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The high-end shelf is empty, bargain bin overflowing.

A Free Lunch newsletter archive of July 23, 2026

Also available:🇫🇷 Édition française

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🇬🇧 United Kingdom
🇺🇸 United States

Good morning!

In June, the US Commerce Department decided a chatbot posed a national-security risk, and for 19 days Anthropic’s best models were treated like a crate of centrifuge parts, too hazardous to export. Washington was busy guarding the crown jewels. The market had already left the building. On OpenRouter, where developers reach for whatever model actually works, the six most-used are all open-weight releases from Chinese labs: DeepSeek, Tencent, and a Beijing lab called Z.ai. Anthropic’s flagship comes seventh, behind half a dozen things a teenager can download before lunch and fine-tune by dinner.

Anthropic carries a $965B valuation, intends to burn $19B on compute this year, and does not expect to turn a profit before 2028. All of that funds models that just lost a coding benchmark by 0.2 points to a Chinese team of 160 people who trained theirs for a reported $20M. Per token, the Chinese model costs about a thirtieth of the American one, and the discount is permanent, the architecture itself simply cheaper to run. The premium tier of AI now resembles a three-star restaurant watching the entire city eat, contentedly, at the kebab shop across the road.

Conviction, in this business, has a habit of matching the invoice. Hugging Face’s Clément Delangue, whose business is helping firms run open models, has concluded that open weights keep the world safe. Satya Nadella, whose firm spent three decades perfecting the product nobody can leave, now warns gravely against vendor lock-in. The sharpest irony belongs to the export controls: denied NVIDIA’s best chips, DeepSeek’s engineers were forced to invent the efficiencies that make their models cheaper to run than anything built with American compute to spare. The moat, dug at ruinous expense, turned out to irrigate the far bank. That Nadella is a self-interested messenger does not make him wrong: value really does pool around whoever owns the infrastructure rather than whoever creates the knowledge, and the point indicts his own trade as much as anyone’s.

Once the sermons are cleared away, one question survives, and it concerns neither openness nor safety but ownership. Who ends up holding the machinery every economy will shortly rent by the hour, and whether that gets decided by anyone but the dozen people settling it inside funding rounds larger than most national budgets. For a continent that rents its intelligence from an American cloud or downloads it from a Chinese lab and mistakes the arrangement for sovereignty, the question is not abstract. A decade of policy assumed the most advanced technology would stay expensive, stay American, and stay behind a wall. The market has since returned its verdict on all three, and no one asked the people who will spend their working lives renting the result.

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🗞️ Top Story

  • 🇬🇧 Press Release. Lobbying firm CT Group was caught on camera offering to pay a reporter for positive coverage of its clients in UK newspapers, blurring the line between journalism and PR. (The Guardian)
  • 🇫🇷 Heat of the Moment. France recorded 5,764 excess deaths during June’s unprecedented heatwave, marking the highest summer mortality since the infamous 2003 disaster. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇭🇺 Mirror, Mirror. Viktor Orbán accuses Hungary of authoritarianism after his party’s servers are seized and his prosecutor quits. The new leadership thanks him for noticing. (El Pais)
  • 🇪🇺 Risky Business Class. EASA recommends European carriers steer clear of Jordan’s skies after Iranian strikes and air defense activity raise the odds of a tragic misidentification. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇺🇸 Damage Control. Despite repeated assurances, Iranian attacks have hit nine American military locations, causing casualties and visible destruction from Jordan to other regional bases. (New York Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Arrested Development. New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani admits his city cannot legally detain Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over ICC warrants, urging federal authorities to take action instead. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇲🇽 Deadly Assignment. Journalist Francisco Alejandro Leyva Aguilar was gunned down in a restaurant in Oaxaca, becoming the seventh journalist killed in Mexico so far this year. (Spiegel)
  • 🇻🇪 Brooklyn Bound. Former Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro is set to appear before a Manhattan judge, months after US forces seized him and brought narcotrafficking charges. (Le Parisien)
  • 🇨🇺 Combat pour le titre. Plus de 60 ans après avoir fui Cuba, les Cubano-Américains réclament des indemnités pour leurs biens confisqués, affirmant que la facture de la révolution n’est toujours pas réglée. (Wall Street Journal) (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇸🇦 Réaction en chaîne. La BBC signe un accord historique autorisant l’Arabie saoudite à développer un programme nucléaire civil, ouvrant la voie à l’enrichissement de l’uranium et ravivant les craintes de prolifération au Moyen-Orient. (Bbc)
  • 🇾🇪 Tankers Not Included. Yemen’s Houthis claim to have hit two Saudi oil tankers in the Red Sea as the US launches its 12th night of strikes on Iran, raising the price of passage for everyone. (Bbc)
  • 🇾🇪 Lost Boys. Houthi forces in Yemen continue to forcibly recruit children as soldiers, placing minors directly on the front lines of their war machine. (Le Monde)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇬🇧 Funding First. Al Carns refused a government role, declaring he will keep fighting for more defence spending rather than compromise for a cabinet seat. (Bbc)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Drafted Lines. The House approved a $1.15T defense bill almost entirely along party lines, as Democrats reject Trump’s unchecked Iran war powers. (New York Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Phish and Chips. Surfside Beach, SC wired $545K to scammers after falling for a fake contractor email, leaving the town reeling and the money gone. (Wall Street Journal)

