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The warning label got better marketing than the product.
Also available:🇫🇷 Édition française
Good morning!
A man paid to break things for a bank’s security desk spent a week trying to break the most feared model on the market, then told me what he found. Capable, quick, genuinely useful. Nothing to fear. That quiet verdict never makes the launch video, which arrived wrapped in benchmarks chosen the way an estate agent picks photographs, scoring beautifully on exams nobody sits and chores nobody assigns, while the maker let it be known the truly dreadful powers had been leashed for the good of mankind. A claim with the singular charm of being impossible to disprove. Beneath the mystique, one real talent survives. The model is unusually good at finding flaws in other people’s software, a trick that matters to almost no one outside offensive security. Such a capability is a lockpick, and lockpicks have a known protocol: trusted hands only. Anthropic already runs that protocol for its top tier, Mythos, kept from the public for a few approved partners. When a rival found a narrow way into the public model, the same opening that sits untouched in GPT-5.5, the company skipped its own list and pulled the global switch, going dark for every human on earth. Stagecraft dressed as prudence.
The stagecraft reached its finest hour once the lights went out. Ordered offline by a Friday letter from Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, binding its own foreign staff as tightly as anyone abroad, Anthropic turned the blackout into a shop window. Anyone opening a chat now meets a tasteful notice that the model is currently unavailable, with a ‘read more’ inviting the curious to learn how dangerous their chatbot briefly was. Few houses get to sell menace as a feature and invoice it as an apology. The grammar of buttons and red telephones, lifted from the bomb, handled the rest, days after the firm filed to go public on a $965B valuation.
Across the Atlantic the blackout was a gift to every politician with a dormant opinion on sovereignty, though their grievance, flags aside, was the interruption of the dependency, not its existence. A former French minister mourned a continent renting its intelligence from a landlord free to change the locks, then prescribed Mistral and a fistful of national clouds. The Dutch contribution was more honest: a populist who skipped the homily and simply demanded his American chatbot back. None of it survives August, when the next model lands and the circus reopens with fresh benchmarks and the same warning that the end is near.
The model will be forgotten. The reflex built around it will not. An industry just watched a near-trillion-dollar fortune raised on the promise that a product might be too dangerous to sell, and drew the obvious lesson: fear scales, utility doesn’t. The next lab hauled offline by Washington will send a thank-you note.
🗞️ Top Story
- 🇬🇧 Fleet Street Justice. The UK intercepted and boarded the sanctioned Russian oil tanker Smyrtos in the Channel, showing Moscow’s workaround tankers are now headline targets. (BBC)
- 🇮🇹 Exit Strategy. Far-right demonstrators filled Rome to demand mass « remigration » of immigrants, as Casapound and allies push for expulsions and stricter assimilation rules. The rhetoric leaves little room for nuance. (Le Monde)
- 🇷🇴 Tomac Out, Vestea In. With Eugen Tomac stepping aside, Adrian Vestea is tasked with forming a new pro-Western government amid Romania’s ongoing political turmoil. (Le Monde)
- 🇪🇺 Cluster Luck. The officially opens accession talks with Ukraine and Moldova this week, moving both countries one step closer to membership after Hungary dropped its veto. (Le Parisien)
- 🇨🇭 Swiss Miss. Swiss voters rejected a plan to cap the population at 10M, choosing economic ties with the EU over anti-immigration fears and Brexit-style drama. (Cnbc)
- 🇲🇩 Steel Nerves. Maia Sandu, the first woman to lead Moldova, faces Russian meddling with calm warnings and a steady hand that barely flinches. (Le Parisien)
- 🇺🇸 Flow State. Trump abandons his goal of regime change in Iran, instead celebrating the reopening of Hormuz and a return to pre-strike oil flows. (Washington Post)
- 🇺🇸 Stake Fight. President Trump is hosting a UFC event at the White House while holding shares in parent company TKO Group, raising fresh ethics questions about personal gain in public office. (New York Times)
