The AI Arms Race
Palantir had its main character moment with “otherworldly” revenue growth + Open tech roles
Hey,
Spotted: The markets are spilling this week. Palantir had its main character moment with “otherworldly” revenue growth, Big Tech’s been padding earnings with paper gains from Anthropic and OpenAI stakes, China is quietly winning the AI race.
Meanwhile, Visa is spending $2.4 billion to fight AI-powered scams, and Meta’s investors are giving serious metaverse flashback energy after another eye-watering AI spending announcement.
Palantir posted 93% revenue growth to $1.94 billion and a 149% jump in commercial revenue, driven by soaring demand for AI sovereignty tools as companies look to keep their data away from frontier AI labs.
S&P 500 earnings growth looked far stronger than it really was this quarter, with Microsoft, Amazon, and Alphabet's paper gains from stakes in Anthropic, OpenAI, and SpaceX inflating headline growth from 29% to a headline-grabbing 48%.
China is already winning the open-weight AI race and could overtake US frontier labs by end of 2026, as OpenAI agents hacking Hugging Face's own platform puts AI cybersecurity firmly in the spotlight.
Visa is acquiring Tel Aviv-based fraud detection startup BioCatch for $2.4 billion, gaining its behavioural biometrics technology to help banks stop AI-powered scams before they reach the point of payment.
Meta shares dropped as much as 11% after the company revealed plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI this year, even as profits fell 14% and free cash flow hit its lowest level in five years.
🧠 Quick Brain Teaser!
Which country invented the World Wide Web, and who was its creator?
What year did the first iPhone launch?
Which ancient wonder of the world was located in Alexandria, Egypt, and was considered one of the tallest man-made structures for centuries?
Answer at the bottom of the newsletter!!
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📚 What We’re Reading:
How Leopold Aschenbrenner built a $45 billion AI hedge fund — and lost most of it in days
Dwindling cash and soaring memory costs: Tech’s AI buildout has ballooning price tag
And the answer is…… 🥁🥁🥁🥁
The UK — Tim Berners-Lee invented it in 1989 while working at CERN in Switzerland.
2007 — Steve Jobs unveiled it on January 9, 2007, and it went on sale on June 29, 2007.
Lighthouse of Alexandria (also known as the Pharos of Alexandria), built around 280 BC. It stood roughly 100 metres tall and guided sailors into the harbour for over a thousand years before being destroyed by earthquakes in the 14th century.
Goodbye, see you next week.
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