The following are some of the news items mentioned in the last few days:

  • Putin is no where close to agreeing the ceasefire with Ukraine, after the so called 30 day ceasefire proposal announced by Trump
  • Chinese annual parliamentary meeting agenda and contents were dominated by the theme of boosting investment in high technology area
  • In Germany, MPs are scheduled to vote on the spending package the coming Tuesday and the second chamber will vote on March 21
  • US is threatening to impose 200 percent tariffs on EU alcohol.
    • The substantial increase in tariffs could lead to a significant decline in demand for European alcoholic products in the U.S., potentially resulting in revenue losses estimated at up to €13.1 billion for the EU beverage industry
  • Trump Jnr is making investments that will hit big if Maga economy wave pans out
    • ​The term “MAGA economy wave” refers to the economic landscape shaped by policies and initiatives associated with former President Donald Trump’s “Make America Great Again” (MAGA) agenda. This wave emphasizes deregulation, tax reforms, protectionist trade measures, and a focus on domestic manufacturing and energy production.
  • Cursor is reported to be close to completing an investment round valuing it at 10B USD
  • Mercor that uses AI powered agent to carry out interviews to screen candidates for jobs said that its annualized recurring revenue hit 50M USD less than two years since it was founded.
    • Mercor, an AI-driven recruiting startup, was founded in January 2023 by three high school friends: Brendan Foody (CEO), Adarsh Hiremath (CTO), and Surya Midha (COO). The trio met during their high school years in the Bay Area, where they participated in competitive debate. Their collaboration continued into their college years at Georgetown and Harvard, where they began conceptualizing Mercor. In 2023, they made the bold decision to drop out of college to fully dedicate themselves to building the company.
    • Since its inception, Mercor has experienced rapid growth and success. The company recently raised $100 million in a Series B funding round, achieving a valuation of $2 billion.
    • Lovable.dev a Swedish companies hit a revenue of 17M USD in the last one month
    • Bolt.new went from 0 to 20M USD in two months
  • VCs are raising millions of dollars (400M USD in one specific case) to fund young EU talent to start companies in the region. They want to limit the brain drain happening currently where all the top talent in the EU are moving away from Europe
  • More and more startups are looking at distillation to use the existing LLMs to train a smaller model suitable for a specific task. This reduces the cost significantly in training an LLM for a specific task
  • Abu Dhabi’s MDX to invest 2B USD in Binance
    • Binance typically handles 20B USD of transactions a day
    • Binance employs 1000 people in UAE and has license to operate in the country
  • Half of the chinese population is obese and it is expected that 2/3rd (900m) will be, by 2030. Massive opportunity for obesity drug makers