Silver Lake Locks In on AI

Silver Lake is merging two of its software firms in a 10bn euro ($11.6bn) gunshot wedding. 

French business management software firm Cegid, and payroll and HR platform, Silae, will join forces. Is this a new trend to help companies manage AI spend?

The idea is to bring all the functionality into a single platform for entrepreneurs and companies of a certain size. Scaling investment in R&D has been touted as a benefit.

Christian Lucas will serve as Chairman of the combined business. Both firms started in France before expanding to Spain, Portugal, with Cegid also having a foothold in Germany.

Blackstone Homes In on Lloyds Income

Blackstone has been in talks with Aon to create a Lloyd's syndicate that would earn income for the asset manager (as much as $2bn in premiums a year). 

Aon would effectively direct a certain amount of reinsurance business Blackstone's way - and Blackstone would act as a substitute for a "regular" insurer's balance sheet.  It would back this provision with private equity funds such as Blackstone Private Equity Strategies, or BXPE.

Reinsurers have warned that alternative capital providers (a la Blackstone) could be less durable after large losses. Blackstone already backs policies at Lloyds, but this move would be a broader and more visible shift into the market with Brookfield and Oaktree also looking at expansion into this sector.

Will private capital irrevocably reshape the insurance market? And what impact to financial resilience?

Jane Street Becomes a Dealer on Leveraged ETF Swaps

Jane Street joins other dealers as a market maker on risky leveraged ETF swaps.

An ETF swap, also known as a synthetic ETF, is where the provider enters into a swap contract with a counterparty, typically a large financial institution, to replicate the performance of an index, asset or asset class, without owning the underlying securities.

The counterparty pays the ETF the total return of the index (or other asset) including dividends while the ETF pays a fee and the return of collateral to the counterparty.

SpaceX May Bring Asteroid Mining Closer to Reality

Asteroid mining is being explored by several companies like Astroforge. These developments create new opportunities for SpaceX in the future.

Parker Gale Releases Note on Evaluating AI Opportunity and Risk in B2B Software

Chicago, IL-based Parker Gale is a buyout firm specializing in acquiring founder-owned B2B software companies where a hands-on approach (to help "close the gap between potential and performance") is adopted. 

Profitable businesses with $10-30m ARR are targeted to industries where the Chicago firm can point to a specific edge (through a thesis, an executive on-boarded or past experience with similar challenges).

In this field, evaluation of AI opportunity and risk (and where the pendulum eventually swings) is crucial. 

In this respect, Parker Gale have published an AI Resilience Scorecard (Summer 2026) to guide assessment.  Things they look out for:

1. What cannot be copied - software is becoming easier to reproduce.  Harder to copy are datasets, regulatory position, network, relationships.

2. Switching costs - can the company change its mind about its AI provider.

3. High retention not taken as proof of safety - not all organizations will willingly rip out their software and replace with an AI native version. However, the threat of AI-native competition will add pressure to pricing and scope.

AI implementation (and having AI-enabled features) is no longer a differentiating factor.

Bending Spoons Acquries Miro - What Next?

What will Bending Spoons do with this SaaS company?

Citdal Opts In On Appital (as Liquidity Bud)

Citadel Securities has said YES to becoming a liquidity provider on Appital led by Mark Badyra (in their own words - "redefining the scale of electronic liquidity"). 

Rumours S&P May Spin off Capital IQ

Speculated Capital IQ Spinoff

Bloomberg reported that S&P Global may spin off Capital IQ - following its spin off of automotive data and analytics business Mobility Global (which includes the vehicle history data division CARFAX) - for a target price in the "single-digit billions". 

Capital IQ is a data, intelligence and workflow product.  It provides company and industry research as well as people intelligence on management teams.

A Specialist "Software Portfolio" Spinoff Earlier in the Year

Earlier in the year (April 2026), SLB (formerly Schlumberger) agreed to acquire the geoscience and petroleum engineering software portfolio of S&P Global Energy, a leading provider of subsurface software, with strong US clientele.

WTI Touches Local High of $94.25; Brent hits almost $100

ICE Brent (Dec 26 futures) has touched $99.88 a barrel; roughly a $5 premium to WTI. 

Volumes on Brent - front month volume on Brent is 42K contracts; vs 22K on the second-month; 11K on third-month.

Volumes on WTI are higher - front month volume is 435K contracts; vs 250K, then 188K. Roughly a factor of 10.

Brent tends to trade at a premium to WTI.

This was not always the case. In 2010-2011 the US shale boom created a glut of crude oil (collected in Cushing) faster than the pipelines could move the crude out to the Gulf of Mexico. Additionally the US crude export ban prevented excess barrels leaving the country. The US export ban was lifted in Dec 2015.

Jane Street Gets Into Physical Natural Gas

While Jane Street has been dipping into commodity derivatives for some time now, it's foray into physical natural gas is more recent. Jane Street has hired in Houston for "gas origination" (sourcing gas to trade) as well as hired directly for trading. Texas is also home to one of Jane's massive data centres in Dallas.

FNZ raises $450m from existing shareholders

FNZ has raised new equity funding to the tune of $450m from its existing swathe of institutional shareholders including, in no particular order, CPP Investments of Canada, La Caisse, Motive Partners and Generation Investment Management.

FNZ brags over USD $2.5 trillion assets on platform (AoP).

It provides a platform to large banks, insurers and wealth/asset managers to run investment, pension and wealth management services.

Rising "Neocloud" Demand from Financials

Jane Street has signed a $13bn , five year AI cloud contract with "neocloud" provider Crusoe, a former crypto-mining company (2018-2024) which pivoted into AI data-center infrastructure. Crusoe supplies AI compute to Meta, Oracle and now Jane Street. Financially, they recently raised $3bn at a $30bn valuation. Jane Street also has cloud agreements with CoreWeave in which it also has a $1bn equity stake.

JP Morgan Reportedly Curbs Financing to Market Makers

This comes in the light of market makers like Jane Street attempting to encroach on market share from banks, and poaching talent to do so.

Examples include Jane Street's expansion into Fixed Income markets, offering quotes on US Treasuries, the traditional remit of banks, as well as talent poaching, with Citadel poaching JP Morgan's head of high-touch trading.

JP Morgan has been estimated to have provided around 5% of Jane Street's total leverage, which will now decline. It remains to be seen if other banks follow suit, putting pressure on profitability of market makers.