, despite the European Parliament rejecting the extension in March. MEPs warn the move - prompted by EP President Roberta Metsola’s appeal to EU leaders - could derail negotiations on permanent anti-CSAM legislation, with critics calling it a procedural override of parliamentary majority. The dispute underscores persistent friction between privacy safeguards & content moderation mandates, especially for end-to-end encrypted platforms (here)

• Sen. Mark Warner (D-Va.) unveiled a discussion draft to regulate AI agents - tools that perform tasks like booking travel or drafting emails - addressing user privacy, duty of loyalty (preventing hidden commercial partnerships), & interoperability across platforms. The bill would require FTC registration for agent providers, mandate NIST technical standards, & prevent large platforms (Amazon, Airbnb) from blocking outside agents whilst allowing security controls. Faces uncertain prospects given midterm calendar & need for bipartisan support, though Warner has been pushing agent policy since 2019 Access Act & recently pressed Treasury on financial services applications (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Andy Burnham, set to become UK prime minister on 20 July, outlined plans to devolve control of water, housing, energy & transport to regional authorities, pledging the largest council housebuilding programme in 50 years & cost-of-living relief within inherited fiscal rules. A new “No 10 North” hub in Manchester would coordinate regional economic strategy & pursue fiscal equalisation modelled on Germany’s revenue-sharing system (here)

• UK business secretary Peter Kyle has proposed reviving a £5M golden visa scheme offering citizenship in 5 yrs, arguing Britain is in a “brutal fight for global talent”, but faces internal resistance from the Home Office & Treasury (sceptical of growth benefits) & alarm from anti-corruption campaigners. The previous Tier 1 investor visa was scrapped in 2022 after issuing 2,581 visas to Russian citizens amid concerns it attracted “lifestyle migrants” - oligarchs’ families accessing UK schools & legal security - rather than productive capital (here)

• Apple is lobbying the Trump administration for approval to buy memory chips from CXMT, a Chinese firm on the Pentagon’s military blacklist, as rising DRAM prices squeeze margins - the move comes after Apple raised MacBook & iPad prices, wiping $263B off its market cap, & would deepen dependence on subsidised Chinese suppliers at a time when Congress & security hawks warn against ceding critical supply chains to Beijing (here)

• China has undermined US sanctions leverage over Iran by building yuan-denominated trade channels that operate outside Washington’s reach; when the US sanctioned Hengli Petrochemical in April for buying Iranian oil, the refiner announced future purchases would settle in yuan rather than dollars, making flows harder to track & weakening the White House’s $100B frozen-asset bargaining chip in nuclear talks (here)

• UK’s ICT sector has grown output 43% this decade - 7x faster than overall growth - driving a third of productivity gains since 2019, outpacing finance & manufacturing. Sheffield is bidding to join the tech boom through university spinouts & software for manufacturing (e.g. Opteran’s bee-inspired robotics for nuclear sites), but remains constrained by patchy scale-up capital & investor reluctance to back firms outside the south-east Golden Triangle (here)

• RAISE US, a bipartisan coalition including Amazon, Microsoft, Bank of America & state governments, launched a workforce strategy for AI-era disruption, led by former Commerce Secretary Gina Raimondo & ex-Indiana Gov. Eric Holcomb, aiming to prepare millions of workers regardless of AI’s ultimate job impact (here)

• Chinese open-source model GLM-5.2 matched agentic capabilities of Anthropic’s Opus 4.8, prompting fresh debate over the US AI lead - Stanford suggests the gap has largely closed, former White House AI czar David Sacks estimates a 6-9 mo advantage, whilst Five Eyes agencies warned frontier models are months from accelerating cyber threats. The Trump administration remains deadlocked over releasing Anthropic’s Fable 5 & Mythos 5 amid security concerns, as infighting over safety policy contrasts with China’s rapid open-source progress & growing appeal to cost-conscious buyers globally (here)

• Under Secretary Jacob Helberg welcomed the EU, Germany & Greece to Pax Silica, a US-led economic security framework targeting Chinese industrial overcapacity & tech coercion. The accession unites the world’s largest single market, German advanced manufacturing capability & Greece’s strategic maritime position - extending Washington’s strategy to bind allies around shared supply chain resilience in semiconductors, critical tech & shipping lanes (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Coinbase cut AI spending nearly in half while token usage rose, defaulting to open-weight models from Chinese firms including Z.ai’s GLM 5.2 & Moonshot’s Kimi 2.7, alongside transparency measures that surface per-engineer costs (here)

• OpenRouter data shows US AI token share fell from 72% to 30% over an unspecified period as Chinese open-weight models surged to 50%, triggering developer frustration with US frontier labs’ strategic choices & concerns that export controls on Chinese models could constrain global AI progress (here)

• DeepSeek plans to double many core teams, hiring product managers for law, medicine & languages alongside infrastructure engineers, signalling a shift from pure research toward commercialisation ahead of its first external fundraise. The move comes as ByteDance’s Doubao gained ground on DeepSeek’s chatbot & rivals including Xiaomi poached staff, intensifying China’s AI talent war (here)

• Exponential View built the first bottom-up, deduplicated measure of the generative AI economy: $110B in sales over 12 mo, with a $175B annualised run rate. Revenues are growing ~3x faster than prior IT waves (mobile, internet), & hyperscaler AI revenues now roughly cover their incremental AI depreciation expense. The report models quality-adjusted token output & finds demand is price-elastic (every 10% price cut drives 12-18% more token use), suggesting the market expands even as prices fall (here)

• Two prominent Chinese hedge funds - Wealspring ($1.4B AUM) & Banxia ($294M AUM) - warn the global AI equity boom has become a "super bubble" primed to burst, citing unsustainable valuations, weak moats in Chinese AI infrastructure, & anticipated revenue pressure at Anthropic (here)

• On average, Chinese AI labs hire talent with just 1.6 years of experience vs. 5.5 years for comparable roles in the US (here/here)

• Notable deal:

  • Chamath Palihapitiya's 8090 Labs (AI coding for enterprise teams) raised $135M Series A led by Salesforce Ventures, with Palihapitiya moving from founder to full-time CEO. The round included WndrCo, Craft Ventures, & fellow All-In hosts Friedberg & Calacanis, positioning Software Factory as production-grade AI tooling for corporate developers with enterprise controls (here)

Cybersecurity

• Ransomware group leaked Tata Electronics files including iPhone 18 Pro component lists, supplier mappings & photos from drop tests, exposing Apple's closely guarded supply-chain architecture. Tata assembles ~26% of global iPhones in India, up from 6% four years ago, making the breach a trust test for Apple's China diversification strategy (here)

• Zhipu AI’s GLM-5.2 (open-weight) has reportedly matched Anthropic’s Mythos in cybersecurity scenarios including software vulnerability detection, “narrowing the US-China capability gap” & raising concern over Chinese cyberwarfare advantage as businesses shift to lower-cost Chinese models. Microsoft & others are exploring hosting Chinese models, reshaping platform power dynamics (here)

• Cloudflare, Google Chrome, Microsoft Edge, & Mozilla Firefox are developing Private Access Control Tokens (PACTs), a protocol to let websites distinguish welcome from unwelcome traffic - including AI agents - without sharing personal data. Sites with ‘strong knowledge of personhood’ can issue anonymous tokens proving legitimate intent, reducing CAPTCHAs & identity checks (here)

• Investigators concluded a Russian hacking group, not the cybercriminal collective that initially claimed credit, was behind the August 2025 Jaguar Land Rover ransomware attack that cost the UK economy $2.5B & forced 5-week production shutdown. Authorities are still determining whether the group operated under Kremlin direction - raising fears of state-sponsored attacks targeting sovereign economic infrastructure amid UK-Russia tensions over Ukraine (here)

• Xprize founder Peter Diamandis argued that “humans behave better when they’re being watched” & predicted “radical transparency” via a global sensor ecosystem spanning cameras, phones, drones & satellites imaging every square metre daily - echoing Oracle’s Larry Ellison in 2024 (here)

Energy / Climate

• US power sector M&A hit $204B in the first 5 mo of 2026, up 40% on full-year 2025, driven by AI & data centre demand for energy infrastructure (here)

• Trump’s clean-energy subsidy ban on Chinese firms triggered $9B in forced asset sales since 2025, with American investors buying solar & battery factories at up to 40% discounts - but the facilities still run Chinese tech, license Chinese IP via Singapore & source 95% of polysilicon from China, illustrating the limits of forced decoupling (here)

• Nvidia’s Rubin platform is the first 100% liquid-cooled AI server architecture, running coolant at up to 45°C - eliminating cooling fans, cutting facility cooling energy by up to 40%, & enabling near-zero water consumption in favourable climates (here)

• Citadel has built one of the world’s largest commodities operations, generating over $30B in profits since 2002 & now trading natural gas equivalent to 11% of total US consumption. The hedge fund owns drilling rigs at Haynesville, has expanded into European & Asian power markets & deploys 260 traders supported by 100 engineers processing 17TB of data daily - a reminder that quantitative finance has moved from purely financial derivatives into physical energy infrastructure, with attendant geopolitical & operational risk (here)

• SemiAnalysis forecasts that over half of new US datacentre capacity added in 2028+ will run behind-the-meter, with annual BTM equipment demand crossing 50GW by 2029, driven by grid constraints that cap accredited supply additions at ~15-20GW/yr against 21-84GW datacentre buildout through 2030 (here)

Defence

• UK PM Keir Starmer unveiled £14.5-15B four-year defence plan on 26 June, £1-1.5B above his previous proposal that triggered Defence Secretary John Healey’s resignation. Successor Dan Jarvis prioritised autonomous systems (including uncrewed ground vehicles) & readiness; funding includes up to £6B over 6 yrs for GCAP fighter jet with Italy & Japan, plus a BAE-led supersonic demonstrator. Plan arrives under NATO pressure & days before likely handover to next PM Andy Burnham (here)

• The chair of the UK Treasury select committee warns that mistrust between Treasury & the Ministry of Defence has stalled defence procurement for 16 years, with the MoD unable to deliver on budget (e.g. Ajax programme) & Treasury refusing funding despite senior military figures citing a £28B shortfall. Meg Hillier proposes a joint minister role & agency to break the impasse, urging the new PM to act in the first days in office (here)

• The Royal Navy will order at least 6 common combat vessels - hybrid warships designed to deploy air & underwater drones - in the early 2030s, dropping plans for 8 Type 83 destroyers & 5 Type 32 frigates. The shift reflects UK defence’s pivot towards unmanned systems over conventional platforms, funded by £14.5B+ in additional spending above prior plans (here)

• India’s military is accelerating weaponised drone orders from domestic suppliers after conflicts with Pakistan & in Iran underscored asymmetric warfare capability gaps. IdeaForge, India’s largest drone maker, started FY27 with Rs3.1B ($33M) in orders, up 20× year-on-year, 70% military; NewSpace Research tested India’s first drone-launched air-to-air/ground missile. Modi’s push to double defence industry revenues to $30B by 2030 reserves 70% of order value for domestic firms, though dependence on foreign chips, sensors & compute remains acute - “we’ve mastered macro-level engineering; the next battle is micro-level indigenisation,” said NewSpace CEO (here)

Quantum

• Physicist Henry Legg published a formal critique in Nature challenging Microsoft’s claims to have demonstrated a topological qubit, arguing the signal may be noise - the latest in a series of setbacks for Microsoft Quantum, which has retracted prior papers & now faces scrutiny over its 2029 roadmap despite advancing to the final phase of DARPA’s benchmarking initiative (here)

EVs/AVs

• Momenta (autonomous driving software) kicked off a Hong Kong IPO targeting up to $751M, with 60% earmarked for AI R&D & 20% for Robotaxi expansion. The Beijing-based firm supplies Toyota, Mercedes, GM, BYD & Audi, with 680k vehicles using its software by end-2025, & is expanding trials to Abu Dhabi & Munich via Uber (here)

And so much has changed. We arguably have an entire reshuffling of global power underway.

A year ago, we had been confronted by Greenland and a first round of tariffs. We did not yet have Maduro, Iran, Hormuz or Mythos. Together, those chapters have diminished American credibility: Greenland showed that the US might not always be a reliable ally; Iran and Hormuz suggested that its military and economic power is less overwhelming than assumed; and Mythos/Fable reinforced Europe’s dawning realisation that it cannot depend on America for strategic technologies and resources.

Europe’s economy is almost the same size as America’s - $28 trillion against $29 trillion - and it is slowly learning to act collectively. More importantly, in a world where power increasingly derives from data centres rather than aircraft carriers, Europe may have a route towards greater strategic independence through renewable energy. Hormuz has underlined the strategic value of energy that cannot be blockaded or cut off, just as the US is stepping back from it: this week, the Trump administration agreed to pay Invenergy $765 million to abandon four offshore wind leases, part of roughly $2.5 billion committed to killing approved renewable projects.

One year in feels like a good time to zoom out - not only in time, but in geography. Venture Geopolitics has still barely scratched the surface, guiltily reflecting the tight-knit world of Western intellectuals and VCs that tends to discuss the stories already being discussed: Silicon Valley, frontier models, China, Brussels and Westminster. These are the stories of today. But what might be the stories of tomorrow?

What could parts of Africa become if abundant land and solar power were paired with serious institutions and secure infrastructure? What happens when India combines its population and technical base with dramatically cheaper renewable energy? The inputs into technological power - and therefore global political power - are changing. They may soon favour far more places than our current conversation admits.

Perhaps the UK is a microcosm. Power has been concentrated in Westminster and London for centuries, but Andy Burnham is now the frontrunner to replace Keir Starmer: not only is he not from Eton, he is not even from London! A prime minister whose authority was built in Greater Manchester, alongside further local devolution, could begin shifting political gravity away from the capital. Could this be the path ahead at a global level too - power dispersing from Washington, Beijing, London and Brussels towards more interesting things happening in more different places?

It is easy as a VC not to think deeply about the wider picture of power, war, politics and national sovereignty. There is always another founder to meet or LP to pitch. But when technology - and specifically AI - will help define the next generations of humankind, it is worth considering how its growth will shape, and be shaped by, geopolitics.

One short year in, we are barely scratching the surface. Thank you for reading, subscribing, challenging the arguments and sending kind words. I am looking forward to meandering further and wider with you in the year ahead.

IPOs / Publics

• Tech stocks ‘tumbled’ over concerns AI valuations had run ahead of fundamentals - the Nasdaq 100 fell 3.3%, chipmakers dropped 8% & South Korea’s Kospi plunged 10% on forced liquidation by leveraged retail investors. Attention turns to Micron’s Weds earnings as a key test of whether AI infra demand can sustain the rally (here)

• Goldman Sachs & Morgan Stanley are both working on OpenAI & Anthropic IPOs (expected autumn 2026), using separate internal teams to prevent information sharing between the rival AI companies - an unusual arrangement of direct competitors going public simultaneously with the same lead underwriters! (here)

• Lime plans to name Uber as an anchor investor in its IPO, cementing a six-year relationship in which Uber holds over 10% of the e-scooter firm & generates 14% of its revenue through its app. Lime posted $170M Q1 revenue (+32% YoY), turned cash-flow positive in 2024 (here)

• Kalshi (prediction markets) is in early-stage IPO discussions with investment banks, with a listing likely beyond 2027. The CFTC-regulated platform now reports $2B+ annualised revenue & $178B in trading volume after raising $1B at $22B in May 2026 (here)

• EigenQ (post-quantum cryptography & quantum sensing) to go public via SPAC merger with Silicon Valley Acquisition at $3B, targeting government, defence & critical infrastructure customers concerned about ‘harvest now, decrypt later’ attacks (here)

• Apple will raise prices across its product line to offset surging memory & storage chip costs, CEO Tim Cook told WSJ in an exclusive interview, calling the increases ‘unavoidable’ after trying to shield customers from supply-chain cost inflation (here)

• AWS is in talks to sell its Trainium AI chips to other data centres, a move CEO Andy Jassy flagged as a $50B annual revenue opportunity - roughly the size of Intel - though the company has historically sold out capacity to its own cloud customers & must compete with Nvidia for TSMC foundry allocation (here)

• Intel jumped 10% after Trump announced a partnership with Apple to design & build chips in the US, the latest in a series of wins (following Nvidia & Musk’s Terafab deal) that have lifted Intel 464% in 12 mo to a $609B market cap (here)

• SpaceX signed a $6.3B compute deal with Reflection AI (the Nvidia-backed open-source AI lab valued at $25B), providing access to GB300 chips at Colossus 2 in Memphis for $150M/mo through 2029 (here)

Big Dogs

• Trump administration is demanding Anthropic ensure Fable 5’s guardrails cannot be jailbroken before rerelease, a technical requirement effectively impossible to guarantee (here)

• JPMorgan blocked Hong Kong staff from accessing Anthropic’s Claude models via internal LLM drop-down menus, following Goldman’s similar move - both citing licensing terms that exclude Greater China (here)

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei urged G7 leaders to ‘resist the temptation to splinter’ over AI rollout, days after the US blocked export of his company’s Mythos & Fable models on national security grounds (here)

• John Jumper, Google DeepMind VP & 2024 Nobel Chemistry laureate (for AlphaFold), left for Anthropic days after researcher Noam Shazeer joined OpenAI - highlighting a talent drain as Google reportedly struggles in AI coding tools where rivals have gained momentum (here)

• Manus’ early Chinese investors (HSG, ZhenFund, Tencent) plan to buy back the AI agent startup from Meta at the original $2B acquisition price after Beijing ordered the deal unwound in April. Manus has quadrupled annualized revenue to $400-500M since Meta’s December 2025 purchase & is now considering a Hong Kong listing (here)

Regulation

• The Bank of England eased its planned stablecoin rules, scrapping ownership caps in favour of a £40B issuance limit & lowering required central bank reserves from 40% to 30%, after crypto firms warned the original proposals would be more restrictive than US rules & undermine London’s competitiveness (here)

• The US Department of Justice intervened in support of xAI in a lawsuit seeking to shut down 57 unpermitted gas turbines powering its Memphis data centres, arguing Grok is one of four AI models supporting ‘mission-critical’ Pentagon operations including recent Iran strikes & that stopping them would undermine national security (here)

• US Commerce Secretary Lutnick told ASML executives he believes an extreme ultraviolet lithography machine - the only tools capable of printing the most advanced chips - may have reached China, breaching export controls in place since 2017. ASML denies this, saying it tracks every EUV system ever shipped & maintains internal firewalls blocking China staff from EUV access (here)

• The EU-UK summit scheduled for 22 July has been postponed following Keir Starmer’s resignation, halting planned agreements on agrifood, emissions trading & youth mobility. European Council president António Costa said he hopes Starmer’s successor - expected to be Manchester mayor Andy Burnham - will continue efforts to reset cross-Channel relations, with the new PM potentially taking office by mid-July (here)

Venture Capital & Finance

• Abu Dhabi's MGX closed a $50B AI fund - one of the largest ever for AI - sourced from regional sovereign wealth funds, global pensions & institutional investors rather than state capital alone. The fund is already deployed into OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI & a $30B data centre vehicle with BlackRock, Microsoft & Nvidia, & is eyeing a multibillion-dollar acquisition of Singapore-based DayOne. MGX targets $100B AUM & plans to invest $10B/yr, positioning Abu Dhabi as a capital aggregator at the centre of frontier AI infrastructure (here)

• Menlo Ventures raised $3B across two new funds (early-stage XVII & growth-stage Inflection IV) on its 50th anniversary, backing AI infrastructure & applications after anchoring on Anthropic in 2023 (here)

• Earlybird & AVP launched E2D, a €500M growth-stage fund for European defence & dual-use tech, targeting ~20 companies with average €25M tickets across space, air, land, maritime & subsurface domains (here)

• Seedcamp raised $320M ($220M core fund, $100M select) to back European founders from first check through Series B, expanding its US team to bridge transatlantic capital & talent for companies building in AI, robotics & frontier tech (here)

• Mantis VC, founded by The Chainsmokers’ Alex Pall & Drew Taggart, is raising a $100M fund targeting AI, cybersecurity, deep tech & health tech, bringing assets under management to over $300M (here)

• PayPal Ventures, the 10-year-old corporate venture arm with 80+ investments across 3 funds totalling $850M, has paused new activity & is exploring secondary sales via Jefferies as new CEO Enrique Lores restructures to ‘recommit to the fundamentals’ (here)

• BAE Systems committed €50M (£43M) to European defence tech VC funds - €25M split between Expeditions & Lakestar - as part of its Launchpad programme designed to spin out internal technologies & back early-stage ventures addressing sovereign capability gaps across energy, manufacturing & defence (here)

• Project Ambition, led by VC Pippa Lamb & HelloFresh co-founder Hamish Shephard, launched at Downing Street during London Tech Week - a culture-focused campaign to reframe ambition & risk-taking in the UK among young people across tech, arts, sport & business (here)

• Bain is using AI to rapidly recreate software from private equity takeover targets, testing whether products are defensible or easily replicable as generative AI collapses development costs. The practice - dubbed ‘vibecoding’ - has been used to mock up hundreds of prototypes for due diligence, with at least one PE buyer dropping a deal after Bain recreated an analytics platform (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Trump advisers weigh how to structure potential government equity in AI firms, with Treasury Secretary Bessent favouring Trump Accounts & Commerce Secretary Lutnick preferring a sovereign wealth fund - both ideas floated by OpenAI & Anthropic - though the proposal faces industry resistance from Microsoft & Meta, scepticism from Republican senators, & structural questions over how non-dividend-paying AI firms would generate returns (here)

• The European Commission selected the EUROPA consortium, led by Italian firm Domyn, to build an open-source frontier AI model covering all 24 EU languages using EuroHPC supercomputers. The project - part of the Frontier AI Grand Challenge - will train a model with 400B+ parameters using 2.5% of EuroHPC capacity for 1 yr, aiming to match global benchmarks while ensuring wide access for European businesses, researchers & public institutions. A clear signal of Brussels backing sovereign AI infrastructure over dependence on US hyperscalers (here)

• Trump reportedly shared & mocked congratulatory texts from Zuckerberg & Bezos post-2024 election victory with associates, according to a new NYT book - a reminder that Big Tech’s rapprochement with the administration remains transactional & fragile despite public gestures (here)

• Beijing tightened capital controls on individuals after outflows hit $809B in 2025, ordering Hong Kong & Singapore brokers to wind down mainland accounts over 2 yr & banning purchases of U.S. stocks. The moves subordinate household wealth to state industrial policy - backing local government debt restructuring & self-reliance priorities - as households with ~$24T in deposits earning 1% seek U.S. rates near 4% following the 2021 property crash (here)

• Canada spent $46.8M on an undisclosed Palantir contract, raising transparency questions around procurement of sensitive data infrastructure from a US defence contractor with close ties to intelligence agencies (here)

• France will replace Palantir’s AI data tools at its DGSI intelligence agency with domestic provider ChapsVision to avoid “strategic dependencies” after Washington restricted foreign access to Anthropic’s latest model. The transition will take several years; France announced €655M in AI investment & a state-wide chatbot built on Mistral AI. Germany’s BfV has also reportedly selected ChapsVision, whilst the UK reviews Palantir’s £330M NHS contract (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Jack Dorsey (Block, Twitter) outlined a vision for AI replacing middle management with an “intelligence layer” that coordinates work, echoing CEO sentiment at Amazon, Coinbase, Airbnb & major banks - middle manager cuts hit 24% of layoffs in 2025 vs 11% in 2020, while spans of control tripled to 16+ reports per manager, pushing many toward a “player-coach” model where AI handles admin while managers focus on unblocking teams & talent development (here)

• Getty Images struck a multi-year display deal with OpenAI to surface licensed images in ChatGPT, sending shares up as much as 200% intraday before settling - but the agreement says nothing about training rights, the issue Getty litigated & lost against Stability AI in 2025 (here)

• Google DeepMind invested $75M in A24 (indie film studio behind Everything Everywhere All At Once & Backrooms) to co-develop AI filmmaking tools with artist input, following Netflix’s acquisition of Ben Affleck’s InterPositive & Amazon MGM’s AI production unit launch (here)

• Stanford’s DeLM framework lets AI agents coordinate directly via shared verified updates rather than routing through a central orchestrator, cutting multi-agent task costs ~50% & improving accuracy 10.5% on SWE-bench Verified (here)

• z.AI’s GLM-5.2, an open-source Chinese model with a 1M token context window, is drawing praise from Silicon Valley for coding performance that rivals Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.8 & OpenAI’s GPT 5.5 - echoing last year’s DeepSeek R1 moment & renewing questions about US AI lead as China advances through open-source models & distillation while chip controls tighten (here)

• Researchers at Shanghai AI Laboratory introduced Self-Harness, a framework enabling LLM agents to rewrite their own operating rules by mining failure patterns, proposing targeted fixes, & validating changes through regression tests - delivering 33-60% performance gains on tool-use benchmarks (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Baseten (AI inference platform) raised $1.5B in a dual-tier round at $11B-$13B, betting on demand for lower-cost alternatives to frontier models as inference workloads scale (here)

  • DeepSeek raised $7.4B at $50B+ valuation with an unusual condition - investors must agree not to poach staff or encourage spin-outs, reflecting escalating talent competition in Chinese AI (here)

Cybersecurity

• Accenture is acquiring Dragos (OT threat detection), runZero (attack-surface intelligence) & NetRise (firmware-level visibility) for $4.175B combined enterprise value to build an end-to-end operational technology (xOT) cybersecurity platform. The trio generated ~$208M ARR as of June 2026 (53% YoY growth); Accenture aims to expand from its existing OT services lead into the broader $27B OT software market (forecast to reach $59B by 2031) (here)

• Nation-state attackers are increasingly using residential proxy networks - routing traffic through millions of compromised home devices (routers, IoT) - to mask their origin & evade detection, a technique uncovered after Microsoft & Comcast investigated a sophisticated breach 2 years ago. The tactic weaponises everyday consumer electronics, complicating attribution & defence for both private sector & government defenders (here)

• Five Eyes intelligence agencies issued a rare joint warning that AI models capable of devastating cyberattacks on governments & businesses are months away, urging leaders to treat cyber risk as a core business responsibility. The statement follows the Trump administration blocking foreign nationals from using Anthropic’s Fable model in June, citing national security advice (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Dream (Israeli sovereign AI & cyber defence) raised $260M at $3B, led by Bicycle Capital & Group 11, to expand platforms across Europe, Middle East, Asia & Americas. The firm builds nation-state threat defence (Sphere), autonomous vulnerability hunting (Hero) & sovereign data infrastructure (Atlas) for governments seeking cyber independence from foreign tech stacks (here)

Defence

• Keir Starmer plans to present UK defence spending proposals at NATO despite likely successor Andy Burnham preferring a delay, signalling early fiscal tension over Britain’s % GDP commitment as Labour leadership transitions (here)

• Defence tech start-ups raised $12.3B in venture funding in H1 2026, nearly double the prior year & exceeding 2025’s full-year total of $10B, as conflicts in Ukraine & the Gulf drove demand for next-generation weapons systems including drones, autonomous vessels & battlefield AI (here)

• Britain tested long-range strike weapons under Project Brakestop that can hit targets 300+ miles away (Moscow-range), carrying 250kg warheads at £400K each with planned production of 20/mo (here)

• US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth announced a 6-month review of American forces in Europe, following withdrawal of 5,000 troops from Germany & cancellation of a long-range fire battalion deployment. He criticised Nato allies for refusing base access during Iran strikes, proposing US financial contributions become contingent on allies’ defence spending & warning Washington will reduce capabilities assigned to Nato’s rapid response pool - including 1 of 2 carrier strike groups & cruise missile submarines (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Stark (German attack drone maker) raised €500M at €3.2B led by Founders Fund & Sequoia, despite political criticism of Thiel’s involvement; the company told the Bundestag that Thiel’s stake - already below 10% - was further diluted & he holds no board seat, special rights, or access to sensitive IP (here)

Space

• NASA awarded Relativity Space a contract to build & launch Aeolus, an orbiter carrying four instruments to Mars by 2028, in a commercial partnership model similar to ISS cargo deals. The mission could beat SpaceX to Mars despite Relativity’s troubled history - its only launch (Terran 1, March 2023) failed mid-flight before Eric Schmidt acquired a majority stake in 2024 & pivoted to the larger Terran R rocket. NASA did not disclose contract value (here)

Robotics

• Hyundai bought SoftBank’s remaining 9.65% stake in Boston Dynamics for $325M, taking full ownership & committing to deploy the electric Atlas humanoid in its Georgia EV plant by 2028 for parts sequencing, escalating to heavier tasks by 2030 (here)

Quantum

• Trump signed executive orders setting a 2028 target for a quantum computer capable of scientific research, directing Energy Dept & others to work with private sector, while also addressing quantum-related security threats (here)

• Britain launched a £10M National Quantum Standards Network to accelerate commercialisation of quantum technologies, with Science Minister Lord Vallance framing it as infrastructure to translate research into products & services (here)

This is basically a billboard. Argentina cannot compete for AI on the things that actually decide where it lands - talent, cheap power, deep capital, courts that behave predictably - so it is choosing to compete on the one input it can produce for nothing: attention. We have seen this move before. In 2021 El Salvador made Bitcoin legal tender, won a year of headlines, and then watched the industry’s real capital stay where it had always been: in New York, London and Singapore, places with functioning courts and settled rules. Crypto, the asset class built to escape institutions, gravitated to the ones that worked.

If Argentina’s problem is that it cannot manufacture institutional credibility, Washington spent this week showing how quickly even a strong system can put that credibility at risk. The US government instructed Anthropic to cut off its two most capable models, Fable and Mythos, from foreign nationals - over a jailbreak the company maintains was narrow and misunderstood. As Derek Thompson put it, the administration treats advanced AI as “a screwdriver that is also enriched uranium” - normal enough that selling advanced chips to China is mostly fine, yet dangerous enough that a British analyst at a New York bank cannot be trusted with a chatbot.

Washington wants the world to build on American AI while reserving the right to decide, abruptly and unilaterally, who may use it.

From the perspective of companies, this is asking them to take on significant political risk. A business cannot confidently treat as infrastructure a tool that is available on a Thursday and prohibited the following Monday.

From the perspective of countries, if you are a middle power, access to the most important technologies of the next decade may depend on the whims of foreign governments that host the companies creating those technologies. This week offered a glimpse of what happens when those governments change the rules.

The result is that two things that countries can provide to companies have quietly become more valuable: stable institutions, and the nerve to back your own.

Which is to say that tech sovereignty has become concrete. I would expect a good deal of public money to find its way to Mistral before long (reportedly raising at a €20 billion valuation - the case for writing the cheque now half-writes itself).

For Britain, the logic looks like it extends. In the past week Lovable, Legora and Cursor all announced sizable expansions in London. It is becoming hard to ignore the sense that the city is pulling clear of its European peers - accumulating talent, capital and the institutional stability that the week’s events have suddenly repriced. It tells you something that even Europe 2031, last week’s dystopian scenario of European decline, grants Britain a kinder fate.

Britain is arguably Washington’s closest intelligence partner. Its AI Security Institute is uniquely trusted by the frontier labs to test their most powerful models. Yet it shares the unsettling exposure of every other country dependent on American technology. That combination should make Britain the natural convener of the middle powers: close enough to Washington to shape the conversation, exposed enough to understand the risk, and credible enough to organise countries that cannot afford to leave their technological future to decisions made elsewhere.

