American Exceptionalism, Default Edition
Good morning!
Lending money is a profession of faith, and the faithful occasionally find themselves robbed at the altar. Sovereigns have been stiffing creditors since at least 1340, when Edward III decided Florentine bankers were a luxury rather than a necessity. The practice never quite went out of fashion. A database maintained by the Bank of Canada and Bank of England catalogues every official non-payment since 1960, and the geography is depressingly familiar: Latin America in the 1980s, Africa from the late Cold War, the post-Soviet rubble, and Greece treating itself to two world records in 2012 and 2013, the largest private-sector and official-sector defaults respectively, a rare double.
Default is rarely a question of empty coffers. It is almost always a question of political appetite. The IMF's working definition is pleasingly circular: debt becomes unsustainable when no realistic policy can stabilise the ratio. Translation: when paying back hurts the ruling party more than not paying back hurts everyone else. The arithmetic punishes either choice. Of the 19 democracies that defaulted between 1980 and 2003, 18 saw their governments thrown out at the first opportunity. Life expectancy drops by roughly a year in the decade following default, and poverty rates climb. Haiti, freshly liberated, agreed to pay 300% of GDP to its former French slaveholders only after Parisian gunboats appeared in the harbour. Sovereignty, it turns out, has always been negotiable when the cannons are pointed the right way.
Britain, paragon of fiscal probity, spent three decades on the deadbeat list for refusing either to deliver tanks ordered by the Shah or to refund the upfront cheque to the post-1979 regime. The dispute was tidied up in 2022, conveniently timed with the release of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe from Iranian custody. The United States, meanwhile, hasn't missed a Treasury coupon since 1960, a record that would impress more had Washington not quietly executed in 1933 what scholars rank among history's greatest wealth transfers from creditors to debtors. Congress retroactively voided the gold clauses on roughly $120B of debt, about 180% of GDP, paving the way for a 41% dollar devaluation. The Supreme Court ruled the move unconstitutional and upheld it anyway, 5-4. Justice McReynolds, dissenting, foresaw shame, humiliation, and financial chaos. The next Treasury auction was oversubscribed.
Argentina defaults and earns a decade in the financial sin bin; Washington defaults and the bond market apologises for the inconvenience. Reserve currency status forgives a remarkable quantity of sins. For everyone else, there are gunboats, IMF programmes, and a swift exit from office. Contract law, in sovereign finance, is essentially for the countries that cannot afford to ignore it.
🪙 The Invoice for Dollar Supremacy
Someone pockets the difference, but it's not you.
America's debt crossed $40T on August 18. The $41.1T ceiling set by Donald Trump's own 2025 tax law could be reached as early as late winter. So the White House wants more room. Since late July, it has pressed Senate Republicans for another $5T, good through 2029, before November's midterms can hand the House to Democrats. The same president calls the trade deficit theft. He has it backwards. The deficit is the invoice for dollar supremacy. America settles it in paper, and the world accepts the paper because it trusts the issuer. Fighting the invoice while spending the trust is a novel way to run a franchise.
Pliny the Elder misread the same invoice. India, he grumbled, drained at least 50M sesterces a year from Rome, and he blamed luxury and women. Rome paid in gold and silver, and Indian traders took the coins for their metal. Some even slashed them with a chisel, apparently to test what was inside. Rome enjoyed no comparable privilege. Its money crossed the ocean as metal, not as a promise. Nobody takes a chisel to a Treasury bond. Trust does the chisel's work, and trust is the asset now under attack.
The cure has worked about as well as leeches. The trade deficit reached $901B in 2025, barely dented by a year of tariffs. In February, the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 that a 1977 sanctions law never gave the president the power to impose them, and the Penn Wharton Budget Model put potential refunds at up to $175B. By May, refunds outran collections and net customs receipts turned negative. The dollar rebounded to 57.13% of global reserves in Q1 2026, still far below the 70%-plus it commanded in 2000. Central banks are not fleeing. They are checking where the exits are.
