Legesi

(1/6) AI isn’t a bubble. It’s a capital cycle without precedent. 🧵 We are in the “In-Between”, the feverish phase where capital outpaces proof and the future is priced in decades early. How to survive the most expensive optimism in history.

@robertwiblin @grok what does this mean for @elonmusk trial against @OpenAI and @Microsoft. Reply including implications for the probability of winning the trial for Elon Musk.

Huge repository of information about OpenAI and Altman just dropped — 'The OpenAI Files'. There's so much crazy shit in there. Here's what Claude highlighted to me: 1. Altman listed himself as Y Combinator chairman in SEC filings for years — a total fabrication (?!): "To smooth his exit [from YC], Altman proposed he move from president to chairman. He pre-emptively published a blog post on the firm's website announcing the change. But the firm's partnership had never agreed, and the announcement was later scrubbed from the post." "...Despite the retraction, Altman continued falsely listing himself as chairman in SEC filings for years, despite never actually holding the position." (WTAF.) 2. OpenAI's profit cap was quietly changed to increase 20% annually — at that rate it would exceed $100 trillion in 40 years. The change was not disclosed and OpenAI continued to take credit for its capped-profit structure without acknowledging the modification. 3. Despite claiming to Congress he has "no equity in OpenAI," Altman held indirect stakes through Sequoia and Y Combinator funds. 4. Altman owns 7.5% of Reddit — when Reddit announced its OpenAI partnership, Altman's net worth jumped $50 million. Altman invested in Rain AI, then OpenAI signed a letter of intent to buy $51 million of chips from them. 5. Rumours suggest Altman may receive a 7% stake worth ~$20 billion in the restructured company. 5. OpenAI had a major security breach in 2023 where a hacker stole AI technology details but didn't report it for over a year. OpenAI fired Leopold Aschenbrenner explicitly because he shared security concerns with the board. 6. Altman denied knowing about equity clawback provisions that threatened departing employees' millions in vested equity if the ever criticised OpenAI. But Vox found he personally signed the documents authorizing them in April 2023. These restrictive NDAs even prohibited employees from acknowledging their existence. 7. Senior employees at Altman's first startup Loopt twice tried to get the board to fire him for "deceptive and chaotic behavior". 9. OpenAI's leading researcher Ilya Sutskever told the board: "I don't think Sam is the guy who should have the finger on the button for AGI". Sutskever provided the board a self-destructing PDF with Slack screenshots documenting "dozens of examples of lying or other toxic behavior. 10. Mira Murati (CTO) said: "I don't feel comfortable about Sam leading us to AGI" 11. The Amodei siblings described Altman's management tactics as "gaslighting" and "psychological abuse". 12. At least 5 other OpenAI executives gave the board similar negative feedback about Altman. 13. Altman owned the OpenAI Startup Fund personally but didn't disclose this to the board for years. Altman demanded to be informed whenever board members spoke to employees, limiting oversight. 14. Altman told board members that other board members wanted someone removed when it was "absolutely false". An independent review after Altman's firing found "many instances" of him "saying different things to different people" 15. OpenAI required employees to waive their federal right to whistleblower compensation. Former employees filed SEC complaints alleging OpenAI illegally prevented them from reporting to regulators. 16. While publicly supporting AI regulation, OpenAI simultaneously lobbied to weaken the EU AI Act. By 2025, Altman completely reversed his stance, calling the government approval he once advocated "disastrous" and OpenAI now supports federal preemption of all state AI safety laws even before any federal regulation exists. Obviously this is only a fraction of what's in the apparently 10,000 words on the site. Link below if you'd like to look over. (I've skipped over the issues with OpenAI's restructure which I've written about before already, but in a way that's really the bigger issue.)

Uganda's solar story is at an inflection point With 5.1 kWh/m²/day irradiation—one of Africa's best—and demand growing 14% annually, the fundamentals are strong. Yet solar is only ~4.2% of the 2,098 MW installed capacity (ERA, June 2025) Time for patient capital. #SolarUganda

Uganda doesn’t just face an employment gap — it faces a quality of employment crisis. Too many jobs pay too little, leaving workers earning a million shillings while published salaries show others at five or eight million. @sklegesi

We’ve rebranded. Ortus Africa Capital is now Oakstone Capital — a stronger brand built on the same trusted foundation. 🌍 📽️ Watch @sklegesi , CEO & CIO, Video here #OakstoneCapital #AfricaGrowth

As a civil engineer, loving this use of AI to bring solutions to infrastructure problems. Amazing Mr. Kyeyune Kazibwe. For @mofpedU, @MoWT_Uganda and @KCCAUG some practical AI use cases #AI4Africa

🧠 "Keep Thinking" Prize - TARA by Kyeyune Kazibwe A dashcam-to-economic-appraisal pipeline that turns road footage into infrastructure investment recommendations. Tested on an actual road under construction in Uganda.

