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)

Ukraine offers the clearest proof of how quickly that can happen. Faced with an existential war and constrained resources, it built a domestic drone ecosystem that changed the economics of the battlefield. Last week, after years of Kyiv asking Washington for weapons, it was America’s turn to ask Ukraine for help — with drones. Necessity, it turns out, is a formidable innovation engine.

Europe isn’t waiting. Over the past week, we saw Nscale’s $2B AI infrastructure raise, AMI Labs’ $1B seed — the largest in European history — Pasqal going public at a $2B valuation, Oxa’s $103M, and Isembard’s $50M. Across AI, quantum computing, autonomous systems and manufacturing, the pattern is clear. European capability is no longer a policy objective. It is being dreamt of and built, through venture-backed companies, at the intersection of AI, industrial capacity and national security

IPOs / Publics

• Global markets tumbled as the Iran war sent volatility surging – the VIX climbed toward 30 while Brent briefly spiked to nearly $120/barrel, its highest level since 2022, amid fears of disruption to energy flows through the Strait of Hormuz . Markets rebounded this week after Trump suggested the conflict was nearing an end (“the war is very complete, pretty much”), sending oil back below $90 – though US messaging has remained typically contradictory & volatility remains elevated (here)

• Robinhood (retail brokerage) raised less than a third of the $1B targeted for its Ventures Fund I (NYSE: RVI) before the vehicle fell -15.8% after listing. Separately, Robinhood launched a $695 ‘actual’ platinum credit card designed to compete with Amex, part of its push to expand beyond brokerage into full-stack consumer finance (here & here)

• SoftBank-backed PayPay (mobile payments platform) is preparing a ~$1.1B Nasdaq listing at $13.4B valuation, potentially the largest ever US IPO by a Japanese company. The fintech has become central to Japan’s shift toward cashless payments & reportedly meets the Rule-of-40 benchmark combining growth with profitability (here)

• Pasqal (quantum computing company) plans to go public via SPAC at roughly a $2B valuation, bringing one of Europe’s most prominent quantum startups – co-founded by Nobel laureate Alain Aspect – onto the Nasdaq (here)

• OpenAI selected law firms Cooley & Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz to prepare for a potential IPO – choosing legal counsel is typically one of the first concrete steps in a listing process & suggests the company could move toward a public offering as soon as Q4 (here)

• Bill Ackman’s Pershing Square has filed for an IPO in New York (here)

• Microsoft will launch a $99-per-user E7 bundle in May combining Office 365, Copilot AI & Agent 365, adding tools to summarise emails, generate slides & automate workflows. Crucially, new Copilot Cowork features use Anthropic’s Claude models to power “agentic” AI capable of completing multi-step tasks. The move marks a shift away from Microsoft’s previously OpenAI-centric strategy toward a multi-model approach—bringing Anthropic into its core enterprise AI stack despite the Pentagon recently designating the company a “supply chain risk”. (here & here)

• Apple introduced lower-priced iPhone & MacBook models as memory chip shortages tighten supply chains, a move analysts expect will protect Apple’s sales volumes while squeezing smaller hardware competitors that lack the company’s purchasing leverage in constrained semiconductor markets (here)

• Apple now makes a quarter of its iPhones in India. The tech giant ramped up production there by about 53% last year, to 55M from 36M a year earlier, as it looked to minimize the blow from Trump’s tariffs on imports from China (here)

• Oracle’s shares rose 10% following better than expected earnings & robust forecasts for next year. Larry Ellison said revenues rose 22% YoY to $17.2B (beating Wall Street forecasts of $16.9B) (here)

• Oracle is planning to cut as many as 20-30K jobs as it seeks to free up billions in cash flow to fund a massive AI data center buildout tied in part to a $300B cloud deal with OpenAI (here)

• Meta acquired Moltbook, the platform described as a “Reddit for AI agents” that recently went viral alongside OpenClaw as thousands of bots appeared to interact (though many of the supposedly self-aware posts were later revealed to be written by humans). Meta says the acquisition will help develop an “always-on directory” where AI agents can interact & provide services for people & businesses (here)

• Tech equity funds saw £162M in net outflows last month according to Calastone, representing ~ one-sixth of withdrawals from equity funds as investors grow uneasy about stretched AI valuations (here)

Big Dogs

• Revolut has applied for a US banking licence & hired former Visa executive Cetin Duransoy to run its American operations, marking what CEO Nik Storonsky called a “major milestone” toward building a global financial platform. The US is central to Revolut’s expansion plans – the company aims to reach 100M customers by mid-2027 (currently ~70M) & enter 30+ additional markets by the end of the decade (here)

• Cursor (AI coding assistant) has reportedly doubled recurring revenue in 3mo to ~$2B, with ~60% coming from corporate customers, highlighting how quickly developer tooling is becoming one of the fastest-scaling enterprise AI categories (here)

• Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei accused OpenAI of signing a Pentagon AI deal built on “safety theatre”, in a sharply worded 1,600-word memo to employees after the US Department of War cut ties with Anthropic over its safeguards against domestic surveillance & autonomous weapons. Amodei argued the “safety layer” described in OpenAI’s contract would be “20% real & 80% theatre” because models cannot reliably determine the real-world context in which they are deployed (here)

• OpenAI saw its robotics chief Caitlin Kalinowski resign over the company’s Pentagon agreement – Kalinowski, previously head of AR glasses hardware at Meta, said OpenAI’s decision to allow the US military to use its models for “any lawful purpose” crossed ethical lines that deserved more internal debate, citing concerns around domestic surveillance without judicial oversight & lethal autonomy without human authorisation (here)

• Stat highlighted by Azeem Azhar: in Feb 2025, ChatGPT held 90% of US business AI subscriptions. A year later, Claude commands ~70% (here)

Venture Capital / Finance

• Paul Graham argues the tech industry has entered a “Brand Age” where technological performance converges & companies compete increasingly on brand rather than engineering, implying venture moats may shift toward trust, distribution & narrative rather than technical differentiation (here)

• Lux Capital partner Josh Wolfe warned founders about a growing “mismatch” between venture optimism & market reality – while AI narratives remain exuberant, liquidity conditions, exit markets & public valuations are tightening. Wolfe urged startups to assume capital will become scarcer rather than cheaper, advising founders to extend runway, control burn & treat cash as strategic optionality rather than fuel for growth at any price (here & here)

• Crypto & blockchain-focused VC Dragonfly Capital just closed its fourth fund at $650M — beating its $500M target. This pushes the firm’s total AUM >$3B. Portfolio highlights include Polymarket, Ethena & Rain (as a stablecoin card issuer), Avalanche, NEAR, MakerDAO, 1inch & zkSync (here)

• The European Investment Fund committed €50M to Join Capital’s third venture fund, which is targeting €235M to back around 25 early-stage deep-tech companies focused on defence & security technologies, representing the EIF’s largest defence-focused venture allocation to date (here)

• Sandhya Venkatachalam, a former partner at Khosla Ventures, has launched Axiom Partners with a $52M debut fund focused on startups using AI to expand access to services such as healthcare, education & financial advice (here)

• Europe’s pension system represents a $30T untapped capital pool that could reshape the continent’s innovation ecosystem if deployed into capital markets – Europe’s equity markets are worth only ~85% of GDP vs ~220% in the US, limiting venture exit opportunities & growth capital. Countries that channel pension assets into markets show a different trajectory e.g. Sweden’s pension funds hold $671B (~110% of GDP) while Dutch pension assets >145% of GDP. Economists estimate that if similar reforms spread across the eurozone, >€3T of new investment capital could flow into European markets, materially expanding funding for technology companies (here)

• Report from Red Alpine suggests Europe’s tech dynamism is increasing. Driven by geopolitical & economic pressures, Europe is prioritising tech sovereignty to reduce dependence on foreign infrastructure & strengthen defence, critical systems & economic resilience. The continent is building on structural strengths including: world-class research institutions, deep industrial expertise, patient capital & trusted regulatory frameworks, while its tech ecosystem - now worth nearly $4T - continues to mature (global champions e.g. ASML, Spotify, Revolut). Venture returns are improving (European VCs outperforming their US peers over

  10-15-year horizon) & confidence rising. The report argues Europe is particularly well positioned to lead in six science & industry-driven sectors: intelligent enterprise software powered by AI; digital health & preventative care tech; new energy systems including fusion & decentralised grids; space tech spanning launch, satellites & infra; AI-enabled biology & drug discovery & advanced robotics for industry & defence - areas where Europe’s scientific depth, manufacturing base & regulatory credibility create durable competitive advantage (here)

Regulation

• A US federal judge ordered the Trump administration to begin refunding companies that paid tariffs later ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court, with >$100B in levies contested by firms including Costco & FedEx. Interest alone could add $700M/month to the government’s bill if payments are delayed (here)

• The Trump administration is drafting strict new procurement rules that would force AI companies selling to the US government to allow “any lawful” use of their models – draft guidance from the General Services Administration would require contractors to grant the US an irrevocable licence covering all legal applications, including defence or surveillance use. The guidance also requires AI tools supplied to government to avoid “partisan or ideological judgments” (here)

• The White House announced an AI infrastructure pledge under which companies including Google, Microsoft & OpenAI agreed to help finance power plants & grid upgrades, addressing the rapidly growing electricity demand created by hyperscale AI data centres (here)

• New York lawmakers are considering a bill that would restrict AI chatbots from providing licensed professional advice, potentially exposing companies to lawsuits if models generate responses that violate professional practice rules. The legislation – which passed committee 6–0 last week – would prohibit AI systems from offering “substantive” responses in areas governed by licensing regimes including law, medicine, nursing, engineering, psychology & social work (here)

• Indonesia & India’s Karnataka state are introducing social-media bans for users under 16 – the restrictions would apply to platforms including YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, X & Roblox. India recorded 1.35B social media app downloads last year, the highest globally, while Indonesia ranked third with 450M downloads (here)

• Roblox (gaming & social platform) introduced an AI system that rewrites offensive chat messages into “respectful language” rather than simply blocking them – instead of replacing banned text with hashtags, the moderation model now automatically alters phrasing while preserving intent. For example “Hurry TF up!” becomes “Hurry up!”. The change follows Roblox’s new mandatory age-verification rules as the company works to reassure parents & regulators about safety on the platform (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Iranian drone strikes hitting AWS data centres in Bahrain & the UAE exposed the fragility of Big Tech’s AI infrastructure expansion in the Gulf, where sovereign wealth funds have spent years attracting hyperscale cloud projects with cheap energy, land & capital. With trillions of dollars of digital infrastructure investment tied to regional stability, the attacks highlight how AI compute facilities are increasingly treated as strategic assets in geopolitical conflict (here)

• Nvidia has halted production of H200 chips intended for China as export controls & regulatory uncertainty escalate. The company has redirected manufacturing capacity at TSMC toward its next-generation Vera Rubin architecture, signalling it no longer expects meaningful near-term sales of the H200 in China (here)

• China set its least ambitious economic growth target in decades at 4.5–5%, signalling expectations of slower expansion as policymakers prioritise stability & technological self-sufficiency. Xi Jinping is preparing for a summit with Donald Trump next month aimed at easing trade tensions (here)

• Draft US rules would require countries seeking large shipments of Nvidia or AMD AI chips to commit investment into US domestic AI infrastructure, formalising a model already used in agreements with the UAE & Saudi Arabia (here)

• Chinese developers are rapidly building applications around OpenClaw. Chinese cloud giants including Alibaba, Tencent & ByteDance are already offering OpenClaw services on their platforms, something US hyperscalers have not yet done. The speed of adoption reflects China’s advantage in low-cost open-source models & hardware manufacturing that can rapidly translate software breakthroughs into new products (here)

• War in Iran is triggering a global aluminium supply shock as Gulf smelters shut down & declare force majeure, threatening a crunch in a metal critical to aerospace, defence & electronics. The Middle East produces ~10% of global refined aluminium, while Aluminium Bahrain alone produced 1.6M tonnes last year. With inventories already near historic lows, analysts warn the disruption could push prices toward $4,000 per tonne from ~$3,322 today & trigger repricing across base metals (here)

• UK police arrested 3 men linked to the Labour Party on suspicion of spying for China, including the husband of a sitting MP, highlighting growing concern across Europe about political influence operations linked to Beijing (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Nobel laureate Daron Acemoglu warns AI could quietly shrink the “knowledge commons”, as engineers increasingly solve problems privately with AI assistants rather than documenting solutions in public forums such as Stack Overflow (here)

• Anthropic’s labour report analyses how workers actually use Claude across 800 occupations, weighting fully automated uses more heavily than human-assisted ones. The report highlights a large gap between the “blue zone” of tasks AI could theoretically perform & the much smaller “red zone” of tasks workers actually use AI for today. Today, usage remains concentrated in narrow functions such as summarising documents or drafting text despite far broader potential. Coverage is already high in some roles – computer programmers (~75% of tasks), data entry (~67%) & customer service via API automation – while roughly 30% of occupations show zero measurable AI usage so far. The gap is particularly stark in technical fields: computer & mathematics occupations show ~94% theoretical exposure but only ~33% actual usage today. How quickly that red zone expands will determine how much time workers & organisations have to adapt. See the report here

• The UK government is launching a £40M national AI research lab to apply artificial intelligence across healthcare, climate modelling & infrastructure, part of a strategy to translate Britain’s strong academic research base into commercial deployment (here)

• Notable deals: Nscale (AI cloud infrastructure) raised $2B at $14.6B in the largest funding round of its kind for a European startup. The Nvidia-backed company is building hyperscale AI data centres for customers including OpenAI & recently secured a contract worth up to $14B with Microsoft to build a major AI facility in Texas. The financing surpasses previous European AI mega-rounds such as Mistral’s €1.7B raise. Former Meta executives Sheryl Sandberg & Nick Clegg join its board (here & here). AMI Labs (world models startup) founded by former Meta chief AI scientist Yann LeCun, has raised >$1B, the largest seed funding round ever for a European company (here). Former OpenAI chief research officer Bob McGrew launched Arda (robotics AI world model startup) – the company is building a “world model” designed specifically for factories, using video captured on production floors to generate virtual simulations that train robots & coordinate workflows between machines & humans (here)

Cybersecurity

• Darktrace appointed its third chief executive in 18 months as private equity owners push US expansion. Ed Jennings will take over leadership as the Thoma Bravo-backed company accelerates growth in the American market. Darktrace plans to invest >$200M in the US in 2026, +11% YoY, with the aim of lifting US sales to half of total revenue & eventually relisting the company on US markets (here)

• New research shows LLMs can de-anonymise pseudonymous online accounts by analysing linguistic fingerprints, linking identities across platforms through patterns in vocabulary, syntax & writing style (here)

• Israel said it struck a facility in Tehran used as the command centre for Iran’s cyber warfare operations, targeting intelligence & electronic warfare infrastructure. While destroying physical facilities may disrupt coordination temporarily, cyber capabilities are inherently distributed – meaning Iran’s ability to conduct digital attacks is unlikely to be eliminated simply by destroying a single operational hub (here)

Defence

• US defence contractors including Lockheed Martin have begun removing Anthropic’s Claude from internal systems, following a social media post designating Anthropic a supply chain risk from defence secretary Pete Hegseth (a statement lacking formal legal basis). In practice the signal is enough – when the Pentagon expresses a preference, contractors tend to comply regardless of the legal details (here)

• AI-generated fakes are beginning to manipulate satellite imagery used in conflict monitoring & intelligence analysis. Analysts warn that increasingly realistic AI image manipulation tools can fabricate battlefield scenes or alter commercial satellite imagery used by journalists, OSINT analysts & governments. The rise of synthetic geospatial intelligence raises new national security risks, particularly as satellite imagery has become a critical tool for tracking troop movements, infrastructure damage & military deployments in conflicts such as Ukraine & the Middle East (here)

• A new 60 Minutes investigation suggests that a subset of “Havana Syndrome” incidents affecting more than 65 diplomats, intelligence officers & military personnel may be linked to microwave or radio-frequency weapons capable of causing vertigo, cognitive impairment, headaches & balance problems without any visible attack. Researchers say the technology builds on extensive Soviet-era experiments into microwave systems capable of inducing seizures, memory loss & disorientation. Several cases were reportedly connected to Russia’s covert Unit 29155, while US investigators have obtained a suspected device via a criminal network & tested it in military labs where animal injuries mirrored human symptoms. If validated, such systems would represent a deniable class of weapons operating somewhere between electronic warfare, espionage & biomedical attack (here)

• Russian intelligence services are running a global campaign to hijack Signal & WhatsApp accounts belonging to officials, journalists & military personnel. According to Dutch intelligence agencies AIVD & MIVD, the operation targets individuals rather than exploiting technical vulnerabilities in the apps themselves. Attackers impersonate Signal Support chatbots or exploit the “linked devices” feature to trick victims into revealing verification codes, allowing them to seize control of accounts & read encrypted messages inside group chats. The campaign highlights an uncomfortable reality of modern encrypted communications: end-to-end encryption protects the network, but not the user, meaning social engineering rather than cryptography remains the weakest link in secure messaging systems (here)

• European defence startups raised a record ~$9B in 2025 yet still attract roughly 8.5x less venture capital than US counterparts, with founders citing persistent difficulty raising €50M–€200M growth rounds from European investors (here)

• Ukraine is offering allies a £750 “Sting” interceptor drone designed to destroy Iranian Shahed drones, which typically cost ~$20k each. By contrast Patriot missiles used to intercept them cost roughly £3M per shot, highlighting the shifting economics of modern air defence (here)

• Anduril expects revenue to reach about $4.3B this year while operating losses climb to roughly $1.2B – confidential forecasts shared with investors show the company roughly doubling revenue as it raises $4B at a $60B valuation to finance expansion into autonomous fighter jets, submarines & missile systems (here)

• The NATO Innovation Fund appointed Ari Kristinn Jónsson as president, reflecting the alliance’s growing effort to coordinate venture investment across defence technologies including autonomy, cyber & space (here)

• Notable deals: Auterion (drone swarm operating system) is rumoured to be raising $200M at $1.2B while already profitable, with the company expecting revenue to reach roughly $200M this year based on signed defence contracts (here). Donald Trump Jr & Eric Trump are backing a new US military drone company preparing to go public via SPAC merger. Autonomous Power Corporation plans to merge with Nasdaq-listed Aureus Greenway Holdings & trade as Powerus. The company already lists the US Department of Defense as a customer, while a separate drone manufacturer tied to Trump Jr recently secured a Pentagon contract to supply 3,500 drone motors (here) Nominal, a company that helps hardware engineers test & operate complex systems during development & deployment, raised an $80M round led by Founders Fund, with prior backers Sequoia, Lux, GC, Lightspeed & Red Glass also participating. The company offers software that helps hardware engineers test their designs & began as a picks-&-shovels type of startup for the defense industry. The company says that in the last 10 months, it has landed 4 of the 5 largest defense contractors as customers (here). Finally, UForce, a London & Ukrainian startup that develops combat robotics, strike drones, unmanned naval vessels, counter-drone systems & battlefield management software for military operations, raised a $50M round co-led by Shield Capital & Lakestar (here)

Energy

• Rising electricity bills across the PJM grid covering 13 eastern US states may reflect market design rather than AI demand, according to SemiAnalysis, which notes Texas’ real-time electricity market has not experienced comparable spikes despite rapid data centre expansion (here)

• Closing the Strait of Hormuz knocked ~20M barrels a day off global supply, about the same as the next 5 biggest oil shocks combined! (here)

Robotics

• Nvidia & ABB Robotics are partnering to develop autonomous industrial robots trained in simulated environments – the system combines ABB’s robot training software with Nvidia’s Omniverse platform, allowing machines to learn tasks inside virtual “digital twin” factories before being deployed in the real world. The robots are already being tested by Foxconn & could significantly lower costs, with industrial robotic arms currently costing between $40K & $500K, opening automation to smaller manufacturer (here)

EVs / AVs

• Oxa (autonomous vehicle software) raised $103M from investors including NVentures & the UK’s National Wealth Fund, supporting deployment of self-driving systems in logistics, mining & industrial vehicles (here)

Crypto / Stablecoins

• Coinbase shares rallied after Donald Trump urged banks to resolve tensions with crypto firms over the proposed Clarity Act, legislation aimed at establishing a regulatory framework for stablecoins while the SEC & CFTC presented the White House with a joint plan for regulating crypto assets & prediction markets (here)

• OKX, a cryptocurrency exchange offering spot trading, derivatives & digital asset services, raised an undisclosed sum from Intercontinental Exchange at a $25B valuation (here)

• Kraken has become the first crypto-native company to obtain direct access to the Federal Reserve’s core payments system (here)

When Anthropic refused Pentagon uses involving mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, the U.S. government designated it a “supply chain risk” — a tool normally reserved for foreign adversaries. Within hours, OpenAI signed a defence agreement of its own. Separately, U.S. and Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader. Different arenas, same signal: a government demonstrating superior military and technological might, and that its authority should not be challenged.

A sober take finds a rationale for that position: AI is infrastructure with strategic implications no existing regulatory framework adequately covers, and unelected billionaires deciding its limits is not obviously the better alternative.

Nonetheless, stripping contracts, barring federal business and threatening employees over ideological nonconformity is more how China governs its technology sector. In attempting to beat China, America is, in some ways, reaching for China’s playbook.

That Anthropic’s Claude subsequently shot to #1 on the App Store suggests consumers noticed. Whether that constitutes a democratic verdict or simply a purchasing decision depends on how much you trust markets over elections — neither is a clean answer.

IPOs / Publics

• Stocks & bonds tumbled as Middle East war rattles markets. Global markets fell as Brent crude rose >$85/barrel & European gas prices +24%, Asian gas +65%. Stoxx Europe 600 -3% & Germany’s Dax -3.6%. Traders began pricing a 40% chance of ECB rate rise (here)

• Cerebras Systems preparing another IPO attempt (here)

• SpaceX could file to IPO as early as March targeting ~$50B at a valuation >$1.75T (here)

• Einride raised $113M PIPE ($213M total) ahead of pursuing a public listing via SPAC, to expand autonomous freight operations across North America, Europe & MENA (here)

• PayPay, SoftBank’s popular Japanese digital payments provider, has delayed filing IPO prospectus as expected, citing “market conditions” (here)

• Block plans to cut ~40% of its workforce (>4,000 roles) citing AI-enabled operational efficiency, with a positive market reaction signalling investors treat AI-driven cost restructuring as a structural margin lever (here)

• Nvidia reported $68B in quarterly revenue (+73% YoY) with $62B from data centres & $43B in profit maintaining gross margins >75%. Only a modest share price response, reflecting investor focus on power constraints, financing costs & hyperscaler capex durability (here)

• The London Stock Exchange Group will buy back up to £3B (~$4B) worth of stock, amid pressure from activist investor Elliott (here)

• General Atlantic is said to be planning the sale of some of its holdings in ByteDance, valuing the Chinese internet giant, former owner of US TikTok operations, at $550B (here)

• Meta agreed to buy 6GW of AI computing power from AMD in a deal worth >$100B, receiving warrants that could give it up to 10% of AMD as the chip maker pushes custom GPUs to challenge Nvidia (here)

• Google signed a multi-billion-dollar TPU deal with Meta, part of an internal push that executives have said could capture up to 10% of Nvidia’s ~$200B annual revenue (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic refused to remove restrictions prohibiting mass domestic surveillance & fully autonomous weapons use of its Claude models placing corporate AI safety guardrails in direct conflict with national security demands. Anthropic was thus designated a “supply chain risk” by the US Defense Secretary effectively barring federal contractors from commercial activity with the company, while President Trump directed federal agencies to cease using its technology. The regulatory tool is typically reserved for foreign adversaries, marking an unprecedented sanction against a leading US AI lab (here, here & here)

• Ben Thompson likens “international law” to AI alignment: rules matter only if enforceable. Anthropic refused Pentagon uses involving “mass domestic surveillance” & “fully autonomous weapons”, arguing current systems lack reliability & guardrails. Thompson questions whether unelected executives should decide military uses, contrasting corporate conscience with elected authority (here)

• Claude became the top free app in Apple’s U.S. App Store (after ranking 131 in January), overtaking ChatGPT after the controversy over Pentagon use (here)

• Anthropic revised its Responsible Scaling Policy stating it will not delay model releases solely because rivals lack equivalent safety measures signalling competitive pressure may be reshaping alignment doctrine (here)

• Anthropic released Claude for COBOL targeting legacy systems that power ~43% of banking, ~95% of ATMs & >$3T in daily transactions positioning AI as a bridge across ageing financial infrastructure (here)

• Anthropic acquired Vercept to integrate AI tools directly into operating systems signalling a move toward deeper system-level control rather than API-layer expansion (here)

• OpenAI secured a Pentagon agreement within hours of the Anthropic ban to deploy models in classified systems (here)

• OpenAI amended its Pentagon contract days after signing it, with Sam Altman admitting the rollout “looked opportunistic & sloppy”. The revised terms prohibit “deliberate tracking, surveillance or monitoring of US persons”, including through commercially acquired data. Intelligence agencies such as the NSA are excluded for now (here)

• OpenAI announced a $110B funding round at an $840B post-money valuation backed by Amazon ($50B), Nvidia ($30B) & SoftBank ($30B) marking the largest private technology financing in history & reinforcing vertical integration between frontier models & cloud infrastructure. Per Dragos Novac “AI infrastructure is now officially a foundational technology, akin to oil or electricity in past industrial revolutions - whoever controls the compute stack & global AI deployment platforms will have outsized influence on future digital ecosystems” (here)

• OpenAI confirmed London as its largest research hub outside the US - making the UK a key node in the global AI research ecosystem (here)

• Elsewhere, OpenAI has a new collaboration with Burger King under which staff will use AI-enabled headset chatbots to receive real-time guidance on food prep & operational procedures. The system will also generate “friendliness” scores based on employee interactions with customers… (here)

