Gravitas Spark CrowdFunding

Tag: fintech

  • Tales On Tour

    Tales On Tour

    Events dear boy. That was Harold Macmillan’s famous response to the query about what can cause government failure. Undoubtedly, there is significant truth attached to that guidance. However, we are currently in an era of unmatched clown-car incompetence, chronic short-termism and self-interest at the highest levels of political power. On Brexit’s 10th anniversary we are about to welcome the 7th occupant of 10 Downing Street since that embarrassing day. Who knew Ed Milliband’s scuppering of his brother David’s bid for leadership of the Labour Party would facilitate Brexit passivity and bonkers trade assumptions across the UK political spectrum? Meanwhile, the Russians are discovering Vladimir Putin is the worst military leader in Europe since Olaf the Hairy accidentally ordered 80,000 Viking helmets with the horns on the inside(thank you Blackadder). And, of course, how can we forget the failed casino, burger, vodka, sneaker, NFL, airline, crypto toddler himself….the Orange Emperor with no Hormuz close (!) babbling about reflection swamps in Washington.  Prepare for Algae-fa to be designated a single-celled terrorist organization. Despite that swampy distraction, it turns out that the Donald is going to go down in history as the worst-returning oil acquisition strategist after his Venezuela and Iran escapades (unless you have an insider trading account).  We seem to be receiving months’ worth of news in mere days so forgive me if I’m a bit event focused. But, I’m not the only one….let’s go on an events tour.

    Prediction markets are the hottest thing in the finance world right now. Regulators in the US decided companies like Kalshi and Polymarket were trading derivatives, rather than betting platforms for events from sports to elections to wars. Famously, a US Special Forces sergeant was arrested having placed a trade on Polymarket to win $400,000 on the probability of Maduro losing power in Venezuela….. just before he hopped on a Black Hawk chopper to abduct Maduro and his wife. Maduro isn’t the only one suffering right now. Sports betting companies like Paddy Power/Flutter, William Hill and Bet 365 are losing out to these new ‘events prediction’ players. Kalshi sports volumes are up 300% since the World Cup started and is now valued at $22 billion. For context, global leader Flutter/Paddy Power is currently valued at $17 billion slightly more than Polymarket’s $15 billion value underpinned by a recent $600m investment from the New York-based Intercontinental Exchange (ICE).  That’s a big bet but after a recent trip to the UK, I’m beginning to wonder about another event prediction…

    Macroeconomic strategists are currently analysing the impact of another economics-light Labour leader in Andy Burnham taking the PM reins in the UK. And lurking in the background is the crypto puppet, Nigel Farage, anticipating a general election win in a few years. At last, thanks to the excellent Sally Nugent on BBC, the ‘ordinary man’ mask is slipping off Nigel (the car crash interview is worth a watch) as are the Reform Party’s electoral hopes. However, Westminster intrigue could amount to a financial distraction. It was acutely apparent during the worst of the Iran war volatility that the UK’s sovereign debt/bonds did worse than most other major advanced economy financial assets. That’s a very worrying signal. It means the UK is considered a ‘vulnerable’ sovereign risk. So, here’s an event prediction not being discussed in the UK financial or political press right now. My personal view is that the UK’s 8th political leader (after Burnham) will be the IMF/Troika who will have to impose financial sanity on the nation. Just saying, but there’s a huge amount of evidence that the UK has failed to do very much over the last 3 decades…

    In recent weeks, both on a recent IMI panel in Dublin and at a business lunch in London, the theme of under-investment was raised as a huge factor in UK decline. It is striking that the UK has quietly lagged at the bottom of the G7 rankings by corporate spending in 24 of the last 30 years. UK investment averaged 23.7% of GDP between 1970 and 1990. But, after that it fell by a quarter, to an annual average of just 17.9%. In contrast, other major OECD economies have, on average, kept their investment levels above 20% of GDP. Back in 2024, I also had highlighted this shocking lack of long-term planning:

     

    “The Institute for Public Policy Research estimates the under-investment in business at $500 billion less than what other comparable OECD countries have invested since 2005. Public sector investment (infrastructure) was a further $200 billon below the G7 average. All in, this chronic lack of investment places the UK 27th out of 30 OECD countries.” 

     

    Thatcherism might need to be reviewed. At least, the English football team is in better shape these days. In fact, sport is on my mind too.

    Closer to home, the return of world-class tennis to Ireland at the Dublin ATP Challenger Tour event at Elm Park opened eyes up to the possibilities of showcasing memorable sporting experiences. There is a reason why sports franchises, festival events, city-break tourism and concert tickets continue to smash valuation records. The experiential industry plays to scarcity, living in the moment and shared memories. Check out the acceleration of NBA franchise valuations from 2020 to 2025. Utah Jazz was acquired for a record $1.66 billion in 2020, but in 2025 the LA Lakers were bought for a new record franchise value of $10 billion. That’s a 6x shift in asset values. So, just as Big Tech companies have become bigger than sovereign states (and borders), it feels like sport will be a border-less global platform. Indeed, the recent reports about an ice hockey franchise coming to a Dublin home (in Cherrywood) and a brand new stadium could be flagging some very interesting long-term thinking? Follow that puck, and reach for the stars….literally.

    One can marvel or guffaw at SpaceX’s peak post-IPO valuation near $3 trillion, but there are big lessons for Europe. Global business in many communications and technology sectors is dominated by quasi-monopolies. That global monopolistic ‘north star’ for start-up founders in the US seems to be a cultural differentiator. Apple, Amazon, Google, Microsoft, Netflix, Nvidia and Meta dominate their sub-sectors and have benefitted from the massive depth of US capital markets prepared to back global domination. We should, of course, celebrate the recent $3.6 billion exit by the founders of Fin/Intercom. But, at a strategic level, Europe needs to mobilize all its financial innovation and resources to plot the building of trillion dollar global champions over the coming years. So, on a positive note for both Europe and the UK, I’m looking at one huge sector still fragmented and missing the economies of scale which digital dominance can deliver. I’m thinking banking where London is still a major financial centre combining centuries of financial experience, stable common law, a concentration of necessary skillsets and….rapid  innovation.

    The UK is the second biggest fintech hub on the planet behind only the United States. In 2025 UK fintechs raised $3.6 billion across 534 separate deals, more deals than the next five European countries combined. Also, London is home to Revolut, now worth around $75 billion and  the most valuable private tech company in Europe. In fact, 8 of the top 10 fintechs in Europe come from the UK. It’s entirely possible London will produce Europe’s first trillion dollar financial services company. Ironically, with my monopoly/north star thinking cap on, the much-maligned fragmentation of Europe’s banking market could help the growth of a new trillion dollar financial franchise. Currently, Europe is home to over 9,000 banking entities. That’s not sustainable, but we might have to wait for events dear boy.