Dollar supremacy rests on three legs, all made of trust. The first is protection. On pre-1914 data, an alliance lifted the protector's share of a partner's reserves by about 30 points, and every alliance turned into a transaction weakens that reflex. The second is Treasury debt deep enough to serve the world and disciplined enough to stay beyond question. The Congressional Budget Office projects a $1.9T deficit this fiscal year and about $1T in net interest. The supply is intact. The discipline is not. The third is institutions, and the Fed's independence is now a presidential grievance. In March, primary dealers had to absorb nearly a quarter of a 2-year auction, against an 11% average. By July, buyers were back. Auctions like that do not end reserve currencies. They are how doubt starts to carry a price. The denarius lost its silver over the two centuries following Nero's reform of AD 64, slowly enough to pass for calm. Coins outlast the men who debase them. Monetary supremacy does not.
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🗞️ Top Story
- 🇳🇱 Track Record. Suspected sabotage brought Dutch rail traffic to a halt on Tuesday, with ProRail reporting objects deliberately placed on tracks across the country. (BBC)
- 🇧🇪 GaN of Interest. Belgian authorities arrested a dual-national ex-BelGaN 🇧🇪 research chief, accusing him of leaking sensitive gallium nitride chip technology to China while secretly running a rival firm. (Le Monde)
- 🇩🇰 Baltic Nerves. Denmark condemned Russia after a navy frigate shot flares at a Danish helicopter during a routine mission, warning Moscow that such provocations cross the line. (France Info)
- 🇺🇸 Warbucks. The Iran war has cost the $246M per day in its first five months, with the Pentagon burning through $38.1B and counting. (CNBC)
- 🇺🇸 Ballot Patrol. Kash Patel, head of the FBI, suggested agents could be deployed to polling places, contradicting earlier statements and alarming Democrats about federal overreach. (New York Times)
- 🇨🇳 Legal Fiction. Despite laws and UN commitments, China continues to use torture to extract confessions from prisoners, according to a new NGO report that finds impunity is the rule. (Le Monde)
- 🇨🇳 AI Contact. Experts at Beijing's Xiangshan Forum urge the US and China to open direct talks on artificial intelligence, including military uses, before Xi Jinping's US visit. (Die Zeit)
- 🇸🇦 Crude Awakening. Saudi Arabia’s key East-West pipeline was badly hit in a strike, with repairs expected to take weeks and global oil prices jumping above $108. (BBC)
- 🇾🇪 Flight Risk. More than 100,000 people have fled their homes in Yemen as fresh fighting between Houthi forces and the government triggers a new wave of displacement, with children among the casualties. (Die Zeit)
- 🇦🇶 Hole in One. The ozone hole over Antarctica shrank for the second year running, reaching one of its smallest sizes since 1990 according to the World Meteorological Organization. (Die Zeit)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Access Denied. The UK Ministry of Justice is investigating after staff inappropriately viewed confidential court files on Southport attack victims, with the prime minister demanding answers and families left reeling. (BBC)
- 🇬🇧 Spoiler Alert. Editorial staff at the Telegraph 🇬🇧 express unease as Reform UK uses the paper to pre-empt negative stories with more sympathetic coverage. (The Guardian)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Ctrl-Alt-Unite. In a rare alliance, Bernie Sanders and Steve Bannon blast tech oligarchs and demand Congress rein in artificial intelligence before it outpaces humanity. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Shot in the Dark. Pennsylvania confirms a fourth measles-related death as vaccine debates flare, giving politics a new outbreak to fight over. (Wall Street Journal)
- 🇺🇸 Cash and Carry. Trump’s $400M super PAC and its affiliates are flooding battlegrounds with $138M in ad spending, aiming to keep Congress in Republican hands. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Name Dropped. A federal judge ruled that the Kennedy Center cannot display Trump's name on its exterior without Congress's approval, blocking the board's latest attempt at presidential branding. (New York Times)
🏛️ Economy
- 🇬🇧 Work in Progress. UK payrolls shrank by 39,000 this summer while vacancies dropped to a decade low, making the Bank of England’s inflation worries a little less urgent. (Financial Times)
- 🇪🇺 Sanction Interruption. France and Slovakia halt the automatic renewal of sweeping measures against Russian entities, with Paris pointing to Usmanov’s presence on the list. (Le Figaro)
- 🇺🇸 Crude Awakening. Shipping oil to China now costs $44.8M per voyage, more than doubling since February as Middle East turmoil scrambles global routes. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Paid Leave It. The Trump administration handed $9.5B to federal employees in 2025 to not show up, all under the Department of Government Efficiency’s cost-cutting crusade. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Upward Bound. The 10-year Treasury yield surges to a near 20-year high, reminding everyone that easy money is now a distant memory. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Rate Race. A CNBC poll finds 86% of economists now expect the Fed to hike rates at least twice by the end of 2026, with the first move likely tomorrow. (Boursier)