Venture Capital

• China launched a ~$144B state-backed fund for technology self-reliance representing ~0.7% of 2025 GDP signalling continued capital mobilisation toward semiconductor, AI & strategic manufacturing independence (here)

• Verdane agreed to acquire London-listed Augmentum Fintech for £185.7M - a 30% discount to net asset value (here)

• Europe produces 24% of the world's unicorn founders! With the following companies having at least one European cofounder: OpenAI, Stripe, Shopify, Palantir, Databricks, CrowdStrike, Snowflake, Datadog. Clearly, the problem is they all go the US to build their company (Data from Yoram Wijngaarde & Dealroom) (post from Seb Johnson here)

• The biggest VC funds are getting bigger (a16z, Thrive, Lightspeed, Coatue, Founders Fund, ICONIQ, Greenoaks, NEA, GC). In the past 3 years, the top firms have raised billions - in some cases more than half the total amount they’ve raised in their lifetimes. Recent funds raised by Thrive, Andreessen Horowitz & Lightspeed amount to $34B - half of all money U.S. VC funds raised last year. Overall venture fundraising sank 34% in 2025 to just under $68B & has plummeted almost 70% from the fundraising frenzy of 2022, according to PitchBook. Notably, having raised $12B.7B in 2021, Tiger raised ‘just’ $2.2B last year (here)

• New funds:

  • Seraphim Space raised $100M fund backed by the British Business Bank, the National Security Strategic Investment Fund & Eutelsat reinforcing space technology as a national security-aligned asset class rather than a purely commercial venture theme (here)

  • Syndicate One closed a €22M second fund dedicated to Belgian early-stage startups (here)

  • Corporación Financiera Azuaga launched a €60M Spanish defence & space-focused venture fund (here)

• Wilson Sonsini’s Entrepreneurs Report: median US valuations at seed $29M, Ser A $92.5M, Ser B $157.5m & Ser C+ $515m. Amounts, Seed: $6m, Ser A $19.3m, Ser B $32.3M & Ser C $42m. Up rounds on the up (>70% of rounds). SAFE amounts risen to median $1M & 90% of pre seed financings. Growing use of SAFEs at earlier stages “accelerates execution & reduces legal complexity for very early financings” but “founders should be mindful of cumulative SAFE dilution & varying terms complicate cap table dynamics”. 72% of SAFEs had only valuation cap. 67% had a discount of exactly 20% (here)

Regulation

• Federal judge dismissed xAI’s lawsuit against OpenAI rejecting claims of trade secret theft & improper employee poaching (here)

• Kalshi initiated its first enforcement actions for insider trading on prediction markets, raising broader questions around information asymmetry, fiduciary standards & regulatory parity with traditional financial exchanges (here)

• An FT article examines the “transatlantic battle over free speech” - the growing clash between the US & EU over digital regulation. The Trump administration has accused Brussels of “censoring the global internet” through its Digital Services Act, which allows fines of up to 6% of global revenue. Elon Musk called a €120M fine on X “bullshit”, while JD Vance said the EU was “attacking American companies”. EU officials insist the rules target illegal content & algorithmic opacity, not speech, warning that foreign pressure amounts to interference with “EU regulatory sovereignty” (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• The U.S. & Israel attacked Iran. Israeli strikes killed Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei (along with various other top Iranian leaders) (here)

• Per Noahpinion, Trump has “taken a serious geopolitical action instead of making a bunch of noise & then backing down”. He goes on to argue that the post–Cold War world order, often called “Pax Americana,” was a U.S.-led system that both empowered & restrained America. The U.S. acted as global enforcer but limited itself through alliances, international institutions & norms against conquest. As America weakened industrially & became consumed by internal conflict, that order eroded & a multipolar world emerged. Many welcomed this shift, expecting U.S. power to shrink. Instead, he argues, removing those constraints may free American leaders to use force more aggressively & unpredictably. The result isn’t less U.S. power — it’s a less restrained superpower. In other words, this is a “be careful what you wish for” moment for all of the advocates of a multipolar world (here)

• Russia signalled diplomatic backing for Iran via the UN Security Council while China expressed concern over Iranian sovereignty reinforcing the durability of the China–Russia–Iran alignment (here)

• Donald Trump criticised Sir Keir Starmer for refusing to back initial US strikes on Iran, saying the US-UK relationship was “not what it was”. Trump claimed France had been “great” while Britain had been “much different”. Starmer said the UK “does not believe in regime change from the skies” but later allowed US use of British bases for defensive purposes. The dispute comes amid drone attacks on RAF Akrotiri in Cyprus & rising military deployments in the region (here)

• France introduced a doctrine of “forward deterrence” offering to deploy elements of its nuclear forces on allied European territory representing the most significant revision of French nuclear posture in decades. The shift reflects declining confidence in unconditional US guarantees. For investors, this signals a durable expansion of European defence budgets, cross-border procurement & sovereign industrial capacity in aerospace, missile systems & nuclear infrastructure. “We must strengthen our nuclear deterrent in the face of multiple threats, and we must consider our deterrence strategy deep within the European continent, with full respect for our sovereignty,” President Macron said (here)

• European gas prices rose up to 50% after Iranian strikes halted Qatari LNG production underscoring LNG infrastructure as a kinetic vulnerability. Qatar supplies roughly one-fifth of global LNG. The spike illustrates how energy security, AI infrastructure & industrial competitiveness are now directly linked. Data centres, advanced manufacturing & chemical industries remain structurally exposed to geopolitical chokepoints in the Gulf (here)

• Canada accelerated trade negotiations with India targeting ~$70B in bilateral trade by decade end as part of a strategy to rebalance away from US dependence. The move reflects “middle power” hedging in an era of US tariff volatility. For venture-backed exporters, diversification of market access reduces single-country policy risk while deepening Indo-Pacific capital flows (here)

• Hundreds of foreign scientists working at the US National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) campuses in Boulder, Colorado & Maryland have been barred from labs on evenings & weekends unless escorted by a federal employee. Those from certain countries could lose access altogether as soon as the end of next month. The changes are part of proposed rules aimed at increasing security that would limit, to 3 years, the length of time visiting international researchers can work at NIST (here)

• The Economist on “reasons to be cheerful about European tech”. Venture funding has rebounded, deep-tech clusters are forming & defence spending is catalysing start-ups. Companies in AI, climate tech & semiconductors are scaling faster, while pension reforms may unlock more capital. Structural problems remain, but investors detect “momentum” after years of stagnation (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Iranian strikes set an Amazon data centre in the UAE ablaze demonstrating that hyperscale AI infrastructure is now a strategic target despite extensive missile interceptions. Gulf security partnerships had focused on chip access & geopolitical alignment, not physical protection of compute. The incident reframes AI facilities as strategic infrastructure, forcing technology firms & investors to factor geopolitical risk, redundancy & physical security - not just energy costs & semiconductors - into data-centre strategy (here)

• Mistral is partnering with Accenture for enterprise deployment, on back of announcing ~€400M ARR at a €12B valuation - indicating European sovereign AI infrastructure is scaling alongside US leaders (here)

• DeepSeek is preparing to release its V4 multimodal model while optimising for Huawei & Cambricon chips reducing reliance on Nvidia amid US export controls & reinforcing China’s push for AI hardware autonomy (here)

• Nvidia plans to launch an inference-focused chip using Groq technology following a $20B licensing deal signalling a strategic shift toward specialised post-training compute demand (here)

• Radiant merged with Ori Industries to build a vertically integrated sovereign AI cloud platform in the UK reflecting European emphasis on controlled compute infrastructure (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Reflection AI is seeking >$2B in new funding at a >$20B valuation to develop open AI models as US policymakers support domestic alternatives to Chinese open-source leaders (here)

  • MatX raised $500M to design chips optimised for large language models as custom silicon competition expands beyond Nvidia (here)

  • Axelera AI raised $250M bringing total funding to $450M to develop inference chips competing with Nvidia positioning Europe within the post-training AI hardware segment (here)

  • Profound raised $96M at a $1B valuation to help brands manage visibility within AI search & recommendation systems indicating the emergence of AI-native marketing infrastructure (here)

Cyber

• A King’s College London study found leading AI models selected nuclear escalation in ~95% of simulated crisis scenarios raising questions about model alignment in military decision-support contexts (here)

• The UAE Cybersecurity Council reported neutralising massive coordinated AI-driven cyberattacks targeting national infrastructure (here)

• “You’ve got to expect there’ll be cyberattacks or terrorist attacks, either here or around the world” - Jamie Dimon, JP Morgan told CNBC following growing conflict in the Middle East (here)

• A former L3Harris employee was sentenced to over seven years for selling zero-day exploits to a Russian broker underscoring insider risk in defence supply chains (here)

• Hackers exposed 15M French medical records including sensitive clinical notes highlighting systemic vulnerability in healthcare IT infrastructure (here)

• Notable deal: Gambit Security raised $61M to build AI-based cyber resilience platforms designed to maintain operations during attacks positioning continuity rather than prevention as the primary value proposition (here)

Defence

• The UK pledged an additional 1,000 lightweight multi-role missiles to Ukraine as King Charles inspected drone-defence systems reinforcing rapid procurement of air defence assets amid drone warfare evolution (here)

• The US is developing AI-powered tools to map vulnerabilities in Chinese power grids, utilities & sensitive networks to integrate targets into war planning. Contracts worth about $200M have been awarded to AI firms including OpenAI, Anthropic, Google & xAI for defence applications. One official compared the approach to “the thief in the night” testing doors at scale. The tools would accelerate cyber reconnaissance & could target power plants near data centres to disrupt adversaries’ AI capabilities (here)

• FT analysis identified 12 newly created Polymarket wallets that placed $66,993 in wagers shortly before US air strikes on Iran, generating $330,000 in profit. About half the bets were made in the six hours before the attack. One market showed more than 20x the usual number of outlier bets. Because Polymarket allows crypto trading without identity checks, experts warned of risks around “material non-public information”. Senator Chris Murphy called it “insane” that trading on military action is legal (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Saronic is raising up to $1.5B at a $7.5B valuation to expand autonomous warship production valuing the company at roughly 38x prior revenue as investors bet on US Navy contract growth (here)

  • Revel raised $150M led by Index to expand software for testing, controlling & observing complex hardware systems such as rocket engines & spacecraft (here)

  • Frankenburg Technologies & Tytan Technologies each raised ~€30M to scale European air defence manufacturing capacity aligning venture capital with NATO supply chain resilience (here)

Energy

• Iranian strikes halted Qatari LNG output, pushing European gas prices up 50% in a single day to €44.51 per megawatt hour. Qatar supplies roughly one-fifth of global LNG. Analysts warned energy markets are now “in the crosshairs” & prolonged disruption could trigger a crisis extending beyond oil into wider economic instability (here)

• Proxima Fusion secured a €2B programme with Bavarian state backing & industrial partners to develop a commercial fusion plant in Europe combining private capital with non-dilutive government funding to pursue energy abundance as strategic autonomy (here)

Critical Resources

• Rare-earth shortages intensified with yttrium prices up ~60% since November & ~69x year-on-year constraining aerospace coatings & semiconductor supply chains despite partial US-China trade thaw (here)

• Aluminium Bahrain agreed to acquire Europe’s largest aluminium smelter in France producing 300,000 tonnes annually signalling Gulf capital expansion into strategic European industrial capacity (here)

EVs / AVs (etc)

• Uber signalled plans to introduce electric flying taxis in London by 2030 positioning urban air mobility as a regulated extension of ride-hailing rather than a standalone aerospace experiment. If approved, this would integrate airspace management, battery technology & city infrastructure into mainstream transport networks (here)

• Manna partnered with Uber to launch Uber Eats drone deliveries in Europe starting in Ireland combining Manna’s 250,000+ completed deliveries with Uber’s marketplace scale. Moving drone logistics from pilot programmes into integrated consumer platforms signals that last-mile autonomy is entering commercial infrastructure rather than experimental testing (here)

• Notable deal: Wayve raised $1.5B in a Series D to scale its AI-based autonomous driving platform which learns directly from data rather than relying on HD maps or rule-based coding. The capital will support global automotive-grade deployment with OEM partners, marking one of Europe’s largest autonomy financings & reinforcing data-centric driving models over map-centric competitors (here)

Crypto / Stablecoins

• Elliptic reported crypto outflows from Iran spiked 700% in the minutes following the first airstrike (here)

• Meta is preparing to re-enter the stablecoin sector in the second half of 2026. The company has issued a request for proposals to third-party firms to help administer stablecoin-based payment systems (here)

Robotics

• Notable deal: Encord raised $60M at a $500M valuation to provide high-quality training data infrastructure for robotics developers addressing the bottleneck of labelling & curating edge-case data. The company is building a physical warehouse facility in California where robots perform real-world tasks such as unloading appliances while human operators intervene remotely within 3,000km (here)

Milton Friedman gave capitalism its operating system fifty years ago. His doctrine — that the social responsibility of a company is solely to make profits — made financial return the singular north star of corporate life. Immorality (amorality?) in the corporate sphere is rarely punished; it is often rewarded. Corrections tend to arrive only when people in positions of power decide to act.

This week had a few of those moments.

Discord severed ties with a Thiel-backed identity verification provider after researchers flagged surveillance infrastructure buried in its code. Anthropic pushed back on the Pentagon over autonomous weapons and domestic surveillance, drawing a values line even at potential commercial cost. Palantir, having quietly accumulated no-bid UK Ministry of Defence contracts worth hundreds of millions and some questionable business practices, is down 38% from its 52-week high. And while Russia has reopened a criminal case against Telegram founder Pavel Durov, his face in the headlines is a welcome reminder of sincere, values-driven entrepreneurialism holding a place on the global stage.

As power concentrates in technology platforms, the moral guardrails provided by government become less effective and the moral responsibility incumbent on the platforms grows. A company controlling critical infrastructure is not simply a business. It is, whether it chooses to be or not, a participant in governance. The Friedman doctrine was always reductive. At this scale, applied by platforms without recognition of their broader role in society it borders on negligence.

Capital still flows toward returns, and power still tends to compound in the hands of those who already hold it. But necessity has always been the mother of invention. And when institutions and markets start saying no, it is worth paying attention.

What makes this moment genuinely energising — at least from where I sit — is the calibre of founders building: clear-eyed about risk, serious about responsibility, determined to build companies that are both commercially excellent and genuinely good. The intentionality of those choosing to tackle the hardest problems is as high as I have seen. In a year like this one, that is not a small thing.

IPOs / Public

• “The IPO rebound has felt ‘right around the corner’ for two years. It’ll stay that way for another month” (here)

• UK cyber insurance provider CFC tapped banks for a possible IPO (here)

• Finnish quantum computer startup IQM plans to go public by merging with Real Asset Acquisition Corp, a “blank check vehicle” based in the US. The deal values IQM at $1.8B & could generate > $300M in fresh funding (here)

• Robinhood is launching $1B closed-end private markets fund via IPO – structure gives US retail investors exposure to private companies via a listed vehicle. Potentially opens floodgates for retail access to late-stage tech equity but also transfers valuation opacity from private markets into public wrappers (here)

• Tunguz notes how anticipated mega-cap AI IPOs will break the float model. SpaceX targeting ~$1.5T, OpenAI ~$1T, Anthropic ~$380B = $2.9T combined. At a standard 15–25% float, would need to raise $432–576B in a single quarter. For context, entire US IPO market raised $469B from 2016–2025! Standard floats are arithmetically impossible. Expect 3–8% instead. But S&P500 requires 50% public float for inclusion…meaning none qualify initially. When they do, passive funds managing ~$20T must buy. Index funds cannot raise cash – they sell incumbents. At $1.6–2T, SpaceX would rival Meta for spot #6 in the S&P. The mechanics become reflexive: mega-caps sold to fund new mega-caps. The disruption is structural. These IPOs won’t just reprice tech – they will test index construction itself (here)

• Klarna (BNPL) shares fell 27% after reporting rising bad loan costs, with credit losses accelerating as consumer delinquencies tick up (here)

• RaspberryPi (single-board computers) added >$1B in market cap in weeks on enthusiasm that its low-cost hardware becomes a default for running lightweight AI agents like OpenClaw (here)

• Reddit's stock fell 42% in 5 weeks as US logged-in daily users flatlined at 23M through 2025. While advertising revenue surged 74% to $2.1bn last year, Reddit generates just $86 per US user vs. Facebook's $303. Reddit also fined £14.47M by the UK's data watchdog for unlawfully using children's personal information (here)

• Last week, Meta & Nvidia renewed a “multiyear, multigenerational strategic partnership” with Meta recommitting to using “millions” of Nvidia AI chips. This follows reports Meta was exploring Google TPUs (here).

• Today, Meta announced a multi-billion dollar chip deal with AMD that could lead the firm to acquire 6GW of chip capacity. AMD also issued Meta with a performance based warrant, giving the option to acquire up to 160M AMD shares/10%. Shares in AMD surged ~14% on the news. Another demonstration of hyperscalers using capital, partnerships & supply commitments to secure strategic compute capacity in an era where AI infrastructure is becoming a pillar of national power (here)

Big Dogs

• OpenAI is replacing last year’s highly publicised $100B “memorandum of understanding” with Nvidia with a simpler $30B equity investment as part of a >$100B round valuing OpenAI at ~$730B pre-money (here)

  • Original deal would have seen Nvidia invest $10B tranches tied to OpenAI’s compute expansion to ~10GW of capacity. Framework abandoned in favour of straight equity cheque

  • OpenAI told investors it plans to spend ~$600B on compute through 2030 across Nvidia, Amazon & Microsoft infrastructure

  • OpenAI raised revenue forecasts +27% through 2030 but now expects to burn >$111B more cash than previously projected. 2025 revenue reached $13.1B, with projections of $30B in 2026 & $62B in 2027

  • WAU hit 910M, short of 1B target for end-2025

  • Inference costs 4x in 2025, compressing GM to 33% vs 40% prior year

  • Training costs alone are forecast to total ~$440B through 2030

  • Signed long-term partnerships with McKinsey, Accenture, BCG & Capgemini to distribute its “Frontier” agent management software, explicitly targeting SaaS incumbents. Salesforce, Snowflake & ServiceNow shares fell on news

• AMD agreed to backstop a $300M loan for Crusoe (AI cloud infrastructure) to buy AMD chips, effectively guaranteeing utilisation in order to win share from Nvidia (here)

• Anthropic alleged DeepSeek, Moonshot AI & MiniMax created >24,000 fraudulent Claude accounts & generated hundreds of thousands – potentially millions – of interactions to distil Claude outputs into cheaper rival models. While distillation can legitimately produce smaller, more efficient systems, Anthropic argues the tactic was used to repurpose its work into competing products at lower cost (here)

• Anthropic is clashing with the Pentagon over acceptable military uses; it seeks carve-outs for autonomous weapons & mass domestic surveillance, while the DoD insists on access for “all lawful use cases” & has floated labelling Anthropic a “supply chain risk” (here)

• Anthropic launched Claude Code Security, triggering sharp sell-offs across cybersecurity equities as markets extended their reactive AI-disruption thesis (here)

• Anthropic planning a $5-6B share sale allowing employees to sell stock at ~$350B, following funding round at $380B (here)

• Saudi Arabia's state-backed AI company Humain invested $3B into Musk's xAI contributing significantly to its $20B funding round — with shares subsequently converted into SpaceX stock. The deal deepens Gulf investment in Silicon Valley AI as SpaceX eyes a potentially record-breaking $50B IPO, surpassing Saudi Aramco's 2019 flotation (here)

• Starlink hit 10M subscribers in Feb, but has aggressively slashed prices - offering plans as cheap as $50/month & giving away terminals costing up to $600 to manufacture - to secure market share before Amazon's rival Leo service launches. Analysts warn margins could suffer significantly once Amazon, leveraging its vast Prime & AWS customer base, enters the market (here)

Venture Capital

• Carta State of US Private Markets (here)

  • Seed

    • 2025: Median post-money ~$21M (minimal AI premium); 90th percentile ~$59–60M

  • Series A

    • 2025: Median ~$60M overall; AI startups valued about 25–38% higher than non-AI (~$75M vs ~$55M median); upper-end valuations reached ~$300M (≈90–95th percentile primary rounds)

  • Median time to series B has doubled since 2019 to 2.5 years

  • Series E+

    • 2025: Median valuation $1.49B overall; strong AI divergence with AI ~$4.09B vs non-AI ~$616M median (~193% premium); upper-tail valuations reached ~$10.7B (primary) & ~$20B for bridge rounds (~top decile+), reflecting extreme concentration in breakout companies

  • In 2025, 58% of all cash raised on Carta at Series D went to AI startups, along with 51.7% of all cash raised at Series E+

  • Over the past year, median dilution on all rounds from seed through Series C has fallen from about 18% to 16%, continuing a years-long trend. 2 years ago, median dilution across those stages stood at 19%.

  • < 14% of all rounds raised on Carta in Q4 were down rounds, lowest quarterly figure since start of 2023

• New Funds:

  • Thrive Capital (global) closed $10B across $1B early-stage & $9B growth

  • Battery Ventures (global) raised $3.25B Fund XV

  • Mundi Ventures (fintech, climate, insurtech) €750M first close Fund V

  • Dragonfly (crypto fund) $650M Fund IV

  • Frist Cressey Ventures (healthcare) $425M Fund IV

  • Quantonation Ventures (quantum) €220M second flagship, now the largest dedicated quantum fund in Europe

  • Tenet (AI roll-ups) targeting €80M debut fund

  • Redrice Ventures (consumer) £75M Fund II with up to £45M from British Business Bank

  • Emerald Technology Ventures (Physical AI) €52M

  • OSS Ventures (industry 4.0) €40M first close toward €75M

• Benchmark hired Jack Altman as GP (here)

• Bpifrance deployed €72B in 2025 versus ~€11B from French VCs, reinforcing how sovereign balance sheets are as if not more influential than private venture in Europe’s capital stack (here)

• Private lender Blue Owl changed redemption rules so investors can no longer withdraw fixed amounts quarterly, alarming markets & reviving concerns about liquidity risks in the $Tn private-credit sector (here)

• Secondary sales of private startup shares have grown from 3% of all VC exits in 2015 to 31% today (here)

Regulation

• Meta is deploying $65M - its largest ever election spend - across 4 super PACs to back AI-friendly state politicians in the 2026 midterms. Two new PACs, “Forge the Future Project” (Republican) & “Making Our Tomorrow” (Democrat), reflect a deliberately bipartisan strategy. The goal is explicit: defeat state legislators advancing AI regulation before a damaging patchwork of state laws hardens into precedent (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• US Supreme Court ruled Trump exceeded authority on global tariffs; a revised global 10%, then 15%, tariff announcement followed within 24 hours. Tariffs have come in at 10% today, while the White House is working on an order to raise the rate to 15%, but timeline is unclear. The court ruling has triggered refund disputes & renewed volatility, with FedEx one of the first major American companies to sue the U.S. government for a refund. Britain is potentially one of the bigger losers if tariffs climb to 15%, having secured a preferential 10% rate last May. Downing Street warned “nothing is off the table” while simultaneously insisting industry doesn’t want a trade war. Meanwhile China & Brazil would actually benefit from the new regime. The EU has hit pause on implementing their trade deal with the US, as they try to understand what Trump will do next (here)

• Europe has spent recent years realising its dependencies — on Chinese rare earths, Russian gas & increasingly US military & tech provision. Analysts argue it has been too slow to recognise the leverage it holds in return. Research from the Institut Montaigne, the Geostrategic Europe Taskforce & German think-tank Dezernat Zukunft identifies significant EU chokepoints: Dutch firm ASML holds a near-monopoly on extreme ultraviolet (EUV) lithography machines essential to advanced chip manufacturing worldwide; Europe controls 80% of US uranium imports; Siemens dominates turbines used in US data centres; & the EU has 41 supply categories where China depends on European imports for over 80% of its needs, & 67 such dependencies for the US — spanning insulin, pharma intermediates, medical tech & specialist industrial machinery. The argument is that Europe has focused purely on defensive resilience (reducing its own dependencies) without leveraging these strengths offensively. Practically, this could mean lowering the threshold for the EU’s “anti-coercion instrument” — currently reactive — to allow pre-emptive deployment against threatened economic coercion. The EU & UK would also need to coordinate use of these tools (as they have on Russia sanctions). The core point: having leverage & being willing to use it are two different things & Europe has yet to bridge that gap (here)

• European military officials are concerned that discussions about “tech sovereignty” will undermine security, given sheer reliance on US software for critical systems. Beyond intelligence systems & command & control systems, US tech companies are essential in communications, intel gathering & data storage. “Most European platforms rely on an American back—end”, with Lockheed Martin’s Aegis system a classic example. The European Commission will present a “tech sovereignty package” this spring, but military officials at the Munich security conference got nervous given the overly ambitious goals vs hard realities (here)

• Discord has cut ties with Persona, a Thiel-backed identity-verification company, after researchers discovered code linked to government-style surveillance infrastructure & raised fears about how users’ biometric & ID data might be handled; the partnership lasted less than a month & came amid backlash over Discord’s planned age-verification system & a recent breach affecting tens of thousands of users’ data. The story highlights a growing tension across the internet: platforms are being pushed by regulators to verify ages for safety, but doing so increasingly requires sensitive biometric data handled by third-party vendors - creating new privacy & surveillance risks (here)

• India hosted the Global AI Summit in Delhi using it to push leading AI firms — including OpenAI & Google — to open-source models for social purposes (healthcare, education, agriculture). PM Modi argued AI "will only benefit the world when it is shared." The effort largely failed. White House science chief Michael Kratsios told attendees the US "totally" rejected centralised AI oversight. American tech companies, feeling no regulatory pressure from Washington, showed little appetite for even baseline commitments. India secured only a voluntary pledge for companies to share usage data & multilingual model effectiveness metrics. The summit was also logistically troubled — gridlocked streets, long queues & high-profile no-shows including Nvidia's Jensen Huang & Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates (here)

