Elon Musk asserts Oil is "Small Time"

"Compared to solar, oil is small-time" Musk issued on X.  The oil industry still fuels 80% of global energy demand, and solar still suffers from scalability and storage challenges.  However, Musk is backing his vision of the future - with factory builds, batteries and grid-scale operations.

Bulgaria Likely to Get Approval to Adopt Euro in 2026

The European Commission is likely to give Bulgaria approval to adopt the Euro in 2026 which would make Bulgaria the 21st country to adopt the currency. 

347 million Europeans in 20 countries use the Euro. If Bulgaria joins that adds another 6.7/6.8 million people to the default "user base". Then the Euro will support just over 350 million people.

There are conditions for euro-candidate countries in terms of consumer inflation (relative to the three best EU performers, in April France was the lowest inflation country at 0.9%), constraints over budget deficit as % of GDP, as well as a maximum of 60% debt relative to GDP. 

Stability of the exchange rate is also a factor. 

The technical criteria is staying within a 15% either side of a central parity rate in the Exchange Rate Mechanism II (ERM II).

Revolut launches Venture Capital Business

Revolut has launched a new venture capital firm called QuantumLight utilizing AI-driven investment. He has billed it as "the first truly systematic venture capital and growth equity firm". Investments include Robin, legal AI for contracts, and Rad AI applying AI to radiology.

UK Tech M&A Dominated by AI and Cyber Firms

UK Software M&A was worth £13.2 billion last year, with deployments across 420 deals, a 27% rise from the previous year. Certainly there have been and still are economic headwinds, but according to a recent study by BearingPoint Capital, private equity appetite for such deals (Software and Software-as-a-Service) remains resilient. The UK is responsible for a third of all software buyouts in Europe. Technology due diligence, with cyber diligence as a related but often separated area, are becoming increasingly important.

Anaconda Bets Big on Open Source AI

Anaconda has launched the Anaconda AI Platform in a bid to separate itself from being simply a provider of Python infrastructure (specifically package management) to a being a provider of open source AI infrastructure.  There are lots of open source tools now available but uniting them in one managed environment is not a fully solved problem.

Klarna Reverts on AI-First

Swedish fintech Klarna is going back to humans (in part) for customer service after a two year trial with OpenAI to run customer service agents purely with AI.

Monzo Reportedly Hires Morgan Stanley to Prepare IPO

The UK digital bank, approaching its 10th anniversary, is preparing to pitch to investors in the build up to a potential IPO, believed to be targeted at the £6-£7bn mark for a listing in London or New York. Key customer metrics include: 11 million personal customers and 600,000 business customers.