Musk is a polarising figure. I’ve shared thoughts on this before, but whatever side you land on, it’s difficult to argue that he hasn’t brought extraordinary things into the world.
Last week, he demonstrated a flying car. The Tesla Roadster uses propulsion technology developed at SpaceX to perform manoeuvres that look like science fiction. It is a bit gimmicky, but the audacity of the entrepreneurialism is remarkable.
Taken in totality, the scope and scale of Musk’s projects: Starship, Starlink, Optimus, Terafab, the Louisiana spaceport, are all remarkable. By design or by mythopoesis, he is assembling the technologies that an interplanetary civilisation would require: SpaceX’s reusable rockets to get there, Tesla’s battery technology to power a settlement where fossil fuels aren’t an option, the Boring Company’s drilling infrastructure to build that settlement protected below Martian soil and Optimus’s robots to provide the workforce.
Musk’s ambition has created not just America’s most critical space asset, but the seed of an interplanetary empire, and a suite of technologies that are proving astoundingly valuable here on earth.
I recently read The Right Stuff by Tom Wolfe, a 1979 book which tells the story of the space race from the perspective of the astronauts. Ambitious, aggressive young men, driven by ego and personal glory rather than altruism. America treated them as rockstar royalty, and their ambition served to sustain America’s unrelenting self-belief and drive a nation of ordinary people to achieve extraordinary things.
I used to think space exploration was largely an ego project. Interstellar travel is undeniably cool, but there are so many problems on mother earth to prioritise. Hearing the head of NASA speak earlier this year when I was on the West Coast changed my opinion, and a particular sentence from Jared Isaacman stuck with me: “our children will either inherit the confidence of a nation still capable of the extraordinary, or the memory of one that used to be”.
The space race isn’t just about physics, or indeed about ego. It’s about cultural psyche and national ambition. It allows people in all parts of society to be a part of something successful, and significant.
And that, to me, is one of the great strengths of American Capitalism. It harnesses self-interest and a desire to win to construct positive communal outcomes. Musk wants to build an empire, make money, get to Mars and go down in history. In pursuing those ambitions, he’s built infrastructure and technologies of enormous value to America and - sometimes - the wider world.
But it’s worth remembering that SpaceX didn’t get to where it is today on private ambition alone. NASA backed the company early on, first with funding to develop commercial space transport, then with a $1.6 billion contract (in 2008!) to resupply the International Space Station. SpaceX was a young company at the time, and that government support was critical to its survival and growth.
There’s something quite remarkable about that model. The American state identifies a national priority, puts serious money behind it, and lets ambitious entrepreneurs compete to deliver. Rather than trying to suppress the desire for personal glory or extraordinary wealth, it finds ways to put those impulses to work for the country.
But such a system has its limitations. The reported restrictions on Starshield in Ukraine, hampering Ukrainian drone operations, serve as a reminder of the extraordinary political power concentrated in Musk’s hands. The details of who authorised those restrictions remain contested, but the broader issue is clear. Infrastructure that has become critical to national (international?) security is controlled by a private company, and in this case, one individual, whose interests won’t always align with those of the countries depending on him.
That’s the other side of the miracle of American Capitalism. America has harnessed private ambition to build extraordinary things, but in doing so has allowed enormous political power to accumulate in the hands of a few individuals.
And this raises an interesting question for Europe. Europe desperately needs ambition of comparable scale. We need to build our own space infrastructure, defence capabilities, energy systems and technological giants. And we need to do it quickly. Yet we seem to lack the appetite for risk, the capital and, perhaps most notably absent, the political audacity to pursue projects of this scale.
SpaceX shows how much can be achieved when private ambition is backed by serious government commitment. The state provided the opportunity and the contracts, while Musk provided the ambition and the willingness to take extraordinary risks. The real danger for Europe is that, in our reluctance to champion our own Musks, we end up entirely dependent on America’s.