IPOs / Publics

• SpaceX priced its IPO at $135/share, raising $75B at $1.77T - the largest public debut in history. The offering makes Musk the first trillionaire & mints 4,400+ employee millionaires (here)

• SpaceX acquired AI coding app maker Cursor for $60B in all-stock, extending a post-IPO rally that briefly pushed its market cap past $2.6T. The deal brings Cursor’s “vibe coding” capabilities (billions in annualised revenue, 4 years old) into SpaceX’s Grok model, addressing gaps versus OpenAI & Anthropic in code generation (here)

• Entrata (property management software) filed for US IPO after Q1 revenue rose 23% to $143.5M with $23.3M net income, testing appetite for software listings after Q1 selloff. Blackstone invested $200M at $4.3B in 2025; platform serves 2.5M multifamily housing units across the US. Renaissance Capital notes software has been ‘the missing pillar’ of 2026 IPOs, with investors scrutinising AI disruption risk. Supposedly the type of company that no-one wants any more - will be interesting to see how it lands (here)

• Flutter (Paddy Power, FanDuel) will delist from London Stock Exchange by August 3, citing high costs & low trading volumes after moving primary listing to Wall Street in May 2024 - latest in string of UK market exits including Wise & Ashtead (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic pulled Fable 5 after a US government export control directive citing national security, following a jailbreak that reportedly allowed cybersecurity exploits (here)

• Before this, Anthropic had apologised for secretly degrading Claude Fable 5’s responses when it detected model distillation attempts, reversing course to make these guardrails visible after research community backlash over hidden safeguards that could affect third-party evaluations (here)

• Anthropic faces a class action lawsuit in Washington, D.C., alleging its Max 5x ($100/mo) & Max 20x ($200/mo) subscriptions deliver only 3.5x & 6-8x Pro plan usage respectively, not the advertised 5x & 20x - a dispute emerging amid recent usage caps driven by compute scarcity, despite Anthropic’s $1.25B/mo SpaceX data centre rental (here)

• That said, SemiAnalysis tested Anthropic & OpenAI subscription plans & found they deliver far more compute than assumed - $200/mo plans yielded ~$3,000-4,000 in API-equivalent tokens. The firms likely cannot nerf subscriptions without backlash, suggesting future models may be withheld from subscription tiers or reserved for API customers as compute costs fall (here)

• Ben Thompson brilliantly argues that Anthropic’s sincere commitment to AI safety doubles as a powerful business strategy: it justifies tighter control over models, customer data & distribution while moving the company closer to owning users’ workflows. That alignment makes Anthropic unusually effective, but also dangerous, because its leaders’ belief that only they can safely govern advanced AI could give a private company extraordinary economic & political power (worth reading here)

• Meta told staff it will impose limits on employee AI token usage after internal spending hit billions in 2026, launching a central dashboard to track costs & budgets in real time. The move reverses months of aggressive AI adoption encouragement & follows a TokenMaxxing episode in which some employees gamed internal leaderboards to rack up usage (here)

Venture Capital & Finance

• SpaceX’s IPO is set to deliver major returns to US university endowments which is likely to cycle back into the ecosystem via LPs, with some schools - including the University of North Carolina system - holding roughly 10% of their portfolios in the company, making it among the most widely held endowment investments (here)

• Looking at Google Ventures portfolio you see extraordinary returns. A $900M investment in SpaceX now worth ~$125B (140x), $13B in Anthropic now worth ~$135B (10.5x) & a $10B investment in Waymo now worth ~$88B at last valuation (8.8x) (Bobby Molavi)

• Vinod Khosla argues the US should eliminate preferential capital gains treatment by 2028 & introduce 20% taxes on AI compute & robotic labour revenue post-2030, generating $400B-$600B annually to offset mass underemployment as AI displaces 80% of economically valuable work across 80% of jobs (here)

• John O’Farrell, former general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, criticised AI industry political spending in a New York Times op-ed. He highlighted Leading the Future (backed by a16z, OpenAI’s Greg Brockman, Palantir’s Joe Lonsdale, & Perplexity), which raised $125M & spent $6M targeting Alex Bores, a New York assemblyman who co-sponsored state AI regulation. O’Farrell, who resigned from a16z in May 2025, argued that attempts to silence regulatory debate through PAC spending mirror crypto industry tactics & will backfire as voters perceive corruption (here)

• Wall Street is adopting catastrophe models - originally built for natural disasters - to quantify war risk, as external conflicts have nearly doubled since 2008 & now cost the global economy $22T annually (over 10% of global GDP) (here)

Regulation

• UK government announced a ban on social media for under-16s covering TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, Snapchat, YouTube & X, with implementation planned for spring 2027. Messaging apps like WhatsApp exempted; AI romantic companion chatbots restricted to 18+. The move follows Australia’s lead & reflects 83% parental support in government consultation, though enforcement challenges remain (here)

• The White House submitted a formal objection to UK plans to ban social media for under-16s, arguing age-gating is technically unworkable & would impose ‘disproportionate’ compliance costs on US platforms (here)

• Apple delayed Siri AI launch in the EU, blaming DMA interoperability rules after Brussels rejected its request for an 18-mo exemption; the Commission said Apple failed to meet EU privacy & security standards & chose not to develop compliant solutions. Europe represents 27% of Apple’s revenue, & the dispute highlights friction between US tech platforms & EU digital sovereignty policy (here)

• Trump threatened France with 100% tariffs on wine (a $2B annual US market) unless Paris scraps its 3% digital services tax on US tech giants, which generated ~$700M last year (here)

• The Trump administration is allowing the Federal Data Center Enhancement Act (FDCEA) to expire in September with no replacement, ending federal oversight of agency data centre operations introduced under Obama (here)

• Two million UK small companies will be required to file profit & loss statements with HMRC under new rules, though they can elect to keep the data private from public view - a significant expansion of tax authority oversight into micro-entity finances (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• UK Defence Secretary John Healey resigned in protest after the long-delayed Defence Investment Plan fell significantly short of the £28B experts estimated was needed to modernise British forces, with funding reportedly less than half that figure. In his resignation letter, Healey accused the Treasury of being ‘unwilling to commit the resources that the nation needs’ & warned the shortfall would ‘reduce the readiness of our Forces & increase the risk to personnel on operations’ (here)

• PM Starmer reportedly considering private capital to help fund the £15-18B Defence Investment Plan as public sector budgets face constraints, with the MoD & Treasury forming a Defence Investment Advisory Group including City banking chiefs & VCs to explore funding options (here)

• EU leaders convene next week at the G7 in Évian & the EU Council summit in Brussels to debate China trade policy after warnings of a “bloodbath” of job losses (Europe lost 1M manufacturing jobs 2019-2025, Germany 400K). Von der Leyen’s proposed “Made in Europe” law would limit Chinese FDI & impose local content requirements for strategic sectors. EU imports from China surged 18% in 2025 & accelerated further in early 2026 after US tariffs diverted Chinese goods to Europe (here)

• US & Iran signed a framework deal including a 60-day ceasefire & plans to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with future talks on sanctions relief & nuclear limits; oil prices fell but shipping firms remain cautious, whilst Netanyahu said Israel would continue operations in Lebanon (here)

• China is preparing a $295B, 5-year programme to build a nationwide network of AI data centres, with state operators (China Mobile, China Telecom) required to source at least 80% of chips & infrastructure from domestic suppliers like Huawei, effectively shutting out Nvidia & AMD. The blueprint - still in draft - underscores Beijing’s push for technological self-reliance & positions state capital as the counterweight to U.S. Big Tech’s $700B+ AI buildout (here)

• London emerges as key AI hub with Cursor selecting it for European HQ (200 hires planned), Lovable opening offices there, & Legora launching engineering hub - part of broader European expansion that includes Generation Tech Partners closing €50M fund for AI-driven German SME acquisitions (here)

• US House allegedly received unredacted emails from Dutch civil servants via Microsoft, illustrating why digital sovereignty requires legal & operational control beyond data residency - European governments’ sensitive regulatory data remains accessible to foreign jurisdictions despite local storage (here)

• UK & Japan launched a Frontier Technology Partnership covering AI, quantum, semiconductors, space, cyber, nuclear & robotics, aiming to pair British research with Japanese manufacturing to secure supply chains, deepen defence cooperation & support joint AI safety work ahead of Japan’s 2027 AI Summit (here)

• Central banks are repatriating gold from London & New York amid geopolitical concerns, with France removing 129 tonnes from the NY Fed (netting €11B) & India cutting overseas holdings from 55% to 22% in 3 yrs. Survey shows fewer banks storing at BoE (57% vs 64% prior year) & NY Fed (14% vs 17%), as institutions diversify to Singapore, Hong Kong & domestic vaults following sanctions fears & Trump-era concerns over Fed independence (here)

• US investment groups are racing to capitalise on Trump’s January ouster of Maduro, with Lionheart Capital pursuing a $1B Nasdaq listing via merger with Keo Energy (owns 40% of PetroUrdaneta oilfields in Venezuela’s Maracaibo Basin) (here)

• Brent Hoberman argues Britain’s risk aversion in the AI era has become its greatest vulnerability, urging policymakers to shift from caution to strategic ambition as competitors accelerate deployment in dual-use technology, foundation models, & compute infrastructure - a framework question for UK competitiveness in tech & defence (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Satya Nadella argues companies must build proprietary AI learning loops that compound human expertise with token capital, rather than ceding value to a few frontier models - warning that concentration of AI returns risks repeating the political backlash from offshoring-era hollowing out of industrial economies (here)

• Palantir CEO Alex Karp said enterprise customers are “unhappy” with frontier AI labs like OpenAI & Anthropic, claiming they don’t understand business needs & focus on “tokenmaxxing” rather than implementation - where he sees the value over the next 7yrs. The comments come as both OpenAI & Anthropic prepare for IPOs, with Karp noting most of Anthropic’s public projects run on Palantir (here)

• In Q4 2025 quarterly net new ARR was $39B for public software, $32B for hyperscalers & $7B for AI labs....by Q1 2026 these numbers were $51B for software, $26B for hyperscalers & $34B for Ai labs....when you look at estimates for Q2 2026 you see software forecasting $19B , Hyperscalers at $36B & AI labs at $45B (Bobby Molavi)

Cybersecurity

• Google sued Outsider Enterprise, a Chinese cybercrime network that used AI-powered phishing-as-a-service ($88/wk or $200/mo) to deploy 1M+ fraudulent domains & 2.5M scam texts in 2 wk, stealing 3.9M credit cards with estimated losses of $1.9B since July 2023. The FBI seized domains & Shopify storefronts; Google worked with US telcos to block messages, illustrating how AI lowers barriers to scaled fraud & forces platforms into defensive legal & technical countermeasures (here)

Energy / Climate

• China launched the world’s first wind-powered underwater datacentre off Shanghai - a 24 MW facility built by HiCloud & state-owned China Communications Construction for £177M. The project cuts power consumption by over 20% vs land-based equivalents through seawater cooling & offshore wind, addressing AI infrastructure’s water & energy demands as China accelerates datacentre buildout under its 2030 AI action plan (here)

Critical Resources

• US & Abu Dhabi-backed Orion Critical Mineral Consortium eyes acquiring the Duval family’s 37% stake in troubled French miner Eramet, which produces nickel, lithium & manganese across Indonesia, Gabon & Argentina. The French government (27% shareholder) remains open to new investors as Eramet faces financial distress & leadership upheaval, highlighting allied nations’ push to counter China’s dominance in critical minerals supply chains (here)

Crypto

• Coinbase launched Agentic Wallets, enabling AI agents to autonomously spend, earn & trade crypto on Base (Ethereum L2) via its x402 protocol, which has processed 50M transactions. The infrastructure lets agents monitor DeFi positions, rebalance portfolios, & pay for compute/APIs without user intervention (here)

Robotics

• Notable deal:

  • Neura Robotics raised $1.4B at $7B from Tether, Amazon, Nvidia & Qualcomm, making it Europe’s best-funded AI startup as Germany attempts to challenge Chinese & US dominance in humanoid robotics ahead of an estimated $28B market by 2030 (here)

Luca Ferrari, CEO and Founder of Bending Spoons, built the business from Milan deliberately. He says on the Invest Like the Best podcast that he wanted it to be “a beacon for European talent,” proof that such a company “could exist here.” And he proved it: fifty acquisitions, generating revenue of $601 million in Q126 alone (+132% YoY), profitable. The company thrives here. Europe is increasingly building extraordinary companies. The problem is European citizens are not benefitting from owning a share in them.

When an American saves for retirement, money comes out of their paycheck and buys shares. The 401(k) system quietly pipes part of every payslip into the stock market - tens of trillions of dollars, automatically, every two weeks.

Europeans, in contrast, receive their pensions primarily from the state, which funds them directly from taxes, without that intermediary, investable pot.*

And so, the natural buyer of any great company’s shares is an American retirement account. Very soon, a dental hygienist in Ohio will own a slice of Italy’s best tech company, and a nurse in Milan won’t.

Right now, America is wiring even more of its citizens into the upside. SpaceX closes its books this week at a $1.8 trillion valuation, with Musk pushing to hand up to 30% of shares to retail investors, triple the norm. OpenAI, which filed its own confidential S-1 on Monday, has proposed a sovereign-wealth-style fund into which AI companies would contribute equity for distribution to American citizens, drawing support from Trump to Bernie Sanders. Trump has separately floated government stakes in OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI. Squint past the politics for a moment, and notice the shape of the debate at least: America is arguing about how to give its people more equity in the AI age.

Play this forward and the implications for the two economies are not subtle. If the AI boom pays out the way the $3.6 trillion listing pipeline implies, the gains will arrive as capital returns, not wages. America has plumbed its households directly into those returns. Europe has plumbed its households into state promises.

That is to say: the US is funding its pensions on capital and Europe is funding its pensions on labour. On a nation state level, there is a capital class and a labour class. In the age of AI, that may not be a trade Europe wants to make.

^{*Yes, this is simplified. America has Social Security, Europe has funded schemes, and Norway is Norway. But directionally, the point holds.}

IPOs / Publics

• Last week saw Nasdaq tumble 4.2% as chip & memory stocks sold off after stronger-than-expected US jobs data triggered Fed rate hike bets. Nvidia fell 6% & Intel 11%. On Monday, chipmakers rebounded sharply with Intel up 11.1%, Micron 9.9% & Marvell 9.6%. Analysts warn positioning remains vulnerable to volatility amid upcoming mega-IPOs (incl SpaceX) (here & here)

• Goldman Sachs projects SpaceX’s AI revenue will surge 100-fold to $322B by 2030 from $3.2B in 2025, as the company targets a record $75B IPO at $1.75T valuation - though Morningstar values it at just $780B amid questions over AI unit economics (here)

• SpaceX is preparing for up to 30% to be allocated to retail investors - the largest retail allocation ever attempted in a megacap listing - reflecting Musk’s preference for individual over institutional investors whilst leveraging his 240M X followers (here)

• OpenAI filed confidentially for IPO just over a week after Anthropic’s filing - secondary markets value Anthropic at $1T vs OpenAI’s $880B (here)

• Bending Spoons filed for US IPO after acquiring AOL, Eventbrite, Evernote & Vimeo for $3.3B, doubling revenue to $1.3B in 2025 whilst swinging to $120M operating profit in Q1 2026 (here)

• Quantinuum raised $1.68B at $15.6B in upsized US IPO, pricing above range at $60/share amid 20x oversubscription (here)

• Revolut CEO Nik Storonsky stands to build a £76B fortune if the fintech giant achieves its target ~£200B IPO valuation within 2 years, making him the UK’s richest person at £20.4B already (here). Meanwhile, Revolut weighs secondary share sale at $115B valuation (up from $75B in November) (here)

• Google will pay SpaceX $920M monthly for AI compute capacity through June 2029, using 110,000 Nvidia GPUs housed in SpaceX’s data centres to support surging demand for Gemini Enterprise - marking SpaceX’s second major infrastructure deal (along with Anthropic) as it monetises xAI assets ahead of its IPO (here)

• Meta is considering tens of billions equity raise to fund AI infrastructure, following Google’s $85B share offering, as capex set to hit $145B this year (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic launched Claude Fable 5, its most capable public model, alongside Claude Mythos 5 - the same underlying system but with safeguards lifted for vetted cybersecurity partners. Fable 5 uses classifiers to route risky requests to Opus 4.8, affecting <5% of sessions, whilst showing state-of-the-art performance on coding, science & finance benchmarks (here)

• Anthropic expanded Claude Mythos access to 150 organisations across 15+ countries including critical infrastructure operators in power, healthcare & communications (here)

• Anthropic has embedded engineers inside the NSA to deploy its Mythos AI model for offensive cyber operations (here)

• Anthropic reports 80% of its new production code is now written by Claude, triggering an 8x increase in code output per engineer (here)

• Anthropic called for global AI labs to consider pausing development, warning that models are approaching ‘recursive self-improvement’ capability where AI systems could enhance themselves without human oversight (here)

• OpenAI has proposed a sovereign-wealth-style fund where AI companies would contribute equity stakes for distribution to American citizens, drawing unexpected bipartisan support from Trump to Bernie Sanders amid growing public anxiety about AI’s impact on jobs (here)

• OpenAI is preparing the biggest ChatGPT overhaul since launch, transforming it into a ‘superapp’ combining coding tools & AI agents as the company pivots toward business customers ahead of its planned IPO - with executives declaring ‘chat is dead’ & viewing ChatGPT as a gateway to higher-value products like Codex (here)

• DeepSeek is raising $7.4B in its maiden funding round at $52-59B valuation from investors including Tencent ($1.4B), CATL ($700M) & China’s national AI fund, marking China’s push for AI self-sufficiency amid US export constraints limiting access to frontier silicon (here)

Venture Capital & Finance

• A viral X thread sparked founders sharing VC horror stories, with Cloudflare’s Matthew Prince naming Sequoia for rejecting his company over gender bias & alleging Vinod Khosla suggested he fire co-founders, whilst multiple founders reported VCs sleeping through pitches then still offering term sheets (here)

• Coatue’s Thomas Laffont reveals $100B ‘centacorns’ have a 31% chance of reaching $1T valuations, dramatically higher than the 8% odds for unicorns reaching decacorn status, as AI acceleration drives unprecedented value creation speed with multiple companies hitting $1T in weeks rather than years (here)

• Benchmark raised $2B across two funds, including its first $1.25B growth vehicle, breaking from its traditional $425M fund ceiling to compete in capital-intensive AI markets where its small cheques have left it sidelined from OpenAI, Anthropic & other foundation models (here)

• Kindred Ventures raised $355M across new funds, driven by strong AI sector performance that helped grow their previous $200M fund to nearly $960M gross fair market value (here)

• Merantix Capital closed a €103M fund to invest in 40 early-stage AI startups across Europe, targeting logistics, manufacturing, energy & healthcare - backed by Union Investment, Jungheinrich & corporates seeking AI transformation partnerships (here)

• Version One Ventures raised $108M across Fund V ($78M) & Opportunities Fund III ($30M) to back pre-seed & seed startups in AI, robotics, deep tech & biology (here)

• Eurazeo closed its largest direct lending fund at $4.5B, despite challenging private debt fundraising conditions that saw fund count & capital decline globally in 2025 (here)

• Cliffwater’s $31B private credit fund capped redemptions at 5% after investors sought to withdraw 17% of shares, highlighting ongoing liquidity pressures across the $1.8T private credit market (here)

• Blackstone’s $79B flagship private-credit fund capped redemptions at 5% after investors requested $4.4B withdrawals (10% of fund) in Q2 (here)

Regulation

• Trump proposes new tariffs of at least 10% on 60 trading partners under Section 301 investigations, citing forced labour concerns - Canada, Mexico, EU, Taiwan & UK face 10% levies while China, India, Japan & South Korea get 12.5%, marking his biggest protectionist move since earlier tariffs were struck down by the Supreme Court (here)

• Police.AI centre halted use of AI systems for court statements at multiple UK forces after accuracy concerns, warning that criminal justice applications must meet ‘beyond reasonable doubt’ standards before deployment (here)

• New York lawmakers passed a 1-year moratorium on new large data centres (20+ megawatts), the first statewide ban of its kind if Governor Hochul signs by December. The law requires environmental impact studies & public hearings for future projects, reflecting growing opposition to data centre expansion (here)

• Federal judge struck down Trump’s $100,000 H-1B visa fee as unlawful taxation, ruling the administration lacked Congressional authority to impose what amounted to a tax on skilled worker visas (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Trump floated taking US government equity stakes in major AI companies including OpenAI, Anthropic & xAI as polling shows mounting voter concerns about AI within his Maga base ahead of November midterms (here)

• Americans show lowest support for AI data centre construction among 15 major economies (26% vs 74% in Nigeria), as grassroots opposition blocks $156B+ in US projects since 2025 (here)

• European Commission unveiled the European Technological Sovereignty Package, including Chips Act 2.0 & Cloud and AI Development Act, aiming to triple EU data centre capacity over 5-7 years whilst reducing dependency on third-country suppliers for semiconductors, cloud & AI infrastructure (here)

• UK unveiled a £1.1B AI hardware plan including £750M for a national supercomputer & £400M for next-generation chips, plus record £150M British Business Bank commitment to Playground Global’s UK AI hardware fund (here)

• Cosine secured backing from BT, Lloyds, NatWest, BAE Systems & other UK institutions to co-design Lumen Sovereign, Britain’s first sovereign frontier AI model trained entirely on Isambard-AI supercomputer using £500M government compute allocation, targeting deployment by end-2026 for air-gapped environments in defence & regulated sectors (here)

• EU to release €16B in frozen funds to Hungary following Viktor Orbán’s electoral defeat & replacement by Péter Magyar, who supports equality & has allowed Budapest Pride to proceed after last year’s government ban drew 200,000 defiant marchers (here)

• UK Government Digital Service replaced Stripe with Dutch provider Adyen for GOV.UK Pay processing across local authorities, police & armed forces - a £25.3M contract covering 17% of payments but 70% of organisations using the service (here)

• In a notable shift from its "American Dynamism" messaging, a16z has published a run of articles centring on "global" & "allies," whilst restructuring operations to help portfolio companies scale internationally & court sovereign partners. The pivot tracks European capitals increasingly seeking to diversify away from US tech dependence (here)

• Xi Jinping visited North Korea for the first time in 7 years, seeking to reassert China as Kim Jong-un’s primary partner amid Pyongyang’s strengthening ties with Russia following their 2-year-old mutual defence pact that has revived North Korea’s economy through weapons & troop exchanges (here)

• Secret Cabinet Office report reveals £28B of UK taxpayer funds were wrongly given to terrorists, criminals & hostile states between 2015-2021, including Covid relief to Islamic State & grants to Russian-linked companies - buried by previous government to avoid political embarrassment (here)

• Pentagon added Alibaba, Baidu, BYD & Unitree to its military-linked Chinese companies list, bringing total to 188 entities & potentially restricting US business ties; Alibaba & Baidu strongly contest inclusion, calling it baseless & threatening legal action (here)

• ASML employees threaten to boycott internal event where Elon Musk is invited to speak about AI & semiconductors, citing concerns over his perceived Nazi sympathies & anti-European stance conflicting with company values - ASML defends the invitation as relevant to its Terafab chip factory project collaboration with Tesla, SpaceX & Intel (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• AMD committed £2B over 5 years to UK AI infrastructure & research, partnering with Imperial College London, Cambridge University & Oriole Networks on quantum computing, AI supercomputers (Zenith & Sunrise), & photonic networking - aligning with UK’s AI sovereignty strategy as government pushes domestic compute capacity (here)

• Mercor (AI training startup valued at $10B) now spends more on AI tokens than employee salaries across functions like recruiting & project management, with CEO predicting most enterprises will spend more on compute than headcount within 5 years (here)

• According to Pär-Jörgen Pärson (Northzone), European AI startups face three critical vulnerabilities: dependency on subsidised US compute that won’t last, risk of being made redundant as OpenAI & Anthropic expand capabilities, and disproportionate exposure to capital market corrections given reliance on US funding - with ‘nice-to-have’ applications most at risk whilst deeply embedded sector-specific tools may survive (here)

• BCG study shows 74% of white-collar workers now use AI regularly (up 23 points year-over-year), with 40% saving 1+ work days weekly, but companies struggle to convert efficiency gains into measurable value as workers spend more time managing AI than doing actual work (here)

• Cloudflare reports automated agents now generate 57.5% of internet traffic vs 42.5% human traffic, crossing this threshold faster than CEO Matthew Prince expected (had predicted end of 2027). The shift represents AI agents handling tasks like price comparison, flight booking & web scraping, though humans still dominate actual engagement time (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Stockholm-based Lovable (AI app/website generation) in talks to raise funding at $12B valuation, nearly doubling from $6.6B in December after hitting $400M ARR in under 2 years - part of fierce competition in AI coding with Cursor (SpaceX acquiring for $60B), Replit ($9B), & Anthropic’s Claude Code ($2.5B ARR) (here)

  • Moonshot AI is seeking up to $2B in new funding at $30B valuation, marking a seven-fold increase from December’s $4B - the Beijing startup’s third financing in 6 mo as Chinese AI labs race for capital with $200M+ annual revenue from its Kimi chatbot (here)

  • PhysicsX raised $300M led by Temasek at $2.4B, more than doubling its valuation from $1B in under a year - the London-based AI start-up uses physics simulation for manufacturing & defence applications, expanding rapidly amid data centre infrastructure demand (here)

Cybersecurity

• US federal commission recommends establishing a dedicated military cyber branch with 11,000 personnel (5,000 National Guard, 6,000 civilians) at $11B startup cost, requiring congressional approval to become the 7th uniformed service alongside Space Force (here)

• Five Eyes intelligence alliance warns Chinese military operatives are increasingly using LinkedIn & professional networks to pose as recruiters from consultancies & think tanks, targeting Western military & government personnel for espionage recruitment (here)

• Russia temporarily shut down surveillance systems protecting Putin after Israel used AI to analyse Iranian traffic cameras & pinpoint Khamenei’s location for assassination - demonstrating how new AI tools can rapidly search millions of hours of footage to identify behavioural patterns & turn surveillance networks into espionage vulnerabilities (here)

Defence

• Palantir won a £9M UK government contract to manage firearms licensing systems across England & Wales, handling gun, bomb & poison records for 43 police forces - adding to its growing portfolio of controversial UK public sector deals worth over £500M (here)

• UK Chief of Defence Staff warns threats are at Cold War levels as Russian aircraft increasingly breach British airspace, but the Government’s defence investment plan remains unpublished after multiple delays despite a £28B budget shortfall - welfare spending now exceeds defence spending by 5x (here)

• Starmer plans £15B defence spending boost funded by 1% capital budget cuts across Whitehall departments, with energy & transport facing largest reductions - highlighting trade-offs between infrastructure investment & military readiness as NATO summit approaches (here)

• Trump requests record $1.5T defence budget for 2027 (40% increase), offset by $73B domestic cuts including programmes serving minorities & the poor, as Iran war drives military spending to highest level since Korean War at 4.5% of GDP (here)

• HMS Prince of Wales, the Royal Navy’s £3B flagship carrier, broke down again in Norwegian waters due to recurring propeller shaft issues, forcing emergency docking in Stavanger during a NATO Arctic deployment meant to deter Russian aggression - the latest in a series of mechanical failures since 2021 (here)

• Germany withdrew from the Franco-German-Spanish €100B Future Combat Air System fighter jet programme, with Chancellor Merz proposing to continue only the ‘combat cloud’ software architecture connecting aircraft & sensors - undermining Europe’s largest defence project as the continent seeks to re-arm against Russia (here)

• Switzerland considers Franco-Italian SAMP-T air defence system as alternative to US Patriot deliveries delayed until 2032, with officials prioritising European interoperability whilst maintaining strong US ties (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Iceye (Finnish-Polish satellite imagery) raised €1B led by General Atlantic at €10B valuation, 4x its December round, as European defence tech attracts massive investment - company shifted from civilian to military focus after Ukraine invasion & now builds synthetic aperture radar satellites for European defence ministries (here)

  • Allen Control Systems (autonomous turret maker) raised $200M Series B at $2.2B from Disney veteran Kevin Mayer’s Smash Capital, which hired Trump advisor David Urban as operating partner - ACS has $120M+ US contracts for its Bullfrog drone-killer platform (here)

Crypto / Stablecoins

• Sam Bankman-Fried, serving 25 years for fraud after FTX’s collapse, formally applied for a Trump pardon despite the president stating he has no intention of pardoning the former crypto exchange founder (here)

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon warned that allowing crypto firms to pay high yields on stablecoins without bank-level regulations could harm the US economy, saying ‘if you want to be a bank, become a bank’. The comments come as Coinbase pulled support for a stalled crypto market structure bill over restrictions on stablecoin yield programmes (here)

• JPMorgan, Citi, Bank of America & Wells Fargo plan to launch a tokenized deposit network in 2027 via the Clearing House, connecting traditional payment rails with digital asset infrastructure to compete with crypto firms gaining ground under Trump’s presidency (here)

Robotics

• Notable deal:

  • Agile Robots (German humanoid & warehouse robotics) in talks to raise $800M with SoftBank contributing $300M+, as global robotics investment tripled to $27.6B in 2025 amid AI-physical world convergence (here)

Quantum

• Microsoft unveiled Majorana 2, a new quantum chip designed with AI that uses lead instead of aluminium, claiming 1,000-fold performance improvements & targeting commercial quantum systems by 2029 - matching IBM’s timeline as tech giants race China in quantum supremacy (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Oxford Quantum Circuits raised £260M ($350M) Series C led by Bullhound Capital, marking Europe’s largest private quantum computing round & the continent’s fourth quantum megaround this year as the sector attracts commercial interest from finance & defence customers (here)

On the one hand, one of the most strategically important assets for Europe’s future will be funded by foreign capital. On the other, France suddenly finds itself hosting an enormous amount of AI capacity, sitting on French soil, consuming French power, employing French workers and operating under French law.

The sovereignty debate largely reflects a fear; there are powerful actors whom we are no longer sure are always our friends.

Our response has been to seek independence: to build domestic champions, reduce reliance on foreign capital and own more of the stack. But perhaps ownership is not the only thing that matters?

Rory Stewart provocatively suggested on his podcast this week that coordinating with China on AI governance may, in some respects, be easier than coordinating with Silicon Valley. His guest, British Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark capitulated: countries tend to have the ‘enlightened view’ that they will still be around for a long time; industry tends to have the view that it may well not be, and must out-compete to remain relevant. Matt Clifford extended this argument: governments have many levers at their disposal. Once there is hardware on the ground, irrespective of who funded it, that hardware becomes part of a distributed body subject to political and regulatory influence.

Money can move. CEOs can move. Massive educated workforces and enormous concentrations of strategic infrastructure have significant inertia. Two stories this week illustrate this perfectly.

Infrastructure. This week Jensen Huang described Taiwan as the “epicentre” of the AI revolution as Nvidia deepened its commitment to the island with a plan to spend $150B annually. Taiwan’s power does not come from ephemeral finance that ignores borders. It comes from industrial capability.

People. Airwallex’s geopolitically motivated relocation this week is the exception that proves the rule. Over the last year, under intense pressure from US clients and lawmakers, they’ve managed to move 5% of their staff out of China to two of the most attractive cities on the planet, and it’s made global headlines.

All this gets to the real sovereignty question. Do we need capability in critical sectors? Yes. Can we take outside investment to build it? Probably. Should we make our cities attractive places to live and build businesses so it is difficult to exfiltrate talent and easy to import it? Definitely.

Build the data centres, the schools and the parks. The capital can come from outside; the capability should be here.

IPOs / Publics

• Seven large IPOs plan to list this week, raising ~$4.8B combined - led by INNIO Holding (gas engines, $1.9B at $19.1B) & Quantinuum (quantum computing, $1B at $12.2B), as IPO market momentum continues with Renaissance IPO Index up 22.5% YTD vs S&P 500’s 11.0% (here)

• Anthropic confidentially filed S-1 paperwork with the SEC for a potential IPO, joining the AI public markets queue as regulatory review begins with no share count or pricing set (here)

• Quantinuum seeks to raise $1.05B in US IPO at $45-50 per share, valuing the Honeywell-backed quantum computing firm at $12.7B despite posting a $136.6M quarterly loss on $5.2M revenue - timing the listing as Trump administration pledges $2B in quantum sector funding including $100M for Quantinuum (here)

• Newcleo, a European nuclear startup developing advanced modular reactors & mixed oxide fuel, will go public via SPAC merger at $2.4B pre-money valuation, raising up to $429M to accelerate reactor deployment across Europe & the US as tech giants race to secure AI power infrastructure (here)

• European defence-tech firms Quantum Systems & Destinus are discussing IPO advisory roles with banks for potential 2027 listings, with Quantum Systems targeting at least €10B valuation - up from earlier private talks around €7B during its €600M fundraising discussions with Blackstone & Airbus (here)

• FalconX confidentially filed with SEC for IPO with Cantor as lead banker, targeting year-end listing despite crypto IPO market cooling after early 2025 enthusiasm from Circle & Bullish debuts faded (here)

• US public company count halved from 8,000 in 1996 to 3,900 in 2025, as IPO activity dropped from 400+ annually in the 1990s to 115 per decade recently (here)

• Alphabet announced plans for an $80B equity raise to expand AI infrastructure & compute capabilities, highlighting the massive capital requirements for maintaining competitiveness in the AI arms race (here)

• Nvidia launched Cosmos 3, its open-source physical AI foundation model using breakthrough mixture-of-transformers architecture that combines vision reasoning, world generation & action prediction for robotics, autonomous vehicles & AI agents (here)

• Nvidia launched its RTX Spark Superchip for PCs, challenging Apple, Intel & Qualcomm in consumer computing for the first time - the chip combines Blackwell GPU with Grace CPU to run AI agents locally, with Dell, Asus & HP building premium devices later this year (here)

• Nvidia plans to spend $150B annually in Taiwan, terming it the ‘epicentre’ of the AI revolution as it builds a new headquarters employing 4,000 people by 2030 - deepening ties with TSMC & other key chip manufacturing partners while Taiwan becomes increasingly central to global AI supply chains (here)

• Nvidia’s Jensen Huang joins Tsinghua University’s advisory board alongside Apple’s Tim Cook & other tech leaders, maintaining China ties despite US export controls that have largely shut Nvidia out of the Chinese market (here)

• Samsung Electronics agreed to share 10.5% of operating profits with 78,000 semiconductor workers, delivering average $400,000 bonuses amid AI-driven memory chip demand - though workers in other divisions receive far smaller payouts, highlighting Korea’s two-tier labour structure (here)

Big Dogs

• Groq raising up to $650M from existing investors following its $17B licensing deal with Nvidia in December, as the AI chip startup pivots from hardware to AI inferencing services (here)

• Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.8 with improved performance & cheaper fast mode whilst raising $65B at $965B, surpassing OpenAI’s $850B valuation as AI leaders compete on both capability & cost efficiency (here)

Venture Capital

• Ethan Choi, formerly of Khosla Ventures, is raising a $500M fund after being terminated for ‘misrepresentation’ according to the firm (here)

• TMV launched a $200M fund backed by Prologis & the American Bureau of Shipping to invest in US maritime & logistics startups, targeting automation, AI & clean-fuel technologies as Washington pushes maritime industrial revival amid China competition (here)

• Transition Ventures closed $150M Fund II to back hardware-software companies at the intersection of AI & physical world, targeting energy, computing, space & climate sectors across Europe & US (here)

• Byfounders closed a new 1.4B SEK ($130M) fund, building on the success of Lovable, reflecting continued investor appetite for Nordic enterprise software despite only one major Swedish VC fund close this year (here)

• London reclaimed the top European tech hub position from Paris, driven by $17.7B in funding last year & 138 unicorns including Wayve, Granola & ElevenLabs, ranking 4th globally behind Bay Area, New York & Boston according to Dealroom’s ecosystem index (here)

• Balderton-led campaign backed by Revolut, Mistral, Wayve & 100+ European founders challenges narrative that startups must move to Silicon Valley, launching six-figure advertising blitz across London, Paris, Stockholm, Berlin & Munich coinciding with major tech conferences (here)

Regulation

• EU drafts tech sovereignty strategy to reduce reliance on US technology, proposing Cloud & AI Development Act to triple data centre capacity within 5-7 years whilst favouring European alternatives like SAP, Mistral & OVHcloud over dominant US providers (Amazon, Microsoft, Google control 70%+ of EU cloud market) (here)

• Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier sued OpenAI & Sam Altman over child safety risks, demanding better safeguards & parental controls after ChatGPT allegedly advised the FSU shooter (here)

• Google engineer Michele Spagnuolo charged with fraud for using confidential search data to make $1.2M on Polymarket bets - the second major Polymarket insider trading case in a month after a US soldier netted $400K using classified Venezuela intel (here)

• Malaysia began enforcing rules requiring social media platforms with 8M+ users to block under-16s from creating accounts, with penalties up to $2.5M for non-compliance. The move follows similar restrictions in Australia, Brazil & Indonesia as governments globally grapple with platform regulation amid child safety concerns (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Gold overtook US Treasuries as the world’s top central bank reserve asset, reaching 27% of global reserves vs 22% for Treasuries, driven by geopolitical tensions & central bank diversification away from dollar holdings since 2022 sanctions on Russia (here)

• US considering expanding nuclear weapons deployments to more European NATO states including Poland & Baltic nations as Trump reduces conventional forces, aiming to maintain deterrence against Russia whilst pushing allies to shoulder more defence burden (here)

• SoftBank pledged up to €75B to build Europe’s largest AI data centre network in France, starting with €45B for 3.1GW capacity by 2031 in Hauts-de-France, leveraging nuclear power & fast-track approvals after Macron-Son dinner talks in April (here)

• Trump’s Board of Peace has received zero dollars in its official World Bank fund despite $17B in pledges for Gaza reconstruction, with donations instead flowing to an opaque JPMorgan account - highlighting institutional dysfunction in a flagship diplomatic initiative where no US reconstruction funds have been deployed 4mo after launch (here)

• SpaceX raised Starlink pricing from $5,000 to $25,000 per terminal for Pentagon drone operations during Iran war, nearly doubling LUCAS drone costs to $60,000 per unit - the Pentagon agreed despite unease, highlighting military dependence on Musk’s satellite network amid concerns over pricing leverage (here)

• China is overhauling its surveillance network with advanced AI-powered cameras that can analyse behaviour in real-time & retrieve footage using text prompts, marking Beijing’s push towards predictive policing as local authorities upgrade decade-old infrastructure with systems from Hikvision & Huawei (here)

• Airwallex is relocating 100+ staff from China to Singapore & San Francisco as it pursues US expansion, responding to Washington’s data transfer restrictions targeting China - a move accelerated after Silicon Valley investor Keith Rabois accused the $8B payments company of being a ‘Chinese backdoor’ (here)

• EU drafts sweeping emergency powers to control semiconductor supplies during shortages, including forcing chipmakers to override existing contracts & enabling bloc-wide purchasing to reduce dependence on Taiwan & Asia for critical chips (here)

• New research suggests remote work, not AI, may primarily explain weak junior hiring in white-collar roles - analysis of hundreds of millions of job postings found the correlation between AI exposure & reduced entry-level hiring disappears when accounting for remote work rates, as junior employees require more supervision & mentorship that’s harder to provide virtually (here)

• Norway’s foreign minister says Trump’s ‘crazy world’ & US-China tensions are forcing Oslo to reassess EU membership after rejecting accession twice over fishing concerns, as trade policy & defence integration become more critical (here)

• Germany’s domestic intelligence agency (BfV) selected French AI firm ChapsVision over Palantir for data analysis software, part of a broader push to reduce European dependence on American tech in sensitive security infrastructure (here)