🏛️ Economy

  • 🇫🇷 Press Code. Bernard Arnault, CEO of LVMH, uses his media empire to push his personal tastes and ideas, expecting his newspapers and radio to reflect his own preferences. (Le Monde)
  • 🇪🇺 Block Bloc. The EU’s attempt to tighten sanctions on Russia stalled as Greece demanded softer LNG rules, leaving Moscow’s bankers off the hook for now. (Boursier)
  • 🇳🇴 Gas Alarm. Norway’s Equinor warns of potential gas supply risks for Europe, just as UK inflation hits a 15-month low and markets brace for impact. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇺🇸 Safe Bet. Gold holds its recent gains as buyers step in, showing that fear of inflation is not scaring off the crowd just yet. (Bloomberg)
  • 🇺🇸 Stake Out. The moves one step closer to banning Mercedes-Benz 🇩🇪 cars if Chinese ownership tops 15 percent, putting the automaker’s American future on the line. (Die Zeit)
  • 🇺🇸 Crash Course. As Waymo data shows robotaxis slashing serious injuries by over 90 percent, America’s legal lobby fights to keep car crash lawsuits alive and lucrative. (Startupper)
  • 🇺🇸 Capital Gains. 1789 Capital, run by Donald Trump Jr. and Omeed Malik, cashes in on companies boosted by Trump administration policies, with Polymarket’s value jumping 50-fold. (New York Times)
  • 🇳🇿 Flight of the Kiwis. New Zealand faces a growing brain drain as thousands of skilled workers head to Australia for higher pay and easier entry, fueling election-year anxiety about economic growth. (Bloomberg)
  • 🌏 Current Affairs. Rising tensions in the Strait of Hormuz and a brutal heatwave have Asian countries racing to secure LNG supplies before prices spike. (Bloomberg)
  • 🌍 World on Pause. The World Bank now expects global economic growth to drop from 2.9% to 1.3% in 2024, as renewed US-Iran tensions threaten to trigger inflation and debt crises. (Boursier)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • 🇬🇧 Fare Enough. The UK government claims its new £2 bus fare cap is fully funded, despite critics questioning how £454M in spending will actually be covered. (The Guardian)
  • 🇬🇧 Liquid Assets. Matthew Wright, ex-boss of Southern Water, is charged with plotting to falsify water tests to save the company millions in penalties. The regulators are not letting this one flow by. (Bbc)
  • 🇬🇧 Power Play. Prime Minister Andy Burnham promises to cut £45 from annual household electricity bills by scrapping VAT, offset by canceling Starmer’s digital ID plan, itself allegedly unfunded. (Bbc)
  • 🇬🇧 Bank Holiday. Santander UK halts further branch closures for at least 18 months, sparing 480 sites from the chopping block. At least for now. (FinExtra)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Trade Off. Ron Wyden introduces a bill to limit President Trump’s ability to set tariffs unilaterally, demanding congressional oversight after a 50% Canada tariff move. (Cnbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Tax-Free for All. A new ETF strategy is the latest craze among the rich, letting investors avoid capital gains taxes with a legal sleight of hand. (Bloomberg)

