Thinking like an AI / Skyrocketing Demand for Data Centers / Creator Economy in 2025 / Industries Reshaping the Economy/ Pitchbook's VCs performance

Hello there ??

I'm Edo, and welcome to the 66th issue of Tech Readings of the Week!

Every Sunday, I curate a digest of tech insights for non-tech folks and aspiring founders. From data-driven trends to tech leaders' opinions, with a pinch of startup wisdom, I help you cut through the noise and stay ahead of the curve.

Ready to dive in? Let's go! ??

In Today's Issue ??

1. Skyrocketing Demand for Data Centers
2. The Creator Economy in 2025
3. Thinking like an AI
4. Industries Reshaping the Global Economy According to McKinsey
5. How to Handle the Exit Strategy Question in VC Meetings

???Essays & articles

• How Intel got left behind in the A.I. chip boom - the company was for decades Silicon Valley’s dominant chip company. But missed opportunities and poor execution left it on the sidelines in tech’s latest gold rush (The New York Times)(€)
• Thinking like an AI - A little intuition can help (Ethan Mollick)

• The AI investment boom - AI demand is driving skyrocketing US investment in computers, data centers, and other physical infrastructure (Joseph Politano)
• Musk has been in secret contact with Putin since 2022, says bombshell new report - the Russian president even asked the billionaire for a Starlink favor (Politico)
• Solar power from space? Actually, it might happen in a couple of years - from Robinhood to slinging photons (Ars Technica)
• What do you do with an Idea? - how to turn ideas into progress (Not Boring)

• China extends the "Great Firewall" into space- satellite Internet services are the next frontier for state-sponsored censorship (IEEE Spectrum)
• Stablecoins, the monetary upgrade - stablecoins are becoming the digital currency used to reshape global finance and commerce as we know it. (The API Economy)
• The Creator Economy 2025 - A bold new chapter of AI, community, and revenue diversification (New Economies)
• Inside Silicon Valley’s most important conversations - talking AI at Reid Hoffman's Masters of Scale Summit (Every)

???VC & startups stuff

• Defense-tech boom spawns wave of new European GPs - ongoing conflict in Europe and its environs has sparked defense investment, which has in turn generated a wave of new GPs focused on the region’s burgeoning defense-tech market (Pitchbook)
• Europe should take a digital leap across its innovation gap - the US is enjoying a virtuous cycle, while the EU is caught in a mid-tech trap (Financial Times)(€)
• Wrong direction - Google CEO Sundar Pichai finally took action and made significant leadership changes (Growth Memo)
• AI-related seed rounds slow, but prices remain high - the third quarter was the second-largest for venture funding to AI startups ever, with a whopping $19.1 billion raised (Crunchbase)
• To beat the market, you have to outsmart yourself - How one venture capitalist hacked his psychology to generate returns (Every)
• Is being-data driven a fad? - Tell me the odds now, but maybe not next year (Benn Stancil)

???Reports & Data

• The high-growth industries reshaping the global economy - we look at the new high-growth industries that could transform the business landscape and generate $29 trillion to $48 trillion in revenues by 2040 (McKinsey)
• Europe & Israel’s Founder Factories (Fintech Edition) - the fintech unicorns contributing to the European entrepreneurial flywheel. Startups nurturing future founder talent. Including Klarna, Revolut and Monzo (Accel & Dealroom)
• Venture Monitor Q3 2024 - lack of distributions is exacerbating the dealmaking and fundraising stalemate (Pitchbook & NVCA)
• Europe Tech Update Q3 2024 - while venture capital investment does typically slow over the summer in Europe, European and global venture capital had its lowest quarterly total for four years in Q3 2024 (Dealroom)

?? Founder's Toolkit

TRW's collection of free fundraising resources for founders!

• Empathy on entrance price - as an entrepreneur, I think higher valuations are usually better. Or perhaps I should say lower dilution is better (Zac Townsend)
• The red flags and magic numbers that investors look for in your startup’s metrics - an 80-slide deck (Andrew Chen)
• How to handle the exit strategy question in VC meetings - your slide deck should only have an exit strategy slide if you’re running a very late-stage company about to IPO, and even then... (Venture Curator)

???ICYMI

• Microsoft to let clients build AI agents for routine tasks from November - (Reuters)
• ‘De-Extinction’ company claims to have extinct Tasmanian tiger’s genome - (Vice)
• Stripe is acquiring stablecoin platform Bridge in a $1.1B deal - (Coin Telegraph)
• Introducing computer use, a new Claude 3.5 Sonnet, and Claude 3.5 Haiku - (Anthropic)
• Arm to scrap Qualcomm chip design license in feud escalation - (Bloomberg)(€)
• OpenAI plans Orion AI model release for December - (The Verge)
• Major publishers sue Perplexity AI for scraping content - (The Register)
• ByteDance intern fired for planting malicious code in AI models - (Ars Technica)
• xAI, Elon Musk's AI startup, launches an API - (TechCrunch)
• TSMC’s (2330 TT) Arizona chip production yields surpass Taiwan’s - (Bloomberg)(€)
• Uber explored takeover bid for Expedia - (Financial Times)(€)
• World’s 1st donor cell therapy helps 3 autoimmune disorder patients - (Interesting Engineering)
• Do AI detectors work? Students face false cheating accusations - (Bloomberg)(€)

???Shitpost of the week:

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Thanks for reading, and I'll see you next week.

Edo