- 🇺🇸 FINRA but for Robots. Inspired by Wall Street’s self-regulator, OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google DeepMind pitch an AI risk authority, hoping lawmakers will not see it as collusion. (France Info)
- 🌎 Hack to the Future. 2026 has seen record-breaking cyberattacks, with massive data breaches, ransomware, and nation-state hacks disrupting everything from utilities to healthcare and social media. (TechCrunch)
- 🇯🇵 Rate Expectations. The Bank of Japan is widely expected to raise rates by 25 basis points to 1.25%, reaching a new 30-year high as inflation and US pressure mount. (CNBC)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Loan Ranger. Chancellor John Healey is weighing UK membership in the Canadian-led DSRB, a multilateral bank designed to boost defence budgets without breaking the Treasury’s piggy bank. (BBC)
- 🇬🇧 Face Value. UK employers will soon be required to meet with staff in person to explain any rejected work-from-home requests, as the government tightens flexible working rights. (Financial Times)
- 🇬🇧 Bank of Shame. New research reveals the Bank of England’s founding directors were deeply invested in the transatlantic slave trade, embedding slavery profits in Britain’s financial roots. (The Guardian)
- 🇬🇧 Lock and Loaded. Downing Street assures pensioners they will keep the full new £13,000 state pension tax-free, even as next year’s triple lock boost overtakes the personal allowance. (The Guardian)
- 🇬🇧 Ethics and the City. The FCA warns UK finance firms after Crispin Odey loses his appeal against a lifetime ban and fine for misconduct, promising tougher enforcement on ethical failures. (Financial Times)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Upward Mobility. New Census Bureau data shows median household income rose 2.6% to $87,460 in 2025 while the poverty rate dropped to 10.2%, giving the Trump administration a rare reason to celebrate economic headlines. (CNBC)
- 🇺🇸 Double Counting. Trump Account savers face a Dec. 31 deadline, with employer and employee contributions combined under the $5,000 annual ceiling, making benefits math trickier than it looks. (CNBC)
- 🇺🇸 Pump Fiction. Americans have shelled out an extra $107B on fuel since the Iran conflict began, with oil prices soaring past $100 a barrel and no relief in sight. (Wall Street Journal)
🏢 Real Estate
- 🇪🇺 Aging Out. Europe faces a silent crisis with 170,000 seniors homeless, according to a new report that shows the problem is growing fast. (Ouest-France)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Home Alone. As 30-year mortgage rates climb past 7%, would-be buyers and builders find themselves priced out of the market once again. (Wall Street Journal)
🔗 On-chain
- 🇮🇹 Phish and Chips. Hackers claim they breached Italy’s official email system to pose as police and trick Revolut 🇬🇧 into handing over data on 680 crypto-rich customers. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Clarity Deferred. The Senate failed to pass the Clarity Act, leaving crypto firms like Ripple 🇺🇸 and Chainlink Labs 🇺🇸 stuck with shifting regulatory sands instead of a stable legal framework. (Coindesk)
- 🇺🇸 Token Laundering. The Justice Department alleges two Chinese firms washed Iranian oil proceeds through Binance 🇨🇳, with funds linked to the Revolutionary Guards and $61M now set for forfeiture. (New York Times)
💱 Listed Markets
- 🇫🇷 Data Fields. TotalEnergies 🇫🇷 partners with Mistral, investing €100M to create AI tools that promise to squeeze more insight (and oil) from their reservoirs. (Le Parisien)
- 🇨🇭 WhatsAppened. Radiant World claims Glencore 🇨🇭 kept their $2B trading relationship off audited records using private meetings and encrypted chats to avoid regulators. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Storage Wars. ExxonMobil 🇺🇸 secures Texas approval to bury 53M tonnes of CO₂ underground in a $5B carbon capture project, sparking fierce debate over safety and subsidies. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Liquid Assets. Oracle 🇺🇸 co-founder Larry Ellison set up a $7B stock sale to fund family ventures, only to scrap the plan days later with no reason given. (Financial Times)
- 🇺🇸 Agent Provocateurs. Salesforce 🇺🇸 unveils a new lineup of AI agents to automate sales, customer support, HR, and supply chain tasks, promising smarter workflows and fewer human headaches. (Webrazzi)
- 🇺🇸 AI for a Fee. Meta 🇺🇸 unveils Meta One and a buffet of new subscription plans, charging users for expanded AI tools after pouring billions into its Muse AI models. (TechCrunch)
- 🇨🇦 Summit Slump. Mark Carney’s expanded tax write-off failed to lift Toronto’s S&P/TSX Composite Index, which slipped 0.4% as energy alone showed gains. (Bloomberg)
- 🇳🇿 Return to Mean. New Zealand’s $54.2B super fund sees global stocks reverting to average returns following its own 14 percent growth and a cautious stance on tech. (Financial Times)
- 🇧🇭 Downtime Abbey. Amazon Web Services 🇺🇸 reveals its Gulf data centers are still down six months after Iranian strikes, proving even the cloud can crash to earth. (CNBC)
🛎️ Big Deals (M&A)
- Essar Energy Transition Fuels 🇬🇧 acquires UK fuel retailer SGN Retail 🇬🇧.
