AI Wars, SaaSpocalypse & Muskonomics

Upside captures all of the week's news affecting European Venture.01:22 — AI models: two flagships drop 20 minutes apartAnthropic ships Opus 4.6; OpenAI replies with GPT 5.3.Key tension: best model vs stickiest workflow (tooling + habits = raw benchmarks).China keeps coming: Kimi K2.5, Qwen3 Max — strong performance at lower cost, plus “swarm”/multi-agent vibes.07:02 — Recursive AI + security flexOpenAI: “GPT 5.3 helped build itself” (debugging training pipeline).Anthropic: claims model found 500+ serious open-source security issues → “bots find bugs better than eyeballs.”11:06 — Alphabet CapEx shockAlphabet expected $180B CapEx in 2026 → market flinches despite earnings beat.Take: hyperscalers signalling capacity constraint and “you ain’t seen nothing yet.”Debate: monster spend now vs how long monetisation takes (ads, pricing, enterprise budgets).18:53 — “SaaSpocalypse”~$300B wiped off software stocks on fear that seat-based SaaS collapses into usage/agent-driven economics.Claude Code “agentic workflows” spook the market: if models do the work, why pay the tool tax?Counterpoint: SaaS doesn’t die—it de-rates (from “growth multiple” to “utility multiple”).Lomax: market likely overcorrecting; enterprise adoption is slow and messy.26:07 — EU–US tech uncoupling (or… vibes?)France moves to ban civil servants from Zoom/Teams/WebEx → pushes homegrown “Visio” by 2027.Germany (Schleswig-Holstein) + Austrian army shifting off Microsoft to open-source alternatives.Group take: sovereignty goal is real, but government-built software ≠ winning strategy; better to back founders + procurement pathways.32:44 — Spain vs social mediaPedro Sánchez pushes: CEO accountability, misinformation/hate speech enforcement, under-16 social restriction.Smart framing: shifts from “free speech” to public health.Pushback: slippery slope risk → censorship-by-proxy debate.39:20 — Muskonomics: SpaceX + xAI + “data centres in space”Core claim gets roasted: physics/energy/cooling/payload/latency all feel brutal.Bull case (Lomax): if anyone can brute-force iterate at scale, it’s Musk + launch cadence.Bear case (Mads): narrative may be a financial wrapper to justify merging/funding xAI via SpaceX halo.51:10 — Anthropic Super Bowl ads + OpenAI shadeAnthropic pokes OpenAI over ads in AI (“we’d never”).Take: brand landgrab + positioning move; debate whether the ads were funny or cringe.53:52 — Europe corner: critical minerals reality checkEU auditor warns Critical Raw Materials Act targets likely missed (dependency on China still extreme).Problem isn’t geology—it’s permitting + processing + time (10–20 years to mine/start).US hosts rare earth summit; Europe tries to coordinate while still exporting heavily to the US.56:53 — Deal of the WeekLomax’s portfolio: Portuguese founder Pedro building LLM-driven clinical trial planning → reduces protocol amendments/costs.Raises $52.5M Series A (one of Iberia’s biggest; top-tier EU Series A scale).Dan: January saw 5 new European unicorns (Aikido shoutout highlighted).Mads: new European growth fund Cambara targeting €30–50M checks; €750M raised toward €1B.