- 🇪🇨 Case Closed. Ecuadorian prosecutor Gloria Bravo, known for probing criminal networks in Manta, was assassinated in a city plagued by drug cartel violence. (Le Temps)
- 🇹🇭 Royal Farewell. Thousands of mourners in Bangkok lined the streets to honor Princess Bajrakitiyabha, who died at 47 after years in a coma. (Spiegel)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Scroll Control. UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer will announce an Australia-style ban restricting teens under 16 from social media and late-night scrolling, citing child safety as his legacy project. (Financial Times)
- 🇬🇧 Priority Boarding. With his defence secretary gone, Starmer doubles down on military spending as his main focus, making it clear he is not stepping aside. (The Guardian)
- 🇬🇧 Phone Alone. Police stopped far-right activist Tommy Robinson at Heathrow after his Russia trip and seized his phones under counter-terrorism laws, leaving his messages on hold. (The Guardian)
- 🇬🇧 Gift Wrapped. Nigel Farage has sharply reduced his press appearances after news broke of an undeclared £5M gift from crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, now under parliamentary investigation. (Financial Times)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Name Drop. After losing a legal battle, the Kennedy Center stripped Trump’s name from its building, ending a short-lived rebranding and reigniting partisan theatrics in DC. (Cnbc)
- 🇺🇸 Polling Place. Sarah Longwell, once a Republican strategist, now studies voter reactions and steers The Bulwark 🇺🇸 for the politically unmoored. (Wall Street Journal)
🏛️ Economy
- 🇬🇧 Price and Prejudice. Lidl 🇩🇪 now ranks fifth among UK supermarkets, thanks to shoppers choosing bargains over brand loyalty in a country squeezed by inflation. (Le Monde)
- 🇬🇧 Agent Provocateurs. UK OnlyFans agencies control, threaten, and abuse creators while taking up to 70% of their earnings, exposing a pattern of exploitation the platform has failed to stop. (BBC)
- 🇬🇧 Consulting the Oracle. KPMG’s “Redefining excellence in the age of agentic AI” cited AI-powered transformations at UBS and NHS, but the stories were hallucinated by AI itself, not actual clients. (Financial Times)
- 🇩🇪 Tank You. After Berlin buries the SCAF fighter jet project, Rheinmetall’s CEO openly questions whether the Franco-German future tank will survive, blaming Paris for the uncertainty.
- 🇪🇺 Field of Greens. The European Commission proposes €540M in aid for farmers hit by soaring fertilizer costs, hoping to keep harvests and tempers steady. (Boursier)
- 🇪🇺 Rate Expectations. ECB officials say another interest rate hike in July is still on the table as inflation stays stubbornly high across the eurozone. (Boursier)
- 🇳🇴 Cold Call. Norway’s Prime Minister publicly dares the EU to explain why US and Gulf gas are supposedly “safer” than Norwegian Arctic supplies, as Oslo lobbies Brussels to lift its Arctic drilling ban. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Peak Concern. Ken Warsh inherits a economy where the smooth path of falling rates now looks more like a steep and uncertain drop. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Copperfield. Copper prices jumped after a US-Iran peace deal calmed markets and revived hopes for global growth, putting commodity bulls back in the spotlight. (Bloomberg)
- 🇯🇵 Peak Performance. The Bank of Japan prepares to hike rates to levels last seen in 1995, hoping higher borrowing costs will tame inflation without stalling growth.
- 🇸🇬 Gold Standard. Singapore will launch a gold clearing system and central bank vault service this year, aiming to become Asia’s premier precious metals hub as global banks sign on. (Financial Times)
- 🇦🇪 Back to the Future. Dubai’s streets are packed and schools are open again, yet the city’s new normal comes with a side of anxiety after recent regional attacks. (Washington Post)
- 🇮🇱 Boom Under Fire. Israel’s economy defies war logic with surging tech exports, a 100% stock market rally, and unemployment at 2.9%, all while missiles fly. (Les Echos)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Fiscal Frontline. Dan Jarvis urges the UK government to prioritize defence spending, stepping in after John Healey quit over Labour’s reluctance to fund military upgrades. (BBC)
- 🇬🇧 Spring Backward. The UK economy shrank by 0.1% in April after a strong first quarter, marking its first contraction since August and ending the rebound narrative. (Wall Street Journal)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Rust Belted. Polls show Trump’s economic approval rating among blue-collar white voters has plummeted below 40 percent, leaving Republicans scrambling to patch up the cracks in their foundation. (New York Times)
