Venture Geopolitics Issue 28
30 December 2026
The Trump administration has imposed travel bans on 5 European tech policy experts, accusing them of “foreign censorship” of Americans - an aggressive escalation in the transatlantic conflict over platform regulation.
The targets are researchers & regulators tied to Europe’s push to rein in Big Tech, including enforcement of the Digital Services Act. By labeling democratic oversight as a “censorship-industrial complex,” the move reframes regulation as hostile interference & places the US government squarely alongside Silicon Valley against European authorities.
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)