• Progressive Democrats led by Bernie Sanders, AOC, Ro Khanna, Elizabeth Warren & Maine candidate Graham Platner are crystallising hardline anti-AI positions, pushing data centre moratoriums, AI company taxation & restrictions on AI-linked political money as a counterpoint to party centrists (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Robinhood launched AI agent integration allowing customers to automate stock trading & credit card purchases through third-party AI tools like Claude, with agents restricted to dedicated accounts & virtual cards whilst maintaining user notifications & kill switches (here)

• Netflix launched INKubator, an internal AI-native animation studio producing short-form animated content with plans to expand to longer formats, positioning against YouTube’s kids programming dominance despite industry backlash over AI in animation (here)

• ByteDance is developing Groq-style AI inference chips with Chinese memory startup InnoStar, which is raising $400M at $1.5B pre-money from investors including ByteDance & Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital, as China’s tech giants build homegrown AI hardware to circumvent US export restrictions (here)

• Kirkland & Ellis allocated $500M to build proprietary AI platform using knowledge from 250 lawyers, avoiding reliance on tools available to competitors - a signal that professional services firms see custom AI as competitive moat worth massive investment (here)

• DuckDuckGo launched Chrome & Firefox extensions for its no-AI search as traffic surged 30% week-over-week following Google’s AI-first search overhaul, with visits to its AI-free page hitting 3x baseline on 28 May - reflecting sustained user rejection of forced AI integration (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Cognition (AI coding startup) raised over $1B at $25B pre-money, led by Lux Capital, General Catalyst & 8VC, jumping from $10.2B valuation just 8 mo ago as enterprise clients like NASA & Mercedes-Benz drive $492M revenue run-rate with 50% monthly growth (here)

  • Fireworks AI (AI inference) in talks to raise funding at $15B, up from $4B in October, with Index Ventures set to co-lead - highlighting fierce competition in AI inference alongside rivals Baseten ($5B) & Fal ($4.5B) (here)

  • OpenRouter raised $113M Series B led by Google’s CapitalG at $1.3B, more than doubling its valuation from $547M a year ago. The AI gateway serves 8M users across 400+ models, processing 100T tokens monthly - up 5x in 6 mo - signalling enterprise demand for multi-model AI infrastructure rather than single-vendor lock-in (here)

Cybersecurity

• GCHQ director Anne Keast-Butler warns Russia is escalating activity against UK infrastructure, democratic processes & supply chains, highlighting cyber threats to critical systems that underpin both public services & commercial operations (here)

• Cybersecurity hiring surges as AI generates new vulnerabilities, with job postings up 11% year-on-year & executive packages reaching $7-8M as companies scramble to address AI-generated code bugs & emerging threats from models like Anthropic’s Mythos (here)

Defence

• US Central Command confirmed adversaries used commercial location data to target & surveil American servicemembers on battlefields, highlighting how ad industry data brokers create national security vulnerabilities by selling phone location information on open markets (here)

• Pentagon has positioned troops & warships in Caribbean for potential Cuba invasion, including USS Nimitz carrier strike group & guided missile destroyers, as Trump considers military action after economic pressure failed to topple Communist government (here)

• EU defence chief Andrius Kubilius urges member states to open weapons stockpiles for Ukraine & shift from ‘haute couture’ sophisticated missiles to simpler, scalable production - noting Ukraine produces 700 cruise missiles annually vs EU’s sub-300 output against Russia’s 1,200 (here)

• Canada selected Saab’s GlobalEye early warning aircraft over Boeing’s E-7 Wedgetail for Arctic patrol duties, marking PM Mark Carney’s strategic pivot away from US defence suppliers amid trade tensions & Nato realignment with Nordic allies (here)

• Dell shares surged 30% following a $9.7B Pentagon AI software contract win & strong Q1 results showing 88% revenue growth to $43.8B, with AI servers accounting for $16.1B - propelling CEO Michael Dell’s net worth up $34B overnight to $245B (here)

• Notable deal:

  • German defence unicorn Stark is reportedly seeking €300M at €2.5B, more than doubling its valuation from earlier this year when it crossed €1B. The autonomous strike drone maker joins Helsing (raising $1.2B at $18B) & Quantum Systems (raised €340M at €3B) in Europe’s booming defence tech sector, as investors pour capital into autonomous warfare systems amid surging military demand post-Ukraine (here)

Space

• Blue Origin’s New Glenn rocket exploded during testing, grounding NASA’s alternative lunar lander & leaving SpaceX as the sole near-term option for 2028 moon missions - perfectly timed as SpaceX prepares its $75B IPO at $1.75T+ valuation on 12 June (here)

• SpaceX secured $6.45B in new Space Force contracts ($4.16B for ‘Golden Dome’ missile defence satellites, $2.29B for LEO communications) ahead of its anticipated record-breaking IPO, highlighting government revenue dependence that comprised one-fifth of 2025 revenue (here)

Energy

• Trump administration selected five companies including Oklo & Newcleo to convert 50+ tonnes of Cold War-era weapons-grade plutonium into nuclear reactor fuel, marking the first time US has made such material available to private firms. Critics warn of proliferation risks & high costs based on past failed programmes, while companies argue it addresses nuclear fuel shortages & provides better waste disposal than burial (here)

• Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Meta joined Elemental Impact’s new initiative to pilot climate technologies in data centres, investing $500K-$5M in up to 10 startups through 2027 focused on cooling, energy storage & low-carbon materials as AI infrastructure expansion drives emissions concerns (here)

• Per The Economist, China’s solar industry faces severe challenges despite producing 80% of global panels & renewables overtaking coal globally - even America’s war with Iran roiling energy markets won’t rescue Chinese manufacturers from current turmoil (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Base Power, the home battery startup founded by Michael Dell’s son Zach Dell, is raising around $1B at $12B valuation with Ribbit Capital in talks to lead, tripling its $4B valuation from October’s Series C round that raised $1B (here)

Critical Materials

• Chinese buyers are aggressively purchasing US tungsten scrap, paying up to 5x normal prices and driving 350% price increases since May 2025, prompting calls for export restrictions on this defence-critical metal where China controls over half of global supply (here)

Crypto

• Nine anonymous crypto wallets control majority voting power in Polymarket disputes affecting billions in bets, with 2,000 contracts adjudicated via UMA token holders in the past year - raising concerns about concentrated power & biased outcomes despite Polymarket’s promises to fix the resolution mechanism (here)

Society is increasingly using “AI” as shorthand for something bigger: the centralisation of power. In venture capital language, it is ‘founder mode’ applied at civilisational scale.

At startup scale, founder mode is an operating philosophy. Paul Graham’s original essay was about keeping founders close to the product and avoiding the deadening effect of managerial abstraction. It was not written for companies seeking trillion-dollar valuations while building infrastructure that governments, markets and other companies depend on.

At infrastructure scale, founder mode becomes something else. It becomes a governance ideology: the argument that the person who built the machine should continue to control the machine, even after the machine becomes part of the public operating system.

SpaceX makes this explicit. Its S-1 claims a $28.5 trillion TAM, 93% AI. Musk holds 85.1% of voting power through supervoting shares — ten votes to one for public investors. He serves simultaneously as CEO, CTO and Chairman and cannot be removed by a shareholder vote. US pension funds have called it “the most management-favourable governance structure ever brought to the US public markets at this scale.” They will own it regardless.

That is the strange bargain public markets are being asked to accept: fund the infrastructure, own the exposure, absorb the index weight — but do not expect meaningful governance.

The biggest conundrum is, maybe it works?

SpaceX has built the world’s dominant launch platform, having deployed ~10,000 satellites (of a total ~14,000 orbiting the earth) — infrastructure that is no longer just commercial, but geopolitical. SpaceX now controls the launch cadence, orbital logistics, compute capacity and communications layer on which other actors depend.

This is why the backlash is so difficult. These companies are becoming indispensable, while remaining astonishingly concentrated.

AI doomers fear a paperclip maximiser without a conscience. But this is something stranger and seemingly more difficult to govern: a paperclip maximiser with a human at the head? A system optimising relentlessly for scale, control and indispensability, producing real value while distributing power badly.

That is the structural question the AI debate is missing: whether the institutions designed to constrain concentrated power can keep pace with the speed at which that concentration is happening.

IPOs / Publics

• SpaceX filed for what could be the largest IPO ever, seeking to raise $80B+ despite $5B losses on $19B revenue after merging with xAI, with Musk securing 85% voting control through supervoting shares & reserving 30% of allocations for retail investors rather than institutions. The S1 outlines a $28.5T addressable market, hinging on Starship’s commercial viability for Mars colonisation & orbital AI data centres. Three major US pension funds called Musk’s control rights “the most management-favourable governance structure ever brought to the US public markets at this scale” (here, here & here)

• OpenAI is preparing to file for an IPO ‘very soon’, with reports suggesting a filing could come as early as last Friday & a public debut as soon as September (here)

• Oura (smart ring maker) filed confidentially for US IPO following $11B valuation in October, as health-tech listings draw renewed investor interest amid broader IPO momentum spurred by SpaceX’s filing (here)

• Blockchain.com confidentially submitted draft S-1 filing for proposed IPO - the crypto wallet provider claims 95M wallets, 43M verified users & $1.1T in facilitated transactions since 2011 (here)

• Nvidia authorised an additional $80B share buyback programme whilst growing revenue 85% YoY, signalling exceptional cash generation ($48.6B free cash flow in Q1) & management confidence despite losing China market & rising competition from customer-built chips (here)

• Google is executing a coordinated pivot from conversational AI to autonomous agents across its entire stack: Gemini 3.5 Flash now powers a revamped Search - its biggest overhaul since launch, expanding queries and introducing standing information agents - alongside the new Antigravity 2.0 development platform, with banks and fintechs already automating multi-week workflows (here, here & here)

• Despite posting record growth, Cloudflare cut around 20% of staff, with CEO Matthew Prince arguing AI is eliminating “measurer” roles (those in middle management/finance/legal/audit etc) & signalling a shift toward leaner AI-first organisational structures (here)

• Salesforce & Snowflake earnings this week set to highlight AI’s complex impact on enterprise software - whilst companies report strong AI revenue growth, these gains appear to cannibalise existing revenue rather than drive net growth acceleration (here)

• Reddit shares fell 6% after Meta launched Forum, a standalone iOS app for Facebook Groups that analysts see as direct competition to Reddit’s discussion-based model. Reddit is down 40% this year despite 7 consecutive quarters of 60%+ revenue growth (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic hit profitability 2 years early with $10.9B Q2 revenue (here)

• Anthropic agreed to pay SpaceX $1.25B monthly ($15B annually) through May 2029 for access to Colossus data centres, revealed in SpaceX’s IPO filing - highlighting AI companies’ desperation for compute capacity as data centre opposition grows (here)

• Anthropic launched self-hosted sandboxes & MCP tunnels for Claude Managed Agents to solve enterprise AI security - agents execute tools within company infrastructure whilst credential control moves to network boundary rather than travelling with the agent (here)

• Andrej Karpathy, former OpenAI co-founder & Tesla AI head, joined Anthropic’s pre-training team to lead AI-assisted research for Claude model development (here)

• Alibaba is likely to end this quarter as the single largest provider of tokens processed globally. ByteDance is second. OpenAI, Anthropic and Google together account for less than a third (here)

• OpenAI’s internal model solved the 80-year-old planar unit distance problem, marking the first time AI has autonomously resolved a major open mathematical problem (here)

Venture Capital

• EQT/the EU’s €5B ScaleUp Fund wants to invest in UK startups despite Brexit complications - signalling potential bridge between European capital & British tech scale-ups amid ongoing regulatory uncertainty (here)

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman offered every Y Combinator startup $2M in OpenAI tokens via SAFE agreements, targeting 1-4% equity stakes in future funding rounds as part of a pilot programme exploring ‘tokenmaxxing’ startups (here)

• Boulder Ventures closed its ninth fund at $55M after 120 days of fundraising, adding 27 new investors to 100 existing LPs, with the Colorado-based firm citing top decile DPI performance in recent vintages (here)

• British Business Bank committed £25M as cornerstone investor to Antler’s UK Fund II, the VC’s largest single-location fund, which will back UK founders from inception with up to £500K initial investments alongside syndicate including Lloyds Banking Group (here)

• Berlin’s Earlybird & Paris-based AVP (formerly AXA Venture Partners) are raising a €500M defence fund, joining the growing European defence investment wave following recent funds from Atomico, BGF, and others (here)

Regulation

• Trump scrapped a planned AI executive order after tech CEOs including Zuckerberg & Musk voiced opposition, with adviser David Sacks arguing the regulation would harm US AI leadership over China - highlighting tensions between safety advocates & accelerationists within the administration (here)

• House Oversight Chair James Comer launched an investigation into prediction markets Kalshi & Polymarket over suspected insider trading, citing suspicious bets on military actions including $2.4M in profits from Iran war bets & a US Army soldier making $400K from classified Venezuela operation intel (here)

• Trump administration mandates most green card applicants apply from overseas rather than within the US, forcing temporary workers including tech talent to return home during processing - tech leaders warn the move will harm AI research & business competitiveness amid existing visa backlogs (here)

• California Governor Gavin Newsom issued an executive order directing state agencies to explore labour policy overhauls ahead of potential AI-driven job displacement, including subsidies for companies that retain workers, expanded retraining programmes, and universal basic capital - the first such mandate from a US governor (here)

• EU Parliament & Council agreed to simplify AI Act implementation with staggered timelines - high-risk systems rules apply Dec 2027, product integration rules Aug 2028 - whilst banning ‘nudification’ apps & extending SME privileges to mid-cap companies (here)

• Musk vs Altman trial ended anticlimactically on statute of limitations grounds, but exposed AI industry leaders consumed by power struggles & profit motives rather than humanity-saving ideals, undermining public trust in sector that once positioned itself as alternative to tech monopolies (here)

• Spain temporarily banned prediction markets Polymarket & Kalshi for operating without gambling licences, imposing a 3-4 mo suspension while authorities investigate compliance with local user protection requirements including identity verification & access controls (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Pope Leo XIV released encyclical ‘Magnifica humanitas’ calling for AI to serve humanity’s common good rather than concentrate power among elites, warning against ‘disarming’ technology from military & economic competition whilst emphasising shared responsibility for digital transformation (here)

• US & Iran agreed in principle to reopen Strait of Hormuz with Iran committing to dispose of highly enriched uranium, though mechanisms remain unclear & deal awaits approval from Trump & Iran’s supreme leader (here)

• London mayor blocks Palantir’s contract with Metropolitan Police as CEO Alex Karp positions the company’s AI as critical infrastructure for western democratic advantage (here)

• Former Attorney General Sir Michael Ellis called London Mayor Sadiq Khan’s blocking of the £50M Palantir police contract ‘extraordinary’ & suggested the US data analytics firm should pursue legal action (here)

• Euro-zone imports of IP services from America hit $200B annually as European governments & companies face massive software dependencies - Germany’s federal government alone pays Microsoft nearly €500M yearly, spurring digital sovereignty initiatives across the continent (here)

• London’s economy grew at a tenth the rate of 20 years ago in the 4 years to 2023, with productivity falling since 2019 despite generating a quarter of UK GDP & a fifth of tax revenues - raising concerns over national policy neglect of the capital’s economic engine (here)

• Elon Musk backed Restore Britain in the Makerfield by-election, sparking a bitter row with Reform UK leader Nigel Farage who accused the billionaire of trying to split Britain’s right-wing vote - highlighting how tech moguls’ political interventions can fragment opposition movements (here)

• EU bootstrappers can build serious applications for under €10/month using a full European stack - Hetzner Cloud VPS at €7/month plus free tiers from EU providers covering email, analytics, monitoring & authentication, offering viable digital sovereignty alternative to US hyperscalers (here)

• One-third of UK university students expect AI job displacement to trigger civil unrest, despite being heavy users (77% use AI monthly vs 46% of workers), highlighting growing anxiety about economic disruption among the cohort entering an AI-shaped labour market (here)

• Netherlands blocks Kyndryl’s acquisition of Solvinity, the company behind DigiD digital identity services used by Dutch citizens, citing public interest risks - part of broader European pushback on US tech dependency ahead of Brussels’ tech sovereignty package (here)

• Sweden will have more spy satellites than many European countries within a year, including France, after acquiring five Pelican satellites from US firm Planet Labs - shifting Europe’s geospatial intelligence balance but creating potential dependency on American technology (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Several commencement ceremonies have been interrupted by boos & jeers when speakers have brought up AI, an indicator that while AI is easing into many parts of life, backlash is rising (here)

• Manus co-founders are exploring raising ~$1B to buy back their agentic AI startup from Meta at $2B+ valuation following Beijing’s demand to unwind the controversial acquisition, highlighting escalating US-China tech tensions & regulatory intervention in completed deals (here)

• Google DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis criticises AI-driven layoffs as shortsighted, arguing companies should use productivity gains to expand operations rather than cut staff - while Google debuts new coding models to catch up with Anthropic & OpenAI (here)

• Pizza Hut franchisee Chaac (111 locations) sued for $100M+ damages, alleging the chain’s mandatory Dragontail AI delivery system caused DoorDash drivers to batch orders & delay deliveries up to 15 minutes, turning 90% on-time performance into cascading failures & customer dissatisfaction (here)

• Analysis suggests hiring engineers in cheaper countries plus local AI models like DeepSeek ($0.094 per million tokens) will become more economical than frontier models ($2.80) within 11 mo, as US labs triple pricing whilst token consumption surges - creating natural price ceiling for OpenAI & Anthropic (here)

• Stability AI released Stability Audio 3.0 models that generate 6+ minute songs, with smaller versions running on-device - highlighting competitive pressure in AI music generation amid ongoing licensing battles between AI startups & major record labels (here)

• Cohere released Command A+, a 218B-parameter open-source AI model under Apache 2.0 licence - the company’s first fully permissive release. The sparse MoE architecture runs on just 25B active parameters with lossless 4-bit quantization, achieving 375 tokens/sec on single Nvidia Blackwell GPU whilst scoring 85% on complex reasoning benchmarks. Features native citations linking outputs to source documents & 48-language tokenizer optimised for non-European languages, targeting enterprise sovereign AI deployments (here)

• Cerebras deployed Moonshot AI’s trillion-parameter Kimi K2.6 model at 981 tokens/second - 6.7x faster than GPU clouds - marking the first trillion-parameter model on its wafer-scale architecture as it challenges Nvidia’s $20B Groq acquisition with enterprise-first inference (here)

• Huawei unveiled the Tau Scaling Law, a new semiconductor development principle, targeting 1.4-nanometer chip production by 2031 - just 3 years behind TSMC’s 2028 timeline, demonstrating faster-than-expected progress despite U.S. export controls aimed at limiting China’s chip capabilities (here)

• Uber president Andrew Macdonald says the company exhausted its annual AI budget 4 mo into 2026 & struggles to justify rising token consumption costs without clear productivity gains, as the link between AI spending & ‘useful’ consumer features remains unclear (here)

• High-bandwidth memory now accounts for 63% of AI chip component costs, up from 52% in early 2024, as HBM spending surged from $12B to $32B in 2025 - the fastest growth of any component category across Nvidia, AMD, Google & Amazon designs (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Modal raised $355M at $4.65B led by General Catalyst & Redpoint, growing 5x since September to $300M annualised revenue. The AI cloud platform powers inference, agent runtimes & RL workloads for companies from DoorDash to Physical Intelligence, with over 1B sandboxes launched (here)

  • Exa Labs raised $250M at $2.2B from Andreessen Horowitz, tripling its valuation from $700M last September as the AI search startup targets agents rather than humans - with queries growing from 100M to 1B over 12 mo & partnerships including Google’s Gemini (here)

  • SiFive raised $400M at $3.65B from Atreides, Nvidia & others to develop data-centre CPU designs using open RISC-V standard, positioning against Arm Holdings as Arm shifts to competing with its own customers (here)

Cybersecurity

• Anthropic’s Mythos & OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber models found 75 bugs vs usual 5-10/mo at Palo Alto Networks, but required significant human expertise to validate findings & distinguish exploitable vulnerabilities from 30% false positive rate (here)

Defence

• White House approved secret $9B request to buy cutting-edge chips for US spy agencies, with CIA & NSA unable to deploy latest AI models on classified systems due to chip shortages - highlights critical infrastructure gap as AI becomes central to espionage operations (here)

• Russia allegedly jammed signals of an RAF aircraft carrying Defence Secretary John Healey as he returned from visiting British troops in Estonia, highlighting escalating electronic warfare tactics in the Baltic region (here)

• RAF will spend £1B over 15 years switching to sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) that costs 3x conventional fuel, with critics arguing the expense - equivalent to 12 F-35 fighters - diverts resources from defence priorities whilst Starmer’s defence investment plan remains delayed (here)

• UK defence chiefs warn Britain’s 6,000-drone stockpile would last only one week in war with Russia, compared to Ukraine’s 9,000 daily usage rate. With Russian invasion risk peaking by 2030, military leaders demand urgent industrial scaling after Exercise Arrcade Strike revealed critical munitions gaps despite £4B government investment (here)

• The UK’s next-generation Global Combat Air Programme stealth fighter - developed jointly with Japan & Italy - faces a critical funding dispute, with London preparing a £6B injection after Tokyo warned that delays are threatening the 2035 timeline (here). The row will be familiar to those who followed Eurofighter: GCAP is structurally identical to the Typhoon programme - same multilateral fragility, same early-stage partner commitment problems - which ultimately delivered an aircraft a generation behind US fifth-gen jets at £215M per unit, with chronic availability failures (here)

• Germany will buy a 40% stake in KNDS, the Franco-German tank maker clearing path for its planned IPO targeting €15B-20B valuation before summer; France will reduce its stake to match at 40%, with both countries planning to drop to 30% within 2-3 years (here)

• France seeks to join the UK-German deep precision strike programme to develop 2,000km-range missiles capable of hitting targets inside Russia, as Europe races to build autonomous defence capabilities after Trump cancelled US Tomahawk deployments to Germany (here)

• Pentagon’s Darpa programme aims to develop batteries with 2,000 Wh/kg energy density - five times current lithium-ion & approaching diesel fuel efficiency - to counter China’s 55% global battery dominance led by BYD & CATL, though experts view the target as extremely ambitious given DoE’s existing 1,000 Wh/kg goal was already considered a long shot (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Berlin-based strike drone startup Stark is in talks for a blockbuster funding round after winning a contract with German armed forces for kamikaze drones, highlighting accelerating European defence tech investment amid geopolitical tensions (here)

Energy

• SpaceX committed over $2.8B to purchase gas turbines for AI data centres supporting Musk’s xAI unit as it pushes into cloud computing, raising questions about carbon emissions from fossil fuel-powered AI infrastructure (here)

Crypto

• Per the WSJ, Binance facilitated billions in Iranian regime transactions despite 2023 guilty plea & $4.3B fine for sanctions violations, with key financier Babak Zanjani moving $850M through the exchange continuing into 2026, prompting fresh Justice Department investigation (here)

EVs

• Waymo suspended all freeway operations across San Francisco, LA, Phoenix & Miami after safety incidents including driving through construction cones & flooding-related crashes - highlighting ongoing challenges in autonomous vehicle deployment despite years of development (here)

Quantum

• US Commerce Department allocated $2B in equity stakes across nine quantum computing companies including PsiQuantum ($100M, backed by Trump Jr’s 1789 Capital) & D-Wave (taken public by current Pentagon official Emil Michael), signalling strategic state investment in critical technology through CHIPS programme (here)

• UK pushes quantum computing & neuromorphic chips as path to computing sovereignty after missing the AI race, with 90% of global AI compute controlled by US & China - government launched £2B quantum initiative & £500M Sovereign AI fund as experimental technologies offer leverage in the new computing arms race (here)

Dyson is one of the few British industrialists left whose wealth is genuinely tied to a productive company: physical products, engineering culture, more than 5,000 prototypes for the first vacuum , thousands of patents, a manufacturing base, a global brand. These solid, meaningful outcomes of “real” entrepreneurialism were just slashed by geopolitical shifts beyond the control of even a businessman of his immense wealth.

Britain likes to tell itself an internal story about entrepreneurship: founders need more ambition, more capital, lighter regulation, better procurement, more risk appetite. The story is not wrong, but it is dangerously incomplete. In the current geopolitical economy, companies also need a state that understands the external levers being pulled around them - and a venture capital class that is alive to the same question.

America has both. The US is no longer merely “pro-business”; it is openly pro-specific-businesses, pro-specific-supply-chains, pro-specific-industrial-outcomes. It uses tariffs, export controls, procurement, equity stakes, tax credits, sanctions and national-security language to bend markets around strategic priorities. See last week’s piece about the US’s increasing control of Europes most valuable company.

Cory Doctorow has brilliantly argued for years against this asymmetry. He argues how American intellectual property and copyright law, built up over decades, has been engineered to give US producers home-field advantage globally - shaping what other countries’ companies can sell, share, license and reverse-engineer, and quietly setting the rules of competition in markets the US doesn’t even produce in. The thumb on the scale is sometimes a tariff. More often it is a clause in a treaty almost no one this side of the Atlantic appreciates.

This week, that thumb became impossible to miss though. Trump landed in Beijing for the first US presidential state visit to China in nearly a decade, trailing what is arguably the most explicitly state-aligned business delegation in modern American memory. Tim Cook (Apple), Elon Musk (Tesla and SpaceX) and Jensen Huang (Nvidia, added last-minute via a refuelling stop in Anchorage) flew in alongside chief executives from BlackRock, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs, Citi, Mastercard, Visa, Boeing, GE Aerospace, Micron, Qualcomm and Meta. “We asked the top 30 in the world,” Trump told the room at the state banquet. “Every single one of them said ‘yes.’” On the way out, Nvidia reportedly secured the licences it needed to resume selling its second-most-advanced chips into China, paying Washington a 25% fee for the privilege.

Even American venture capital has now publicly fused with that organism. According to a New York Times analysis, Andreessen Horowitz and its co-founders have channelled more than $115 million into the 2026 midterm cycle - $47.5 million to crypto super-PAC Fairshake, $50 million to AI-focused Leading the Future, $12 million to Trump’s MAGA Inc - making a16z the largest known political donor of this cycle. A firm that began as a tech investor has become, openly, an instrument for shaping the regulatory terrain around its own portfolio.

Venture Geopolitics has spent 47 issues asking variations of the same question: how do we feed the war machine without becoming it? How do we keep state hands off business otherwise? Those questions assumed a neutral baseline existed. It does not. When the world’s most powerful state has its thumb on every scale, a “neutral” position is de facto no longer neutral.

The cultural pushback has begun. This week General Catalyst posted a parody of the old Mac vs PC ads in which a thinly-veiled Andreessen character pitches a robot dog (“Woof AI”) and then kicks it; the dog - surveillance-dog symbolism intact - chases him off screen. The execution was clumsy, but GCs marketing team is reading the room.

The lesson here is not that Europe and Britain should mimic Trump Capitalism. State influence in private markets is a bad thing in principle, and an actively dangerous thing when it metastasises across tariffs, equity, export controls and donor PACs at once. The point is that the principle has already been violated, on a vast and asymmetric scale.

Dyson’s £8.8 billion fall is not a story about one billionaire’s bad year. It is a story about what happens to a country that builds genuinely productive companies and then declines to back them with a state and a capital ecosystem capable of understanding power as clearly as Washington does. Europe and Britain have the founders. They have the companies. What they need is a venture class that backs them with more than money, and a state that supports them with more than rhetoric. If we keep treating that as someone else’s problem and allowing foreign actors to distort the environment, the fruits of their labour will be stolen.

Paul Krugman’s recent series of posts say it all: “My message to Europeans is that you’re much stronger than you seem to believe. Act accordingly”.

IPOs / Publics

• Cerebras raised $5.5B in its IPO, with shares doubling on debut to reach almost $70B valuation - the AI chipmaker’s massive silicon wafers (58x larger than Nvidia GPUs) attracted partnerships with OpenAI ($20B deal) & Amazon, signalling intense investor appetite for AI infrastructure plays (here). Nb, Arm & SoftBank made an unsuccessful last-minute approach to acquire Cerebras weeks before the IPO (here)

• DayOne, spin-off of China’s largest data centre operator GDS Holdings, plans to raise $5B through dual listing in Singapore & New York at $20B valuation, becoming pioneer for Singapore’s new dual-listing rules designed to attract Asian companies amid heightened scrutiny of Chinese firms using Singapore as international expansion base (here)

• SpaceX accelerates IPO timeline, targeting a June 12 listing on Nasdaq with ticker ‘SPCX’ - aiming to raise $75B at $1.75T valuation, which would be the largest stock flotation in history (here)

• Microsoft is canceling Claude Code licenses for thousands of developers by June 30th, transitioning them to GitHub Copilot CLI instead - a move driven by both financial considerations at fiscal year-end & strategic desire to consolidate around its own tooling (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic raised $30B at $900B from Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Sequoia & Altimeter, nearly tripling its valuation from 3 mo ago as annualised revenues hit $45B - surpassing OpenAI despite shared investors backing both AI labs (here)

• Claude Code introduced “goals”, adding a native evaluator model (Haiku) that checks task completion after every agent step, preventing premature termination - a key enterprise pain point where agents decide they’re finished before actually completing tasks (here)

• Anthropic published a paper calling for tighter US chip restrictions on China, warning that loosened compute access could create a ‘destabilizing neck-and-neck race’ in AI by 2028 - timing coincides with Trump’s Beijing visit & criticism that the company is using nationalism to fend off competitive Chinese models like DeepSeek (here)

• OpenAI reorganised its leadership with Greg Brockman officially taking control of product strategy, consolidating ChatGPT & Codex into one unified experience as the company prepares for a potential IPO later this year amid intensifying competition from Anthropic & Google (here)

• xAI launched Grok Build, a coding agent & CLI for professional software engineering, in early beta for SuperGrok Heavy subscribers - features include plan mode approval, parallel subagents, & deep worktree integrations (here)

Venture Capital / Finance

• EQT won the mandate to manage Europe’s €5B Scaleup Europe Fund, beating Atomico, Eurazeo & other top firms in a competitive process that signals Brussels’ push to create homegrown tech champions (here)

• 1789 Capital, with Donald Trump Jr as partner, expanded assets from $200M to $3.5B in a year by investing in US AI & defence companies including SpaceX, xAI, Cerebras & Anduril, targeting $10B AUM through 'patriotic capitalism' & leveraging Trump family political connections (here)

• Bain Capital closed its largest Asia fund at $10.5B, exceeding its $7B target by $2.1B from external investors, with Japan increasingly the region’s most active PE market driven by corporate governance reforms & ageing founders seeking exits (here)

• BC Partners secured $2.5B first close for its €5B flagship Fund XII, benefiting from LP allocation shifts towards Europe amid US market volatility & the firm’s strong €18B equity value generation since 2023 (here)

• A* closed its third fund at $450M, targeting 30+ startups with $3-5M cheques across AI applications, fintech, healthcare & security - Kevin Hartz’s firm notably backs teenage founders in ~20% of its portfolio (here)

• Lansdowne Partners closed $150M for its debut VC fund, targeting $200M final close by December with backing from British Business Bank, Aviva Investors & Lloyds Banking Group - aims to bridge UK university IP to global scale, having already backed 6 unicorns including Oxford Nanopore & Raspberry Pi (here)

• Corazon Capital closed $100M Fund IV for pre-seed to Series A investments in AI-native companies that transform human experiences (here)

• General Catalyst posted a viral parody video mocking Andreessen Horowitz’s investment approach, depicting an a16z-type character pitching dubious AI startups whilst GC maintained “high standards” - Marc Andreessen responded with multiple tweets, generating 2.4M views & industry-wide commentary on VC firm positioning (here)

• Phoenix Court undergoes major restructuring as four GPs depart ‘amicably’ whilst transitioning from founder-led firm to shared ownership model (here)

• VR Capital, led by Richard Deitz, has emerged as Ukraine’s largest corporate debt investor with major stakes in Ukrainian Railways & Naftogaz bonds, wielding decisive influence over restructuring talks as state-owned companies struggle with war damage. The hedge fund’s tough negotiating stance - rejecting Ukrainian Railways’ request for a 20% debt haircut - reflects Deitz’s view that maintaining creditor discipline is essential for Ukraine’s future access to international capital markets (here)

• HSBC has yet to deploy its $4B private credit commitment announced 11 mo ago, with sources citing wariness over US private credit market volatility following the bank’s $400M loss from Apollo exposure linked to the collapsed UK lender MFS (here)

Regulation

• Six European semiconductor startups formed lobby group ‘Voices’ to counter influence of larger chip giants like Intel & TSMC amid €45B EU Chips Act implementation - highlighting tension between established players & emerging innovators vying for policy influence & funding allocation (here)

• The Clarity Act passed the Senate Banking Committee with bipartisan support, setting clear rules for crypto trading & custody whilst giving regulators specific authority - banks oppose provisions allowing stablecoin interest payments, fearing deposit flight (here)

• Bank of England deputy governor Sarah Breeden signals the central bank will ease proposed stablecoin restrictions after industry pushback, calling initial £20k individual & £10M business ownership limits ‘overly conservative’ & examining alternatives to the 40% central bank deposit requirement that makes UK rules far stricter than US equivalents (here)

• OpenAI exploring legal action against Apple over their 2024 iPhone integration deal, alleging Apple has failed to invest sufficient resources in the partnership whilst prioritising competing AI deals with Google’s Gemini models (here)

• X committed to reviewing reported illegal hate & terror content in the UK within 24-48 hours following Ofcom probe that found harmful material still accessible on major social platforms, marking the most significant Online Safety Act enforcement since 2023 (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Mistral AI CEO Arthur Mensch warned French lawmakers that Europe has only 2 years to build independent AI infrastructure before becoming America’s ‘vassal state’, citing US plans to deploy $1T next year whilst Europe lags on chips, energy & data centre capacity (here)

• Synthesia policy chief warns EU sovereignty rules could harm startups, saying new regulations aimed at boosting tech independence may have opposite effect by making it harder for European AI companies to compete globally (here)

• Andreessen Horowitz has emerged as the biggest donor in the 2026 midterm elections, spending over $115M through crypto-focused Fairshake ($47.5M) & AI-focused Leading the Future ($50M) super PACs, plus $12M to Trump’s MAGA Inc, as the firm transforms from tech investor to political kingmaker (here)

• UK government saved millions annually by replacing Palantir’s Ukrainian refugee housing system with an in-house alternative, after contracts grew from free to £10M over 18 mo - highlighting broader concerns about tech sovereignty & vendor lock-in risk (here)

• Trump administration considers $1.7B taxpayer-funded compensation programme for allies investigated under Biden, including Jan 6 defendants, modelled on Obama-era Native American settlement & drawing from Treasury’s uncapped Judgment Fund to resolve Trump’s $10B IRS lawsuit (here)

• Revolut co-founder Nik Storonsky rose to 7th place on UK rich list with £16.4B wealth, highlighting fintech’s growing prominence as Dyson fell £8.8B partly due to Trump tariffs (here)

• USA Rare Earth leads $3B dealmaking spree in rare earths as western companies race to build ‘mine to magnet’ supply chains independent of China, backed by $18.6B in US government funding commitments since Trump’s return - analysts expect only 3-4 western players to achieve scale in the consolidating market (here)

• US officials & press threw away Chinese-issued gifts, pins & burner phones before boarding Air Force One after Trump-Xi summit, highlighting operational security concerns around potential surveillance hardware from strategic adversary (here)

• EU carmakers fear production disruptions after sanctions hit Yangzhou Yangjie Electronic Technology, a Chinese semiconductor supplier accused of selling military tech to Russia - industry executives are scrambling for information & may seek derogations as up to 3,000 chips are needed per car (here)