🏢 Real Estate
- 🇩🇪 Debt Revival. Germany’s property sector is once again facing a wave of debt troubles after a four-year lull, as refinancing pressures return to the spotlight. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 AI in the Sky. The Utah mega data centre, double Manhattan’s size, promises jobs but sparks a rare rural alliance against tech’s land and resource grab. (Co)
- 🇺🇸 Main Street Malware. The FBI unveiled a 22,000 square-foot replica town in Huntsville, Alabama, where agents now practice fighting cybercrime in a world that looks suspiciously like ours, minus the actual neighbors. (TechCrunch)
- 🇸🇬 Flat Market. With developers holding back on new projects, Singapore’s new home sales dropped, giving the city-state’s real estate scene a rare quiet spell. (Bloomberg)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Buy British. Overseas buyers have spent £128B snapping up UK companies this year, pushing dealmaking to its highest level since 2007 and making London a bargain bin for global acquirers. (Financial Times)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Gold Rush Hour. Juneau officials are pushing to demolish historic homes on Telephone Hill to build denser housing, sparking fierce resistance from preservationists and locals. (Wall Street Journal)
🔗 On-chain
- 🇺🇸 Block Chained. Sam Bankman-Fried’s 25-year prison sentence for FTX fraud is upheld on appeal, leaving the crypto wunderkind with no exit strategy but time. (Le Monde)
- 🇮🇳 Zelle Out. US bank-owned Zelle will let users send money to India and is prepping a dollar-backed stablecoin for global payments, chasing remittance gold. (FinExtra)
💱 Listed Markets
- 🇨🇭 Reply All. Palantir lost its lawsuit against Swiss magazine Republik, as Zurich’s court rejected nearly all its demands for published counterstatements, leaving the US tech giant footing most of the bill. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Trillion Dollar Baby. With SpaceX’s IPO sending shares up 20 percent, Elon Musk’s fortune rockets past $1T, making inequality look positively retro. (New York Times)
- 🇨🇳 Unfriended. Meta is unwinding its $2B acquisition of Chinese AI startup Manus after Beijing demanded a full separation on national security grounds, halting all data sharing between the companies. (TechCrunch)
- 🇰🇷 Breaking Default. Major Korean broadcaster JTBC fails to meet debt obligations and is slapped with a junk rating, giving “bad news” a new meaning. (Bloomberg)
- 🇮🇷 Crude Awakening. Oil prices tumbled nearly 5% after Pakistan announced a US-Iran deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, with Trump declaring « let the oil flow » and markets bracing for more volatility. (BBC)
🛎️ Big Deals (M&A)
- Barclays 🇬🇧 acquires GoHenry 🇬🇧 from Acorns 🇺🇸. Subject to regulatory approval and expected to complete Q4 2026 (GoHenry’s US operations remain with Acorns; 2M+ young users.
- Permira 🇬🇧 acquires a majority stake in Carbon Disclosure Project 🇬🇧, a corporate environmental transparency non-profit.
- OVHcloud 🇫🇷 enters exclusive negotiations to acquire Gladia 🇫🇷, an AI company.
- Ferretti 🇮🇹 weighs an offer to acquire all or part of The Italian Sea Group 🇮🇹, struggling rival.
- Adyen 🇳🇱 acquires Orb 🇺🇸 for $335M (an all-cash reverse triangular merger. Orb is a San Francisco–headquartered enterprise billing platform founded in 2021).
- Belfius Insurance 🇧🇪 acquires Insurlytech (Leocare) 🇫🇷 (bancassureur buys 100% of the parent of Leocare. Leocare (85 employees) will keep its brand, integration effective July 1.
- EQT 🇸🇪 looks to sell its minority stake in HMI Medical 🇸🇬 for about $600M, a deal in the healthcare sector.
- Eaton 🇮🇪 merges its mobility business with Dana 🇺🇸 in a $5.1B deal, including debt.
- Daniel Křetínský 🇨🇿 is considering acquiring shares from Vanessa Gold 🇬🇧 to become the largest shareholder in West Ham United.
- Paramount Skydance 🇺🇸 to acquire Warner Bros Discovery 🇺🇸 for $111B. Receives US Department of Justice antitrust approval, combining assets including HBO, CNN, CBS and Paramount Pictures.
- KKR 🇺🇸 launches Helix Digital Infrastructure 🇺🇸, an AI infrastructure company with over $10B in committed capital from Kuwait SWF KIA, Nvidia, and Vistra.
- KKR 🇺🇸 acquires a majority stake in accounting firm Crowe 🇺🇸 for $3B.
