NWE Jet Fuel Soars, 13,000 flights cancelled in May

Following US and Israel strikes on Iran in March, jet fuel (priced in $ per tonne) has risen from roughly $750 to more than $1500 per tonne. 

Istanbul and Chicago O'Hare have been the most impacted in terms of cancellations (according to data from aviation analytics firm Cirium). This is partly due to Turkish Airlines being hard hit by the closure of the Strait of Hormuz. Lufthansa has also cancelled many flights. 

The 13,000 cancellations represents 1% of global flights.

The UK imports around 65% of the jet fuel it uses.

The IEA has warned Europe will face jet fuel shortages by June.

Anthropic Reaches Deeper into Finance with PE backed services arm

Anthropic has reached deeper into workflow with a new venture embedding its technology into Enterprise Services.  Both Anthropic and OpenAI signed deals with private equity to embed their engineers (in Palantir-style forward-deployed fashion) into thousands of PE-backed portfolio companies - TPG, Blackstone, Goldman Sachs and Bain Capital are the partners in this initiative. $5.5bn in capital has been committed.

Fitch Solutions Acquires TREPP

Fitch Solutions has acquired Trepp, Inc (specialist data provider for CRE and structure finance, named after its founder, Richard Trepp) from DMGT for $1bn. Sellers were advised by Centerview Partners and Goldman Sachs.

Ares Defies Private Credit Jitters

Ares, a leading global alternative investment manager, reported Q1 fundraising of around $30bn, a positive indication of investor appetite for private credit (a multi-trillion dollar sector).  

Ares' AuM is $644bn. It seeks to surpass $750bn by 2028. 

In February, Ares acquired systematic fixed-income manager BlueCove, creating a $5.5bn asset boost to the business.

Ares only earns fees on deployed capital - if capital is uninvested no fees are earned. $32bn of capital was deployed in Q1 increasing fee income. Fee income is up 26% from a year ago.

China Blocks $2bn Purchase of Manus by Meta

Manus is an agentic AI startup. Meta wanted to acquire Manus to leapfrog ahead in AI. Although Manus was incorporated in Singapore, its owners hail from China.

UK Banks to be Briefed on Anthropic's Mythos Cyberthreat

The Bank of England, UK National Cyber Security Centre, HM Treasury and FCA will brief banks, insurers and exchanges in the UK on the cyber implications of Anthropic's new (non-publicly released) AI model, Mythos, which was revealed in April.  

The briefing will include CEOs of the UK's eight largest banks, two insurers and four financial infra providers. 

The model can exploit new-found vulnerabilities autonomously when instructed to do so. Bruce Schneier has observed this is "very much a PR play by Anthropic". It is curious that Anthropic seem to have not built in any guardrails against offensive security.

Bezos Bets Big on Physical AI

Jeff Bezos' Physical AI project, Project Prometheus, is nearing the end of a $10bn funding round.