Leaks, Launches & Listings

📈 Portfolio Pulse

🤖 OpenAI: Offensive on Every Front

A leaked memo from OpenAI CRO Denise Dresser accused Anthropic of inflating revenue by roughly $8B, claiming they count cloud credits from Google and Amazon as full revenue. The memo put OpenAI's own run rate at $24B and called Anthropic "built on fear and restriction." Same week, OpenAI acqui-hired Hiro Finance, an AI personal finance startup founded by Ethan Bloch, who previously sold Digit for $230M. Internal docs also surfaced a new model codenamed Spud set to upgrade all OpenAI products, a new enterprise agent platform called Frontier designed to move customers from prompts to multi-year contracts, and the launch of GPT-5.4-Cyber, a restricted model for defensive cybersecurity work available only to vetted security firms. Gizmodo | TechCrunch | The Decoder | Axios

🦾 Anthropic: Passing on $800B Offers

Investors have been coming to Anthropic with term sheets valuing the company at $800B or higher. Anthropic is passing for now. The company's last round was a $30B raise at $380B, and annualized revenue just crossed $30B, with many credible investors forecasting that Anthropic could hit a run rate of $80-100B by EOY. Separately, Anthropic shipped a redesigned Claude Code desktop app with parallel session management, a built-in terminal, diff viewer, and a new Routines feature that runs automations without an active session. TechCrunch | MacRumors

🐙 Kraken: IPO Filed, Big Partner In

Co-CEO Arjun Sethi confirmed Kraken filed confidentially for an IPO. The same day, Deutsche Börse disclosed a $200M secondary investment at a $13.3B implied valuation, down from $20B in November. The partnership covers trading, custody, settlement, and tokenized assets. If it goes through, Kraken would be the first crypto-native firm of its scale to go public since Coinbase's direct listing in 2021. QZ

💸 X Money: PayPal's New Problem

Elon is finishing what he started. Back in 1999, he launched X.com which became PayPal. Now, X Money is live in beta going straight after PayPal with P2P transfers, a 6% APY account, and a Visa debit card. Wall Street noticed. Mizuho responded by downgrading PayPal from Outperform to Neutral and cutting its price target from $60 to $50, calling X a “direct threat” to Venmo and PayPal's checkout business. X already has money transmitter licenses in 40+ states, though notably not New York, where regulators have pushed back. The longer-term play is a WeChat-style financial layer embedded inside a 600M-user platform. X Head of Product Nikita Bier just tweeted: "Crypto has had a rough year. Maybe we should launch something to fix it," fueling speculation that crypto rails could be next. The Block

👀 Watch List

🏗️ Vercel: IPO Signals, Agents Driving Growth

CEO Guillermo Rauch said publicly the company is "ready and getting more ready every day" for an IPO. ARR grew 240% since early 2024, from $100M to $340M. The driver: 30% of apps running on Vercel are now being built by AI agents, not humans. As more software gets created autonomously, Vercel becomes the default place to host it. The broader IPO window is still frozen, but Vercel is positioning itself to move when it opens. TechCrunch

💬 Prompt

What can I help you with?

I need to name [product, company, or project]. Give me 10 options that are not generic, not a SaaS pun, and not already taken. For each one, tell me what it signals to the person hearing it for the first time.

📚 Content

🌎 Control the Crust

Leave it to the founder behind Anduril to make drilling deeper sound like one of the biggest unlocks for humanity. Geothermal abundance, here we come.

🪾 Sequoia’s Thesis 

This is one of the better takes we’ve seen on where AI is really going.

Sequoia argues the next $1T AI company won’t sell copilots or software seats. Instead, it will sell outcomes, closed books, reviewed contracts, and processed claims.

That is the unlock. When you sell the outcome, every model upgrade expands margins instead of eroding your moat.

Worth 2 minutes.

🛑 Anthropic Hits the Brakes

Anthropic just made a move that tells you the game is changing.

It held back Claude Mythos Preview after the model reportedly found thousands of software vulnerabilities, then teamed up with Apple, Microsoft, Google, and others for controlled defensive use through Project Glasswing.

Old Silicon Valley was move fast and break things. Frontier AI is starting to look a lot more like sandbox first, deploy second.

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