Archive

Tim Cook out. Ternus gets a $4T Apple

Tim Cook is stepping down as Apple CEO on September 1, with hardware chief John Ternus taking over a year earlier than most insiders had modeled — and inheriting the company's still-unsettled AI strategy. Meanwhile, Amazon added up to $25 billion to its Anthropic position and locked the lab into a $100 billion-plus AWS commitment.

Paul Smalera

Apr 17, 2026

•

6 min read

Anthropic Says No to $800 Billion

Anthropic is turning away investors offering $800 billion-plus valuations — a signal that the company may believe its leverage only increases from here, especially with an IPO reportedly on the table for October. Meanwhile, a routine Alaska filing revealed Google's hidden 6% stake in SpaceX, worth an estimated $100 billion at IPO. And Amazon-backed nuclear startup X-Energy hit the road this week for an $800 million IPO on Nasdaq, bringing AI's power problem one step closer to an investable thesis.

Paul Smalera

Databricks 25x, Snowflake 12x: The NAV Trap

Apr 16, 2026

•

9 min read

Databricks 25x, Snowflake 12x: The NAV Trap

Six private mega-caps trade at 2–3x public comps. The evergreen funds marking NAV off those prints are running a feedback loop, not price discovery. Four IPO catalysts in 120 days will break the loop or prove it right.

Paul Smalera

OpenAI says Anthropic's $30B is off by $8B

Apr 14, 2026

•

8 min read

OpenAI says Anthropic's $30B is off by $8B

OpenAI's chief revenue officer sent an internal memo claiming Anthropic overstates its headline $30B run rate by roughly $8B — a direct challenge to the accounting narrative anchoring Anthropic's $600B secondary valuation. Separately, $600M in OpenAI shares sit unsold on secondary platforms while $2B in buy-side demand chases Anthropic stock with zero sellers. Underneath all of it, SpaceX's public S-1 is weeks away — and it reshapes the IPO window for every company standing behind it.

Paul Smalera

CoreWeave has now signed the four biggest AI labs

Apr 10, 2026

•

15 min read

CoreWeave has now signed the four biggest AI labs

Meta, Anthropic, OpenAI, Google — all on one platform. The $66.8B backlog story, Anthropic employees won't sell at $350B, and xAI admits it's behind. (Our apologies for the late delivery — apparently our coffee machine was illiquid today. Here's hoping our bartender won't be.)

Paul Smalera

Anthropic's Mythos Just Broke Cybersecurity's Business Model

Apr 9, 2026

•

12 min read

Anthropic's Mythos Just Broke Cybersecurity's Business Model

Anthropic did something on Monday that no AI company has done before: it announced a model too dangerous to release — and then handed it to Apple, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, CrowdStrike, and seven other organizations to go find bugs in their own code. The model is called Claude Mythos Preview. The initiative is called Project Glasswing. And if the numbers Anthropic is publishing are real, the cybersecurity industry just woke up in a fundamentally different world. Here's our Deep Dive:

Paul Smalera

Dario's notes on Sam. Anthropic's $30B run rate.

Apr 7, 2026

•

9 min read

Dario's notes on Sam. Anthropic's $30B run rate.

Anthropic announced its revenue run rate has crossed $30 billion — up from roughly $9 billion at year-end 2025, a 3x gain in about 90 days. The announcement landed on the same day The New Yorker published an 18-month investigation into Sam Altman's character, sourced from 100+ insiders and 200+ pages of internal documents, including Dario Amodei's private notes calling Altman's words "almost certainly bullshit." The juxtaposition is not accidental: Anthropic is the company Dario founded after leaving OpenAI. Meanwhile, OpenAI's CFO — who just closed the largest private round in history — now reports to the head of applications instead of the CEO.

Paul Smalera

Apr 3, 2026

•

11 min read

OpenAI Bought a Talk Show. Seriously.

OpenAI dropped low hundreds of millions on TBPN, the buzzy tech talk show — its first media acquisition, and one that raises more questions than it answers about editorial independence. Meanwhile, secondary markets are flashing a surprising signal: $600 million in OpenAI shares sitting unsold while buyers line up $2 billion deep for Anthropic. And Q1 2026 just closed as the biggest venture quarter ever recorded — $300 billion, with foundational AI alone doubling all of 2025 in three months. The capital concentration in this market has no precedent.

Paul Smalera

SpaceX S-1 Teardown: The Filing Nobody's Seen, Reverse-Engineered

Apr 2, 2026

•

14 min read

SpaceX S-1 Teardown: The Filing Nobody's Seen, Reverse-Engineered

The confidential filing is at the SEC. We built our own from leaked financials, tender offer docs, and government contract databases — before anyone else sees the real thing.

Paul Smalera

Mar 31, 2026

•

8 min read

The robot money is here

Physical Intelligence is raising $1 billion at an $11 billion valuation — doubling in four months — as robotics AI becomes the next major capital destination. Meanwhile, legal AI platform Harvey closed $200 million at $11 billion, with Sequoia leading for the third time. The pattern: AI capital is migrating from foundation models to domain-specific applications with clear enterprise moats.

Paul Smalera

SpaceX is finally going public. Here's what it actually means.

Mar 27, 2026

•

10 min read

SpaceX is finally going public. Here's what it actually means.

SpaceX is preparing to file its IPO prospectus this week or next — targeting a $1.75 trillion valuation and a $75B raise that would be the largest public offering in history. Meanwhile, Anthropic is eyeing a Q4 IPO of its own. And defense AI is having its own capital moment: Shield AI closed $2B at a $12.7B valuation. The IPO window is open.

Paul Smalera

The world's largest software buyer says the market is wrong about AI

Mar 26, 2026

•

9 min read

The world's largest software buyer says the market is wrong about AI

Thoma Bravo — the world's largest software buyout firm — says the market has the AI-disruption story wrong. Software fundamentals are intact. The real divide is between easily-replaced point solutions and mission-critical, compliance-heavy systems that AI won't touch. They're buying. Private markets investors should pay attention.

Paul Smalera

...

Tim Cook out. Ternus gets a $4T Apple

Anthropic Says No to $800 Billion

Databricks 25x, Snowflake 12x: The NAV Trap

OpenAI says Anthropic's $30B is off by $8B

CoreWeave has now signed the four biggest AI labs

Anthropic's Mythos Just Broke Cybersecurity's Business Model

Dario's notes on Sam. Anthropic's $30B run rate.

OpenAI Bought a Talk Show. Seriously.

SpaceX S-1 Teardown: The Filing Nobody's Seen, Reverse-Engineered

The robot money is here

SpaceX is finally going public. Here's what it actually means.

The world's largest software buyer says the market is wrong about AI

The Pulse by Augment

Home