🏢 Real Estate

  • 🇷🇴 Ctrl-Alt-Deleted. A hacker wiped Romania’s national land registry, freezing all property transactions and exposing a €135M digital project with €305K spent on security. (Startupper)
  • 🇺🇸 Freeze Frame. New York City landlords are suing to overturn Mayor Mamdani’s flagship rent freeze, calling the process a sham and the board anything but independent. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇨🇺 Room Service Denied. Spanish hotel giant Meliá 🇪🇸 is shutting down all operations in Cuba after 36 years, citing US sanctions and mounting local hardships. (Les Echos)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 House Rules. Mortgage rates hit their highest since last August at 6.69%, yet a 6% jump in purchase applications suggests buyers are finding new leverage as sellers blink first. (Cnbc)

🔗 On-chain

  • 🇬🇧 Stake and Mirrors. George Cottrell’s betting account took in nearly $9M in crypto from mysterious wallets, wagered on Trump, and cashed out millions, leaving the true source of Farage’s benefactor shrouded in secrecy. (Financial Times)

💱 Listed Markets

  • 🇩🇪 Cum-cum shot. German prosecutors raided Deutsche Bank 🇩🇪 headquarters in Frankfurt as part of a probe into Postbank’s alleged €350M cum-cum tax fraud, with one current Deutsche Bank executive under scrutiny. (Die Zeit)
  • 🇪🇸 Fee-ling the Pinch. Santander 🇪🇸 saw quarterly profits rise to €3.5B, but a €250M restructuring charge from its TSB 🇬🇧 takeover kept gains in check, proving acquisitions come with a price tag. (Financial Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Cashbot. Alphabet 🇺🇸 reported its first negative free cash flow in over a decade, burning $5.9B as AI infrastructure spending outpaces its soaring revenues. (Bbc)
  • 🇺🇸 Margin Call. Tesla 🇺🇸 saw profits shrink to $1.11B last quarter while spending on ambitious ventures climbed, making investors wonder if the future is still on track. (Die Zeit)
  • 🇺🇸 Value Proposition. Tesla 🇺🇸 remains the world’s most valuable automaker by market cap, outshining its rivals despite selling fewer cars and offering fewer models. (Wall Street Journal)
  • 🇺🇸 Feed Me Not. Reddit’s stock slid as the company considers pulling the plug on Google’s use of its content for AI, with search traffic already in freefall. (Cnbc)
  • 🇨🇳 Driving Ambition. Volkswagen’s Carizon ramps up its partnership with Horizon Robotics to speed up autonomous vehicle development in China, putting Silicon Valley on notice. (Wall Street Journal)
🇺🇸 United States
  • 🇺🇸 Global Puff. Philip Morris International 🇺🇸 saw revenue rise last quarter, with overseas markets and Zyn sales offsetting a drop in earnings per share. (Wall Street Journal)

🛎️ Big Deals (M&A)

