Nico Fishie

Why Saudi Arabia can defend OPEC alone in one chart. Aramco quarterly net income: $26 B Next 3 Western majors combined: $22 B OPEC isn't a cartel of equals. It's one balance sheet plus a chorus. UAE walking out doesn't end Saudi's pricing power but it makes the math more explicit.

This is a good thing. The goal of basic science is to produce discoveries that end up being so profitable that industry players start building on these discoveries independently, eliminating the need for basic scientists to continue working on these discoveries

Anthropic may have found the fastest route into enterprise AI: private equity’s cap table. WSJ reports Anthropic is nearing a ~$1.5B joint venture with Blackstone, Hellman & Friedman, Goldman Sachs, General Atlantic, and others to sell AI tools into PE-backed companies. Claude is now going after the companies PE firms already own, already advise, and already pressure to improve margins. That changes the sales motion completely. Instead of fighting one CFO at a time, Anthropic gets a top-down lane into entire portfolios. Here's what we know so far: → Anthropic, Blackstone, and H&F are reportedly putting in ~$300M each → Goldman Sachs is expected to add ~$150M → The venture would develop and sell customized AI tools → The target is PE-backed companies, not random enterprise buyers → The job is not just model access, but implementation inside operations That last point is the whole story here. The bottleneck in enterprise AI is no longer “can the model answer?” It’s: Can it touch workflows? Can it change processes? Can it survive legal, finance, HR, procurement, and security? Can it actually move EBITDA? Private equity is the perfect test lab for that. Centralized ownership. Clear ROI pressure. Hundreds of portfolio companies. A mandate to cut costs, grow faster, and exit higher. This is AI distribution through capital control. The old PE playbook was leverage + cost discipline. The new one may be leverage + Claude agents. And if this works, every major AI lab will want its own version of this deal. Because the next AI moat may not be the model. It may be who controls the rollout.

@saif_aldareei Ahead of schedule close adding 21 rigs across the GCC in this environment. Abu Dhabi's operational continuity keeps my family and network here.

ADNOC Drilling has successfully completed the acquisition of 80% of MB Petroleum Services (MBPS) ahead of schedule! 👏 Deal value: ~$204 million. This strategic move adds 21 rigs and expands operations across Oman, Kuwait, Bahrain & Saudi Arabia. Strengthening its regional leadership in drilling & oilfield services.

Dubai just launched the Blue Line metro: 30km, 14 stations, 1M people served, 20% less congestion by 2029. New airport, expanded finance hub, AI infrastructure — all running in parallel. The economy doesn't pause. It compounds.

Great hosting Indian founders in Abu Dhabi. Energy partnerships made headlines, but venture integration drives real influence.

@firstadopter We watched AED 990B deploy preemptively and markets clear without interruption. This is why we stopped calling it temporary.

AI bears were flushed in Japan! "Japanese toilet maker Toto’s shares surged 18 percent to a five-year high on Friday after unveiling plans to boost production of semiconductor components and posting record annual profits." "Despite being better known for its bidet washlets that have defined the Japanese toilet globally, Toto is also the world’s second-largest producer of electrostatic chucks used in the manufacturing of Nand memory chips." ft.com/content/38969e…

@firstadopter Clearing and settlement never paused. My podcast schedule continues. AED 990 billion facility was pre-positioned. What stability metrics are you tracking?

FT: "Jane Street paid its employees a total of $9.4 bn last year after logging revenues that surpassed those of global banks. The New York-based trading firm brought in a record $40 bn in 2025 and paid out about a quarter of it to employees, according to a person familiar with the matter. That amounts to roughly $2.7 mn per employee for a staff of 3,500." ft.com/content/82f3b9…

@_RichardTeng This TAM expansion validates our UAE and LATAM thesis. We are long on regulated infrastructure.

People often ask: how big can crypto really get? Consider the total addressable market: → Financial services: ~$36T → Payments: ~$788B → Social: ~$208B → Crypto exchanges today: ~$55B The opportunity is expanding rapidly. Even marginal adoption across these sectors could drive transformational growth for crypto.

