Infrastructure
$265m Trains the Electricians Money Cannot Buy
Meta, Google and BlackRock have put more than 265 million dollars into training tradespeople. Europe enters the same squeeze 2.1 million builders short.
All news
Law & Regulation
Your AI Vendor Is About to Get a European Auditor
The Commission is set to designate ChatGPT and Roblox as very large online platforms. The trigger is a user count, and the duties bind four months later.
Gaming
Microsoft's Quarterly Profit Beat Xbox's Whole Year
Xbox revenue fell for a fourth straight quarter and Microsoft guides it down again. Meanwhile the parent grew 18 per cent. What that means if you sell through a platform.
Infrastructure
BMW Handed One Vendor the Next Ten Years
BMW named Qualcomm its lead compute silicon provider for cockpit and automated driving. Hours later Qualcomm guided its Apple revenue down by half. Read the two together.
Energy
$100bn of AI Capacity With No Tenant Named
The US Department of Energy awarded Brookfield and NextEra a $100bn AI data centre campus at the former Paducah enrichment site. It names every utility and no tenant.
Capital
Meta Kept Five Cents of Every Profit Dollar
Meta grew revenue 28 percent and still ended the quarter with 784 million dollars of free cash flow. The number that matters is the floor of its capex range, which rose while the ceiling held.
Gaming
23 Redundancies Came 22 Days After Independence
Double Fine got its catalogue, its culture and transition funding back from Xbox. Twenty-two days later it cut about a quarter of its staff. Good exit terms are not a cost base.
Consumer Tech
DoorDash Got the Certificate, Not the Airspace
DoorDash is now an FAA-certificated air carrier. The certificate is not permission to fly deliveries: that comes area by area, and Europe has its own separate queue.
Law & Regulation
The Cheaper Plan Was Behind the Cancel Button
The UK CMA is investigating how Microsoft sold 365 renewals after bundling Copilot. The allegation is not the price rise. It is that the cheaper plan existed and was never named.
Capital
Growing Eightfold Did Not Keep Wexler Independent
Legora bought London litigation AI firm Wexler on 29 July, its fifth acquisition since March. Wexler was growing eightfold a year. That is why it sold.
Capital
Staff Cashed Out Four Months After the Round
9fin ran its first employee share sale on 28 July, four months after a 170 million dollar Series C. The design of the window matters more than the price.
Capital
Pliant Crossed $100m Without a Banking Licence
The Berlin card issuer says it passed 100 million dollars in annual recurring revenue on 29 July, serving 5,000 businesses as an e-money institution. Money held there is legally not a deposit, and most treasury policies have never said so.
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The Operator Brief
One considered note on infrastructure, governance, and measurement, most mornings. No theory.