Trump and Jensen Huang both landed in the UK last week. The Brits rolled out the red carpet – and royalty – for Trump, who signed a sweeping “tech prosperity deal” promising £150B+ in long-term US investment. Huang was a key presence, highlighting how central the company has become to the UK’s AI push, and AI more generally. Beyond the UK, Nvidia continues to extend its reach – striking deals with Intel and OpenAI that reinforce its role not just as a chipmaker, but as a gatekeeper for global AI infrastructure.
Venture Market Highlights
IPOs
The biggest quarter of IPOs since 2021 - 60 IPOs and $14.6bn issued.
Highlights over the last week include:
StubHub (ticketing) raised $800M at $8.6B valuation on NYSE.
Netskope (cybersecurity) raised $908M at $8.79B on NASDAQ.
Urban Company (home services) raised ~$216M at ~$3B valuation in Mumbai.
Navan (business travel/payments) filed for Nasdaq IPO ($613M revenue, $7.6B bookings, 10k customers) and SumUp (small business payments) reportedly weighing NYSE or London listing ($10–15B). Could SumUp help the UK drought?
Public Companies
Nvidia to invest $5B for 4% of Intel, co-building CPUs/PCs with Nvidia GPUs – a potential revival for Intel and more pressure on AMD. This follows the US govt’s 10% Intel stake announced c.1 month ago.
Nvidia also agreed to invest up to $100B in OpenAI ($10B per GW of Nvidia-backed data centre capacity). Capacity would equal power for 8M US homes.
These investments raise questions around “circular revenue” and the level of pain if the bubble pops!
MSFT signed $6.2B deal with Nscale - committing to Nscale’s AI Campus in Loughton, which will be the UK’s largest AI supercomputer when live. Separately, Nscale, OpenAI and NVIDIA are establishing StargateUK - an infra platform to deploy OpenAI’s tech in the UK. All part of the broader US-UK tech deal (more on this below).
Meta unveiled $799 Ray-Ban smart glasses, praised by some as stylish and functional (hands-free photo, video, audio, etc) but criticised by others for privacy reasons (“is this a surveillance device masked as a fashion accessory?”)
Google launched agent-to-agent payments protocol and added Gemini assistant into Chrome (days after US judge said it need not divest the browser).
Other Big Dogs
Trump & Xi approved a TikTok deal giving Oracle, Silver Lake, a16z 80% and Bytedance <20%. US govt to take a board seat, no price disclosed (~$35–40B suggested). Critics say it is not a true split from China.
Wayve is set to receive $500M investment from Nvidia, part of Nvidia’s $2B UK investment package. Nvidia will also be backing UK companies Oxa, Revolut, PolyAI, Synthesia and Latent Labs.
Revolut on track for >£4.1B revenue (+~50%) and seeking $75B valuation. The company opened its new HQ in London today and announced: 100M target retail customers by mid 2027 (up from 65M today), Revolut Business is at $1bn runrate, +$13B global investment (+$4bn for UK), +30 markets by 2030 and hiring 10k people in next 5Y.
xAI reportedly raising $10B at $200B valuation, weeks after $10B debt/equity at $150B. Musk denies this though!
Groq raised $750M at $6.9B valuation.
Notion released “third gen” with customisable AI agents to execute tasks across its platform.
Venture Capital
BNVT Capital announced $150M fund. Founded by Rory Mounsey-Heysham (ex-Gates Foundation) and Chris Corbishley (ex-Hedosophia) the fund is “benevolent” without the baggage of traditional impact funds. The founders note how firms like Zoom have cut emissions more than most climate businesses and eBay has done more for the circular economy than many “impact” startups.
EDT Venture Capital founded by Hugo Jammes (ex-NSSIF) and Martin Davis (ex-Molten) raising €300M to back dual-use, later-stage startups and secondaries.
Insight Partners suffered a ransomware attack – thousands of staff and LP records stolen.
Venture Geopolitics
Trump visited the UK and signed a “tech prosperity deal” touted as a golden age of transatlantic cooperation. Pledges include £31B in near-term investment from MSFT, Google, OpenAI, Nvidia, CoreWeave and others; the Stargate UK AI supercomputer; quantum and AI health research partnerships; and a civil nuclear partnership. NE England will be designated an “AI Growth Zone”, creating 5k jobs. Long-term promises exceed £150B across defence, nuclear, advanced manufacturing. Lots to celebrate, but commentators warn Britain risks becoming a “vassal state” - hosting US infrastructure without building domestic champions.
China banned Bytedance and Alibaba from buying Nvidia’s AI chips. While symbolic, it underscores Beijing’s efforts to reduce reliance on US tech and accelerate domestic chipmaking. For Nvidia, China has been one of its largest markets; cutting access risks fragmenting global AI development into US vs. China tech spheres.
Goldman Sachs highlighted China’s resilient exports, rising high-tech capacity and weak domestic demand risk creating a deflationary shock. Overcapacity could crush global manufacturers, but lower consumer prices, giving central banks space to ease. For investors, this means cheaper goods but squeezed margins across Western industrials — a familiar echo of China’s 2000s steel and solar oversupply.