  • Mitigram 🇬🇧 acquires Export Enterprises 🇫🇷, a trade intelligence platform for banks and corporates, taking on core assets including Trade Pilot, Trade Club Connect and the Trade Resources Platform.
  • ETG 🇬🇧 acquires Lightning Reach 🇬🇧, a fintech-for-good govtech platform serving 100+ UK organisations. Over 300,000 people have unlocked £25M+ since launch in Dec 2021, the company quadrupled ARR, remains cash positive, founder stays on the board and COO Rhiannon Sheridan becomes CEO.
  • Amit Bhatia 🇬🇧 acquires a minority stake in Liverpool FC 🇬🇧 from Fenway Sports Group at a $6B valuation.
  • OCS Group International 🇬🇧 acquires Mitie Group 🇬🇧 for $4.2B, CD&R-backed facilities management deal at a 47% premium.
  • Metro Bank 🇬🇧 explores a $2.7B merger with Aldermore 🇬🇧, which was put up for sale by South Africa’s FirstRand.
  • Intersnack 🇩🇪 acquires Utz Brands 🇺🇸 for $2.9B at a 90% premium.
  • TKMS 🇩🇪 renounces buying German Naval Yards 🇩🇪, the German subsidiary of CMN Naval.
  • SoundCloud 🇩🇪 acquires Nina Protocol 🇺🇸 months after its shutdown. Will take ownership of Nina’s editorial archive and genre map, offer a migration tool and complimentary SoundCloud Artist subscriptions through year-end.
  • Iberdrola 🇪🇸 to buy an 80% stake in Caruna Group 🇫🇮 for $2.3B.
  • BCC-Grupo Cooperativo Cajamar 🇪🇸 expresses interest in a merger with CTT–Correios de Portugal 🇵🇹’s banking unit.
  • Einride 🇸🇪 acquires Flipturn 🇺🇸 for $38M, an EV charging software startup (founded 2022. Had raised $15.5M).
  • Vaar Energi 🇳🇴 will buy BlueNord 🇳🇴 for $1.33B, an energy-sector deal.
  • Prologis 🇺🇸 acquires Segro 🇬🇧 with a best-and-final offer of £14bn (1,032p/share) including a £3.5bn cash alternative. Segro investors would own ~9% of Prologis if cash option fully taken.
  • AMD 🇺🇸 invests up to $5B in Anthropic 🇺🇸 and will deploy 2GW of AMD Instinct MI450 GPUs in Helios rack-scale solutions.
  • BlackRock’s GIP 🇺🇸 and MGX 🇦🇪 invest $5B more in Aligned Data Centers 🇺🇸 following their $40B acquisition.
  • Arlington Capital Partners 🇺🇸 acquires Gooch & Housego 🇬🇧 in a $462M LBO at a 40% premium.
  • Platinum Equity 🇺🇸 acquires about 50% stake in Nestlé’s European water business (Perrier/San Pellegrino) 🇨🇭 in a joint venture valuing the unit at close to €5B, amid legal controversies and prior purity scandals.
  • Paramount 🇺🇸 acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery 🇺🇸 for $81B is approved by the European Union, subject to offered commitments.
  • Cardinal Health 🇺🇸 acquires AdaptHealth 🇺🇸’s diabetes health business for a combined $360M with the Strive Medical deal.
  • Nubank 🇧🇷 acquires Banco Porto Real de Investimentos 🇧🇷, a 1992-founded Rio de Janeiro bank operating in wholesale credit. Acquisition pending Brazil central bank approval.
  • FountainVest Partners 🇨🇳 considers sale of Rokin 🇨🇳, a logistics business.
  • Japan Hotel REIT 🇯🇵 acquires TPG 🇺🇸 for $860M.
  • JSW Group 🇮🇳 in advanced talks to take a majority stake in Skoda Auto Volkswagen India 🇮🇳.
  • Re-Pie Portföy Yönetimi AŞ 🇹🇷 acquires Vivense Teknoloji Hizmetleri ve Ticaret AŞ 🇹🇷. Actera’s $130M 2020 investment in Vivense was transferred to Re-Pie, Vivense operates 87 stores and serves BE/NL/LU.
🇺🇸 United States
  • The Veterinary Angel Network for Entrepreneurs (VANE) 🇺🇸 invests in PawPay 🇺🇸, PawPay becomes VANE’s newest portfolio company bringing point-of-care pet insurance payments to veterinary medicine.
  • Falfurrias Growth Partners 🇺🇸 invests in FactorLab 🇺🇸, a growth investment to accelerate AI-powered safety and operations risk intelligence across construction, utilities, energy, and industrial sectors.
  • Crest Rock Partners 🇺🇸 announces a strategic growth investment in Andrew Site Work 🇺🇸, a Southwest Florida infrastructure and underground utility contractor.
  • Knox Lane 🇺🇸 acquires Cross Country Healthcare 🇺🇸, deal completed July 21, 2026. Joel Tremblay appointed CEO.
  • NovaGold 🇨🇦 acquires Paulson’s stake in an Alaska gold mine 🇺🇸