IPOs / Publics
Anthropic could file by next Friday if its reported November target holds, though the company is now also considering December. Its pre-IPO investor day revealed Q3 revenue of $16.8 billion with an 11% adj. operating margin. Its rumored valuation is now $1.5 trillion, down from $2 trillion (here)
General Atlantic is planning an IPO in early 2027 at up to $10B valuation, aiming to fund expansion & compete with listed peers Blackstone & Apollo. The $130B growth-focused firm - an early backer of Facebook, Alibaba, Klarna & CrowdStrike - first filed confidentially in 2023 but delayed amid geopolitical unrest & rate volatility. It would be the first growth-oriented PE firm to list, offering investors exposure to fast-growing tech & AI companies without the leverage profile of traditional buyout shops (here)
CoreWeave shares fell 15.5% whilst yields on its bonds hit 14.8-14.9%, reflecting broader investor concern over AI infrastructure debt loads - the neocloud has capex levels approaching hyperscaler scale without the balance sheet (here)
SpaceX & Tesla report Q3 earnings this week (SpaceX tonight, Tesla tomorrow) amid merger speculation after Barclays floated SpaceX as likelier acquirer ahead of Tesla’s 3 Dec shareholder meeting. SpaceX expected to show $12.7B revenue (vs $7.8B in Q2) driven by Starlink (up 66% to $4.3B in Q2) & AI compute, though AI capex hit $15.8B last quarter; Evercore sees $104B annualised run-rate by year-end (here)
Microsoft AI completed pre-training MAI-Base-2, a 2.8T-parameter MoE model (80B active) trained on 16,000 Nvidia GB200 GPUs over 38 days. CEO Mustafa Suleyman told staff it outperforms the base model behind OpenAI’s GPT 5.6 Sol using one-quarter of the compute, though that comparison remains unverified (here)
Meta released Muse Spark Open, an 816B-parameter mixture-of-experts model it describes as the most capable US open-weight model. The model runs locally on paired Mac desktops with 1TB combined memory - configuration pricing remains unannounced but likely exceeds $40K - & is available via API from providers including Together AI at $5.50 per million tokens (matching Meta’s hosted Spark 1.2/1.3 pricing). Meta’s custom licence permits free commercial use except for model-serving businesses above $20M revenue, which require a separate agreement (here)
Big Dogs
Anthropic is offering Blackstone >10% yield on $9B of junior debt inside a $60B financing package (”Project North Star”) to acquire 1.5 GW of Google TPUs via SPV, building on its June $35B Apollo-Blackstone deal as it targets >20 GW capacity by 2028. Senior debt at ~7% benefits from Broadcom residual-value support; the structure lets Anthropic scale compute without balance-sheet leverage or equity dilution, whilst offering private credit investors AI exposure above public high-yield returns (here)
Anthropic co-founder Jack Clark said an internal model forecasts AI could boost US GDP nearly 50% to $44T by 2030 under certain conditions, assuming technology continues improving & new industries emerge (here)
Training OpenAI’s GPT-6 Astra required an estimated octillion calculations (1,000T trillion) across 100,000+ GPUs over 8 mo, costing ~$490M & emitting 150,000 tonnes CO₂. Power demand for training the largest models may match New York City’s consumption by 2030, with US data centres projected to use 12% of national electricity (here)
Venture Capital
Only 22% of Series A-backed companies reach Series B, typically stalling on go-to-market execution rather than product or capital, according to data cited by a marketing workshop targeting funded founders (here)
British Business Bank committed £180M across six VC funds - Crane III (£35M), Intrepid Growth Partners (£55M), Connect V (£20M), Headline EU VIII (£26M), Entrepreneurs First Early Stage (£22M) & Evantic (£22M) - focused on AI & deeptech from pre-seed to growth, collectively raising over £1B. The move follows a £10M direct investment in Salience Labs (optical switching for AI data centres) & aims to deepen domestic capital pools for UK companies scaling in AI infrastructure, hardware automation & applied solutions (here)
Andreessen Horowitz laid off a majority of its 34-person portfolio recruiting team, reallocating remaining staff into specialised investment groups rather than maintaining a centralised talent function - a notable shift in value-add strategy at one of Silicon Valley’s largest firms (here)
UK venture funds raised $6.9B across 31 closes in Q3 2026, the strongest fundraising quarter on record & more than 4x the prior two-year average, led by Index Ventures’ $3.5B trio & Highland Europe’s €1.1B growth fund. UK startups raised $6.1B in the quarter (58% late-stage), with semiconductors hitting $1.6B year-to-date & already surpassing the 2025 full-year record, while the UK captured 35% of European VC in 2026 (here)
Andreessen Horowitz launched Securing America’s Infrastructure Foundation (SAIF), a nonprofit led by former White House cyber advisor Anne Neuberger to deliver AI-based cybersecurity tools, hands-on support & training to under-resourced US public institutions - rural hospitals, small municipalities, school districts - targeted by ransomware. The foundation commits $25M from a16z partners over 5 yrs, starting with pilot deployments in 2 cities, focusing initially on AI-driven vulnerability detection in critical medical devices & emergency systems (here)