The US will impose a $100k fee on H-1B visas. Initially thought to be an annual fee, it was subsequently updated to be a one-time application fee (less catastrophic!). Still, it risks deterring skilled migrants who have historically driven US innovation — Elon Musk, Sundar Pichai and Satya Nadella are three of many world-class leaders that entered the US under H-1Bs. The policy could accelerate offshoring, boost non-US ecosystems, and reduce the US’s ability to monopolise global talent. The UK and European ecosystem are seeing this as Trumps greatest gift!
EU is extending DSA enforcement to financial crime, probing Apple, Google, Microsoft and Booking for enabling fake banking apps, fraudulent search results and bogus accommodation listings. With >€4B lost annually to scams, Brussels wants platforms to actively detect and remove fraud. Breaches risk fines up to 6% of global turnover — meaning tens of billions for Big Tech. It marks Europe’s push to set global standards on platform accountability, beyond child safety and election integrity.
UNGA (UN General Assembly) meets in New York for its 80th anniversary today. Two notable announcements anticipated: (1) the UN is launching a global annual dialogue on AI risks, and (2) the UK, France, Canada and Australia will recognise Palestinian statehood.
Notes on Strategic Sectors
AI
Anthropic has refused repeated US law enforcement requests to use its AI models for domestic surveillance, including monitoring citizens’ communications and online activity. This position, framed as protecting civil liberties, has strained relations with the US government and risks shutting the company out of lucrative federal contracts.
If Anyone Builds It, [Probably] Everyone Dies has become one of the most-discussed books in the tech community. Endorsed by Stephen Fry, Ben Bernanke and Yoshua Bengio, it has sparked heated debate: supporters warn extinction risk is real, while critics argue the threat is wildly overstated (but…still worth preparing for). Currently rated 4.8 on Amazon.
Delphi-2M has been revealed by European researchers. It is a model trained on millions of patient records that can forecast >1,000 diseases years in advance.
The Economist warned of misleading accounting (i.e. depreciation risk) in AI - chips are often written off over 5–6yrs but useful life may in fact be 2–3yrs. Shorter schedules could cut profits by £26B/yr and wipe £0.8–1.6T off valuations.
MCP is emerging as the standard for “agent-to-agent” communication and this is being formalised by GitHub launching a public MCP directory, effectively an app store–style infrastructure for agents.
OpenAI published 100-page usage study – only 4.2% of ChatGPT usage is programming, versus 36% for Anthropic.
Energy
China is executing the largest clean energy build-out in history. H1 2025 global solar installs +64% YoY, with China driving two-thirds. With costs down 60–90% since 2010, its solar and wind now generate more power than hydro, nuclear and bioenergy combined. This abundance creates a paradox: clean energy is cheaper and more plentiful than ever, yet supply gluts hammer profits, showing how energy markets invert normal (Adam Smith) supply and demand economics — scarcity drives prosperity, while abundance can spark crisis.
Robotics
There continues to be a surge of funding into humanoids and general-purpose robots
Figure (humanoids for labour gaps) raised >$1B at $39B valuation.
Dyna Robotics (general-purpose commercial robots) raised $120M at $600M+.
ANYbotics (four-legged industrial robots) raised undisclosed but >$150M to date.
Icarus (dexterous robots for ISS logistics) raised $6.1M.
Weeks after Elon Musk claimed humanoid robots would make up 80% of Tesla’s future value, Tesla’s AI robotics lead defected to Meta
Cybersecurity
Major activity continues amongst low-revenue AI security startups, a still nascent but fast evolving market:
Irregular (AI safety/testing) raised $80M out the gate, co-led by Sequoia & Redpoint.
Airia (enterprise AI agent security) raised $100M (founder John Marshall put $50M upfront).
Smaller rounds include Miru Labs (cyber/trust/safety investigations), Vega (AI compliance automation) and Eve Security (agentic AI observability/policy).
This follows the two exits annouced last week in the space: Lakera to Checkpoint (~$300m) and Pangea to CrowdStrike (~$270m).
Jaguar Land Rover factories will stay shut until Oct 1 following the Aug cyberattack – £120M profit lost, £1.7B revenue hit.
Defence
Noah Smith argues the “electric tech stack” should be the strategic and economic imperative of all countries (akin to railroads historically), as it underpins both defence and modern industry. Countries that can build drones domestically can also manufacture an increasing share of everything else. Smith warns that China, through firms like BYD, has already mastered integration of the electro-industrial stack, while Western countries lag by framing it mainly as a climate issue. Ryan McEntush (a16z) adds: “The electro-industrial stack is the bridge between software and the physical world, the foundation animating the machines that will ultimately shape the future.”
NATO warned that Russia and China are rapidly developing anti-satellite weapons — lasers, cyber tools and kinetic strikes. Military, financial and civilian infrastructure is reliant on these for GPS, banking, weather, comms etc. The US has ~200 and Europe < 50, while Russia and China are deploying hundreds. The imbalance leaves NATO exposed. Officials argue the threat is no longer hypothetical: resilience, redundancy and allied coordination are critical to prevent satellite “Pearl Harbors” that could cripple economies overnight.
Denmark shut Copenhagen airport after coordinated drone attack (suspected Russia). Oslo airport also briefly closed. NATO warned of escalation, EU cited “pattern” of border testing.