- UK government 🇬🇧 proposes to acquire insolvent steelmaker Speciality Steel UK 🇬🇧 after a private-sector rescue failed.
- Schroders 🇬🇧 explores acquisitions in wealth management.
- LeHibou 🇫🇷 acquires Afarax 🇧🇪, a Belgian IT consulting and freelance recruitment company.
- Thales 🇫🇷 to acquire maritime drone specialist Exail Technologies 🇫🇷 for €3.9B.
- Forvia 🇫🇷 is considering selling its Japanese unit Clarion Electronics 🇯🇵 to cut debt.
- Uniper 🇩🇪 to sell its 20% stake in Germany’s Opal gas pipeline to Hy24 🇫🇷.
- Cheplapharm 🇩🇪 to acquire 20 medicines and three production sites from Sanofi 🇫🇷 in exchange for a 26.4% stake in Cheplapharm, increasing its annual revenue by approximately €1B.
- UniCredit 🇮🇹 is negotiating to acquire Commerzbank 🇩🇪, with the German government seeking to retain its 13.3% stake and two supervisory board seats.
- BMPS 🇮🇹 offers to acquire Banco BPM 🇮🇹 and Banca Generali 🇮🇹 as Intesa Sanpaolo 🇮🇹 pursues a $40B takeover.
- Biorsaf 🇮🇹 acquires Cooki 🇮🇹 alongside a €5.2M funding round led by P101.
- Puig Brands 🇪🇸 acquires the remaining 50% of skincare brand Isdin 🇪🇸 for $1.4B.
- Euronext 🇳🇱 is open to a merger with Deutsche Börse 🇩🇪.
- Core Equity 🇧🇪 is seeking a new owner for Belgian dental chain Mint Dental 🇧🇪.
- Endra 🇸🇪 acquires Swiss AI startup Planlabs 🇨🇭 in a technology and talent deal.
- Renato Radic 🇭🇷 acquires ADA Möbelwerke Holding 🇦🇹, taking a 100% stake in the Austrian furniture manufacturer.
- Aeon 🇨🇭 acquires key assets from blood diagnostics provider Aware Health 🇩🇪 and raises its seed funding to over $14M.
- KKR 🇺🇸 sells its entire 19.9% stake in Philippine power producer First Gen 🇵🇭 to Angsana Finance for $411M.
- OpenAI 🇺🇸 acquires AI-powered camera technology developer Glass Imaging 🇺🇸 for more than $300M.
- Uber 🇺🇸 invests $10M in fleet management startup Carrum Mobility 🇮🇳 in a Series B round, raising its post-money valuation to $168M.
- Vista Equity Partners 🇺🇸 explores a $12B sale of financial software company Finastra 🇬🇧, with Blackstone 🇺🇸 as a potential bidder.
- DFO Management 🇺🇸 and Sequence Holdings 🇺🇸 to acquire insurance brokerage The Baldwin Insurance Group 🇺🇸 for $7.7B, a 90% premium.
- Carlyle 🇺🇸 acquires Canadian oil and gas company Parallax 🇨🇦 from Carnelian Energy Capital 🇺🇸 for $720M.
