Venture Geopolitics Issue 38
10 March 2026
The erosion of Pax Americana doesn’t produce less American power — it produces a less restrained one. Venezuela, Greenland, Iran: the pattern is a government demonstrating it will act unilaterally. The implications are immediate. For Europe, energy, manufacturing, defence, AI are no longer areas where dependence on others is an option. The muscle must be built at home.
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. Sovereign capability is no longer a policy objective. It is being 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)