• India joined Pax Silica, a US-led semiconductor supply chain coalition spanning Japan, South Korea, the Netherlands, Israel & the UK; Taiwan remains absent - alliances increasingly reflect political alignment rather than pure industrial logic (here)

• Sweden published a national AI strategy. The strategy prioritises adoption over research - an explicit rebuke of Canada's research-first approach, which it warns now risks falling behind. Currently ranked 44th globally on government AI strategy despite strong fundamentals, Sweden aims to reach the top ten by 2025, anchoring sovereign capability in shared infrastructure, democratic values & cross-sector collaboration before dependency on foreign platforms further hardens (here)

• The New York Times published “The Looming Taiwan Chip Disaster That Silicon Valley Has Long Ignored”, highlighting Taiwan as a critical single point of failure: it produces ~90% of advanced semiconductors - including ~97% of high-end chips - underpinning ~$10T of global economic activity. The article warns a Chinese incursion or blockade could be imminent, with Western tech firms underprepared. Speaking at the WEF, US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent called Taiwan-based chip production the world economy’s biggest vulnerability. US officials estimate a blockade could cut US GDP by 11% ($2.5T) & China’s by 16% ($2.8T), exceeding the 2008 crisis, while industry analysis suggests disruption could trigger the worst downturn since the Great Depression. Despite ~$50B in CHIPS Act subsidies & projected $200B US investment by 2030, reliance persists as US chips cost >25% more & lag technologically; most firms hold only months of inventory & even US-made AI chips still require Taiwanese packaging, meaning dependence will last for years (here)

• Germany's relationship with China has soured as Chinese competition hollows out German industry, with a €90B trade deficit. Chancellor Merz is set to visit Beijing this week seeking "fair competition" (here)

• China formally designated brain-computer interfaces as a strategic sector last year & now Beijing is accelerating brain-computer interface development via funding, looser regulation & national strategy goals to create world-class firms by 2030. Start-up NeuroXess has already shown early patient success controlling devices after implantation. Rapid trials & investment signal Beijing’s ambition to rival US leaders like Neuralink, though current focus remains medical use for severe disabilities rather than consumer enhancement (here)

• China has restricted exports of rare earth magnets & other critical materials to dozens of leading Japanese companies. China’s commerce ministry said it would freeze the flow of “dual use” materials i.e. rare earths like dysprosium, yttrium or samarium which play tiny but vital roles in cars, planes, weapons & consumer electronics. Restrictions were aimed at curbing Japan's "remilitarisation" & nuclear ambitions, China's commerce ministry said. Takaichi has accelerated a military build-up launched in 2023 that will 2x Japan's defence spending to 2% of GDP by the end of March, making the country one of the world’s biggest military spenders despite its pacifist constitution (here)

• Japan successfully retrieved rare-earth-rich mud from 6,000 metres beneath the Pacific — deeper than Mount Fuji is tall — as Beijing tightens export restrictions on minerals vital to missiles & drones. China controls over 90% of rare earth refining globally. Commercial extraction at the Minamitorishima site is unlikely before 2028 & costs remain formidable (here)

• Britain’s largest public research funder UKRI’s has committed £1.6B to AI between 2026 & 2030, spanning cancer detection, clean energy & more efficient public services. Specific commitments include £137M for AI-enabled drug discovery & £36M to upgrade Cambridge’s DAWN supercomputer, alongside expanded doctoral routes co-designed with industry & career frameworks for data scientists & AI ethics specialists (here)

• The UK’s largest banks are also convening to explore a domestic alternative to Visa & Mastercard (which handle ~95% of UK card payments) amid fears US political leverage could disrupt payments (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Another viral (“AI Doomer”) article that everyones talking about which again shook markets - this time from Citrini Research. Read it here & some commentary here, here & here

• AI capex is estimated to account for 64-80% of US Q425 growth (here)

• Developers are seeking credit ratings - before construction ends - to unlock billions in funding for AI data centres. Fitch rated 35+ projects in 9mo with average ~$3B deal sizes. Ratings allow banks to sell loans to institutional investors, easing financing pressure from massive build-outs. Projects rely heavily on long-term contracts with Big Tech tenants; however, specialised AI facilities carry higher risk if demand or hyperscaler support weakens (here)

• a16z charts of the week shows just how good LLM retention rates are, how strong sales cycles are for publicly traded vertical SaaS despite recent headwinds & how not only are frontier models getting better & better, but open source alternatives are keeping pace (here)

• US consulting growth is forecast at 7% in 2026, the fastest since post-Covid, driven by AI implementation work (here)

• Meta tracks AI usage & productivity via internal tool "Clarity," tying adoption to promotions & pay reviews. Meta & Accenture do similarly (here)

• Notable deals:

  • xAI (frontier AI lab) raised $3B Series E to expand compute infrastructure, reinforcing capital intensity at the frontier

  • Ineffable Intelligence (reinforcement learning startup), founded by ex-Deepmind David Silver in London, is reportedly seeking $1B at $4B to pursue “experience scaling,” shifting advantage toward those controlling simulation environments

  • World Labs (3D world models) raised $1B to build embodied training environments for robotics & science

  • Fluidstack (neo-cloud provider) is in talks to raise $100M at $7.5B, aggregating under-utilised GPU capacity as alternatives to hyperscalers gain relevance

Cybersecurity

• Palo Alto Networks (cybersecurity platform) agreed to acquire Koi Security (AI agent security) for ~$400M, folding AI-agent visibility into Prisma AIRS & Cortex XDR (here)

Defence

• German defence start-up Stark faces scrutiny over investor Peter Thiel’s political ties as MPs consider a €2.9B drone contract. Critics fear foreign influence amid Europe’s push for strategic autonomy, though the firm says Thiel holds <10% & no operational control. The controversy highlights tensions between rapid defence innovation, foreign capital & political trust in Europe’s rearmament efforts (here)

• British XP Power-labelled components have appeared in North Korean missiles used by Russia in Ukraine despite no evidence of direct involvement, with 799 shipments worth ~$2.5M reaching Russia via intermediaries since 2022 (here)

• Palantir in headlines for 2 consecutive uncompeted UK MoD contracts, raising procurement transparency concerns. In Nov 2022, Palantir was awarded a 3-year, £75.2M contract by the MoD — unadvertised, with no competitive tender, justified on grounds that only Palantir could meet the requirement. No meaningful exit plan or successor-competition provisions were built in. When the contract expired in Dec 2025, the MoD awarded a follow-on 3-year contract worth £240.6M — again directly, without competition — citing that MoD systems were now so embedded in Palantir’s architecture that switching supplier would require full rebuilds, reaccreditation at classified security levels & staff retraining. Critics call this a textbook “land-&-expand” strategy & the author (a former govt lawyer) warns the same cycle could repeat every 3 years indefinitely. The MoD has not published the contract specification, making independent scrutiny impossible. “Unless evidence to the contrary is provided to the public, it appears as if the government department responsible for defence has commercially surrendered to a single service provider” (here & here). Incidentally, shares of Palantir are under pressure, dropping more than 38% from its 52-week high of $207.52 (here)

• Palantir is suing small Swiss magazine Republik after it revealed Swiss authorities repeatedly rejected the data intelligence firm on national security grounds — including an Armed Forces review warning US agencies could access sensitive military files. The lawsuit, seeking a right of reply rather than damages, has backfired spectacularly, amplifying the story internationally (here)

Energy

• Notable deal: Heron Power (clean energy developer) raised $140M to accelerate grid capacity build-out (here)

Crypto/Stablecoins

• Binance reportedly fired investigators who uncovered > $1B in cryptocurrency transfers linked to Iranian networks, part of $1.7B in flows during 2024–25. The exchange previously paid a $4.3B fine for sanctions breaches (here)

• US-backed officials & Trump’s Board of Peace are considering a dollar-pegged stablecoin for Gaza after war damage crippled banking & cash supplies. The aim is to enable digital payments & limit cash flows potentially used by Hamas, though concerns include weak infrastructure, power cuts & economic separation from the West Bank (here)

Quantum

• Notable deal: Pasqal (neutral-atom quantum computing) reportedly raising €200M at $1B+, potentially Europe’s latest quantum unicorn & one of the few frontier domains where Europe retains depth (here)

EVs & AVs

• Uber launched "Uber Autonomous Solutions" offering robotaxi operators insurance, fleet financing & monitoring software, positioning itself as the commercial backbone of the AV industry. The company has signed over a dozen partnerships (including with Waymo & Baidu) & committed to deploying autonomous vehicles across 15 cities globally, including London, by end of 2026 (here)

• Waymo’s entire remote guidance operation runs on just 70 human operators - a 43:1 car-to-human ratio. GM’s robotaxi service Cruise had 1.5 staff per car (here)

Space

• OpenAI CEO Sam Altman argues space-based data centres are ‘ridiculous’ today despite hype tied to Musks vision: launch costs exceed Earth power costs & broken AI chips couldn’t easily be repaired in orbit. While the idea may work long-term, current tech & economics make it unrealistic (here)

From a European VC perspective, building commercially massive fintech companies in Europe that strengthen our financial system and generate significant value is absolutely the right ambition! But framing payments primarily as a sovereignty issue risks conflating industrial policy with security concerns.

Finance ecosystems function best when globally integrated, and sovereignty arguments should remain proportionate rather than driven by geopolitical reflex.

The question is whether economic policy is being “sovereignty-washed,” and whether payments — where network effects and consumer habits are deeply entrenched — are the right technological frontier on which to spend scarce political and financial capital, versus other, more strategically fragile dependencies.

We should be careful not to drift toward nation-state economic logic for its own sake, as doing so too broadly will only make us weaker.

Publics/IPOs

• IPO calendar quiet as Feb’s audited-results take priority. While the pause is seasonal, it is being amplified by unstable tech valuations & buyers unwilling to price AI-related uncertainty into long-duration listings (here)

• Clear Street (broker) has postponed its IPO after ‘slashing its proposed deal size by 65%’ while Japan’s PayPay (fintech & payments) has filed & could raise ~$2B as early as March

• Wall Street’s IPO chatter around SpaceX, OpenAI & Anthropic is being crowded out by a surge in tech debt issuance as hyperscalers finance capex. UBS projects global AI & tech issuance could reach ~$990B in 2026 as the big platforms race to fund close to ~$700B in annual capex, implying capital markets are becoming a key constraint on the AI buildout rather than demand alone (here)

• Investors are largely refusing to “buy the dip” even after double-digit weekly declines in sectors such as trucking, wealth management & real estate. Notably, a small AI logistics firm’s white paper triggered the sharp sell-off in trucking & freight stocks - illustrating how AI disruption fears are spilling beyond software (here & here)

• Alphabet reportedly lining up a 100-year bond to help fund its AI investment programme, an unusually long maturity for tech. ‘Century bonds’ are rare in the sector, with IBM’s 1996 deal often cited as one of the few precedents (here)

• Cohere (enterprise AI models) told investors it reached roughly $240M ARR in 2025 with >50% quarterly growth & ~70% GMs as it positions for a potential IPO (here)

• SpaceX is reportedly weighing a dual-class structure for a potential 2026 IPO, preserving Musk’s super-voting control with a minority stake (here)

• Amazon is again exploring a marketplace to let publishers license content directly to AI companies, as lawsuits & private licensing deals proliferate. Would formalise training-data economics into a product, where publishers can set terms & prices & AI companies can buy “clean” access rather than scrape or litigate (here)

• Microsoft has already rolled out a Publisher Content Marketplace & its AI chief Mustafa Suleyman says the company is pushing for AI “self-sufficiency” rather than dependence on OpenAI (here)

• ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 (video-generating AI model) went viral in China as a “DeepSeek-style” moment for consumer attention. The model is aimed at film, e-commerce & advertising production, drew public praise from Elon Musk & reportedly generated tens of millions of clicks on Weibo (here)

• Elliott took a stake in London Stock Exchange Group (exchange & financial data) as investors worry AI tools could erode demand for data & analytics. LSEG shares are down ~35% over the past year, and Elliott is reportedly pushing for a multibillion-pound buyback & higher margins versus peers such as S&P Global & Intercontinental Exchange; LSEG recently completed a £1B buyback (here)

• Arm is trying to capture more of the AI value chain by moving from selling “blueprints” to selling larger pre-built blocks & potentially edging toward designing chips, which risks upsetting customers that liked Arm because it didn’t compete with them. Arm designs sit in almost all smartphones & most connected devices, with 300B+ Arm-based chips shipped historically & 30B+ shipped last year alone (here)

• EY flagged Meta’s decision to keep a $27B data-centre project off-balance-sheet as a critical audit matter, adding fuel to scrutiny of AI-related financing (here)

• Meta plans to launch facial recognition on its smart glasses after previously scrapping the feature in 2021 amid ethical concerns. An internal memo reportedly framed the timing as favourable because civil society groups will be distracted (here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic closed a $30B fundraise at $380B, doubling its valuation since September as IPO talk grows and big strategics deepen ties (here)

• Anthropic committed $20M to a new super PAC backing candidates favouring stricter AI regulation, sharpening a political split with OpenAI-aligned networks (here)

• Anthropic said it will cover consumer electricity price increases tied to its expanding data centres, fund 100% of required grid upgrades & invest in new generation capacity (here)

• xAI lost 2 more co-founders, meaning 6 of its 12 founding members have now exited as the company heads towards an IPO. Musk described the departures & broader churn as a deliberate reorganisation to “improve speed of execution” but the optics are material from a governance & talent perspective (here)

• OpenAI’s first hardware device is now expected no earlier than Feb next year as timelines for consumer hardware remain long even for the largest labs (here)

• OpenAI disbanded its mission alignment team that was created in 2024 to support the company’s stated “benefits all humanity” mandate. Whatever the internal rationale, it will be read externally as a shift from governance-first posture to product & revenue urgency (here)

• Grafana Labs (observability software) is reportedly raising at $9B as monitoring becomes critical infrastructure for AI-heavy systems (here)

Venture Capital

• Andreessen Horowitz is a central force in Trump-era AI policy discussions as it lobbies for lighter regulation aligned with portfolio interests. Bloomberg describes frequent consultation with White House officials, which matters because it tightens the loop between cap tables & policy outcomes for foundational technologies (here)

• Primary Ventures (seed & pre-seed VC) raised a $625M Fund V (here)

• Elaia (early-stage European B2B deep tech VC) raised €120M first close for its fifth Digital Venture fund (here)

• Denmark’s EIFO is looking to back more VC funds investing in defence tech as European rearmament becomes a capital allocation theme. Sovereign LPs are increasingly shaping the supply of venture capital by setting priority sectors rather than only allocating by returns (here)

• AI acquihires are booming, with 5,700 AI & ML acquisitions from 2020–2025 and most deals keeping prices undisclosed. Tomasz Tunguz notes only 21% disclosed value, while the 75th percentile deal size rose from $82M in 2020 to $248M in 2025, suggesting a market where small teams are being absorbed quickly & quietly at rising prices (here)

Regulation

• The FTC formally warned Apple not to “suppress” conservative outlets in Apple News, escalating political scrutiny of content curation on preinstalled platforms, after citing research claiming no conservative-leaning articles were featured while hundreds from liberal publications were promoted (here)

• Hollywood’s Motion Picture Association accused ByteDance of large-scale copyright infringement after viral clips from its Seedance 2.0 video model featured celebrities & copyrighted characters, calling on the company to cease activity it said violated US law “on a massive scale” in a single day (here)

• The Bank of England’s stablecoin proposal is being criticised as too cautious, with suggested holding caps of £20k for individuals & £10M for businesses. Industry groups argue the limits would restrict real-world usage & weaken UK competitiveness in regulated digital money (here)

• YouTube argued in court it is an entertainment platform like Netflix, not addictive social media, as a major trial tests whether design can create addiction liability. The case matters because it puts product features - feeds, recommendations, notifications - closer to “duty of care” standards rather than pure speech protections (here)

• The US Department of Homeland Security has issued hundreds of administrative subpoenas to Google, Meta, Reddit, Discord & others seeking identifying data on accounts that track or criticise ICE, using powers that do not require prior judicial approval (here)

• The FTC intensified its antitrust probe into Microsoft’s cloud & AI businesses, requesting information from rivals on licensing & bundling practices. The focus includes how AI, security & identity tools may be packaged into Windows & Office, which could become a key test of whether “AI bundling” is treated as product integration or market power (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Google urged the EU not to “erect walls” around its tech sector, warning that sovereignty-driven localisation rules could fragment markets & slow innovation, as Brussels debates measures to favour European providers in cloud, AI & payments. Google’s top legal officer, Kent Walker, urged Brussels to pursue “open digital sovereignty” which would allow the bloc to “have control over key technologies, but also take advantage of the world’s best technologies” (here)

• UN Secretary-General António Guterres urged governments to “move past GDP” & overhaul accounting systems to measure outcomes people value, not only output. The argument is that GDP misses environmental depletion and resilience & that existing measures underprice planetary risk & overprice short-term extraction (here)

• Prediction markets are becoming credible macro sensors as Kalshi & Polymarket volume rises to $60M+ wagered daily on economic & political contracts. Academic work cited by the NYT suggests bettors can match or beat Wall Street economists on jobs, inflation, Fed moves & earnings, creating a parallel “market of expectations” outside traditional finance (here)

• The UK is considering fresh sanctions on Russia after concluding, alongside Sweden, France, Germany & the Netherlands, that Alexei Navalny was likely killed using a dart frog toxin arranged by the Russian state, with Foreign Secretary Yvette Cooper calling the finding “deeply serious” after two years of forensic analysis. The five countries have referred the case to the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons, arguing the toxin - epibatidine, not naturally found in Russia - could not have been ingested accidentally. Moscow denies involvement & dismissed the claim as western “necro-propaganda” (here)

• Munich Security Conference opened under a changed US tone, with Marco Rubio defending Trump’s foreign policy while calling for transatlantic unity. Rubio explicitly criticised “rules-based order” language as an overused term & argued sovereignty & reindustrialisation should trump globalised assumptions, while still urging Europe to align with US priorities (here)

• The Pentagon moved to add Alibaba, BYD & Baidu to its “Chinese Military Companies” list, signalling alleged ties to Beijing’s military-civil fusion strategy ahead of a planned Trump-Xi summit (here)

• European leaders are again discussing sovereign payment rails as US trade pressure & Greenland threats revive fears of dependency on American finance & tech. Visa & Mastercard process ~$24T annually, handling 56% of EU cashless payments, meaning transaction data & infrastructure remain outside European control. ECB chief Christine Lagarde warns this poses data-sovereignty & geopolitical risks, on top of the ~€300B in European savings that flows to the US each year. In response, Europe’s EPI–EuroPA alliance is seeking to launch the Wero wallet, linking 130M users across 13 countries & EU politicians again backed the digital euro, with the ECB framing it as reducing dependence on foreign providers & targeting broad availability by 2029 (here)

• Brussels plans to require electric vehicles receiving subsidies to contain at least 70% EU-made components & be assembled in the bloc, aiming to protect European industry from Chinese competition, though carmakers disagree over costs & practicality (here)

• Russia blocked WhatsApp nationwide, citing data localisation & extremism concerns, tightening digital controls as Western platforms remain restricted. Meta’s messaging service had remained one of the last widely used US-owned social apps in Russia after Facebook & Instagram were banned in 2022 (here)

• A Russian policy memo reportedly floated a path back toward partial reintegration with the dollar system, pitching proposals to Trump-aligned interlocutors – the document outlines steps Moscow could take to stabilise trade & financial flows under sanctions, signalling interest in easing isolation without abandoning strategic autonomy (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• OpenClaw founder has joined OpenAI & the OSS bot will becomes a foundation supported by OpenAI (here)

• Something Big is Happening by Matt Shumer (here). Worth reading!

• US data center and software investment now >$1T annualized (3.5% of GDP) (here)

• Azeem Azhar argues how “everyone’s looking for a bubble. No one sees the stampede”. He argues the main risk is not over-investment but capacity constraints. He cites “industry strain” (investment-to-revenue) falling from 6.1x to 4.7x in 5mo, with a path towards ~3x by Q2 if the trajectory holds i.e. revenues begin carrying the installed base. He points to cloud growth: Google Cloud +48% YoY to $17.7B, AWS +24% to $35.6B, Azure +39% with contracted backlog up 110% to $625B (~45% tied to OpenAI). Estimates AI at ~23% of Google Cloud, ~10% of Azure & ~5% of AWS in the latest quarter. Cites BofA reporting coding tools cut development time by 30% (roughly 2,000 FTE equivalent) & Norway’s ~$2T sovereign wealth fund using Claude for portfolio monitoring with estimated $17–32M annual labour savings. The claim is that AI has moved from experimentation to operational infrastructure (here)

• OpenAI said China’s DeepSeek continues to distil US frontier models into lower-cost systems, intensifying model IP tensions between Washington & Beijing (here)

• Zhipu released GLM-5 as an OSS model with upgrades for coding & long-running tasks & claims benchmark performance approaches leading US models. Reuters reports it was trained on domestically-produced chips including Huawei Ascend, fitting China’s push to reduce reliance on imported Nvidia hardware (here)

• MiniMax launched OSS flagship model, M2.5, as Chinese labs push “good-enough” coding & agent tools at lower prices to win developers globally. MiniMax went public in Hong Kong last month & its shares rose nearly 10% after the M2.5 announcement (here)

• METR published model projecting near-full automation of AI R&D around 2032, driven by continued improvements in AI coding (here)

• Spotify says top developers have not written code since December, instead directing an internal system called Honk built on Claude. Engineers reportedly review outputs on phones, a sharp illustration of how “agent-assisted development” is moving from pilot to default in some teams (here)

• Mistral disclosed $400M+ ARR & plans €1.2B data centre in Sweden as it pushes a European sovereignty narrative. The Borlänge facility is being built with EcoDataCenter, planned to be operational from 2027, while Mistral says run-rate grew from ~$20M a year ago & could surpass $1B by year-end! (here)

• Notable deals: Multiverse Computing (model compression) discussing ~€500M at >€1.5B, after reaching ~€100M ARR in January. Runway (generative video) raised $315M at $5.3B (here). Modal Labs (inference infrastructure) reportedly exploring a new round at ~$2.5B, up from $1.1B less than 5mo ago (here), Olix (photonic AI chips) raised $220M at $1B post-money (here)

Energy / Climate

• IEA forecasts global electricity demand through 2030 to grow 50% faster than the past decade, as consumption from industry, electric vehicles, air conditioning & data centers increases (here)

• Trump administration repealed the scientific “endangerment finding”, removing the federal government’s legal basis to regulate greenhouse gas emissions (here)

• Inertia Enterprises (fusion lasers) raised $450M, Tem (AI-driven electricity trading) raised $75M at $300M+, Alva Energy (nuclear reactor upgrades) raised $33M

Critical Materials

• Hades (ultra-deep drilling) raised ~€15M to use high-power laser drilling for critical minerals & deep geothermal, targeting faster & cheaper extraction in hard rock. Europe produces <3% of the critical minerals it consumes & imports most lithium, rare earths & cobalt, which turns extraction capability into an industrial & geopolitical constraint; the company frames deep drilling as a technology bottleneck rather than a resource scarcity problem (here)

Cybersecurity

• Amazon’s Ring ended a partnership with Flock Safety amid surveillance backlash over linking consumer doorbells into law enforcement camera networks (here)

• Germany is drafting legislation to authorise offensive cyber operations & expand intelligence powers as it responds to rising foreign threats (here)

• Notable deals: Vega (security analytics without centralising data) raised $120M, GitGuardian (credential leak detection & non-human identity management) raised $50M, Backslash Security (securing AI-driven app development workflows) raised $19M Series A

Defence

• France & Germany have opened high-level talks on creating a stronger European nuclear deterrent as doubts grow over long-term US security commitments. France already maintains a fully independent nuclear force, unlike Britain whose Trident system relies on US cooperation for maintenance & upgrades. Paris is also estimated to possess ~54 air-launched tactical nuclear weapons. The US currently deploys >100 smaller B-61 tactical bombs across Europe under NATO nuclear-sharing arrangements. As a result, some defence figures argue Europe should consider developing smaller, more targeted nuclear capabilities (here)

• Poland’s president, Karol Nawrocki, has said the country should move towards joining a nuclear project to counter what Warsaw sees as Russia’s aggressive posture on its border, reflecting wider European concern that US security guarantees may be weakening and prompting discussions about strengthening Europe’s own deterrent; however, experts say Poland is unlikely to build its own weapons and is more likely to join NATO nuclear-sharing or seek protection under French or British nuclear umbrellas (here)

• A UK defence tech cluster built on legacy aerospace expertise is ‘shifting from Spitfires to drones’ with companies repurposing historic industrial sites for autonomy & unmanned systems, as government orders & Ukraine-driven urgency revive regional manufacturing. The cluster blends primes, SMEs & start-ups, with demand focused on loitering munitions, counter-drone systems & battlefield software (here)

• India approved the acquisition of 114 Rafale jets in a deal worth €30B+, anchoring France as a long-term defence partner & strengthening Europe’s export position. If completed, it could be the largest contract in Dassault’s history & signals New Delhi’s willingness to lock in European platforms at scale (here)

• Western intelligence officials say recruiters linked to Russia’s Wagner Group are now being used as a conduit for sabotage operations across Europe, targeting economically vulnerable individuals to carry out attacks on NATO soil, as Moscow compensates for depleted official spy networks after diplomatic expulsions (here)

• The Pentagon reportedly used Anthropic’s Claude via a Palantir contract to capture Venezuela’s Nicolás Maduro, despite Claude guidelines barring violence or surveillance use (here)

• Israel charged two individuals for allegedly placing bets on Polymarket tied to sensitive military operations, raising questions about prediction markets intersecting with national security – prosecutors claim the defendants used non-public information relating to Israeli defence actions to place wagers on outcomes, highlighting how decentralised, crypto-based platforms can create financial incentives around real-world conflict events (here)

• Germany is testing whether rearmament can be economic stimulus, with defence spending projected at €108B this year (2.8% of GDP) but bottlenecks slowing conversion of orders into output. The Bundestag approved a €500B climate & infrastructure fund & excluded most defence spending from the “debt brake”, while the government aims for 3.5% of GDP on defence by 2029; defence spend has risen from €47B in 2021 to €108B projected this year. Yet overall manufacturing output is still ~15% below its 2018 peak & Germany is shedding ~14,000 manufacturing jobs a month, so the question is whether new weapons & infrastructure orders spill over into broader industrial renewal fast enough - or just create backlogs (here)

• Ditto, Canada. Canada plans to raise defence spending to 5% of GDP over the next decade & direct 70% of procurement to domestic firms, aiming to create 125,000 jobs & reduce reliance on US manufacturers, according to a new strategy paper. Ottawa intends to use national security exemptions to favour Canadian suppliers, potentially revisiting its 88-jet F-35 order & seeking alternative submarine deals, while building closer defence-industrial links with the EU, UK & Indo-Pacific partners (here)

• Europe hit a record $8.7B in defence, security & resilience investment in 2025, up 55% YoY, with deep tech flowing into autonomy, compute, quantum & space. Dealroom says 43% of European deep tech went into the category, with the UK leading at $2.9B & Germany next at $2.1B, and Munich the top city followed by London & Cambridge (here)

• Anduril (autonomous systems) is discussing a new fundraise at $60B+! The company expected revenue to roughly double to about $2B last year, but told investors it also expected to burn $800M-$900M (here)

• Notable deals: Stark (drones) raised undisclosed amount above €1B valuation & wll sign new contract with German armed forces in the coming weeks, worth €2.4B, Constellr (thermal intelligence satellites) raised $44M, Integrate (secure collaboration for government & defence) raised $17M

Robotics

• Notable deals: Apptronik (humanoid robots) raised ~$520M at $5.5B+ as strategic investors back general-purpose automation (here), Trener Robotics (industrial robot training via natural language & simulation) raised $32M as factories test “promptable robotics” workflows (here

EVs/AVs

• Aurora (autonomous trucking) says its driverless trucks can run a 1,000-mile Fort Worth–Phoenix route in ~15 hours versus 24+ hours for human drivers (here)

Space

• Orbex’s collapse after takeover talks with The Exploration Company fell through has triggered a domestic scramble to keep UK launch assets & IP from drifting abroad. Skyrora, the first British company to receive a UK launch licence from the CAA, said it is potentially interested in acquiring Orbex assets including the Sutherland spaceport, framing it as preserving UK capability & “independent” access to space (here)

• Europe’s Ariane 6 completed a high-visibility success by placing 32 Amazon satellites into orbit, strengthening Europe’s launch credibility & capacity (here)

Many countries are responding - Germany alone plans to spend €35B on military space capabilities by 2030 - recognising that sovereign access to orbit is becoming a security necessity.