Regulation
UK’s FCA plans to become an “agentic regulator” by deploying AI to automate supervision & enforcement, using models to analyse unstructured text & intervene at scale (here)
Bank of England governor Andrew Bailey, a deepfake victim himself, called for social media platforms to face greater liability for fraud & criminal content, comparing their immunity to historic print media standards (here)
EU Inc, the Commission’s proposed pan-European company framework backed by 26,000+ supporters including founders from Stripe, Mistral AI & Klarna, is being stripped of core provisions in Council negotiations - campaigners warn the watered-down version removes freedom to choose incorporation country, harmonised employee stock options with deferred taxation, & the central digital register, leaving little more than a fast-track registration system that won’t improve European competitiveness (here)
China proposed export bans or restrictions on 40 technologies - including 23 AI categories (advanced large models, AI agents for defence/critical infrastructure, models with 2T+ parameters), chip design, & solar power tech - citing national security & abuse prevention. The move mirrors Western sovereignty rules & follows years of US-led export curbs on advanced chips to China (here)
Taiwan is considering stricter export controls on AI chip sales to China, particularly targeting smuggling of Nvidia-powered servers through Southeast Asia. The move aligns Taiwan more closely with U.S. restrictions first imposed in 2022, following DOJ investigations that implicated Super Micro employees in allegedly smuggling $2.5B worth of Nvidia chips & arrested co-founder Yih-Shyan Liaw (here)
Trump signed an executive order exempting Russia from new bipartisan sanctions targeting Russian officials, oligarchs & financial institutions, days before the law was set to take effect. The waiver follows Trump’s deal to import Russian diesel amid pre-midterm inflation pressure, drawing bipartisan congressional rebuke & Ukrainian criticism that it ‘feeds the Russian war machine’ (here)
Venture Geopolitics
A former OpenAI engineer arrested for planting a recording device in a meeting room used by executives & US officials was in frequent contact with a Saudi royal family member, according to court filings; prosecutors say a Saudi military official paid for his wife & son to fly one-way to Doha the day after his arrest, arguing he poses a national security risk & flight threat (here)
China posted a $133.5B trade surplus in September - its second-highest ever - driven by a 36% year-on-year export surge (the largest gain since July 2010) to $447B, putting 2026 on track to exceed 2025’s record $1.19T surplus (here)
China’s AI evangelism is being driven less by optimism than by labour-market dread - unemployment at 18.9% among youth has fuelled a booming industry in AI courses & paid communities (e.g. Shengcai Youshu charging ¥3,365 for membership), with state rhetoric framing AI as inevitable progress while ordinary workers scramble to avoid obsolescence. Contrasts sharply with Western AI populism: resistance to elite concentration versus a compulsion to upskill or be left behind (here)
DHS ordered federal agencies to remove DeepSeek products from government IT systems & block them from contracts, warning the Chinese AI startup’s models could transfer sensitive data to Beijing via prompt-response interactions & user tracking. The order, issued in July & published 19 Oct, follows DeepSeek R1’s emergence as a low-cost rival to OpenAI & Google models, intensifying US-China AI competition (here)
Musk reportedly initiated a Starshield slowdown in Ukraine that crippled drone defences, approaching Trump with the proposal despite publicly blaming the White House, according to four sources. Speed limits imposed on Ukraine’s military-grade satellite system restricted drones to ~160 km/h, half the speed needed to intercept Russian attacks. The episode underscores European concern over strategic dependence on SpaceX - Poland’s foreign minister warned “we are watching you” - whilst the EU targets 2030 for its Iris2 replacement (here)
London ranked Europe’s best city for business events for the 4th consecutive year (Cvent), as geopolitical instability diverts conferences from Riyadh (Houthi strikes forced oil major CEOs to cancel) & the US (Trump-era travel restrictions). The ranking cited 6 airports, 200 museums, 80+ Michelin-starred restaurants, & infrastructure including the Elizabeth Line - a reminder that hard & soft power infrastructure matters when rivals face security or political risk (here)
IMF forecasts 3.1% global growth in 2026, citing AI investment offsetting oil prices above $100/barrel from Middle East conflict, though 47% of economies saw downgrades since April & only 32 countries now account for 95% of global growth (vs 54 in April). AI value chain economies (South Korea, Malaysia, Mexico, Thailand) received upgrades; Gulf states face deep recessions (Saudi Arabia -3.3%, UAE -3.9%). IMF warns AI investment bust could reduce global GDP by 1.1% by 2028, with US output down 1.8% (here)
Strategic Sectors
AI
