— Reads —
Things to Read
A curated collection of articles I find interesting and worth sharing.
The case for building, not buying CEOs
Clearlake nabs Chelsea FC; secondaries sail into India September 18, 2026 | Log in | Read onli...
Nvidia’s Risky Business
On January 1, 1870, Jay Cooke, hailed as an American hero for his role in financing the Union effort in the Civil War, signed a contract that would, if you squint, lead to world war. In 1864, Congress...
Remembering the pre-Google web, when search was an experiment
In the mid-'90s, the web was exploding, but finding anything of actual value on it felt like an elaborate negotiation with whatever proto-search engine happened to be standing closest to the door. Unl...
Zohran Mamdani’s NYC Tech Team Is What DOGE Should Have Been
The mayor of New York City has assembled a crew of Silicon Valley and United States Digital Service veterans to overhaul city services with better software.
AI Note-Taking Apps Are Violating User Privacy
A few years ago, AI note-taking and transcription tools were a niche productivity hack used by busy executives and the media. Now, they're everywhere. But these apps come with a legal fine print that...
VC-backed startups commit more fraud, and researchers think they know why
New research from the U.K.’s Imperial College and France’s Emlyon Business School mapped out how Silicon Valley founders commit fraud — and the role investors play.
Independent sponsors are beating the buyout funds
The term “fundless sponsor” has long had a hint of failure about it, the sense that a sponsor is without a fund because they were unable to raise one.Today, not only are these sponsors outperforming t...
AI investment FOMO, quantified ...
Amazon adds a brick to the AI debt wall; loan dividend deals pick up July 11, 2026 | Log in |...
PE exits fall 46%
Quantum computing's déjà vu; inside Apollo's hybrid investing strategy; private credit market recalibrates; European PE fundraising pushed to margins...
Google Search Goes Agentic—and Doesn’t Need You Anymore
Vibe-coded results! Super widgets! Bots that never sleep! Google’s vision for the future of Search is hyper-personalized, automated, and extremely AI.
Frontier AI Models Are Doing Something Absolutely Bizarre When Asked to Diagnose Medical X-Rays
Can’t-miss innovations from the bleeding edge of science and tech Hallucinations have plagued OpenAI ever since it launched its blockbuster ChatGPT chatbot back in 2022. The propensity of large l...
🚨 We got the Chinese deepfake software powering scams around the world
404 Media has obtained a copy of ‘Haotian AI’, a popular piece of realtime deepfake software marketed to scammers. It can turn a fraudster's face into anyone else's on WhatsApp, Zoom, and Teams....
Pluralistic: A Pascal's Wager for AI Doomers (16 Apr 2026)
Today's links A Pascal's Wager for AI Doomers: We're already being turned into paperclips. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: Every pirate ebook on the internet; Sun'...
French AI start-up Mistral raises $830m in debt
The Paris-based company is building out ‘cutting-edge’ European data centres with a total capacity ambition of 200MW by 2027. French AI start-up Mistral has raised $830m in its first debt financing,...
Modeling The AGI Economy
There is a heated debate about what an AGI-level economy might look like. On one side are pessimists who foresee extreme wealth concentration and a permanent precariat: people with no meaningful econo...
Inside OpenAI’s acquisition streak
Plus, $3.5B in fresh funds to back AI startups March 25, 2026 Hi, Jeffrey l. As competition in the increasingly crowded generative AI space has intensified, it appears...
The problem with mega IPOs
University of California CIO sounds alarm on AI; Fed maintains interest rates; private credit's place in Iran war...
The missing middle of startup M&A
Plus, Europe takes the lead on week's biggest deals March 16, 2026 Hi, Jeffrey l. When startups get acquired, the deal is either a home run for investors, a money-losin...
Tech Publications Lost 58% of Google Traffic Since 2024
At their peaks, ten major tech publications pulled a combined 112 million organic visits per month from Google in the US. By January 2026, that number had fallen to 47 million. All ten sites are down,...
Venture capital is not an asset class, says Sequoia's Roelof Botha
At TechCrunch Disrupt 2025, Sequoia managing partner Roelof Botha argued that the venture industry isn’t an asset class and that throwing more money into Silicon Valley doesn’t lead to better companie...