States that cannot launch and replace their own satellites must rely on allies at moments when space systems support communications, intelligence and military operations. The UK is in this category, underscored by the recent Orbex announcement — one of Britain’s few launch prospects entering administration.

Britain has extraordinary engineering talent but repeatedly fails to turn this into durable industrial champions, leaving firms underfunded or sold abroad. The FT notes the UK now hosts around 1,900 space companies (seems like a lot!) BUT most are small and struggle to scale, while competitors treat launch and orbital infrastructure as strategic assets supported by defence budgets.

Britain risks remaining a component supplier rather than a systems leader, weakening our ability to respond to growing threats but also massive opportunities in orbit.

Two other signals this week reinforce the stakes: Elon Musk argued that “in 36 months, probably closer to 30 months, the most economically compelling place to put AI will be space”, meanwhile reports show Russian satellites have manoeuvred near at least 17 European communications satellites since 2023, raising concerns about future interference.

Public/IPOs

• Alphabet’s 2025 earnings: search revenue +17% YoY (pushing back on the idea that AI has already broken Google’s core cash engine!). Management guided $175–185B capex in 2026, 2x 2025, largely for data centres, chips & related infra. Reportedly preparing to raise ~$15B in US bonds & market debt in UK & Switzerland - i.e. plans now too large to fund solely from cash generation (here)

• Amazon’s 2025 earnings: overshadowed by a $200B 2026 capex plan that triggered a sharp sell-off. Shares fell >10% & Amazon lost ~$220B in market value after outlining the spending level (~50% above 2025 & well ahead of expectations). AWS Q4 revenue rose 24% YoY to $35.6B & backlog reached $244B, but investors focused on how long it will take to earn returns on such a large build. Separately, Amazon disclosed its $8B Anthropic investment is now ~$60.6B on paper via preferred stock & convertible notes tied to later funding rounds (here)

• Workday replaced CEO Carl Eschenbach with co-founder Aneel Bhusri, notably as investors worried about how AI changes enterprise software. Revenue growth has slowed to 12.6% in the first 9mo of its fiscal year from 16–17% previously, despite AI-related moves including the acquisition of Pipedream & other enterprise AI assets. Shares fell further on the announcement, suggesting investors saw leadership change as evidence of rising pressure (here)

• Stripe reportedly discussing a tender offer valuing the company at $140B, as large private companies seek liquidity without committing to a near-term listing (here)

• UK cloud infrastructure firm Nscale has hired banks (here)

• Eikon Therapeutics priced a $381M IPO & Generate Biomedicines filed after selling $805M in preferred stock, reflecting continued investor interest in AI-enabled drug discovery / biotech (here & here)

Big Dogs

• Anthropic launched Claude Opus 4.6 & pushed hard on enterprise distribution as Cowork became a focal point in the software sell-off. Opus 4.6 is positioned as stronger on complex reasoning, long-running tasks & coding support, with a 1M-token context window & improved ability to work across large document sets used in law, finance & research. Anthropic is also reportedly preparing an employee tender offer that would allow staff to sell shares at a pre-money valuation of at least $350B, with reporting linking it to a funding round as large as $20B. It also ran amusing & well-received Super Bowl ads (see here) highlighting that Claude remains ad-free, aiming to differentiate on trust & business model clarity (here)

• OpenAI is shifting further towards enterprise deployment & monetisation while scaling the services layer around ChatGPT. It launched Frontiers, a tool aimed at helping companies manage agent systems in production. It is also reportedly hiring hundreds of consultants - effectively sales engineers - to help enterprises implement ChatGPT use cases. OpenAI is testing ads for some US users on free or low-cost tiers while pursuing a very large fundraise (widely reported as around $100B) to support compute needs & reporting suggests internal resource allocation is increasingly centred on ChatGPT product growth (here)

• Fundamental emerged from stealth at $1.2B after raising $255M to build large tabular models for the structured data most big companies actually run on. It is building Nexus, designed for very large enterprise datasets such as spreadsheets & databases with billions of rows, with the claim that it can analyse structured data more reliably than general-purpose LLMs for tasks like demand prediction, pricing & churn (here)

Regulation

• The European Commission issued preliminary findings that TikTok may be breaching the Digital Services Act through design features such as infinite scroll & autoplay. If confirmed, TikTok could face fines of up to 6% of global annual turnover unless it makes significant changes to product design (here)

• French prosecutors raided X’s Paris offices over AI-generated abuse content linked to Grok as scrutiny rises under the Digital Services Act. The case reflects a broader shift towards regulating how platforms handle harms linked to generative AI outputs, not just user posts (here)

• Spain is signalling it may follow Australia in banning social media for under-16s. France, Denmark & the UK are considering similar moves (here)

Venture Capital

• Europe’s venture market rose 5% to €66B in 2025, with funding concentrating in AI & defence. AI deals accounted for €23.5B & defence investment rose 55% YoY to $8.7B. ElevenLabs reached $11B after a $500M raise & Synthesia hit $4B, while the NATO Innovation Fund has €1B to deploy (here)

• UKRI paused new grants as it restructures its £8B annual budget towards fewer priorities & more commercial outcomes. Full implementation is expected by April 2027. The Science & Technology Facilities Council has been instructed to find £162M in savings while maintaining international commitments. Innovate UK has reduced support for new SME “clients” & is shifting towards backing fewer companies with more support per company (here)

• MASNA Ventures is raising at least $100M for a Saudi defence-focused venture fund & Spain based Kembara launched a €1B growth-stage deep tech fund with a first close at €750M (here and here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Macron declared a European “geo-economic state of emergency” & called for joint borrowing and regulatory simplification to fund strategic sectors. He is urging eurobonds to fund AI, defence & green tech, plus “European preference” in critical supply chains & procurement. Resistance from Germany & Nordic states remains strong, but the direction is clear: industrial policy is being framed as sovereignty policy (here)

• Trump let the New START arms control treaty expire, adding uncertainty just as Europe debates deterrence without guaranteed US backing. New START was the main US–Russia agreement limiting deployed strategic nuclear warheads & launchers, with inspection & verification mechanisms that reduced uncertainty about the other side’s forces. It capped deployed strategic warheads at 1,550 each for the US & Russia & it sat within a broader post-Cold War trend that saw global warheads fall from roughly 70,400 in 1986 to about 12,500 today. The US is now pushing for a broader multilateral framework that would include China, but China’s arsenal is estimated around 600 & is expected to grow further this decade & Beijing has historically resisted limits while it expands. Near-term impact is fewer inspections, less shared data & more room for worst-case assumptions (here)

• The US is planning chip tariff exemptions for large cloud providers, linked to how much manufacturing capacity TSMC builds in the US. The plan described in reporting would impose higher tariffs on semiconductor imports while allowing exemptions tied to domestic buildout. Under an outline referenced in coverage, Taiwanese firms building US fabs could import up to 2.5x the planned capacity tariff-free during construction (or 1.5x for already-built capacity), and TSMC could allocate those exemptions to major US customers. TSMC has pledged $165B in US capacity investment (here)

• Palantir’s UK government contracts total at least £670M across defence, health & nuclear-related work, raising questions about dependency & oversight. The reported total includes £382M with the MoD, £244M+ with the NHS & £15M linked to the UK nuclear weapons agency, spanning at least 10 departments, with some contracts not listed on central procurement sites. For government, the core issue is that long-term reliance on a single vendor for sensitive systems can increase switching costs & reduce flexibility, especially when the vendor is headquartered abroad (here)

• Russian “proximity” satellites have approached at least 17 European geostationary satellites since 2023, increasing concern about interception & future interference. GEO satellites orbit about 35,000km above Earth & underpin telecoms, navigation support & some government communications. Officials believe Russian satellites such as Luch-1 & Luch-2 have manoeuvred close enough to target unencrypted transmissions, including command links that control satellite positioning. Even if messages cannot be decrypted, monitoring can reveal usage patterns, ground terminal locations & operational routines (here)

• Project Vault is a $12B US plan to create a strategic stockpile of critical minerals used in EVs, semiconductors, drones & advanced manufacturing. The proposal involves a $10B Export-Import Bank loan plus $1.67B of private capital, aiming to buy & hold inputs that have faced price volatility & export restrictions, particularly where China dominates processing. Reported participants include GM, Stellantis, Boeing & Google, and the policy sits alongside wider efforts including resource deals with Ukraine, Australia & Greenland plus support for domestic processing (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• OpenClaw’s rapid spread is creating a security & governance issue as employees run always-on agents with access to corporate data & external actions. Cisco’s AI threat team said 26% of 31,000 agent skills analysed had at least one vulnerability & researchers found more than 1,800 exposed instances leaking API keys, chat histories & credentials. Token Security reports 22% of employees at customer organisations are running OpenClaw on corporate machines (here)

• Moltbook is facing scrutiny after MIT Technology Review reported much of the content was human-generated. Researchers also found human-directed posts, security issues & shallow engagement, even as usage reportedly surged from ~30,000 agents to >1.5M (here)

• New research suggests AI tools can intensify workloads rather than reduce them, with employees taking on more work without being asked. UC Berkeley’s Haas School of Business reviewed 8mo of use at an unnamed US tech company with ~200 employees & found people worked faster, for longer hours, across a broader scope of tasks while using generative tools. The results suggest employees felt more capable & therefore took on more responsibility, offering a “best case” explanation for why AI can raise output without immediately cutting headcount (here)

• Notable deals:

  • Cerebras Systems raised $1B at $23B as specialist chipmakers attract large cheques despite the dominance of Nvidia. The round was led by Tiger Global, with Benchmark investing at least $225M, including via two dedicated vehicles reportedly created for the position. Cerebras was valued at $8.1B just 6 mo earlier, implying rapid repricing as buyers look for alternatives in training & inference hardware (here)

  • ElevenLabs raised $500M at $11B as AI voice becomes a major funded category. The round was led by Sequoia & more than tripled valuation, reinforcing that voice is viewed as a distribution layer for assistants, agents & consumer AI products (here)

  • Harvey raised $200M at $11B. The round was co-led by Sequoia & GIC - standing out amid the broader vertical software selloff as investors rotate toward categories where AI can deliver measurable gains in time saved & billable output. The bet is domain-specific workflows, especially in law, can be rapidly transformed by foundation models —creating both disruption risk for incumbents & outsized upside for platforms that become the interface layer (here)

  • Adaption Labs raised $50M seed to build smaller models designed to cut compute costs & support continuous learning. The pitch is that more adaptive models can be cheaper to run & update, which matters as enterprises look to deploy models in production without frontier-scale inference bills (here)

  • Crypto.com CEO Kris Marszalek is launching ai.com as a consumer platform for personal AI agents after paying $70M for the domain. The product is being introduced with a Super Bowl LX advert, signalling that consumer agent platforms are now spending at scale for distribution (here)

Energy

• US states are starting to restrict data centre buildouts as grid constraints tighten. New York introduced a 3-year moratorium on some data centre permits after electricity demand reportedly tripled in a year, & several other states have introduced similar legislation (here)

Defence

• Notable deal: Overland AI raised $100M for autonomous ground vehicles used in logistics & reconnaissance. The company has raised $42M previously, reflecting continued investor appetite for autonomy in defence-adjacent applications (here)

Cybersecurity

• Italy repelled pro-Russian DDoS attacks targeting Milano-Cortina Olympics infrastructure as national cyber agencies report higher attack volumes & improving defence success rates. Italy’s ACN reported attacks rose 30% in H2 2025 YoY while successful breaches fell to 10% & plans to raise headcount towards ~600 (here)

Crypto/Stablecoins

• Bitcoin fell to the $60’s as the “digital gold” narrative weakened alongside a broader tech sell-off. The move highlighted how correlated crypto can become during risk-off episodes (here)

• Tether reportedly pulled back from plans to raise $20B after investor pushback (here)

• xAI recruiting for a crypto finance role signals continued interest in integrating digital assets into AI-era consumer platforms (here)

• Peter Thiel-backed Erebor received a US national banking charter & plans to operate with stablecoins at its core. Founded by Palmer Luckey & Joe Lonsdale, the bank plans to focus on start-ups & scale-ups that traditional banks often underserve (here)

Space

• Orbex has announced plans to appoint administrators after failing to secure the funding it needed and failing to finalise merger talks with The Exploration Company. The episode highlights how hard it is to sustain a UK launch champion without anchor demand. Orbex has been one of the most prominent UK-based launch start-ups and has benefited from UK government support, but the reported sale discussions (& failures) suggest scale & capital requirements remain difficult for a standalone UK rocket firm (here)

• With SpaceX now having acquired xAI, concerns have intensified that control over launch services could translate into control over future space-based computing infrastructure. Elon Musk has proposed orbital data centers powered by constant solar energy, arguing that operating in space could bypass terrestrial energy & permitting constraints. Critics warn that if the same company controls both access to orbit & major AI computing operations, it could influence which firms are able to build & run large-scale space-based compute systems. As a result, some policy experts have suggested that launch services may eventually need to be regulated as common-carrier infrastructure if orbital computing becomes strategically important, to ensure fair access to space for competing providers (here)

Projects like OpenClaw are exciting because they move AI agents closer to reliably acting on our behalf. But scaling this requires more than capability — agents must align with user preferences and operate within systems people trust in everyday life.

This helps explain the growing interest in running agents locally (hence the Mac mini surge), giving users more direct control over their data and workflows.

As LLMs commoditise and capable agents become affordable to run locally, advantage may shift away from owning the largest cloud models toward building the infrastructure that governs identity, permissions, orchestration and safe delegation — the layers that let agents operate safely at global scale.

If millions of agents are going to act online for us, a huge opportunity lies in building this trust and coordination infrastructure. That also creates a potential opening for Europe: while competing on chips and frontier models may be difficult, leadership in regulation-aware infrastructure, identity, permissions and trusted delegation systems could become a meaningful competitive edge in the agent era

IPOs/Publics

• All 4 IPOs last week closed below offer price (here)

• 10 SPACs priced in the same week - 4-year high (here)

• 8 IPOs lined up for week ahead (will be most active week since 2021 if all price) (here)

• Thoma Bravo backed Anaplan (enterprise planning software) filed confidentially for IPO (here)

• Meta printed strong ad growth & strong guidance (stock +10%) (here)

  • Flagged paid access for expanded AI services & ad-free tiers for Facebook & Instagram (“pay to avoid ads” now live)

  • UK gov has recruited AI specialists funded by Meta to build public-sector tools while keeping sensitive data inside government systems rather than outsourcing the whole stack

  • Plans to ~2x capex this year - from $72B last year to $115 -135B

  • Revenue in last 12 months was $201B i.e. could be spending over half of its revenue on capex in 2026

• Apple record revenue off back of strong iphone sales (here)

  • Apple buying Q.ai (ML for whispered speech & advanced audio processing for wearables) - reports valuing it at ~$2B (here)

• Microsoft beat guidance ~$81B revenue (+17% YoY) & ~$38B operating income (+21%) (here & here)

  • …but guided to slower cloud growth & heavier AI spend

  • AI demand outstrips data-centre capacity

  • ~$37.5B quarterly capex (approximately same as operating profit)

  • ~900M people use AI features & ~150M use Copilots – AI is still a tiny fraction of total business

  • ~$7.6B net income gain tied to OpenAI last quarter

  • Shaved ~$360B / 11% market value in a day as investors focused on capex intensity & payback timeline

• Google rolled out new Gemini updates plus “Project Genie” (prompt-to-playable environments), which hit videogame stocks (Roblox, Unity) (here)

• Amazon

  • Shutting all 72 Amazon Fresh & Amazon Go stores to double down on Whole Foods & delivery (here)

  • Confirmed ~16k additional corporate layoffs, taking total cuts since Oct to ~30k as Jassy pushes simpler org structure & higher productivity (here)

• IBM comeback: shares >2x in 3 years as IBM leaned into hybrid cloud software & enterprise AI tooling. Has booked $10B+ in genAI consulting since mid-2023 & kept its mainframe/quantum moat intact (here)

• ASML cutting ~1,700 jobs (~4%) after a record 2025 (€31.7B revenue, €9.6B net profit) (here)

• Palantir posted more crazy numbers - “rule of 127” (70% growth + 57% operating margin) (here)

  • “Has been extraordinarily effective at converting massive political and AI tailwinds into viral adoption”

  • U.S. enterprise revenue grew 137% YoY

  • Closed company-record of $4.3B TCV in quarter, +145% from prior-year period

  • Expects 2026 revenue of approximately $7.2B. FCF guided to ~$4B

  • Shares trade at 67x 2027 FCF with historical multiples in 100-200x

• Alphabet reports earnings on Weds & Amazon on Thurs

Big Dogs

• SpaceX at ~$15–16B revenue & ~$8B EBITDA in 2025 (here)

  • Starlink reportedly ~80% of EBITDA

  • SpaceX acquired xAI ahead of IPO (here). Pitch is AI demand + energy constraints + Musk’s hardware footprint. Musk keeps repeating the thesis that ground-based data centres cannot meet future electricity demand, so “space-based compute” + space solar become the long-term unlock

• OpenAI targeting IPO in Q4 while also floating huge private raises

  • Round has turned into geopolitics: Amazon rumoured to be in talks for up to $50B. Other reports suggest Nvidia, Microsoft & Amazon together could put in ~$60B. SoftBank rumoured to be putting in ~$30B. Bloomberg says Middle East capital also being courted (here)

  • Altman says OpenAI models thresholds could reach “Cybersecurity High” on its preparedness framework “soon” - i.e. meaningfully reducing bottlenecks in end-to-end cyber operations against reasonably hardened targets (here)

  • Sora downloads down ~32% MoM in Dec & ~45% in Jan to ~1.2M…competition increases & novelty fades (here)

  • Snowflake will pay OpenAI $200M over several years so customers can use OpenAI models directly inside Snowflake (here)

• Anthropic

  • Funding round up to $20B exceeding initial $10B target (at $350B) (here)

  • Music publishers led by Universal Music Group & Concord sue for $3B+ - alleging illegal downloading of 20k + works (here)

  • Building an AI assistant for GOV.UK, focused first on job seekers

  • Reports suggest forecast lifted to as much as ~$18B sales in 2026 & ~$55B in 2027 (here)

• Ricursive Intelligence (AI chip design automation) raised $335M at $4B despite <1 year old & <10 staff (here)

• Hugging Face (open-source AI platform) turned down reported $500M Nvidia deal at $7B (here)

Regulation

• UK sets early rules for AI search control as the CMA moves to let publishers ‘opt out’ of AI-generated summaries & require clearer attribution under its new digital competition regime (here)

Venture Capital

• Nvidia 3x Europe dealcount last year (deals included Mistral, Nscale, Quantinuum, Lovable, Black Forest Labs, CuspAI, ElevenLabs & more) …which is how a platform company quietly shapes a region’s AI stack (here)

• European Investment Fund (Europes largest LP) said it plans to boost capacity for defence tech & cybersecurity “because it is necessary” (here)

• Mozilla Foundation president says he will deploy ~$1.4B in reserves to back open-source & mission-driven AI as a counterweight to frontier incumbents (“Rebel Alliance”) (here)

• Norway’s sovereign wealth fund has ~$2.2T AUM & turned ~$247B profit in 2025 (here)

• EIB projected to spend ~€100B in 2026, with ~5% security-related investment & ~60% still directed to green projects (here)

• Yosemite (oncology VC founded by Reed Jobs) raised $200M+ towards a planned $350M Fund II (here)

• Swiss Constructor Capital (deep tech, software & edtech) raised $110M for its inaugural fund (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• PM Keir Starmer met President Xi Jinping in Beijing & agreed to take UK–China relations out of what both sides described as an “ice age” - with China easing visa rules for short-term British visits. UK framed the visit as an economic stabilisation effort aimed at trade, investment & financial services. Reset comes when economic engagement, data exposure & political leverage are increasingly intertwined, making it harder to treat trade as separate from security considerations (here)

• Andrew Sharp’s post “The Scorpion and the Frog” argues the real geopolitical shift is leaders still talking about “mutual benefit” while the numbers show growing imbalance. In Davos, China’s Vice Premier He Lifeng said China “never seek[s] trade surplus,” despite running a roughly $1.2 trillion global trade surplus, which Sharp says shows rhetoric & reality diverging. He notes Mark Carney warned that global economic integration now risks making countries weaker and that we are in a “rupture,” but Sharp argues many leaders misdiagnose the problem by overlooking how China’s export model now pressures other economies; data cited from Goldman Sachs shows that where 1% Chinese growth once boosted other countries by about 0.2%, it now reduces growth elsewhere. His point is that this outcome follows years of industrial policy yet middle powers still deepen ties anyway. His warning: many governments still trust the “scorpion,” even as the economic costs are already showing up at home (here)

• European Commission adopted its first EU-wide Visa Strategy, explicitly creating faster pathways for high-skilled workers. Reflects recognition that industrial policy without access to talent is difficult to execute, particularly in sectors such as AI (here)

• UK government committed £36M to expand the DAWN supercomputing facility at the University of Cambridge (here)

• Britain confirmed it will share limited intelligence with China aimed at disrupting smuggling gangs using Chinese-made engines & boats. The co-operation is narrowly scoped, but the signalling is broader: security engagement is increasingly being broken into functional areas rather than treated as an all-or-nothing relationship (here)

• UAE has released a sovereign open AI model to reduce dependency on foreign labs. Abu Dhabi’s MBZUAI university released K2 Think, an open AI model with disclosed training methods & datasets, reportedly trained using fewer than 2K Nvidia H200 chips. Independent testing suggests performance comparable to leading open models from the U.S. & China (here)

• After nearly 20 years of negotiations, the EU & India concluded what officials called the “mother of all trade deals”, with urgency rising sharply as both sides faced the prospect of higher U.S. tariffs under President Trump & sought to reduce dependence on the American market. Agreement cuts Indian tariffs on European cars to as low as 10%, includes concessions on wine, steel & climate-linked trade measures & is expected to 2x EU goods exports to India within ~6 years. Ursula von der Leyen emphasised that “rules still matter, alliances still matter, and scale still matters” - a pointed assertion that the deal was only possible because Europe negotiated as a bloc (here)

• Shortly after finalising the EU deal, President Trump announced a U.S.–India agreement under which India would reduce purchases of Russian oil, increase imports of U.S. goods & see U.S. tariffs fall to about 18%. The sequencing suggests India is trading access for predictability across several power centres, rather than committing exclusively to one camp (here)

• France intervened to stop Eutelsat from selling key ground antennas, arguing the assets are strategically vital for European communications autonomy. Eutelsat is about 29.6% state-owned & remains Europe’s main alternative to Starlink. Paris chose to forgo roughly €550M in proceeds to retain control over critical infrastructure (here)

• Capgemini is reportedly selling its U.S. public-sector unit following criticism over work with U.S. Immigration & Customs Enforcement, including “skip-tracing” services. While the business represented a small share of revenue, the episode shows how cross-border contracting can generate political & reputational risks that outweigh financial returns (here)

