Exponentials

"You just have to be willing to reduce your margin... Investing in Agric for local consumption requires some patience capital" @nii_nokwei Context: youtu.be/7bllDXKMu9U

Africa has "carried last" in many things. This AI revolution cannot be one of them. Could Africa become a hub for AI infrastructure? The revelations are wild! Stay glued. #TheAiEngineRoom drops tomorrow.🔥 #aicommunity #investments #techafrica #exponentialspodcast

While the global tech landscape is currently fractured by kinetic strikes on data centers and the sudden silence of foreign AI platforms, a far more quiet and consequential transformation is taking place in Accra. Ghana has officially decided that its digital future will no longer be written in someone else’s code. On February 27, 2026, Minister @samgeorgegh stood before the Data Protection Conference and revealed that the Cabinet has approved the nation’s first National AI Strategy. This is not just another document in a bureaucratic file; it is a declaration of digital sovereignty. In a few weeks, President John Dramani Mahama will formally launch a blueprint designed to shift Ghana from a passive consumer of emerging technology to an architect of the intelligence age. This move comes at a moment where the world is learning a brutal lesson: digital dependency is a national security risk. When we rely on foreign infrastructure that can be switched off by regional conflicts or corporate whims, we are building on sand. This new strategy, paired with an Emerging Technologies Framework, is the first step toward building a digital armory. It aims to strengthen local expertise, ensuring that the algorithms governing Ghanaian healthcare, agriculture, and finance are built and audited by those who understand the nuance of our soil. The vision here is a difficult paradox. As Sam George noted, the goal is not to slow innovation but to guide it. In the race for AI dominance, many nations are sacrificing fairness for speed. Ghana is betting on a different currency: Trust. By prioritizing transparency and accountability from the start, the strategy seeks to ensure that as we scale, we do not erase our identity or inherit the biases of a black box. It is the belief that a tech ecosystem is only as strong as the confidence its citizens have in it. But a strategy is only as powerful as the hands that execute it. Innovation is often born in the chaos of a hub or the silence of a late night coding session, yet it survives through the structure of a nation. We are moving into an era where the distinction between a software developer and a national strategist has collapsed. Ghana is now asking its builders to stop looking outward for solutions and to start looking at the framework being built at home.

we're making @blocks smaller today. here's my note to the company. #### today we're making one of the hardest decisions in the history of our company: we're reducing our organization by nearly half, from over 10,000 people to just under 6,000. that means over 4,000 of you are being asked to leave or entering into consultation. i'll be straight about what's happening, why, and what it means for everyone. first off, if you're one of the people affected, you'll receive your salary for 20 weeks + 1 week per year of tenure, equity vested through the end of may, 6 months of health care, your corporate devices, and $5,000 to put toward whatever you need to help you in this transition (if you’re outside the U.S. you’ll receive similar support but exact details are going to vary based on local requirements). i want you to know that before anything else. everyone will be notified today, whether you're being asked to leave, entering consultation, or asked to stay. we're not making this decision because we're in trouble. our business is strong. gross profit continues to grow, we continue to serve more and more customers, and profitability is improving. but something has changed. we're already seeing that the intelligence tools we’re creating and using, paired with smaller and flatter teams, are enabling a new way of working which fundamentally changes what it means to build and run a company. and that's accelerating rapidly. i had two options: cut gradually over months or years as this shift plays out, or be honest about where we are and act on it now. i chose the latter. repeated rounds of cuts are destructive to morale, to focus, and to the trust that customers and shareholders place in our ability to lead. i'd rather take a hard, clear action now and build from a position we believe in than manage a slow reduction of people toward the same outcome. a smaller company also gives us the space to grow our business the right way, on our own terms, instead of constantly reacting to market pressures. a decision at this scale carries risk. but so does standing still. we've done a full review to determine the roles and people we require to reliably grow the business from here, and we've pressure-tested those decisions from multiple angles. i accept that we may have gotten some of them wrong, and we've built in flexibility to account for that, and do the right thing for our customers. we're not going to just disappear people from slack and email and pretend they were never here. communication channels will stay open through thursday evening (pacific) so everyone can say goodbye properly, and share whatever you wish. i'll also be hosting a live video session to thank everyone at 3:35pm pacific. i know doing it this way might feel awkward. i'd rather it feel awkward and human than efficient and cold. to those of you leaving…i’m grateful for you, and i’m sorry to put you through this. you built what this company is today. that's a fact that i'll honor forever. this decision is not a reflection of what you contributed. you will be a great contributor to any organization going forward. to those staying…i made this decision, and i'll own it. what i'm asking of you is to build with me. we're going to build this company with intelligence at the core of everything we do. how we work, how we create, how we serve our customers. our customers will feel this shift too, and we're going to help them navigate it: towards a future where they can build their own features directly, composed of our capabilities and served through our interfaces. that's what i'm focused on now. expect a note from me tomorrow. jack