@Rna_b2 This is an investment decision. Get a financial advisor. @KakandeAlex or @sklegesi might be able to help. Once you have worked out the financials, work with an MVP of 5 acres & an annual cost of 15-18k per tree. Turnover should be at least 20k per tree. Those are rough numbers

As you learn mathematics, what does the road ahead look like.

Between the 1960s and the 1980s, under the guise of "countering Communism," the CIA infiltrated Christian movements all over Africa and the Global South with the mission of steering Christian doctrines away from so-called "Liberation Theology" (teachings that encouraged people to stand up to corrupt governments and take collective action to better their lives), because this doctrine apparently was "Communist." It funded and assisted the explosive growth of a whole new form of Christianity, which you recognise today as Prosperity Gospel, and it pumped millions of dollars into pushing it all over the Global South as part of its Cold War effort. This new doctrine ignored any kind of collectivism and encouraged people to see their Christian faith and salvation as individualistic issues that can be measured with specific individual outcomes, such as economic "blessing." It was the perfect capitalist trojan horse because it convinced people to stop thinking of progress as a shared national issue and rather as an individual responsibility, which meant they did not need to organise into pressure groups, political movements, trade unions, student unions, or any other collectivist entities that the US government considered "Leftist" or "Communist." It succeeded wildly, and turned the world's poorest people in Sub Saharan Africa into rabid, money-obsessed capitalists without capital. And in case you're wondering whether this means that all your mega pastors in Lagos and Abuja are US government-funded industry plants, the answer is simple: do a 1-minute Google search and find out where they all gained their theology degree or pastor training. There's your answer. Anyway this is all on open record on the FOIA section of the CIA's own website, but the oyibos have convinced you that "Africans don't read," and you have internalised your own false stereotype, so you definitely won't read regardless. Your job is to enter my comment sections and drop laughing emojis because your forced laughter is your coping mechanism for dealing with how completely powerless and lost you are in a world you haven't begun to understand. Anyway for the benefit of the 2 people who understand the value of reading and exervising their brains: CIA and Missionaries: Half a Loaf by Wesley Granberg-Michaelson sojo.net/magazine/may-j… CIA Covert Action Information Bulletin Number 18: The CIA and Religion cia.gov/readingroom/do… Blowback of the gods: the U.S. government's covert use of religion as a tool of foreign policy in the Cold War by Wallace, James C. open.bu.edu/items/4e6bb7b6… Liberation Theology: Religion, Reform, and Revolution (CIA Directorate of Intelligence Research Paper) cia.gov/readingroom/do…

@KakandeAlex Why? Any clues?

The Treasury Bond yields are crushing in real time right now. The 15 year Bond. The 2039 bond is coming out at 16.75% cut off yield. The lowest yield in over a year plus. Not the usual 17.7% yields of 2025.

🚨 BREAKING: NYSE announces new tokenization platform. Here's what they're building: A completely new trading venue with: • 24/7 operations (no market hours) • Instant settlement (not T+1) • Stablecoin-based funding (not bank wires) • "Tokens natively issued as digital securities" Not retrofitting the existing exchange. Not adding blockchain to the back office. An entirely new venue. --- Think about what this means: NYSE will run two exchanges. The old one: 9:30-4:00 EST, T+1 settlement, bank wires. The new one: 24/7, instant settlement, stablecoin rails. They're not choosing between traditional and digital. They're operating both in parallel. --- How does this compare to others? Everyone else is building infrastructure to tokenize existing assets: • DTCC tokenizes existing custodied securities • State Street tokenizes MMFs and ETFs • Nasdaq amends rules for tokenized trading alongside traditional NYSE is building a new way to bring equities on-chain AND the venue to trade them. This puts them in competition with Figure's OPEN and Superstate. Native digital issuance. Native digital trading. --- Tokenized stocks enable a world where: • Settlement happens on-chain • Custody lives in wallets, not DTCC • Trading never stops • Capital formation happens in stablecoins The question for every institution: Are you digitizing your existing business or building the business that replaces it? NYSE just answered: both. --- #fintech #tokenization #infrastructure #digitalassets #stablecoins