- Elliott 🇺🇸 joins bidders including JD.com 🇨🇳 to acquire The Very Group 🇬🇧 in takeover talks that could value it at $2.7B.
- Blackstone 🇺🇸 is in talks to acquire $2B-listed commercial REIT H&R REIT 🇨🇦
- Figure 🇺🇸 agreed to acquire Kiavi 🇺🇸 in a $717M deal, a blockchain-based lender buying a residential transition loan lender.
- L Catterton 🇺🇸 in talks to buy a stake in Hyrox 🇩🇪, Sky reports.
- Rox Capital Partners 🇺🇸 acquires Interstate Threaded Products 🇺🇸, a Texas-based PE firm launching an industrial fastener platform with a specialty threaded fasteners manufacturer serving North American industrial markets.
- NTT Global Data Centers 🇯🇵 seeks to raise $1B in fresh capital to fund data center projects in the US.
- AHS Properties 🇦🇪 acquires Shangri‑La (Dubai hotel) 🇦🇪 for $300M, Dubai luxury five-star hotel.
🧳 Private Markets & VC
- 🇫🇷 Vive la Silicon. Arthur Mensch announces Mistral 🇫🇷 is considering making proprietary chips, signaling Europe’s AI ambitions go well beyond software. (Cnbc)
- 🇦🇹 Crystal Clear. Swarovski CEO Alexis Nasard bets on « modern luxury » and celebrity tie-ins with Ariana Grande and Disney to restore the 131-year-old brand’s profits. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Claude Out. Anthropic has blocked Mythos AI from using its models following a sweeping directive, turning off the taps with immediate effect. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Access Denied. Anthropic shut down its Fable 5 and Mythos 5 A.I. systems for all customers after the Trump administration demanded a foreign access ban over security fears. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Margin Call. Andrew Yang argues that lowering living costs is the real startup goldmine, launching Noble Mobile to prove profits and savings can coexist. (TechCrunch)
- 🇻🇪 Oil Rushmore. US investment firms are scrambling to pour billions into Venezuela’s oil sector after Trump’s $100B call, with Lionheart Capital leading early moves to list Venezuelan oil assets on Nasdaq. (Financial Times)
- 🇨🇳 Rocket Envy. As SpaceX prepares for a historic IPO in the US, China’s 600 private space firms watch closely, dreaming of their own launch window. (Les Echos)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Frankly Forgiven. Charlie Javice, convicted of defrauding JPMorgan Chase by inflating her startup’s numbers, is now seeking a Trump pardon and a clean slate. (Cnbc)
Fundraising
- Prometheus 🇺🇸 (Physical AI): $12B (Jeff Bezos, JPMorgan Chase, Goldman Sachs, BlackRock)
- Mistral AI 🇫🇷 (AI): €3B (rumored)
- Neura Robotics 🇩🇪 (Robotics): $1.4B
- KOHO 🇨🇦 (Fintech): $130M CAD (Mubadala, Savano Capital, Tobi Lütke, Michael Linford, Portage Ventures, Drive Capital, BDC Capital, HOOPP, Eldridge)
- Theker 🇪🇸 (Robotics): $85M (CRV, Samsung, Aglaé Ventures, Inditex)
- Current 🇺🇸 (Fintech): $80M (Springcoast Partners, Andreessen Horowitz, Tiger Global Management, Avenir, Foundation Capital, Wellington Management, Sapphire Ventures, QED Investors, General Catalyst, Cross River)
- PhoenixAI 🇺🇸 (AI): $80M (Sky9 Capital, Atypical Ventures, Olive Technology Ventures)
- Endurance Energy 🇺🇸 (Geothermal): $54M (Founders Fund, Ascend, Construct Capital, Felicis Ventures, First Round Capital, Point72 Ventures, Riot Ventures, Voyager Ventures)
- Hypha (AI): $50M
- CameraMatics 🇮🇪 (AI): €49M (Blume Equity, Ireland Strategic Investment Fund, Goodbody Capital Partners)
- Dapple 🇺🇸 (AI infrastructure): $30M (The Raptor Group, Ion Pacific)
- Equal AI 🇮🇳 (AI): $30M (Prosus Ventures, Tomales Bay Capital, Think Investments, Valiant Fund, Sameer Nigam, Zubin Bharti Mittal, Anshu Sharma, Sandhya Devanathan, Sridhar Pinnapureddy)
