Venture Geopolitics Issue 32

27 Jan 2026

Last week a colleague asked whether obsessing over venture and geopolitics isn’t incredibly depressing. While there are certainly bleak aspects, the dominant feeling it provokes for me is one of opportunity, not defeat - a sentiment captured brilliantly by Prime Minister Mark Carney at Davos.

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 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 when 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.

The constraint in the UK and Europe has never been ideas or talent, but scale. Scaling is directly tied to the willingness of customers and governments to procure local alternatives over defaulting to an incumbent.

Much remains to be done, from deepening capital pools to building risk appetite. But a small change in slope - particularly in procurement and capital formation - can make up for a lot of y-intercept.

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)