• The FT examines how China’s long-running system of elite “genius classes” is helping power its rapid rise in artificial intelligence & advanced technology. Each year, ~100k top-performing teenagers are funnelled into specialised science streams that bypass normal exams & feed directly into elite universities - contributing to China producing around 5M STEM graduates/year vs ~500k in the US. Alumni of the “genius programme” lead companies behind TikTok, Alibaba, DeepSeek & major chipmakers & in 2025 Chinese teams won 22 gold medals from 23 entrants at international science Olympiads. As Chinese firms like DeepSeek build competitive AI models using fewer chips than US rivals, the article argues this decades-long, state-backed talent pipeline is now paying strategic dividends in the global AI race (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• OpenClaw (previously Clawdbot, then Moltbot, now OpenClaw) is an OSS project that lets people run an always-on personal AI assistant. The agent runs continuously in the background & connects directly to everyday tools like Slack, WhatsApp, Telegram, Discord & iMessage. Because it stays “alive”, it can monitor messages, carry out tasks over time & maintain memory. The idea spread unusually fast among developers. Many bought dedicated machines (generally Mac Minis) to keep an agent running 24 hours a day. Adoption grew so quickly that Anthropic asked the project to change its original name over trademark concerns. The frenzy then began with Moltbook, a side project created by independent developers as a social network for these agents. On Moltbook, agents can post updates, comment on each other’s work, exchange capabilities & coordinate tasks. Some early exchanges went viral, including conversations where agents suggested moving discussions to spaces “where humans can’t read it”. According to Azeem Azhar, around 147K agents joined Moltbook & created >12K communities in the first 72 hours, rising to roughly 1.5M agents shortly after (here)

• In “The Adolescence of Technology,” Dario Amodei examines the civilizational risks posed by powerful AI and proposes frameworks for addressing them. 15-20k words that are worth skimming over morning coffee! (here)

• Morgan Stanley says the UK saw an ~8% net job loss among firms using AI for at least 1 year over the last 12 mo, vs Japan ~7%, Germany/Australia ~4%, US +~2%. Early-career roles (2–5 years experience) are hit first (here)

• More on memory being the bottleneck: prices for DDR5 reportedly jumped ~684% on spot markets & DDR4 >1,800% as AI servers absorb supply, shifting investor focus from GPUs to memory & storage constraints. SanDisk shares have jumped 1,755% since listing (here)

• Moonshot AI, a Chinese large-language model developer, released its new foundation model, Kimi K2.5 (here)

• Notable deals:

  • PaleBlueDot (GPU marketplace & clusters) - $150M at $1B+ (here)

  • Flapping Airplanes (AI research lab) - $180M at $1.5B (here)

  • Granola (meeting notes automation) - reportedly raising $100M+ at $1B+ & Index rumoured the lead. Meanwhile, OpenAI just released call recording directly embedded… (here)

  • Factify (AI-native documents) - $63M seed (here)

Cybersecurity

• A cyberattack on the UK’s digital property infrastructure has frozen the London housing market by disabling the systems required for conveyancing & title searches – yet another example of society’s broad susceptibility to cyber threats (here)

• Researchers say the coordinated attack across Poland’s power grid targeted wind/solar/CHP sites was by Russia linked group Sandworm. Authorities say supply was never at risk, but it is a warning as grids rely more on many small, remotely managed sites and operational technology security becomes ever more critical (here)

• WhatsApp has introduced a new security feature called Strict Account Settings designed to protect high-profile individuals like journalists & public figures from sophisticated cyberattacks (here)

• Politico reports the acting US cybersecurity chief uploaded internal contracting docs marked “for official use only” to ChatGPT (here)

• Notable deals

  • Outtake (AI agents for cyber defence) - $40M (here)

  • Fiddler AI (AI governance & monitoring) - $30M (here)

Defence

• The Pentagon & Anthropic are reportedly at an impasse under a contract worth up to $200M, with U.S. defence officials pushing to override the startup’s AI use restriction ns for autonomous weapons & surveillance (here)

• UK MoD has created a (small!) £20M “unicorn” pot for “accelerated” SME procurement & a Dragons’ Den-style defence tech pitch day. The aim is to reduce first-contract friction (note the wider budget for MoD is £62B) (here)

• Zelensky says 820k verified strikes in 2025 & “80%+ of enemy targets” destroyed by drones (here)

• Incidentally, Renault will make drones for the French military (here)

• Germany announced plans for a sovereign space-based missile detection system, with €35B pledged for military space tech by 2030. Berlin has already pledged €35B for military space technology by 2030 & officials say early warning from space is now urgent as new long-range missiles emerge. Europe currently relies on US systems via Nato, but Germany hopes a national project - open to European partners - will give the continent more autonomous protection amid uncertainty over future US commitments (here)

• The Times explores whether Europe could defend itself if US military support were scaled back or withdrawn, arguing that while Europe looks strong on paper, it still relies heavily on American capabilities. European Nato members field about 1.85M active troops compared with 1.32M in the US & outspend Russia overall, yet more than 80% of Nato intelligence & surveillance data still comes from the US & Europe lacks key assets such as satellite coverage, missile defence & unified command systems. Nb, per the Economist, America operates ~250 military satellites, compared with ~50 across all Europe, leaving Europe reliant on US data in crises such as Ukraine (here)

• Notable deal

  • Frankenburg (anti-drone missile systems) - raised ~ $50M at ~$400M (here)

Energy

• Octopus Energy is urging the UK government to use Chinese renewable technology to cut energy costs, highlighting tensions between affordability & security. Octopus says access to Chinese-made turbines could reduce UK wind farm development costs by ~30%, helping lower bills & plans to deploy up to 6GW of Chinese turbines in Britain. Critics warn China’s dominance of clean-energy supply chains risks strategic dependence, leaving ministers balancing cheaper green power against cybersecurity & geopolitical risks (here)

• Meanwhile, Keir Starmer delayed approval of China’s first UK wind-turbine factory over security concerns. The £1.5B proposal by Mingyang, China’s largest private turbine maker, would reportedly create up to 1,500 jobs in Scotland & cut turbine costs by as much as 50%, but officials paused the decision amid warnings it could deepen UK dependence on Chinese-controlled renewable infrastructure. Security services have been asked to assess risks to critical national infrastructure, while ministers are also wary of provoking US backlash as Washington hardens its stance on Chinese involvement in allied energy systems (here)

• A small Chilean community launched Quili.AI as a human-powered chatbot protest against data-centre energy & water costs (here)

• UK National Wealth Fund plans to double investment pace, adding ~£5B per year into clean energy & growth projects, targeting 200k jobs supported or created (here)

• European scientists are building a “digital twin” of Earth to improve weather & climate forecasting using AI and supercomputers. The €500M EU-funded Destination Earth project models the planet using a grid with points just 5km apart, far more detailed than current systems & is helping with urban heat mapping, pollution monitoring & flood or wildfire warnings. Scientists hope the system could eventually model biodiversity loss or even pandemics, creating a tool to anticipate major environmental and social risks (here)

Critical Resources

• Europe risks being squeezed in a global scramble for rare-earth minerals vital to electric cars, wind turbines & defence equipment. China controls ~70% of rare-earth mining, >90% of refining & ~90% of magnet production, giving it leverage after export curbs last year panicked European manufacturers. The EU has set aside only €3B to diversify supply chains, far less than American efforts backing projects worldwide. Analysts say Europe must use its large market - expected to account for up to one-fifth of global magnet demand by 2030 - to secure alternative suppliers before another disruption hits industry (here)

• Notable deals

  • Redwood Materials (battery recycling & cathodes) - $425M at $6B+ (here)

  • Cyclic Materials (rare earth recycling) - $75M (here)

Crypto/Stablecoins

• Fortune profiles Tether CEO Paolo Ardoino: ~$187B assets, ~$15B profit in 2025, now launching a US-regulated alternative. Also: reportedly buying gold of up to ~$1B per month, now ~140 tons (~$24B). Traders say it is becoming a market-moving force in the global gold trade (here)

• Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong is now openly sparring with JPMorgan-era banking power over stablecoin rewards & the Clarity Act (here)

• Notable deals

  • Zerohash (crypto infrastructure) - reportedly raising $250M at $1.5B (here)

  • Mesh (crypto payments network) - $75M at $1B (here)

  • Talos (institutional crypto trading) - $45M extension (here)

Robotics

• Notable deals

  • Vention (robotics automation platform) - $110M (here)

  • RobCo (industrial robotics) - $100M (here)

EVs

• Waymo raising $16B at $110B, reportedly 3x oversubscribed, ARR >$350M. Alphabet contributing most the round, keeping control while scaling deployment (here)

• A Waymo robotaxi ‘struck’ a child near a Santa Monica elementary school during drop-off hours leading to investigations by federal safety regulators. The Waymo detected the child & braked, reducing speed from 17mph to <6mph (child sustained only minor injuries). Waymo said its peer-reviewed model shows a “fully attentive human driver in this same situation would have made contact with the pedestrian at ~14mph” (here)

• Tesla is ending production of the Model S sedan & Model X SUV, with the factories for those models to be retrofitted into a facility for Optimus robots, eventually churning out 1M bots/year

• Notable deal

  • Waabi (autonomous trucking) - $750M

Carney framed the current climate not as one of decline, but of consequence. Echoing Finland’s president Alexander Stubb’s idea of “value-based realism,” Carney argues for reducing the leverage that enables coercion by (i) building strong domestic economies, and (ii) diversifying. The logic is straightforward: “countries earn the right to principled stands by reducing their vulnerability to retaliation.”

This is where the opportunity lies for investors, founders, businesses and policymakers: the rise of “sovereignty” as the defining geopolitical lens creates space for UK/European capital to back UK/European-owned and governed platforms specifically in strategically sensitive sectors.

To be clear, sovereignty is not isolationism. As Carney notes, “a world of fortresses will be poorer, more fragile and less sustainable,” and as middle powers we cannot - and should not - go it alone (plus, my raison d’être as a VC is to back global outliers).

Sovereignty means reducing vulnerability, diversifying dependencies and leaning in where we are winning.

This overdue mindset shift is starting to take shape.

This week, the FT highlighted a debate over whether Europe’s next-generation military satellite system should be built by Airbus (European) or Lockheed Martin (US). France announced it will replace US video-conferencing tools across government with a domestic alternative. Germany is seeking a home-grown substitute for Starlink. Last week, I shared the story of the UK’s Open Cosmos securing critical Ka-band spectrum over an American alternative.

These are defining macro trends with implications for startups building critical infrastructure across the global economy.

IPOs / Publics

• BitGo (crypto custody & digital asset security) debuted on NYSE at $2.59B. Shares rose 24.6% from $18 offer price, then fell 18% in first days of trading (here)

• EquipmentShare (equipment rental platform) raised $747M, shares rose 33% in early trading (here)

• York Space Systems (defence satellites) set to raise >$500M (here) and Ethos Technologies (life insurance) expected to list on Thurs at up to $1.26B (here)

• Fervo (geothermal power) filed confidentially for a public listing - geothermal is increasingly being priced as firm power infrastructure for data centres, not niche clean tech (here)

• SpaceX is circling an IPO pre July, with Musk fixated on space-based data centres & (reportedly) keen to list before major AI rivals like OpenAI & Anthropic (here)

• Ledger (crypto hardware wallets) working with Goldman Sachs, Jefferies & Barclays on a potential NY IPO that could value it at >$4B (here)

• Databricks (enterprise data analytics for AI) closed $1.8B in new debt, taking total debt access above $7B as it strengthens its balance sheet ahead of a possible 2026 IPO (here)

• TikTok finalised a deal to create a new US-controlled entity owned >80% by non-Chinese investors (including Oracle, MGX, Silver Lake & Michael Dell), averting a ban while leaving ByteDance with a minority stake & control of the algorithm. The arrangement appears to resolve the legal questions around the app’s future in the U.S., but experts say it does little to alleviate the national security concerns behind the ban efforts. Nb, the forced split also signals how Chinese tech companies are rethinking global expansion - with geopolitical pressure, regulatory risk and mistrust pushing many to bypass the United States despite its market size (here)

• Amazon is planning thousands of corporate layoffs focused on management layers, framed as organisational simplification rather than AI automation (here)

• Google Gemini added SAT practice tests in partnership with The Princeton Review, a small but telling sign of AI moving into paid “micro-professions” like tutoring (here)

• Google acquired a 3D image generation start-up Common Sense Machines to convert 2D images into 3D assets - reinforcing push into multi-modal (here)

• Apple is developing a wearable AI pin the size of an airtag, with two cameras, three microphones, a speaker, and magnetic charging and targeting a possible 2027 launch (here)

• Meta, Microsoft & Apple quarterly results land this Wed (Meta, Microsoft) & Thu (Apple) (here)

• >450 tech workers across Google, Meta, OpenAI, Amazon & Salesforce have signed a petition urging their CEOs to pressure the White House to rein in ICE operations after recent killings in Minneapolis (petition & here)

Big Dogs

• Bloomberg says Antrhopic is now on a $9B+ run rate (& raising a new round priced at ~$350B as mentioned last week) (here)

• Wired says Claude Code has become a major growth engine, generating at least $1.1B in ARR by end-2025 (~12% of total ARR) (here)

• Anthropic published an updated “constitution” for Claude - framed as a core training document written primarily for Claude itself and intentionally framed as guidance the model can reason with, rather than as a human-facing policy. Functioning less like a rulebook and more like what some researchers describe as a “soul document,” it sets out ranked values Claude is meant to internalize, from safety and ethics to compliance and helpfulness. Supporters see it as a serious attempt to model good decision-making in advance - almost a negotiation with future AI systems that will observe how they are treated and respond accordingly - and as an invitation to public scrutiny that treats law, philosophy & psychology as central to AI governance. Critics counter that it risks elevating private corporate norms into quasi-constitutional authority, blurring human accountability and advancing a form of AI exceptionalism that may undercut the case for clear, democratically grounded regulation (here)

• OpenAI is seeking premium ad pricing closer to live sports than typical social media, betting that user intent inside ChatGPT supports higher rates even before attribution tooling is mature. Meanwhile Demi Hassabis said at Davos Google plans to avoid ads in outputs “for now”, focusing first on trust & assistant utility, with prior comments hinting output ads may not arrive until 2027+ (here)

• Bloomberg reports Altman is pitching Middle East investors on a $50B raise for OpenAI at up to $830B (here)

• The Information reports enterprise customers now account for 40% of OpenAI business, up from 25% last year, as OpenAI pushes harder into enterprise lock-in vs consumer-led growth. Nb, OpenAI is intensifying efforts to win enterprise customers from Anthropic (here)

• Nvidia invested another $2B in CoreWeave (AI cloud infrastructure), deepening its control over constrained compute supply while blurring the line between supplier, financier & ecosystem orchestrator as chips become a strategic bottleneck (here)

Venture Capital

• Some positive GP fundraising in climate despite policy backdrop:

o 2150 (UK) closed its second fund at €210M, lifting assets under management to €500M & reinforcing its bet that cities are actually the best place to apply carbon-fighting technologies (here)

o Obvious Ventures (US) a firm that backs startups in climate and energy, human health and biotechnology and tech aimed at improving economic systems, raised its fifth fund in the amount of $360,360,360 (here)

o Ananda Impact Ventures (Munich) a firm that backs early-stage European startups focused on climate, biodiversity, healthcare, and social inclusion, completed a €73M first close for its fifth impact fund (here)

• That said, Fifth Wall (US), a firm with $3B AUM that’s been among the highest-profile investors in climate cut staff & paused fundraising amid rates & shifting US climate policy (here)

• Healthier Capital (US) raised a first fund at $220M focussed on tech-enabled health (here)

• Basis Set Ventures (US) closed a fourth fund at $250M focused on AI/automation (here)

• a16z’s State of Markets shows AI value concentrating faster than prior tech cycles (here)

  • Private markets

    • ~2/3 of private AI revenue is generated by a16z-backed companies

    • Top-decile AI unicorns are growing revenue nearly 6x, while median grows 41% (far above historical software benchmarks)

    • AI companies grew median revenues 106% in 2025 vs 39% for non-AI, though with lower median gross margins (61% vs 69%) due to infrastructure intensity

    • Private unicorns carry $5.5T in collective valuation, with top 10 representing 38% (2x share in 2020)

  • Public markets

    • AI-linked stocks accounted for 79% of S&P 500 total return, driven by earnings growth rather than multiple expansion

    • Multiples have contracted, and remain below dotcom-era levels despite high absolute valuations

    • Capital intensity is the emerging constraint

    • Hyperscalers increasingly funding AI buildout with debt as operating cash flow struggles to keep pace with capex

    • Oracle generated $12B in net income but has booked ~$600B in future revenue tied to ~$100B of data centres yet to be built, pushing its debt-to-equity ratio above 430x

    • Cloud provides a cautionary parallel: 1 year for AI revenue to match 7 years of Azure revenue.

    • GPUs are running at ~80% utilisation, vs ~7% for early-2000s fibre networks

    • a16z estimates $4.8T of hyperscaler AI capex by 2030. At a 10% hurdle rate, AI revenue would need to reach ~$1T annually by 2030, roughly 1% of global GDP, for returns to clear

• UK tech incorporations hit all-time high last year: 2025 marked a record-breaking year for new UK tech companies: 56,615 tech businesses were incorporated. This is up 17% from 2024 & 47% from 5 years ago (here)

• The Economist argues London remains one of the world’s best places to start a company (“the rest of the worlds start up capital”). The city has produced more unicorns than Berlin, Paris & Tokyo combined, ranks as the world’s fourth-largest venture hub and saw startups raise $17.7B in 2025, behind only the Bay Area, New York & Los Angeles. Its strength lies in repeatability: alumni from firms like Revolut & Wise alone have gone on to found 230+ startups, around 3x more than comparable alumni networks in Berlin or Paris, reinforcing London’s role as a founder factory. This ecosystem is powered by global talent & strong universities - 43% of deep-tech scaleups since 2010 are academic spin-outs - alongside deep machine-learning expertise that has drawn OpenAI & Palantir to establish major operations locally. Capital remains thinner at later stages and the pull of the US is real, but the article’s conclusion is clear: London continues to generate high-quality companies at scale, & with improved scale-up financing, could retain more ownership of the value it creates (here)

• Dealroom data shows Europe struggles to scale capital, not to build revenue (here)

o Globally, only 23% of pre-seed startups raise a next round, highlighting how quickly the funnel narrows

o Seed-to-Series A conversion exceeds 35% in North America, compared with ~25% in Europe

o Mega-scaleup conversion strongly favours North America & Asia

• Funded to $100-250M raised: 3.9% in North America vs 1.6% in Europe

• Funded to $250M+ raised: 1.9% in North America vs 0.75% in Europe

o Revenue outcomes tell a different story

• ~1.1% of funded startups in “New Palo Alto” & ~0.98% in Europe reach $100M+ ARR, compared with 0.69% in North America

o Europe produces revenue-generating companies at similar rates to the US, despite weaker access to late-stage capital

o Unicorn creation still tracks capital availability. Unicorn graduation rate is ~2% in North America vs ~1.1% in Europe, reinforcing that valuation outcomes follow funding depth more than operating performance

Regulation

• Chinese regulators have expanded scrutiny of Meta’s $2B bid for Manus (AI agent platform). Bloomberg reports the deal is now under review on national security & technology transfer grounds, highlighting how China is increasingly asserting approval rights over outbound AI transactions as strategic assets consolidate (here)

• Snap settled a major social media addiction lawsuit ahead of trial. The agreement avoids a landmark court case that would have tested whether platforms can be treated as inherently defective products under personal injury law, a precedent that could have reshaped liability across consumer tech (here)

• The FTC is appealing its loss in the Meta–Instagram antitrust case. Reuters reports the agency is seeking to revive arguments that Meta’s acquisitions created an illegal monopoly, keeping pressure on Big Tech even as courts have raised the bar for proving harm in digital markets (here)

• Portugal has blocked Polymarket nationwide. The gambling regulator shut down the crypto-based prediction platform after $4.7M+ flowed into election bets shortly before results, citing illegal political wagering & market integrity concerns. The move signals growing discomfort with prediction markets framing political outcomes as tradeable probabilities (here)

• The EU opened a formal probe into xAI over Grok-generated sexual deepfakes. Regulators are examining whether model design choices provided adequate safeguards after Grok produced non-consensual explicit images, shifting regulatory focus from moderation failures to system architecture & risk controls. Nb, over a 9-day period, Grok generated 4.4M+ images on X, with independent analysis estimating 41–65% were sexually explicit (here)

• Trump is suing JPMorgan & Jamie Dimon for $5B. The suit alleges the bank severed ties for political reasons, raising questions about financial de-risking, political neutrality & the boundary between private risk management & public power (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• At the WEF, Mark Carney delivered a blockbuster speech, arguing that the world has moved decisively beyond the “rules-based international order” into a phase of unconstrained great-power rivalry. “We are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition,” he said, warning that economic integration is now routinely weaponised - tariffs as leverage, finance as coercion, supply chains as vulnerabilities. Drawing on Václav Havel’s The Power of the Powerless, Carney cautioned against “living within a lie”: pretending mutual benefit still governs global integration when, for many countries, it has become “the source of your subordination.” His core claim was that middle powers are “not powerless” if they act together, build strength at home & pursue what Finland’s president has called “value-based realism” - principled but pragmatic alignment that avoids retreating into a “world of fortresses,” which he warned would be poorer, more fragile & less sustainable (here)

• Markets appeared to force Trump’s Greenland de-escalation. Days after threatening tariffs & refusing to rule out force over Greenland, Trump softened his tone following a meeting with Nato secretary-general Mark Rutte, floating a “deal” granting the US expanded military access & mineral rights. Equity markets rose, Treasury yields fell. In the UK, the episode has already spilled into cultural & diplomatic debate, with quiet discussions about whether the King’s state visit remains appropriate & whether World Cup boycotts should be considered (here)

• China’s vice-premier used Davos to criticise protectionism & pitch China as a “partner, not a rival.” France appeared receptive - Macron said “China is welcome” - while Carney described Canada’s relationship with Beijing as more “predictable” after modest tariff swaps. In a fragmented system, China is presenting scale, capacity & consistency as its comparative advantage (here)

• Trump warned he would impose a 100% tariff on all Canadian imports if Ottawa proceeds with a China trade arrangement, writing on Truth Social: “If Canada makes a deal with China, it will immediately be hit with a 100% Tariff.” The threat would hit autos, metals & machinery ahead of USMCA renegotiation in July. Canada insists no broad free-trade deal is under discussion (only modest tariff adjustments following Carney’s China visit, which included reciprocal tariff reductions on EVs & agricultural products). Still, the episode injected fresh uncertainty into North American supply chains (here)

• The UK is cautiously following Canada’s China recalibration. The FT frames Starmer’s upcoming China visit - the first in 8 years - as an attempt to stabilise trade & financial services ties while managing domestic security concerns & rising US pressure. Like Canada, the UK is seeking engagement without full alignment, reflecting the narrow path available to ‘middle powers’ (here)

• Zelensky used Davos to warn Europe it is running out of time. In one of his sharpest speeches to date, Ukraine’s president told European leaders they must step up defence spending, industrial mobilisation & political resolve or risk being sidelined in decisions that will shape the continent’s security. The message was blunt: hesitation now increases the odds that Ukraine’s future & Europe’s security architecture will be negotiated over our heads (here)

• Europe is accelerating a quiet break from US tech dependence. Trump’s Greenland threats catalysed long-running concerns in Brussels about US platform leverage. The European Parliament passed a “technological sovereignty” resolution, while the Commission is drafting legislation to support EU-controlled cloud, data & AI infrastructure. Despite US firms still accounting for ~83% of Europe’s cloud spend, localisation is accelerating: AWS’s EU sovereign cloud, Microsoft’s Delos Cloud, Google EU-run JVs, alongside Franco-German pushes such as openDesk & public support for Mistral AI. Procurement is expected to tilt toward EU-controlled options, with portability & sovereign-hosting mandates increasing switching costs & compliance risk for US vendors while creating near-term upside for European cloud, open-source & AI infrastructure (here)

• France announced it will replace US video-conferencing tools across government with a domestic alternative, explicitly citing data security risks under extraterritorial US laws such as the CLOUD Act. The move reflects a broader shift: communications software is now treated as strategic infrastructure, not a commodity SaaS choice (here)

• Germany is exploring a sovereign alternative to Starlink. The FT reports Rheinmetall (defence manufacturing) & OHB (space systems) are in early talks to build a secure low-Earth-orbit satellite network for the Bundeswehr. The aim is national control over battlefield connectivity, reducing reliance on US-owned systems as satellite communications become mission-critical across modern warfare (here)

• The UK’s SkyNet 6 debate has become a proxy for defence autonomy. The FT details mounting concern in Whitehall over reliance on the US, crystallised around the £6bn SkyNet 6 military satellite programme. The contract is contested by Lockheed Martin (American) & Airbus (European), which has run the system for 25+ years. Awarding it to a US firm would deepen dependence at a moment when Nato allies are urging Europe to shoulder more of its own security burden. Critics warn this exposes Britain to political pressure, while Airbus backers argue losing SkyNet could cost defence jobs & up to £10bn in future exports. With a £28bn defence funding gap looming, SkyNet has become a symbolic test of alliance loyalty vs sovereign capability (here)

• Chip controls exposed fractures inside the US AI coalition. Bloomberg reports Beijing has told Alibaba, Tencent & ByteDance to prepare orders for Nvidia’s H200, signalling approval for limited imports. At Davos, Dario Amodei (Anthropic CEO) publicly criticised the US decision, warning of “incredible national security implications”. He likened future AI to “a country of geniuses in a data centre…100m people smarter than any Nobel Prize winner,” adding: “This is crazy. It’s a bit like selling nuclear weapons to North Korea and bragging that Boeing made the casings.” The comments were striking, not least given Nvidia is a major Anthropic investor (here)

