Europe is building yesterday’s AI

Lime, the electric scooter company backed by Uber and Alphabet, filed to go public with updated SEC documents revealing $886.7 million in 2025 revenue but seasonal losses in Q1 2026, highlighting the challenges of the on-demand mobility market.

Europe is building yesterday’s AI Today, we're looking at scooter IPOs, off-grid AI power, OpenAI's Q1 results, and Europe's latest effort to build its own AI models. Welcome to . Cautious Optimism https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/ , a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat Monday. The global snapshot is a simple one this week: The Iran War is trending towards a cessation of hostilities https://apnews.com/live/trump-administration-iran-updates-06-22-2026 and a return to the previous ~JCPOA status quo. Alan Greenspan, the famed Fed chairman, passed away at 100 https://www.nbcnews.com/news/obituaries/alan-greenspan-economist-longtime-head-federal-reserve-dies-100-rcna42286 , and Keir Starmer is out as PM of the United Kingdom https://apnews.com/live/keir-starmer-resignation-uk-prime-minister-updates-06-22-2026 — a job that seems to resemble a recycling facility that quickly converts U.K. political leaders into pariahs five PMs in ten years, and which do you really miss https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqjpe7q0j1xo ? . Today, we’re looking at scooter IPOs, off-grid AI power, OpenAI’s Q1 results, and Europe’s latest effort to build its own AI models. To work — Alex 📈 Trending Up Water wars https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/india-pakistan-indus-waters-treaty-water-dispute-war-risk.html … water woes https://www.texastribune.org/2026/06/11/texas-corpus-christi-water-crisis-abbott-hinojosa-politics/ … whiplash https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/water-shortage-watermain-montreal-advisory-9.7223848 water supplies https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/southern-quebec-severe-thunderstorm-alert-9.7243572 … US GDP https://www.investing.com/analysis/q2-gdp-nowcast-steady-at-25-as-usiran-talks-progress-200682547 ? … vertical integration https://www.crh.com/media/press-releases/2026/crh-to-acquire-arcosa-leading-u-s-provider-of-aggregates-and-critical-infrastructure-products-for-8-5b/ … sea surface temperatures https://x.com/US Stormwatch/status/2068910953262207016 … Getty, after signing a mega-deal with OpenAI https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-22/getty-images-soars-200-in-early-trading-after-openai-deal … Meta’s interest in India https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-06-22/meta-taps-new-whatsapp-boss-as-part-of-900-million-investment Lime: One of the most insane and fun periods of venture capital was the boom of on-demand products and services. Uber was flying high and startups of all kinds wanted a piece of the magic. Food delivery tried new forms remember SpoonRocket https://techcrunch.com/2016/03/15/spoonrocket-shuts-down/ ? , while electric scooters attracted slugs of venture capital https://news.crunchbase.com/venture/soon-everything-will-be-a-scooter-startup/ . Consumer discounts ruled. ROAS was a term you’d hear spoken out loud. Scooter companies — mostly Lime and Bird — raised hundreds of millions of dollars to blanket cities around the world with rentable hardware. Now, years later, you can still find the scooters out in the wild, but the hype has died down to Groupon levels, right? Maybe not. Lime is going public. We missed its initial IPO filing, but we did catch its updated document https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1699963/000162828026044471/neutronholdingsinc-sx1a1.htm . The former venture darling hit rough times during COVID, which caused its market to collapse. Still, it managed to get Uber, Alphabet, Bain and others to give it $170 million in 2020 https://www.li.me/blog/new-financing-strengthens-lime-leadership . So how does the company look today? Not great as of the first quarter of 2026, its worst period of the year so far. Lime is a seasonal business, you see, posting operating profits during the summer Q2 and fall Q3 quarters when people are out and about. The colder two quarters of the year aren’t good for the company. Looking at its yearly tallies, Lime generated revenue of $886.7 million in 2025 up from $686.6 million in 2024 , resulting in a modest net loss of $59.3 million worse than the $33.9 million loss a year earlier . Reporting a 32% improvement in revenue in Q1 2026, Lime is targeting a valuation of up to $1.8 billion per RenCap https://www.renaissancecapital.com/IPO-Center/News/119958/E-scooter-rental-platform-Lime-sets-terms-for-$174-million-IPO . With the benefit of hindsight, it’s nuts that VCs invested so much into a business that’s going to exit at around 2x trailing revenue. Still, we’ve seen what’s happened to SaaS multiples, and many a venture-backed business has wound up with lower terminal valuations than hoped. - Want more on Lime? We can go deeper. Let me know. Going off-grid: Redmond has tapped Chevron https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260622017964/en/Chevron-Signs-20-Year-Power-Agreement-with-Microsoft-for-West-Texas-Data-Center to build and operate a large “co-located power facility in West Texas” to juice a Microsoft-operated data center for 20 years. That won’t immediately solve the AI power crunch or the following AI compute crunch , as first power from the installation isn’t expected until 2028. Through line : AI is good for GDP growth if for no other reason than it’s driving a materials and construction boom. The Chevron plant will purchase turbines from GE Verona and a Caterpillar subsidiary.