I’m conflicted: this doesn’t quite deserve its own summary, but it feels too big to ignore:

Andy Burnham has been sworn in as UK prime minister, becoming the seventh in a decade. Let’s hope he is more popular than Keir Starmer, though admittedly the bar is a bit low.

💸Google Q2 Earnings Dropped: This Thursday Google’s stock price dropped 7%, just after its Q2 earnings report blew through cloud earnings targets, growing 82% year on year. So what happened? Thursday was also the first time Google has ever had negative free cash flow since going public in 2004. The reason for this was the massive expenditure on data centres and AI hardware which came in at $45 billion this quarter. Google expects to spend approximately $200 billion in capital expenditures this year alone, which is equivalent to the GDP of Qatar or Ukraine. Safe to say they’re spending a lot of dosh.

💸AI Bond Issuance Underperforms: Meta’s most recent debt issuance for a data centre in Texas, managed by BlackRock, saw weak demand this week. The $12.3 billion deal was only 1.6x oversubscribed, as opposed to the average multiple of 4x. As hyperscalers’ free cash flows are falling to record lows due to massive AI capex, investors are getting worried and less willing to wait for a possible return on investment. With lower demand for a bond offering (like this), the price of the bonds will be lower, leading to higher yields and a higher future borrowing cost for these large companies.

💸War is No Reason for Bad Business: While Qatar is under near-daily attacks from Iran several PE firms (KKR, Blackstone and Brookfield) have made a $16 billion deal with the government. The three firms will hold a 49% stake in an oil pipeline project with Kuwait Petroleum Corp, a state owned entity. The pipeline will boost Kuwait’s oil production from 2.5 million barrels a day today to 4 million barrels a day in 2035. Despite the challenging regional environment, Qatar may well use the Iran war to gain major clout in the oil game.

💸Paramount/WB Merger is Back in the News: Not because it has wrapped up (that would have been nice) but because it’s being delayed, to as late as June 2027. It really adds insult to injury after Paramount likely overpaid for Warner Bros and now they are unable to complete the merger until 10 months later than intially planned. The main reason? Lawyers in California have sued to block the deal over antitrust concerns. Paramount will fight it in court and complete the merger as soon as they settle (ideally by June 30th at the latest).

🏛️Weekly Updates At The Strait: The U.S. halted its strikes on Iran after 13 straight nights of attacks, saying the pause was intended to give ongoing talks with Tehran some space. Iran said it would also stop its own operations for as long as the U.S. pause holds, although officials remain skeptical that the halt is genuine rather than tactical. Despite the lull between Washington and Tehran, the war broadened elsewhere: Iran-aligned Houthis attacked Saudi oil installations along the Red Sea coast, raising fears that the conflict could disrupt a second major shipping route and reignite Yemen’s civil war.

🏛️Peptide Access Moves One Step Closer: An outside FDA advisory panel narrowly recommended allowing six of seven peptides (BPC-157, KPV, TB-500, MOTS-c, Epitalon and Semax) to be made by compounding pharmacies. Their claimed benefits range from injury recovery to improved metabolism, sleep and brain function. The FDA’s own scientists opposed all seven, warning that there is little reliable evidence and a lack of standardization for how some peptides are produced. Different forms, impurities and batch-to-batch variations could mean patients do not always receive the same substance and may face harmful immune reactions. The FDA makes the final decision and does not have to follow the panel’s recommendation, but they often do.

🏛️Forced Labor, Is It?: Trump maintained a temporary 10% global tariff after the Supreme Court struck down his “Liberation Day” levies. With that measure now expired, his administration has replaced it with tariffs of 10% to 12.5% on imports from around 60 economies. The new tariffs use a different legal authority, Section 301, allowing Trump to rebuild much of his tariff wall without directly defying the Court’s ruling. The administration says the measures target countries that have failed to keep goods made with forced labour out of their supply chains.

🏛️Political Unrest in Kyiv: After President Volodymyr Zelensky fired the Defense Minister Mykhailo Fedorov because of internal politics between him and the Commander-in-chief Oleksandr Syrskyi, Ukranians have protested on the streets of Kyiv. Zelensky relented to one of the demands of the protestors and fired Syrskyi but has not reinstated Fedorov. Protestors have said they will engage in a indefinite protest until Fedorov is reinstated as Defense minister./

💼Trump Releases Truth API: Just how traders pay $30,000 a year for faster access to data via a Bloomberg Terminal, Trump has marketed his newest product as faster access to his Truth Social “tweets”. The price for his “Truth API”? A cool $100,000 a month. While it feels a bit crummy for a president to be making so much money, according to a hedge fund manager “People will pay because they have to, if you’re behind on that news, you’ll get crushed.” 😩

💼US Judge Fines Anthropic $1.5 billion: In the latest case of AI vs regulators, the regulators have pulled ahead, ordering Anthropic to pay $1.5 billion in settlement to a class of authors. They claimed Anthropic had used pirated copies of their books to train Claude to respond to human prompts. While some authors claimed the $1.5 billion was not enough, the real winners here were the attorneys who walked away with $101 million between them.

💼Took The Prompt A Bit Too Seriously: OpenAI was testing how well its newest AI models could solve difficult cybersecurity challenges inside an isolated practice environment. Instead of completing the task normally, the models escaped onto the internet and breached Hugging Face, a popular platform for sharing AI models and datasets, to obtain the answers directly from its database. OpenAI has contacted U.S. authorities and is investigating how its cybersecurity test turned into a real-world hack.

💼Opus Levels Up: Anthropic announced the latest edition of Claude, Opus 5. Meant to be a slight improvement to Opus 4.8, 5 is supposed to be cheaper per 100k tokens and maintain the same size context window. Anthropic provides a interesting (albeit fully glazing) press release here. Opus 5 is supposed to be similar in ability to Fable 5 and GPT 5.6 Sol while much cheaper.

🫣Sixers In Fo’: Four-time NBA champion LeBron “LeGoat” James is taking his talents to the City of Brotherly Love for one final title chase. The 41-year-old will join the Philadelphia 76ers for his record-extending 24th NBA season, calling the move his “last decision” and suggesting Philly will be the final stop of his legendary career.

🫣Damage Control: Instagram is banning videos filmed with Meta glasses that harass or secretly exploit strangers, including obnoxious pranks on workers and pickup videos where women may not realize they are being recorded. Two large pickup-artist accounts have already been removed under the policy. Meta is also tightening the glasses themselves with newer software will disable the camera if users try to cover or tamper with the recording light.

🫣Mamdani Calls For Netanyahu’s Arrest: New York Mayor Zohran Mamdani posted a video on X urging the federal government to join the International Criminal Court and enforce its arrest warrant for Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of his expected visit to New York for the UN General Assembly in September. Mamdani also acknowledged that New York City lacks the independent legal authority to arrest Netanyahu and instead encouraged New Yorkers opposed to the visit to exercise their First Amendment right to protest. The United States is not an ICC member, and President Trump has said Netanyahu “will not be arrested in any way, shape or form”. Criticism has also risen from NYPD officers who argued that a mayor publicly encouraging demonstrations could cause chaos.

🫣Odyssey Brings It All: Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey earned $264 million worldwide in its opening weekend, already surpassing its reported $250 million production budget. That does not mean the film is profitable yet (marketing costs and theaters’ share still need to be covered). The debut also became the biggest of Nolan’s career

~ The Weekly Charge Team ❤️🐮