But don't worry, there's still cool non-AI stuff happening and we are on the case. #
**Thursday. **This newsletter once had a broad remit. Many things of import were happening in the technology world. Today? A monotopic consumes an increasing amount of our space. An interesting $50 million round with participation from Kleiner Perkins and Founders Fund? AI. The most critical policy discussions? AI-focused. The macroeconomic story? AI-accelerated. You get the idea.
In the interest of realism, we won’t shy away from AI coverage. But that doesn’t mean we won’t keep our eyes up for non-AI news that matters. Stories like **Slate **(the tiny EV pickup startup) repeatedly emailing this publication’s author about reserving one of its vehicles, and touting news that its factory is getting up and running. That’s awesome. Some of the non-AI news (more below) is less fist-pumping.
Today, we’re covering the latest in the Iran-USA war (and its possible impact on a critical IPO), rising interest rates (and what impact tech stocks can expect), non-trad power companies, Oracle earnings, and why everyone hates Anthropic. To work! — Alex
📈 Trending Up #
White House chaos…the free press…backing the European far-right with American dollars…free market spine…why tho? …retail demand…
**Bezos’s wealth: **The Amazon founder’s AI startup, Prometheus, just raised $12 billion, bringing total funding to $18.2 billion after raising $6.2 billion last year. It’s now worth $41 billion.
**The War with Iran: **After trading ~limited munitions in recent days, the Iran-USA war appears to be picking up steam once again. Per POTUS, strikes on Iran will be “VERY HARD TONIGHT,” and:
At some point in the not too distant future, we will be taking Kharg Island, and other oil infrastructure points, and assume total control of their Oil and Gas Markets, much like we have with Venezuela, which is working out brilliantly for both Venezuela and the United States of America.
Man, all those anti-Bush right-wingers who wanted no foreign entanglements really voted well! Oil prices will rise on the back of the escalation, not to mention further supply disruption. It seems unlikely that the United States seizing Iranian land (and critical oil infra) *won’t *lead to more outbound missiles from the nation. Expect more bad news from MENA economies.
There’s a tech angle! Per Iranian state media (reported by CNBC), the country intends to treat “all interests related to economic holdings managed by Elon Musk in West Asia” as targets. That’s not great forSpaceX, whichmakes a lot of money from its Starlink business that operates in the region.- Recall that AWS installations were damaged in the early weeks of the war, leading to service disruptions. Such issues are precisely what you don’t want to weather while listing. That said, I doubt that Musk is worried by such pedestrian concerns.
**Interest rates: **The European Central Bank raised interest rates today, raising the cost of borrowing by 25 basis points (0.25%). The move was driven by the ECB’s expectation of “a higher path for energy prices, which, to some extent, [will] feed into food, goods and services” due to the war with Iran (not a bad bet!). The ECB also reduced its near-term (2026, 2027) growth forecasts.
- Wholesale inflation (PPI) in the United States reached 1.1% inMay, resulting in a 6.5% gain over the last year. As PPI is upstream of consumer inflation, that’sbad. The market had expected astill-unhealthy 0.7% gain in the month. (Some good news: PPI inflation ex-fuel came in slightlyunderexpectations.)
Seeing Europe raise interest rates in the face of metastasizing inflationary pressures stemming from stalled exports from the Middle East isn’t a surprise. Here in the States, however, where Presidential bluster matters more than sound policy, POTUS is calling for rate cuts. Investors expect interest rate hikes. And the newly installed Fed Chair Kevin Warsh finds himself stuck between a rock (reality) and a hard place (Trump’s social media accounts).
- Despite his leadership role, Warsh gets one vote. So even if he wanted to move American interest rates lower (despite rising inflation and a better-than-expected labor print), he cannot do so unilaterally. Why should you care? The ECB doesn’twantto raise rates; it yearns for growth. The American government doesn’t want rising inflation; it hungers for growth. But rising pricesdemandpolicy action, and boosting the price of money to combat price increases won’t help tech stocks (which trade loosely as an inverse of interest rates). That matters as we head into a bevy of massive tech listings from SpaceX, OpenAI, and Anthropic.
Investing in the trades: News that Meta is working with unions and other groups to invest nine figures into training skilled trades workers, funding their education while “guarantee[ing] a job for all graduates” broke recently. It’s a generous offering (Meta will pay for training and travel and provide an in-training stipend), and one that I think we can all get behind.
- Not that Meta is being altruistic; it’s investing in a substance (skilled tradesworkers) to solve a problem (it can’t build data centers as quickly as it wants). Perhaps it was the need to
house expensive compute inside tentsthat helped Meta make the commitment. And it’s no longer alone in the effort to bolster America’s human capital in welding, concrete pouring, rebar tying, HVAC, and electrical work. No, Google is spending $50 million itself along similar lines. This is how capitalism is supposed to work when humans remain in the working loop; demand rises in one part of the economy (technology), leading to greater demand for other inputs (construction). Up go training budgets! Up go wages!
Tapping the power of the sun: One of the coolest companies in tech is Base Power (interviewed the founder here), a startup that wants to install batteries in residential properties that charge when power is cheap, remitting that energy to both house and community when power is more expensive (not all states charge variable rates for power, mind).
- In essence, Base Power is arbitraging changing power costs using distributed storage; its customers get a flat-rate power bill, and Base earns the difference between what it pays for power and what it sells it for.
- More on the battery rush from .TechCrunch’s Tim De Chant
There’s a new player on the market that’s worth mentioning: Ambrosia. Fresh out of stealth, the company offers full-stack, solar-and-battery power plants on customer land. Or, colocation near a centralized installation of both generation (solar) and storage (batteries) in Texas.
Good. We need a smarter, more resilient grid that leans more heavily on renewable power and
speed.
[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html) Trending Down
[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html)
American tech companies hiring in India? …European cars in China…Chinese spying? …Reddit’s community market share? …
**Oracle, after earnings: **Oracle beat street expectations in its most recent quarter. Revenue of $19.18 billion beat an anticipated $19.10 billion result, and the company’s adjusted per-share profit came in seven cents ahead of estimates.
Investors were not enthused, however, by the company’s disclosure of intent to raise another $20 billion on top of its recent fundraising activities. Oracle’s free cash flow was -$23.7 billion in its last year, causing investor heartburn. Hearing promises of even more spending is sweat-inducing.
Or is it? Pulling from the Oracle slide deck (infra revenue +119% to $4.8 billion, +$85 billion worth of performance obligations in its most recent quarter), the database giant and AI hyperscaler had this to say:
Accelerating data center delivery against high-90s pre-sale or utilization is pretty, pretty good. Yes, the financialization of compute is worrying; the scale of capital required for the AI infra buildout is hard for even the global economy to chew. But it’s not like Oracle is building speculative capacity. No. It’s serving hard-coded demand. So long as the major AI labs don’t enrage their customer base. Right?
Everyone hates Anthropic #
How quickly the turn tables. OpenAI spent 2025 evolving from the world’s darling into an overly ambitious builder of data centers and buyer of compute (sound familiar?). Towards the end of last year and through to recent days, Anthropic borrowed the crown from Sam Altman, releasing more impressive models and mopping up enterprise demand in the same breath.
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