  • Ten WOW Moments This Week

    Ten WOW Moments This Week

    I feel good. Maybe it’s an Arsenal triumph thing? Ok, I won’t go there but I do think we need to absorb some astonishing other developments this week. Dare I say it, even Republicans are astonished by their own crime family in the White House. Currently, Republican politicians are fleeing Washington to avoid precarious Capitol Hill votes, press scrutiny and global ridicule as the world digests the single most corrupt action by any US President in history. The phrasing I use is almost Trumpian but deserved this time. A self-dealing ‘settlement’ between the Trump family and the US government (via its IRS taxation department) is truly one for the ages. The establishment of a $1.776 billion ‘slush fund’ to spend on anyone the Donald wants, as well as a full waiver on Trump family tax audits in perpetuity is finally generating senior GOP leader outrage….and rebellion. This is ‘end of days’ stuff only missing a Caligula-like attempt to appoint a loyal horse (or Eric) to the Senate. However, the real WOW stuff is to be found elsewhere. Join me on a quick whistlestop tour of developments which have genuinely earned their superlatives.

    • The $5 trillion AI chip superstar stock, Nvidia, reported quarterly earnings this week. Again, as the most analysed company on the planet, the company managed to exceed revenue and earnings forecasts in the quarter, and then increased its guidance for the following quarter way ahead of the estimates in dozens of analyst spreadsheets. But, the real wow bit was Nvidia’s CFO forecasting global AI spend of $4 trillion PER YEAR by 2030.

     

    • IPO markets have been sleepy in recent years but get ready for a very hot IPO summer. SpaceX, Open AI and Anthropic are expected to list on US stock exchanges with a combined valuation of $3.5 trillion. For context, that equates to the GDP of France! More crucially, IPO exits means investment capital is freed up to be re-invested in the next SpaceX or Google. For illustration, Founders Fund, Valor Equity Partners, and Sequoia are set for over $100B, $60B, and $20B windfalls respectively from SpaceX alone in the biggest VC exit ever.

     

    • Ukraine rarely gets the headlines these days but something’s up. Vladimir Putin is increasingly paranoid about his personal safety as Russian advances in Ukraine stall or go into reverse. Losses are now approaching Vietnam war (57,000 US deaths) levels every 6 weeks. Meanwhile, deep-strike capabilities of Ukrainian drones into the Russian motherland are reaching targets 1,500 kilometres away. Military and infrastructure targets are being picked off at will by Ukrainian drones and there are emerging reports of large parts of Russia’s road network littered with destroyed military equipment. This writer’s personal view is that Putin’s removal and Ukraine peace could be the summer wow geopolitical moment.

     

    • The UAE’s announcement to transform healthcare, public services and federal operations with AI — including deploying Agentic AI across 50% of government services and training 80,000 employees in AI technologies — feels like a significant inflection point. The commitment to train 80,000 public service employees is particularly noteworthy.

     

    • The structural tailwind of generational wealth transfer continues to be under-estimated, particularly by those convinced 5 times a year that financial asset markets are going to crash. In Europe alone, €3.5 trillion of wealth will shift into new hands by 2030. That means new relationships and new wealth tools. So, please DO pay attention to this enormous structural trend and possibly take a look at NestiFi which is raising funds with Spark right now.

     

    • The biggest stock market move this week was not actually the US, despite Nvidia’s best efforts. Actually, it was South Korea’s KOSPI index which rocketed 8% in one trading session adding more than $400 billion of value to the market. The reason for the move was Samsung’s last minute deal with its worker unions, an agreement to pay a $26 billion AI bonus to employees. Wow. However, don’t forget Samsung is now a trillion dollar company and accounts for 30% of South Korea’s stock market value.

     

    • Not all news in Asia is good news. One can’t help feeling an untethered Japanese bond market could cause the global economy some real pain. Japan’s bonds are selling off in ways not seen since 1999. The current yield on Japan’s 30-year debt instruments is 4.2% (yields rise as prices fall). Watch this very carefully.

     

    • Bond and debt prices rising globally are the critical risk factor right now but the M&A market is showing continued confidence that debt markets will settle down. For illustration, the electric utility merger deal in the US between NextEra Energy and Dominion Energy is a $67 billion whopper bet, and biggest ever seen in the sector. Again, AI and its insatiable demand for power is driving deals in the sector.

     

    • As the Strait of Hormuz focuses minds on supply chains and logistics, there was a double reminder of two big trends from Japan. Logistics is a ‘hot’ sector for private equity, as is Japan. So, it was interesting $4.6B Japan-listed logistics firm NIKKON Holdings is exploring going private, with Bain Capital, Warburg Pincus, and Blackstone seen as potential bidders. That’s a helpful tailwind for our own portfolio name, Net Feasa, which has just this week teamed up with network giant, Ericsson, to deliver 5G IoT connectivity on container ships. Watch that connectivity trend too – Ericsson’s share price is up 44% and Nokia’s has rocketed 145% year-to-date. Wowzers.

     

    • Finally, as Europe prepares a €25 billion IPO of its tank manufacturer, KNDS, with 80% ownership by French and German government… it’s worth thinking about other traditional areas of German engineering prowess. The AI data centre race for power is driving massive demand for grid/transformer equipment and you should check out Siemens’ latest margins in this activity. Margins(EBITDA) in recent years have more than trebled from 5% to 18%. The old economy and real assets can still wow.

     

    All of the above are big themes to keep an eye on, but now it’s time to dream. Can Leinster follow Arsenal with another long-awaited triumph?    That would be WOW too…..

  • Google Growth, Giddiness and Gullibility…

    Google Growth, Giddiness and Gullibility…

    Deep breaths…I’m searching for expletives. Google has not only become briefly the most valuable company on the planet last week, it also has its own eponymous verb. Now I’m wondering will there one day be a verb “Farage”? Could someone ‘farage’ a nation? Not quite damage or ravage, more like persuade a country to screw itself repeatedly. I’m staring at the screens over the last few days and gasping at the fact that millions of UK voters are trusting dear Nigel (again) and his Thai-based crypto billionaire backers to lead them to the “sunlit uplands” which escaped them on Brexit. Anyway, back to Google and another prediction which has ended up going horribly wrong. Remember how the commentariat gurus confidently predicted AI was going to destroy Google because of its dependence on search? Well, the reality today is far sunnier…

    Google’s AI focused cloud business delivered $20 billion of revenues in its last quarter. That number is astonishingly growing at 63% year-on-year and surpassed the expectations of all herd-like analysts on Wall Street. As mentioned earlier, Google last week briefly passed Nvidia as the world’s most valuable company at almost $5 trillion. Incredibly, 38% of that value, or $1.3 trillion, was added in April alone. Growth is still being rewarded, despite the simultaneous chaos caused by the strangulation of the global economy’s critical energy supply route in the Persian Gulf. This tug-of-war between positive and negative macro drivers is both scary and fascinating to long-time market watchers. Clearly, as stock markets hit all-time highs, the AI growth story is winning the battle for investors’ mindset. Indeed, the S&P 500 in the midst of strategic White House chaos has managed to add $10 TRILLION in value in the past month. It’s not just sentiment and valuations on the rise. The fundamentals look pretty good too.