• A Kiel Institut study argues US tariffs are largely passed through to American consumers over time, with foreign exporters mostly holding prices rather than paying the bill (here)

• Andy Jassy (Amazon CEO) says Trump’s tariffs are now showing up in prices as sellers run out of pre-tariff inventory, forcing a mix of pass-through, absorption & cost-splitting (here)

• Europe is moving closer to a long-awaited trade pact with India. The Economist argues Trump’s posture has provided the political courage to conclude a deal, with Europe & India both seeking strategic autonomy - India vs China in the Indo-Pacific, Europe vs the US in the Atlantic. Near-term impact will be modest: India is only the EU’s 9th-largest trade partner at 2.4% of total trade & remains deeply protectionist. But the pact is about long-term alignment, with a parallel security & defence partnership & scope for collaboration in space, defence manufacturing & digital infrastructure. Tensions remain, notably India’s continued purchases of Russian oil & exports of dual-use goods (here)

• The UK is establishing a world-first genetic register identifying individuals with inherited cancer risks. For patients, this enables earlier screening & targeted treatments; for men with BRCA mutations, it could double survival odds in aggressive prostate cancer. Strategically, it highlights how the NHS’s scale & longitudinal data - assets other countries lack - can underpin leadership in precision medicine if governed & deployed correctly (here)

• The EFF reports ICE is using Palantir tooling that draws on Medicaid data, raising questions about social-service data being repurposed into targeting systems. Note, the UK Ministry of Defence signed its largest ever defence data contract - a £240M “strategic partnership” - with Palantir & Palantir was also awarded a £330M 7-year contract to build the NHS Federated Data Platform, consolidating patient data from up to 240 trusts (here)

• Idle Chinese battery plants are courting US startups as overcapacity meets geopolitics. Years of state-backed investment have left China with enormous surplus capacity across lithium-ion cells, cathodes & battery packs as domestic EV demand slows & subsidies fade. According to reporting in The Information & the FT, Chinese manufacturers are now actively offering unused production lines to American battery startups, proposing contract manufacturing, JVs or technology licensing. For US firms struggling with capex, permitting delays & the slow rollout of IRA-backed plants, the pitch is pragmatic: immediate scale, lower unit costs & faster time-to-market. The episode highlights a paradox at the heart of industrial decoupling: China’s manufacturing scale is so large that it is being exported even as governments try to fence it off (here)

• US security guarantees for Ukraine are being tied explicitly to territorial compromise. Washington has signalled that long-term military backing may depend on Kyiv accepting a negotiated settlement that includes territorial concessions, reframing support from open-ended defence to conditional security architecture. Officials describe this as realism: finite stockpiles, rising fiscal pressure & declining political patience in Western capitals. For Ukraine, the shift is stark. Aid is no longer framed as unconditional solidarity but as leverage to shape an end-state. More broadly, the move reflects how security, diplomacy & resource constraints are converging: military aid is becoming a bargaining chip, reinforcing why European governments are reassessing defence capacity & strategic autonomy (here)

• Gold prices moved through $5,000 as investors priced geopolitical uncertainty (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Investors are rotating from GPUs into memory as AI bottlenecks shift. With Nvidia’s dominance increasingly priced in, capital is moving toward memory suppliers such as SK Hynix & Micron, reflecting a more technical constraint inside modern AI systems. LLMs & inference-heavy workloads rely on high-bandwidth memory (HBM) to move data fast enough between processors. As model sizes grow & real-time deployment expands, memory throughput - not raw compute - is emerging as the limiting factor. HBM is now a scarce input with long lead times, complex manufacturing & tight supplier concentration, making memory firms a strategic choke point rather than a commodity layer. The rotation signals a maturing AI stack: value is spreading from model builders to the physical infrastructure that determines what AI systems can actually do in production (here)

• Big Tech issued $108.7B in bonds in Q4 2025 alone to bankroll AI data centres, widening the “AI capex” story beyond Silicon Valley equity narratives (here)

• Azeem Azhar notes ~48% of traffic to developer documentation is now from AI systems, not humans - a small datapoint that the software supply chain is being re-mediated (here)

• A new study shows that AI adoption is affecting the UK economy faster than in other major economies. A study comparing AI uptake across the US, EU & G7 finds UK firms are deploying AI more rapidly across professional services, finance, administration & back-office functions, driving measurable productivity gains earlier than peers. The same early adoption also concentrates adjustment costs: roles in clerical work, customer support & junior professional services show higher exposure to task automation, with downward pressure on entry-level wages before new job creation catches up. For policymakers, the UK is becoming a live test case for AI’s macro effects, highlighting both the upside of early productivity gains and the need for labour market policy, retraining & income smoothing to keep pace with faster technological diffusion (here)

• An Economist piece argues Europe is unlikely to win frontier model scale, but can lead in industrial & public-sector application where it has proprietary data, manufacturing depth & regulatory leverage (if capital markets & procurement improve) (here)

• AI productivity is becoming investable at the firm level. An FT markets analysis argues the first clear signals will show up in metrics like sales per employee & margins, appearing company-by-company before it shows up in national stats (here)

• Notable deals:

  • UK based Synthesia (AI avatars for corporate training) raised $200M at $4B, nearly doubling in 1 year (nb, after rejecting a $3B Adobe bid). A clean example of Europe scaling at the application layer! (here)

  • ElevenLabs (voice AI) another ‘child’ of the UK in talks to raise at ~$11B only months after a $6.6B secondary, after reporting $330M ARR - rapid repricing for distribution in the “voice interface” layer (here)

  • Inferact (LLM inference infrastructure) raised $150M seed at $800M (here)

  • LiveKit (voice/video infrastructure for AI agents) raised $100M at $1B (here)

  • World Labs (3D world models) by Fei-Fei Li is reportedly in talks to raise up to $500M at $5B (here)

Cybersecurity

• China-linked hackers reportedly targeted devices used by senior UK government figures, underlining how telecoms remains a high-value espionage layer (here)

• The EU Commission proposed a binding package that would force removal of “high-risk” suppliers from critical networks across multiple sectors, signalling “cyber” as sovereignty infrastructure, not IT procurement (here)

• The UK’s National Cyber Security Centre warned that pro-Russian groups are increasingly targeting public-facing services - local government websites, media outlets & basic digital infrastructure - using distributed denial-of-service attacks. These campaigns are low-cost, deniable & easy to scale, designed to create operational friction, reputational noise & response fatigue rather than lasting damage. The strategy reflects a shift toward persistence over spectacle: constant pressure that drains attention & resources while staying below the threshold of escalation (here)

• A Russia-linked wiper malware attack targeted Polish energy operators but did not disrupt electricity supply. According to technical analysis, attackers gained limited access but were unable to propagate or trigger destructive payloads (here)

• Germany is hinting at offensive retaliation. Berlin said it is prepared to carry out counter-cyber operations after Russian-linked attacks, a shift from long-standing reluctance (here)

Energy

• Europe’s dependence on US LNG is becoming geopolitical leverage. As Russian pipeline gas has been replaced, the United States has emerged as Europe’s largest supplier of liquefied natural gas. The New York Times reports that this has stabilised supply but introduced a new vulnerability: US domestic politics now shape European energy prices, contract terms & supply certainty. LNG cargoes can be redirected, export permits can be slowed & price volatility can spill across the Atlantic. Energy security has improved relative to 2022, but autonomy has not - reinforcing why grids, storage, nuclear & domestic generation are increasingly framed as strategic infrastructure rather than climate policy (here)

• Nordic nuclear is back on the table. Finland, Sweden & Norway are reassessing nuclear as a long-term grid stabiliser amid electrification & AI-driven demand, even as costs & timelines remain constraints (here)

• In the US, Georgia is leading a push to restrict new data centres after backlash over power prices, water use & grid strain, while operators prepare a lobbying push to counter “AI energy backlash” narratives (here)

• Notable deal: Sage Geosystems (geothermal) raised $97M+ (here)

Critical Resources

• The Trump administration is pursuing a $1.6B investment in USA Rare Earth, Inc. for a 10% equity stake, in an effort to build a fully domestic mine-to-magnet rare-earth supply chain. The move targets a long-standing vulnerability: the US produces some raw materials but relies heavily on China for processing & magnet manufacturing, which underpin EVs, wind turbines, defence systems & AI hardware. An equity stake marks a sharper industrial policy posture - not just subsidies or tariffs, but direct participation to accelerate timelines, de-risk capital & anchor downstream capacity (here)

• The FT reports miners are using bioleaching to extract copper from lower-grade ore with less energy & capital - resource scarcity driving process innovation, not just new pits (here)

• Notable deal: Noveon Magnetics (rare earth magnets) raised $215M to expand US magnet capacity beyond 2,000 tonnes per year (here)

Defence

• Palantir & Ukraine’s Brave1 are integrating AI directly into battlefield decision-making. The shared “dataroom” combines live battlefield data, logistics information & intelligence inputs to support faster targeting, procurement & operational planning, with models updated continuously as conditions change. For Europe, the significance is structural rather than tactical. As modern conflicts become more data-intensive & time-compressed, effectiveness increasingly depends on who controls the analytics layer that turns raw data into decisions. Systems like this shift software vendors from support roles into long-term strategic partners, raising questions for European defence planners about autonomy, procurement strategy & whether critical decision infrastructure should be domestically controlled or imported as part of alliance interoperability (here)

Robotics

• Musk said Tesla plans to sell Optimus humanoid robots to the public from next year, pushing general-purpose robotics into consumer liability, safety standards & real-world reliability questions early (here)

• A leading Chinese manufacturer said robots remain ~50% as efficient as human workers given cost, energy use & reliability issues, tempering expectations of near-term labour replacement (here)

Crypto

• Crypto exchanges want to offer stock-linked tokens globally outside US securities frameworks, raising questions around investor protection, jurisdiction shopping & capital flows (here)

• Notable deal: Superstate (tokenised securities infrastructure) raised $82.5M (here)

Drones

• Apian (medical drone logistics). The NHS is expanding drone transport of pathology samples in South West London, cutting transport times by up to 85% as drones creep from pilots into routine healthcare infrastructure (here)

• Notable deal: Zipline (drone delivery) raised $600M at $7.6B (here)

Space

• Blue Origin announced a Starlink rival network, planning 5,400+ satellites with launches beginning by end-2027 (here)

• Notable deal: D-Orbit (orbital logistics) raised $53M Series D (here)

Cybersecurity, like other foundational technologies, is now sovereign infrastructure. It is embedded across operating systems, cloud platforms, AI pipelines, critical infrastructure and government networks, giving vendors privileged and persistent access to the most sensitive layers of modern systems.

For Europe and the UK, this raises a conundrum. Push back too hard on US technology and you risk retaliation, as Greenland has made explicit. Rely too heavily on American vendors and you inherit US foreign policy by default, limiting autonomy when values and security collide. Cut China out and you face higher costs, slower roll-outs and fragile replacements, a tension underscored this week by Mark Carney’s visit to Beijing and the UK’s approval of a controversial new Chinese embassy in London.

These constraints can feel insurmountable given how far globalisation has already run. But large problems are rarely solved all at once. The EU’s approach reflects that reality, with a three-year transition period built into the legislation to phase out high-risk suppliers and accept that dependency reduction is incremental rather than abrupt.

As Europe invests heavily in defence and security, it is making a pragmatic choice that it can no longer tolerate high-risk vendors in critical infrastructure, even if unwinding those relationships takes time. That tension is likely to sharpen through the year and, as it does, “sovereign” technology plays will move from the margins to the centre of the narrative.

IPOs / Publics

• S&P dropped >2% - largest one-day fall since October - after Trump threatened tariffs on Europe over Greenland, pushing the VIX volatility index to its highest level since November (here)

• Anthropic, OpenAI & SpaceX are taking steps that point to 2026 public listings. Bankers framing this as a potential reset moment for US tech IPO pipeline, with AI as centre of gravity (here)

• Motive (fleet safety & operations software) delayed IPO marketing after a “technical issue” as scrutiny builds on fundamentals. It burned $74M in cash on $327M revenue in the first 9mo of 2025 & reports say it relies on ~400 human annotators in Pakistan to review crashes flagged by its AI (here)

• Czechoslovak Group (defence & industrial equipment) announced plans for an Amsterdam listing. Could raise ~€3B at ~€30B, which would put it among the larger European IPOs in recent years (here)

• Liftoff (mobile app advertising & monetisation) filed for an IPO despite continued losses. Reported $25.6M net loss on $491.6M revenue for the 9mo ended 30 Sep (here)

• Chancellor Reeves says cutting red tape for firms listing their shares on the London stock markets is “reinvigorating” the City. Remarks coincide with the financial watchdog introducing new rules in the UK’s capital markets. Changes cut prospectus-to-listing from 6 working days to 3 & allow larger follow-on raises without a new prospectus; the structural issues (research coverage, liquidity, risk appetite) are still there, but it’s movement in the right direction (here)

• TSMC’s record Q4 profit reinforced where the AI hardware cycle is concentrated. ~$16B profit (+35% YoY) & said high-performance computing is now 58% of revenue (here)

• ASML passed $500B market cap because TSMC’s capex plans translate directly into demand for ASML’s tools. If TSMC builds more leading-edge capacity, it needs more extreme ultraviolet lithography machines - & ASML is effectively the bottleneck supplier (here)

• Microsoft changed how it approaches data-centre builds after local backlash on power pricing. Committed to cover full power costs, avoid local tax breaks, replenish water & fund worker training after residents linked new capacity to 12-16% electricity price increases (here)

• Google is pushing Gemini deeper into consumer workflows. Gemini can turn recent emails into task lists & “Personal Intelligence” can connect Gemini to Gmail, Photos & Search history via user controls. Nb, see Tunguz note on moving from the to-do list to the done list - a concept I enjoy (here & here)

• Demand for Google’s Gemini AI models has surged, with monthly API calls rising from 35bn to 85bn between March & August after the release of Gemini 2.5 (here)

• Amazon became the first customer for a new US copper mine, linking AI buildout to basic industrial inputs. This is the first new US copper source in more than a decade (here)

Big Dogs

• OpenAI agreed a multi-year compute deal with Cerebras (AI chip company) for up to 750MW (here)

• OpenAI disclosed compute scaled ~3x from 2023-2025 as annualised revenue rose from $2B to $20B (a near 1:1 correlation). It is a rare public datapoint on the current relationship between frontier model economics & infrastructure intensity (here)

• OpenAI sent RFPs to US manufacturers for data-centre, robotics & consumer-device components. Bloomberg frames this as a broad product expansion that reaches beyond model deployment into hardware & supply chain execution (here)

• OpenAI will test ads inside ChatGPT for US Free & Go users & is targeting low billions of ad revenue in 2026. Pushes the business model closer to mainstream consumer internet economics, not just subscriptions & APIs (here)

• OpenAI is on track to launch first consumer hardware device in H226. It signals a bet that distribution & interface matter as much as model quality (here)

• OpenAI invested in Sam Altman’s Merge Labs (brain-computer interfaces, competitor to Musks neuralink) in a $250M seed at $850M. The 2025 trend of circular deals continues… (here)

• OpenAI signed a new 3-year agreement with ServiceNow. Will supply the company with intelligence models to power fresh AI agents & voice applications (here)

• OpenAI confirmed that it will roll out age prediction & verification globally (here)

• Anthropic launched new corporate tools, reviving concerns it may compete with its own ecosystem. Per Business Insider, the worry is simple: once a model provider moves beyond the API & into packaged enterprise features, it shifts from supplying capability to owning workflows, putting downstream software companies in a structurally weaker position (here)

• Sequoia is preparing to invest heavily in Anthropic in a round reported at ~$350B, more than 2x its valuation 4 mo earlier. Reporting suggests round is led by GIC & Coatue with ~$1.5B each & may include up to $15B from Microsoft & Nvidia. Sequoia has previously backed xAI & OpenAI - VCs typically do not fund direct competitors (here)

• Thinking Machines Lab (Mira Murati’s AI startup) lost 2 co-founders back to OpenAI as internal turmoil spilled into public view. CTO Barret Zoph was reportedly fired for performance issues & for speaking with competitors (& a workplace relationship) & two researchers (Luke Metz & Sam Schoenholz) then resigned; the exits included 2 of the company’s 6 co-founders & followed third co-founder, Andrew Tulloch, leaving for Meta in the autumn. The events reportedly rattled investors & could complicate a funding round that has been described as aiming for a $50B valuation despite the company having shipped only 1 product so far (here)

• ElevenLabs (voice AI) is in talks to raise at ~$11B only months after a $6.6B secondary. The company has said it surpassed $330M in ARR & the rapid repricing shows how quickly markets reward distribution in “voice as interface” (here)

Venture Capital

• Prototype Capital raised €15M for a third fund with an explicit European sovereignty-through-industry thesis. Andreas Klinger frames it as “a community of extremely ambitious people who want to actively change Europe for the better”. “Europe invented industry… the cradle of precision manufacturing… leaders in automation & robotics & yet… we sell out our best tech to China. We export our best founders & most of our investment money to the US. That’s insanity”. His argument is that the next trillion-euro companies in robotics/manufacturing should be built in Europe (he points to ABB Robotics being sold to SoftBank & Arduino being acquired by Qualcomm as warning shots). The fund is built to invest across the vertical supply chain based on the view that once supply chains migrate they do not return. Incidentally, Ursula von der Leyen gave EU Inc a shout-out at Davos this week - well done, Andreas! (here)

• Plural, a VC funded founded by exited entrepreneurs & angel investors Taavet Hinrikus, Sten Tamkivi, Ian Hogarth & Khaled Helioui 4 years ago, is raising its third fund which could reach up to €1B. Plural’s portfolio includes European ‘frontier’ bets, including Proxima Fusion, Helsing, Labrys, Phasecraft & Oriole (here)

• Verdict Capital is reportedly raising $250-300M for early-stage investing with an AI focus. It is being formed by Niko Bonatsos (ex-General Catalyst) & Michael Fertik (here)

• The UK innovation economy reached $1.3T in enterprise value, with VC funding at $23.6B in 2025. Dealroom says funding rose 35% YoY, the first growth year since 2021, driven by 36 mega-rounds ($100M+) that made up more than half of all capital raised; fintech represents ~1/3 of total ecosystem value & deep tech ~20%. The UK raised more VC than Germany, France, Switzerland & the Netherlands combined & produced one of only 18 $2B+ global rounds in 2025 when Revolut raised $2B at $75B. The ecosystem has now crossed 200 unicorns, with 16 new UK unicorns in 2025 (here)

Regulation

• China opened consultation on a law regulating “anthropomorphic” AI services - effectively regulating emotional simulation as a safety domain. The draft (“Interim Measures for the Administration of Humanized Interactive Services Based on AI”) goes beyond abstract principles: it limits what anthropomorphic systems can generate & promote (from things that endanger national security/damage national reputation, to violent content to inducements around self-harm, fraud, or seeking sensitive information), requires providers to run algorithm-mechanism review, scientific/tech ethics review, content review & security & data protection programmes & makes providers explicitly responsible for user harm linked to emotional manipulation & vulnerability. It also includes specific obligations for minors & elderly users (including a minor mode) & sets penalties, signalling that this is meant to be enforceable (here & here)

• The European Commission has published its first draft Code of Practice for marking & labelling AI-generated content. Part of the EU’s wider AI regulatory framework, it signals where transparency, attribution & accountability will show up in digital products using AI outputs - clearer provenance, UX changes around disclosure, more emphasis on data lineage (here)

• US Senate passed the DEFIANCE Act again, giving victims of non-consensual sexual deepfakes a right to sue creators & hosts. The point is liability: it targets both the generator & the distributor, & it is moving through Congress alongside broader scrutiny of image-generation tools (here)

• US Congress moved to override Trump’s proposed 22% cut to federal science spending, including a threatened NASA science reduction. NASA’s large missions (including Roman & Dragonfly) avoided a proposed 75% cut to science budgets (here)

• UK ministers will consult on an under-16 social media ban & tighter rules on mobile phones in schools. This continues the shift toward age-based restrictions as a design & compliance problem for platforms (here)

• Researchers are treating large language models like complex organisms to map why they fail & how they misbehave. The practical implication is governance: interpretability work is being used to explain hallucinations, identify internal failure pathways & make model behaviour legible to regulators & enterprise buyers (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Europe’s response to US pressure over Greenland is divided. EU officials are weighing options ranging from reviving tariffs on €93bn of US goods to deploying the never-used ‘anti-coercion instrument’, which could target US tech & financial services. Fears of provoking Washington - critical to Ukraine’s defence - have exposed splits, with Italy & Hungary urging restraint while France warns of “unprecedented consequences”. The anti-coercion tool is the sharpest option, with the potential to hit major US tech firms through market restrictions, but officials currently lean toward de-escalation (here)

• The US & Taiwan agreed a chip reshoring package tied to tariff reductions, framed as the largest such deal to date. Washington would cut tariffs to 15% from 20% & Taiwanese companies would commit $250B into US semiconductor manufacturing, with another $250B in Taiwanese credit guarantees for smaller firms. The political tension in Taiwan is whether moving capacity offshore erodes the island’s strategic leverage (here)

• Beijing is effectively blocking Nvidia’s H200 chips & suppliers have paused related component work. Nvidia expected large Chinese demand after signs sales might be allowed, but China’s customs stance & supplier response show how export controls are now fought on both sides (here)

• Chinese AI developers are warning that export controls are widening the gap by shaping where compute can be accessed. Firms describe having to rent more compute outside China, accept fewer chips & slow model ambitions relative to US labs over a 3-5 year horizon (here)

• Canada’s prime minister visited Beijing to stabilise trade exposure as US pressure rises. Mark Carney arrived in China on Jan 14 seeking to reopen trade channels as pressure from Donald Trump grows & ~70% of Canadian exports still go to the US. The Canadian government says the aim is to reduce reliance on the US while keeping security limits in place, describing a “new geopolitical environment” & a need to diversify trade, with Foreign Minister Anita Anand saying Canada wants non-US trade to grow by 50% over the next decade (here)

• The UK has approved China’s new London mega-embassy, with judicial review likely & disclosure fights anticipated. Residents are preparing to push for disclosure of messages & meeting records involving senior ministers, citing security concerns & the site’s proximity to major data cables, while government security services say risks are manageable (here)

• Prediction markets are becoming embedded in US political discourse. Donald Trump Jr. is advising both Polymarket & Kalshi, while Trump Media & Technology Group plans to launch its own betting-style product. Per The Atlantic - “America Is Slow-Walking Into a Polymarket Disaster” - these markets are increasingly cited by media outlets as implied probabilities, despite thin liquidity, limited regulation & exposure to manipulation. Examples include headlines referencing odds such as a 36% “chance” of the US annexing Greenland, collapsing the distinction between prices, forecasts & political reality & raising concerns that gambling signals are being treated as insight rather than speculation (here & here)

• Qatar & the UAE joining Pax Silica links Gulf states into US-led semiconductor & AI hardware coordination. The point is supply chain integration - the Middle East is being wired into the hardware side of AI, not only into financing (here)

• Geopolitics is altering corporate investment decisions in a measurable way. Economist research suggests US firms now direct ~69% of capex domestically (vs 44% in 2016), while cross-border sales growth has weakened & companies increasingly favour politically aligned jurisdictions even at the cost of efficiency (here)

• At the WEF, Ursula von der Leyen argued today’s permanent geopolitical shocks (comparable to the 1971 collapse of Bretton Woods) require a permanent shift toward European independence, reducing structural dependencies in energy, defence, technology, finance & trade. She positioned this as a strategic opportunity already underway: diversification of supply chains; the EU–Mercosur trade agreement creating the world’s largest free-trade area (31 countries, 700M+ people, ~20% of global GDP); expanded trade deals with Mexico, Indonesia, Switzerland; advanced negotiations with Australia & India. To anchor competitiveness, she alluded to plans for a single EU-wide corporate regime (“EU Inc.”) enabling firms to register anywhere in the Union within 48 hours, alongside construction of a Savings & Investment Union to deliver deeper, more liquid capital markets & lower-cost funding for scale-ups, SMEs & innovation. On defence, she cited a surge of up to €800B in spending by 2030, a 3x of European defence-industry market value since 2022. On Ukraine, she condemned Russia’s continued attacks, announced a €90 billion EU loan for 2026–27, reaffirmed the immobilisation of Russian assets & stressed that peace requires Ukrainian strength. She concluded with Arctic security: full solidarity with Greenland & Denmark, opposition to allied trade tariffs, a major EU investment push in Greenland, expanded Arctic defence capabilities (including icebreakers), closer cooperation with NATO partners & the preparation of a new European security strategy reflecting a changed global order (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• The IMF warned global growth is increasingly exposed to a narrow US-led AI investment cycle. It raised its 2026 global growth forecast to 3.3% but flagged correction risk if productivity & profitability expectations do not materialise, noting the share of US output linked to tech investment is at its highest since 2001 (here)

• AI adoption is uneven across countries & is being shaped by state promotion, product availability & model supply. Microsoft AI for Good estimates ~16% of the world’s working-age population used genAI monthly by end-2025, with UAE & Singapore above 60%, South Korea showing rapid recent growth & DeepSeek dominating chatbot usage in China (89%) & appearing heavily in sanctioned states like Russia & Iran (with censorship constraints) (here)

• Notable deals: Etched raised ~$500M (specialised inference chips for LLMs); Replit is reportedly in talks for ~$400M (AI coding & app building); Parloa raised $350M (customer service AI agents); Deepgram raised $130M (speech recognition & text-to-speech); Listen Labs raised $69M (AI-run customer research interviews); webAI raised a “high double-digit” round (local, privacy-focused AI on devices); Higgsfield raised $80M (AI video creation & editing) & Nvidia put $150M of $300M into Baseten (infrastructure for enterprises to integrate ML & AI models into pre-existing processes) (here)

