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$45B to $10B. The Anthropic stake stayed.

Leopold Aschenbrenner's Situational Awareness sold its public equity portfolio to Citadel this week after margin calls, while keeping a reported $5 billion Anthropic stake that could not have been sold on the same timeline. A bank group is reportedly in talks to lend $15 billion for a Texas data center that Anthropic would lease, with Google providing guarantees. The Commerce Department also signed letters of intent that would put the federal government on the cap tables of five private semiconductor companies.

Paul Smalera

Jul 30, 2026

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7 min read

The Builders Are Back

Tech's most proven founders are launching their next acts, all at once, and the market is pricing something new: proof of scale. One interpretation is that investors are placing unusually high value on founders with demonstrated execution histories.

Paul Smalera

SpaceX reports Aug. 4. $116B unlocks Aug. 6.

Jul 28, 2026

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6 min read

SpaceX reports Aug. 4. $116B unlocks Aug. 6.

SpaceX reports its first quarterly results as a public company on August 4. Two days later, restrictions lift on roughly 911.5 million shares worth about $116 billion, with the stock currently trading well below its $135 IPO price. Separately, Nvidia has reportedly committed $5 billion to Safe Superintelligence, a lab with no product in the marketplace and a reported $32 billion valuation. In that deal, the supplier is also reported to be helping set the price.

Paul Smalera

Jul 24, 2026

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7 min read

Stripe's ~$10B move on OpenRouter

The week's biggest private-markets story was a payments company reaching into the AI stack. Stripe is reportedly in talks to buy OpenRouter for around $10 billion, roughly eight times where the startup was marked in May. Meanwhile a public 10-Q did what secondary desks usually do in the dark: Alphabet's filing put a fair-value number on its Anthropic stake, and the number was roughly $124 billion. And the public market spent two days deciding it's nervous about the cost.

Paul Smalera

OpenAI's reported $1T IPO target ask and the Bonfire Economy

Jul 23, 2026

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5 min read

OpenAI's reported $1T IPO target ask and the Bonfire Economy

OpenAI reportedly wants $1 trillion. A 1949 theory of why civilizations destroy their own wealth explains the number.

Paul Smalera

Moonshot's $30B path opens after Kimi K3

Jul 21, 2026

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5 min read

Moonshot's $30B path opens after Kimi K3

Moonshot AI released an open-weight model last week that followed by a selloff in semiconductor stocks that some market commentators compared to prior AI-model-related market reactions. Days later, the same company reportedly asked its shareholders to approve a Hong Kong listing at a pre-money valuation near $30 billion. In a separate corner of the market, CuspAI raised $450 million at a $2.6 billion valuation to aim AI at chipmaking materials, with Jeff Bezos among the backers.

Paul Smalera

Jul 17, 2026

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8 min read

DeepSeek's $52B, found in a filing

The private market minted three big valuations this week, and each one landed a different way. DeepSeek was priced at roughly $52 billion through the regulatory paperwork of a Chinese luggage maker; Fireworks closed a $1.5 billion round at $17.5 billion on more than $1 billion of annualized revenue; and Stripe, with Advent and Block, put a reported $53 billion take-private bid on the table for PayPal. The throughline: a valuation is not the same thing as a price you can act on, and the gap between the two is where the secondary market does its work.

Paul Smalera

Kalshi priced compute. OpenAI’s exposure may be different.

Jul 16, 2026

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6 min read

Kalshi priced compute. OpenAI’s exposure may be different.

Kalshi built a forward curve for GPU rentals this week. The most-traded private AI names contracted their way off it years ago.

Paul Smalera

Jul 14, 2026

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5 min read

Helsing raised $1.8B as AI stocks fell

Two markets moved in opposite directions on Monday. In public, investors kept selling anything tied to heavy AI spending: Apple, the one big tech company that skipped the data-center race, has added about $650 billion in market value since late June while chip stocks fell. In private, the Munich defense-AI maker Helsing closed a $1.8 billion round at an $18 billion valuation — larger than the $1.2 billion it first sought. And Shein won Beijing's approval for a Hong Kong listing, reopening an exit it had been denied in New York and London.

Paul Smalera

Jul 10, 2026

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8 min read

Blue Origin's $130B ask

Four weeks after SpaceX became a public company, Blue Origin is reportedly raising outside capital for the first time since it was founded in 2000, at a reported $130 billion pre-money valuation. Meta began charging for its frontier model at roughly a quarter of what OpenAI and Anthropic advertise. Grubhub's parent is reportedly raising at $9 billion with an IPO ratchet attached.

Paul Smalera

Jul 9, 2026

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6 min read

Wayve's tender and the 81% problem

Wayve reportedly opened an $85 million tender at $8.5 billion. Twenty companies account for most of what trades at all.

Paul Smalera

SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 today: $4.3B in play

Jul 7, 2026

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5 min read

SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 today: $4.3B in play

SpaceX finishes its first month public by joining the Nasdaq-100 this morning, with a reported ~$4.3 billion of index buying meeting a float of roughly 4%. OpenAI, a week after reports of a 2027 IPO timeline, has reportedly proposed handing 5% of its equity to a U.S. sovereign wealth fund. And Mercor reportedly doubled its gross revenue run rate in two months.

Paul Smalera

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$45B to $10B. The Anthropic stake stayed.

The Builders Are Back

SpaceX reports Aug. 4. $116B unlocks Aug. 6.

Stripe's ~$10B move on OpenRouter

OpenAI's reported $1T IPO target ask and the Bonfire Economy

Moonshot's $30B path opens after Kimi K3

DeepSeek's $52B, found in a filing

Kalshi priced compute. OpenAI’s exposure may be different.

Helsing raised $1.8B as AI stocks fell

Blue Origin's $130B ask

Wayve's tender and the 81% problem

SpaceX joined the Nasdaq-100 today: $4.3B in play

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