    The year-on-year earnings growth (yep, that income thing after sales) for the median S&P 500 company in Q1 hit a double-digit 12% pace (Source: Deutsche Bank). The average across all 500 companies actually reached a monster 25% growth rate. That pace of fundamental profit growth hasn’t been seen in at least 4 years and has nothing to do with a pandemic recovery or other macro rebound. Fundamentals like income and earnings matter for the more risk-averse investors. So, it was encouraging to see US high-yield bonds perform strongly in April, European M&A volume at its highest since 2007 and the European bond market just had its busiest day ever.  Yes, people are concerned about supply/demand imbalances in the AI infrastructure world but, if anything, demand is running ahead of capacity. Check out the deal just done by Anthropic and SpaceX. This is all about Anthropic’s urgent need for compute power to meet demand. For illustration, Anthropic had planned for 10x revenue and usage growth in the first quarter of this year. In fact, the growth has been closer to 80x……. yep 80x, not 8x. Euphoric stuff, but it’s time for a word of caution.

    Confidence and rising expectations are great for driving valuations higher. However, this also brings over-confidence and speculation. Arguably, the gullible are in danger of being sucked into the wrong ‘opportunities’. Two outstanding examples of over-confidence and gullibility working in tandem appeared on my screens this week. First, the original meme-stock, GameStop, which gathered a huge retail investor following from online communities like Reddit and Mashable, announced a $56 billion bid for the much larger company, eBay. However, no matter how many times GameStop CEO, Ryan Cohen, awkwardly told his CNBC interviewers the financing was “half cash, half stock”, nobody sane could make the numbers add up. At best, GameStop equity valued at $11 billion, plus $9 billion cash in the bank, plus an offer of $20 billion of financing from Toronto Dominion was still going to be $15-20 billion short of the asking price. Nuts stuff which probably won’t end well. However, you don’t have to wait to find out with Fermi Inc.

    Fermi Inc listed publicly (IPO) as recently as October 2025 with a valuation of about $19 billion. Fermi was riding the coat tails of the AI infrastructure-chasing-energy theme. Its solution was a promise to supply 17 gigawatts of nuclear-powered AI infrastructure….with zero revenues and zero clients. In the subsequent months the CEO and CFO have both departed, and the company still has not signed a single customer. Unsurprisingly, gullible investors have taken serious pain. The Fermi Inc share price has imploded by 85% wiping $16 billion from the IPO valuation. Customers and market traction remain a critical consideration for sensible investors and thankfully there are investment themes out there which are showing encouraging form. Here’s two worth watching.

    Amazon’s cloud business, AWS, was built around its first, best customer, Amazon’s e-commerce business. Now Amazon is launching Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS). And guess what? Amazon itself will be this logistics business’s first and best customer again. This allows Amazon to invest massively in infrastructure to challenge the incumbents, UPS, FedEx etc.  Regular readers will know we have strong positive views on the logistics infrastructure space and have recently raised money for OOHPod. Now, think how Amazon invented cloud computing before it was “hot”. This writer believes logistics infrastructure in the coming years will attract lots of investment capital and… customers. Check out Bloomberg’s view:

     

    “The world’s largest online retailer on Monday announced Amazon Supply Chain Services (ASCS), offering other companies access to its “full portfolio” of supply-chain and distribution offerings. The service largely consolidates a package of existing products — air and ocean freight, trucking and last-mile delivery — into a new suite it says companies like Procter & Gamble Co. and 3M Co. are already using.”

     

    Not bad, P&G and 3M on the customer roster already. Of course, our angle in logistics infrastructure is more deals and more M&A. So, it was interesting to catch another positive signal on M&A activity in recent days. It looks like Chicago’s boutique investment bank, Lincoln International, is looking to go for IPO in 2026. This will be the first boutique investment bank to go public since Perella Weinberg in 2021, and is enjoying a 31% income growth tailwind from 2025. Of course, the perkier M&A environment has helped. Data from Pitchbook would seem to confirm same…

     

    “2025 was a record-setting year for global M&A activity, with both deal value and volume shattering the previous highs set in 2021. PitchBook data tracked 50,810 transactions last year—the first time deal count has ever surpassed 50,000; and combined deal value hit nearly $5 trillion, up 37% from the prior year. In its filing, Lincoln contends that the growth of private capital will create a “larger and more durable M&A fee pool,” particularly for sponsor-led deals.”

     

    Again, we have written frequently about the structural shifts in finance and fintech investment. The opportunities to leverage technology in financial services are enormous, and particularly for small disruptors. The standout number for me in April was the trading revenue achieved by a firm unknown to most. Jane Street is a financial trading firm with 3,500 personnel and a lot of technology. In the last 12 months Jane Street generated $39.6 billion in trading revenues. JP Morgan with 316,000 employees did $35.8 billion; Goldman Sachs and its 46,000 superstars did $31.1 billion. The average revenue per employee at Jane Street was an incredible $11 million. Technology and trillions of dollars of investment capital flows can be a phenomenal combination. So, it is timely that Spark Private investors in the coming weeks will be shown two excellent fintech platform prospects. The beach can wait….

  • Summer Looking Hot….

    Summer Looking Hot….

    Last week was biblical. Firstly, President Trump became Jesus online, before dodging to “doctor” retreat on evangelical outrage. Secondly, Vice President, JD Vance, fresh from blowing up Viktor Orban’s election chances in Hungary, told the Pope to tread carefully on….theology. And then, Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, presented a biblical verse, Ezekiel 25:17, at a Pentagon prayer service which turned out to be more fiction than truth. In fact, it was Pulp Fiction and the words delivered by Samuel L. Jackson’s character in Quentin Tarantino’s cult classic. Who needs The Gimp character with these White House slaves to ignorance?? Sadly, there’s little chance of ball gags for the Trump crime gang just yet as they ‘flood the zone’ with reality-defying nonsense. Meanwhile, our job in the macro risk world is to look behind the eye-rolling headlines connected to the on/off blockade of the Strait of Hormuz, and make sense of real events and numbers. Coincidence or not, I was about to write a rather upbeat piece before any Persian Gulf news broke. Here’s the real stuff which caught my eye away from the Oval Office clown show…

     

    Big Tech stocks leading a $4 trillion market rebound – Bloomberg

     

    Systematic hedge funds bought stocks at a record pace last week – Reuters

     

    Global Venture Capital (VC) investment surged to a record $330 billion in Q1 –   KPMG

     

    Emerging Market bond sales are soaring again as investors dive back into risk  – Bloomberg

     

    It feels like markets and investors have moved on, and confidence is building rapidly. Goldman Sachs research reported that March was the best month in a decade for long/short trading hedge funds. The actual average return in one month for these type of funds was 7.7%, and will be music to the ears of investment banks who need these huge institutional generators of commissions, M&A fees and securities lending to be “feeling good” and chasing opportunity/risk. Indeed, quarterly updates from all the US investment banks showed Goldman Sachs delivering a best-ever quarter for their equities trading operation, and the Guardian has reported almost $50 billion of profits (Q1) generated by just 6 banks – Goldman, Morgan Stanley, JP Morgan, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and Bank of America. It’s all about confidence and we’ve been waiting a while for the IPO market to come to life. In the private equity world, and the Spark world, this public listing channel (IPOs) is critical in providing the much needed ‘exits’ while pumping liquidity flows (and confidence) through the financial ecosystem. The latest numbers look encouraging.