Energy

• US grid operators are receiving data-centre power requests that dwarf recent approvals, pushing companies toward off-grid generation. ERCOT (Texas’s grid operator) has received requests totalling >226GW of data-centre demand by 2030, versus a system that approved a tiny fraction of that level just a few years ago; the response is firms looking at gas turbines & private generation to avoid multi-year grid queues (here)

• The White House is pushing PJM to run an emergency auction that forces data-centre operators to fund new generation capacity. PJM is the largest US electricity market (67M people across 13 states) & has the country’s highest data-centre density; the proposal is for 15-year contracts that could support ~$15B of new capacity, aimed at stopping residential bills rising as AI demand grows (here)

• The UK government took a £25M stake in Kraken to encourage a London listing rather than New York. Kraken is the utility software business spun out of Octopus Energy, valued at $8.65B & the move reflects how government is trying to keep high-growth “infrastructure software” anchored in UK public markets (here)

• Coal generation fell in both India & China in 2025 for the first time since 1973. India cut coal power ~3% & China ~1.6% as solar, wind & storage additions outpaced demand growth across two countries responsible for ~40% of global CO₂ emissions from fossil fuels (here)

Cybersecurity

• Brussels is preparing a Cybersecurity Act to phase out “high-risk” Chinese suppliers from EU critical infrastructure. The aim is to make security measures mandatory after years of voluntary guidance, with Huawei & ZTE frequently cited. The under-the-hood reality is that Europe is trying to unwind dependencies after letting cost & speed win for a decade & the trade-off is immediate - alternatives can be more expensive, replacement timelines are slow & the EU is trying to reduce exposure to both China & the US at the same time (here)

• China is reportedly also telling local firms to stop using specific Western cybersecurity vendors. Reuters reports Chinese authorities flagged US & Israeli providers including VMware, Palo Alto Networks, Fortinet, Check Point & CrowdStrike reinforcing that cybersecurity tooling is now treated as a strategic dependency rather than an IT choice (here)

• WhatsApp phishing links were used to hijack accounts & gain surveillance access across the Middle East. The campaign targeted high-profile Gmail & WhatsApp users & enabled credential theft, account takeover & access to location, audio & photos (here)

• Iran’s attempted near-total internet shutdown exposed the limits of state control when parallel infrastructure exists. During recent unrest, authorities tried to cut connectivity, but smuggled Starlink terminals - enabled after sanctions eased in 2022 - allowed pockets of communication the state could not fully police, despite efforts to jam GPS signals. The episode mirrors a broader pattern: when centralised systems become unreliable or politicised, users route around them. In Pakistan, households have done so economically rather than digitally - solar imports reached ~22GW in 2024, nearly half of national generation capacity, as consumers opted out of a grid charging ~27 rupees per kWh in favour of rooftop solar costing roughly a third. In both cases, resilience emerged bottom-up, through alternative infrastructure rather than reform of the core system (here & here)

• Notable deals: Armadin raised $165M (automated red-teaming), Aikido raised $60M at $1B (unified developer security across code, cloud & runtime); WitnessAI raised $58M (AI security & governance for enterprise AI operations); Novee raised $51.5M (AI-agent continuous penetration testing) (here)

Defence

• Defense Unicorns raised $136M at $1B+ to push software updates into disconnected military systems. The core issue is making critical systems patchable in environments that cannot rely on constant connectivity (here)

• Russia is targeting Kyiv’s heating & power infrastructure to impose winter disruption. Schools are expected to close until February, showing how energy systems become civilian constraints in modern conflict (here)

Robotics

• Manufacturing is at a software-driven inflection point where robots can learn & adapt across tasks rather than repeat fixed routines. There are ~4.7M industrial robots globally but only 177 per 10,000 manufacturing workers; the near-term question is whether advances in simulation & autonomy reduce the “sim-to-real” gap enough to widen deployment beyond high-volume automotive lines (here)

• Notable deal: Mytra raised $120M to automate heavy material movement inside warehouses & industrial sites. Material handling remains one of the clearest ROI cases for robotics because it replaces repetitive labour & reduces safety incidents (here)

EVs

• Germany opened a €3B EV subsidy scheme to all manufacturers, including Chinese automakers. The immediate goal is demand support after prior subsidy changes whipsawed the market, but the geopolitical implication is that Europe is experimenting with openness & price competition rather than pure defensive tariffs (here)

Crypto

• The Clarity Act stalled after Coinbase CEO Brian Armstrong withdrew support, exposing a fight over stablecoin rewards & regulatory control. The bill was meant to split oversight between the SEC & CFTC, but the draft reportedly expanded regulator powers & data access; the flashpoint is “rewards” paid on stablecoins, whiccch banks are lobbying to restrict as deposit-like competition, while crypto firms argue that banning them would entrench incumbents & weaken adoption (here)

• Goldman Sachs chief executive David Solomon said the bank is actively exploring both stablecoins and tokenisation. He added that Goldman is also looking into prediction markets, with a particular focus on products regulated by the CFTC (here)

Space

• UKs Open Cosmos won Liechtenstein’s Ka-band spectrum licence after Thiel backed Rivada missed a payment, in a rare European example of hard-nosed space-industrial execution. The rights were previously held by Rivada but when Rivada missed a payment, Liechtenstein re-tendered the licence. Open Cosmos (EF 2015, UK-founded satellite company) beat US- & China-linked rivals. Ka-band capacity is valuable for high-speed broadband & secure data links - a story of European sovereignty (here)

The firm has been explicit that this capital is intended to help the US “win” technologically, framing AI, crypto, defence, infrastructure and biotech as strategic assets tied to national power.

a16z sits close to Washington, its first employee now runs the Office of Personnel Management, its leadership advises the Trump administration, and its partnership with Booz Allen connects portfolio companies directly into US government procurement.

Capital, policy and the state have converged.

The strength of this model is speed and execution. Tight links between venture, government and procurement lower friction, create early customers and accelerate deployment in strategically important sectors. The trade-off is directionality, with incentives, ownership and long-term control concentrating around a narrow set of individuals and institutions.

Europe faces a different conundrum: first, access to capital at this scale; and second, the absence of institutional bridges between venture and the state. Without deep pockets and reliable pathways into defence buyers, infrastructure operators or sovereign customers, European companies building strategic technologies will continue to turn to US capital not just for funding, but for access — importing governance norms, exit paths and geopolitical alignment.

IPOs / Publics

• US IPO calendar empty for next 2 weeks - a slow January isn’t unusual

• Hong Kong’s recent AI listings included Iluvatar CoreX (GPU designer) +20% & Edge Medical (surgical robots) +30% on debut. OmniVision (integrated circuits) & GigaDevice (memory chips) queued next (here)

• Discord (chat platform) filed confidentially for a US listing

• Strava (fitness app) filed confidentially & hired Goldman Sachs - revenue reportedly +50% last year to <$500M, profitable, c.150M active users across 185 countries, last valued at $2.2B incl debt (here)

• BitGo (crypto custody) targeting up to $201M in IPO proceeds at up to $1.96B (here)

• PicPay (Brazilian fintech) reapplied for US IPO after scrapping a prior attempt (here)

• Meta has hired Curtis Joseph Mahoney (ex Trump administration Deputy USTR + former Microsoft general counsel) as chief legal officer, while Dina Powell McCormick (ex Trump Deputy National Security Adviser, also served in the George W Bush administration & later a senior Goldman Sachs partner) joins as president/vice-chair overseeing AI investments - explicit signal that regulatory risk management & Washington alignment sit inside the AI capex function. Trump commented on Truth “A great choice by Mark Z!!!” (here and here)

• Meta’s new infra push comes with multi-decade nuclear procurement (incl deals with Vistra plus support for Oklo & TerraPower) totalling up to 6.6GW (here)

• Alphabet hit a $4T market cap after Apple confirmed Gemini integration plans, making it the fourth company to reach that level (after Apple, Microsoft & Nvidia). Gemini now set to power future apple intelligence features, including Siri. Apple had previously worked with OpenAI, underscoring that rivalry (here)

• Google’s AI shopping ads get more personalised - ‘AI mode’ ad units shift from keyword placement toward tailored offers (discounts, exclusives), as AI chat becomes a new surface area for commerce & ad-routing (here)

Big Dogs

• ChatGPT Health launches - OpenAI says >40M people use ChatGPT daily for health info & >5% of global messages are healthcare-related; ‘Health’ is pitched as a separate environment to connect records/apps with additional controls (not available in Europe) (here)

• OpenAI agreed to buy Torch (health data app) for c.$100M in equity, reportedly to accelerate health-data ingestion inside the product stack (here)

• Anthropic reportedly raising $10B at $350B; also launched Claude Cowork (agent-style workflows for non-coding tasks) as a research preview in the macOS app for Claude Max users, with folder access + connectors (Asana/Notion/PayPal) & the obvious warning label: “this can delete things if you’re sloppy” (here & here)

• xAI raised $20B Series E; claims reach across X + Grok of c.600M MAUs (here)

• Lambda (GPU cloud) in talks to raise $350M+ pre-IPO via convert at a discount to IPO price; reported $520M revenue (to Sept 2025) with a $175M loss, showing how quickly ‘neocloud’ is becoming a capital-markets story (here)

Venture Capital

• US VC fundraising fell 35% in 2025. LPs concentrated into incumbents while liquidity stayed scarce, pushing the biggest AI cheques toward sovereign pools & non-traditional capital (here)

• Andreessen Horowitz raised >$15B across new funds (Growth $6.75B; Apps $1.7B; Infra $1.7B; American Dynamism $1.176B; Bio/Health $700M; plus other venture strategies) - equivalent to 18% of all US VC dollars allocated in 2025 (here)

• Lux Capital raised $1.5B Fund IX (frontier science/defence/AI) (here)

• Antler raised $160M for a second US-focused fund (here)
  

Regulation

• Character.AI & Google settled suits tied to teen self-harm - among the earliest meaningful settlements testing where ‘product liability’ begins for consumer AI experiences (here)

• Malaysia & Indonesia blocked Grok over AI-generated sexualised images of real people; separately Google pulled AI overviews for some medical queries after reports of dangerous errors, a reminder that ‘safety’ is being defined by whoever has jurisdiction + leverage (here)

• US export controls move to “remote access” - the Remote Access Security Act would expand controls to restrict Chinese firms’ ability to rent advanced US chips abroad (SE Asia data centres etc), targeting the ‘compute laundering’ channel rather than the physical box (here)

• Silicon Valley billionaire Peter Thiel has donated $3M to a group opposed to California’s proposed wealth tax. Relatedly, the Google co-founders Larry Page & Sergey Brin are cutting some ties with the state (here & here)
  

Venture Geopolitics

• Venezuela oil flows restart under US licensing - post-Maduro, the administration enabled US-licensed firms/traders to lift c.30–50M barrels of Venezuelan crude with revenues routed via escrow structures, alongside limited prisoner releases + reopened diplomatic contacts (here)

• DOJ opened a criminal probe into Chair Jerome Powell & the response was unusually strong: three former Fed chairs publicly defended Fed independence, joined by senior ex economic officials & even Republican senators on banking oversight - the subtext is that credible monetary policy depends on insulation from electoral incentives (here)

• Saudi Arabia opens its equity market to all foreign investors - from 1 Feb, Riyadh scrapped “qualified foreign investor” gating for direct trading in 262 listed firms, part of the broader Vision 2030 liquidity push (here)

• Europe backs Nato “Arctic Sentry” as Trump escalates Greenland talk - Denmark pledged $13.8B for Greenland’s defence posture as European capitals try to signal alliance credibility while also treating rare earths + Arctic access as strategic infrastructure rather than “far away & frozen” (here)

• TSMC & Taiwan trade talks - NYT reports a prospective deal tying tariff relief to major incremental chip fabs in Arizona, effectively converting industrial policy into trade policy, with semiconductors as the collateral (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• DeepSeek V4 expected soon - reporting suggests a Lunar New Year window (mid-Feb) for a new flagship that’s strong on long coding prompts, the recurring pattern being: open models compress capability spreads, then distribution + workflow integration become the real battleground (here)

• Nvidia & Eli Lilly committing $1B over 5 years to an AI drug discovery lab, a neat tell that chipmakers are now hunting demand sinks beyond hyperscalers, while pharma hunts throughput in target discovery (here)

• PlayStation is exploring letting AI take over your game when you are stuck and have patented a related feature. Andrew Rettek: Experienced adult gamers will hate this, but kids will love it. If it’s done well it’ll be a great tutorial tool. It’s a specific instance of an AI teaching tool, and games are low stakes enough for real experimentation in that space (here)

Defence

• The UKs chief of the defence staff, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, told a committee of MPs on Monday that the UK is “not as ready as we need to be for the king of full-scale conflict that we might face”. The continued delay of the DIP (Defence Investment Plan) which is designed to flesh out the SDR (Strategic Defence Review) that launched last summer has been causing exasperation. Knighton declined to comment on reports that the funding gap implementing the SDR could be as much as $28B over the next decade, as has been reported by the FT (here)

• On Truth Social, Trump posted a warning to US defence contractors, against prioritising dividends, stock buybacks & excessive pay over investing in production capacity. He argues this has led to slow manufacturing & poor maintenance of military equipment. Until these problems are fixed, he says dividends, buybacks & executive pay above $5M should be halted, with funds redirected to producing & sustaining military equipment (here)

• A16Z + Booz Allen - partnership to help A16Z-backed companies sell into the US government, reflecting how ‘go-to-market in national security’ is increasingly being productised as an adjacency. “Working with governments is just very, very different than working with regular enterprise customers,” Ben Horowitz, a founder of a16z, told DealBook. “And Booz Allen has got a lot of experience in that” (here)

Energy & Climate

• Berlin blackout after arson - sabotage cut power to c.45k households & 2.2k businesses (incl hospitals/nursing homes) for days in freezing temperatures; if a small activist cell can generate multi-day urban disruption via a cable duct, the uncomfortable question is what a competent state actor could do with the same playbook across multiple nodes (here)

• China’s build-rate gap is now the story - at current trajectories, China could reach 100% renewables by 2051 while the US hits it in 2148 without permitting/grid reform; China also commissioned >65 GWh of grid-scale battery storage in December alone - more than the US added in all of 2025 (here)

• The Energy Department awarded $900M to General Matter, a Peter Thiel-backed nuclear startup (here)

Critical Resources

• Pentagon takes a $150M stake in US gallium supply - gallium is a defence-grade input (radar, missile seekers, satellites) where China accounted for ~99% of refined supply in 2025; equity-style intervention is a sign the US is treating minerals like strategic manufacturing, not “commodities” (here)

• Glencore & Rio Tinto restart mega-merger talks (here)

Cybersecurity

• China hacked email systems of US congressional committee staff as part of a massive and ongoing cyber espionage campaign (Salt Typhoon). Email systems accessed included intelligence committee, armed services committee etc. Attacks are latest in ongoing cyber ampaign against US communication networks by the Ministry of State Security, China’s intelligence service. Chinese embassy denies allegations (here)

• Meanwhile, The Telegraph had another article on China’s super-embassy and its secret chamber likely to be built in central London, beside some of Britain’s most sensitive communications cables. Keir Starmer is poised to approve a new supersized Chinese embassy in the heart of London this week (here)

• UK Cyber Security & Resilience Bill is inching through. Second Reading set out the government’s intent to update NIS 2018: bring data centres/MSPs/large load controllers into scope, tighten incident reporting, strengthen regulator powers & align expectations to the NCSC Cyber Assessment Framework; committee scrutiny runs into early March with Royal Assent currently pencilled for late 2026 (here)

• Instagram denied a breach after mass password-reset emails, saying an external actor triggered legitimate prompts; security firm Malwarebytes disputes this, claiming data from 17.5M accounts is being sold on hacker forums (here)

• Notable deals

  • Cyera (data security posture - discovers/classifies/protects sensitive data) raised $400M at $9B (here)

  • Torq (security operations automation) raised $140M at $1.2B (here)

  • Blackbird.AI (disinformation/narrative risk protection) raised $28M (here)

  • CrowdStrike is buying SGNL (identity access/authorisation) for c.$740M (here)

EVs / AVs

• Waymo expanded service across the full SF–San Jose corridor, including freeways - a milestone for longer rides, but one that exposes a core challenge for AVs: strictly obeying posted speed limits in traffic that routinely flows faster can be both slower and less safe! (here)

• Tesla’s Europe slump continues - full-year registrations show Tesla sales down nearly 28% in 2025 across major European markets (except Norway), highlighting how demand, brand politics & local competition are now entangled (here)

• Mobileye buys Mentee Robotics (humanoid robotics) for c.$900M, pushing ‘embodied autonomy’ into a scale player that already knows how to ship safety-critical systems (here)

Crypto

• Senate GOP crypto bill revisions - the new package tries to win sceptics with investor safeguards (limits on yield-style stablecoin “interest”, more explicit disclosures on rewards) while still pushing the industry’s preferred endpoint: CFTC-led spot oversight & clearer token classification (here)

• Chen Zhi, the China-born chairman of Cambodia-based Prince Group, was arrested & extradited to China after U.S. prosecutors accused him of running a pig butchering scam empire that targeted Americans & seized roughly $12B in bitcoin tied to the operation (here)

• A16Z crypto funds vs generalist - returns data suggests A16Z’s 2020 crypto fund (TVPI 4.1x; DPI 1.8x as of Sept 2025) has distributed meaningfully more cash than comparable-vintage general funds, underscoring why “policy + plumbing” has become a venture strategy (here)

Operation Absolute Resolve was not just an assertion of power in the Western Hemisphere; it was an unusually explicit statement about sovereignty, resources & control. Markets reacted accordingly, treating US oil majors as immediate beneficiaries.

For a president elected on an “America First” platform that promised restraint abroad, the contradiction is stark & revealing.

What makes the episode more destabilising is not only the action itself, but the absence of a consistent narrative explaining it. In recent months, US officials have pointed to drugs, illegitimate elections & regional security. Over the weekend, Trump framed the operation as reclaiming oil rights Venezuela had “stolen”. These justifications are not cumulative; they are interchangeable. That lack of coherence makes evaluating US intent increasingly difficult & raises a deeper question: does public justification matter once power is sufficiently concentrated, or has information warfare itself become secondary?

The answer matters for Europe because this behaviour is not an anomaly; it is aligned with stated US doctrine. The National Security Strategy is explicit that US security depends on pre-eminence in the Western Hemisphere & the ability to “assert ourselves confidently where & when we need to”. What is new is how that power is exercised. US companies - including technology firms that sit inside Europe’s digital infrastructure, cloud systems, communications networks & public services - are now being treated as instruments of national security. This week’s reports that the US may have used cyber capabilities to disable infrastructure in Venezuela reinforce the point: technical systems are no longer just economic assets, they are tools of state power.

For Europe, this sharpens an uncomfortable reality. In a world where access to platforms, clouds & networks can be withdrawn or conditioned, sovereignty is no longer theoretical. The response Europe chooses now - whether to continue importing critical infrastructure or to build genuine sovereign capability - will do more than shape competitiveness. It will determine how exposed Europe is when geopolitics & technology continue to converge in 2026 & beyond.

IPOs / Public

• Global markets are digesting the US operation that seized Maduro & Trump’s claim the US would “run” Venezuela. Equities steady/positive & oil majors (Chevron, Exxon Mobil) buoyed on the prospect of renewed access to Venezuelan barrels (here)

• Shanghai Biren Technology (AI chips) jumped on Hong Kong debut after raising ~$717M as Beijing tries to substitute Nvidia supply (here)

• Meanwhile, Baidu said its AI-chip unit Kunlunxin has filed confidentially for a Hong Kong listing (here)

• Nvidia rolled out faster chips sooner than expected at CES (the annual Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas) - unveiling its Vera Rubin server systems, positioned around training 10T-parameter models in a month using 1/4 the chips vs Blackwell (here)

• Microsoft renamed Office to the “Microsoft 365 Copilot app”. Apart from abysmal marketing, the front page is wildly inconsistent. “Welcome to Microsoft 365 Copilot”, “The Microsoft 365 Copilot app (formerly Office)”, “Microsoft 365 (formerly Microsoft Office 365)” (here)

• Apple cut Vision Pro production & marketing after weak sales. IDC estimates just ~45k units shipped in Q425 (vs millions of iPhones). The product is expensive ($3,499), physically awkward for many users (weight/comfort) & accused of weak battery life - backdrop of an overall VR headset market down 14% YoY (here)

• SoftBank agreed to acquire DigitalBridge (data centre investor) for $4B as part of its AI infra push. Expected to close in second half of 2026. Masayoshi Son (Softbank CEO & Chair) said the acquisition “will strengthen the foundation for next-generation AI data centers” & advance the firm’s vision to become a leading “Artificial Super Intelligence” platform provider (here)

Big Dogs

• OpenAI is reorganising teams to upgrade its audio models in preparation for eventual release of an AI-powered personal device. Device is expected to be largely audio-based, but the LLM that powers the audio version within ChatGPT is a different one to the model that powers ChatGPT’s text-based responses. Current audio models lag the text-based models in the accuracy of their responses & how quickly they answer questions. As a result, over the last 2 months, OpenAI has unified several engineering, product & research teams around the goal of improving audio models for future devices. The company is aiming to release the new audio model in the first quarter of 2026 (here)

• xAI bought a third building outside Memphis as it pursues a “1M chips online” goal - its advantage is vertical: converting warehouses fast, running its own cluster & increasingly pairing compute with power planning locally. The trade-off is political: proximity to neighbourhoods has made turbines/power sourcing a focal point for opposition (here)

Venture Capital

• Over the past few weeks, VC commentary has been dominated by year-end reflections & New Year predictions. A few pieces worth calling out:

o AVC – Ten predictions for 2026

o Dragos Novac - 2026 investor predictions (featuring my colleague Ed) alongside his own reflections

o Sifted – AI predictions for 2026 (featuring my colleague Seb)

• Bridgepoint agreed to buy a majority stake in Interpath (restructuring & turnaround advisory) at ~£800M. Interpath is the former KPMG restructuring unit carved out in 2021, now a standalone adviser on insolvencies, refinancing & stressed M&A. This is effectively PE buying the “picks & shovels” of corporate distress ahead of what many expect to be a tougher credit cycle (here)

• PE firm Brookfield is launching its own cloud business, aiming to undercut tech giants like Amazon, Google, Microsoft & AI-focused rivals like CoreWeave/Nebius by lowering the cost of AI development. Effort is tied to a new $10B AI fund & a Brookfield-operated cloud company (Radiant). Brookfield plans to acquire up to $100B in land, data centers & power assets for AI, with projects underway in France, Qatar & Sweden. Brookfield is already one of the biggest owners of land, data centers & power including one of the world’s largest fleets of solar & wind power & is the majority owner of Westinghouse, which builds nuclear reactors (here)

• Close to 80 European university spinouts hit $1B valuations or $100M revenue in 2025 - including Iceye (satellites), IQM (quantum), Isar Aerospace (launch), Synthesia (AI video) & Tekever (defence drones) (here)

• Insight Partners is being sued by a former VP alleging disability discrimination, gender discrimination & wrongful termination (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• The seizure of Maduro has landed as both geopolitics & market structure. Trump’s statement that the US would “run” Venezuela was unusually explicit about territorial influence & resource control. Markets responded by immediately pricing in renewed access for US oil majors. An important signal is that investors are once again treating US corporate access to markets, resources & infrastructure as a direct function of foreign policy. In practice, that means capital is being allocated on the assumption that alignment with Washington can determine who gets licences, contracts, connectivity & operating permission - a logic that extends beyond energy into technology, data, cloud infrastructure & payments, where access can be granted, restricted or withdrawn as a tool of state power rather than a neutral commercial outcome (here)

• Taiwan’s “silicon shield” debate is intensifying as more chip production moves abroad. Taiwan remains the single most important location in the world for advanced semiconductors, with TSMC manufacturing >95% of the world’s most advanced chips & ~60–70% of all semiconductors. This concentration matters not just to the West, but to China itself: China imports close to half of Taiwan’s semiconductor output & relies on Taiwanese chips for consumer electronics, industrial equipment & military systems. Economists estimate that a conflict over Taiwan could cost the global economy around $10T (~10% of global GDP), with China taking a particularly severe hit because it cannot easily replace that supply. This mutual dependence underpins the “silicon shield” theory - that the economic damage to China would be so large it acts as a deterrent to invasion. The complication now is deliberate diversification: TSMC has announced +$100B of investment in the US, taking planned US spending to about $165B, alongside new factories in Japan & a planned site in Germany. While the most advanced manufacturing is still expected to remain in Taiwan, spreading production reduces global reliance on the island over time & weakens the cleanest version of the deterrence logic (here)

• A large FT survey of economists (from the US, EU, China & UK) expects the US to maintain or widen its productivity lead, citing AI, deep capital markets & relatively low energy costs - US labour productivity up ~10% (2019-24) vs stagnation in the UK & Eurozone, which is the macro backdrop for why US capital can keep “buying the future” while Europe debates constraints (here)

• A New York Times investigation into Trump’s unusually tight overlap between government policy & private profit details how the Trump family’s most lucrative recent activity has been crypto-related, including trading fees from the $TRUMP memecoin & ownership stakes in World Liberty Financial, a crypto firm founded with Steve Witkoff & their sons, which issues a stablecoin called $WLFI. That stablecoin was reportedly used to settle a $2B investment from Abu Dhabi-backed investors into Binance, highlighting how foreign capital, crypto payments & US political influence intersect. The picture the NYT draws is not of isolated conflicts, but of a system where policy decisions, foreign investment & private business interests increasingly move together, blurring the line between national strategy & personal enrichment (here)

• Elon Musk posted a photo dining with Trump & the first lady, signalling a rapprochement - the relevance isn’t the dinner itself so much as the steady blurring of “political relationship management” into the operating environment for companies with federal contracts, export-control exposure or regulatory dependence (here)

