Ian Tobin

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In the first days of the Iran war, a US submarine torpedoed and sank the IRIN Dana off the coast of Sri Lanka. The navy vessel was unarmed, having just returned from an international celebration in India in which the US also took part. There was no warning. There was probably no need. Naval experts called it dishonorable if not illegal. Trump said it was “more fun” to sink the ship than capture it. The daughter of one of the sailors who perished at sea attended his funeral service.

In 45 years on Wall Street, I've never seen anything like this. Sam Altman just convinced 3 of the world's smartest investors to fund his losses. $110 billion. But ZERO profit in sight. The largest private funding round in history. Let me explain why this is borderline criminal & what you have to understand as an investor: Amazon. Nvidia. SoftBank. 3 of the world's most sophisticated investors just handed OpenAI $110 billion at an $840 billion valuation. That's more than double the $40 billion OpenAI raised last year. For context: all US venture capital combined invested $170 billion into American startups in all of 2023. Altman just raised 65% of that. Alone. In one round. And the company STILL isn't profitable. Let's look at the actual numbers: OpenAI burned $8 billion in 2025. They project burning $17 billion in 2026. $35 billion in 2027. $47 billion in 2028. Cumulative losses before any projected path to profitability: over $115 billion. Meanwhile, Amazon's $50 billion comes with strings attached. $35 billion is contingent on OpenAI either achieving AGI or completing its IPO by year end. Read that again. $35 billion is conditioned on ACHIEVING AGI. They're literally writing checks against a scientific breakthrough that may not happen on any predictable timeline. This is what peak cycle financing looks like. The circular logic every investor should understand: Amazon invests $50 billion in OpenAI. OpenAI commits to spending $100 billion on Amazon Web Services. Nvidia invests $30 billion. OpenAI commits to buying 3 gigawatts of Nvidia compute. These aren't arms-length investments. They're vendor financing dressed up as venture capital. Amazon and Nvidia are essentially paying OpenAI to buy their own products. The $840 billion valuation prices in a future that doesn't exist yet. At $13 billion in 2025 revenue, that's 65x revenue. Even in 2021 - the most speculative bubble in recent tech history - Snowflake peaked at 50-80x revenue. And Snowflake was actually profitable. J.P. Morgan calculates that the AI industry needs $650 billion in annual revenue just to generate a 10% return on total infrastructure buildout. The entire industry currently generates a fraction of that. I've seen cycles my entire 45-year career. The 1980s defense build-up. The dot-com bubble. The 2008 mortgage machine. The pattern is always the same: When the biggest players start financing each other's growth through circular investment structures, you're not witnessing a revolution... You're watching the LAST PHASE of a credit cycle. Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said OpenAI is going to be "one of the very big winners long term." Maybe. But $840 billion assumes they've already won. Stock prices follow earnings. Always have. Always will. And right now, OpenAI's earnings are deeply, structurally, massively negative. The IPO is coming. The hype will peak. And the question every serious investor needs to answer is simple: At what price does this actually make sense? Sam Altman doesn’t know either - he just keeps raising money faster than he can burn it. This can’t end well.

Reuters reports that the European Commission has delayed publishing a roadmap for a full ban on Russian oil imports, previously expected in mid-April. The agency claims that the proposal itself has not been dropped, but timing has been pushed back amid rising oil prices linked to the US–Iran conflict and disruptions around the Strait of Hormuz. Internal divisions also persist, with Hungary and Slovakia, both still reliant on Russian supplies, vehemently opposed to a full ban.

Total annihilation of Iran is not an option and urged countries in the region to find a way to live next to each other, Qatar says. Qatar has not registered any attacks over the past few days Statement comes days after rumors Qatar offered Iran $6BN bribe to stop attacks

Kyiv ranked third in Europe for Bentley sales, - regional Director of the company, Richard Leopold. The average price of a Bentley starts at $400.000. After Europe gives Zelenskyy another 90 billion, there's every chance of taking first place.

JUST IN: 🇷🇺🇻🇳 Russia officially signs deal with Vietnam to build its first nuclear power plant.

"We won't be doing that": Government figures say they definitely won't be cancelling or postponing carbon tax hikes this year despite the surging cost of energy, with one minister saying "It's not a tax, it's a fund".

EU commissioner for Global Gateway, Sikela, used a trip to Vietnam to warn Hanoi: Chinese vendors in its 5G network might deter foreign investment "Be careful with dependencies in strategic areas," Sikela ⁠said when asked about Chinese contracts. "5G is the new battlefield"

Absolutely incredible: The US 20Y Note Yield is now back to 5.00% less than 24 hours after President Trump said peace talks were underway. The threat of 7% mortgages and $4.00 gas prices has become reality. Bond markets say this war is unsustainable.

Costa: "We live in a multipolar world, where both North and South are plural. And this multipolar world requires multilateral solutions and multipolar partnerships. And Europe must and will be at the centre of those solutions."

VDL "Our critical minerals partnership will be crucial to our success. We can't be overdependent on any supplier for crucial ingredients. That's precisely why we need each other. Our security is your security. With our new security partnership, we have each other’s backs"

Vietnam is rising. One of my friends just put $100m in a plant there. They built it in 6 months. Like China does. Smart, hard working people. Vietnam will be a mini-China circa 2015. Won’t lead on tech like China but will become a massive exporter powerhouse. Will be interesting in local SE Asia politics as Vietnam becomes a regional superpower.

Meanwhile in China A railway maintenance robot that automatically repairs cracks on the surface of rails at a maximum speed of 10,000 RPM and can detect flaws as small as 0.1 mm is already in operation.