- The Pentagon 🇺🇸 to acquire a 20% stake in tungsten producer Elmet Group 🇺🇸 for $450M.
- Sazerac 🇺🇸 acquires UK-based spirits maker Au Vodka 🇬🇧 for $404M.
- La Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec 🇨🇦 partners with Beedie 🇨🇦 in a C$1B Canadian industrial real estate joint venture.
- MCOT 🇹🇭 faces unconfirmed reports of a possible merger with Thai PBS 🇹🇭.
- Solar Industries India 🇮🇳 acquires Omnia Holdings 🇿🇦 for $1.4B.
- Macquarie 🇦🇺 acquires half of Maple Infrastructure Trust 🇮🇳 from CDPQ 🇨🇦 for $300M. CDPQ retains a 37.5% stake.
🇺🇸 United States
- Verlinvest 🇧🇪 invests in HomeExchange 🇫🇷, with Ternel 🇫🇷 reinvesting and ISAI 🇫🇷 exiting.
- Broadcom 🇺🇸 acquires its former Irvine office and R&D campus for $325M from PRP Real Assets 🇺🇸.
- NOVVA Group 🇸🇬 acquires a 3.17 GW renewable energy portfolio in Argentina from ABO Energy 🇩🇪.
🧳 Private Markets & VC
- 🇪🇺 Model Behavior. Anthropic has finally allowed the EU’s ENISA agency to access its Mythos 5 AI model, though the newer Mythos 5.1 remains off-limits for now. (Siliconrepublic)
- 🇺🇸 Trillion Dollar Baby. Investors are circling OpenAI with offers, but the company wants a $1.5T price tag before its IPO, because $730B just does not cut it anymore. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Meta Morals. Mark Zuckerberg criticizes Anthropic for pushing an A.I. pause, claiming Meta can move fast and stay safe at the same time. (New York Times)
- 🇺🇸 Guardrails Optional. OpenAI’s Sam Altman acknowledges AI’s risks but urges the world to trust tech firms to set their own limits, dismissing calls for new laws. (BBC)
- 🇺🇸 Exit Strategy. Gilt Groupe may have sold for pennies on the dollar, but its alumni network now dominates New York's female founder scene, outlasting the original business. (Wall Street Journal)
- 🇺🇸 Working Class Hero. Agility Robotics unveils Digit 5, a humanoid robot designed to work safely side by side with humans in warehouses and factories, no cage required. (Bloomberg)
- 🇺🇸 Snitch, please. AI agents now have dedicated hotlines to report misbehaving bots, as researchers scramble to contain collusion and cyber shenanigans in the machine ranks. (TechCrunch)
🇬🇧 United Kingdom
- 🇬🇧 Pitch Perfect. Lloyds Banking Group 🇬🇧 is calling on UK start-ups and scale-ups to pitch tech solutions for banking, mortgages, and insurance with the promise of potential investment or partnership. (FinExtra)
🇺🇸 United States
- 🇺🇸 Dash and Deliver. DoorDash 🇺🇸 is investing $425M in Wonder 🇺🇸, acquiring its Grubhub Campus Dining business and fueling Marc Lore's food delivery ambitions. (TechCrunch)
Fundraising
- Cognition 🇺🇸 (AI): $2B+ (Andreessen Horowitz, Accel, Founders Fund, General Catalyst, Avenir, Benchmark, Bessemer, Kleiner Perkins, Greylock, Lightspeed, Altimeter, Bond Capital, Meritech, Atreides, Valor, T Rowe Price, Lux, 8VC, D1, 137 Ventures)
- Temporal Technologies 🇺🇸 (Software): $550M (Lightspeed, Wellington Management, Goldman Sachs Alternatives, Tiger Global)
- The Exploration Company 🇩🇪 (Space): €387M
- Open Cosmos 🇬🇧 (Space): €300M (Lightrock, ETF Partners, British Columbia Investment Management Corporation, Entrepreneurs First, Institut Català de Finances, A&G Global Investors, Trill Impact, Phoenix Court, National Security Strategic Investment Fund, Convex, Santander Alternative Investments, Sankara, Ireon, Sustainable Forward Capital, Endeavor Catalyst Fund, Iberis Capital, Shilling VC, Amena Ventures, Claret Capital Partners)