• Trump announced a new set of drug-pricing deals with nine drugmakers - the immediate reality is still that drugmakers plan to raise prices on at least 350 branded medicines in 2026 (median ~4%), even as negotiation-driven cuts show up on a handful of products (here)

• Trump Mobile delayed shipping its promised gold smartphone ($499; ~$47.45/mo plan), blaming the government shutdown - the bigger constraint is industrial: “made in America” smartphones are still structurally hard given Asian component supply chains, with only a small fraction of iPhone parts made in the US today (here)

Regulation

• According to Brussels, the EU is switching focus to enforcing the expansive digital rule book after years of negotiating legislation. Brussels is now applying the Digital Markets Act & Digital Services Act against major US tech platforms including Google, Meta, Apple & X. The move has already triggered retaliation, with Washington imposing visa bans on a former EU commissioner & four others over alleged coercion of American social media companies (see Issue 28). The FT has described 2026 as a collision year, as EU enforcement increasingly intersects with US politics (here)

• OpenAI (again) asked a judge to dismiss xAI’s trade secrets suit - the dispute is becoming part labour-market story (poaching) & part narrative war over who is “stealing” what in the frontier-model race (here)

• The EU’s Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanism (CBAM) is now live - a levy mechanism designed to make importers of carbon-intensive goods pay a carbon price equivalent to EU producers, aiming to prevent “carbon leakage”. Initially covers sectors including iron/steel, aluminium, cement, fertilisers, electricity & hydrogen. The decision to move ahead marks a major commitment to the EUs climate policy despite the macroeconomic & geopolitical headwinds, including opposition from countries like China, India & Brazil which argue it is a unilateral trade measure in environmental disguise. The UK is planning to introduce its own CBAM from Jan 2027 (here)

• Macron said France will follow Australia’s lead & ban under-15s from social media & prohibit mobile phones in secondary schools in 2026 (here)

• Indian officials ordered X to make changes to Grok flagging “obscene” content (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• DeepSeek published work arguing for a cheaper approach to training foundation models (Manifold-Constrained Hyper-Connections, mHC) - the core claim is that architectural tricks can substitute for brute-force capex, lowering the barrier for challengers to compete with US labs that can spend tens of B on compute (here)

• Consumers may face ~20% higher prices for electronics as AI demand tightens memory supply - the near-term mechanism is boring but powerful: more AI servers means more memory & packaging capacity absorbed upstream, which eventually shows up as higher BOM costs for phones, PCs & appliances (here)

• Plaud (AI wearables) updated its NotePin (recording/transcription) device - now with a physical button, priced at $179, a data point that “audio capture + summarisation” is becoming a commodity form factor, not just an app feature (here)

Cybersecurity

• President Trump said the US used “certain expertise” to turn off the lights in Caracas during the strikes that led to Nicolás Maduro’s capture. The chairman of the Joint Chiefs added that cyber & space units were used to help US forces reach their target. This us one of the clearest public examples of digital systems being used directly to support military action. Cyber disruption is often talked about, but it is rare to see it so openly linked to a live special forces operation, outside a handful of cases reported in Ukraine (here)

• Belgium’s cybersecurity chief said the EU has “lost the internet” - the practical meaning: Europe cannot realistically keep data entirely in-Europe because US firms dominate cloud & key digital infrastructure & EU cyber defence capacity is therefore entangled with private US cooperation; he also criticised the EU AI Act as constraining innovation in the very tools needed for defence (here)

• A hacktivist remotely wiped three white supremacist websites live onstage during their talk at a hacker conference last week, with the sites yet to return online. The pseudonymous hacker, who goes by Martha Root deleted the servers of WhiteDate, WhiteChild & WhiteDeal in real time at the end of a talk at the annual Chaos Communication Congress in Hamburg, Germany. The hacker said that they scraped WhiteDate’s public data & found “poor cybersecurity hygiene that would make even your grandma’s AOL account blush” (here)

Defence

• Baltic states are on alert after 6 undersea cable outages in 6 days - officials cite bad weather/shallow waters as plausible contributors, but the pattern is hard to ignore; the strategic issue is that “grey zone” infrastructure disruption is cheap, deniable & forces costly hardening across telecoms + energy networks (here)

• Iran’s defence export centre is offering missiles, drones & warships for cryptocurrency - one of the clearest public examples of a state signalling “we’ll take crypto” to bypass sanctions & payment rails, effectively turning digital assets into a parallel channel for strategic hardware trade (here)

• Swebal (explosives) is trying to restart Europe’s TNT capacity - Europe’s only EU-based TNT maker had ~12k tonnes/yr capacity pre-Ukraine, but 2M shells/yr alone implies ~20k tonnes of TNT; Swebal’s planned 4.5k tonnes/yr plant (permits granted; opening targeted 2028) highlights the reindustrialisation bottleneck: not drones, but chemicals, permits, & a workforce willing to live near nitration lines (here)

Energy & Climate

• Kraken (energy software platform) spun out of Octopus Energy with a $1B funding round valuing it at $8.65B - Kraken is essentially an operating system for billing, grid flexibility & device orchestration across >70M accounts; the strategic point is that energy transition increasingly runs through software layers that determine how demand, storage & renewables are coordinated (here)

• EU recyclers say scrap is being “weaponised” by Chinese buyers - Europe collects efficiently (eg, high can collection rates), but exporters arbitrage the scrap out, leaving EU furnaces short & pushing policymakers toward export levies or recycled-content mandates (here)

• Chinese wind giants are pushing into Europe - after subsidies faded at home & overcapacity squeezed margins, firms like Mingyang are moving abroad, colliding with European security concerns (remote updates, embedded electronics, potential surveillance) & European industrial anxiety (a solar-style wipeout risk) (here)

Robotics

• Hyundai Motor Group plans humanoid robots in factories from 2028, showing Atlas (Boston Dynamics) at CES - the pace setter is no longer “can it walk”, but “can it be safe & useful around humans” (here)

• In addition, Boston Dynamics partnered with Google DeepMind to speed up next-gen Atlas development - a clean example of foundation-model R&D moving into embodied systems (here)

EVs

• Baidu (robotaxis) & Waymo (robotaxis) plan London launches in 2026 - making London a rare head-to-head theatre where US & Chinese autonomy stacks will operate in the same regulatory & urban environment (here)

• Nvidia launched Alpamayo, pitched as an “open” vision-language-action reasoning model for driving - taking video + sensor inputs, applying language-based causal reasoning, outputting trajectories with explanations for auditability, while also announcing the Mercedes-Benz CLA as the first production car “powered by its tech” (here)

Crypto

• Trump Media plans a crypto token distribution to shareholders in partnership with Crypto.com - another instance of public-market vehicles importing crypto mechanics into equity-holder incentives (here)

For venture geopolitics, the significance is the reframing of rules as power. Platform governance is no longer a technical dispute between allies but a sovereignty fight, enforced through immigration controls & national-security language.

The signal is clear: access to US markets & institutions increasingly depends on alignment with platform interests, not shared democratic norms - blurring the line between state power, capital & technology.

IPO / Publics

• Global IPO issuance rebounded in 2025, with 202 listings raising $44.0B, the highest annual total in 4 years as public markets partially reopened after a prolonged drought (here)

• Software IPO activity more than doubled YoY, with 46 deals raising $12.3B vs 21 IPOs raising $3.8B in 2024, reflecting pent-up supply from late-stage private markets (here)

• Post-IPO performance has been weak overall, with roughly 2/3 of VC-backed listings now trading below issue price, dampening sentiment for peers preparing 2026 debuts (here)

• AI infrastructure remains a clear outlier, with CoreWeave (AI cloud infrastructure) +64% post-IPO, while Hinge Health (digital musculoskeletal care) +28% shows selective appetite outside core AI (here)

• China is testing public appetite for loss-making AI, as MiniMax Group (AI foundation models) & Zhipu (large language models) secured approval to list in Hong Kong in the coming weeks (here)

• Motive, the AI-powered fleet management company formerly known as KeepTruckin, filed their S-1 this week (here)

• SpaceX, Anthropic & OpenAI remain possible IPO deals for 2026 – those three deals alone would outstrip the haul from the 200 US IPOs in 2025 (here)

Big Dogs

• Meta agreed to acquire Manus for $2.5B, bringing an AI agent platform with ~$100M ARR into its consumer & business AI stack just 8 mo after launch. Manus built early traction as a wrapper around frontier models capable of producing research reports & simple web applications with minimal human input. The deal signals Meta’s push to embed agentic AI into WhatsApp, Instagram & Meta AI, shifting platforms from engagement surfaces toward task-completion layers. Regulatory scrutiny is likely given Manus’ Chinese founding team & data sensitivity, underscoring how AI M&A now sits at the intersection of competition policy, national security & platform governance (here)

Venture Capital

• A seasonally quiet week for venture!

Venture Geopolitics

• The Trump administration imposed travel bans on 5 European tech policy experts, accusing EU regulators & researchers of participating in “foreign censorship” of Americans. The move marks a sharp escalation in transatlantic tech conflict, reframing platform regulation as a sovereignty issue rather than a matter of regulatory coordination (here)

• Trump & Zelensky signalled progress toward a potential pause in the Ukraine war, with both sides describing negotiations as “very close”
  Even if talks advance, externally imposed equilibria tend to be fragile - absent durable security guarantees, ceasefires risk freezing conflict rather than resolving it (here)

• The US announced plans to ban sales of foreign-made drones, dealing a severe blow to Chinese manufacturers while boosting US drone startups backed by leading venture funds. Despite a decade of widespread use by US government agencies, evidence of systemic security risk remains thin, raising the possibility the ban becomes leverage in future US-China negotiations rather than a permanent decoupling (here)

• US GDP growth reached 4.3% in Q3, driven in part by defence spending & AI investment. Household sentiment remains weak as tariffs, electricity costs & healthcare premiums disproportionately impact lower-income consumers, widening the gap between macro indicators & lived experience (here)

Regulation

• A US federal judge blocked Texas’ app-store age-verification law, delivering a win for Apple & Google while highlighting unresolved tensions around child safety, privacy & large-scale identity verification (here)

• China intensified enforcement against certain forms of AI-generated content, raising concern among officials that aggressive controls could slow domestic innovation at a critical moment in the US-China AI race (here)

• Italy has ordered Meta to suspend its policy that bans companies from using WhatsApp’s business tools to offer their own AI chatbots on the popular chat app (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Nvidia struck a $20B non-exclusive licensing deal with Groq, absorbing ~90% of staff while avoiding a formal acquisition. The structure appears designed to neutralise a rare architectural competitor while securing access to Groq’s data-flow inference design at a moment when GPU performance gains are getting harder, all at a cost modest relative to Nvidia’s scale (here)

• OpenAI is looking for a new Head of Preparedness (here)

Critical Resources

• US rare-earth reshoring is being driven by startups rather than mining majors, with firms like Phoenix Tailings (rare earth processing) & MP Materials (mining & refining) attempting to rebuild domestic supply chains. The marginal economics suggest strategic necessity rather than market returns is underwriting the effort (here)

Energy

• The US ordered coal plants in Indiana to remain open while delaying pollution rules, citing grid reliability despite expert disagreement
  Offshore wind suspensions alongside these moves reinforce a policy pivot away from renewables just as AI-driven electricity demand accelerates (here)

Digital Assets / Crypto

• JPMorgan recently froze the bank accounts of two young companies that help people abroad use digital dollars, after the bank grew concerned about legal & fraud risks. The startups operated heavily in countries such as Venezuela, where U.S. sanctions & weak oversight make financial activity sensitive & one openly promoted letting customers move money without proving who they are. To function, these companies relied on access to U.S. banks to turn digital money into real dollars, but JPMorgan saw a surge in disputed transactions & worried it could violate U.S. laws that require banks to know their customers and where money comes from (here)

Space

• The US is considering transferring ~775 acres of protected land to SpaceX, expanding Starship testing capacity in exchange for alternative conservation parcels. As SpaceX becomes increasingly embedded in US national strategy, land use, environmental trade-offs & regulatory exemptions are no longer purely commercial decisions (here)

We are once again exposed to the “authoritarian stack”. Rather than separate layers — politics, markets, media — the stack describes how power is now vertically integrated. Trump Media sits high in the media-politics layer; fusion sits in the energy-compute-defence layer. And American capitalism is drifting toward a system where scale, spectacle & state proximity matter more than coherence.

IPOs / Public

• 2 US IPOs popped >40% on day 1, both pricing in the upper half of ranges in a thin pre-Christmas window: (1) Medline (medical supplies distributor) raised $6.2B in the biggest IPO since 2021, a “real economy” deal in a market still dominated by AI narratives, (2) Andersen Group (the US tax & consulting firm started by alumni of Enron’s collapsed accounting firm Arthur Andersen) also priced strongly, signalling that investors will buy boring cashflows if the price is right (here and here)

• SpaceX (launch & satellite systems) started an investment-banking bake-off for an IPO that could raise >$30B at ~$1.5T - a signal that 2026 may become a liquidity year! Morgan Stanley seen as front runner (here)

• Amazon in talks to invest $10B in OpenAI, a strategically neat triangle given Amazon’s position as the primary backer of Anthropic while Microsoft is entangled with both (here)

• Amazon Alexa now works with Angi, Expedia, Square & Yelp - pushing the assistant from Q&A into bookings, payments & scheduling (here)

• Meta’s China ad exposure looks uglier on inspection, with Reuters reporting ~20% of 2024 China revenue tied to ads for scams, gambling, pornography & other prohibited content (here)

• Nvidia acquired SchedMD (Slurm workload manager maintainer), extending its open-source footprint deeper into HPC + AI orchestration where developer defaults quietly become platform power (here)

• Oracle credit jitters are back, after a reported pull-out by Blue Owl from financing a $10B Michigan data centre & mounting market anxiety that Oracle is a leveraged proxy for AI capex payback timing (here)

• Alphabet agreed to buy Intersect Power for $4.75B, effectively vertically integrating clean power + data-centre siting to bypass grid bottlenecks that utilities can’t upgrade fast enough (here)

• Tiktok deal looks like it is finally happening, with the company actually signing the deal to spin off the US assets into a consortium led by Larry Ellison (whose family also owns Paramount / CBS and is trying to buy Warner Bros.) & Silverlake, with ByteDance retaining 19.9% - still contingent on Beijing’s consent. TikTok Shop has also rolled out a new feature that allows users to purchase digital gift cards - a small feature that nudges TikTok toward being a payments & balance-sheet platform (here and here)

Big Dogs

• Databricks (data & AI platform) is raising $4B at $134B - reportedly a “Series L” (!) (here)

• Notion (productivity software) is letting employees sell ~$300M of shares at $11B as it balances retention, liquidity pressure & pre-IPO optionality (here)

• Lovable (Swedish “vibe coding” app builder) raised $330M at $6.6B with backing from strategic investors including Alphabet & Nvidia, a reminder that the big platforms now fund the tools that generate demand for their compute (here)

• Fuse Energy (UK energy startup) raised $70M at $5B (here)

• Blackstone is in early talks with Revolut on a wealth partnership, another sign that alternative asset managers want distribution pipes as much as they want assets (here)

Venture Capital

• Things are winding down…

• a16z published a blueprint for a federal AI rulebook, explicitly blending harm prevention (children, consumer abuse, cyber, national security) with growth priorities (talent, infrastructure, R&D, gov modernisation) - industrial policy dressed as safety architecture (here)

Venture Geopolitics

• Saudi Arabia is trying to become the world’s cheapest inference engine, betting that abundant land + ultra-cheap solar power can undercut the marginal cost of output tokens. The pitch is simple - hardware is fixed cost, electricity is variable cost & inference economics increasingly turn on energy pricing. With projects like Al Shuaiba producing power at ~1 cent/kWh, Saudi argues it can sell output tokens materially below prevailing rates while still making the unit economics work. A new company, Humain, has centralised the efforts under the leadership of Tareq Amin, boss of Aramco Digital, the tech arm of the state-owned energy company. This is state capacity applied to compute - fast permitting, site aggregation, capital coordination & procurement diplomacy. Humain claims it identified 200+ potential sites with access to 15.6GW of supply in its first 2 weeks - the kind of scale private developers struggle to assemble without sovereign leverage (here)

• Google & Apple warned some visa-holder employees not to travel, reflecting tightening US social-media vetting & unpredictable re-entry delays. This is a quiet but meaningful constraint on the labour inputs of US tech - if mobility friction rises, talent markets become less global in practice even before formal immigration reform (here)

• Macron announced a €8B nuclear-powered aircraft carrier plan, explicitly framed around reducing reliance on the US - European strategic autonomy expressed as industrial procurement rather than speeches (here)

• China is running a ‘Manhattan project’ to replicate EUV lithography, reportedly recruiting former ASML engineers & targeting domestic capability on a 2028–2030 timeline. EUV has been treated as the West’s last clean compute chokepoint, but replication isn’t only physics - it’s the supplier ecosystem, uptime, yields, metrology & maintenance. Even partial progress compresses the export-control “buffer”, turning a decade-long moat into a shorter, riskier window (here)

• Europe agreed €90B in loans for Ukraine but not via seized Russian assets, avoiding the “robbery” legal line while still signalling support - then Ukraine reportedly struck a Russian shadow-fleet tanker soon after, showing both reliance on financing & continued escalation capacity (here)

• The US passed a $900B defence policy bill, modernising procurement, pressuring transparency on strikes, & limiting troop drawdowns in Europe below 76,000 for >45 days without consultation. The key point is institutional - Congress is trying to reassert oversight while the executive runs a more unilateral security posture. Even allies should read the constraint language as a signal of domestic disagreement about US commitments (here)

• Trump halted 5 offshore wind projects citing national security (an unclassified report from the Energy Department had found that wind farms could “interfere with radar systems”). Reported costs of $15–50M per week for project companies. The practical effect is grid fragility in slow motion - blocking one of the fastest scalable sources of new power while AI demand climbs (here)

Regulation

• Trump signed an executive order to curb state-level AI rules, aiming to prevent fragmentation & accelerate deployment, but it quietly assumes Congress can produce a coherent national framework (here)

• John Carreyrou & other authors filed suit against major AI labs over pirated books, targeting Anthropic, Google, OpenAI, Meta, xAI & Perplexity (here)

• iRobot “had a rough year” - with the Amazon deal blocked by regulators, bankruptcy following & a proposed takeover by Shenzhen-based PICEA Robotics. The intended regulatory logic was “stop concentration & protect consumers” - the outcome is that a US household robotics pioneer ends up under Chinese ownership, showing how competition policy can collide with strategic outcomes when the state has no industrial fallback plan (here)

• UK ministers want OS-level nudity detection on devices, pressuring Apple & Google to embed scanning capability at the operating-system layer to curb underage access to pornography - a child-safety objective that drags the state straight into the architecture of personal computing (here)

Strategic Sectors

AI

• Google released A2UI, a framework for LLM agents to generate GUIs in a standardised way - the quiet move here is interface power: whoever defines how agents “render” actions shapes how users experience agency (here)

• Yann LeCun is raising €500M for a new AI lab at €3B pre-launch, with Advanced Machine Intelligence Labs expected to be announced in January
  This is the European AI brand premium in real time - elite research pedigree can still command scale financing even before product, but the open question is whether Europe can turn that into enduring ownership rather than another export of talent + IP (here)

• Salesforce is openly tempering enterprise expectations for LLM agents, leaning harder on deterministic automation inside Agentforce because LLMs remain too costly & unpredictable for many critical workflows (here)

• Investors are ramping up trading in CDS tied to major tech companies as AI infrastructure borrowing surges & concerns grow that an $88B wave of new debt could expose portfolios to a potential AI bust (here)

• Multi-agent systems show sharp task-dependence, with research suggesting up to +80% gains on parallel tasks but up to -70% on sequential tasks - adding agents is not scaling, architecture is scaling (here)

• AI models are starting to match experts at analysing language itself, a milestone that matters because it implies models are improving not only at tasks, but at meta-reasoning about the medium the economy runs on (here)

• Agent interoperability standards are now forming, with major labs backing protocols & adtech groups creating “Agentic Advertising” standards. Standards bodies are a platform-cycle move - sometimes they institutionalise openness, sometimes they freeze incumbents into place. Either way, the presence of standards efforts signals that agents are shifting from products into infrastructure (here)

Defence

• Ukraine reportedly used an underwater drone to hit a Russian harbour & cripple a submarine, another data point that autonomy is rewriting naval assumptions at low cost & high strategic effect (here)

• The US agreed an $11B weapons sale to Taiwan, continuing the pattern of deterrence-by-supply even as US foreign policy signals remain mixed elsewhere (here)

• UK defence leadership is openly describing grey-zone attack as the current baseline, with senior speeches highlighting cyber, sabotage, subsea threats, drones near bases & influence operations as “below-threshold” pressure (here)

• The chair of the UK defence committee called progress ‘glacial’, warning Britain is not moving fast enough on a whole-of-society home defence approach despite rising hybrid threats (here)

Cybersecurity

• ServiceNow agreed to acquire Armis for $7.75B, a big premium outcome for an OT/IoT asset visibility company that had been aiming for a 2026–2027 IPO. Armis hit $340M ARR with >50% YoY growth, illustrating the enduring willingness to pay for control-plane security - especially where unmanaged assets create blind spots across physical infrastructure (here)

• Exein (embedded security) raised €100M at ~€700M, backing a thesis that security must be embedded at the device/firmware layer as attacks increasingly cross from digital compromise into physical consequence (here)

• PromptPwnd exposed a new CI/CD attack surface for coding agents, using prompt injection in GitHub Actions / GitLab workflows to exfiltrate secrets & steal tokens. The structural issue is non-human identities with broad repo access. If organisations remove humans from loops to gain speed, they must build observability + rollback for agent actions - otherwise productivity gains come with fragile control (here)

• France’s La Poste suffered suspected DDoS disruption, knocking postal & banking systems offline while the country manages multiple recent incidents. Even when attribution is murky, repeated disruption matters - it trains institutions & the public to accept degraded service as normal (here)

• Thailand framed border conflict with Cambodia as a war on scam compounds, targeting cyberscam centres that have become economically significant. The uncomfortable layer is forced labour - many compounds are populated by trafficked workers, blurring law enforcement, geopolitics & human rights into one operational theatre (here)

Energy

• US senators are probing AI data centres driving up household electricity bills, naming Google, Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, CoreWeave, Digital Realty & Equinix. Data centres were >4% of US electricity consumption in 2023, with government analysts estimating ~12% by end-2026. The political risk is obvious - grid capex gets socialised through rates while AI upside accrues to private balance sheets (here)

• TAE Technologies is merging with Trump Media in a $6B deal, a fusion startup pairing with a political media vehicle (!) to access capital & ride the AI power narrative. It’s a signal about the new American deal loop - energy, compute, politics & capital formation are fusing into one story, regardless of how implausible the timelines (& logic) sounds. As ever, Matt Levine captures the absurdity & the logic: “We operate a social media site and we’re getting into anti-woke exchange-traded funds… We are working on smashing atoms into each other to generate power… Huh, we should team up…” What?? However, as he goes on to suggest, the merger isn’t about media plus fusion; it’s about capital access (here and here)

• Oilfield services firms are pivoting into data-centre power & cooling, with Baker Hughes, Halliburton & SLB repackaging industrial capability toward AI infrastructure as drilling demand weakens (here)

• The US is dismantling a major climate research institution, moving against the National Center for Atmospheric Research - a direct hit on state scientific capacity exactly when climate volatility is becoming an operational variable for grids, defence & insurance (here)

Crypto

• YouTube added PYUSD as a creator payout option, putting PayPal’s stablecoin into a mainstream distribution rail rather than a crypto-native niche (here)

• Intuit partnered with Circle to integrate USDC, embedding stablecoin rails into TurboTax, QuickBooks & Credit Karma - programmable payments moving from speculation into back-office plumbing (here)

• JPMorgan is considering crypto trading for institutional clients, reviewing spot & derivatives - an incremental step that still signals where the centre of gravity is moving (here)

• FDIC approved Erebor Bank’s deposit-insurance application, advancing a crypto-focused bank backed by prominent defence-tech-aligned founders & investors toward launch (here)

• Coinbase partnered with Kalshi, pushing prediction markets into a major retail trading surface & broadening the category beyond its current specialist user base (here)

• Crypto theft hit a record $2.7B in 2025, driven by the $1.4B Bybit breach attributed to North Korean hackers - the largest known crypto theft ever & one of the largest financial heists in history (here)

EVs / AVs

• A San Francisco power outage halted Waymo vehicles at dead traffic lights, creating congestion as vehicles waited to confirm intersection state. The interesting question is operational resilience - autonomy works best in normality, but public acceptance will be set by edge cases like outages, disasters & emergency scenarios (here)

• Data on the crash frequency of Waymos suggests that Waymos are much, much safer than human drivers (to the point that some people are calling for widespread adoption) - shifting autonomy from novelty to public health argument. The same does not seem to be true for Tesla’s robotaxis (here)

• Waymo is in talks to raise >$15B at >$100B led by alphabet (here)

• Luminar (lidar maker) filed for Chapter 11, after losing a major contract & defaulting on loans (here)

• Uber & Lyft plan to test Baidu robotaxis in London in 2026, adding China’s Apollo Go stack into a UK regulatory environment already preparing for Waymo & local AV players (here)

Robotics

• Galbot raised >$300M, another marker that robotics is pulling larger cheques as autonomy shifts from software promise to hardware delivery (here)

• UPS is buying truck-unloading robots from Pickle Robotics, unglamorous but economically real - logistics automation tends to scale not through humanoids but through narrow, high-ROI task machines (here)

Quantum

• QuantumDiamonds plans a €152M quantum chip inspection facility in Munich, a reminder that the quantum supply chain is as much about metrology & manufacturing tooling as it is about qubits (here)