    In Q1 there were 22 IPOs in the US with a combined stock sale value of $9.4 billion compared to just 15 exits the year before and $7.9 billion of liquidity generated (Source: PwC). So, the pace is picking up but we must brace ourselves for the ‘galactico’ listings promised later in the year. Elon Musk’s SpaceX alone could raise $75 billion on a $2 trillion valuation and the listings of OpenAI and Anthropic will be massive conduits of capital back into the AI ecosystem. War or no war, there seems to be no end to investor demand for a slice of AI action. CB Insights research showed that global venture capital (VC) markets invested $226 billion in AI in Q1 of this year. That compares to the $217 billion raised by private AI companies in ALL of 2025. Note that the ‘concentration’ effect familiar to many observers of the ‘Magnificent 7′ tech dominance of public markets can also be seen in private markets; more than 94% of the value of Q1’s VC funding was funnelled into deals worth more than $100m. But it’s not all AI giddiness…

    The biggest industrial IPO this century was just completed last week. Madison Air Solutions, in the ‘hot’ HVAC sub-sector critical to hi-tech construction, officially claimed the title of the largest industrial IPO since UPS in 1999, pricing its $2.23 billion offering at the top of its range and surging 18.5% in its Thursday debut. Madison Air delivers the cooling systems for servers in the data centre space but one can’t help feeling things are generally hotting up, and could make for a very interesting summer. Of course, there are big ‘IFs” on the macro geopolitical front but the longer-term picture is beginning to reveal some emerging trends. In particular, I’m watching Jeff Bezos going BIG into physical robotics and manufacturing automation with a planned  $100 billion fund named Project Prometheus. It is noteworthy how often the AI chip king, Jensen Huang of Nvidia, refers to robotics as the next multi-trillion dollar wave of the AI economy after agentic services (eg Claude, Gemini, ChatGPT etc). However, there’s another agency service which is quietly picking up speed and needs watching.

    We have written before about Waymo and autonomous driving passenger miles growing rapidly. So, the most recent data from start-up funding database, Crunchbase, is striking. Autonomous vehicle start-ups have already raised a record $21.4B across just 34 deals in 2026 year-to-date, versus $5.9B across 99 deals in all of 2025. Waymo led with a $16 billion round at a $126 billion valuation, while Shield AI raised $2 billion and Wayve raised $1.3 billion. Again, automation and human-collaboration are very much our future, and are driving (!) investor animal spirits. This also confirms the theme of a book I cite often, The Future Is Faster Than You Think, and highlights how technologies are converging – think battery power, AI, and robotics in combination. Feel free to follow the ridiculous Trump headlines, but there’s a danger you’ll miss the bigger picture. It’s hotting up out there….

  • When Words Are Definitely NOT Our Bonds…

    When Words Are Definitely NOT Our Bonds…

    There’s only one thing sicker than an Irish parrot outfit this morning. That’s the global bond market. The biggest bully of them all is sick of the nonsense. Not just the front-running of the US President’s social media posts. The Financial Times rightly flagged this week the gob-smacking scale of corruption and ‘insider’ trading going on close to the Oval Office but, in real financial terms, the pricing reactions of equity and oil markets to Trump’s Monday TACO were relatively muted. Of course, oil prices dipped below $100 earlier in the week but they’re back above $110 now. Similarly, the S&P 500 spiked for a day but it too is back slightly below Monday levels. Arguably, Trump’s words have been losing credibility since his first TACO retreat on tariffs in April last year but there’s a much more dangerous aspect to this credibility failure now. Truth has officially fled the higher echelons of US institutions and that impacts the biggest contracts of them all, United States Treasury bonds’ (or IOUs) credit worthiness with the rest of the world. Here are the headlines you’re not reading…

     

    • The yield on the US 10-year Treasury bond has deteriorated/risen by 13.5% (in yield or cost of money terms) since the Iran war began.
    • The yield on the US 20-year Treasury bond has deteriorated/risen by 11% in the same period (25 days!!).
    • The yields on US Treasuries are used to price almost everything so the average cost of a mortgage in the US is now at a 7 month high despite job creation being at a multi-year low.
    • It’s not just the cost of US assets. The global disruption caused by the Iran ‘operation’ has driven Japanese government bond yields up by 16%.
    • UK bond yields above 5% are the highest seen in 20 years.

     

    The price moves above are the ones that really count. And their message is very clear: the damage done to energy infrastructure and global supply chains is inflationary. The bond traders don’t believe a word of what is coming out of the White House and Pentagon propaganda machines. The opening up of the Strait of Hormuz is dependent on Iranian cooperation and the ability of logistics companies to commit their ships and crews to a safer and insurable environment.  At current levels of reduced shipping activity, the world is losing 11 million barrels of oil every day, as well as numerous other critical distillates like ammonia, diesel, helium, urea etc.  The key point is that bond markets do not “price” temporary cost spikes or supply squeezes. The bond market is explicitly contradicting the Trump regime and suggesting longer-term disruption. In fact, the French government have laid out the following observations:

    • 30-40% of Gulf oil refining capacity is destroyed.
    • That is the worst energy infrastructure destruction since WW2.
    • Full repairs could take 3 years.

     

    Thanks Donald. Actually, you don’t need to thank him. Speaker of the House of Representatives, Mike Johnson, went full North Korea at this week’s National Republican Congressional Committee fundraiser by presenting Trump with a new award. The Guardian reports:

     

    “The president has done so much for the American people and we want to honour him, in some small way, some token of our appreciation for his leadership,” said Mike Johnson, the US House speaker. “So, tonight, we have created a new award.” Johnson then introduced the “America First” award, made up of a golden eagle statue. “We could think of no better title for what that is,” said Johnson. “That’s this beautiful golden statue here – appropriate for the new golden era in America.”

     

    Idolatry and empty words. Asia might have other words right now. Latest headlines suggest crisis:

     

    Pakistan is reducing government working hours to save energy

    India is diverting gas from factories to homes

    Philippines declares a national emergency

    Japan to temporarily lift coal power plant curbs over Hormuz crisis

     

    Clearly, bond markets are looking East and not West for the true story. Indeed, it was striking how most commentators and traders earlier in the week were looking to Tehran to verify whether the US President was telling the truth about ‘negotiations’. Yes, an autocratic theocracy is now more credible than the leader of the ‘free world’.