- Exein 🇮🇹 (Cybersecurity): $270M (Headline, Sofina, Goldman Sachs, European Investment Bank Group, KfW Capital, T.Capital, Balderton, HV, Intrepid Growth Partners, 33N Ventures, Lakestar, Supernova Invest, Blue Cloud Ventures, Geodesic Capital)
- Tabby 🇸🇦 (Fintech): $233M (Blue Pool Capital)
- Mal 🇦🇪 (Fintech): $230M (BlueFive Capital)
- EUCLYD 🇳🇱 (AI): €200M+ (Samsung, Somerset Capital Partners, Innovation Industries, Scaleup Europe Fund, EIFO, imec.xpand, Brabant Development Agency, Quadri)
- Cornelis Networks 🇺🇸 (AI): $205M (IAG Capital Partners)
- Profound 🇺🇸 (AI): $180M (Sequoia, Kleiner Perkins, Lightspeed Venture Partners, Khosla Ventures, South Park Commons)
- Buildots 🇮🇱 (Construction): $130M (O.G. Venture Partners)
- Kaiko 🇫🇷 (Crypto): $110M (S&P Global, BNP Paribas, Bpifrance, Broadridge, Canton Foundation, Coinbase Ventures, DRW Venture Capital, Nasdaq Ventures, Royal Bank of Canada, Stellar Foundation, Susquehanna Private Equity Investments, Anthemis, Point Nine, Revaia)
- Thatch 🇺🇸 (Healthcare): $108M (The General Partnership, Index Ventures, General Catalyst, Andreessen Horowitz)
- Pixxel 🇮🇳 (Space technology): $100M (Temasek, Seraphim, Radical Ventures, growX Ventures, 360 ONE Asset, IMM Investment)
- Delos Data 🇺🇸 (AI infrastructure): Over $100M (Matrix, Playground, Socratic Partners, Capricorn's Technology Impact Fund, Matter Venture Partners, IAG)
- Model ML 🇺🇸 (AI): $100M+
- Tandem Health 🇸🇪 (Healthcare): €86.49M (Scaleup Europe Fund, Kinnevik, Northzone, Amino Collective, Visionaries)
- Samson Sky 🇺🇸 (Mobility): $80M (Matin Group)
- Mecka 🇺🇸 (Robotics): $60M (Framework Ventures, Menlo Ventures, SV Angel, Kindred Ventures)
- Nuance Labs 🇺🇸 (AI): $50M (Lightspeed)
- Limetax 🇩🇪 (TaxTech): €36M (Motive Partners, Activant, Heliad, Christian Lindner, Alexander Kudlich, Anton Rummel, Ante Spittler)
- Jack & Jill 🇺🇸 (AI): $40M (Air Street Capital, Madrona, Antler, Creandum, Ada Ventures, Entrepreneurs First, Expedite Capital, Repeat.vc)
- Artificial Intelligence Underwriting Company (AIUC) 🇺🇸 (AI): $40M (Ribbit Capital, First Harmonic)
- Impossible Objects 🇺🇸 (Manufacturing): $40M (Inflection Equity)
- Evvy 🇺🇸 (Healthcare): $40M (Catalio Capital Management)
- ReEmerge 🇺🇸 (MedTech): $37M (U.S. Venture Partners, Santé, Oxford Science Enterprises, 415 Capital, IAG Capital Partners, The Vertical Group, Dendrion Ventures)
- BRKZ 🇸🇦 (Proptech): $31M
- HVR Energy 🇪🇸 (Mobility): €20M (Sandton)
- Fin.com 🇺🇸 (Fintech): $20M (Expa, Garrett Camp, Coinbase Ventures, Tenet Fund, Figure founders, Bam Azizi, Second Sight Ventures, sovereign and royal family offices)
- CloudNC 🇬🇧 (AI): €17.2M (Nimble Ventures)
- R+I Factory 🇩🇪 (AI): €15M (German Federal Ministry of Research)
- Sportano 🇵🇱 (E-commerce): €15M (EBRD)
- Aeon 🇨🇭 (Healthcare): More than $14M (Araya Ventures, Concentric, GoHub Ventures, Kadmos Capital, Calm/Storm Ventures, N&V Capital, Bigwave Capital)
- Synapse Analytics 🇹🇳 (AI): $13M (Partech)
- Vaxdyn 🇪🇸 (Biotech): €11M (Biovance Capital, EIC Fund, Arcano Partners)
- Chift 🇧🇪 (Fintech): €10.5M (BlackFin Capital Partners, Entourage, Shapers, Seeder Fund, Wallonie Entreprendre)
- Keewano 🇮🇱 (AI): $12M (Hetz Ventures, a16z speedrun, Remagine Ventures, DIG Ventures)
- BizAway 🇪🇸 (Travel): €10M (BBVA)