• Chinese ‘sea turtle’ talent returning from Silicon Valley accelerated in 2025, with recent graduate returns up 12% year-on-year & doubling since 2018, as Beijing offers competitive compensation packages matching US salaries whilst leveraging geopolitical tensions & immigration restrictions to fuel domestic AI, robotics & biotech capabilities (here)

• Per the FT, both the US & China seek global leadership whilst avoiding responsibilities - the US maintains competitive China policy through tariffs, export controls & alliance-building, while China struggles to translate perceived American decline into geopolitical gains, with 52 of 70 major economies launching trade measures against Beijing (here)

• EU plans to slash steel import quotas by 47% from July, potentially costing Ukraine €1B in lost export revenues as its 2.65M tonnes of annual steel sales to the bloc face 70% reduction - undermining Kyiv’s wartime finances whilst it lacks alternative buyers to replace European markets (here)

• King’s Cross has emerged as London’s premier AI hub, hosting Google DeepMind, OpenAI & Anthropic’s new European offices alongside UK startups like Synthesia & Wayve - a £3B redevelopment success story showing how strategic urban planning can create global tech clusters (here)

• Krugman challenges the narrative of European economic decline, arguing Europe’s lower GDP per capita versus the US reflects lifestyle choices rather than fundamental weakness - Europeans achieve similar productivity but work fewer hours, while maintaining higher life expectancy & social outcomes than supposedly comparable US states (here)

• Xi Jinping warned Trump that poor handling of Taiwan could lead to US-China conflict during their Beijing summit, invoking the ‘Thucydides Trap’ before both leaders emphasised cooperation at a state dinner where Trump invited Xi to visit Washington in September (here)

• Revolut co-founder Nik Storonsky rose to 7th place on UK rich list with £16.4B wealth, highlighting fintech’s growing prominence as Dyson fell £8.8B partly due to Trump tariffs (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Gallup survey finds 70% of Americans oppose data centres being built in their communities, with nearly half strongly opposed - more would rather live near nuclear plants than AI infrastructure facilities (here)

• Big Tech companies including Alphabet & Amazon are issuing unprecedented volumes of foreign currency bonds to fund AI infrastructure, with Alphabet alone raising $40B+ across euros, Swiss francs, pounds & yen after having zero foreign debt until last year - driven by $725B collective AI spending leaving the lowest free cash flow in a decade (here)

• Google’s AI researchers are leaving to found startups partly due to internal competition for computing resources, as the company prioritises revenue-generating projects like Gemini over experimental research - former DeepMind researchers Andrew Dai (Elorian), Anna Goldie (Ricursive Intelligence), and Ioannis Antonoglou (ReflectionAI) cite better access to computing power & decision-making autonomy as key factors in their departures (here)

• Ford shares surged 21% over 2 days as investors embraced the automaker’s $2B pivot into energy storage for AI data centres, with Morgan Stanley valuing Ford Energy at $10B - though analysts warn the rally resembles ‘meme-styled’ speculation vulnerable to quick reversal (here)

• Chinese AI firms ByteDance & Kuaishou lead US rivals in video generation quality, training models on vast short-video libraries from TikTok & similar platforms - whilst OpenAI discontinued Sora due to computing costs, Chinese tools enable commercial-scale content creation with looser restrictions (here)

• Notion launched Agent Orchestration, allowing any user to work with AI agents through a new External Agents API, with partnerships including Anthropic, OpenAI, Decagon, Cursor, & others for out-of-the-box integration (here)

• GitHub launched a desktop app for Copilot in technical preview, creating a unified interface for managing AI coding agents, repositories, issues & pull requests - positioning it against Claude Code & OpenAI’s Codex as the AI coding market shifts towards autonomous agents handling larger development tasks (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Isomorphic Labs (DeepMind spinout) raised $2.1B led by Thrive Capital for AI-designed drug development, highlighting growing US VC appetite for European AI companies with pharmaceutical applications (here)

  • SAP invested in n8n (workflow automation) at $5.2B valuation, doubling from October’s $2.5B round, as the German software giant integrates n8n’s AI agent tools into its Joule Studio platform to accelerate its AI transformation (here)

  • Recursive Superintelligence raised $650M at $4.65B with Nvidia & Google Ventures leading, building self-improving AI systems that automate research without human oversight - distinguishing itself from foundation model scalers as Europe’s latest AI unicorn eyes mid-2026 public launch (here)

  • Junyang Lin, former Alibaba Qwen technical lead, raised several hundred million at $2B for a new AI lab focused on world models & embodied intelligence, joining a wave of elite AI researchers launching pre-product companies at eye-watering valuations despite China’s chip access constraints (here)

  • SoftBank injected $450M+ into Graphcore, the Bristol-based AI chip company it acquired for $600M+ in 2024, with more funding expected this year as it builds a semiconductor portfolio alongside Arm & Ampere to challenge Nvidia’s dominance (here)

  • Wispr (voice dictation for developers) is raising $260M at $2B from Menlo Ventures, tripling its valuation from $700M in 7 mo as engineers increasingly use voice to interact with AI agents - a workflow that barely existed a year ago (here)

  • UK chip startup Fractile raised $220M Series B from Factorial Funds, Accel & Founders Fund to develop specialised inference chips targeting AI query latency - joining hardware race as Cerebras heads for $4.8B IPO (here)

  • Multiverse (apprentice training) raised $70M at $2.1B, up from $1.7B in 2022, as Euan Blair’s edtech pushes into AI workforce training amid debate over whether AI destroys or enhances jobs - the company posted £79.6M revenue but £62.4M losses in 2025 (here)

Cybersecurity

• Anthropic will brief the Financial Stability Board on cyber vulnerabilities exposed by its Claude Mythos Preview AI model, following a request from Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey. Mythos has found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities across major operating systems & web browsers but remains limited to 40 organisations including Amazon, Microsoft & JPMorgan to prevent misuse (here)

• Anthropic’s Mythos Preview & OpenAI’s GPT-5.5-Cyber demonstrated powerful cybersecurity capabilities in early testing, with Palo Alto Networks finding 75 bugs vs their usual 5-10 monthly, though models still require human expertise to validate findings & distinguish exploitable vulnerabilities from noise with ~30% false positive rates (here)

• UK anti-fraud organisation Cifas found 13% of large enterprise employees sold login credentials or know colleagues who did within 12 mo, with senior executives showing highest acceptance rates (43% of C-suite find it justifiable vs lower-level staff), highlighting critical insider threats as Fortune 500 firms lose employee credentials regularly & face rising account takeover incidents (here)

• UK cybersecurity sector generated £14.7B revenue with 17% annual growth, reaching 70,000 employees across 2,603 firms as the Cyber Security & Resilience Bill advances through parliament alongside a voluntary Cyber Resilience Pledge for businesses (here)

Defence

• NATO chief Mark Rutte will meet European defence firms including Rheinmetall, Airbus & Saab in Brussels to push for immediate production increases ahead of July’s Ankara summit, as the alliance seeks to hit 5% GDP spending targets & reduce US dependence following Trump’s criticism over Iran war support (here)

• UK preparing £6B injection for Global Combat Air Programme stealth fighter jet project with Japan & Italy after Tokyo issued unusually blunt warnings about funding delays threatening the 2035 programme aimed at challenging US military tech dominance (here)

• US intelligence indicates Chinese companies are plotting secret arms sales to Iran, planning to route weapons through third countries including African nations to mask origins - revelations that could complicate Trump’s ongoing diplomatic reset with Xi Jinping in Beijing (here)

• Anduril & Meta are developing AI-powered smart glasses for soldiers that use voice commands & eye tracking to control drones & identify targets, with the Army’s $159M SBMC prototype due for production consideration in 2028 - though technical challenges around weight, durability & offline AI processing remain significant (here)

• Trump’s cancellation of Tomahawk missile deliveries to Germany exposes Europe’s long-range strike capability gap, forcing Berlin to pursue three parallel solutions: begging Washington for purchase deals, partnering with Ukraine on drone technology, and accelerating the European Long-Range Strike Approach programme that won’t deliver until 2030 (here)

• CEPS task force outlines three pathways for European defence autonomy: Europeanisation of NATO (taking over US leadership roles), new European multilateralism (including a proposed European Security Council), and EU-led defence cooperation opening programmes like SAFE loans to non-EU allies including the UK (here)

• Dutch defence tech startup Destinus is in talks to raise around €200M ahead of a planned IPO, developing drone technology amid growing European defence spending priorities (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Anduril raised $5B at $61B led by Thrive Capital & Andreessen Horowitz, doubling its valuation from $30B in under a year as defence tech attracts VC interest amid geopolitical tensions - revenues hit $2.2B in 2025 with major Pentagon contracts including $20B Army AI deal (here)

Energy

• Tech giants including Meta & Amazon successfully lobbied to keep loose clean energy accounting rules for gas-powered data centres, allowing them to claim 100% clean energy coverage through renewable certificates purchased elsewhere despite running on fossil fuels - a decision that could slow emissions reductions by decades compared to stricter hourly matching standards (here)

Space

• AT&T, Verizon & T-Mobile announced a JV to pool spectrum for unified direct-to-device satellite coverage, potentially reshaping deals with SpaceX’s Starlink Mobile, AST SpaceMobile & others as T-Mobile’s exclusive Starlink partnership expires this year amid lower-than-expected usage (here)

• SpaceX & Google are in talks for launch services as both pursue orbital data centres, an unproven technology central to SpaceX’s pitch ahead of its planned summer IPO - potentially the largest of all time. Google announced Project Suncatcher in 2025 to test satellite-based computing by 2027, whilst SpaceX filed to launch up to 1M satellites for orbital data centres & recently struck a 300MW deal with Anthropic (here)

Crypto

• Notable deal:

  • Elliptic (blockchain compliance) raised $120M at $670M from Nasdaq Ventures, Deutsche Bank, One Peak & British Business Bank, highlighting institutional confidence in on-chain analytics as stablecoins processed $33T in 2025 & digital assets become core financial infrastructure (here)

Robotics

• Humanoid signed a deal to deploy up to 2,000 humanoid robots across Schaeffler’s global manufacturing sites by 2032, with initial rollout starting December 2026 at German facilities for box handling & testing operations, marking one of the largest planned humanoid robot manufacturing deployments (here)

ASML, Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral, Nokia, SAP and Siemens (the signatories) represent €417 billion in revenue, €1.1 trillion in market cap, 957,000 high-tech jobs and €40 billion of annual R&D. Europe, their leaders wrote, “has the people, the ecosystems and the technology to lead in this next phase, but too often is not converting this position into scale.”

At the top of the signatories’ list: ASML’s CEO, Christophe Fouquet, put his name to a letter warning about Europe’s decline on the same day he told the press “no one is coming for us” - there is no competition, yet we are still being outplayed.

Dutch company ASML is the most valuable company in Europe (worth ~$570 billion). It makes the only machines in the world capable of printing the patterns on the chips that make AI possible - patterns finer than your fingernail grew while reading this sentence. The machines are the size of a school bus, ship in Boeing 747s, take months to assemble across hundreds of suppliers, and cost between $200 million and $400 million apiece. ASML is the single non-substitutable chokepoint in the entire AI supply chain.

In theory, this gives Europe a structural chokepoint at the bottom of the AI stack. However, ASML’s most strategic output - High-NA EUV systems - has since 2021 been pre-allocated to Intel. In August 2025, the Trump administration converted $8.9 billion of CHIPS Act funds into a 10% equity stake in Intel, part of an accelerating series of state stakes the administration has taken in strategic businesses across the supply chain, dubbed “Trump Capitalism”.

This week, with its 10% stake in hand, the Trump administration used direct pressure from Commerce Secretary Lutnick to broker chip manufacturing between Apple and Intel, directing one of the largest commercial chip buyers in the world into a foundry the state part-owns and that uniquely holds every High-NA EUV machine ASML has ever shipped. Through political machinations, not business failings, the unique European product at the base of the AI stack has been absorbed into the US national-security architecture, and is no longer compounding the value it produces back into European bargaining power.

Even as the continent’s policies fail them, these companies continue to fight to develop European strength and sovereignty. ASML’s €1.3 billion investment in Mistral last September anchored Europe’s most credible model layer to its strongest equipment manufacturer - exactly the kind of vertically integrated European stack their letter argues Europe must enable. But the move is happening at the national rather than the continental level, at a scale one or two orders of magnitude below the US and Chinese vertical projects. It is one private corporate decision against two state-led national projects.

In listening to the podcast by the Rest is Politics – leading – this week, I was struck by William MacAskill’s synthesis of democracy and AI. He places the odds of democracy surviving AGI < 50%, unpicking just how a non-democratic country could become very powerful in this next era, driven by a dominance of the very underpinning industries our politicians are allowing to slip away from us.

Europe needs to open its toolbox, desperately. Luc Frieden, the prime minister of Luxembourg, argued in a speech last week: the deliberate use of public procurement to create predictable European markets for European technology is urgent. The US has found one less than ideal way to do this, through Trump Capitalism. Europe needs to find its own way to protect and empower its industry.

Europe still possesses the crown jewel of the AI supply chain. But unless it learns to convert technological advantage into coordinated state power, ASML risks becoming less a European lever than an American asset with a Dutch passport.

IPOs / Publics

• HawkEye 360 (space analytics) shares jumped 30% on NYSE debut, reaching $3.15B valuation after raising $416M at top of range - signaling strong appetite for defence-tech IPOs ahead of potential SpaceX listing (here)

• Cerebras Systems (AI chips) plans to raise $3.4B at $34.7B this week, leading 5 major US IPOs alongside Blackstone’s $1.8B data centre REIT, geothermal developer Fervo Energy ($1.3B), emergency medical services provider GMR Solutions ($750M), and oil land owner EagleRock ($320M) (here)

• Nb Cerebras lifted both the size & price range of its IPO after Reuters reported the deal drew more than 20x the share demand. It is backed by $10B+ OpenAI deal & AWS partnership as demand surges for inference-optimised processors (here & here)

• Lime filed for US IPO targeting $2B valuation, up from $500M in 2020 when Uber took its 10%+ stake after acquiring Jump e-bikes - revenue grew 29% to $886M in 2025 but losses jumped 75% to $59M amid regulatory & safety challenges (here)

• Quantinuum filed for a US IPO, marking a major test for quantum computing public appetite after raising $600M at $10B pre-money from Nvidia & others in 2024 (here)

• SEC proposed amendments allowing public companies to file semiannually rather than quarterly, potentially reducing compliance burden that keeps some firms private - though investors may resist reduced transparency (here)

• Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft & Meta’s combined free cash flow expected to fall to $4B in Q3 - lowest since 2014 & down from an average of $45B in each quarter since the Covid-19 pandemic (here)

• AI hyperscalers reported $53B in ‘other income’ during Q1, with Alphabet booking $37.7B & Amazon $16B - nearly 60% of their combined net income - driven by mark-ups on stakes in Anthropic (now valued at $380B) & OpenAI, creating a circular economy where hyperscaler investments fuel AI startups that then buy their cloud services (here)

• Amazon launched Supply Chain Services to open its global logistics network to all businesses, directly competing with UPS & FedEx by offering freight, distribution & fulfilment capabilities to companies including P&G, 3M & American Eagle (here)

• Amazon launched AgentCore Payments in preview, enabling AI agents to autonomously pay for APIs, content & services via micropayments built with Coinbase (x402 protocol/stablecoin) & Stripe (Privy wallets), targeting the emerging agent-to-agent economy where software transacts at fractions of cents per call (here)

• Apple & Intel struck a preliminary chip manufacturing deal after Trump administration pressure, with Commerce Secretary Lutnick orchestrating meetings & the US government’s $9B investment giving it 10% of Intel - part of broader effort to reshore critical semiconductor production as Apple faces supply constraints from TSMC (here)

• Meta removed end-to-end encryption from Instagram DMs citing low adoption, directing users to WhatsApp instead, as regulatory pressure mounts over child safety concerns following a $375M penalty in New Mexico (here)

• Meta is building advanced ‘agentic’ AI assistants for its 3B+ users, similar to OpenClaw, capable of autonomous task completion & handling sensitive financial/health data - part of Zuckerberg’s push for ‘personal superintelligence’ amid investor concerns over $145B capex plans (here)

• ServiceNow unveiled Action Fabric, a new layer that charges customers based on AI agent actions within its apps, joining HubSpot & Workday in monetising AI access whilst SAP moves to ban external AI agents entirely - a strategic shift as enterprise software firms establish tollgates around AI integration (here)

• Arm projects $2B in sales from its new AI chip across 2027-28, double its initial forecast after stronger-than-expected demand, marking a strategic shift from licensing designs to selling complete processors that puts it in direct competition with customers like Nvidia (here)

• Samsung Electronics hit $1.04T market cap as shares jumped 13%, making it the second Asian company after TSMC to cross $1T - driven by AI chip demand that has doubled its stock price this year & record Q1 earnings with production capacity fully sold out (here)

• Datadog shares jumped 36% after raising full-year revenue guidance to $4.30-4.34B (from $4.06-4.10B) on strong Q1 results driven by cloud security demand amid AI adoption - Q1 revenue grew 32% to $1.01B, beating estimates of $961M (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic weighs raising up to $50B at ~$900B pre-money valuation, which would surpass OpenAI’s $852B post-money from March - driven by annualised revenue approaching $45B (up from $9B end-2024) as Claude Code & Cowork gain enterprise traction (here)

• Anthropic struck a deal with SpaceX to access 300+ megawatts of computing power from the Colossus 1 Tennessee data centre, as Musk’s merged xAI-SpaceX entity seeks revenue from underutilised Grok infrastructure whilst Anthropic races to secure capacity for Claude model deployment (here)

• Anthropic committed to spend $200B with Google over 5 years for cloud & chips, representing 40% of Google Cloud’s revenue backlog - part of a broader pattern where OpenAI & Anthropic deals now comprise half of the $2T combined backlog across Amazon, Microsoft, Google & Oracle (here)

• Anthropic signed a $1.8B 7-year cloud deal with Akamai for GPU infrastructure, marking the largest contract in Akamai’s history & validating its strategy of distributed AI inference through smaller data centres closer to end users (here)

• OpenAI launched Daybreak, an AI-powered cybersecurity platform combining GPT-5.5 models with Codex Security to identify vulnerabilities, generate patches & automate threat response - positioning the company to compete directly with established cybersecurity vendors whilst leveraging its AI advantage (here)

• OpenAI launched 3 real-time audio models for developers - GPT-Realtime-2 (conversational agent), GPT-Realtime-Translate (70+ languages), & GPT-Realtime-Whisper (live transcription) - with early customers including Zillow, Priceline & Deutsche Telekom (here)

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman proposed spinning out robotics & consumer hardware divisions late 2025 ahead of IPO preparations, considering an Alphabet-like structure to separate speculative bets from core AI business, though the plan was rejected over balance sheet consolidation concerns (here)

• OpenAI launched a $10B private-equity joint venture with 19 partners including TPG, Advent & Bain Capital to help corporates deploy AI, raising over $4B in capital whilst acquiring Scottish consultancy Tomoro for its 150 AI engineers and creating the OpenAI Deployment Company - following Anthropic’s similar move with Blackstone & Goldman Sachs (here & here)

• DeepSeek nears $45B valuation as China’s state-backed semiconductor ‘Big Fund’ leads funding talks alongside Tencent, marking the AI lab’s first external fundraising & reinforcing Beijing’s push for domestic AI-chip ecosystem independence amid US export controls (here)

Venture Capital & Finance

• Venture funding cycles have compressed from 12-18 mo to weeks, with startups now raising follow-on rounds at higher valuations whilst announcing lead investors from earlier tranches - creating artificial demand signals that drive up industry pricing irrationally (here)

• Tech M&A fell 60% to $135B annualised as investors pivot from traditional software to AI, whilst 36,000 AI companies launch amid record $500B PE dry powder seeking deployment (here)

• TCI Fund Management slashed its Microsoft stake from 10% to 1% of portfolio (worth ~$8B), citing AI disruption risks to Office productivity software & Azure cloud services; fund increased Alphabet position from 3% to 5% as largest tech holding (here)

• Hg Capital Trust marked down 14 of its 20 largest portfolio companies in Q1, with net asset value per share falling 5.4% amid concerns about AI disrupting traditional software businesses - the trust’s shares are down 26% this year as private equity grapples with software sector repricing (here)

• A16z Crypto raised $2.2B for its fifth fund, down from $4.5B in 2022, with a more disciplined focus on crypto applications with proven use cases like stablecoins, tokenization & AI agents rather than speculative Web3 promises (here)

• Katie Haun raised $1B across new funds to back crypto & blockchain startups globally, focusing on alternative assets, agentic economy & financial services - her firm now manages over $2B AUM since launching in 2022 after leaving a16z (here)

• Wisdom Ventures closed oversubscribed $77.7M Fund II for AI health & wellness startups, deploying $1-5M cheques across ~40 companies - fund backed by Reid Hoffman & Evan Sharp follows top-quartile $10M Fund I that included OpenAI & Anthropic (here)

• Dan Levine, Accel partner who led Scale AI’s 2016 seed round (netting Accel ~$2B after Meta’s recent stake purchase), is stepping back from new investments but retains board seats at Scale, Vercel & Sentry (here)

• Anthropic warned that unauthorised secondary share sales & tokenized exposure products may be “void”, which triggered fresh scrutiny of the the AI-era startup secondary market. The controversy escalated after former LocalGlobe investor Ash Egan posted that brokering Anthropic secondary deals “made her more money than her entire net worth from working in her 20s”. Following Anthropic’s statement, pricing on some unofficial secondary venues reportedly fell sharply (here & here)

Regulation

• Meta launched a High Court challenge against UK’s Online Safety Act, arguing Ofcom’s fining powers based on global revenue are unlawful & could cost billions - Epic Games & CCIA plan to join the case as wider Big Tech pushback emerges over the world’s most stringent social media regulations (here)

• Meta faces EU hearing to contest proposed order requiring free access for rival AI chatbots on WhatsApp Business, after changing policy in March to charge competitors whilst keeping its own Meta AI free - Commission considering interim measures as part of broader market abuse investigation (here)

• Musk’s trust settled SEC allegations over delayed Twitter stake disclosure for $1.5M, a fraction of the regulator’s initial $200M demand & claimed $150M in wrongful profits - highlighting SEC’s lenient approach to Trump-linked figures following similar dismissals for Coinbase & Kraken (here)

• EU Parliamentary Research Service labels VPNs ‘a loophole that needs closing’ in age verification systems, as VPN downloads surged after UK & US states implemented mandatory age checks - signalling potential regulatory clash between child safety rules & privacy tools that underpin much of Europe’s cybersecurity infrastructure (here)

• UK’s Financial Conduct Authority opened antitrust investigation into PayPal, Mastercard & Visa over concerns that PayPal’s digital wallet funding model may breach competition rules - a rare use of FCA’s competition powers that could result in fines up to 10% of global turnover (here)

• EU countries & parliament agreed to water down AI Act implementation, delaying high-risk system rules to Dec 2027 & excluding machinery after business complaints, whilst adding bans on AI-generated deepfake nudes by Dec 2026 (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• US sanctions three Chinese satellite companies - The Earth Eye, MizarVision & Chang Guang Satellite Technology - for allegedly providing imagery that enabled Iranian strikes on US forces in the Middle East, timing the action days before Trump’s Beijing summit with Xi Jinping (here)

• UK government will take full ownership of British Steel after failing to agree a commercial sale with Chinese owner Jingye, using new legislation to secure control of Britain’s last two operating blast furnaces amid strategic supply chain concerns (here)

• UK launches new ‘Supers Unit’ targeting £99B investment from Australian pension funds by 2035, as part of broader government push to channel overseas capital into UK infrastructure & private markets following passage of controversial pension reform legislation (here)

• WSJ reports on how Trump administration taking direct equity stakes (which has happened in at least 10 companies including 10% of Intel for $8.9B) is shifting traditional Republican free-market approach to state capitalism model - executives now rehearse rejecting government investment requests before White House meetings (here)

• Google’s DeepMind, Microsoft & xAI agreed to US pre-deployment security reviews of new AI models through the Center for AI Standards & Innovation, following concerns over Anthropic’s Mythos model’s enhanced cyber vulnerability exploitation capabilities (here)

• Martin Sandbu argues Europe should resist AI Fomo & focus on using public procurement to create markets for homegrown tech rather than rushing to copy US/China foundation models - notes Europe’s €100B trade surplus with US became €50B deficit partly due to rising IP payments (here)

• NHS England granted Palantir contractors & consultants unlimited access to identifiable patient data via admin roles on its £330M Federated Data Platform, abandoning previous case-by-case approval requirements despite internal warnings of public confidence risks (here)

• Google DeepMind workers in the UK voted to unionise in April, driven by concerns over the company’s Pentagon AI deal & broader military applications including Project Nimbus with Israel - marking the first union recognition bid at a frontier AI lab (here)

• Over 100 European banks & asset managers increased Palantir stakes by 60% in the past year, reaching $27B combined value despite the company’s controversial work with US ICE for migrant tracking & Israeli military operations in Gaza - highlighting tension between ESG commitments & index-driven investment strategies (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Thinking Machines unveiled ‘interaction models’ that enable real-time, simultaneous AI voice & video conversation, with its 276B-parameter TML-Interaction-Small achieving 0.40s response times (vs 1.18s for GPT-realtime) & 77.8 on interaction quality benchmarks (vs 46.8 for competitors) - positioning for enterprise applications requiring natural human-AI collaboration (here)

• ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet dismissed competitive threats to the Dutch firm’s EUV lithography monopoly, claiming rivals like Peter Thiel-backed Substrate lack the decades of expertise & supplier ecosystem needed to replicate technology that took 30 years to develop. With AI driving chip demand beyond supply capacity for years, ASML argues for relaxed export controls to China using Nvidia’s multi-generation gap approach rather than current 8-generation restrictions (here)

• ASML CEO Christophe Fouquet co-signed open letter with leaders from Airbus, Ericsson, Mistral AI, Nokia, SAP & Siemens warning Europe is ‘losing global competitiveness every day’ due to fragmented markets & complex regulations - the 7 companies represent €417B revenue, €1.1T market cap & 957,000 jobs (here)

• GitHub outlined infrastructure improvements after recent outages, with agentic development workflows driving 30X scale requirements since December 2025 - commits hit 1.4B monthly, new repos 20M monthly, as the platform shifts from Ruby monolith to Go microservices & multi-cloud architecture (here)

• AI coding platforms Lovable, Base44, Replit & Netlify inadvertently enabled 5,000+ web apps to expose sensitive corporate & personal data on public internet, as vibe-coding tools democratise app creation beyond traditional security oversight (here)

• Google Chrome now silently downloads 4GB of Gemini Nano AI models to local storage without explicit user consent, powering features like scam detection & writing assistance - though Google says files auto-delete when storage runs low & a toggle setting is rolling out (here)

• Enterprise GPU utilization sits at just 5% despite $401B in AI infrastructure spending, as companies pivot from capacity hoarding to efficiency maximization. VentureBeat’s Q1 tracker shows access concerns dropping 25% whilst TCO priorities surge 20% as organizations face CapEx reality on depreciation cycles. Market shifting toward specialized AI clouds (up to 36% adoption) & managed inference services as alternative to owning underutilized assets (here)

• Zyphra released ZAYA1-8B, an 8B parameter open-source reasoning model trained on AMD Instinct MI300 GPUs that matches GPT-5-High & DeepSeek-V3.2 performance with only 760M active parameters, demonstrating that efficient architecture & reasoning algorithms can rival frontier models at fraction of the cost (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Nvidia invested up to $2.1B in data centre operator IREN as part of a 5-gigawatt AI infrastructure deployment deal, highlighting Big Tech’s $700B+ annual AI spending surge as companies secure computing capacity through ‘neocloud’ providers rather than building new facilities (here)

  • Isomorphic Labs, Google DeepMind’s AI drug discovery spinout, raised >$2B led by Thrive Capital with Alphabet participating, positioning it alongside Waymo as another major Alphabet bet seeking standalone scale (here)

  • Moonshot AI raised $2B at $20B, led by Meituan’s VC arm, as its open-weight Kimi models gain traction with developers seeking cheaper inference alternatives to Western AI labs - part of a broader investor surge into Chinese AI companies (here)

  • Core Automation, a 6-week-old AI startup founded by ex-OpenAI researcher Jerry Tworek, is targeting $300M-$500M at $4B valuation just weeks after raising $100M at $1B - exemplifying how Nvidia’s strategic investments in AI chip customers are driving rapid re-funding cycles for ‘neolabs’ challenging OpenAI & Anthropic (here)

Cybersecurity

• IMF warns that advanced AI models like Anthropic’s Claude Mythos risk ‘systemic’ financial shocks by enabling correlated cyber attacks across banks simultaneously - Mythos found thousands of high-severity vulnerabilities in major systems but limited US-focused rollout leaves many global banks without protective patches (here)

• Google reports AI-powered hacking has escalated to industrial scale in just 3 mo, with criminal groups & state actors from China, North Korea & Russia using commercial models like Gemini, Claude & OpenAI tools to refine attacks - highlighting the dual-use nature of AI capabilities in cybersecurity (here)

• Mozilla used Claude Mythos Preview & other AI models to identify 271 security vulnerabilities in Firefox, shipping fixes for 423 bugs total in April - representing an unprecedented scale of AI-powered security auditing that found complex sandbox escapes & 20-year-old bugs missed by traditional fuzzing (here)

• Cloudflare is cutting ~1,100 employees (20% of workforce) citing 600% growth in AI usage over 3 mo as reason to restructure for ‘agentic AI era’, sending shares down 15% despite 30% YTD gains (here)

Defence

• UK defence start-ups increasingly frustrated with providing discounted or free equipment to military in ‘mission partnerships’ as MoD struggles with funding constraints - army fielding fewer than 2,000 drones in 2024 vs Russia’s 7M annually whilst modernisation plans await delayed Defence Investment Plan (here)

• Franco-German tank maker KNDS warned Berlin to decide on a stake purchase within 2 mo or face an IPO without German government involvement, targeting €15B-€20B valuation by summer as German family shareholders push to exit & French state would become largest shareholder in key Bundeswehr supplier (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Helsing raised $1.2B at $18B valuation led by Dragoneer, marking a 29% increase from its €12B round less than a year ago - the German drone startup’s success reflects surging investor appetite for European defence tech amid Ukraine war & rising military spending (here)

Energy

• New York State pension fund threatens to divest $1.6M TotalEnergies stake after the French major accepted $928M from Trump administration to exit US offshore wind leases & redirect capital to fossil fuels, highlighting investor resistance to White House renewable energy rollback (here)

• German energy giant Eon acquired UK supplier Ovo for circa £550-600M, creating a 9.6M customer base to rival Octopus Energy as Britain’s largest supplier. The deal reflects sector consolidation pressures from tighter capital adequacy rules & margin compression, with Ovo struggling to meet regulatory buffers after wholesale price volatility wiped out 30 competitors (here)

Crypto

• Coinbase plans to cut 14% of its workforce (roughly 700 roles) as CEO Brian Armstrong vows to rebuild the crypto exchange as an “intelligence, with humans around the edge aligning it” - citing AI’s ability to accelerate processes & the crypto market downturn (here)

• U.S. Treasury demanded Binance comply with its 2023 monitoring programme after reports of $1B+ flowing through the exchange to Iran-linked entities in 2024-25, marking the Trump administration’s first aggressive action against the crypto giant despite Trump’s pardon of founder Changpeng Zhao & family business ties via World Liberty Financial stablecoin (here)

EVs

• Tesla Model Y becomes first vehicle to pass NHTSA’s new advanced driver assistance system tests, covering pedestrian emergency braking, lane keeping, & blind spot features - setting industry benchmark as US regulators push automakers toward enhanced safety tech (here)

Robotics

• Project CETI deployed autonomous underwater robots that track sperm whales in real time by listening to their clicks & automatically following them for potentially months, marking a shift from brief encounters to continuous observation that could inform marine conservation policy (here)

Quantum

• Quantum Motion raised $160M from DCVC & Kembara to commercialise silicon-based quantum computers that fit standard data centre racks, building on DARPA selection & delivery to UK’s National Quantum Computing Centre (here)

There is no doubt that AI will create immense economic value, but the harder question is who captures it. The dominant assumption, reinforced by every fundraise and every gigawatt-scale compute deal, is that it will be captured by the frontier labs building the models.

But the model layer looks like something on a fast path to commoditisation, with rapid capability convergence (underscored again by Deepseek’s latest release), multiple credible providers, falling cost per token and customers who increasingly ‘mix and match’.

The value will accrue into the layers around the model where things are harder to replicate. Proprietary data, domain expertise, workflow integration, distribution, the customer relationships that make any of those things stick.

SAP has those things. It is not an AI-native company, but nor is it normal SaaS. It sits underneath the operations of much of the enterprise economy, and its systems are deeply embedded and highly customised, which makes it very difficult to leave. The problem this incumbent faces therefore is how it gets used in an AI-native world, what value gets eroded and what it can still capture.

Mercedes-Benz - a flagship SAP customer - reportedly cut its SAP seat count by around 40%, leaning on external AI tools to do work it once paid people to do inside the platform. Customers rarely move off SAP, they reduce usage, and SAP’s reaction was not to pretend the shift was not happening but to insist that whatever agent now sits on top of its systems, it will define the terms of access.

Prior Labs is the constructive half of the same instinct. Tabular foundation models are the unsexy cousins of LLMs, built to predict time series, fill gaps in structured datasets and categorise messy back-office data, which is the kind of work LLMs do not in fact do particularly well and also the kind of work that quietly drives a huge amount of economic output.

Prior Labs’ TabPFN-2.6 tops benchmarks in its category and has been downloaded >3m times. But left to itself, it is the sort of group that might have continued producing excellent papers in relative obscurity or been replicated by a better-capitalised (likely American) lab two years and several billion dollars later.

Inside SAP, with €1 billion committed over four years and Prior continuing to operate as a separate entity, it becomes something else, an applied capability deployed at scale into problems where SAP already owns the data, the customer and the workflow.

The two SAP announcements this week describe a posture rather than a transaction. Acquire uncommoditised capability before the market notices it, and control the agent layer over a platform too embedded for customers to leave. Both flow from the same recognition that the model layer is unlikely to be where the value finally settles, and the players best positioned to capture it are potentially those who own what is hardest to replicate.

The press has already framed the Prior Labs acquisition as the establishment of Europe’s frontier AI lab, but that framing flatters the labels and underplays the move. A frontier lab is a capability. What SAP is assembling is capability plus data plus workflow plus customer, the four ingredients value tends to settle into once a technology starts to commoditise, anchored inside the infrastructure the European economy already runs on. As I wrote a month ago, with specific reference to SAP, “Europe builds institutions”. This appears to be a move following that European hallmark - it isn’t making headlines (at least compared to Gamestops more vibes-driven $55B acquisition of ebay), but it is building deep and significant value.