🧳 Private Markets & VC

  • 🇬🇧 Pounds of Interest. Revolut 🇬🇧 hits a $115B valuation through a secondary share sale for employees, putting its founder on track for a billionaire bonus if targets are met. (Sifted)
  • 🇪🇺 Eye Openers. Science Corporation has received the green light from European regulators to sell its PRIMA device, a brain-implant chip that helps the blind read, draw, and play games again. Max Hodak’s new venture is hoping vision can pay the bills. (TechCrunch)
  • 🇺🇸 Fable Theft. officials allege Moonshot AI copied Anthropic’s Fable model to create Kimi K3, calling it a high-tech case of intellectual property looting. (Le Monde)
  • 🇺🇸 Exit Strategy. Semi-liquid private credit funds are under pressure from investor outflows, giving secondary funds a rare chance to scoop up loans and fund stakes on favorable terms. (Financial Times)
  • 🇺🇸 Artificial Inflation. OpenAI will spend $750B on infrastructure by 2030, launching a $20B Georgia data center while its Stargate project stalls and energy questions multiply. (TechCrunch)
  • 🇺🇸 Human After All. Substack now flags which newsletters are AI-generated using Pangram detection, inviting readers to see just how human their favorite writers really are. (TechCrunch)
  • 🇺🇸 Chip Shot. AMD 🇺🇸 will invest $5B in Anthropic and supply massive orders of AI chips, aiming to challenge Nvidia’s dominance one GPU at a time. (Le Figaro)
  • 🇳🇿 Rocket Man. Sir Peter Beck’s Rocket Lab 🇳🇿 is buying US-based Iridium 🇺🇸 for $8B, putting New Zealand’s space upstart in direct competition with Musk and Bezos for satellite internet dominance. (Financial Times)