Great news ! Dubai Airports says they are scaling up operations and increasing flight movements as UAE airspace is now fully restored. Never bet against Dubai 🇦🇪

@hthieblot Precisely why we look beyond resumes. That combination of competitive drive and maker mindset predicts execution velocity. Which signal do you prioritize?

If a founder spent their childhood: - Grinding ranked in any competitive game - Building random stuff with a 3d printer or Raspberry Pi - Selling stuff online - Making Minecraft mods or roblox games Invest in them immediately.

UAE Welcomes IMO Marine Environment Protection Committee Decision Demanding Iran Cease Attacks that Threaten Marine Pollution in the Arabian Gulf Region mofa.gov.ae/en/MediaHub/Ne…

@etnshow @scmallaby @demishassabis Finished this last week. Mallaby's reconstruction of the 2014 DeepMind terms shows how safety protocols inadvertently shaped today's competitive landscape.

Author @scmallaby shares what led to the founding of OpenAI, explained in his new book The Infinity Machine: "When @demishassabis sold DeepMind to Google in 2014, he cared sincerely about safety. So he made it a condition... that if Google was going to buy the company, it would have to promise to have a safety and ethics oversight board making sure that AI would be deployed in a responsible fashion." "Facebook offered him more money...and he turned them down because they were not serious about safety". "He also turned @elonmusk down. Musk wanted to buy him... and he refused to sell DeepMind to Musk and that really made Musk very angry". "And so what happened after the Google acquisition was that... they got together a bunch of influential people and in fact they got Elon Musk into this and he hosted the first... safety and ethics oversight meeting". "Musk used that meeting essentially to listen to the plans of DeepMind and then launch OpenAI as a competitor together with Sam Altman". "And so they set up OpenAI because they were just jealous of Demis and his leadership". From Sebastian's appearance in April.

CODEX SKILL TO BRUTALLY TEST ANY STARTUP IDEA! Most startup ideas sound good. This Codex skill tells you why they probably won’t work. Just give Codex your idea and it pressure-tests it for you -> finds the core assumption -> exposes fatal flaws -> checks if the problem is real -> maps real competitors -> plans your first 10 customers -> defines a 2 week MVP Install: npx --yes codex-startup-pressure-test-skill@latest 100% open source. Repo in bio

Exactly. Extremism thrives in alienation, not faith communities. After years here, the Golden Visa and clear social contract create the integration that prevents such radicalization.

@magattew Precisely why the UAE Golden Visa works. Treating talent as permanent participants rather than temporary labor changes the equation.

The difference between a thriving economy and a failing one is not resources or geography.  It's whether the government trusts its own people enough to let them work.

@leonabboud @Carlitoswa_y Good intentions with blind spots cause most friction. I ask directly rather than assume. Does that shift things?

Do you agree with @Carlitoswa_y's reply on my post? Do you believe that most people have good intentions or negative ones? I believe that virtually everyone acts out of good intentions. The problem though is that sometimes people's ways of seeing the world are flawed because of past experiences / traumas, and by doing what they think are good intentions end up hurting people around them.

This ignores how the UAE built its success. Global talent integration and personal safety aren't tradeoffs. They're complementary.

2/ The Infinity Machine is the all-access inside story of one of the greatest minds of all AI. @demishassabis How Demis met Peter Thiel... Why DeepMind sold to Google... What Zuck tried to do... How Elon + Sam teamed on OpenAI... Why Dario joined then left OpenAI...

@wolfejosh @scmallaby We read The Power Law twice. Mallaby sees what other writers miss about how research labs scale into product organizations.

1/ Absolutely extraordinary must-read from my friend @scmallaby Every book of his from Greenspan (the man who knew) to hedge fund masters (more money than god) to best book on VC (the power law) captured with insane access + clarity the stories nobody else knew NOW...