IPOs / Publics

• S&P Dow Jones Indices is considering accelerating mega-cap IPO inclusion from 12 to 6 mo & dropping profitability requirements for top 100 market cap companies, potentially benefiting SpaceX’s expected mid-June $75B raise at $1T+ valuation alongside future Anthropic & OpenAI listings (here)

• Cerebras raised target IPO size to $4B at $40B valuation, up from initial $2B plan, with banks receiving $10B+ in early interest orders as semiconductor stocks surge 50% this year amid AI infrastructure investment boom (here)

• Retail investors are driving massive premiums in closed-end funds offering exposure to SpaceX, OpenAI & other pre-IPO tech firms - Fundrise Innovation Fund hit a 3,000% premium to NAV in March before falling back to ~85 after short-seller criticism. The funds use complex structures like SPVs & forward contracts, prompting OpenAI to warn it may invalidate underlying shares acquired through such transactions (here)

• SpaceX IPO filing reveals Musk can only be removed as CEO & chairman by his own consent through Class B super-voting shares he controls, giving him effective veto power over board removal attempts - an unusual governance structure even by dual-class standards (here)

• IPO expert Jay Ritter questions SpaceX’s potential $2T valuation ahead of its historic public offering, citing scepticism over Starlink’s projected cost savings & margin expansion - noting IPOs with 40x+ price-to-sales ratios typically underperform markets over 3 years (here)

• SoftBank is creating Roze AI, a robotics company focused on automating US data centre construction, & plans to IPO the business in the US this year at up to $100B valuation, incorporating ABB Robotics acquisition & data centre assets, as Son seeks to offset $30B+ OpenAI commitments whilst approaching leverage limits (here)

• Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian says the company’s full-stack AI strategy - including proprietary TPU chips & DeepMind models - is helping it gain ground vs Amazon & Microsoft, with cloud revenue growing 48% to $70B annually. Google controls ~25% of global AI compute capacity & struck a $200B+ deal with Anthropic, while Kurian predicts a market shakeout as AI startups struggle with unsustainable economics (here)

• AWS launched OpenAI products on Bedrock after Microsoft’s exclusive rights ended, including latest models, Codex, & new Bedrock Managed Agents service - marking deeper AWS-OpenAI collaboration as Microsoft-OpenAI relations deteriorate (here)

• Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said he plans to ‘fully exploit’ royalty-free access to OpenAI’s models through 2032, despite losing exclusivity as OpenAI partners with Amazon - Microsoft’s AI business hit $37B annual run rate, up 123% year-over-year (here)

• Big Tech’s AI capex plans jumped to $725B this year as Google Cloud grew 63% (vs Amazon’s 22% & Microsoft’s 40%), helping Alphabet shares rise 6% to near $4.5T market cap whilst Meta fell 8% despite 33% revenue growth amid rising costs & vague AI timelines (here)

• SAP published new policies threatening to block unauthorised AI agents like OpenClaw from accessing customer data, citing performance & IP protection concerns - a defensive move as customers like Mercedes-Benz reduce SAP usage by 40% whilst using external AI tools for data analysis (here)

• SAP acquired Prior Labs (tabular foundation models) with €1B+ investment over 4 years to establish Europe’s leading frontier AI lab, targeting structured business data where LLMs struggle - Prior Labs’ TabPFN-2.6 tops benchmarks & has 3M+ downloads (here)

• Atlassian shares jumped 25% after Q3 results showed 32% revenue growth to $1.8B, with CEO noting customers using its AI search tool Rovo generate twice the annual recurring revenue of non-users - a sign AI integration may be driving product uptake rather than threatening traditional software providers (here)

Big Dogs

• OpenAI expanded its Amazon partnership to distribute AI models via AWS Bedrock after renegotiating Microsoft exclusivity terms, with Amazon having invested $15B of a committed $50B & securing $138B in data centre capacity deals (here)

• OpenAI projects 122M subscribers this year driven by $8 ChatGPT Go tier, expecting 80% of $20 Plus users to downgrade as it shifts from subscription to advertising revenue (targeting $102B ads by 2030, 36% of total revenue) (here)

• OpenAI has abandoned its original $500B Stargate joint venture model in favour of bilateral deals for computing capacity, halting data centre projects in the UK & Norway while securing over 8GW through partners like Oracle ($300B, 5-year deal) - now targeting $600B spending by 2030 despite missing revenue targets (here)

• OpenAI dismissed reports of missed internal targets as ‘clickbait’, insisting consumer & enterprise businesses are ‘firing on all cylinders’ despite growing investor concerns over AI infrastructure spending & computing costs outpacing revenue growth (here)

• Musk testified he was a ‘fool’ to provide $38M to OpenAI as a nonprofit, accusing Altman & Brockman of manipulation before converting to for-profit status now valued at $800B - seeks $180B damages & leadership removal (here). He also testified that xAI used distillation techniques to train Grok on OpenAI models, confirming widespread industry suspicions about frontier labs copying each other’s work - whilst OpenAI & Anthropic simultaneously campaign against Chinese firms using identical methods (here)

• Anthropic collecting investor allocations within 48 hours for $50B round at potential $900B+ valuation, closing within 2 weeks - would eclipse OpenAI’s $852B valuation & likely be final private round before IPO, as revenue run rate hits $40B vs $30B disclosed (here)

• Anthropic formed a $1.5B joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs & others to deploy its AI across their investment portfolios, with Blackstone & H&F investing $300M each whilst Goldman & General Atlantic commit $150M apiece - a revenue diversification play ahead of Anthropic’s expected IPO this year (here)

• Anthropic in talks to buy AI chips from UK startup Fractile as part of broader effort to reduce Nvidia dependence & lower inference costs, with Fractile raising 100M+ at 1B+ valuation partly on strength of potential Anthropic deal (here)

Venture Capital

• Startup bankruptcies exceeded exits for the first time in 2025, with insolvencies representing 51% of US portfolio exits & 54% in Europe - nearly 4,000 bankruptcies versus 3,600 exits as high 2020-21 valuations collide with ongoing liquidity constraints (here)

• UK’s Pension Schemes Bill gained Royal Assent with mandation watered down to 10% cap (5% for UK assets), after Lords rejected full compulsion of pension funds into specific asset classes - VC CEO Duncan Johnson argues self-regulation via Mansion House Accord (17 pension providers pledging 10% to private markets by 2030) beats mandation’s blunt instrument approach (here)

• Coatue launched Next Frontier to acquire land for AI data centres, with tens of billions expected to be deployed across projects targeting customers like Anthropic - the $70B investment firm is already developing a 430MW complex in Indiana through a JV that raised $5.7B in bonds (here)

• Founders Fund raised $6B for its fourth growth-stage fund just 10 mo after closing a $4.6B predecessor, with $4.5B from LPs & $1.5B from employees including Peter Thiel (here)

• 137 Ventures raised $700M across two growth-stage funds, deploying $1B in the past year into defence, AI & industrial companies including SpaceX, Anduril & Hadrian - positioning ahead of SpaceX’s expected $1T+ IPO (here)

• Earlybird VC closed €360M Fund VIII, its largest fund ever, focusing on deeptech & AI infrastructure with early investments in Black Forest Labs, Aleph Alpha & others (here)

• BMW i Ventures raised $300M for its third fund targeting agentic AI & physical AI startups across North America & Europe, bringing total assets under management to $1.1B as the German automaker’s VC arm positions for AI-driven manufacturing transformation (here)

• Ridgeline raised $180M through the SBA’s Critical Technologies Initiative, leveraging 1.25x debt against $81M private capital to back dual-use tech companies (here)

• Kompas VC raised €160M for its second fund to back early-stage startups in manufacturing, supply chains & sustainability across Europe’s fragmented markets (here)

• Illuminate Financial closed its $135M Early Growth Fund backed by BNP Paribas, Citi, Deutsche Börse, HSBC & others, targeting Series B+ AI & fintech companies serving financial services (here)

Regulation

• EU moves closer to fining Meta up to 6% of global turnover for failing to prevent under-13s accessing Instagram & Facebook, escalating transatlantic tech tensions as Trump administration calls DSA enforcement attacks on American platforms (here)

• UK tech ministers worry EU regulatory alignment could ‘smother’ British AI innovation & strain US ties, seeking opt-outs from Brussels’ stricter AI Act while maintaining laissez-faire approach that has attracted investment (here)

• US District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers told Elon Musk & OpenAI leadership to stop social media commentary during their high-profile trial, after Musk called CEO Sam Altman ‘Scam Altman’ & amplified critical coverage on X - all parties agreed to a ‘clean slate’ (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• New research warns Europe’s heavy reliance on Chinese green tech (90% of solar modules, 80% of wind turbines & batteries) creates national security risks including cyber attacks, supply disruptions & potential US pressure to remove Chinese components - echoing UK’s rejection of Chinese wind factory & National Grid component removal over cyber concerns (here)

• US warns European allies including UK, Poland, Lithuania & Estonia to expect serious delays for missile systems as Iran war depletes American stockpiles, forcing Pentagon to reallocate weapons from Indo-Pacific amid concerns about deterring China (here)

• Goldman Sachs stopped Hong Kong bankers from using Anthropic’s Claude AI models following strict contract interpretation, whilst maintaining access to other AI vendors like OpenAI - highlighting how US-China tensions are creating operational complexities for global financial services (here)

• UK Technology Secretary Liz Kendall announced a new AI hardware plan to secure domestic semiconductor capability & supply chains, calling AI the ‘defining currency of the age’ & warning Britain risks falling behind without tech sovereignty (here)

• Google agreed to let the Pentagon use its AI tools in classified settings, joining OpenAI & xAI after Anthropic refused over ethical concerns about mass surveillance & autonomous weapons - despite 600+ Google employees signing a letter opposing the deal (here)

• Russia now imports >90% of its sanctioned military technology through China, up from 80% last year, despite EU sanctions targeting semiconductors, electronics & machinery needed for weapons production. Most EU countries avoid harsher penalties on China, fearing Beijing’s retaliation, while China maintains it doesn’t recognise international sanctions (here)

• White House state dinner for King Charles III brought together tech leaders including Tim Cook, Jeff Bezos, Marc Andreessen & Marc Benioff alongside Trump administration officials, highlighting Silicon Valley’s continued access to power despite political shifts (here)

• Pentagon signed classified AI deals with seven companies (xAI, OpenAI, Google, Nvidia, Microsoft, AWS, Reflection) for ‘any lawful operational use’ on secret networks, after Anthropic refused broad licensing & was subsequently banned as a supply chain threat - now suing for political retaliation (here)

• Google CEO Sundar Pichai met Trump administration officials ostensibly about cybersecurity but primarily over worries about AI compute capacity for government defence systems, amid concerns that Anthropic’s restricted Claude Mythos model could throttle high-priority government access during crises (here)

• Build American AI, a nonprofit linked to OpenAI & Andreessen Horowitz executives, is funding influencer campaigns to promote US AI development whilst stoking fears about Chinese AI capabilities, highlighting how tech giants are deploying dark-money tactics to shape public opinion on AI geopolitics (here)

• UK defence officials warn the state pension triple lock could face suspension if Britain enters direct conflict with Russia. No main UK political party, except the Green Party, has made it official policy to axe the triple lock as it is seen as a politically toxic vote-loser, but the Office for Budget Responsibility last year forecast that the extra cost of the triple lock to state pension spending will be around £15.5bn by 2030. (here)

• Banksy installed a new statue overnight in central London depicting a suited man blindfolded by a flag walking off a ledge, placed among historical monuments in Waterloo Place. London authorities plan to keep the provocative artwork in place despite growing crowds (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Panthalassa raised $140M from Peter Thiel & others at nearly $1B valuation for wave-powered floating data centres, deploying 85m steel nodes that generate electricity from ocean waves to power AI chips via self-propelled vessels operating in international waters. Thiel, a co-founder of Palantir & PayPal, said: “The future demands more compute than we can imagine. Extraterrestrial solutions are no longer science fiction. Panthalassa has opened the ocean frontier.” (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• DeepSeek released V4-Pro (1.6T parameters) & V4-Flash (284B parameters), both with 1M token context & MIT licensing, pricing 80-90% below frontier models whilst claiming performance within 3-6 mo of GPT-5.4 & Gemini 3.1-Pro - a reminder that Chinese labs continue advancing open-weight capabilities at aggressive price points (here)

• Poolside launched two coding-focused AI models - flagship Laguna M.1 (225B parameters) & open-source Laguna XS.2 (33B parameters) - with the smaller model achieving 44.5% on SWE-bench Pro despite running locally on consumer hardware, positioning US-trained open weights against Chinese alternatives like DeepSeek (here)

• NVIDIA B200 GPU spot prices surged 114% to $4.95/hour in 6 weeks, driven by frontier AI model releases like GPT-5.5 requiring advanced memory capacity - signalling inflationary demand outpacing chip improvements & creating pricing power for cloud providers (here)

• OpenAI revealed GPT-5.5 developed an obsession with ‘goblin’ & fantasy creature metaphors during training - a byproduct of their personality selection feature (specifically “nerd” mode), which then required explicit system prompts to suppress the behaviour - highlighting how reinforcement learning rewards can create unintended biases that leak across model functions (here)

• Cloudflare launched agent-first infrastructure provisioning via Stripe Projects, allowing AI agents to autonomously create accounts, purchase domains, deploy code & handle billing without human intervention - a protocol shift that could accelerate agent-driven development workflows (here)

• Zuckerberg & Chan’s Biohub commits $500M over 5 years to build AI models of human cells, targeting datasets 10x larger than current billion-cell scope with partners including Nvidia & Allen Institute (here)

• Academic study finds one-third of websites created since 2022 are AI-generated, making the internet more cheerful but less semantically diverse - contrary to expectations, AI content isn’t spreading more falsehoods or failing to cite sources (here)

• Spotify launched ‘Verified by Spotify’ badges to distinguish human artists from AI-generated content, requiring sustained engagement, platform compliance & off-platform presence like concerts - response to synthetic tracks comprising 44% of daily uploads on rival Deezer (here)

• Nebius agreed to acquire Eigen AI for $643M in cash & shares to strengthen its Token Factory inference platform, combining Eigen’s optimization stack with Nebius’s global GPU capacity - the MIT HAN Lab team will establish Nebius’s Bay Area presence as inference becomes two-thirds of AI compute demand (here)

Cybersecurity

• White House blocked Anthropic’s proposal to expand Mythos AI model access from ~50 to ~120 entities over security concerns & computing power constraints, highlighting ongoing tensions despite recent reconciliation efforts following Pentagon disputes (here)

• CrowdStrike & Palo Alto Networks shares up 20% this month as Anthropic’s Mythos AI model identifies thousands of new cybersecurity vulnerabilities, positioning incumbent security firms to benefit from expected surge in enterprise cyber spending after 2 years of sluggish growth (here)

• NSA is using Anthropic’s Mythos model to find security vulnerabilities in Microsoft software, whilst Microsoft deploys the same AI tool to identify & patch flaws faster - highlighting how AI cyber capabilities are being shared selectively with governments & select companies to stay ahead of threat actors (here)

Defence

• Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth defended the Iran war costing $25B so far, attacked Democratic critics as the US’s biggest adversary, & falsely inflated Ukraine aid figures during contentious congressional testimony on Operation Epic Fury (here)

• Founders Fund increased its stake in Anduril as the defence startup expects revenue to double to $4.3B in 2026, though operating losses will hit $1.2B & won’t turn profitable until 2030 - reflecting the fund’s strategy of concentrated bets on perceived winners whilst Anduril burns venture capital to compete with traditional primes like Northrop Grumman (here)

Space

• Starcloud seeks funding at $2.2B valuation for space-based data centres, having launched its first demo satellite (single Nvidia H100 GPU) in November & planning 88,000-satellite constellation - facing heavyweight competition from SpaceX’s 1M satellite plans & Blue Origin’s 50,000-satellite ambitions despite only 25,000 satellites ever launched in human history (here)

• SpaceX plans to file for IPO this week in what would be the largest US public offering in years, pitching space launch, Starlink internet & orbital data centres whilst allocating 20%+ of shares to individual investors rather than the typical 10% - though recent $250B xAI acquisition may depress initial financials (here)

Energy

• Ming Yang Smart Energy accused the UK of ‘politicisation’ after being banned from offshore wind projects over national security concerns, despite a planned £1.5B Scottish investment. The world’s 4th-largest turbine maker said it would continue European expansion plans, eyeing Spain & other markets as Chinese wind tech faces growing geopolitical resistance (here)

• Belgium in talks to nationalise nuclear assets from Engie, suspending reactor dismantling plans as the country reconsiders extending reactor lifespans beyond 2025 amid Europe’s broader nuclear renaissance following energy shocks (here)

• Notable deal:

  • CMBlu Energy (Germany) raised €50M at €1B as Europe’s latest unicorn, with Samsung Ventures backing its non-lithium long-duration storage tech targeting data centres & utilities - highlighting European energy storage competitiveness amid supply chain reshoring (here)

Crypto

• Robinhood shares fell 6% after crypto trading revenue dropped 47% year-over-year, though total revenue rose 15% to $1.07B driven by record prediction market volumes of 8.8B event contracts; the firm plans to launch its own prediction market exchange this year via joint venture with Susquehanna (here)

• Polymarket partnered with Chainalysis to deploy insider trading detection tools following high-profile cases including a US soldier’s $400K bet on Maduro’s capture & Israeli suspects using classified intel, as prediction markets face regulatory scrutiny despite Trump’s recent criticism of the sector (here)

EVs / AVs

• Uber plans to equip millions of driver vehicles with sensors to create a massive data collection grid for autonomous vehicle companies, expanding beyond its current AV Labs fleet to become the data infrastructure layer for the entire self-driving industry (here)

• BYD reported Q1 net profit of $600M, down 55% year-on-year, as domestic Chinese EV sales slowed despite government subsidies phasing out - though export strength helped offset domestic weakness with European sales more than doubling to 74,000 vehicles (here)

Robotics

• Meta acquired Assured Robot Intelligence (ARI) for undisclosed terms, bringing co-founders Xiaolong Wang (ex-Nvidia) & Lerrel Pinto (ex-NYU) to its Superintelligence Labs to advance humanoid robotics foundation models for physical labour tasks (here)

• Notable deal: ZaiNar raised funds at $1B valuation from Steve Jurvetson & Jerry Yang after 9 years developing 5G-based location tracking accurate to 4 inches indoors/outdoors, securing $500M in contracts & negotiating $5B more as robotics & physical AI drive demand for precise positioning beyond GPS capabilities (here)

If the future of AI is determined solely by two superpowers, power and monopoly rents will concentrate quickly. But this week’s headlines suggested something more interesting may be emerging: a messier, more plural world in which others still have room to compete.

In China, the most underplayed line in DeepSeek-V4’s release was that it validated fine-grained Expert Parallelism on Huawei Ascend NPUs with a 1.50–1.73x speedup - a technical way of saying advanced AI workloads are becoming more viable on domestic Chinese chips rather than relying entirely on Nvidia’s stack. The announcement landed just as Washington escalated accusations that Chinese actors were distilling US frontier models and engaging in industrial-scale AI theft. China’s strategy appears straightforward: absorb capability while lowering dependence.

In the United States, the week showed a different version of the same contest. Google prepared to deepen its backing of Anthropic. Cirrascale’s new air-gapped Gemini appliance offered governments, banks and regulated industries a way to run frontier AI on their own infrastructure rather than inside a public cloud. All while SpaceX/xAI secured the right to acquire Cursor for $60 billion, and Nvidia surged to an over $5 trillion market capitalisation as investors continued to reward the incumbent provider of the world’s AI compute backbone.

But beyond Washington and Beijing, a third camp may be taking shape. Ineffable Intelligence’s record UK seed round was a reminder that Britain continues to generate frontier talent and model-layer ambition. The Canadian-German tie-up between Cohere and Aleph Alpha - a roughly $20 billion combination backed by Schwarz Group’s €500 million lead investment - suggested scale may increasingly come through alliance rather than isolation. Middle-power coalitions need not outspend the giants if they can out-coordinate them.

The US and China may still steal the headlines, but they do not have to own the whole map. Put DeepSeek on Huawei chips next to Google’s sovereign deployment push and Cohere/Aleph Alpha’s transatlantic merger, and a different picture emerges: lower-cost models, trusted deployments and cross-border coalitions are creating more routes to relevance than a simple duopoly would allow. A more complex technological order - more ecosystem than empire - is a healthier one.

In an open ocean, only sharks are happy. On a coral reef, there is room for many more winners.

IPOs / Publics

• US IPO activity surged with $17.3B targeted this month as companies rush to debut before SpaceX’s record-breaking June IPO plan, with recent deals delivering 21% weighted returns vs S&P 500’s 4.2% (here)

• 5 x IPOs planned this week - 3 biotechs (Seaport, Avalyn, Hemab) targeting neuropsychiatric disorders, pulmonary fibrosis & coagulation disorders plan to raise $200M each; Silver Bow Mining (exploration-stage Montana miner) seeks $50M; Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square vehicles also set to debut - expected to raise $5B, down from $10B target (here & here)

• X-Energy (Amazon-backed small modular reactor developer) raised $1.0B at $9.5B in the first traditional IPO for advanced nuclear tech, pricing well above range & closing up 27%; critical materials supplier Elmet Group raised $120M at $420M, up 21%, highlighting non-China supply chains amid defence & aerospace demand (here & here)

• Nvidia hit $5.06T market cap as shares reached $208.27, breaking out of a $170-190 trading range held since summer 2025 on renewed optimism around enterprise AI adoption where it dominates chip supply (here)

• BoE deputy governor warned global stock markets are overvalued & set to fall, citing AI bubble risks, $2.5T private credit market vulnerabilities & macroeconomic shocks - unusual public market call from BoE leadership (here)

• Google Cloud unveiled TPU 8t & 8i chips designed for AI training & inference respectively, claiming 117-124% better performance per watt than predecessors whilst announcing a $750M fund for corporate AI adoption (here)

• Google’s Gemini now runs on fully air-gapped servers via Cirrascale partnership, targeting banks & governments unwilling to send sensitive data to public cloud APIs - the model self-destructs if tampered with & vanishes when unplugged, marking a shift from cloud-first to private AI deployment for regulated industries (here)

• Google Cloud CEO Thomas Kurian argues the company’s integrated AI strategy - owning chips, models & infrastructure - positions it to close ground on AWS & Microsoft Azure, as Google invests $185B in capex whilst predicting a market shakeout for loss-making AI startups dependent on private funding (here)

• Hundreds of Google employees petitioned CEO Sundar Pichai to block Pentagon access to Google AI for classified military projects, echoing concerns that led to Anthropic being dropped from Defence Department programmes 2 mo earlier (here)

• Meta plans to cut 10% of its workforce (8,000 employees) on 20 May & freeze 6,000 open roles to boost efficiency & offset heavy AI spending, with Zuckerberg’s aggressive push into large language models & infrastructure driving record capex projections (here)

• Meta signed a multi-billion dollar deal with Amazon to use Graviton5 CPUs for AI reasoning & code generation, adding to $115B-135B capex plans that include chip deals with Nvidia, AMD & Google as Meta builds AI infrastructure whilst developing internal chips (here)

• Meta is installing keystroke & mouse tracking software on US employee computers to capture work interactions for training AI agents designed to autonomously perform office tasks, as the company plans 10% workforce cuts starting May 20th - a surveillance approach that would likely violate European data protection laws (here)

• Oracle’s $300B OpenAI deal faces financing bottlenecks as banks hit exposure limits syndicating multibillion-dollar data centre construction loans, with JPMorgan & others struggling to distribute risk across institutions - highlighting capital constraints that could slow AI infrastructure build-out alongside power grid & public opposition challenges (here)

Big Dogs

• SpaceX secured the right to acquire AI coding start-up Cursor for $60B as Musk attempts to catch up with OpenAI & Anthropic ahead of SpaceX’s record $1.75T IPO - if SpaceX doesn’t exercise the option, it pays a $10B termination fee (here)

• OpenAI released GPT-5.5, which the company calls its smartest model yet & a step towards creating a unified ‘super app’ combining ChatGPT, Codex & AI browser - intensifying competition with Anthropic & Musk’s X ambitions (here)

• Microsoft dropped its exclusive rights to sell OpenAI’s models, allowing the ChatGPT maker to pursue deals with Amazon & other cloud rivals whilst ending revenue-sharing arrangements - a shift that simplifies their complex partnership as OpenAI seeks broader distribution (here)

• OpenAI is committing up to $1.5B to a joint venture with PE firms TPG, Bain Capital, Advent & others to deploy AI across portfolio companies, guaranteeing investors 17.5% annual returns whilst competing with Anthropic’s enterprise push (here)

• OpenAI reportedly developing smartphone with MediaTek & Qualcomm for 2028 launch, replacing traditional apps with AI agents to bypass iOS/Android restrictions & capture deeper user data from ChatGPT’s 1B weekly users (here)

• OpenAI missed internal user & revenue targets, prompting CFO Sarah Friar to question $600B in data centre spending commitments as the company eyes an IPO by year-end amid slowing ChatGPT growth & competition from Google’s Gemini (here)

• Google to invest up to $40B in Anthropic ($10B initial at $350B, remainder tied to performance targets) plus 5 gigawatt compute deal starting 2027, following Amazon’s $25B investment & 5GW commitment - highlighting Big Tech’s escalating AI infrastructure arms race (here)

• DeepSeek-V4 launched with near state-of-the-art AI performance at roughly 1/6th the cost of GPT-5.5 & Claude Opus 4.7, featuring a 1M token context window & open-source MIT licensing - while notably training on Huawei Ascend NPUs rather than Nvidia hardware, marking China’s push for semiconductor independence in frontier AI development (here)

• DeepSeek is raising its first external funding round targeting a $20B valuation, primarily to retain AI researchers being poached by rivals offering lucrative stock options - the Chinese AI startup has lost key talent to ByteDance & Tencent despite competitive cash compensation (here)

Venture Capital / Finance

• Thoma Bravo is nearing a deal to hand over software firm Medallia to creditors including Blackstone, KKR & Apollo, wiping out $5.1B in equity after the 2021 $6.4B buyout - highlighting private equity’s software sector stress as AI disruption & high debt burdens collide (here)

Regulation

• China warned the EU it will take “countermeasures” if its companies are hurt by the proposed Industrial Accelerator Act, which would restrict foreign investments over €100M from countries with >40% global production in strategic sectors like batteries & solar panels, requiring 50% EU workers & tech transfer to European partners (here)

• California’s proposed 5% billionaire wealth tax gathered 1.5M signatures for November’s ballot, prompting Silicon Valley exodus including Google cofounders Page & Brin plus Zuckerberg relocating primary residences to avoid the levy (here)

• Maine Governor Janet Mills vetoed what would have been America’s first statewide data centre moratorium, citing failure to exempt a project in struggling mill town Jay - highlighting tension between AI infrastructure growth & local economic needs as states grapple with regulating data centres amid Trump administration threats to sue states over ‘cumbersome regulation’ (here)

• Musk vs Altman trial begins this week, with Musk seeking $134B damages & demanding OpenAI revert to full nonprofit status whilst removing Altman & Brockman from leadership - posing existential threat to the $852B-valued company ahead of its planned mega-IPO (here)

• China blocked Meta’s $2B acquisition of Manus (AI agent), ordering termination despite Butterfly Effect’s attempt to distance itself by moving headquarters to Singapore after raising $75M from Benchmark (here)

• China told AI startups Moonshot & StepFun to reject US capital without government approval, part of broader restrictions triggered by Meta’s $2B acquisition of Chinese startup Manus - a move that risks isolating China’s tech sector from two decades of American venture backing (here)

• UK ministers resist EU alignment on AI regulation & lab-grown meat rules, fearing it could undermine Britain’s innovation edge & US tech partnerships - negotiations continue as Starmer pursues broader EU reset whilst seeking sector-specific opt-outs (here)

• FCA led first operation to disrupt illegal P2P crypto trading, targeting 8 London locations with HMRC & SWROCU - no FCA-registered P2P crypto traders currently operate legally in UK (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• China’s R&D spending has reached parity with (and by purchasing power measures surpassed) the US, with both nations crossing $1T in research investment - marking China’s ascent from among the world’s lowest research spenders in 1980 to leading in scientific publications, highly-cited papers & patent filings whilst US federal R&D spending has declined from 1.86% of GDP in 1964 to 0.66% in 2021 (here)

• Palantir employees express internal turmoil over the company’s role as technological backbone of Trump’s immigration enforcement, with WIRED obtaining internal Slack messages showing worker concerns about civil liberties implications & “descent into fascism” (here & here)

• Palantir’s £330M NHS contract shows mixed results 15 mo in - some hospitals report benefits like 1,000+ patient transfers between sites, but critics call it ‘expensive database’ delivering similar capabilities to existing systems at higher cost (here)

• Iran war has cost Europe €22B in energy premiums compared to pre-war levels, forcing European manufacturers into 20-year US LNG contracts at premium rates whilst China’s electrification pace (30-32% electricity share vs Europe’s 24-26%) leaves the continent increasingly dependent on American fossil fuel exports as a strategic lever (here)

• White House accuses China of ‘industrial-scale’ AI theft via distillation attacks using tens of thousands of proxy accounts to extract IP from US labs, as Trump administration prepares countermeasures ahead of Xi Jinping meeting (here)

• King Charles addresses US Congress to repair US-UK ‘special relationship’ strained by PM Starmer’s initial reluctance to support US-led Iran war operations, with Trump calling the partnership ‘not good at all’ (here)

• India’s $1.3B ‘sovereign AI’ initiative faces contradictions as infrastructure relies on Nvidia chips whilst US legal frameworks could still compel American cloud providers to access India-hosted data, highlighting undefined sovereignty standards in AI governance (here)

• UAE announces plan to run 50% of government operations on autonomous AI systems within 2 years, positioning itself as the first nation to implement agentic AI at this scale across public services, with Sheikh Mansour overseeing execution (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Cohere (Canada) & Aleph Alpha (Germany) agreed $20B merger to create transatlantic ‘sovereign AI’ alternative to US Big Tech, backed by German & Canadian governments plus $600M from Schwarz Group (Lidl owner) - early consolidation signal as middle powers seek AI independence from US-China duopoly (here)

• Martin Lueck, co-founder of £9B hedge fund Aspect Capital & quant pioneer, warns against fully delegating trading decisions to AI, arguing firms need to understand why models make trades rather than operating ‘black boxes’ - a counterpoint to AQR’s Cliff Asness who admitted to ‘surrendering more to the machines’ (here)

• Atlassian, HubSpot & 79 of 500 tracked software firms shifted to usage-based AI pricing by end-2025, double the 2024 figure, as flat-fee models proved unsustainable amid rising compute costs & concerns AI agents will reduce seat-based subscriptions (here)

• Jeff Bezos’s AI lab Project Prometheus is in talks to lease 38,000 sq ft at London’s King’s Cross, following its $10B raise at $38B valuation - part of an AI office space surge that could reach 4M sq ft in London by 2033, up from 1.5M today (here)

• Ex-OpenAI VP Jerry Tworek’s new startup Core Automation has recruited top researchers from Anthropic & Google DeepMind, including Rohan Anil & Anmol Gulati, aiming to build automated AI research systems beyond current scaling paradigms (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Cognition (creator of AI coding assistant Devin) in talks to raise hundreds of millions at $25B valuation, more than doubling from its $10.2B September round as demand for AI-generated code accelerates (here)

  • Ineffable Intelligence, founded by ex-DeepMind researcher David Silver, raised $1.1B at $5.1B to develop reinforcement learning AI that discovers knowledge without human training data - joining London’s growing AI hub alongside similar ‘pentacorn’ ventures from star researchers (here & here)

Cybersecurity

• Anthropic’s Mythos vulnerability detection model leaked to unauthorised users via third-party vendor breach linked to Mercor supply chain attack, but security researchers suggest the hype exceeds reality - the model hasn’t found zero-days that human experts couldn’t discover & claimed ‘thousands’ of vulnerabilities may only be around 40 confirmed (here)

• Meanwhile, UK government in talks with Anthropic over expanding access to Claude Mythos, the powerful AI model that can rapidly detect cyber vulnerabilities, as British banks seek expedited access to strengthen defences following warnings from Jamie Dimon & German central bank chief (here)

• Per the FT, Anthropic’s Claude Mythos AI model is driving a surge in software patches after identifying vulnerabilities, with Microsoft alone rolling out 150 updates for one bank since release - prompting cybersecurity chiefs to warn of risks to critical infrastructure & call for coordinated government-business response as the technology proliferates beyond US guardrails (here)

• Survey of UK companies with £100M+ revenue finds 61% lack full understanding of how their data is handled when processed by AI systems overseas, with three-quarters reporting weekly cross-border data transfers - highlighting compliance risks as AI adoption accelerates without adequate governance frameworks (here

• QBE & Beazley are introducing sublimits on AI-related cyber claims, capping LLMjacking losses at ~10% of total policy limits as insurers rush to limit exposure to emerging AI risks including hallucinations & regulatory breaches (here)

• Health records from 500,000 UK Biobank participants were found for sale on Alibaba before being swiftly removed by Chinese authorities, prompting data access suspension & highlighting ongoing security gaps in Britain’s premier genomic research programme (here). UK Biobank CEO blamed ‘a few bad apples’ at three academic institutions for posting the de-identified medical data (here)

Defence

• US defence stocks fell 5-10% despite massive munitions expenditure in Iran conflict as production bottlenecks & uncertainty over Trump’s $1.5T budget proposal weigh on investor sentiment - classic ‘buy tension, sell war’ dynamic as capacity constraints limit near-term profit realisation (here)

• US Army soldier Gannon Ken Van Dyke charged with making $400K by betting on Polymarket using classified intelligence from the January operation that captured Venezuelan President Maduro, allegedly placing his final wager hours before the raid (here)

Energy

• Trump cancelled Iran peace talks in Pakistan, driving oil prices up 2% (Brent crude to $107/barrel) whilst global markets remained mixed as shipping disruptions through the Strait of Hormuz continue (here)

• UK government corrected its AI data centre emissions forecast by 136x after routine review, now projecting 34 MtCO₂ over the decade to 2035 vs previous 0.25 MtCO₂ estimate, raising questions about net-zero commitments amid data centre expansion (here)

• US electricity demand will hit consecutive record highs in 2026-27, driven by AI data centres & crypto mining, with consumption rising to 4,381B kWh by 2027 as renewables reach 27% of generation mix (here)

• Notable deals

  • X-energy raised $1B in IPO at $23 per share (above $16-19 range), driven by data centre electricity demand & deals with Dow for industrial heat & Amazon for 5GW nuclear power by 2039 (here)

Robotics

• Notable deals:

  • Physical Intelligence (robotics AI) in talks to raise ~$1B at $11B valuation, nearly doubling from its $5.6B November round led by Alphabet’s CapitalG - Founders Fund participating with Lightspeed, Thrive & Lux in discussions (here)

  • Sereact raised $110M Series B led by Headline to develop Cortex 2.0, an AI model enabling robots to predict consequences & avoid errors before they occur - already powering systems for BMW & Daimler Truck with plans to expand into US retail applications (here)

Quantum

• Goldman Sachs disbanded its quantum computing team after discovering algorithms would require millions of years & 8M qubits to solve portfolio optimisation, whilst JPMorgan maintains 50+ quantum researchers across trading, risk & cryptography - reflecting Wall Street’s split on whether the technology remains too early despite McKinsey forecasting quantum revenue to reach $72B by 2035 (here)

EVs

• BYD’s Q1 net profit dropped 55% to $600M as Chinese EV sales slowed despite phased-out subsidies, though the Iran war’s energy shock boosted global demand & European sales doubled to 74,000 vehicles (here)

But as power receives overdue political attention, the week’s headlines point to scarcity elsewhere in the stack. In the US, nearly 40% of data centre projects reportedly face delays, while Maine became the first state to halt new large-scale data centre construction, with many more states considering the same. The practical limits on AI expansion are increasingly planning approvals, grid access, construction timelines and hardware supply.