- The data center boom has sent memory prices soaring as you’ve heard https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/memory-shortage-minting-trillion-dollar-175308313.html . Here’s a series of fun charts https://pcpartpicker.com/trends/price/memory/ that illustrate the changing market the final chart is the most important . Microsoft’s been crowing https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2026/06/22/powering-the-next-wave-of-ai-expanding-capacity-with-our-new-datacenter-in-pecos/ about the resulting 2 GW capacity upgrade to its Texas data center footprint thanks to this deal. But this power will sit behind the meter; this matters, as it implies that the future data center will have limited impact on the local grid. Consumers hate higher energy prices, so tech companies are finding ways to secure juice for their chips without sparking tiny, hyperlocal rebellions. Microsoft has a reasonably local impact plan, planning to limit its water usage and not seek property tax breaks, so it contributes to communities where it builds. Good. - This is just one project of many, but the scale and timing are a hint of what the people with a finger on the pulse of AI demand see in the future. - Is 2 gigawatts a lot? Yes. In its most recent quarter, Microsoft added “ nearly one gigawatt of total capacity https://view.officeapps.live.com/op/view.aspx?src=https://cdn-dynmedia-1.microsoft.com/is/content/microsoftcorp/TranscriptQandAFY26q2 ,” so this plant would add two quarters’ worth of added capacity. OpenClaw-Hermes beefing: The personal AI agent wars continue to smolder. While the OpenClaw hype has, to quote its progenitor Peter Steinberger, “ died down https://x.com/steipete/status/2068961217524490739 ,” the product itself has continued to improve. In the same tweet, Steinberger took pride in having “created a non-profit whereas competiors sic are VC funded and have other agendas.” OpenClaw rival Hermes Agent’s from Nous Research Teknium fired back, asking if he and his company live “ rent free https://x.com/Teknium/status/2069007211087675756 ” in Steinberger’s head, and said everyone knows “what non profit sic means to people at OpenAI, nothing at all.” Steinberger went on to argue that Hermes is insecure https://x.com/steipete/status/2068964066954268908 , which Teknium vehemently disagreed with https://x.com/Teknium/status/2069008554573595018 . You love to see it. CO holds that OpenClaw made clear the demand for a personal, computer-use agent that is untethered to any particular AI lab. Still, watching these competing projects’ engineers fight publicly is an indication that the products are also grappling. More competition equals more good, so we approve. OpenAI’s revenue run rate: After Ed Zitron reported https://www.wheresyoured.at/exclusive-openai-financials/ OpenAI’s 2024 and 2025 financials find our notes here https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/spacex-is-worth-more-than-amazon/ , more information has leaked from the AI lab as it prepares for an IPO this year. Per The Information https://www.theinformation.com/articles/openai-burned-3-7-billion-first-three-months-2026 , OpenAI generated $5.7 billion in revenue in Q1 2026 while burning $3.7 billion in cash. The company, which tripled https://thenextweb.com/news/openai-burned-3-7-billion-q1-2026 on a year-over-year basis, had $73 billion worth of cash and equivalents at the end of the quarter. - We knew that OpenAI ended March with quarterly run-rate revenue of about $6 billion “We are now generating $2B in revenue per month,” March 31st . The total figure is not a huge shock, though it’s closer to $6 billion than I might have guessed. - That implies that OpenAI either didn’t grow as much during the first three months of the year, or it undersold its monthly revenue in March by reporting a round number instead of the more jagged and larger real tally. - So is this good news for the company’s investors? Yeah. OpenAI has enough cash to fund another 20 quarters with the same burn. Mix in the money it will secure from the IPO in time, and the company has a financial Fort Knox to build on top of. - Of course, we have questions https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/everyone-hates-ai-now/ . But the AI labs’ numbers seem to be about where we’d expect them to be. 📉 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 China-US trade https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/china-trade-curbs-us-companies-export-controls-procurement-exclusion-pentagon-list-.html … infra-led growth https://www.ft.com/content/44b48a15-1f7b-44fa-803c-27659b3d2690?syn-25a6b1a6=1 ? … normal life in heat-hammered Europe https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c0jy9g96086o?xtor=AL-71-%5Bpartner%5D-%5Bbbc.news.twitter%5D-%5Bheadline%5D-%5Bnews%5D-%5Bbizdev%5D-%5Bisapi%5D&at ptr name=twitter&at campaign=Social Flow&at bbc team=editorial&at link id=214B0C70-6E0B-11F1-8B8F-EFBD9DAE1B8F&at format=link&at medium=social&at campaign type=owned&at link origin=BBCWorld&at link type=web link … Anthropic in South Korea https://biz.chosun.com/en/en-it/2026/06/22/XFHSJHM5VRFWNGTDXIOBOPIAQI/ ? … Iranian oil revenues https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/treasury-iran-oil-sales.html … EV jobs https://www.cnbc.com/2026/06/22/lucid-layoffs-evs.html Cybersecurity: The Five Eyes if you need a primer https://direct.mit.edu/jcws/article/25/1/101/115125/Why-the-Five-Eyes-Power-and-Identity-in-the have released a group warning https://www.ncsc.gov.uk/news/the-ai-shift-in-cyber-risk-why-leaders-must-act-now that AI systems are improving so rapidly that countries need to get their backsides in gear now : “The rapid pace of frontier AI development means cyber risk assumptions can become outdated in months, not years.” Else, countries are going to face a deluge of AI-powered attacks that increasingly powerful AI models can and will unleash and are unleashing today . - The stark language is worth noting. Many other AI models will be able to do tomorrow what Mythos can do today. That means that entire national cybersecurity footprints need to be overhauled and hardened. - Some countries may get this right. Many will not. What will the world look like when less wealthy governments cannot afford to keep themselves digitally sovereign? Speaking of which: Sovereign AI accelerates Big news The “European Commission has selected EUROPA https://digital-strategy.ec.europa.eu/en/news/commission-selects-europa-consortium-winner-frontier-ai-grand-challenge-project-build-european-open , a European consortium led by the Italian company Domyn, as the winner of its Frontier AI Grand Challenge.” Don’t know what any of that means? Let me help: Subscribe to Cautious Optimism to unlock the rest. Become a paying subscriber of Cautious Optimism to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content. 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