- Resolutiion 🇬🇧 (AI): $10.4M (Cherry Ventures, Octopus Ventures, LocalGlobe, Auxxo)
- Zero 🇫🇮 (AI): €8.93M (Primary Venture Partners, Inception Fund, Defiant, Greens, Lovable founders, Supercell founders, Langdock founders, Silo AI founders)
- Isometric 🇬🇧 (ClimateTech): €8.6M
- Deneb Medical 🇪🇸 (Healthcare): €7.2M (SETT)
- First Table 🇳🇿 (Foodtech): NZ$12M
- HeyDiga 🇪🇸 (AI): €5.5M (6DC, Kfund, Italian Founders Fund, Decelera)
- KVector 🇬🇧 (Antenna technology): £3.8M (Midlands Mindforge, Midlands Engine Investment Fund II, Mercia Ventures, UK Innovation & Science Seed Fund, Future Planet Capital, University of Birmingham)
- Tellia 🇩🇪 (AgTech): $5M (Revent, Grey Silo Ventures, Jeriko, Fund F)
- Furo 🇩🇪 (EnergyTech): €4M (TQ Ventures, Neo, Sandberg Bernthal Venture Partners, CDTM Venture Capital)
- Eve Security 🇺🇸 (Cybersecurity): $4.5M (Run Ventures, Dreamit Ventures, Blu Ventures, LiveOak Ventures)
- FRYTE Mobility 🇩🇪 (Mobility): €3.5M (4impact capital, Rethink Ventures, Revent, F-LOG, accilium ventures, angel investors)
- Decimal AI 🇺🇸 (AI): $4M (Khosla Ventures, Kearny Jackson, Atlassian Ventures, Weekend Fund)
- Fusionality 🇨🇭 (Fusion): CHF 3M (Founderful, Playfair)
- CONNECTA Therapeutics 🇪🇸 (Biotech): €3.1M (Clave Capital)
- Ferm Labs 🇨🇭 (Biotech): €3M (CDP Venture Capital, Fund F, Redstone, Euregio+)
- Depotcharge 🇩🇪 (Mobility): €2.7M (High-Tech Gründerfonds, xdeck Ventures, Kopa Ventures, Prequel Ventures)
- Radian Forge 🇺🇸 (Manufacturing): $2.5M (Veteran Ventures Capital, Virginia Innovation Partnership Corporation, existing investors)
- Boxd 🇳🇱 (AI): $2M (BlueYard Capital, OVNI Capital, Antler, S20, Script Capital, General Intuition)
- EnforceShield 🇱🇹 (Legaltech): €1.7M (Vendep Capital, FIRSTPICK VC)
- Magnitude Biosciences 🇬🇧 (Biotech): £1.3M (Northstar Ventures, Maven, angel investors)
- QUIET 🇫🇷 (Deeptech): €1.4M (Demea Sustainable Investment, Bpifrance, banking pool)
- TesterArmy 🇵🇱 (AI): €1.04M (Y Combinator, AIP Seed, Eight Capital, Script Capital, Guillermo Rauch, Walden Yan, Charlie Cheever, Zeno Rocha, Fernando Rojo, Fryderyk Wiatrowski)
- Greencovery 🇳🇱 (FoodTech): €1M (ROM InWest, Brightlands Venture Partners, private investor)
- Freya Industries 🇸🇪 (Defence): €533k (Foundry Ventures, Longswan Ventures, Propel Capital, Saminvest, Schyssta Änglar, Sting, selected private investors)
- Safahat.ai 🇹🇷 (Legaltech): $590K (Albaraka Türk, Albaraka Portfolio Management, Insha Ventures)
Fund Watch
- Goldman Sachs Alternatives 🇺🇸: $11.7B (private equity funds: $9.6B flagship buyout fund, $1.6B Asia-Pacific fund, and $500M co-investment vehicles)
- PSG Equity 🇺🇸: $5.1B (3rd fund targeting European software)
- Pinegrove Venture Partners 🇺🇸: $1.5B (12th fund of funds)
- Radical Ventures 🇨🇦: $1B+ (1st close of Radical Breakouts Fund, late-stage AI venture capital fund)
- Claret Capital Partners 🇬🇧: €575M (Fund IV, European growth debt fund for tech, life sciences and impact companies)
- Intrepid Growth Partners 🇨🇦: $525M (1st growth fund focused on AI)
- Crane Venture Partners 🇬🇧: €419M (four venture vehicles across Europe, APAC and the US)
- Artemis Capital Partners 🇺🇸: $254M (4th industrial tech private equity fund)
- Airbnb 🇺🇸: $250M (housing construction investment fund)
- Suma Capital 🇪🇸: €2M (SC Climate Tech Ventures I, early-stage climate tech fund)
🔔IPO
- Biogena 🇦🇹 (Healthcare): raised approximately €25M in its Vienna Stock Exchange debut.