    It’s a very strange world, but I suspect the bond market will have a very big say about how events unfold in the Middle East from here.

  • Themes And Dreams For 2026

    Themes And Dreams For 2026

    This won’t help my US visa application any time soon. However, it is possible to be on the right side of history and seek investment opportunity too. History may record that 2025 was a dark year of barbarity in Gaza, criminal meat-grinder slaughter in Ukraine, trade tariff chaos, war crimes in Venezuelan waters and full strategic capture of US national security policy by the Kremlin. And, yet I’m hopeful. I will leave it to more mainstream outlets to review 2025. Instead, I’d like to take a look at a number of 2026 investment themes – new and old and not AI – which are developing in potentially unexpected ways. Many, in a good way.  Let’s take a look at the data and start to dream….

    Global Trade: Dare we return to Brexit. Anybody see the UK paying over €600m to re-join the EU’s Erasmus student exchange programme? Don’t worry. We are not going to re-visit Brexit but we are going to cite this as an example of slow-moving sanity repairing self-inflicted harm. Similarly, the “America First” tariff policies in Washington are now beginning to reveal some awkward truths. The mighty US dollar has slipped by 9-10% against other major currencies, US equities (+15%) have underperformed global equities (+29%) and the US manufacturing sector has been losing jobs for 7 months consecutively. Oh, and China, the original bipartisan focus of US trading ire, has just seen its trade surplus exceed $1 trillion for the first time in history. So much winning. What are the chances of US trade policy moving away from tariffs? Well, the polling for US mid-term elections in 2026 is looking pretty bleak for incumbent Republicans. And, the spectacular Vanity Fair quotes (more of them later) from Trump chief-of-staff, Susan Wiles, are prompting Washington insider speculation of a policy re-set or ‘cry for help’ from within the White House. To be clear, nobody sane thinks Wiles (in 11 recorded interviews with Vanity Fair) was unaware of the likely end result.  Bank on that. So…..

    Financials: If you’ve been dazzled by AI you might have missed the massive performance of financial stocks this year.  Financials in the US (+20%) have outperformed technology (+18%) but check out UK banks being tortured by a chaotic Labour government. The FTSE All-Share Banks index is up just the 56%!! In Europe the Euro Stoxx Banks index has clocked a 76% increase in value year-to-date. Meanwhile, Europe’s fintech banking star, Revolut, has completed its second funding round since August. The latest round was eye-catching for the $75 billion valuation achieved (vs $48 billion in August) and the backing of Nvidia’s venture capital arm. That’s a 56% increase in value in just a few months. More importantly, healthy performance in banks and financials usually reflects overall confidence in the global economic cycle despite the dark headlines. Bluntly, banks feel the fear first. It’s not there. In fact, the latest Bank of America investment survey shows investor sentiment at its strongest since 2021. And, that confidence might be showing up in strange places…

    Europe: There appears to be a growing view that Europe has been shocked into taking responsibility for its destiny on the geopolitical stage. The loss of the US as a reliable ally – outlined in the recently published National Security Strategy 2025 – means Europe must back its own. All the way. It was striking to read recently that in Europe, over the past 50 years, just 14 companies started from scratch ended up with valuations over $10 billion. In the US that number is 241!  German defence company, Rheinmetall AG, at €70 billion is now worth more than BMW, VW or Mercedes. Its value has appreciated 15x since the outbreak of the war in Ukraine. Unsurprisingly, Franco-German defence company, KNDS, is eying a €25 billion IPO in Amsterdam in 2026. Furthermore, conditions of ‘war’ have historically driven innovation. So, when the head of the UK’s MI6 intelligence services and its chief of defence staff both warn in the same week of the need “to be ready to fight”, we should expect a massive step up in investment in Europe across the board, to strengthen not just defence but energy grids, communications, technology, supply chains etc. Europe’s prompt for action might be scary but there might be a surprise further east….

    Geopolitics: Europe is still reeling from the stunning geopolitical alignment of Russia and the US sealed with the Kremlin’s approval of Washington’s National Security Strategy “as largely consistent with our vision”. Read that twice, watch the party of Ronald Reagan spin in its grave (yep it’s dead) and remember those famous Russo-proverbial words borrowed by Reagan…. “trust, but verify”. Then think about who is really driving the Ukraine peace talks. In recent weeks we have seen oil hit 5 year lows, the Russian economy battle rampant inflation, the Russian central bank selling its gold reserves and Europe moving to seize ‘indefinitely’ $200 billion of Moscow’s foreign reserve assets. If I were to offer a contrarian view on current peace talks, or even dream, I’d say Russia and Putin has more problems than we think. Furthermore, the unseemly haste of Trump’s agents, Witkoff and Kushner, to rush Ukraine into a Russian-written deal has a ‘frantic’ feel about it. Just a thought, or dream.  Of course, these are not the only deals which could light up 2026 in an unexpected way….

    Private Exits: The IPO pipeline of 2026 could break all sorts of records. Databricks has just completed a $3 billion Series L funding at a $134 billion valuation – yep that’s an “L”. We hear it so often now, but the private market really needs some big exits. OpenAI could be up for a $500 billion IPO. ByteDance ($480 billion) and Anthropic AI ($180 billion) are also on the blocks, as is Stripe with a $100 billion promise. I’m loath to mention the biggest of the lot, SpaceX, which is targeting a whopping $1.5 trillion 2026 valuation and thus pushing its owner Elon Musk in to trillionaire territory. Unless……

    Electric Vehicles: Ford might be grabbing the headlines this week with a monumental $19 billion walk away write-down of its electric vehicle (EV) projects. And, people worry about AI infrastructure over-spend? As China continues to accelerate away from the EV pack in its global dominance of the EV manufacturing ecosystem, whither Elon Musk’s Tesla? First, one can’t miss the opportunity to re-print Trump chief of staff Susan Wiles’s marvellous Vanity Fair assessment of Musk this week among others in this “only the best” Trump inner circle/cabinet. The New York Times summary is best:

     

    Trump’s White House Chief of Staff Susie Wiles describes Trump as an “alcoholic’s personality”, JD Vance as a “conspiracy theorist for a decade” and Elon Musk as “an avowed ketamine user” and an “odd, odd duck” in an interview with Vanity Fair

     

    Hmmm. An odd, odd duck. Tesla might just be reaping the DOGE or DUCK whisperer whirlwind. Tesla currently is valued at $1.5 trillion with a price/earnings valuation of 327x. Yep, 327x – I might raid the ketamine jar too. You’d expect Tesla to be growing, right? Well, the ducks are lining up. November sales for Tesla were the lowest seen since 2022. The brand destruction by Musk’s dive in to right wing politics has been epic. In Europe not a single country achieved sales of more than 750 units, except France. If it walks like a duck, tweets like a duck…….we can only dream.