One point I'd like to make about the @Terrahaptix round: it goes against the zeitgeist in the African VC ecosystem. > It does not check the DFI impact box > It's involves procurement and manufacturing > It faces traditional industry contract cycles > It got a big hardware component > It has two young founders These aspects meant it was out of mandate and comfort zone for almost all of Africa's VC firms - too risky, too weird, too non-consensus. But our biggest issue today is we don't search for enough asymmetric upside in African venture anymore. I don't mean all these discussions of riding pre-seed to series A for a 10x secondary. I mean old-school, fund-making, assumption-breaking, high-loss rate, asymmetric upside that renders those above challenges worth facing. And in a tech epoch that's about to put incredible pressure on Africa's age-old marketing pitch around population and purpose, we will fail if we don't take a hard look at how much the world has changed outside of our impact bubble. More often than not, new opportunities will be operationally complex, atoms-based, impossible-looking ventures made possible by this technological and geopolitical step-change. It's my belief thst Terra should have had much more early support locally. As grateful as I am for this group of Tier 1 co-investors, institutional conviction in Africa's next-gen opportunities should not have to be spearheaded by Silicon Valley's biggest firms. African venture must stand on its own global competitiveness. It must align with the disruption coming from synthetic intelligence. It must unearth high-ceiling rather than (just) high-floor deals. We must, or we become irrelevant. More on this soon.

Calling Ugandan 🇺🇬 Business Support Organizations working to advance the circular economy to apply now & join a tailored capacity building programme by the 🇪🇺 EU Circular Economy Resource Centre & @Enabel_Belgium 🗓️ 𝗗𝗲𝗮𝗱𝗹𝗶𝗻𝗲: 27 Jan 2026 🔗bit.ly/45HJnRe

LML is an institute for basic science in which researchers are commissioned to follow their curiosity. Please share and retweet! #follow

"All laws which are made in favour of liberty result from the discord between the people and the great.” — Machiavelli (Discourses on Livy, I.4). In other words, freedom—not peace—is the source of strength.

How to think about raising venture capital for your startup Most fundraising advice is written by investors for founders Here's a thread of my best advice from founder to founder:

Perplexity CEO Aravind Srinivas says the biggest threat to data centers is intelligence that runs locally on your device If models run on your own chip, they can watch your workflow and adapt via "test time training" without data ever leaving your computer "you own it. it's your brain"

🥇 THE WINNER: Uganda 🇺🇬 🥈 THE COMEBACK: Kenya 🇰🇪 🥉 THE ANCHOR: Tanzania 🇹🇿 💎 THE WILD CARD: DRC 🇨🇩 ⚠️ THE AVOID: Burundi & South Sudan 🇧🇮🇸🇸 Read the full deep dive here: 👉 impalamarket.substack.com/p/the-2025-eas…

The 2025 EAC Debt Scorecard Mega-Thread The EAC is no longer a monolith. As of Dec 2025, we are seeing a massive "monetary decoupling." Who is winning the race to stability, and who is stuck in the yield trap? The rankings are in.

(6/6) The technology will survive the drawdown. The question is: Will you? Staying solvent in a revolution is the ultimate act of defiance. Read the full deep dive on Part 2 of the AI Mania here: open.substack.com/pub/legesi/p/t… See Part 1 for context here: legesi.substack.com/p/the-ai-bubbl…

(5/6) The Tactical Framework: ✅ AI Core (65%): The "Engineers" (NVDA, TSM, GOOGL, ETN). 🚀 AI Hopes (15%): Speculative optionality. ⚓ Ballast (20%): Cash/Gold/T-Bills. Rule: If your AI sleeve hits 25% of your wealth, HARVEST. Turn hype into legacy.

(1/6) AI isn’t a bubble. It’s a capital cycle without precedent. 🧵 We are in the “In-Between”, the feverish phase where capital outpaces proof and the future is priced in decades early. How to survive the most expensive optimism in history.