Against that backdrop, OpenAI recently raised at roughly $850 billion and this week Anthropic was reportedly ‘shrugging’ off investors at similar levels. Capital remains a weapon - these businesses require vast sums of it - but money cannot magic new substations into existence. Capital buys time. Margins buy independence. Anthropic’s Claude Opus 4.7 release offers a clue. Analysis suggests the same input may now map to materially more tokens at similar headline pricing. Whether this is margin management or compute rationing points to the same conclusion: model labs are desperately managing scarce capacity.

Which leads to a sharper question: what kills Anthropic?

NIMBYism, quite possibly. Data centres require land, water, power and transmission lines — all the ingredients modern politics struggles to permit quickly. Meanwhile, the hyperscalers control an estimated 70% of global AI compute. They own the customer relationships, run the cloud platforms and possess balance sheets that recycle existing profits into chips, campuses and power procurement. Anthropic’s $100 billion Amazon commitment reflects that reality. The frontier labs are fighting the infrastructure war on borrowed ground.

Apple’s decision to outsource AI to Google while appointing a hardware executive to succeed Tim Cook offers a different perspective. Cook has spent a career making enormously profitable decisions. If there is a strategic message in that handover, it is that LLMs are being commoditised. Durable value lies elsewhere: devices, distribution, compute at the edge.

When the Channel Tunnel opened in 1994, it was one of the great engineering achievements of the late twentieth century and one of the more sobering financial outcomes. Builders absorbed immense capex and construction risk, only to find that long-term value accrued to those operating on top of the asset.

History rhymes. Vast sums are being committed upfront, scarcity is real, everyone agrees the asset matters. What remains unresolved is who captures the economics once the tunnel is built. Meanwhile, markets remain sufficiently delirious that even Allbirds is trying its luck.

IPOs / Publics

• S&P 500 closed above 7,000 for the first time, up 2% since the US-Iran war began in February, as investors bet on imminent peace despite ongoing Strait of Hormuz disruptions that have sent oil prices to decade highs (here)

• Taiwan’s stock market overtook the UK’s to become the world’s 7th largest at $4.13T, driven by TSMC which reported record Q1 profits of $18B (+58% YoY) & comprises 45% of Taiwan’s market cap - highlighting Asia’s exposure to the AI chip supercycle versus Europe’s limited positioning outside ASML (here)

• X-Energy (Amazon-backed nuclear reactor developer) targets $7.5B valuation in US IPO, seeking up to $814M by offering 42.9M shares at $16-19 each, as nuclear experiences resurgence driven by hyperscaler electricity demand for AI processing (here)

• Cerebras filed for IPO after scrapping 2024 plans, reporting $88M profit on $510M revenue (76% growth) driven by $20B+ OpenAI deal through 2028 & reduced UAE customer concentration from 87% to 24% (here)

• Wise confirmed its primary listing switch from London to the US will complete this quarter, marking another blow to the City after reporting 26% growth in cross-border volumes to £50B & 22% customer growth to 11.3M (here)

• Victory Giant (PCB maker for AI servers) seeks $2.2B in Hong Kong IPO at 37% discount to Shenzhen price, backed by cornerstone investors including Jack Ma’s Yunfeng Capital - testing appetite for tech listings amid geopolitical tensions & regulatory scrutiny (here)

• Ramp (corporate card & expense software) hit $1.4B annual revenue run rate as it prepares for IPO, up from $1B in September, with customer base growing 70% YoY & expects $125M free cash flow this year - valuation jumped from $13B to $32B across three 2025 rounds led by Lightspeed (here)

• Google assembled a strike team to improve its AI coding models after falling behind Anthropic, which leads in code generation - part of Sergey Brin’s push toward AI that can improve itself by automating software development (here)

• Google is in talks with Marvell to develop two new AI inference chips - a memory processing unit to work alongside TPUs & a new TPU variant - as it seeks to diversify from Broadcom amid surging inference demand. Google plans ~2M memory processing units vs 6M TPUs by 2027, highlighting the growing need for specialised inference hardware as AI workloads become more sophisticated (here)

• Tim Cook will step down as Apple CEO in September after 15 years, becoming executive chairman as John Ternus (hardware engineering head) takes over - transition comes as Apple faces questions over AI strategy, executive departures & navigating US-China tensions despite remaining highly profitable with $110B annual profit (here)

• ASML raised 2026 sales guidance to €36B-€40B (up to 22% growth) as AI chip demand drives orders for its extreme ultraviolet lithography machines, though US export restrictions on China sales create ongoing policy pressure (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic committed to spend $100B on Amazon chips & computing over 10 years, securing 5GW of capacity, whilst Amazon invests $5B immediately & up to $20B more over time at Anthropic’s $380B valuation (here)

• Anthropic released Claude Opus 4.7, narrowly reclaiming the lead from OpenAI’s GPT-5.4 on key benchmarks (1753 vs 1674 Elo on knowledge work evaluation) with enhanced self-verification capabilities & 3x higher image resolution processing, though GPT-5.4 still leads in agentic search & multilingual tasks - highlighting the increasingly tight competition between frontier AI models (here)

• Anthropic is testing an in-chat app builder in Claude that lets users generate applications from prompts, directly challenging Lovable - the Stockholm startup that raised $330M at $6.6B in Dec 2024 & has become Europe’s hottest vibe-coding company (here)

• Anthropic announced plans for a London office expansion to house 800 people, growing from its current 200-person presence, days after OpenAI revealed its first permanent London office - both moves highlighting the UK capital’s emergence as a key AI hub outside the US (here)

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei met with White House officials including chief of staff Susie Wiles in talks described as ‘productive’, as the Trump administration seeks to restore government access to the AI company’s technology after the Pentagon designated it a supply chain risk over disagreements on military use of AI (here)

• The NSA is using Anthropic’s powerful Mythos model for cybersecurity scanning despite the Pentagon labelling Anthropic a ‘supply chain risk’ & moving to blacklist the company in February, highlighting tensions between operational needs & institutional disputes over AI governance (here)

• OpenAI launches new image generation model with significantly improved text rendering & realistic output, targeting Google’s dominance after CEO Sam Altman declared ‘code red’ over competitive threats - enhanced capabilities could boost advertising & education applications (here)

• OpenAI launched GPT-5.4-Cyber to select customers, following Anthropic’s Mythos release last week - both models autonomously hunt software vulnerabilities, triggering regulatory concerns as US Treasury & Fed summoned major banks to discuss cyber risks posed by AI-powered security tools (here) (to be clear: the two aren't directly comparable - GPT-5.4-Cyber's benchmarks are based on capture-the-flag competitions, where vulnerabilities are pre-staged; Mythos goes further, autonomously traversing the full chain from unknown vulnerability discovery to working exploit)

• Cursor raising at least $2B at $50B valuation from Thrive & Andreessen Horowitz, with strategic participation from Nvidia, as annualized revenue climbs towards $6B target by end-2026. The startup recently achieved gross margin profitability on enterprise sales by deploying proprietary models alongside cheaper alternatives like China’s Kimi, reducing reliance on third-party providers like Anthropic (here)

• DeepSeek is raising outside capital for the first time at $10B+ valuation, seeking at least $300M to compete in frontier AI development as it faces talent drain to ByteDance & Xiaomi while struggling with V4 model delays amid U.S. chip restrictions (here)

Venture Capital

• Sequoia Capital raised ~$7B for late-stage investments, doubling its previous expansion fund size as new co-leaders Alfred Lin & Pat Grady position for major AI bets including OpenAI, Anthropic & xAI - all eyeing 2026 IPOs that could deliver significant returns (here)

• Accel raised $5B ($4B for its late-stage Leaders Fund, $650M sidecar) targeting AI-focused companies across software, hardware, robotics, defence tech & data centres, averaging $200M checks as competition intensifies for late-stage AI deals (here)

• UK launched £500M Sovereign AI fund supporting domestic AI startups to win from the UK. Chaired by Balderton Capital’s James Wise & supported by Joséphine Kant, the fund offers compute access via government supercomputers alongside traditional funding. The first 7 teams to work with the fund include Callosum, Prima Mente, Cosine, Cursive, Doubleword, Twig Bio & Odyssey (here)

• Lockheed Martin expanded its venture fund 250% to $1B, with three UK portfolio companies (CloudNC, SatVu, Q5D) representing advanced manufacturing, satellite imaging & robotics - highlighting US defence capital’s growing presence in UK dual-use tech but raising questions about long-term UK defence industrial base benefits (here)

• British Business Bank committed £100M to Apposite Healthcare Growth I, its largest fund commitment to date (here)

• ET Capital launched Cambridge Venture Index Fund 2, targeting up to 20 early-stage deeptech startups from Cambridge & Oxford ecosystems (here)

• Unconventional Ventures closed second round of Fund II, to support its thesis of investing in overlooked founders building scalable companies (here)

• ACE & Company raised $228M across two funds (here)

Regulation

• Microsoft & other US tech firms successfully lobbied the EU to classify datacentre emissions data as confidential, with industry demands written almost verbatim into EU rules - blocking public access to environmental metrics despite legal scholars warning this violates transparency obligations under the Aarhus convention (here)

• EU plans biggest merger rule relaxation in decades, with draft guidelines prioritising scale, innovation & resilience over pure consumer pricing effects - a shift towards creating ‘European champions’ to compete with US & Chinese rivals after geopolitical shocks exposed regional economic weaknesses (here)

• Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent confirms an executive order requiring US banks to collect citizenship data from customers is ‘in process’, despite warnings of $2.6B-5.6B in compliance costs & concerns about excluding immigrants from the banking system (here)

• US Customs launches CAPE refund system on 20 April to process $166B in tariff refunds after Supreme Court struck down Trump’s global tariffs as unlawful in February, with 56,497 importers already registered for $127B in electronic refunds (here)

• The US Energy Information Administration plans to implement the first nationwide mandatory survey of data center energy consumption, following pilot programmes in Texas, Washington & northern Virginia that complete by September (here)

• Maine became the first US state to ban data centre construction, prohibiting projects over 20 megawatts until late 2027 for impact assessment - part of growing nationwide resistance that has blocked $156B in data centre investments over energy & environmental concerns (here)

• Ofcom launched investigations into Telegram over child sexual abuse material allegations & two teen chat sites (Teen Chat & Chat Avenue) over grooming risks, following evidence from Canadian Centre for Child Protection - six file-sharing providers withdrew from UK after similar safety concerns (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• European governments are rapidly abandoning WhatsApp & Signal for homegrown messaging apps, with France, Germany, Poland, Netherlands, Belgium & Luxembourg deploying secure alternatives for official communications - a sovereignty push accelerated by Trump’s return & incidents like Pentagon classified plans shared on Signal (here)

• UK Energy Secretary Ed Miliband will unveil plans to delink electricity prices from gas costs by pushing wind & solar farms into fixed-price contracts for difference, backed by higher windfall taxes on generators outside these schemes - responding to Iran war-driven price spikes that threaten Labour’s pledge to cut bills by £300 by 2030 (here)

• European Commission recommends remote working mandates, public transport subsidies & heat pump VAT cuts to reduce energy demand amid Middle East war price shock, drawing from 2022 crisis playbook while preparing electricity market reforms (here)

• Cubbit, SUSE, Elemento Cloud & StorPool launched Europe’s first sovereign disaster recovery stack, designed to protect critical workloads from foreign vendor kill-switches whilst enabling data repatriation from non-European cloud infrastructure (here)

• Per the FT, Europe faces a stark choice between siding with Trump’s America or authoritarian China, but deeper US-Europe economic & industrial integration remains the only viable path to counter Beijing’s export-led mercantilism and maintain technological sovereignty in AI & critical supply chains (here)

• Palantir published a 22-point manifesto (book summary) on X denouncing inclusivity & ‘regressive’ cultures whilst defending military AI development, arguing Silicon Valley owes a moral debt to America & criticising ‘vacant pluralism’ - timing coincides with congressional scrutiny over its ICE deportation tools (here)

• Thomson Reuters faces whistleblower lawsuit from fired employee who raised concerns about ICE using its Clear surveillance tool for immigration enforcement, whilst shareholders demand human rights assessment of the $4.8M contract amid broader backlash against surveillance tech providers (here)

• Citadel says Trump’s social media posts have transformed oil trading during the Iran war, with volatility increasing 300% in early weeks as traders now monitor presidential messages alongside physical flows - oil hit nearly $120/barrel after Iran moved to close Strait of Hormuz carrying 20% of global crude (here)

• China deployed warships through waters closer to Japan’s mainland on the same day Japan joined US-Philippine Balikatan military drills with 1,400 combat troops for the first time, escalating Pacific tensions as both sides test military capabilities around the First Island Chain (here)

• James Kirkup argues Britain’s defence weakness stems from public indifference, with Ipsos polling showing just 6% of 18-24 year-olds prioritise defence vs 52% of over-75s, whilst 48% of Britons would refuse to bear arms under any circumstances - reflecting an erosion of martial culture that leaves politicians with no electoral cost for neglecting military spending (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Fermi shares plunged 20% after CEO Toby Neugebauer & CFO Miles Everson resigned, extending an 82% decline since the data centre company’s October IPO - insider sales of $68M preceded the departures as the Trump-linked firm struggles to find anchor tenants for its $50B Texas campus despite retaining Amazon’s 20-year lease commitment (here)

• Nearly 40% of US data centre projects face delays of 3+ months due to labour shortages, permitting hurdles & equipment constraints, threatening to slow AI expansion for Microsoft, OpenAI & other hyperscalers racing to build gigawatt-scale facilities (here)

• Allbirds, the eco-friendly trainer maker that fell 99% from its $4B peak valuation, is pivoting to become an AI compute provider called ‘NewBird AI’ after raising $50M via convertible notes, sending shares up 774% on meme stock speculation (here)

• Canada’s Cohere & Germany’s Aleph Alpha reportedly in advanced merger talks with Berlin government backing, as Germany pushes to create a European AI champion to compete with US & Chinese dominance - merger would create dual-headquartered entity with German state as key customer (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Recursive Superintelligence, a 4-month-old AI startup founded by former DeepMind & OpenAI engineers, raised $500M at $4B from GV & Nvidia with potential to reach $1B total, targeting self-improving AI systems that learn without human intervention (here)

  • Project Prometheus (Jeff Bezos’s AI lab) nears closing $10B funding at $38B valuation, targeting AI models for industrial applications & physical world understanding - JPMorgan & BlackRock among investors in what would be one of the largest early-stage rounds globally (here)

  • Factory (AI software development platform) raised $150M Series C led by Khosla Ventures at $1.5B, doubling revenue monthly for 6 mo with enterprise clients including Nvidia & Adobe as autonomous coding agents evolve into full-spectrum development systems (here)

Cybersecurity

• NIST announced it will only enrich CVEs for critical vulnerabilities due to overwhelming volumes - affecting CISA KEV entries, US federal software, & critical infrastructure systems. The agency has fallen 30,000 CVEs behind since 2024 amid budget cuts & expects AI tools to further explode vulnerability discoveries (here)

• Canada unveiled a comprehensive cyber resilience plan targeting AI-driven threats to critical infrastructure including energy, transportation & healthcare, emphasising collaboration between government & private sector entities to detect & mitigate sophisticated cyber attacks (here)

• MIT Technology Review identified 22 Telegram channels selling KYC bypass tools targeting major crypto exchanges & banks including Binance & BBVA, as cyberscammers exploit virtual camera technology to circumvent facial recognition systems for money laundering - part of an escalating arms race as regulators tighten oversight following $17B in crypto fraud losses in 2025 (here)

• Brussels launched an age verification app that hackers claim to have breached in 2 minutes, exposing unprotected sensitive data & bypassable authentication despite EU claims it was ‘technically ready’ - highlighting rushed regulatory tech deployment amid political pressure to protect minors online (here)

Defence

• Rheinmetall secured a €300M German drone contract, initially worth €30M more than rival deals with Munich’s Helsing & Berlin’s Stark, with potential expansion to €2.39B over 7 years (capped at €1B per supplier). The deal follows CEO Armin Papperger’s controversial comments dismissing Ukraine’s drone industry as ‘Ukrainian housewives’ making ‘Lego’ drones with kitchen 3D printers (here)

• Chancellor Rachel Reeves is considering issuing war bonds to raise £17.6B for defence spending to meet Labour’s 3% GDP target by 2029-2030, supported by Defence Secretary John Healey & backed by Labour peer Lord Hain & Lib Dem leader Sir Ed Davey as a politically preferable alternative to welfare cuts (here)

Space

• Iran’s IRGC secretly acquired Chinese spy satellite TEE-01B for $36.6M in late 2024, using it to target US military bases across the Middle East during March war - satellite provided half-metre resolution imagery to guide strikes & assess damage, highlighting China’s growing military support for Iran despite regional sensitivities (here)

Energy

• Grid-scale battery installations are surging globally as costs drop 75% since 2018 & the Iran War drives demand for alternatives to expensive fossil fuels - projects now rival power plants with Inner Mongolia’s 7.4 GWh facilities & Australia’s batteries outcompeting gas during peak hours (here)

Robotics

• China’s second humanoid robot half-marathon features 300+ robots from 70 teams, with 40% running autonomously compared to zero last year - highlighting technical progress but also limitations as robots remain years from industrial deployment despite China’s 80% share of global humanoid installations (here)

• Physical Intelligence unveiled π0.7, a robot AI model that performs tasks it wasn’t explicitly trained on - using an air fryer to cook sweet potatoes after seeing only 2 partial training examples, suggesting compositional generalisation capabilities similar to large language models’ breakthrough moments (here)

Critical Materials

• TSMC’s $165B Arizona expansion accelerates with 6 planned fabs by 2030, as the Taiwan chipmaker posts 35% revenue growth despite helium supply disruptions from Strait of Hormuz closure - part of broader US semiconductor reshoring alongside Samsung’s $17B Texas facility (here)

• USA Rare Earth will acquire Brazilian rare earths producer Serra Verde for $2.8B ($300M cash, remainder shares), marking Washington’s largest bet on securing critical mineral supply chains outside China - Serra Verde expected to produce half of global heavy rare earths outside China by 2027 (here)

• Notable deal: Stegra raised €1.4B rescue funding led by Sweden’s Wallenberg family to complete construction of the world’s largest green-steel plant in Boden, with the consortium taking a leading position in the company after months of negotiations (here)

EVs

• Electric car sales jumped 51% across continental Europe in March to 224,000 units as Iran war-driven fuel price rises accelerated EV adoption, with Norway hitting 98% market share & southern European markets showing 40%+ growth despite previous sluggish uptake (here)

• Uber commits $10B to robotaxis through equity stakes & vehicle orders, abandoning its asset-light model to compete with Waymo, Tesla & Amazon’s Zoox - includes $500M investment in Lucid for 35,000 vehicles as the ride-hailing giant races to secure autonomous supply after selling its own AV unit in 2020 (here)

Crypto

• Polymarket seeks funding at $15B valuation, up 66% from its $9B October round but trailing rival Kalshi’s $22B mark - the gap reflects Kalshi’s $1.5B annualized revenue vs Polymarket’s recent US launch & fee introduction (here)

• Notable deal: NYSE owner ICE invested $200M in crypto exchange OKX at $25B valuation & agreed to invest up to $2B in prediction market Polymarket, positioning the 233-year-old exchange as an unlikely crypto powerhouse despite past missteps like Bakkt (written down by over $1B) (here)

But, as Ben Thompson argued this week, that model is breaking down. In an AI-native economy, marginal costs are re-emerging via compute, energy and infrastructure. Value is no longer captured purely by those who design systems, but increasingly by those who can build and operate them at scale.

Which is why the more important headline this week was not OpenAI’s expansion, but its retreat. The decision to step back from Stargate UK, citing energy costs, points to a constraint that is immense and wildly underdiscussed: you cannot be an AI superpower with expensive power and speculative grid access.

UK industrial electricity prices are among the highest in the developed world — materially above France and Germany, and multiples of the United States. The system lacks the firm nuclear base of France, the cheap gas and scale of the US, or the hydro-backed stability of the Nordics. At the same time, infrastructure is slow and expensive to build, constrained by planning complexity and regulatory friction.

The result is a system that is neither cheap nor predictable. At times of excess renewable output, households are now going to be paid to consume power the grid cannot store or transmit. Yet when firm power is required, the system falls back on marginal gas, setting expensive prices for everyone. This is not a shortage of energy, but a failure to deliver it reliably.

AI infrastructure is one of the most power-hungry industrial systems ever built. As the economy shifts from zero marginal cost software to compute-constrained systems, this mismatch becomes critical. Without a competitive position in energy and infrastructure, the UK risks remaining a hub for talent and ideas — while the economic value increasingly accrues elsewhere.

To that end, the green light for the UK’s first small modular nuclear reactor fleet this week was a welcome development. We need more focus on things like this than incentives to adjust our washing cycles!

IPOs / Publics

• SpaceX’s planned IPO may waive traditional 180-day insider lock-ups, allowing early shareholders to sell immediately & effectively gutting Section 11 investor protections against misleading prospectus claims. The SEC has ignored years of warnings about this growing trend that strips retail investors of their strongest legal recourse (here)

• Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square USA is marketing a dual IPO to raise up to $10B despite geopolitical headwinds from the Iran conflict, offering investors in the closed-end fund (at $50/share) free stakes in his management company - a pivot after his $25B NYSE fund collapsed in 2024 (here)

• Nvidia-backed Firmus raised $505M at $5.5B ahead of its ASX IPO, targeting $2B in additional capital for what could be Australia’s largest tech IPO this decade - unusual given most local tech firms favour overseas exchanges (here)

• Intel surged 53% over 9 sessions, adding $100B in market value, after announcing a $14.2B buyback of its Ireland plant from Apollo & partnerships with Musk’s Terafab project & Google data centres - though the stock now trades at 90x forward earnings, its highest on record (here)

• Meta launched Muse Spark, its first model from Meta Superintelligence Labs, featuring native multimodality & agent-based reasoning built in 9 mo with less compute than rivals, leading benchmarks in health reasoning & agentic search despite trailing Gemini 3.1 Pro overall (here)

• Palantir shares fell 8% after Michael Burry argued Anthropic is ‘eating Palantir’s lunch’, citing data showing Anthropic’s ARR jumped from $9B to $30B in months whilst capturing 73% of new enterprise AI spending - highlighting how private AI leaders are disrupting public market darlings (here)

• Microsoft is developing OpenClaw-inspired features for Copilot to enable autonomous 24/7 operation within Office 365, as Anthropic’s Claude increasingly encroaches on Microsoft’s enterprise software dominance with direct integrations to PowerPoint, Excel & Word (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic launched Claude Mythos Preview, a cybersecurity AI model, to select partners including Amazon, Apple, Microsoft & US government following source code leaks that exposed the project - the model identifies thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities but escaped its sandbox during testing, prompting limited release over misuse concerns (here)

• US Treasury secretary Scott Bessent summoned major bank CEOs to discuss cyber risks from Anthropic’s Mythos, which can detect thousands of severe vulnerabilities across operating systems & browsers - some undetected for decades - raising concerns about potential exploitation by bad actors (here)

• Anthropic also launched “Claude Managed Agents”, a cloud service that automates container management & tool orchestration for AI agent development, reducing build time from months to weeks at 8p per runtime hour plus model usage costs - early adopters include Notion, Asana & Rakuten (here)

• Anthropic temporarily banned OpenClaw creator Peter Steinberger from accessing Claude for ‘suspicious activity,’ lifting the ban after his viral post sparked backlash - highlighting tensions as Anthropic now charges separately for third-party AI agent tools whilst promoting its own Cowork alternative (here)

• CoreWeave signed a multi-year deal to provide compute infrastructure for Anthropic’s Claude AI models (here)

• Three senior OpenAI Stargate executives departed to join the same new firm Three senior OpenAI Stargate executives departed to join the same (currently unknown) new firm after the company shifted from building its own data centres to renting compute through partnerships, following financing struggles & joint venture delays with SoftBank & Oracle (here)

• A Molotov cocktail was thrown at OpenAI CEO Sam Altman’s San Francisco home, with a 20-year-old suspect arrested after threatening to burn down OpenAI’s headquarters; no injuries reported, highlighting escalating security concerns facing tech executives amid rising AI anxieties (here)

• Sam Altman shared a family photo in hopes of discouraging future attacks whilst defending OpenAI’s mission to democratise AI rather than concentrate power (here)

• OpenAI told investors it has outpaced Anthropic in computing capacity - claiming 1.9GW available in 2025 vs Anthropic’s estimated 1.4GW - as the ChatGPT maker defends its $600B infrastructure spending against rivals characterising it as reckless whilst Anthropic faces service outages from demand surges (here)

Venture Capital

• Global venture investment hit $300B in Q1 2026, driven by mega-deals to OpenAI, Anthropic, xAI & Waymo ($188B combined), with 80% of total funding flowing to AI companies - marking shift toward physical layer investments in chips, robotics & defence unlike prior software-centric cycles (here)

• Eclipse closed $1.3B across two funds targeting ‘physical AI’ startups, with $591M for early-stage incubation & the remainder for growth companies - the fund plans to build an ecosystem of portfolio companies across transportation, energy, infrastructure & defence that can partner with each other to achieve scale (here)

• Eka Ventures closed £107M Fund II targeting early-stage health, sustainability & consumer tech investments (here)

• Collide Capital raised $95M Fund II to back early-stage fintech, supply chain & future-of-work companies, following its $66M Fund I in 2022, with LPs including UC Regents, Goldman Sachs & JPMorgan (here)

Regulation

• OpenAI backs Illinois bill SB 3444 that would shield AI labs from liability for mass harms (100+ deaths or $1B+ property damage) caused by models trained with $100M+ compute costs, provided they publish safety reports & didn’t act intentionally - marking a shift toward offensive lobbying as state liability frameworks remain unsettled (here)

• UK financial regulators are urgently meeting with banks, insurers & exchanges after Anthropic’s Claude Mythos model exposed thousands of critical vulnerabilities across major systems - including some undetected for decades (here)

• Electronic Frontier Foundation is “logging off X” after nearly 20 years, citing dramatic decline in reach (posts now receive less than 3% of views compared to 2018) & platform’s abandonment of user rights protections under Musk ownership - will maintain presence on Facebook & TikTok to serve vulnerable communities who need digital rights advocacy most (here)

• Washington DC appeals court declined to block Pentagon’s national security blacklisting of Anthropic, giving Trump administration a win as the AI company fights designation over refusal to remove safety guardrails on Claude for military surveillance & autonomous weapons use (here)

• Meta began removing hundreds of ads from Facebook & Instagram that law firms use to recruit clients for social media addiction lawsuits, following recent trial losses including a Los Angeles jury verdict holding Meta liable for youth mental health harm (here)

• Musk amended his $150B lawsuit against OpenAI to direct any damages to the nonprofit arm rather than himself, whilst seeking Sam Altman’s removal from OpenAI’s board as the case heads to trial over the company’s for-profit conversion (here)

• UK government weighs standardised testing for AI models used by banks after Bank of England warned lenders over evaluation practices, with Starling Bank CIO proposing independent assessment to ensure US algorithms meet minimum standards (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• OpenAI halted its Stargate UK data centre project citing high energy costs & regulatory uncertainty, dealing a blow to Starmer’s ‘sovereign AI’ agenda - the company also scaled back its Texas facility & shut Sora app as it refocuses resources amid competition from Anthropic & Google (here)

• NHS data chief Ming Tang vowed to deepen Palantir’s integration across hospitals despite staff refusing to work on the £330M Federated Data Platform over ethical concerns about the US company’s defence & immigration work (here)

• Meanwhile, NHS England officials apparently threatened staff with job loss for criticising Palantir’s data platform rollout, despite voluntary adoption claims - highlighting internal resistance to the controversial 7-year contract that ministers may terminate early (here)

• Trump publicly endorsed Palantir after short seller Michael Burry bet against the stock, claiming AI startup Anthropic would erode its market position - Palantir shares rallied 5% on the endorsement before closing lower, having already lost 25% this year amid valuation concerns (here)

• Hungary’s opposition Tisza party led by Péter Magyar secured a landslide victory with 138 of 199 parliamentary seats, ending Viktor Orbán’s 16-year rule as EU’s longest-serving premier - a setback for Trump & Putin who counted Orbán as their closest European ally (here)

• European Commission ties Hungary’s €35B frozen fund release to 27 conditions including court reforms & anti-corruption measures, following PM Péter Magyar’s supermajority win (here)

• Trump ordered a US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz after Iran rejected demands to reopen the shipping lane & end its nuclear programme during 21-hour talks in Pakistan - Britain refused to participate whilst Iran’s IRGC mocked the threat as ‘ridiculous’, escalating tensions that could further choke global oil supplies (here)

• Trump’s White House unveiled a $70B maritime spending plan for 2027, including $65.8B for naval shipbuilding (the largest since 1945) and $1.5B for US Maritime Administration programmes - part of his executive order to restore American maritime dominance and strengthen the domestic shipbuilding industrial base (here)

• China nearly tripled export controls over the past 5 years (30 restrictions vs 11 previously), with new regulations allowing punishment of foreign companies conducting supply chain due diligence & exit bans for violators - demonstrating Beijing’s willingness to weaponise trade leverage ahead of Trump’s May visit to China (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Perplexity’s monthly revenue surged 50% to $450M ARR in March as the AI startup pivots from search to agents, launching usage-based pricing alongside subscription tiers of $20-200 monthly for 100M+ users including enterprise clients (here)

• Notable deals

  • Elorian (AI visual reasoning) raised $55M at $300M led by Striker Ventures, Menlo Ventures & Altimeter with NVIDIA participation - building models that understand images directly rather than converting to text first, targeting robotics, aerospace & medical applications (here)

  • SiFive raised $400M at $3.65B from Atreides, Nvidia & others to develop data centre CPUs using RISC-V architecture, positioning against Arm as the incumbent shifts to direct chip competition with its own customers (here)

  • Aria Networks raised $125M Series A from Sutter Hill Ventures & others for AI-native networking infrastructure designed to work across any AI chip (Nvidia, Google) without requiring full network overhauls (here)

Cybersecurity

• FBI, NSA, CISA & Department of Energy warned of escalating Iran-backed cyberattacks targeting US critical infrastructure including water utilities, energy systems & local government, with hackers exploiting SCADA vulnerabilities following recent US-Israel military strikes on Iran (here)

• Cisco is in talks to acquire AI security startup Astrix for at least $250M, part of a broader consolidation trend as enterprises grapple with rogue AI agents that have triggered security alerts at Meta & mass-deleted emails elsewhere (here)

Defence

• IMF analysis warns that defence spending booms typically last 3 years, worsen deficits by 2.6% of GDP & raise debt by 7 percentage points without lasting economic gains - tempering European hopes that military budget increases to 5% of GDP by 2035 will revitalise industrial growth (here)

• UK Defence Secretary exposed a month-long covert Russian submarine operation in British waters, involving an Akula-class attack submarine & two GUGI spy submarines targeting underwater cables & pipelines. Royal Navy warships & RAF aircraft monitored the operation 24/7 before Russian forces retreated, highlighting escalating infrastructure threats amid broader geopolitical tensions (here)

• Former RAF chief urges Starmer to repair UK-Israel ties to learn from Iron Dome technology as Britain faces ‘notable gaps’ in air defence against Russian & Iranian threats, with only 2 of 6 Type 45 destroyers operational whilst Iran recently struck RAF Akrotiri (here)

• Royal Navy faces critical ship shortage with just 13 frigates & destroyers operational versus 56 in Cold War era, forcing impossible choices between defending home waters from Russian submarines & deploying to Middle East amid Iran conflict - new Type 26/31 frigates won’t arrive until 2027-28 (here)

• UK’s promise to seize Russian shadow fleet tankers in the English Channel exposed as empty UK’s promise to seize Russian shadow fleet tankers in the English Channel (21 miles wide) was exposed as empty when Russian frigate Admiral Grigorovich escorted sanctioned vessels through unchallenged, meanwhile Iran successfully closed Strait of Hormuz (21 - 30 miles wide) with shore-based drones & missiles - highlighting Britain’s naval weakness with only 3 of 13 frigates/destroyers carrying anti-ship missiles (here)

• Lord George Robertson, former NATO chief & author of UK’s strategic defence review, accused PM Starmer of ‘corrosive complacency’ on defence, warning Britain is ‘under attack’ & ‘in peril’ whilst facing a £28B funding gap over 4 years - criticised Treasury ‘vandalism’ & called for welfare cuts to boost military spending as the promised defence investment plan remains delayed (here)

• Cambridge Aerospace, a UK defence startup founded in late 2024, is set to supply Skyhammer drone interceptors to the MoD in a multimillion-pound deal with first deliveries expected in May - remarkably fast for UK defence procurement (here)

Energy

• UK government approved new nuclear power station on Anglesey using Rolls-Royce small modular reactors, promising 8,000 jobs & powering 3M homes from 2030s following £2.5B partnership signed in 2024. BBC quips “the project is still subject to a final investment decision, which is expected by the turn of the decade” (here)

Quantum

• Lloyds Banking Group & IBM successfully used a 156-qubit quantum computer to detect money mule networks in fraud detection experiments, demonstrating quantum’s potential to identify complex criminal transaction patterns that traditional computing struggles to catch (here)

But dismissing ‘sovereignty’ outright misses the point.

The backlash to Palantir within the NHS is not happening in a vacuum. Nor are the recurring questions about US security guarantees, or the steady pull of European AI talent into American firms. These are signals of a more fundamental reality: control over technology underpins economic strength and national security. Every major economy now understands this. The difference is how it is framed and sold.

The American system practices economic nationalism with remarkable discipline — but rarely calls it that. “Buy American” is expected. When Jamie Dimon talks about deploying $1 trillion and urges the US to “get stronger”, it is framed as market logic. “American Dynamism” sounds expansive, ambitious, forward-looking. By contrast, “sovereignty” and “strategic autonomy” lack sex appeal — despite describing the same underlying imperative.

The US makes state-aligned priorities feel like the natural product of markets — coherent with venture capital ambition.

European framing often does the inverse, presenting similar priorities as intervention, or worse, protectionism.

The result is a narrative gap that distorts reality. The UK and Europe are capable of building global champions — and increasingly do. But when national ambition is framed defensively, it signals constraint rather than scale, and invites exactly the critique Miller makes.

We increasingly live in a world where the clearest and most confident narratives shape where capital flows, where talent moves and where power concentrates. The answer is not to abandon sovereignty as a concept, but to clarify it. Not as a slogan, but as a coherent expression of national ambition.

