There is one winner regarding the most significant story this week. Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy have been made advisors to the Trump administration on Government efficiency in a department called DOGE (Department of Government Efficiency). Their advisor status is widely assumed to be to avoid apparent conflicts, but in reality, they are likely to wield much power.

It is rumored that Marc Andreessen was also seen on election night in Mara-a-Lago and is engaged in giving Trump advice on Tech issues.

Many of my friends (perhaps you are one of them) are horrified that Elon has this much power and are inclined to assume bad things will happen. That may well be right, but…..

Hat Tip to this week’s creators: @BrankoMilan, @europressos, @AfPalasciano, @adam_tooze, @MCC_Brussels, @Norm_Lewis, @KateClarkTweets, @Alex_Lazarow, @AABerwick, @BenFoldy, @peternixey, @rhodgkinson, @andyjayhawk, @_odsc, @Kantrowitz, @amir, @steph_palazzolo, @Kyle_L_Wiggers, @girlstothefront, @mcbridesg, @geneteare, @elonmusk

Contents

Editorial: 

Essays of the Week

Can an international economic system exist in the world of nationalisms?

Draghi Says EU Itself at Risk Without More Funds, Joint Debt

Draghi's view of Europe: Investment, R&D & the US-EU comparison

Musk, Telegram and the European Assault on Online Speech

Venture Capitalists Turn to Novel Methods to Return Cash

The Rise Of Fintech Families

The Shadow Dollar That’s Fueling the Financial Underworld

Startup Success - How to Measure it?

Illiquidity is a feature, not a bug

Video of the Week

Elon Musk Live at All In Summit

AI of the Week

Waymo and Uber expand their robotaxi partnership to Austin and Atlanta

New AI Chip Surpasses Nvidia, AMD, and Intel with 20x Faster Speeds and Over 4 Trillion Transistors

Is OpenAI’s New “o1” Model The Big Step Forward We’ve Been Waiting For?

OpenAI COO Says ChatGPT Passed 11 Million Paying Subscribers

OpenAI In Talks To Raise $6.5 Billion at $150 Billion Valuation

Keen On: Gary Marcus on How to Tame Silicon Valley’s AI Barons

Mistral releases Pixtral 12B, its first multimodal model

News Of the Week

Why the SpaceX spacewalk is such a huge deal

Silicon Valley’s Y Combinator to Double Number of Cohorts Per Year

The Unicorn Board Adds 8 New Companies, With One Newly Minted Entry Valued At $16B 

Startup of the Week

AI-Powered Work Assistant Glean Doubles Valuation To $4.6B In Less Than Seven Months

X of the Week

Australian Government is “Fascist” - Elon Musk