    Old Economy: Surprisingly, 5 of the “Magnificent 7” tech stocks have under-performed the AI-giddy market this year. In fact, the original perceived AI ‘loser’, Google, has been the stellar performer, up 56% year to date. Now, it might be worth taking another look at other ‘losers’. Defence and banking  stocks are already back in vogue, but in ‘war-like’ conditions the basics become critical too. So, it’s possibly no great surprise that the Basic Materials sector in the US has clocked the best sector performance by far, up 33%. As the race to electrify the global economy accelerates, critical minerals, precious metals and mining stocks stand to benefit from urgency, security and scarcity. Gold is up 65% year-to-date, silver has more than doubled and platinum is up 117%. Keep an eye on Mr Copper too with a 34% uplift in 2025.

    Plenty to think about above, and possibly dream too. What a year! I’ve a feeling I won’t be short of writing material in 2026.

    That’s nearly it folks for 2025. Thanks for reading and the words of encouragement along the way.

     

     

  • Shunning Risk Not Making It EIISy For Europe…

    Shunning Risk Not Making It EIISy For Europe…

    Finally, somebody called it. Poland has a Donald as President too but he seems less enthralled by criminal heads of state. Donald Tusk’s view on the latest Trump ‘peace’ plan for Ukraine was quite  the zinger – “it would be good to know for sure who is the author of the plan and where was it created”. Answers on a postcard to the Kremlin. Sadly, Europe’s leaders have been generally slow to call out Agent Orange’s craven need to be Putin’s fluffer. Indeed, this risk aversion by Europe is not confined to geopolitics.  Mario Draghi has given a blunt assessment of progress made by Europe since his high profile EU Competitiveness Report last year.

    Draghi is unhappy about the slow pace of investment in innovation and the mobilisation of capital to scale the growth of Europe’s young companies. Worryingly, his initial estimate of innovation investment required of €800 billion has now jumped to €1.2 trillion as other economic regions accelerate their efforts to lead in healthcare, electrification, renewable energy and AI. Draghi’s words make for uncomfortable reading and go so far as to link this lack of risk courage to the existential threat to Ukraine and European sovereignty:

     

    “One year on, Europe is therefore in a harder place. Our growth model is fading. Vulnerabilities are mounting. And there is no clear path to finance the investments we need. We’ve been reminded painfully that inaction threatens not only our competitiveness, but also our sovereignty,”

     

    Inaction. Sounds familiar closer to home too. At our recent re-branding event for Spark Venture Funding, Fintan O’Toole in his guest address highlighted Ireland’s failings in housing, healthcare, infrastructure and SME support and identified a key contributing factor. Typically, Fintan did not mince his words. Citing the €150 billion or more of cash sitting in non-interest earning deposit accounts, he viewed this as symptomatic of a nation which “is afraid of risk”. The scars of the relatively recent Troika bail-out run deep but Mario Draghi is clearly saying the risks of inaction are far far worse. On a more positive note, we should remind ourselves of what can happen if investment bravery recovers again. In just the last 7 days, the European tech sector has been grabbing an unusually large share of the global financial headlines. Check out the following:

    *Revolut completes a funding round including an investment from Nvidia at a $75 billion valuation. Last year the valuation was $45 billion.

    *Lovable, the AI powered coding and developer platform, has reached annual recurring revenues (ARR) of $200 million and is raising money at a $6.3 billion valuation.

    *Energy play, Fuse Energy, founded by Revolut alumni is raising money at a $5 billion valuation just 5 months after reaching ‘unicorn’ status ($1 billion). Again ARR acceleration has been stunning, moving from $100m to $300m of recurring revenues within months.

    *Second-hand fashion market platform, Vinted, has reached the $1 billion revenue mark and is reported to be looking at a valuation close to $8 billion.

    *Quantum Drones is also raising at a $3 billion valuation while payments player, Flatpay, has just raised funds at a $1.7 billion valuation.

    All good in the ‘hood. But…here’s the really good bit. The geographic spread of these companies is pan-European with Sweden, UK, Lithuania, Germany and Denmark all represented.

    In Ireland there are many young companies with the potential to join these headlines. Returning to the embarrassing €150 billion pool of funds sitting in Irish deposit accounts doing nothing, it cannot be overstated how big an impact could be made if even 10% of that money was used in risk appropriate manner. To be clear, riskier investments should form an essential but much smaller portion of any savings/investment portfolio. We are not talking about 30-50% asset allocations. Depending on age profiles and existing risk budgets, a 5-15% allocation to innovation and young companies should be considered. And, don’t forget we are in EIIS “season”. Investments in EIIS-eligible companies can bring tax rebates (and risk reductions) of 35-50%. It is amazing how many people are unaware of this excellent government scheme used to scale young businesses, create employment and enter new markets. From this writer’s perspective, we are in a global race. Spark Private’s own portfolio of deal opportunities currently open for investment are race leaders and can deliver exciting and diversified exposures to multiple high-growth markets.

    Europe and Ireland urgently need to shake off their fears of risk. Frankly, Draghi is right: the risk of inaction could now be fatal for our economies and sovereignty. Think about that bank deposit shift, the EIIS de-risking opportunity and the speed of growth and wealth creation now possible in a global innovation economy growing at warp speed. There’s a ready-made EIIS portfolio available to curious investors which can help drive leadership and innovation in medical devices, digital currencies, e-transport, logistics infrastructure, AI and fintech. It’s worth taking a look and then considering the risk-reward of Moby, Social Voice, Quadrant, OOHPod, Nazare Point or Ostoform featuring in headlines like the ones above in just a few years from now.

     

  • Numbers Which Make You Wonder….

    Numbers Which Make You Wonder….

    I’m quite enjoying the “rubber meets road” moment for the leaders whose numbers never add up. In a previous political era they might just have been called liars and shunned by serious media. Now, it’s about eyeballs for the media and their audiences retaining some memory cells. Good ol’ Nigel Farage has moved from trying to avoid discussing the number of white people in ads (thanks to Reform MP Sarah Pochin) to rowing back on previous tax promises. Currently, known as “aspirations”. Like Brexit, more lies. In the US, gold-plated ballrooms and newly minted tech billionaires don’t quite cut it for the 50% of US have-nots who don’t benefit from 401k investment savings. But, the have-nots do have votes…..for now. New York has just voted for a Democrat socialist mayor with the biggest mandate since 1969. Meanwhile public representative seats and offices have flipped this week from MAGA red to Democrat blue in New Jersey, Georgia, California and Virginia. Even Mississippi is turning. In Washington adjacent, Virginia, the political landscape has morphed back to 1987 as Federal workers, either sacked or not being paid, discover some numbers are very real. Here’s a few other numbers flagging change which caught the eye in recent days….