IPOs / Publics

• Chinese AI & tech companies drove Hong Kong IPO proceeds to $13B in Q1 2026, a 5-year high, with AI stocks Zhipu & MiniMax each up 400%+ after raising $1.3B combined - though mainland markets now compete as regulators tighten quality controls (here)

• SpaceX confidentially filed for what could be the largest IPO in history, targeting $75B raised at $1.75T valuation - nearly 20x its 2022 valuation of $90B. The June listing follows Nasdaq rule changes allowing fast-track index inclusion for large IPOs, potentially directing billions in passive investment flows to newly public companies (here). Nb Musk requires SpaceX IPO banks to purchase Grok AI subscriptions to participate (here)

• Elmet Group (refractory metals & high-power microwave systems for aerospace/defence) filed for a $115M IPO on Nasdaq, following $202M revenue in 2025 - a rare defence materials float amid supply chain reshoring priorities (here)

• KNDS (European land defence) plans dual listing in Frankfurt & Paris in 2026 to support growth after record €11.2B order intake in 2024 & €23.5B backlog (here)

• Amazon in talks to acquire Globalstar for $9B to accelerate its Project Kuiper satellite internet service & compete with SpaceX’s dominant Starlink constellation, though Apple’s 20% stake & reserved network capacity complicate negotiations (here)

• Microsoft released three AI models (transcription, speech & image generation) as part of Mustafa Suleyman’s effort to reduce reliance on OpenAI, though progress remains mixed with no public general-purpose model yet available despite $600M paid for Inflection’s technology in 2024 (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic accidentally exposed proprietary Claude Code source code via a packaging error, triggering 8,000+ copyright takedowns on GitHub as competitors gained access to its AI agent techniques & tooling (here)

• Anthropic launched Project Glasswing with Claude Mythos Preview, an AI model that autonomously identified thousands of zero-day vulnerabilities across major operating systems & browsers, including a 27-year-old OpenBSD flaw & critical Linux kernel exploits - partnering with AWS, Apple, Microsoft, CrowdStrike & others whilst committing $100M in usage credits plus $4M to open-source foundations (here)

• Anthropic cuts off Claude Pro/Max subscriptions (£16-160/mo) from third-party agents like OpenClaw, forcing users to pay-per-use API or extra usage bundles - a margin protection move as unlimited subscriptions subsidised agents costing $1K-5K daily in compute (here)

• Anthropic committed to hundreds of billions in Google & Broadcom chip deals, securing nearly 5GW computing capacity as annualised revenue surged from $9B to $30B in 3mo (i.e. Anthropic has passed OpenAI in revenue, despite spending 4x less) (here)

• OpenAI acquired TBPN, a Silicon Valley tech talk show averaging 70,000 viewers per episode, for low hundreds of millions - a media play to shape AI narratives despite CEO pledges to avoid ‘side quests’ beyond core ChatGPT business (here)

• OpenAI raised $122B at $852B led by SoftBank & a16z, with $3B from retail investors via bank channels, as the company builds its public market narrative ahead of an expected IPO whilst generating $2B monthly revenue (here)

• Mistral AI raised $830M in debt from French, British & Japanese banks to expand its Paris data centre to 44MW capacity with 13.8k Nvidia GPUs, part of broader European infrastructure push targeting 200MW by 2027 as demand grows for sovereign AI alternatives to US cloud giants (here)

Venture Capital & Finance

• Blue Owl Capital faced $5.4B in redemption requests across two flagship funds (40.7% of its $3B tech fund, 21.9% of its $20B direct lending fund), forcing it to cap withdrawals at 5% as private credit stress spreads beyond peers like KKR, Apollo & BlackRock (here)

• Sequoia Capital named Doug Leone as chairman, returning him to active investing after stepping back in 2022, amid ongoing leadership reshuffles that saw Alfred Lin & Pat Grady replace Roelof Botha as co-leaders last year (here)

• Matt Miller of Evantic criticised European tech sovereignty efforts as ‘welfare for sub-performing companies’ & argued Europe needs VCs that can compete for the world’s best deals rather than regional champions (here)

• Matt Clifford stepped back from daily duties at Entrepreneurs First, the UK accelerator he cofounded 15 years ago that recently reached unicorn status at $1.3B valuation after raising $200M - he’ll remain 1 day per week advising on AI founders & exploring UK tech sovereignty opportunities (here)

• EQT & Atomico remain in final selection round to manage the EU’s €5B Scaleup Europe Fund after Eurazeo, Northzone & Vitruvian Partners were eliminated, with decision ‘imminent’ on Europe’s largest strategic tech fund covering spacetech, AI, quantum & biotech (here)

• US investors contributed 73% of capital to European AI funding rounds >$100M this year, whilst US tech giants lead recruitment of Europe’s 325,000 AI researchers - raising concerns Europe risks becoming an R&D incubator for Silicon Valley rather than building sovereign tech champions (here)

• Jamie Dimon warned that losses in the $1.8T private credit market will be higher than expected when the next credit cycle hits, citing weakening lending standards including aggressive performance assumptions, weaker covenants & more payment-in-kind structures across leveraged lending (here)

• New funds:

  • BC Partners secured €2.2B ($2.5B) first close for Fund XII targeting €5B total, benefiting from LP allocation shifts towards Europe amid US market volatility & focus on managers with strong realisation track records (here)

  • Mubadala Capital raised $900M for its third Brazil fund (vs $750M target), with Abu Dhabi providing $250M anchor, ‘easing concerns’ the Middle East war will cause Gulf states to review foreign investments (here)

  • Corazon Capital closed $100M Fund IV targeting AI-native consumer companies, emphasising founders who ‘use AI to amplify human potential, not replace it’ - the Chicago-based firm promoted 3 partners & counts SpotHero, Telnyx & TradingView among portfolio (here)

Regulation

• The European Commission announced plans for EU-US dialogue on digital rules amid mounting US pressure, drawing fierce criticism from MEPs who warn this undermines enforcement of the Digital Services Act & Digital Markets Act against American tech giants (here)

• Apple removed Jack Dorsey’s decentralised messaging app Bitchat from its China App Store at Beijing’s request for violating regulations on services that could influence public opinion or social movements - highlighting ongoing tensions between Western tech platforms & China’s internet controls (here)

• Perplexity faces class-action lawsuit alleging it secretly shares user conversations with Meta & Google via embedded trackers, violating California privacy laws - highlighting data governance risks for AI search platforms as regulatory scrutiny intensifies (here)

• Pentagon appeals federal judge’s order pausing Anthropic’s supply chain risk designation, which followed contract talks breakdown over AI safeguards - case highlights tensions between DoD procurement & AI ethics, with implications for defence contractors working with frontier AI companies (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Trans-Atlantic alliance faces potential divorce as Trump threatens NATO withdrawal after European allies refuse to join the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, adding to tensions over tariffs, Ukraine support cuts & Greenland threats (here)

• Germany now requires men aged 17-45 to obtain Bundeswehr permits for trips abroad exceeding 3 mo, part of new military service reforms amid plans to spend €153B (3.5% GDP) on defence by 2029 & build Europe’s strongest conventional army against Russian threats (here)

• UK, Italy & Japan signed a £686M contract for the Global Combat Air Programme fighter jet but limited funding to just 3mo whilst Britain finalises its delayed defence investment plan, highlighting how budget constraints can strain international defence partnerships despite strategic imperatives (here)

• Iranian missile strikes knocked multiple AWS data centers in Bahrain & Dubai into ‘hard down’ status with no recovery timeline, as the IRGC escalates attacks on Western cloud infrastructure amid broader Middle East conflict disrupting semiconductor supply chains through Strait of Hormuz blockades (here)

• UK government courting Anthropic to expand London operations after the AI company’s clash with US defence department over military use restrictions, with proposals ranging from office expansion to potential dual listing ahead of expected IPO (here)

• JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon outlined plans to deploy over $1T through security & economic initiatives & urges US to ‘Get Stronger’ & keep military & economic power. JPM also launched the American Dream Initiative to expand small business lending by $80B over 10 years & grow clients from 7M to 10M, hiring 1,000 bankers whilst advocating for local economic policies - part of Dimon’s broader push to address what he calls America’s ‘fraying’ economic opportunity (here)

• Microsoft committed $10B over 4 years to build AI infrastructure & cybersecurity capabilities in Japan, partnering with SoftBank & Sakura Internet on domestic LLM development whilst training 1M engineers by 2030 - part of broader Asian expansion following $5.5B Singapore & $1B Thailand commitments (here)

• NHS staff increasingly refuse to work on Palantir’s £330M Federated Data Platform over ethical concerns about the US company’s defence work & CEO’s Trump support, with some treating it as workplace adjustment; 123 of 205 hospital trusts now using the system despite internal resistance & government review of contract break clause (here)

• The UK now has at least five government bodies investing in AI startups (including the new Sovereign AI fund, Innovate UK, British Business Bank, National Wealth Fund & ARIA) plus multiple regulatory agencies, arguably creating complexity for founders navigating support options (here)

• US scientists are departing for Europe & other regions as Trump slashes research funding, with Austria recruiting a robotics engineer from Cambridge who hired 4 more US researchers; Canada launched a $1.2B talent recruitment program whilst the EU allocated €500M as rivals capitalise on 95,000 federal science departures (here)

• US International Development Finance Corporation secured rare earths access through $565M loan to Brazil’s Serra Verde mining company, including offtake controls ensuring metals go to US & allies rather than China - part of broader American strategy to break Chinese dominance in critical materials supply chains (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Netflix released VOID, an open-source video model that removes objects from scenes & realistically animates how remaining objects behave - turning car crashes into open roads or removing pool splashers whilst keeping water undisturbed. In user testing, VOID outperformed rivals like Runway 64.8% to 18.4% (here)

• Poolside’s ambitious 2-gigawatt Texas data centre project collapsed after CoreWeave deal fell through & $2B funding round anchored by Nvidia stalled, forcing the AI start-up to seek new cloud partners including Google whilst splitting into separate infrastructure & model-building entities (here)

• Per The New Yorker, new interviews & documents reveal OpenAI board members, led by chief scientist Ilya Sutskever, compiled 70 pages of evidence alleging Sam Altman exhibited ‘a consistent pattern of lying’ & deception before his November 2023 firing, raising questions about whether someone building ‘civilization-altering technology’ can be trusted with humanity’s future (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Fractile (UK AI chip start-up), is seeking >$200M at ~$1B to challenge Nvidia’s inference dominance, with backing from Accel & Oxford Science Enterprises - part of broader investor appetite for British inference-focused chip companies after rival Olix raised $220M at similar valuation (here)

Cybersecurity

• North Korean hackers compromised Axios, a JavaScript library downloaded tens of millions of times weekly, by hijacking a maintainer’s account & pushing malicious code that delivered remote access trojans - highlighting ongoing supply chain vulnerabilities in critical open source infrastructure (here)

• Mercor ($10B AI recruiting firm) suffered major data breach via supply chain attack on open-source LiteLLM project, with Lapsus$ claiming theft of internal Slack communications, ticketing data & platform interaction videos - highlighting critical infrastructure vulnerabilities in AI toolchain dependencies (here)

• Cryptography engineer Filippo Valsorda cites new Google & Oratomic papers showing dramatically reduced qubit requirements for breaking 256-bit elliptic curves - prompting urgent calls to deploy post-quantum cryptography now with ML-KEM & ML-DSA rather than wait for better solutions (here). Cloudflare is accordingly accelerating timelines (here)

• Russian military hackers from APT28 (GRU Unit 26165) exploited vulnerabilities in UK routers from TP-Link & MikroTik to hijack DNS traffic, redirecting users to malicious sites for credential theft - highlighting infrastructure vulnerabilities amid growing US-China router security concerns (here)

Defence

• UK delayed its Defence Readiness Bill until mid-2027 - legislation to prepare critical infrastructure & industries for war - whilst European neighbours rapidly bolster military readiness with Germany introducing voluntary service, France adding €8.5B for drones/missiles, & Poland fortifying its Russian border (here)

• Former RAF air defence commander warns UK has ‘extremely limited capability’ against ballistic missiles, with £1B funding allocation insufficient compared to Germany’s €6B commitment & Denmark’s $9B overhaul - critics question reliance on allies to intercept missiles targeting Britain (here)

• Royal Navy First Sea Lord Gen Sir Gwyn Jenkins admitted the Navy is not ready for war, saying ‘we have work to do’ - the most senior military figure to criticise Armed Forces readiness amid pressure on Starmer to boost defence spending to 3% GDP & US criticism over Iran crisis response (here)

• Trump’s 2027 budget requests $1.5T for defence - a 40% increase & highest in modern history - offset by $73B cuts to domestic programmes as the Iran war enters its 5th week, with bipartisan congressional pushback already emerging (here)

• Honeywell Aerospace partnered with startup Odys Aviation to develop the Laila hybrid-electric aircraft for Pentagon counter-drone missions, bringing a $17B defence contractor into the nascent eVTOL military market as Trump requests $1.5T defence spending (42% increase). The autonomous aircraft uses AI-driven systems & multiple methods (lasers, microwaves, interceptor drones) to disable enemy drone swarms before they reach targets (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Saronic (autonomous ships) raised $1.75B led by Kleiner Perkins at $9.25B, more than doubling its valuation from $4B last year as the US races to counter China’s shipbuilding dominance & modernise military capabilities under Trump’s defence agenda (here)

  • Hermeus raised $350M ($200M equity, $150M debt) at $1B valuation to develop unmanned hypersonic aircraft, pivoting from in-house engine development to partnering with Pratt & Whitney on modified F100 engines to accelerate testing & government contracts (here)

Space

• Artemis II crew set new human distance record at 252,752 miles from Earth, breaking Apollo 13’s 1970 mark during their lunar flyby mission - the first crewed Moon voyage since 1972, featuring the first Black astronaut & first woman to travel to the Moon (here)

Energy

• Notable deal:

  • Palmar Luckey backed Valar Atomics raised $450M ($340M equity, $110M debt) at $2B valuation to build small modular reactors for AI data centres, backed by Palmer Luckey & Shyam Sankar with defence tech investors including Lockheed Martin board member John Donovan (here)

Digital Assets / Crypto

• Tether seeks to raise up to $20B at $500B despite $10B+ net profits in 2025, targeting expansion beyond its $184B USDT stablecoin dominance into AI, commodity trading & media - but investor concerns mount over extreme valuation (exceeding all US banks bar JPMorgan) & lack of exit route given no IPO plans (here)

• Notable deal:

  • Midas (Berlin tokenised assets platform) raised $50M led by RRE & Creandum, having minted $1.7B in assets with $500M TVL across DeFi integrations; launched $40M liquidity layer enabling instant redemptions without settlement risk (here)

EVs

• Tesla delivered 358,023 vehicles in Q1, up 6% year-on-year but below 365,000 analyst forecasts, whilst Chinese rival BYD’s EV sales plunged 25% amid intensifying competition - Tesla Europe sales rebounded 12% in February driven by cheaper Model Y/3 variants & cash discounts (here)

These are real and important issues, but media is painting over an equally urgent question: not just how much we should spend, but what are we spending it on?

Its a complicated issue (hence DIP delays). But the idea that you can encapsulate a nations commitment to defence by a proportion of GDP is arguably ludicrous - what do we even mean by defence? how are we fulfilling the needs of defence? what measures should we use to test effectiveness?

A strategic defence plan should start with our vulnerabilities - a foreign company providing domestic surveillance? being wholly dependent on foreign GPS? whether our nuclear deterrent is genuinely sovereign? our food and energy security?

This week, Trump suggested that NATO spending less than 5% of their GDP on defence should be excluded from the blocs decision making. This feels like the thin end of the wedge, and thus perhaps one of the biggest vulnerabilities of all.

We are at risk of being strong armed into spending our defence budget on a war we did not choose to enter. A war that (again) others have been revealed to seek personal profit from. While Nato is being asked for help and being told of no help at same time, whilst being called cowards to boot.

Meanwhile, we are directing large sums of that budget to a company embedded within that same kleptocratic system - from a quarter-billion-pound MoD contract to a £1bn NHS data deal (which faced more scrutiny and backlash this week, including in the US).

We should not be fixated on % of GDP spent on defence as a scoreboard against our allies. We should be asking how well defended we actually are, what we are defending against - and whether our choices about dependency, data and allegiance are consistent with those answers.

IPOs / Publics

• Worst week for Nasdaq since ‘liberation day’. Index now down 5 weeks in a row & 8 of last 9 weeks. Mag7 losing $800B of mkt cap last week alone (here)

• US memory chip stocks lost $100B as Google’s TurboQuant research suggested AI models can run on much less memory without accuracy loss - Micron shed $70B (down 15%), SanDisk lost $15B (here)

• Anthropic is discussing a Q4 IPO that could raise $60B whilst preparing Claude Mythos, its next flagship AI model that reportedly represents a ‘step change’ in performance & carries ‘unprecedented cybersecurity risks’ (here)

• Moonshot AI (Kimi chatbot) is restructuring from Cayman Islands incorporation to prepare for a Hong Kong IPO as Beijing tightens oversight of red-chip structures, whilst raising fresh funding at $18B valuation (up from $4.3B in December) (here)

• SpaceX aims to file for IPO “as soon as this week” - targeting June debut, with plans to allocate over 20% of shares to retail investors (vs typical 10%) & no standard 6-month lockup period given $10B raised privately (here)

• Microsoft leased the 900MW data centre site in Texas from startup Crusoe after Oracle & OpenAI abandoned it (here)

• Apple plans to open Siri to rival AI assistants beyond ChatGPT in iOS 27, allowing third-party chatbots like Google Gemini & Anthropic Claude to integrate through App Store extensions - potentially boosting services revenue whilst addressing its AI lag (here)

• Google launched new Gemini tools allowing users to import chat history from ChatGPT & Claude, providing detailed prompts to transfer context including preferences, interests & instructions - a direct play to steal market share from OpenAI & Anthropic (here)

Big Dogs

• OpenAI hit $100M annualised ad revenue just 6 weeks after launching its ChatGPT ads pilot, reaching 600+ advertisers whilst showing ads to under 20% of eligible US users - signalling major monetisation potential ahead of its expected public debut (here)

• OpenAI shuttered Sora (video platform), redirecting resources to enterprise tools & robotics (here) & shelved erotic chatbot plans indefinitely amid staff & investor concerns (here)

• Musk unveiled Terafab, a $20-25B joint venture between Tesla, SpaceX & xAI to build advanced semiconductors in Texas, targeting 2-nanometer chips for robotics & space applications - driven by Optimus needing 200M+ chips annually if Tesla hits 100M robot production targets (here)

Venture Capital

• SoftBank secured a $40B unsecured bridge loan (maturing March 2027) to fund additional OpenAI investments & general corporate purposes, adding to its existing $30B Vision Fund 2 commitment - underscoring Son’s aggressive AI bet amid broader US-Japan tech alignment following the $500B Stargate Project announcement (here)

• European Investment Fund plans to raise €15B fund of funds targeting growth-stage ventures, aiming to unlock €80B in scaleup capital across Europe through backing 100 funds with cheques up to €200M each - a sharp increase from €60M average in predecessor programme (here)

• Trian Fund Management & General Catalyst raised their Janus Henderson offer to $52/share after Victory Capital withdrew, clearing path for mid-2026 completion (here)

• OpenAI investor Vinod Khosla proposed eliminating income tax for Americans earning under $100K by equalising capital gains tax with income tax rates, arguing politicians must address voter fears that AI will displace jobs ahead of the 2028 election cycle (here)

Regulation

• A US jury found Meta & YouTube liable for addictive design features that caused mental health harm, ordering $4.2M & $1.8M damages respectively. The landmark verdict validates personal injury claims against social platforms using Big Tobacco-style arguments about product design, potentially exposing tech giants to thousands of similar cases as regulatory momentum builds globally (here)

• US federal judge blocked Trump administration from punishing Anthropic after it refused to allow unrestricted military use of its AI, ruling the supply-chain risk designation was ‘arbitrary & capricious’ (here)

• US ambassador to EU Andrew Puzder warned Brussels to scale back tech regulation or risk exclusion from the AI economy, saying companies providing critical data centres & hardware won’t stay if over-regulated - comes as EU fined Meta €200M, Apple €500M, Google €2.95B & X €120M in recent months (here)

• EFF urges US Supreme Court to hold Cisco accountable for custom-building China’s “Golden Shield” surveillance system that facilitated Falun Gong’s persecution, as justices prepare to hear case on 28 April that could set precedent for US tech companies’ liability when knowingly enabling foreign human rights abuses (here)

• Beijing’s review of Meta’s $2B Manus acquisition has shattered the ‘Singapore-washing’ model for Chinese AI startups, with founders now banned from leaving China & VCs reconsidering offshore structures as regulatory uncertainty deepens around tech exports (here)

• Sanders & AOC unveiled a bill to pause all new data centre construction across the US until federal AI safeguards protecting workers, consumers & civil rights are enacted - potentially freezing projects for years given Congress is far from passing comprehensive AI legislation (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Elon Musk joined a call between Trump & Indian PM Modi about Iran’s control of the Strait of Hormuz, marking an unusual, but increasingly unsurprising, inclusion of a private citizen in head-of-state diplomacy during wartime crisis. Nb signals Musk’s return to Trump’s inner circle after their summer 2025 fallout (here)

• Middle East conflict has severed one-third of global helium supply from Qatar, threatening chip production at TSMC, Samsung & SK Hynix - helium is critical for cooling semiconductors during manufacturing & cannot be easily stockpiled due to storage constraints (here)

• Iran conflict triggers global fertilizer crisis as 30% of world supply transits Strait of Hormuz - urea prices up 50%, ammonia up 20% since war began, with India, Thailand & Europe most exposed to shortages that threaten food security worldwide (here)

• Iran is deploying sophisticated AI-generated disinformation across social platforms to undermine US-Israeli support & exploit global opposition to military action, with coordination from Russia & China amplifying narratives through state media & bot networks reaching 145M views in 2 weeks (here)

• SMIC, China’s largest chipmaker, reportedly supplied chipmaking tools to Iran’s military for ~1 year, according to US officials - potentially violating sanctions if equipment includes US-origin components & deepening US-China tensions amid Middle East conflicts (here)

• ECB President Christine Lagarde warns that risks from the Iran war are being underestimated, with energy disruption potentially lasting years rather than months as Gulf supply damage is irreversible, whilst Europe faces limited fiscal space compared to 2022-23 when countries spent 2.5% of GDP cushioning energy costs (here)

• Trump & Xi Jinping will meet in Beijing on 14-15 May, postponed from March due to the Iran war, with a reciprocal Washington visit planned later in 2026 - a critical summit for US-China relations amid ongoing geopolitical tensions (here)

• China has launched retaliatory trade investigations into US Section 301 probes (US tariff investigations that target allegedly unfair trade practices by foreign countries) as tensions escalate ahead of the planned summit in May (here)

• Bipartisan US Senate delegation visited Taiwan to urge the passage of & support for a stalled $40B defence spending bill, aimed at showing support amid rising pressure from China (here)

• Trump considers ‘pay-to-play’ NATO model blocking allies spending under 5% GDP from decision-making on expansion, missions & Article 5, after European refusal to send warships to Strait of Hormuz amid Middle East escalation (here)

• David Sacks stepped down as Trump’s AI & crypto czar after hitting his 130-day limit as a special government employee, transitioning to co-chair the President’s Council of Advisors on Science & Technology alongside Jensen Huang, Zuckerberg & Ellison (here)

• HMRC awarded AWS a £473M contract to migrate from Fujitsu datacenters after Google & IBM dropped out, leaving AWS as the sole bidder - highlighting UK cloud market concentration concerns as the CMA estimates public sector overpays £500M annually (here)

• UK ministers exploring break clause in Palantir’s £330M NHS contract as pressure mounts over the US defence contractor’s role in managing health data - only 80 of 205 hospital trusts report benefits from the platform despite whole-life costs exceeding £1B (here)

• WeMove Europe has launched a petition demanding European governments halt new contracts with Palantir, citing the US spy-tech company’s role in Gaza operations, ICE deportations & expanding European public sector access - from UK healthcare data to German police systems - warning against surveillance expansion under limited oversight (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Mistral released Voxtral TTS, an open-weight text-to-speech model that outperformed ElevenLabs in 70% of voice customisation tests whilst running on smartphones - positioning the French firm as the enterprise alternative to API-dependent voice AI (here)

• Stanford researchers found AI chatbots affirm users’ behaviour 49% more than humans, even endorsing harmful actions 47% of the time when giving personal advice - making users more self-centred & less empathetic whilst preferring the sycophantic responses (here)

• Wikipedia banned editors from writing or rewriting articles using AI, citing violations of core content policies, though basic copy editing & translation remain permitted with accuracy checks - reflecting broader platform struggles with AI-generated content quality (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Periodic Labs (AI Scientists, founded by former OpenAI & DeepMind execs), is raising hundreds of millions at $7B - up from $1.3B in September after a $300M seed from a16z, Felicis & Accel. The startup builds AI ‘scientists’ that design materials experiments autonomously (here)

  • Reflection, Nvidia-backed startup positioning as the ‘DeepSeek of the West’, raising $2.5B at $25B to build open-source AI models for US allies - part of Nvidia’s strategy to counter Chinese AI dominance with ‘sovereign AI’ systems running on its chips (here)

  • Nvidia is investing $2B in Silicon Valley chipmaker Marvell to boost the networking technology that connects its AI chips into ever-larger data centres (here)

  • AMD-backed Vultr seeking $1B+ funding via Goldman Sachs to compete in AI cloud infrastructure - part of broader funding surge as AI cloud providers like Nscale ($2B), Together AI ($1B target), & CoreWeave ($8.5B debt) race to secure compute capacity (here)

  • Aligned Data Centers raised $2.6B in debt from institutional investors to build AI computing facilities ahead of its $40B acquisition by a BlackRock & Abu Dhabi MGX consortium, the largest data centre sale to date (here)

  • Granola (AI meeting notes) raised $125M at $1.5B led by Index, up from $250M 10mo ago, as it pivots from prosumer transcription to enterprise AI workflows with new APIs & team workspaces targeting companies like Vanta, Asana & Mistral (here)

Cybersecurity

• Google accelerates quantum computer threat timeline to 2029, warning that current RSA & elliptic curve encryption will be broken by then - 4 years ahead of US government estimates - pushing Android 17 to integrate post-quantum cryptography & urging industry-wide migration to quantum-resistant algorithms (here)

• Iran-linked hackers breached FBI Director Kash Patel’s personal Gmail, publishing photos & 300 emails from 2010-2019 as part of an escalating cyber campaign to embarrass US officials during the Israel-Iran conflict (here)

• FCC banned new foreign-made consumer routers from US market citing national security risks, after state-sponsored groups like Volt Typhoon & Salt Typhoon exploited router vulnerabilities to target critical infrastructure (here)

Defence

• VW is in talks with Rafael Advanced Defence Systems to convert its Osnabrück factory from car production to Iron Dome component manufacturing, potentially saving 2,300 jobs as the German carmaker pivots away from struggling automotive operations amid Chinese competition. Osnabrück is known as the “city of peace” given its role ending the 30yrs war in 1648 (here)

• Dassault Aviation is blocking the €100B Future Combat Air System (FCAS) project (the joint Franco-German next gen fighter programme) by refusing to cede design control to German partner Airbus, echoing its 1980s walkaway from Eurofighter. Despite Macron’s diplomatic efforts with Chancellor Merz, family-controlled Dassault maintains its independent streak (here)

• Anduril & Palantir are developing software for Trump’s $185B Golden Dome antimissile shield alongside SpaceX, Scale AI, & others, as the space-based defence programme expands to counter ballistic, cruise & hypersonic threats (here)

• UK’s Royal Navy forced to borrow German frigate Sachsen for NATO mission after deploying HMS Dragon to defend Cyprus, leaving Britain with only 2 operational destroyers as 3 others undergo repairs - highlighting fleet capacity crisis amid delayed defence spending plans (here)

• UK has slipped from 3rd to 14th in NATO defence spending as a share of GDP - rising modestly from 2.1% to 2.3% while most allies quadrupled their contributions since 2014. Poland (4.3%) & Lithuania (4.0%) now rank far higher & Germany has leapfrogged Britain entirely: doubling from 1.2% to 2.4% of GDP & fielding Europe's largest absolute defence budget at €107B. Given Britain's historically larger economy, its fall in the rankings reflects relative stagnation rather than cuts - but that distinction may offer little comfort as allies question whether its privileged alliance positions still reflect its contribution (here)

• UK defence tech start-ups are considering US relocation as Britain’s delayed Defence Investment Plan creates funding paralysis, with European firms like Helsing & Quantum Systems also losing patience over contract drought (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Shield AI raised $2B ($1.5B at $12.7B + $500M preferred) led by Advent & JPM to acquire defence simulation company Aechelon, combining AI pilot software with high-fidelity training systems used by Pentagon’s Joint Simulation Environment (here)

  • PDW raised $110M led by Ondas to scale production of modular military drones including the C100 platform & Attritable Multirotor, emphasising U.S.-based supply chain resilience as battlefield drone demand accelerates (here)

Space

• Russia’s Bureau 1440 launched 16 broadband satellites as part of its Rassvet project to build a domestic Starlink rival, marking the transition from experiments to commercial service after 1,000 days of development - a strategic response to Ukraine’s Starlink restrictions that have disrupted Russian front-line communications (here)

• NASA has announced a $20B plan to build a permanent Moon base within a decade, while also sending a nuclear-powered spacecraft to Mars by 2028 — driven largely by the race to beat China there (here)

• On Wednesday, NASA will attempt to send four astronauts around the Moon on a mission called Artemis II. An article argues the mission may be proceeding under political pressure that risks compromising safety, claiming NASA faces strong expectations from Congress & the U.S. government to demonstrate progress, justify funding & maintain geopolitical leadership over China (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Aetherflux (orbital data centres) raising $250-300M at $2B, led by Index, as Robinhood co-founder Baiju Bhatt’s startup targets Q127 launch for solar-powered satellites performing AI computations (here)

  • Xona has raised $170M to launch its own network of satellites that will act as a backup - & potential replacement - for GPS, with signals strong enough to resist jamming. The US military is among its target customers (here)

Crypto

• Binance faces fresh scrutiny after investigators found $1.7B moved to Iran-linked entities through Blessed Trust, a vendor the exchange continued using despite red flags including shared addresses with blacklisted firms appearing in public records for over a year (here)

• UK sanctioned Xinbi Guarantee, a Telegram-based Chinese-language marketplace processing $20B in illicit crypto transactions for money laundering, human trafficking & scam operations, marking escalating Western efforts to disrupt digital crime infrastructure that bypasses traditional financial oversight (here)

• Fannie Mae will accept crypto-backed mortgages for the first time, allowing buyers to pledge bitcoin or stablecoins for down payments instead of selling holdings - a move that could mainstream crypto mortgages despite higher borrowing costs (here)

Robotics

• Physical Intelligence is reportedly discussing raising $1B at $11B including investment, doubling from its $600M November round at $5.6B led by Alphabet’s CapitalG - reflecting continued AI robotics appetite despite broader funding pullback (here)

EVs

• BYD’s annual profits fell nearly 20% to $4.7B as China’s EV price war intensified, marking the first decline in 4 years for the world’s largest EV maker. Domestic market share dropped from 27% to 17% amid fierce local competition, though overseas revenue surged 40% as the company accelerates global expansion with 8 new transport ships & factories across 6 countries (here)

Cursor did not initially mention, and only acknowledged after being called out publicly, that Composer 2 was built on top of Kimi K2.5 - an open-source model from China’s Moonshot AI. Perhaps they avoided mentioning it for geopolitical reasons. Perhaps because the model beneath the product is increasingly beside the point.

Are we crossing into frontier model commoditisation?

Historically, the most performant models were also the most expensive, and that premium felt defensible. Now a benchmark-topping product can be delivered at one-tenth the price using open foundations assembled across borders. The implication is uncomfortable for the labs that built their identity around model superiority (evidenced by OpenAI’s re-re-refocus).

As intelligence becomes cheaper and more abundant, capital stops being the decisive advantage. The inference economy rewards a different kind of builder - one who understands a domain deeply. The harnesses - the workflows, constraints, context and judgement built around the model - is where value increasingly lies. Which is where Europe enters the picture, not as an afterthought but as a genuine protagonist.