- Spotify 🇸🇪 (Music): Co-CEO Gustav Söderström sold nearly 84,000 shares for $46.5M.
- Sysco 🇺🇸 (Foodservice): seeking to raise $1B in a share sale to help fund its $29.1B Jetro Restaurant Depot acquisition.
- Anthropic 🇺🇸 (AI): targeting an October Nasdaq IPO, with valuation estimates reaching $2T.
- Bamboo Insurance Services 🇺🇸 (Insurance): seeking to raise $700M at a $3.2B valuation in an IPO.
- Orion180 🇺🇸 (Insurance): seeking to raise $340M at a $1.7B valuation in an IPO.
- Electra Therapeutics 🇺🇸 (Biotech): seeking to raise $350M at a $1B valuation in an IPO.
- Authentic Brands Group 🇺🇸 (Consumer): exploring an IPO as it expands into the creator economy.
- Boston Dynamics 🇺🇸 (Robotics): unlikely to IPO next year.
- Ligent Technologies 🇨🇳 (AI): seeking to raise $727M in a Hong Kong IPO.
- Kioxia 🇯🇵 (Semiconductors): considering a US listing that could raise $10B.
- First Gen 🇵🇭 (Energy): KKR sold its entire stake for $410M.
- Firmus Technologies 🇦🇺 (Data Centers): seeking to raise $5B in an Australian IPO.
🧳 Debt
- Aon 🇺🇸: saw $65B in demand for its $13.5B bond sale to fund its USI acquisition.
- Churchill Downs 🇺🇸: seeking $500M in junk loans to refinance debt.
- J. Paul Getty Trust 🇺🇸: plans to sell $270M of municipal bonds to refinance debt.
- Michaels 🇺🇸: used a $170M tariff refund to cut debt by $100M.
- Sagen 🇨🇦: seeking to raise $215M in a bond sale.
- LATAM Airlines 🇨🇱: secured $505M to finance 11 new aircraft.
- SF Holding 🇨🇳: plans to raise $1.5B in its first offshore yuan bond sale.
- SoftBank 🇯🇵: secured an $11.9B two-year loan to fund OpenAI investments.
❌ Failures
- Uniper 🇩🇪: Ardian-backed Hy24 will acquire its 20% stake in the Opal gas pipeline to comply with bailout terms.
- Booksy 🇵🇱: the beauty-booking app is cutting nearly 200 jobs, or 20% of its global workforce, to accelerate its AI transformation.
- Nakd 🇸🇪: Swedish fashion retailer to cut 23 headquarters jobs, about 10% of its office staff, after a weak summer and strategic shift.
- Air Baltic 🇱🇻: the Latvian carrier filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy with $400M in debtor-in-possession financing to restructure its debt.
🎯 For a Few More Minutes…
- 🇬🇧 Sins of the Fathers. Evidence shows Church of England clergymen backed slave trafficking, prompting renewed calls for reparations and a public reckoning from church authorities. (The Guardian)
- 🇪🇸 Jurassic Parked. Spanish paleontologists have found the first-ever diplodocus fossils in Europe, upending the dinosaur's North American reputation with a 25-meter surprise in Teruel. (Boursier)
- 🇺🇸 Late Fee-ble. Concord Public Library in New Hampshire finally got back a magazine borrowed in 1894, skipping a $12,055 fine thanks to a new amnesty. (BBC)