    Sports betting was legalised in the US in 2018. Americans bet over $148 billion on sports last year, which is more than they spent on movies, books, concerts and sports tickets…. combined.  Meanwhile, Disney through its sporting broadcast arm, ESPN, is teaming up with DraftKings as its new sports betting partner. Expect more deals in the sports betting space with $148 billion of US wallets on offer and then wonder about societal shifts. Housing shortages and fewer children seems to be freeing up a lot of discretionary spending power. Watch also prediction marketplaces like Kalshi and Polymarket. The latter is doing over $1 billion of volume each month and is fully crypto-native. More traditional financial businesses are taking notice. Robinhood’s share price is up 235% year-to-date and has reported 2.5 billion prediction contracts (fees of $25m) traded on its platform in just October 2025. That is more than all of the contracts traded in Q3 2025. Any more predictions…?

    You can probably bet on OpenAI doing more AI/cloud infrastructure deals. The famous Financial Times graphic of OpenAI playing a central role in $1 trillion of AI projects is worth revisiting. OpenAI has recently announced a re-jig of its corporate structure to allow for a profit making entity under the stewardship of the original non-profit foundation. The profit bit is going to have to wait. Thanks to Microsoft’s recent results (and a circa 27% stake in OpenAI) analysts have estimated quarterly losess at OpenAI could be as high as $11 billion. Per quarter! Now think about those trillion dollars of projects planned. Then digest this little gem…

    OpenAI is requesting US government support to help guarantee financing for the massive investments in AI chips and data centers it needs for expansion, per Bloomberg.

    The latest OpenAI infrastructure project commitments, per Wall Street analysts, are heading towards $1.4 trillion. UK water utility observers will be familiar with the privatise-the-gains and socialise-the-losses model. It doesn’t end well. And, Fox News and Trump think Zohran Mamdani is the communist….

    On a more capitalist pursuit, M&A deal flow, the news is very encouraging and starting from a less frothy base. Deal research house, Pitchbook, gives the latest update on confidence levels in the C-suite. As we often say, it’s what companies DO, not say, which counts:

     

    “Q3 activity increased by 25.6% in M&A value and 3.8% in deal count as buyers jumped back into the market after macroeconomic headwinds disrupted momentum earlier in the year. Moreover, 2025 is shaping up to be an incredible year for global M&A despite the spooky headwinds present in the market, including geopolitical volatility, stubborn inflation, and a slowing global economy. YTD, there have been 37,096 M&A transactions for an aggregate of $3.4 trillion….. This resurgence in large-scale deals leaves the door open for two consecutive years of M&A deal value growth for the first time in over a decade. Deal count itself is on pace for year-over-year growth, with an active fourth quarter that could see the ecosystem hit nearly 50,000 deals for the year. ”

     

    One can expect more deals in the electricity/power sector. Close to home, Energia was bought by French private equity house, Ardian, and Blackstone bought TXNM Energy for $11.5 billion earlier in the month. It’s all part of the AI infrastructure story but the daddy of the AI rush is Nvidia’s Jensen Huang. He had some sobering thoughts in an FT interview. “China is going to win the AI race.” warned Huang, citing China’s advantages in energy and less‑stringent regulation. He later clarified that China is “nanoseconds behind” the US, adding “it’s vital that America wins by racing ahead and winning developers worldwide.” Huang might have backed away from his original statement but consider that last year China added 426 GW of electricity generation capacity. In the US that number was 30 GW. A growth differential of 14x doesn’t take many ‘nanoseconds’ for China to establish a dominant cheaper electricity base. If electricity is going to decide the global AI race then “drill baby, drill” could cost US industrial policy dearly. Go ask Germany, where manufacturing output is 20% below 2019 levels thanks to disastrous energy policy decisions. But there are prescient decisions to be made too…..

    Investors can see M&A activity pick up, corporate earnings growth above 12% year-on-year, cost of capital shift to a lower trajectory and even the possibility of the US Supreme Court stifling Trump’s ‘emergency’ tariff powers. It’s always awkward to claim ‘emergency’ in court when your lawyer (for US government) agrees the consumer pays 30-80% of tariff costs, and the judges note that tariffs have been imposed on countries like Brazil and Great Britain who actually have trade DEFICITS with the USA. More ketchup on the walls of Mar-a-Lago me thinks. However, the key point is that the investment environment for private investors is picking up momentum. And, Spark Private can help. A flow of new EIIS season deals has just hit our investors’ in-boxes. In this instance, the numbers are real, and do warrant real attention. This is a genuine opportunity to build an exciting diversified portfolio of 8-10 companies with a variety of timing/risk horizons and big thematic exposures in a matter of weeks.

  • Strong Grounds For Optimism, And Action….

    Strong Grounds For Optimism, And Action….

    I should be terrified. Watching Netflix’s House of Dynamite was definitely disturbing. In real life, the guy with the nuclear codes is having another Canada tantrum and refusing to rule out a third presidential term. Meanwhile, financial market headlines are full of ‘bubble’ talk as Hallowe’en approaches and yet…… I’m suddenly very optimistic. It might be Hallowe’en season but there are two other ‘seasons’ in full swing which could bring significant wealth enhancement. Firstly, we are in the middle of corporate earnings results for Q3. Secondly, Irish earners will soon be looking for opportunities before year end to invest in EIIS-eligible deals to reduce their income tax costs and balance their investment portfolios. My sense is that the stars are aligning nicely for a further burst of action in the next few months. As always, companies need to lead so check out the latest developments.

    We mentioned Q3 earnings season but we didn’t mention the “Magnificent 7” superstar tech stocks dominating the financial headlines. Deliberately so. The latest ‘tot up’ of Q3 earnings reveals a much broader participation of companies in healthy earnings reports. So far, 145 companies out of the S&P 500 index have reported Q3 earnings. A whopping 84% of those companies “beat” analysts earnings forecasts which is the highest “beat” rate seen in four years (Source: Bloomberg).  Average earnings growth across the reporting companies is on track for a year-on-year acceleration of 15%. The bottom line, literally, is that operational fundamentals are very strong. Critically, this profit growth is spreading to smaller companies; the Russell 2000 index of smaller companies is clocking an even higher 2025 profit uplift of 25%. You might have to pinch yourself, then check your notes re current challenges faced by companies. Try these for starters:

     

    • Global disruption to supply chains and energy markets due to Ukraine war.
    • Relatively high interest rates since 2022.
    • Tariff and trade chaos thanks to the unstable ‘genius’ in the White House.


    In many ways these are historical known ‘unknowns’ in Rumsfeld-speak. However, the positive twist on this uncertainty is that, if companies are able to generate significant profit growth despite these challenges, then this generation of corporates must be fundamentally very robust. This opens up another possibility, a very exciting one. What if interest rates were now beginning to fall and China and the US were about to agree a trade framework? Well, there’s a 97% chance (per money markets) of the Fed cutting interest rates this week and the news from the Trump trip to Asia is positive on a China deal happening too. Dare we dream of a Ukraine breakthrough? We might ease up on the Kool-Aid there, but we do note a weekend article in The Telegraph about Putin’s fears of a coup. We will continue to dream. However, the deal junkies in the private equity world seem to be picking up on the same fundamental positivity.

