MY TAKE
Since LinkedIn only sends out the first part of the newsletter and then makes you click through to finish it, I’m going to try putting my opinion before the data this time, and then you can keep reading if you want.
There’s one thing that ties together every move this week:
AI is ceasing to be software and turning into critical infrastructure.
When you see OpenAI building hardware, Foxconn reindustrializing America, investors funding nuclear reactors for data centers, Palantir selling at the peak… and Google investing in talent in India, the pattern is no longer a coincidence.
We’re entering a phase where the bottleneck is no longer artificial intelligence itself. The bottleneck is everything that makes artificial intelligence possible.
Energy, chips, supply chain, talent, security, infra. It’s the “AWS moment,” multiplied by a thousand.
And my gut feeling, which nobody on a blog is going to tell you, is that we’re watching the birth of a second layer of the economy, one that exists exclusively so the first one doesn’t blow up.
So if you’re a CEO, a CPO, or you’re in that weird middle spot where you’re the only one who understands the tension between business and product… my advice this week is simple:
Stop looking at AI as a tool. Start looking at it as infrastructure.
And now, the data that made it possible to write all of this….
THE BOMBSHELL OF THE WEEK
Sam Altman has decided that depending on third parties is so 2023. So he’s partnered with Foxconn — yes, the people who assemble your iPhone — to design and manufacture AI data center hardware… in the United States. As if to say: “If I want to run, I’ll make my own sneakers.”
What they’re going to do together is not small:
- Design several generations of AI racks in parallel (this is about speed, not production capacity).
- Foxconn will assemble everything in the US: cabling, networking, cooling, power…
- Factories in: Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas, Virginia, Indiana.
- And note this detail: the Ohio plant is a former General Motors factory. A poetic way to close the loop on industrialization.
The numbers that matter:
- OpenAI has committed 1.4 trillion (yes, with a T) to infrastructure.
- Foxconn is already a supplier to Nvidia. Now to OpenAI too.
- The initial deal doesn’t bind anyone to anything, but it gives OpenAI priority access to whatever hardware Foxconn pulls out of the oven.
Why does this genuinely matter?
Because OpenAI is making a move that smells an awful lot like Apple 2007: going vertical. Controlling not just the software and the model, but the entire supply chain.
If you control the hardware:
- you control costs,
- you control speed,
- and above all, you control strategic dependency.
In geopolitics this is called: “If you don’t want to depend on Asia, build it yourself.”
And in product this is called: “Stop explaining your bottlenecks. Eliminate them.”
Altman’s quote sums it up perfectly:
“The infrastructure behind advanced AI is a generational opportunity to reindustrialize America.”
“If we want the party to keep going, we’d better build the table ourselves.”
POWER MOVES
1. Palantir’s CEO sells $96M mid-slump
Alex Karp offloaded 585,000 shares, nearly 96 million dollars, right as the AI sector was getting a serious scare.
Quick context:
- Palantir fell 16% in November — its worst month since August 2023.
- From 207.52 (all-time high on November 3) to 168.45 on the 28th.
- -19%, as casually as you like.
- Jefferies keeps saying its valuation is “extreme”: 233× forward earnings.
Insider move or unfortunate timing? I’m not going to tell you what to think. Just that it’s always interesting to watch who sells… and when.
2. Google and Accel team up to fund AI startups in India
Date: November 25, 2025.
Google’s AI Futures Fund and Accel are jumping in together to invest up to 2 million per startup, focused on AI for entertainment, creativity, work, and coding.
It’s the first time Google has done a dedicated funding partnership of this kind.
Why does this matter for Silicon Valley? Because the battle for AI talent is no longer Silicon Valley versus the world. Now the world is playing too. And India, especially, is raising its hand very high.
MONEY TALKS
Revolut — $75B valuation (Nov 24)
Revolut has pulled a very sly move: raising a round without raising a round.
They sold secondary, but with names that, put together, could stage a G20 of money: Coatue, Greenoaks, Dragoneer, Fidelity… with a16z, Franklin Templeton, and NVIDIA’s ventures unit behind them, which lately invests in anything that breathes AI and smells like scale.
The number that matters: +66% valuation versus last year.
And the context that makes you think: They’re now worth more than BBVA, almost as much as ING, and they’re a 10-year-old fintech competing with banks that have more history than your grandfather’s typewriter.
Santander is still ahead, but the gap is closing. Silicon Valley has once again proven that when it spots a slow market… it walks in with a flamethrower.
X-Energy — $700M Series D (Nov 25)
Here comes the part where your coffee goes cold: $700 million for modular nuclear reactors.
Yes, reactors. For AI data centers.
The play: Jane Street leads, ARK and Point72 behind. The elite of risk capital saying: “energy is now AI’s bottleneck, so let’s build the energy.”
While half the industry debates whether to use GPT-4, GPT-5, or Llama, these people are figuring out how to plug it all in without tripping the planet’s breakers.
Tenzai — $75M Seed (Nov 25)
A 75 million seed. Seed. In cybersecurity.
The idea? AI agents that behave like offensive hackers to test your system before someone with real intentions does.
The second read: If the bad guys are using AI, and your systems aren’t… buddy, your SOC is a sandcastle.
Model ML — $75M Series A (Nov 24)
This is the startup that will make a lot of consultants sleep worse.
They automate:
- pitch decks
- financial models
- due diligence
- market analysis
FT Partners leads (and they don’t invest as a hobby), with Y Combinator and QED alongside.
Translation: AI no longer takes your job. It takes your meetings.
Clover Security — $36M (Nov 25)
Security agents embedded directly into development workflows.
In other words: Your pipeline flags vulnerabilities before your team even starts discussing them on Slack. Speed and security at the same time. The holy grail.
Tidalwave — $22M Series A (Nov 24)
“Agentic” AI to speed up mortgage processing.
Doesn’t sound glamorous… But if you’ve worked with banks, you know this is a hell full of PDFs.
Solving that is like pulling the plug out of a multi-billion-dollar drain.
VALLEY DRAMA
Three earthquakes rattle Silicon Valley in 4 minutes
Date: November 26, 2025, 9:16-9:20am
- Magnitude 4.0 — 23 miles south of San Jose
- Magnitude 2.7 — 2 minutes later
- Magnitude 3.6 — at 9:20am
The epicenter: kilometers away from the HQs of Google, Apple, NVIDIA, Meta, Netflix.
Worrying data point: Roughly 100 small earthquakes have shaken the Bay Area this month. Scientists are investigating the unusual activity.
Real risk: A major earthquake would be catastrophic for the global cloud infrastructure concentrated in the region.
Thanks for reading me once again.
Onward.