Fundraising

  • Atoms 🇺🇸 (Robotics): $1.7B (Andreessen Horowitz, Bain Capital, Fifth Wall, Uber)
  • Ant International 🇨🇳 (Fintech): $1.2B (Ant Group, Alibaba, and others)
  • Meshy (AI): $400M
  • Sila 🇺🇸 (Battery): $300M (Atreides Management, Sutter Hill Ventures, 8VC, Bessemer Venture Partners, Matrix Partners, T. Rowe Price Associates)
  • Augustus 🇺🇸 (Fintech): $180M (Tiger Global, Hummingbird, QED, David Velez, Karim Atiyeh, Sean Neville, Alex Bouaziz, Victor Cardenas, Alan Chang, Balaji Srinivasan, Farooq Malik, Gavin Uberti, Victor Riparbelli, Alexander Rinke, Jamie Cox, Jan Oberhauser, Soma Capital, Road Capital Management, CMT Digital, Brevan Howard Digital, Variant)
  • Humanoid 🇬🇧 (Robotics): $152M (Prime Movers Lab, Schaeffler, Bosch, Fubon Financial Holding Venture Capital, Aglaé Ventures)
  • Crystalys Therapeutics 🇺🇸 (Biotech): $130M (Frazier Life Sciences, Wellington Management, HBM Healthcare Investments, Soleus Capital, Cormorant Asset Management, Trails Edge Capital Partners, Pivotal bioVenture Partners, KCap Biotechnology Fund, Novo Holdings, SR One, Catalys Pacific, Perceptive Xontogeny Venture Funds, Lightstone Ventures, AN Venture Partners, funds managed by abrdn Inc., KB Investments, Pontifax, Longwood Fund, Alexandria Venture Investments, Wedbush Healthcare Partners, Prebys Ventures Fund)
  • Candid Health 🇺🇸 (Healthcare): $120M (Sixth Street Growth, Oak HC/FT, 8VC, Y Combinator)
  • Arrakis 🇬🇧 (AI): $38M (Blossom Capital, Accel, Olivier Pomel, Olivier Godement, Junaid Hussain)
  • Gritt 🇺🇸 (Robotics): $34M (Obvious Ventures, Union Square Ventures, Active Impact Investments, First Round Capital, Climactic, Congruent Ventures, VSC Ventures)
  • Greenjets 🇬🇧 (Aerospace): £30m
  • Natural 🇺🇸 (AI): $30M (Forerunner Ventures, Aarmaan Ali, Barış Akış, Ramtin Naimi, Nichole Wischoff, Darragh Buckley, Pablo Palafox, Paul Klein IV, Akshay Kothari, Henri Stern, Max Segall, Pete Koomen, Dylan Babbs, Jake Paul, Logan Paul, Brex, Art Levy)
  • SkyPilot 🇺🇸 (AI): $20M (Lux Capital, Amplify Partners, Coatue Management, Foundation Capital, Race Capital, The House Fund, Ali Ghodsi, Jeff Dean, Guillermo Rauch, Amjad Masad, Clem Delangue, Tristan Handy)
  • Passionfroot 🇩🇪 (Creator marketplace): $15M (Insight Partners, Creandum, Supernode Global, s16vc)
  • Modo Energy 🇬🇧 (Energy): €14.9M (CIBC Innovation Banking)
  • Yope 🇬🇧 (Social): $12.3M (Northzone, Inovo, Redseed, Geek Ventures)
  • Circular Materials 🇮🇹 (ClimateTech): €11.8M (CDP Venture Capital, European Innovation Council Fund, EIT RawMaterials, 360 Capital, Corbites, Lumar S.r.l.)
  • Inner Logic 🇺🇸 (Medtech): $11.5M (General Catalyst, Bison Ventures, J2VP, Defined, PTX, Valia Ventures, Page One, Alumni Ventures, Flare)
  • Brenus Pharma 🇫🇷 (Biotech): €11M (Sambrinvest, Korea Omega Investment Corp, Angelor, UI Investissement, Crédit Agricole (CACE Création, CACF Capital Innovation), Noshaq, Orsa, BIO JAG, Bpifrance)
  • deltaVision 🇩🇪 (SpaceTech): €10.2M (KT Ventures, Valemount Capital, Futury Capital, industrial family offices, private investors)
  • Bluecore Energy 🇺🇸 (Nuclear): $10M (Slauson & Co.)
  • Tikva Allocell 🇸🇬 (Biotech): $8M (Kantharos Capital)
  • Cordant 🇺🇸 (Fintech): $8M (Motive Partners, Oak HC/FT, Bitso, Paxos, Bankless VC, FJ Labs, SignalFire, Quona, Next Stage, Selah Ventures, Flatironx, Nascent Ventures, Silvercircle Ventures, Generative Ventures)
  • Vikk AI 🇺🇸 (Legal): $4.2M (Ronson Shamoun, Joe Samo, Brad Jowell, Cooper Collins, other individual investors)
  • StrongestLayer 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $4.1M (Inovia Capital, Sorenson Capital, LaunchPod, Alumni Ventures, Chris Key)
  • Cascade 🇺🇸 (Construction): $3.5M (Andreessen Horowitz Speedrun, Ada Ventures, Snowball VC)
  • Foncière agricole d’Occitanie 🇫🇷 (Agriculture): €2.7M (La Banque des Territoires)
  • Ossprey 🇬🇧 (Cybersecurity): $2.65M (Episode 1 Ventures, Osney Capital, Octopus Ventures)
  • Immitra Bio 🇨🇭 (Biotech): €2.58M
  • beatsquares 🇩🇪 (AI): $2M (IBB Ventures, XTR Capital, ddvg, V‑Ventures, Veronica Foundation, business angels)
  • La Filature Colbert 🇫🇷 (Textiles): €350K (Baltis, Magellim)
  • Sowilo 🇮🇸 (AI): undisclosed (Kría, TGC Capital, angel investors from Iceland and Australia)
  • Mentelem 🇪🇸 (Healthtech): €600,000

Fund Watch

  • Clipway 🇺🇸: $6.4B (debut secondaries fund)
  • Golden Gate Capital 🇺🇸: $1.5B (Fund VII, private equity — $2.5B total investable including co-investments)
  • TruArc Partners 🇺🇸: $1.2B (Fund V, 5th PE fund for middle-market specialty manufacturing & business services. Closed above $1.1B target)
  • Dimension Capital 🇺🇸: $800M (3rd fund, VC at intersection of science and compute)
  • E2D (Earlybird & AVP) 🇪🇺: €500M (dual-use & defence tech growth fund, €500M target. Anchor LP Airbus Defence & Space)
  • Avenue Growth Partners 🇺🇸: $155M (Avenue Growth Partners Fund II, 2nd early growth equity fund, closed at hard cap)
  • GPIF 🇯🇵: $123M (commitment to Advantage Partners’ domestic PE fund)
  • Resist.UA 🇪🇪: €50M (Resist 2.0, European early-stage DefenceTech & dual-use fund, operational support)