    Blackstone’s COO, Jon Gray, in its Q3 results call with Wall Street analysts was certainly pointing to more activity:

     

    “Directionally healthier markets, more liquid markets, better credit markets, better IPO markets; that’s healthier for realizations….The deal dam is breaking.”

     

    Closer to home, private equity exits in Europe’s financial services have reached an all-time high with 77 deals year-to-date worth $31 billion. As we wrote last week…… Banks are SOOOO back! However, it would be a mistake to think this was frothy financial ‘engineering’. In fact, it’s more engineering than finance on a global basis. Private equity investment deals in global infrastructure have rocketed by 44% year-on-year to $25 billion. That’s the second highest total deal value seen in a decade. Clearly, there is a lot more going on than an AI revolution. In the Spark Private world of venture funding and smaller private equity deals we keep a close eye on smaller company activity benchmarks. Two caught the eye this week:

     

    • Smaller company tech equity indices in the US are up 23%…. in just 3 months.
    • Small company industrials are hitting new all-time highs and breaking out on technical charts.

     

    An environment where global trade tensions, interest rates, corporate earnings, smaller company valuations and private equity deal activity are all moving in the right direction will undoubtedly generate more deal opportunities. Pitchbook’s latest review of European private equity (PE) activity is telling:

     

    “A run of large-cap deals in Q3, buoyed by interest rate cuts and improved macro stability, saw European PE dealmaking grow to €177.1 billion (about $206.7 billion) in Q3…….37% of overall PE deal value, €66 billion, came via 19 deals worth over €1 billion—more than Q1 and Q2’s mega-deal value combined. In total, 48 mega-deals took place in Europe over the first nine months of the year. That figure is expected to approach 70 by year-end, making 2025 one of the most active years for such deals in the region on record.”

     

    So enough of the headlines, where’s the action for private investors? The key questions for many investors at this time of year are…

     

    How can I access the deal flow?

     

    Can I do it in a tax friendly manner?

     

    Spark Private can help on both fronts. More specifically, investors can quickly build a well-diversified portfolio of 7-8 companies with top-calibre teams, EIIS tax rebates and genuine structural growth opportunities in a matter of months. Now, for the action…..YOUR action.

  • Back To School For A Monster Theme…

    Back To School For A Monster Theme…

    I’m running out of expletives. It’s a sort of “FOMO” thing which rules out obsessing on Labour’s implosion or the Epstein “hoax” which mysteriously keeps removing only British citizens from high profile roles. No, the headlines driving my heightened state of anxiety are derived from a familiar theme. However, it’s a theme which is now hitting warp speed. We have previously written that the best pulse-take of the monster AI trend was tracking the “picks and shovels” of AI/cloud infrastructure rather than the “gems” of digital intelligent progression. Well, this week is turning into a “biggie” for the AI infrastructure theme. I’d highlight three key developments and a few other snippets. So, here goes….

    The creation of start-up billion dollar ‘unicorns’ has hardly any scarcity value these days. Maybe, we should think in trillions. Step forward almost 50-years old Oracle. Who knew Larry Ellison’s database software business would rack up a trillion dollar enterprise value at the beginning of this week? Probably nobody. Even the Wall Street analysts paid to follow every line of the Oracle business and financial model were truly shocked by the big reveal in Oracle’s quarterly update. In fact, earnings results were slightly shy of expectations. But, the share price proceeded to rocket 40%. Why? The future contract work backlog in its cloud(AI) infrastructure business grew 359% to $455 billion. I mentioned “warp speed” earlier so here’s what caught the eye. Oracle’s cloud revenues from Amazon, Google and Microsoft grew by 1,500% but the entire division this year is annualising revenues of circa $10 billion. That number will be $144 billion by 2030. Welcome to trickle-down AI economics. Oracle was barely mentioned in AI giddiness a year ago, now its owner is the richest man in the world. Oracle is not the only AI ‘unknown’ making waves.

    Anyone heard of Nebius? No, me neither until this week but I do remember its former Russian search/e-commerce platform, Yandex. Anyway, Russian sanctions forced a sale of the Russian assets leaving Nebius as an Amsterdam-listed company specializing in cloud computing (GPU) infrastructure. This week Microsoft signed an agreement worth up to $19.4 billion for Nebius in exchange for 5 years’ access to its GPU datacentre infrastructure in Vineland, New Jersey. Nebius’ market value before that news was less than $15 billion. Not surprisingly, the share price has roared 50% higher and the company is now seeking to raise $3 billion in fresh funds to accelerate its growth plans. This was not the only Dutch tech/AI zinger story this week…..

    Eindhoven-based ASML is the world’s dominant player in critical lithography technology used in chip manufacturing equipment. A single machine can contain up to 100,000 parts and cost $300-400 million. Clearly, semiconductor chips and AI are thematically closely connected. But investing in an AI start-up caught ASML analysts on the hop. ASML has just invested $1.5 billion in French AI player, Mistral, for a circa 11% stake valuing Mistral at close to $14 billion. Remember, Mistral raised $385m in late 2023 with a $2 billion valuation and early investor support from BNP Paribas, AndreessenHorowitz, Lightspeed Ventures and telecoms entrepreneur, Xavier Niel. Less than 2 years later, the Mistral valuation is racing towards a 7-8x return for those early investors. Apart from being an example of multi-layer AI investment activity, the deal is being hailed as a boost to Europe’s AI and semiconductor chip sovereignty.  And maybe I’m not the only one feeling a bit FOMO….

    It seems Ireland’s Taoiseach, Micheál Martin, has been thinking ‘sovereign’ too and looking at France’s early initiatives in funding AI startups. The Business Post has reported that Martin has sought the help of Eir owner, Xavier Neil (see above), in establishing an AI/tech incubator modelled on his highly successful Station F start-up campus. There might be good reason why Ireland needs to increase the pace of its AI and start-up readiness. I thought the next few little snippets should be focusing minds in Government buildings and elsewhere:

     

    Private investing: The UK debt market is worrying many, but on a more positive note it was interesting to see Hargreaves Lansdowne and Schroders join forces to offer UK retail investors the opportunity to add private assets to their pension pots. Note to Irish government – start-ups need investor incentives first, then campuses.

     

    Consumer behaviour: Wildfire Systems’ 2025 Consumer Shopping Trends Report shows 61% of consumers are now using generative AI tools like ChatGPT as a tool for deal-hunting.

     

    Company growth speeds: Stripe’s Indexing the AI Economy report shows AI companies reaching $1m annual recurring revenues (ARR) 4 months faster than even the fastest growing SaaS/software companies. And… AI companies reaching $5m revenues are reaching that milestone 3x faster.

     

    I feel my back-to-school mantra should read:    The future is private, AI and fast. Very fast.