Morgan Stanley CEO Ted Pick forecasts AI infrastructure investment will continue at ~$1T annually over the next 5-10 years, despite bottlenecks & overbuilding, with the bank positioning itself to regulate capital flow during the cycle; JPMorgan separately flagged closer monitoring of AI exposure as investor caution increases (here)
America’s $10T AI infrastructure build-out is hitting serious friction: at least 47 large data centre projects delayed or blocked in 2026, Bernstein estimates only 35% of US pipeline is credible, & debt tied to neoclouds including CoreWeave sold off sharply this week (here)
Microsoft cancelled a deal to lease 50MW at Nscale’s Essex data centre after power connection was delayed beyond 2030, undermining the Nvidia-backed neocloud’s £22B UK investment plan & forcing it to find a new tenant. Nscale faces mounting pressure ahead of a planned $35B New York IPO, with only 25,000 AI chips online versus 500,000 planned (here)
UK schools will test oracy (oral communication) as part of GCSE exams from next month, elevating speaking skills to equal status with reading & writing in the curriculum - a response to AI’s rise demanding skills “that make us human” (here)
Reflection AI released Beam, a 501B-parameter open model trained to finish tasks in fewer tokens rather than cheaper tokens - claiming it can undercut Chinese models on task cost despite higher per-token pricing (here)
MiniMax launched M3.1 Flash, claiming 3x faster inference & 70% lower costs alongside improvements in coding, cybersecurity & agentic tasks - part of China’s push to match US foundation model capabilities with lower-cost, optimised alternatives (here)
Defence
France convened its Defense & National Security Council - the body that oversees nuclear deterrence - for its first session devoted wholly to AI, formally placing the technology alongside cryptography & space as a national-security priority (here)
Anduril is running a tender offer at $94.80/share (~$90B valuation), allowing employees across 16 countries to sell up to $1.3B in stock - a 48% step-up from its May $61B round, reflecting surging demand for AI-powered defence platforms as Western governments accelerate procurement (here)
US defence stocks fell 16% between July & mid-October as betting markets priced in a Democratic midterm sweep that could scrap Trump’s proposed $500B military spending boost. Lockheed Martin down 20% from March peak, Northrop Grumman & L3Harris down 35-36%, despite surging global demand for Patriot missiles & other systems - investors betting political headwinds outweigh production backlogs & geopolitical tailwinds (here)
Space
Deutsche Telekom, Orange, Telefónica & Vodafone signed a letter of intent to explore a joint bid for 2 GHz spectrum to provide direct-to-device satellite mobile services in Europe, partnering with an existing constellation operator rather than launching their own satellites. The move follows an EC proposal to reserve the band for European players when US licences (Viasat, EchoStar) expire, drawing US threats of retaliation & SpaceX criticism over Ukraine connectivity risks. Most satellite constellations remain US or Chinese-operated; France’s Eutelsat lags Starlink’s 11,000+ satellites (here)
US Ambassador to the EU Andrew Puzder threatened “devastating” retaliation against European companies if Brussels reserves satellite spectrum for EU players, limiting access for SpaceX’s Starlink (here)
Elon Musk said he’ll give one SpaceX share to every American child (72M under-18s) next year, a $10.5B distribution based on SpaceX’s $146 price, though he provided no mechanism (here)
EVs / AVs
Tesla unveiled a Roadster with SpaceX rocket thrusters that can jump & spin in mid-air, with production slated for 2028 - a decade after the prototype reveal. Deposits start at $50K (Performance) to $250K (Thrust variant); top speed exceeds 230 mph, 0-60 mph in under 1 sec. The SpaceX collaboration fuels speculation about a potential merger between Musk’s companies, though analysts note the Roadster remains a “small potato” financially compared to Tesla’s pivot toward autonomy & robotics (here)
Critical Resources
JPMorgan appointed Andrew Frame to lead critical minerals investment under its $1.5T Security & Resiliency Initiative, targeting extraction, refining & processing to reduce US reliance on concentrated overseas supply chains. The bank allocated $10B for equity & venture investments across 27 strategic subsectors including nuclear, battery storage, semiconductors, robotics & defence tech, backed by a new Centre for Geopolitics & advisory council (here)
Langdao Silex (Shanghai) displayed a prototype EUV light-source system - the core component of advanced lithography machines - with 90% localised parts, though staff said mass production remains 3-5 years away. China faces steep technical & supply chain barriers replicating ASML’s monopoly in EUV, where the light source alone requires precision laser, plasma & optical systems foreign suppliers have spent decades perfecting (here)
China signalled willingness to facilitate rare earth export licences to the EU in exchange for reciprocal approvals on dual-use technology exports, framing critical minerals access as a bargaining chip in the broader export control standoff (here)