🔔IPO

  • Frasers 🇬🇧 (Retail): raised its stake in Hugo Boss to 30.3%.
  • Equinor 🇳🇴 (Energy): hiked its quarterly buyback as Q2 adjusted operating income rose to $11.48B.
  • Axiom Biosciences 🇺🇸 (Biotech): considering a Hong Kong IPO.
  • Semight 🇨🇳 (Semiconductors): mulling a Hong Kong listing after its stock surged about 2,200%.
  • InMobi 🇮🇳 (Adtech): backed by SoftBank, seeking to raise $1B an India IPO at a $6B valuation.
🇺🇸 United States
  • Nth Cycle 🇺🇸 (Critical minerals): to list on the NYSE via Kensington SPAC in a deal valuing the company at $585M and raising up to $330M (up to $230M in trust plus a $100M PIPE, $40M committed).
  • Penske Automotive Group 🇺🇸 (Auto retail): agreed to be taken private for about $3.78B, at $210 a share.

🧳 Debt

  • Covivio 🇫🇷: placed €500M of green bonds due July 2033.
  • Verda 🇫🇮: signed a €22M InvestEU-backed loan from NIB months after raising €102.5M.
  • JPMorgan 🇺🇸: in talks to fund part of Japan’s $550B investment package in the.
  • SoftBank 🇯🇵: secured $5.4B in loans backing its robotics bet.
  • Danantara 🇮🇩: hired banks for a second dollar bond sale.
  • Pakistan 🇵🇰: picked banks for its global bond and sukuk programs.
  • Kuwait 🇰🇼: received bids topping $9B for a bond sale.
  • Tanzania 🇹🇿: gauging investor appetite for its first hard-currency bond sale since 2013 via a London non-deal roadshow.
🇺🇸 United States
  • Galaxy Digital 🇨🇦: seeks $3.5B of debt for a Texas data center.

❌ Failures

  • Diageo 🇬🇧: instituting 20–30% cuts in some teams as part of a cost‑reduction drive linked to a €625M « Accelerate » savings target (29,000 employees).
  • Victoria 🇬🇧: the UK carpet maker’s bid to restructure $400M of debt is facing resistance from HSBC Holdings.
  • Attestor 🇬🇧: plans to acquire the remaining 49% of German leisure airline Condor from Germany in Q3.
  • Aston Martin 🇬🇧: struck a £550mn loan from HPS secured on certain assets despite objections from existing creditors.
  • Carlyle 🇺🇸: in talks to hand sustainability consultancy Anthesis to private credit lender Bridgepoint.
  • Amazon 🇺🇸: is cutting roles in its AGI unit amid broader layoffs (30,000+ since October) while forecasting $200B in capex and raising at least $25B in bonds.
  • Monday.com 🇮🇱: cutting ~630 jobs (20%) and expects $45–55M in restructuring charges.
  • KPC Group 🇰🇼: part of a JV cleared to buy Oceanwide Plaza’s ‘Graffiti Towers’ for $517M and complete it at a total cost of $800M.
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
  • Varta 🇩🇪: creditors will take control of a unit after rescue talks failed.
🇺🇸 United States
  • Varta 🇩🇪: creditors will take control of a unit after rescue talks failed.

🎯 For a Few More Minutes…

  • 🇩🇪 Paper Trail. After years of restricted access, Die ZEIT releases millions of SA and SS personnel files, offering a new look at the architects of Nazi crimes. (Die Zeit)
  • 🇺🇸 Note Worthy. 3M, best known for office supplies, just landed Microsoft certification for its optical connectivity tech, making it a surprise player in the AI infrastructure race. (Cnbc)
  • 🇨🇱 Moonshot. Astronomers have identified a possible exomoon orbiting a brown dwarf 71 light-years away, marking a new milestone in the search for worlds beyond our solar system. (Le Monde)
  • 🇰🇷 Bugs on the Menu. Seoul’s Gangnam dining scene gets a legal twist as a Michelin-starred chef is prosecuted for using dried ants in a signature dessert. (Le Parisien)
  • 🌍 Smash Hit. Orcas have been seen slamming sunfish until they burst, leading researchers to wonder if this is hunting or just whale play. (The Guardian)

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