- Atana Elements 🇺🇸 (Climate): $27.5M (Borusan Ventures, Lowercarbon Capital)
- Jedify 🇺🇸 (AI): $24M (Norwest, Snowflake Ventures, S Capital VC, Cerca Partners, Oceans Ventures)
- Orbio 🇪🇸 (HR): $21M
- SyntheticFi 🇺🇸 (Fintech): $13M (Y Combinator, Social Leverage, NextGen VP, The Compound Capital Fund)
- Corca Research 🇺🇸 (AI, Math): $7.8M
- ChatSee.ai 🇺🇸 (AI): $6.5M (True Ventures, First Rays Venture Partners, Seven Hill Ventures, industry veterans)
- Rejuvenate Bio 🇺🇸 (Biotech): $6M (VCapital, Merck Animal Health, Connecticut Innovations, Digitalis)
- Fearn 🇺🇸 (Legaltech): $5.5M (Kindred Ventures, a16z speedrun, Designer Fund, Essence VC)
- Chptr 🇺🇸 (Media): $5.5M (CityRock, Tribute Technology, iHeartMedia, Sinclair, Hearst)
Fund Watch
- Partners Group 🇨🇭: $650M (5th real estate secondaries fund, first close)
- SparkLabs Group 🇰🇷: $600M
- Digital Asset 🇺🇸: $355M (growth round led by a16zcrypto. Canton. Institutional onchain infrastructure)
- Jinger Zhao 🇺🇸: $300M (z Star Research, Asia-focused quant hedge fund. Seed capital from Blackstone)
- Kos Biotechnology Partners 🇬🇷: $123M (inaugural global life sciences fund, life sciences VC. First dedicated life sciences fund in Greece)
- Fonds européen d’investissement (FEI) 🇪🇺: €25M (pan‑European agri-food VC fund, seed & Series A)
🔔IPO
- Flutter Entertainment 🇮🇪 (Gaming): to delist from the London Stock Exchange and trade solely in New York.
- SpaceX 🇺🇸 (Aerospace): valued at over $2,000B after a record $75B IPO.
- Kardigan 🇺🇸 (Biotech): seeking to raise $373M at a $1.4B valuation in an IPO.
- Forbright 🇺🇸 (Banking): raised $140M at a $900M valuation in the first bank IPO this year.
- Minor International 🇹🇭 (Hospitality): weighing a Singapore listing for its restaurant arm instead of Hong Kong.
- Kasapreko 🇬🇭 (Beverages): raised $148M in Ghana’s second IPO this year, more than double its IPO target.
🧳 Debt
- Lloyds Banking Group 🇬🇧: plans to issue an SRT tied to $4.2B of SME loans.
- Bpifrance 🇫🇷: issued €750M inaugural European Secured Note maturing June 25, 2031.
- Dangote Petroleum Refinery & Petrochemicals 🇳🇬: seeking $1B in a private debt placement.
❌ Failures
- Prax Group 🇬🇧: administrators say the CEO ordered £334mn of fake invoices (≈£277mn still outstanding), triggering the group’s collapse.
- Shell France 🇫🇷: announced its 14th layoff plan in ten years, with negotiations to finalise departure terms this week.
- Pleo 🇩🇰: laid off around 50 employees from its offering team as part of ongoing restructuring.
- JBS 🇧🇷: preparing to close its Souderton, Pa., beef plant that employs about 1,700 people and slaughters roughly 2,000 cattle a day.
- Geely 🇨🇳: the automaker plans to shut some units to focus on its Hong Kong-listed arm, the chairman says.
- JoongAng Holdings 🇰🇷: the holding company filed for court rehabilitation amid a deepening liquidity crunch, with units Contentree JoongAng, JoongAng P&I and Megabox joining the filing.
🎯 For a Few More Minutes…
- 🇫🇷 Tile and Error. From Paris to Hong Kong, Invader enthusiasts devote money and vacation days chasing down elusive mosaics for digital bragging rights. (Le Parisien)
- 🇫🇷 Work in Progress. French researchers dissect how video games turn jobs into playful chores, asking if players are just workers in digital disguise. (Le Monde)
- 🇺🇸 The Trillionaire Next Door. Elon Musk’s net worth hits $1.2T after SpaceX’s IPO, making him the world’s first trillionaire and giving inequality critics a new milestone to highlight. (New York Times)