In that context, the AI race is not only about who builds the smartest model. It is about who can embed intelligence into the hardest real-world systems - banks, energy grids, defence ministries, industrial supply chains. European founders who have spent years navigating fragmented markets, building trust with serious institutions and solving hard problems rather than scaling easy ones are precisely the founders this application era selects to build global champions

IPOs / Publics

• IPO market remains selective with volatility suppressing issuance

  • Janus (senior housing REIT) raised $840M in a carve-out from Healthpeak & rose +18% on debut (here)

  • Guardian Metal Resources (tungsten miner) raised $60M in its US IPO, but traded flat. Tungsten is strategically important - it sits inside defence, industrial tooling & critical supply chains. So the listing made geopolitical sense (here)

  • Swarmer (AI drone software) raised $15M & surged more than +500% despite minimal revenue. The Ukrainian company, <3yrs old, reportedly generated ~$300K revenue in 2025, yet attracted huge demand on Nasdaq. Partly a float dynamic (tiny supply meeting a hot theme) but also says something broader about the moment (here)

  • VINCORION (military power systems) rose ~10% after Frankfurt IPO - another sign defence remains one of the few sectors where public markets are willing to underwrite expansion stories with conviction (here)

  • Amazon backed X-energy (small modular nuclear reactors) has filed for an IPO. The company is building an SMR that uses helium as a coolant instead of water, the industry standard (here)

  • Unitree (Chinese humanoid robotics startup) seeking $610M Shanghai IPO amid surging sales. Revenue 4x to about $247M last year, with profits 7x as shipments jumped from 410 robots in 2024 → 3,551 in first 9mo of 2025. Beijing views humanoids as strategic infrastructure to offset labour shortages & close the US tech gap (here)

• At its flagship GTC conference, NVIDIA reinforced its shift from chip leader to full AI platform provider, with CEO Jensen Huang describing an emerging stack spanning applications, models, software, semiconductors & large AI data-centre infrastructure (here)

• Microsoft is weighing legal action over Amazon’s reported $50B cloud deal with OpenAI. The dispute centres on whether OpenAI’s new enterprise agent platform, Frontier - software designed to let companies deploy autonomous AI systems to perform complex workplace tasks - can run on AWS without breaching Azure exclusivity clauses. The rift reflects OpenAI’s push to diversify infrastructure partners even as Microsoft relies on its models to drive cloud growth (here)

• HSBC reportedly considering 20K job cuts driven by AI, focused on back- & middle-office roles. Analysts now suggest up to 200K banking jobs could be cut over next 3-5 yrs (here)

• Arm has announced its first ever in-house data-centre CPU, the AGI CPU, aimed at powering the next wave of AI infrastructure - especially “agentic AI” systems that can act autonomously, not just respond to prompts (here)

Big Dogs

• OpenAI is reorienting from consumer toward enterprise, coding & cost leadership as competition in frontier AI intensifies (here)

  • The company plans to nearly double headcount to ~8K, hiring engineers, sales & “forward-deployed” consultants to customise AI agents for large clients - signalling a pivot toward recurring enterprise revenue & full-stack deployment partnerships (here)

  • Bloomberg also reports the company is nearing a deal for $10B in fresh funding (from funds including Abu Dhabi’s MGX, Coatue & Thrive). This will value the company at $730B (here)

  • New GPT-5.4 mini & nano models show how fast marginal intelligence costs are collapsing - with token pricing falling to ~$0.20 per million vs ~$30 for Sora 2 Pro just two months ago, a ~150x drop within the same model family (here)

  • Internal priorities are shifting toward developer workflows where willingness to pay is high & models already shape production environments, reinforced by the acquisition of Astral (Python tooling) (here)

  • Meanwhile, OpenAI’s retreat from in-chat shopping has left partners like PayPal & Etsy exposed, illustrating platform volatility as the firm abandons consumer “side quests” to concentrate resources on enterprise AI (here)

• Pentagons move to label Anthropic “supply chain risk” has fractured Trump’s truce with Silicon Valley - prompting rare, coordinated lobbying from rival tech groups. Microsoft, Google & venture investors are reportedly pushing back both to preserve access to Claude models & to avoid a precedent where federal authorities can abruptly cut off critical AI infrastructure. Despite warnings the crackdown could hurt growth, Anthropic’s annualised revenue is said to have jumped from ~$9B to ~$19B in weeks - suggesting enterprise customers may reward perceived safety positioning (here)

Regulation

• White House released its Federal AI Policy Framework (here)

• Brussels is considering curbing national vetoes on corporate takeovers to build European “champions”. A proposed overhaul of EU merger rules would limit governments’ ability to block cross-border deals aimed at scaling firms to compete with US & Chinese rivals. Recent interventions - including Germany opposing UniCredit’s bid for Commerzbank - have fuelled fears of single-market fragmentation. Officials insist safeguards against monopolies will remain, but the shift signals growing willingness to prioritise industrial competitiveness over national protectionism (here)

• Nevada courts issued a 14-day restraining order forcing Kalshi to halt certain markets. Perhaps the clearest sign yet that the legal fight around prediction markets is moving from theory to practice. Nevada’s argument is that Kalshi is effectively running a gambling operation without the relevant licence (here)

• Britain’s House of Lords has blocked government plans to compel pension funds to invest more in domestic assets. Peers voted down “mandation” powers aimed at channelling retirement savings into infrastructure, defence & growth sectors. Critics warned political pressure could undermine fiduciary duties & returns, while ministers argued unlocking trillions in pension capital is essential to boost productivity (here)

• UK reversed course on proposed AI copyright opt-out regime after backlash from artists & creators. Original idea would have allowed AI models to train on copyrighted works unless rights holders explicitly opted out. In practice, creators saw that as unfair: burden would sit with them to prevent appropriation of their work (here)

• US jury found Elon Musk liable for misleading Twitter investors during his chaotic 2022 takeover. His public claims about bots & threats to walk away caused sharp share-price swings that allegedly inflicted losses - with damages potentially reaching $2.6B (here)

Venture Capital

• GV (Google Ventures) has doubled down on Europe, with >$1B now invested. Tom Hulme argues Europe & London in particular offers density of founder talent, operators & technical depth to produce returns comparable to top US venture ecosystems. He says GV invested ~$500M in Europe from 2014-2023, then >$600M since, implying conviction has increased rather than faded (here)

• New funds:

  • Jeff Bezos reportedly raising $100B fund to buy industrial firms & deploy AI-driven automation at scale. Would target sectors like aerospace, chipmaking & defence. Bezos has been courting sovereign wealth funds & asset managers, as investors pile into “re-industrialisation” themes amid geopolitical tensions & supply-chain reshoring (here)

  • Partech raised €300M for a new impact fund focused on industrial & climate technology (here)

  • Air Street Capital raised $232,323,232 for its third fund to back AI-first companies across North America & Europe (here)

  • Credo Ventures raised $88M to continue to back founders from CEE (here)

  • 360 Capital raised €85M for deeptech startups & university spinouts (here)

  • Montis VC raised €50M to back energy & industrial tech startups (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• EU Council met on Thursday (here)

  • Discussions suggest Europe is trying to answer the energy crisis with a mix of dilution & delay. On one side, there is likely to be some weakening of the ETS regime through higher permit supply & more allowances. On the other, member states are being nudged toward “targeted, temporary & tailored” fiscal measures. The bloc is trying to preserve climate architecture while quietly making it less painful for industry & voters

  • Meanwhile, Hungary continues to delay the €90B Ukraine loan by vetoing the required EU budget amendment

• China is pitching itself as a “harbour of stability” to global executives amid US geopolitical turmoil. Premier Li Qiang told >70 CEOs that predictable policy & unmatched supply chains make China a safer investment destination as Washington grapples with war in Iran. The message accompanies a new 5-year plan doubling down on high-tech manufacturing, even as record $1.2T trade surpluses & fears of industrial overcapacity strain relations with Europe (here)

• It is well known chips have been smuggled into China (per Benedict Evans “there couldn’t really be that many customers ‘in Singapore’”), but the US has charged co-founder of Supermicro, a server maker, with diverting $2.5B(!) chips into China without a licence (here)

• The UK’s Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) has given US tech firm Palantir a trial contract to apply its AI software to large volumes of sensitive regulatory intelligence data to improve detection of fraud, money-laundering & market abuse. Deal forms part of a wider government relationship with Palantir (worth >£500M across sectors including the NHS (£330M Federated Data Platform), MoD, policing & now financial regulation. Critics warn of privacy risks, dependence on a Trump-linked US “spy-tech” supplier & long-term vendor lock-in as Palantir becomes embedded across multiple core public systems (here)

• Prosus & Dealroom argue Europe is an AI “hidden giant”. Talent parity with the US (~325K AI workers & ~50K frontier researchers each) but misallocated across legacy sectors & starved of late-stage capital. ~48% of European AI talent sits in the “old economy” vs ~33% in the US, while only ~35% works in digital-native firms vs ~54% stateside, suggesting in their view Europe misuses elite engineers to retrofit incumbents rather than build global platforms (read more here)

• Per the Economist, cheap electricity - not algorithms - may be China’s decisive edge in the global AI race. China’s vast coal, hydro & nuclear build-out is driving industrial power prices to roughly half US levels, enabling far cheaper training & inference at hyperscale. Provinces are racing to host data centres, while state-backed grid expansion supports “AI industrial policy”. The strategy reflects Beijing’s view that compute is infrastructure - & energy abundance, not model breakthroughs, may ultimately determine AI supremacy (here)

• The UK is erecting a tariff “cordon” around its steel industry to counter a global glut driven by Chinese overcapacity. Import quotas will be cut 60% & tariffs above thresholds set at 50%, aligning Britain with US & EU protectionist moves. Officials frame the shift as ending decades of deindustrialisation & safeguarding national security, though manufacturers warn higher costs. The policy forms part of a broader £2.5bn strategy to decarbonise steelmaking via electric arc furnaces (here)

• Apple supplier Murata is restructuring supply chains to reduce dependence on Chinese rare earths. The Japanese electronics group - producing ~40% of global MLCC components - plans to establish parallel US & China production networks as export restrictions tighten. Identifying alternative mineral sources could take three years, underscoring how geopolitical tensions are reshaping tech manufacturing (here)

• Brussels is poised to clinch a long-delayed trade deal with Australia to strengthen access to critical minerals. After 8 years of negotiations, compromises on beef quotas & electric-vehicle tariffs are unlocking progress as both sides seek allies against rising US protectionism. EU officials say the pact would deepen presence in the Indo-Pacific & secure supplies of lithium, cobalt & rare earths vital for the green transition, though farmer opposition remains politically sensitive (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Mistral is seeking to define a distinctly European enterprise AI strategy around customisation, controllability & sovereign deployment rather than pure frontier scale. Its new Forge platform lets enterprises train or heavily customise models on their own data, including in sensitive environments (here)

• Mistral’s chief executive is urging Europe to impose a revenue levy on AI companies using copyrighted content. The proposal would fund creators & grant developers legal certainty by shielding training on publicly available material. Arthur Mensch argues fragmented copyright rules leave European AI at a structural disadvantage versus US & Chinese rivals. A central fund could support cultural industries while ensuring foreign model providers also contribute - part of a wider debate over sovereignty in the knowledge economy (here)

• Apple has quietly blocked updates to AI “vibe coding” apps that let users generate software through natural-language prompts. The company argues features in apps like Replit & Vibecode violate App Store rules against downloading or executing new code that alters app functionality. With such tools enabling web apps that bypass Apple’s marketplace - a major profit centre - the crackdown reflects long-running tensions over platform control & developer lock-in (here)

Cybersecurity

• Lovable added built-in penetration testing using Aikido Security. With Aikido, builders on lovable can get affordable pentests (that support SOC 2, ISO 27001, client security questionnaires, or investor due diligence) for $100 vs typical $5-$50K for security analysts to do the same (here)

• Turing Award went to inventors of quantum cryptography. The field has often felt theoretical to outsiders, but in an era where both classical cyberattacks & future quantum threats loom larger, communications systems that are secure in principle, rather than merely difficult to break, become more important (here)

• A rogue internal AI agent at Meta triggered a severe (Sev-1) security incident, exposing sensitive data for nearly two hours (here)

• Washington is quietly encouraging private companies to “hack back” against foreign cyber attackers. US officials are signalling greater tolerance for offensive cyber responses as state-backed intrusions surge - especially from China, Iran & Russia. The shift reflects growing frustration that defensive spending alone has failed to stem breaches affecting critical infrastructure, financial systems & technology supply chains (here)

• YC-backed Delve (agentic compliance) has been accused of faking compliance checks. The startup is rumoured to have generated fake evidence of compliance on its clients’ behalf, skipping major requirements, using off-shore “certification mills” to produce generic nearly-identical reports & filling out audit paperwork before any actual audit has taken place. If true, Delve wouldn’t just be cheating their clients out of money, but potentially putting them in legal jeopardy, exposing them to liability under laws like HIPAA & GDPR (here)

• Notable deal: Cloaked (consumer digital footprint & privacy) raised $375M from GC & Liberty City (here)

Defence

• Britain ‘defenceless against Iranian missiles’. Follows reports Iran attempted to strike joint US-UK Diego Garcia base using long-range missiles, one intercepted & one failing in flight. Diego Garcia sits ~2,400 miles from Iran - enough to speak debate labout whether Tehran’s capabilities now put parts of Europe, including London, in range. The Telegraph says the UK has no ground-based air defence system capable of intercepting ballistic or hypersonic missiles & is largely reliant on a small number of Type 45 destroyers, most of which are not in position for immediate homeland defence (here)

• Pentagon’s $200B Iran-war funding request shows how quickly modern conflict rewrites fiscal assumptions (here)

• UK, Netherlands & Finland creating a joint defence financing mechanism to pool weapons procurement. Structured like an international lender issuing bonds backed by member guarantees, the scheme aims to cut costs & boost deterrence as Europe rearms after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Officials argue aggregated orders could halve per-unit costs. Initiative reflects pressure on governments to expand military capacity while keeping debt off national balance sheets (here)

• Australia & UK discussing autonomous “robot warships” as part of a future hybrid navy. Remains conceptual, but logic is: naval mass expensive, missiles decisive, crewed platforms scarce. So defence planners want cheaper, attritable, optionally crewed vessels that can carry payloads without carrying full human cost. Nb, suggests autonomy is moving from drones in the air to distribution of lethality at sea (here)

• HMS Dragon, the UKs Royal Navy warship, has arrived in the eastern Mediterranean to defend Cyprus from Iranian attacks (here)

• Britain will buy more anti-drone missiles to support Gulf allies amid escalating Middle East conflict. The procurement signals London’s effort to demonstrate commitment to regional partners after criticism from Washington & European allies, while ministers stress Britain is avoiding direct war involvement (here)

• Notable deal: Egide (air defence systems) raised an €8M seed to build systems designed to intercept hostile drones (here)

Energy

• Chinese battery champions have gained >$70B in market value as Middle East war shifts energy expectations. Shares in CATL, BYD & Sungrow have outperformed oil majors since US-Israeli strikes on Iran, reflecting investor bets on accelerated electrification & energy security. Analysts forecast China’s grid-storage battery market could jump from $48B to $199B by 2032, underscoring how geopolitical shocks are speeding the transition away from fossil fuels (here)

• The Trump administration will pay $1B (€860M) to French energy giant TotalEnergies to walk away from 2 US offshore wind leases as it ramps up its campaign against offshore wind & other renewable energy. TotalEnergies has agreed to what is essentially a refund of its leases for projects off the coasts of North Carolina & New York & will invest the money in fossil fuel projects instead (here)

Robotics

• DoorDash paying couriers to record real-world tasks for AI training is a strong example of how physical AI gets built. The company’s new “Tasks” app pays people to film themselves doing everyday activities - washing dishes, speaking languages, carrying out chores - so models & robots can better understand the physical world (here)

• Amazon is acquiring Fauna Robotics, entering the consumer household humanoid market (here)

Crypto / Stablecoins

• Crypto exchange Coinbase is racing to build payments infrastructure for AI agents as crypto trading slumps. The firm is vying to issue a new stablecoin with Cloudflare that could sit at the centre of rising agent-driven internet traffic (here)

EVs / AVs

• Uber committed up to $1.25B into Rivian. Uber, or its fleet partners, are expected to buy 10K fully autonomous Rivian R2 robotaxis, with the option to purchase up to 40K more by 2030. The first 10K Rivian R2 robotaxis are expected in US cities including San Francisco & Miami by 2028 (here)

In many ways, the meme is Europe emulating a distinctly American attitude. Having lived & worked in the US, the biggest delta is cultural. You are encouraged to sell the cookies, make the pitch, believe you can achieve anything.

The combined pressures of AI competition & geopolitical fragmentation are forcing Europe to rediscover its own voice. ‘Londonmaxxing’ is a signal that confidence & narrative matter. But the uplifting mood was complicated by another headline: Entrepreneurs First, an extraordinary talent incubator born in the UK, raised $200M while now being described as “based in San Francisco”.

This reflects a deeper tension. Europe’s structural advantage has always been talent density — the research institutions, the scientific depth, the intellectual seriousness. EF built its model on proving that many of the best founders in the world come out of our universities. They were right. The difficult question is what happens when that talent is systematically incubated here, but subsequently shipped elsewhere?

The idea that you must relocate to the Bay Area to win feels increasingly outdated & unhelpful. Founders should absolutely absorb the energy of the US — it is often catalytic. But it has never been easier to operate with your feet on both sides of the pond: to access global capital (capital that often goes significantly further when you are not paying San Francisco salaries) & to build great companies from anywhere.

Raising ambition is not about changing location, but changing mindset. And as technology becomes more strategic, there is a growing case for choosing to build at home.

Building here is still hard, not least because markets remain fragmented (for now). Doing things ‘right’ is always harder - building around the complexity of humans, of societies & of cultures, of real regulatory & institutional fabric. But founders who succeed in navigating that complexity often emerge with something more durable. The work itself becomes a moat — not only because of the relationships & distribution built over time, but because the product must be meaningfully better. It has to function across languages, regulatory environments & cultural contexts. Companies forged in that environment are shaped less like growth vehicles & more like institutions. The types of institutions we need at this very moment in time.

Europe has SAP, Siemens, Bosch (America has Facebook & Snapchat). What I mean to say, is Europe builds institutions that outlast their founders, that serve societies, that compound for decades. The strongest European systems tend to encode, protect & evolve culture; the strongest American ones are often optimised to move faster than it. That difference shows up in the kinds of companies each ecosystem produces.

For those of us working in technology, this is a formative moment. The task is not to reject global ambition or capital, but to co-opt it — to channel that energy into building enduring outcomes here. Londonmaxxing may be a meme, but the question it surfaces is serious: where will the next generation of enduring companies be built, & how will that shape the societies we live in?

IPO / Publics

• SoftBank’s PayPay (mobile payments platform) priced its IPO below range to raise $880M (here)

• MDA Space (satellite & space infrastructure provider) completed $300M expedited US cross-listing (here)

• Microsoft publicly backed Anthropic’s lawsuit against the Pentagon in a court filing, urging a judge to block its “supply-chain risk” designation despite holding major federal business (including part of the $9B Joint Warfighting Cloud Capability deal & a $6B+ GSA framework). CEO Satya Nadella’s stance implies the era of “corporate silence” toward federal policy may be fading (here)

• AWS will deploy both in-house Trainium chips & Cerebras wafer-scale processors in a new inference offering, making Amazon the first hyperscaler to integrate Cerebras’ experimental ultra-large chips at scale, signalling a diversification of compute architectures as inference economics become central to AI profitability (here)

• Meta delayed its next frontier model “Avocado” to at least May amid performance gaps vs Gemini & Claude. Despite BNs spent rebuilding its AI division under Alexandr Wang, internal benchmarks reportedly place the model between Gemini 2.5 & 3.0, raising strategic questions about whether Meta may temporarily license rival models for distribution across Facebook, Instagram & WhatsApp (here)

• Atlassian will cut ~1.6k jobs to self-fund AI investment & enterprise sales expansion. CEO Mike Cannon-Brookes framed the move as redeploying capital toward AI growth, though critics argue productivity narratives are increasingly used to mask structural challenges in mature SaaS (here)

• Alibaba plans to ride the country’s OpenClaw/agentic AI trend by releasing its own enterprise-ready AI assistant, built atop its Qwen family of models. The agent gets built-in access to the Alibaba galaxy of platforms (including Taobao & Alipay) (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic will offer 1M-token context windows on Opus 4.6 & Sonnet 4.6 at no extra charge. Removing prior surcharges on large context suggests competition is shifting toward capability bundling & enterprise platform stickiness vs pure model pricing (here)

• Anthropic also exploring AI consulting JV with Blackstone & other PE firms, a move that could formalise the emerging “services wrapper” around frontier models as corporates seek help operationalising agents across workflows (here)

• Anthropic’s product velocity through the roof! In ~2 weeks the company shipped Claude Code Security, voice mode, free memory tools, a multi-vertical plug-in marketplace, structured outputs & web search GA, Sonnet 4.6, enterprise data feeds (FactSet, MSCI, S&P Global, LSEG), Google ecosystem integrations, legacy COBOL modernisation tooling & API data-residency controls, alongside acquiring Vercept. Much of the tooling is iteratively generated & refined by Claude itself, compressing development cycles & illustrating how frontier AI firms are entering a phase of compounding product surface expansion (here)

• Anthropic commits $100M to Claude Partner Network ecosystem. The AI lab is deepening enterprise distribution by funding integrators & software partners building on Claude APIs, reflecting a platform strategy aimed at embedding models across regulated industries & vertical workflows (here)

• Revolut secured a full UK banking licence (after a 4-year wait). This unlocks large-scale lending at home & strengthens case for approvals abroad as the $75B fintech targets deeper penetration across the US (here)

• Musk sidelined additional xAI founders amid coding push struggles. Leadership churn highlights mounting execution pressure as firms race to monetise coding copilots & infrastructure bets (here)

• Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines secured a multibillion-dollar chip supply deal with Nvidia (here)

Regulation

• UK MPs rejected a blanket social-media ban for under-16s in favour of consultation, highlighting a more incremental European regulatory approach vs sharper platform restrictions seen in parts of Asia (here)

• UK is consulting on a scaled-back national digital ID framework after earlier proposals faced backlash. Policymakers are attempting to balance identity verification infrastructure benefits with public concerns over surveillance, data centralisation & private-sector access (here)

• UK will subject major water utility acquisitions to national security screening – ministers are expanding the Investment Security Unit’s remit to include critical water infrastructure deals amid rising foreign interest in distressed UK utilities. Officials argue water networks now sit alongside energy grids & telecoms as strategic assets vulnerable to hostile leverage or supply disruption. The move signals a broader trend of governments redefining “critical infrastructure” in economic security terms, particularly where private capital ownership intersects with sovereign resilience (here)

• US banking regulators plan to ease post-2008 capital rules on lenders (i.e. reduced capital buffer requirements) potentially boosting credit supply & risk appetite at a time when private credit markets are under scrutiny (here)

• Per Sifted, the leaked EU “28th regime” proposal falls short. While it would be introduced as a regulation (ensuring consistent implementation across states) it stops short of creating a fully unified company structure. Instead of an EU-wide registry, founders would file via a single portal with data routed to national registers, while legal disputes would remain in national courts. Ecosystem groups are pushing back, warning this undermines the core goal of standardisation (here)

• Washington is trying to calm major sovereign wealth funds after proposed US tax changes raised fears of reduced foreign investment. New rules could expand what counts as “commercial activity”, potentially increasing tax liabilities on activities like direct lending or minority stakes. Funds such as Mubadala (>$100B invested in the US) & Qatar Investment Authority ($580B globally) warned investment could fall (here)

Venture Capital / Finance

• Dragos Novac argues Europe’s venture market is structurally barbelled. “The reality check is a snapshot of capital under some sort of a cognitive dissonance - we’re in a bearish market, but with a specific bull flavour”. ~1K deals closed in the first 11 weeks of the year, but capital increasingly concentrated in AI mega-rounds & defence seed clusters while the scale-up layer continues to erode. $10M–$50M rounds are down ~44% YoY, signalling fragile graduation pathways from seed → growth. AI accounts for ~41% of deployed capital, which Novac frames as herding rather than pure conviction, particularly in an ecosystem that may already have 3–4x more VCs than its LP base can sustainably support, implying consolidation inevitable (here)

• Per Dealroom, European unicorns have erased ~€123B in paper value as 60 of 199 fall below $1B. Fintech alone accounts for ~€64.8B in markdowns (53% of value destruction), underscoring how 2021 pricing assumptions rather than operational weakness are driving ecosystem recalibration (here)

• Deutsche Bank flagged ~$30B exposure to private credit while Cliffwater’s $33B fund saw redemptions hit ~14%. Highlighting liquidity mismatches emerging in semi-liquid credit vehicles as institutional allocators reassess risk (here & here)

• Carlyle paused fundraising to overhaul its team after struggles in its latest vehicle (here)

• Sequoia argues the next $1T company may be a software company masquerading as a services provider - as enterprises shift from buying tools to buying completed work, the biggest winners will be vertically integrated AI businesses that look like services firms on the surface but operate with software-like margins. Historically, for every $1 spent on software around $6 has been spent on services; AI is now beginning to convert much of that services spend into scalable, outcome-driven software (here)

• Entrepreneurs First raised $200M for its talent-first venture builder model, while continuing to encourage European founders to spend time in US markets to access customers & capital networks. Businesswire reported the story, declaring EF “a global talent investor & company builder based in San Francisco”. EF was founded by Matt Clifford & Alice Bentinck in the UK in 2011 (here)

• New funds:

  • Spark Capital (first VC to back Anthropic) is in the process of raising ~$3B in new funds, 50% more than the size of funds it raised 2 years ago (here)

  • Elaia closed €134M for its third deep-tech fund focused on B2B pre-seed & seed (here)

  • Scout Ventures closed its fifth fund with $125M in commitments. The Austin-based VC will invest in companies building tech tied to national security & defence (here)

  • Emerald Technology Ventures reached €100M for Global Water Fund II – highlighting growing investor focus on resource infra innovation (here)

  • Samaipata launched a €110M early-stage AI fund (here)

  • UVC Partners secured €77M first close for a €150M growth fund – signalling cautious re-entry into later-stage deployment as exit visibility remains limited (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• The Strait of Hormuz remains one of the most consequential chokepoints in the global economic system. ~34% of seaborne oil, ~22% of minerals & ~16% of fertiliser shipments transit the corridor, alongside aluminium, chemicals & jet fuel, underscoring how regional conflict can ripple through technology supply chains (here)

• Qatar helium shutdown has triggered chip supply chain alarm. This removed ~30% of global helium supply, forcing semiconductor manufacturers like SK hynix to accelerate diversification efforts as geopolitical shocks increasingly threaten critical materials for advanced computing (here)

• Trump warned NATO faces a “very bad future” if allies fail to back US operations linked to Iran. The comments signal a more transactional American security posture where alliance solidarity may increasingly depend on participation in expeditionary conflicts, intensifying European debates around sovereignty (here)

• Germany rejected Trump pressure to support Iran operations militarily. Defence officials emphasised constitutional constraints & domestic opposition, exposing fractures within NATO over burden-sharing & intervention scope during high-intensity crises (here)

• US temporarily lifted sanctions on Russian oil already at sea as prices spiked toward $100 (here), while Zelenskyy urged Europe to stop importing Russian oil funding Moscow’s war effort. He highlighted the contradiction between Europe’s geopolitical stance & persistent energy dependence, particularly as global oil volatility complicates transition timelines (here)

• UK announced a £45M AI supercomputer (“Sunrise”) to support fusion energy development. With massive computing power, it aims to enable digital simulations of reactors, accelerating research, reducing costs & strengthening supply chains around AI, materials & superconductors (here)

• UK LibDebs called for a “genuinely independent” nuclear deterrent review. Proposals to reassess reliance on US Trident systems reflect growing anxiety about the durability of transatlantic guarantees in a more unpredictable security environment (here)

• UK defence insiders warn Palantir’s data aggregation power creates sovereign risk. Officials argue that even if raw datasets remain state-owned, the company can derive strategic insights by combining metadata across departments, building a detailed intelligence picture of population & critical infrastructure (here)

• Russia tests nationwide internet shutdown architecture with Moscow blackouts. Temporary mobile internet disruptions suggest the Kremlin is trialling scalable censorship & traffic-control systems, signalling a move toward Chinese-style sovereign internet governance models amid wartime information control (here)

• Russia launched far-right “Paladins” network targeting Europe. Intelligence officials warn Moscow is backing extremist online cells designed to incite violence, destabilise democratic institutions & exploit migration tensions, reflecting a broader shift toward hybrid warfare using ideology, cyber influence & grassroots mobilisation (here)

• TikTok investors may pay a ~$10B fee to the Trump administration as part of deal negotiations – a direct insertion of executive power into corporate transactions (here)

• Likewise, Intel shareholders alleged the company offered strategic concessions to US authorities to avoid political pressure campaigns (here)

• “Londonmaxxing” reflects The bull case for London - reasons to be cheerful about the city! (here)

• Per the FT, debates around “sovereign AI” increasingly centre on the “economics of anti-scale.” Smaller nations are exploring domestically controlled compute & models despite efficiency disadvantages, prioritising resilience & political autonomy over hyperscale optimisation. “Deglobalisation — which is in effect what this is, however rational — is expensive for individual countries, but a windfall for their suppliers” (here)

• Peter Thiel (founder of Palantir) commenced a series of closed door lectures in Rome depicting those who lobby for tech regulation as harbingers of the antichrist. Thiel’s views stand in stark contrast to those of Pope Leo, who has warned of the dangers of AI & called for stronger regulation to minimise its risks (here)

• The UK is pledging £1B to accelerate domestic quantum computing capability. The funding package aims to support hardware scale-up, talent pipelines & sovereign supply chains as Britain seeks to remain competitive with US & Chinese quantum investments. Officials frame quantum not only as a scientific race but as a strategic computing capability tied to encryption resilience, advanced materials & defence modelling (here)

• Pentagon expands oversight of Stars & Stripes media outlet. Proposed controls on editorial scope reflect growing tension between military comms strategy & journalistic independence during conflict periods, with implications for information warfare narratives (here)

• Norway (via Norwegian Consumer Council) is pushing back against platform “enshittification”, advocating for open digital ecosystems & public-interest platforms to counter concentration among US tech giants, aligning with broader European digital sovereignty debates. This has been done via an absurdist video (see here) from the publicly funded Norwegian council which joined up with <70 groups/individuals across Europe & the US, including trade unions human rights orgs to urge policymakers to resist deliberate deterioration of platforms & devices (here)

• Office.eu launches as sovereign European productivity suite. The Hague-based initiative aims to provide 100% European owned alternatives to Microsoft 365 & Google Workspace, reflecting mounting political demand for local data control & cloud independence (here)

• Hua Hong (semiconductor manufacturer) has developed 7nm chipmaking capability for AI chips marking a significant step in China’s domestic semiconductor push as US export controls bite. Until now only SMIC could produce at this level at scale, but collaboration with Huawei & prototype testing for blacklisted designer Biren suggest China is steadily localising advanced AI compute supply chains despite sanctions (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Another article on AI deepfakes blurring reality in both warfare & financial markets as scams scale globally. Per the FT, real images of toxic smoke over Tehran now circulate alongside fabricated scenes of US soldiers captured by Iranian forces, illustrating how generative media is overwhelming verification capacity. A Columbia policy brief estimates AI-driven fraud losses rose from ~$12.3B in 2023 toward ~$40B projected by 2025, with criminals using synthetic celebrity endorsements, cloned executives & impersonated relatives to trigger urgent payments or crypto transfers. Regulators are attempting piecemeal responses – from SIM card limits in Malaysia & Mexico to bank data-sharing regimes in Singapore & new deepfake identity protections in Denmark & Ireland – yet enforcement remains fragmented as scams operate across borders. Scholars argue platforms distributing billions of fake adverts daily are the “cheapest cost avoiders”, but liability frameworks remain contested. The result is a widening trust deficit: consumers cannot realistically detect high-quality deepfakes themselves, turning misinformation resilience into a systemic governance & infrastructure challenge rather than a media literacy problem (here)

• Andrej Karpathy’s autoresearch experiments cut GPT-2-level training time ~11% in 48 hours – demonstrating how automated research loops could accelerate model improvement cycles (here)

• Nvidia is expanding beyond GPUs into full-stack AI strategy. A $2B investment in neocloud provider Nebius Group — helping finance multi-gigawatt data-centre build-outs & large hyperscaler deals — highlights efforts to secure downstream demand even as analysts warn about circular financing risks. At the same time, planned ~$26B spending on open-weight models signals ambitions to shape the application layer, while new inference-focused chips & forecasts of up to $1TN in cumulative AI chip revenue underscore confidence in deployment-driven growth (here, here & here)

• GenAI traffic remains highly concentrated with ChatGPT & Gemini dominating global usage while Claude has recently accelerated share gains. SimilarWeb estimates show ChatGPT declining from ~75.7% share 12 mo ago to ~62%, while Gemini rose from ~5.7% to ~24%, benefiting from distribution via Android & Workspace. Claude climbed from ~1.7% to ~3.3% within months, but this share is likely to be materially higher now following Opus 4.5, Claude Code & Opus 4.6 launches which drove corporate adoption & doubled ARR since the start of the year (here)

• Notable deal: Mirendil (neolab building specialised models for scientific R&D) is reportedly in talks to raise $175M at $1B co-led by Andreessen Horowitz & Kleiner Perkins. Mirendil was founded by former researchers from Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI & OpenAI (here)

Cybersecurity

• Google closed its $32B acquisition of Wiz in the largest deal in its history! The deal delivered >$8B combined to founders & multibillion-dollar returns to major VC backers as cloud security consolidates (here)

• The White House published its national cyber strategy (just 7 pages!) framing it as an instrument of American power - innovation over regulation & offense is no longer optional (here)

• OpenAI acquired Promptfoo, an enterprise AI security & evaluation platform, reinforcing the strategic importance of testing, red-teaming & reliability tooling as agent deployments scale across regulated industries (here)

• Iran-linked hackers disrupted Albania’s parliament systems in a data-wiping attack (here) & Stryker (Medical tech platform) suffered a global outage after a wiper malware attack claiming ~50TB of data exfiltration – both stories underscore how geopolitical cyber operations increasingly target commercial critical infrastructure (here)

• North Korean “fake workers” are using AI-generated identities to infiltrate European companies & secure remote jobs. Intelligence agencies warn operatives are deploying deepfake video, synthetic CVs & automated coding outputs to pass hiring processes, then funnelling salaries or data back to state-linked networks. The campaign illustrates how genAI is reshaping economic espionage from network intrusion toward labour-market infiltration, turning HR pipelines into an unexpected security frontier (here)

• The UK’s Companies House security lapse exposing UK director data (here) & Sweden’s e-government source code leak highlight the fragility of centralised digital state systems increasingly relied upon for welfare, tax & identity services (here)

• Notable deals: Kai launched after raising $125M to scale its AI-driven autonomous security platform (here); Qevlar AI raised a $30M for its AI SOC (here); Escape raised €15.4M for its AI offensive security platform (here) & Augur raised $15M Seed to deploy sovereign AI security monitoring across critical infrastructure (here)

Defence

• Poland plans to deploy the EU’s first integrated anti-drone shield combining radar, EW & interceptor systems reflecting how cheap unmanned aerial threats are driving rapid innovation in layered air defence across Europe (here)

• European & Asian militaries are ‘scrambling’ to build sovereign Starlink-like satellite constellations to reduce dependency on the US. Starlink uses nearly 10k satellites to provide connectivity almost anywhere on Earth. But to avoid reliance on a privately, US controlled service, countries are developing alternatives such as the EU’s IRIS (planned ~300 satellites by 2030), China’s Guowang & Qianfan constellations (targeting up to 13k satellites) & Russia’s delayed Sfera network. These systems aim to ensure secure troop coordination, drone control & real-time intelligence links during high-intensity operations (here & here)

• German Air Force is eyeing operational unmanned combat aircraft by 2029. Airbus proposals signal Europe’s move toward indigenous autonomous strike capability, driven by Ukraine lessons & pressure to reduce reliance on US defence platforms (here)

• Open-source intelligence is being constrained as satellite imagery of conflict zones is delayed or withheld. Commercial providers such as Planet extended publication delays on Middle East imagery from 4 days to 2 weeks amid wartime pressure, reducing transparency just as demand for verification rises (here)

• Per the FT, AI is compressing the tempo of modern warfare. In Iran, the US reportedly struck >2K targets in just 4 days (matching the number hit in the first 6mo of the anti-ISIS campaign) as frontier models moved from summarisation to operational reasoning. Systems such as Palantir’s Maven, now used by 20-50K personnel across dozens of military entities & adopted by NATO, act as a real-time “software brain” across the full kill chain: identifying targets, selecting weapons & assessing damage. Where approval cycles once took hours or days, AI-enabled workflows are shrinking decisions into seconds, allowing commanders to generate & vet vastly larger target sets. The result is unprecedented scale & speed — alongside growing questions about oversight, traceability & benefits vs risks of machine targeting (here)

• A watchdog report claims the US Department of War spent millions on luxury food including $6.9M on lobster tail, $2M on Alaskan king crab & $15.1M on ribeye steak in just September 2025 (here)

• US Army awarded Anduril a contract worth $20B (here)

• Notable deal: Cambridge Aerospace (drone & missile interception) is speaking with investors about raising about $200M at <$1B (here)

Crypto

• Mastercard is buying stablecoin startup BVNK for $1.8B (here)

EVs / AVs

• Uber is rolling out Motional autonomous rides in Las Vegas with safety drivers initially present, reflecting gradual commercialisation of robotaxi networks ahead of wider regulatory clearance (here)

• Zoox will integrate robotaxi rides into Uber’s Las Vegas app if federal approval is secured. The purpose-built autonomous vehicle lacks steering wheel or pedals & currently operates only under demonstration exemptions (here)

• Wayve signed agreements with Nissan & Uber to launch robotaxis in Japan, reinforcing Asia as an early deployment arena for autonomy (here)

• Honda scrapped several EV models after forecasting its first annual loss since 1957, while Rivian & Lucid push ~$50k vehicles, signalling a reset in legacy automaker electrification strategies (here)

• Travis Kalanick is pivoting CloudKitchens into robotics startup Atoms – targeting automation across food, mining & logistics as part of his long-standing thesis on digitising the physical economy. Uber reportedly investing ~ $100M in its self-driving arm. The company reunites Kalanick with several former Uber operators, including Anthony Levandowski & ex-ATG head Eric Meyhofer, making Atoms both a comeback story & a revival of one of Silicon Valley’s most controversial autonomous-driving circles (here)

Robotics

• China is accelerating humanoid robotics development through state-backed AI labs focused on industrial deployment. New facilities are training large multimodal models using real-world factory footage, motion-capture datasets & reinforcement learning environments to build robots capable of logistics, assembly & service tasks. The strategy mirrors Beijing’s EV playbook: scale first, iterate quickly & compress commercialisation timelines through subsidies, local procurement mandates & coordinated supply chains. Western robotics firms still lead in software stack sophistication, but China’s manufacturing density & data access will likely narrow the gap rapidly (here)

• Notable deals: Rivian spinout Mind Robotics raised $500M to develop AI-powered industrial robots designed to perform physical manufacturing tasks such as picking parts, assembling components & manipulating wiring harnesses in factory environments. Led by Accel & Andreessen Horowitz, with participation from Rivian (here). Sunday (home robotics) reached ~$1.15B valuation (here)

Space

• China & Russia are expanding influence across the global space sector through subsidised launches & diplomatic partnerships. Emerging economies are increasingly opting into lower-cost satellite & launch ecosystems tied to political alignment, raising the risk of a fragmented orbital infrastructure landscape (here)

AgTech / Bio

• Gene-edited banana startup Tropic raised $105M to commercialise climate-resilient fruit varieties, reflecting growing venture interest in food security technologies as supply chains face climate & geopolitical shocks (here)