The shift away from financing GPU clusters with offtake agreements to prepayments means that OCF to EBITDA is the most important metric. Moves the diligence burden from private credit funds evaluating the creditworthiness of offtaker to the actual customer of the GPU making the prepayment. Dock to live and historic cluster stability levels will be the most important metrics to customers who are increasingly paying nearly 100% upfront. Also significantly improves the payback period on GPUs.

The shift from 1990s cel-drawn mechanical design to the hyper-fluid digital compositing of the Rebuild film series redefined how mecha action was executed. What’s your take on the visual overhaul in 2.22? 🤖✨

The Shark Tank investor says regulatory uncertainty and quantum computing are weighing on Bitcoin, and he is looking at IBM as a way to play the shift Read more:

The world calls Foxconn a “box mover.” 📦 Their Chairman, Young Liu disagrees. Today I met Young Liu, Chairman of @HonHai_Foxconn, here in Taiwan, and that was a conversation that will stay with me for a long time. First of all, you don't meet a chairman of one of the biggest companies in the world every week. Alright, so here's the reaaally interesting part! He said the world still tends to see Foxconn as a “box mover”, a company that just assembles electronics someone else designed. Then he brought his numbers: → Over 1 million employees worldwide → 120,000+ engineers → 78,000 system designers → ~2,500 patents in 2025 alone That’s not a workforce built for moving boxes. Definitely not. That’s a workforce built for designing what goes in them. And that’s the shift he’s driving. Foxconn is not doing the vertical aggregation but vertical integration! → Vertical aggregation: assembly, molding, producing the parts (just being the contractor) → Vertical integration: co-design, co-development, co-validation, participating in the full end-to-end process You see it in the AI server business, where Foxconn now works hand in hand with NVIDIA, and where AI servers are set to make up more than half of its server revenue this year. And the part that landed closest to home: Poland. 🇵🇱 Foxconn is building toward EV production in Poland with ElectroMobility Poland, a technology hub in Jaworzno, platforms from its Foxtron arm, and first cars targeted for 2029 under Polish control. Actually while asked why Poland, he said it reminds him of Taiwan. He pointed to the flexibility, the dynamism, and the work ethic. The company everyone files under “assembly” is quietly becoming a design and engineering partner, on three continents at once. Damn, what a day! Expect tons of content from Taiwan! 🇹🇼 ~~  ♻️ Join the weekly robotics newsletter, and never miss any news →

The Shark Tank investor says regulatory uncertainty and quantum computing are weighing on Bitcoin, and he is looking at IBM as a way to play the shift Read more:

The Islamic Republic is losing Pakistan, a once-friendly neighbour that is now aligning against the regime and its Houthi proxy. Pakistan now says it will follow all applicable sanctions regimes against Iran. That is a clear retreat from its earlier refusal to recognize unilateral United States sanctions and its promises to expand trade with the Islamic Republic. The shift is particularly humiliating because Pakistan previously acted as the regime’s diplomatic lifeline. It brokered the June Islamabad Memorandum between the Islamic Republic and the United States, giving the regime an off-ramp from war and isolation. That agreement collapsed, and Pakistan is now moving closer to the states threatened by the Islamic Republic. The military shift is even more damaging. On August 7, Pakistan joined Saudi Arabia and Turkey in a collective-defence pact declaring that an attack on one will be treated as an attack on all. Pakistan has since condemned Houthi attacks on Saudi Arabia, warned the Islamic Republic to restrain its proxy and pledged to defend Saudi Arabia by “whatever means are available.” Its defence minister went further, declaring that any enemy of Saudi Arabia is an enemy of Pakistan. The latest attack on a power station supplying the Prophet’s Mosque in Medina has hardened that position. Pakistan called it a grave provocation and demanded that the attacks stop immediately. The Islamic Republic spent years using the Houthis to threaten Saudi Arabia while denying control whenever the consequences arrived. That deniability is no longer protecting it. Pakistan now places Saudi security and the protection of Islam’s holy cities above preserving its old relationship with the regime. Pakistan has not severed diplomatic relations, but the direction is unmistakable. A neighbour that once brokered an agreement for the Islamic Republic is now complying with sanctions, joining Saudi Arabia’s defence architecture and warning that it may confront the regime’s most important Arab proxy. The Islamic Republic’s proxy strategy is not expanding its influence. It is turning former partners into potential adversaries.

The first half of the year was a wake up call to the VC industry. Both in the shift in perception of the investability of SaaS and that investing in companies building for the world of atoms can produce extreme power law outcomes. We hear of strong pressure both internally amongst GPs and externally from LPs across a swath of investment firms to seriously reorient their allocation strategies. 2026 is the first year that robotics has really registered on the map for VC investment and we expect growth to accelerate. I would not be surprised to see annual investment in private robotics companies to exceed $100b by next year.

The loud, wheezy hoot of the pit horn used to signal the end of the shift. Blaring across the town, it blew the changes. We'd all hear it. My father, as his father before him, was a GP in Ashington, a large mining town in Northumberland. Ashington was the hub of a network of subsidiary collieries including Woodhorn (now a museum), Ellington and Lynemouth, which both appropriately featured as film locations for Billy Elliot. Mining was in the local blood. To work 'doon the pit' was a proud profession and a natural family succession. ✍️ Alastair Irvine Article |

The Bank of Japan has raised interest rates once again, ramping up the pace of hikes to the fastest in 36 years. On today’s Big Take: What the shift means for Japan and global markets.