🇳🇱 Netherlands proposes 36% tax on unrealized capital gains starting 2028

The Netherlands announced a 36% tax on unrealized capital gains covering stocks, ETFs, savings, and crypto. Each year, portfolio value growth would be taxed even if assets are not sold. The proposal still requires Senate approval and is scheduled to take effect on January 1, 2028.

Example:

🖱 €100K portfolio rises to €140K
🖱 €40K paper gain
🖱 After €1,800 threshold, €38,200 taxable
🖱 36% tax = €13,752 due

Even if markets later crash, taxes already paid are not refunded. Losses can be carried forward, but prior unrealized gains remain taxed.

In a 3-year scenario:

🖱 Initial investment: €100K
🖱 Total tax paid: €13,752
🖱 Portfolio value after recovery: €110K
🖱 Real net capital after tax: €96,248

On paper the investor shows a profit. After taxes, they are below the original capital.

This setup increases forced selling risk, as investors may need to liquidate assets to pay taxes on unrealized gains.

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SBF tweets from prison showing that his shares of Anthropic would be worth $30 Billion now.

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Amazon’s stock fell 80% in 2000.

Here’s what Jeff Bezos told investors.

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🚀 SaaS crisis 2026 is about budgets, not extinction

The narrative says AI is replacing SaaS. The shift looks different. IT budgets are growing around 8% year over year, while AI budgets are up 100% or more. That money is not coming from new allocation. It is being pulled from existing SaaS spend.

Enterprises are not cutting software entirely. They are reallocating. AI tools take dollars that previously funded new seats, extra modules, and expansion plans.

Three forces drive the pressure:
🖱 Budget reallocation toward AI initiatives
🖱 Vendor consolidation as companies reduce app sprawl
🖱 Lower seat counts as AI boosts productivity per employee

What shows up as revenue growth in some SaaS names often comes from price increases rather than new logos. At the same time, AI-native interfaces make older products feel dated.

AI is not removing software from the stack. It is changing how value is priced. Seat-based licensing weakens when output can scale without adding users. Budgets are finite. The products tied to AI allocation capture the growth.

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Ⓜ️ Meta rolls out Manus Agents after missing OpenClaw deal

After failing to acquire OpenClaw, Meta has introduced Manus Agents inside Manus, the project reportedly acquired by Mark Zuckerberg.

The new agents offer integrations with tools like Gmail and Notion, access through messaging interfaces, and background task execution. The feature set closely mirrors OpenClaw’s model.

The main difference is distribution. Manus Agents are available out of the box, without self-hosting. The trade-off is paid access and limited customization.

When acquisition fails, replication moves fast.

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🏎 Operating margins in autos: Ferrari plays a different game

Ferrari does not just build beautiful cars. It runs one of the strongest operating margin profiles in the auto industry.

While most manufacturers compete on volume and face tight margins, Ferrari keeps production limited and pricing firm.

In autos, that is the difference between selling cars and running a business.

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🎫 Former HSBC executive faces court for 740 fare dodges in 11 months

Joseph Molloy, a millionaire and former senior executive at HSBC, appeared in a London court after repeatedly evading train fares.

Over 11 months, he used a scheme 740 times by buying tickets only for the first and last stations of his journey. The estimated loss to Southeastern Railway was about €6,700. He purchased tickets under false names and addresses between October 2023 and September 2024 and admitted guilt.

According to his lawyer, Molloy could not explain his actions. He previously led HSBC Global Asset Management and retired early last year.

The court sentenced him to a 10-month suspended term, 80 hours of community service, and a one-year ban from Southeastern Railway.

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📉 US tech IPOs fall to ~15 per year as exits get older and rarer

Data from 2,770 US tech IPOs between 1990 and 2025 shows a sharp decline in listings.

🖱 In the 1990s there were 1,598 tech IPOs.

🖱 In the 2000s, 573.

🖱 In the 2010s, 372.

🖱 In the 2020s so far, 227.

Recent years average around 15 deals annually. Companies now go public at roughly 11 years old, compared with about 7.6 years in the 1990s.

At the same time, the share of profitable companies at IPO has dropped from around 60% in the 1990s to roughly mid-20% levels in recent years.

The US public market is worth $62.2T.
IPO volume suggests access to it is narrowing, not expanding.

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💰 OpenAI secures first commitments in $100B round at $830B valuation

🖱 OpenAI finalized the first commitments in a new funding round expected to total $100B. The deal values the company at about $830B and would be the largest private financing round on record.

🖱 Key investors include SoftBank, Nvidia, Amazon, and Microsoft. OpenAI still generates $0 in annual profit and remains deeply unprofitable, with revenues projected to exceed expenses only by 2029, if at all.

🖱 Much of the capital is expected to flow back to the same companies through infrastructure and compute spending. Money moves in a loop.

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💰 OpenAI valuation could top $850B in new funding round

🖱 According to Bloomberg, OpenAI may exceed an $850B valuation in its next funding round.

🖱 That would place it above Exxon Mobil, Visa, and JPMorgan Chase by market capitalization.

An AI lab approaching the scale of legacy financial and energy giants signals how capital is being repriced around compute and models.

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🤝 Sam Altman and Dario Amodei skip Unity Raise handshake in Delhi

🖱 At an AI summit in Delhi, India’s prime minister led a Unity Raise ceremony where participants hold hands and lift them to signal solidarity.

🖱 Everyone joined in except Sam Altman and Dario Amodei, who happened to stand next to each other.

🖱 Amodei previously served as VP of Research at OpenAI. He left in 2020 after disagreements with leadership and later founded Anthropic. Since then, he and Altman have become direct competitors.

Stage optics sometimes say more than prepared speeches.

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🌍 World Labs lands $1B to build AI-generated 3D worlds

World Labs secured $1B in funding. The startup builds AI models that generate interactive 3D worlds. Its first product, the Marble model, launched in November.

Autodesk is one of the largest investors, committing $200M. The company plans to integrate World Labs’ models into its products in the future.

The latest reported valuation stands at $5B.

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🧠 Ex-DeepMind lead David Silver lands $1B to build superintelligence without LLMs

David Silver’s London startup Ineffable Intelligence secured $1B in a seed round at a reported $4B valuation. Silver previously led work on AlphaGo and contributed to Gemini before leaving Google last year to start the company.

The goal is to build an “infinitely learning superintelligence” that discovers knowledge on its own. Instead of training on massive datasets, the system will rely on reinforcement learning and learn through trial and error.

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🚀 Claude Code hits $2.5B ARR just 9 months after launch

Anthropic opened Claude Code to all users in May 2025.

Nine months later, the product is generating $2.5B in annual revenue, faster than any SaaS product before it.

Growth is accelerating.

Since early January, revenue has doubled, and business subscriptions are up 4x.

Half of the total growth came in the last six weeks.

🖱 Claude Code now accounts for more than half of Anthropic’s enterprise revenue.

🖱 Anthropic itself scaled from $1B to $14B ARR in 14 months.

🖱 500 customers pay over $1M per year, and 8 of the Fortune 10 use its products.

One developer tool is turning into a core revenue engine.

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Yahoo was once worth more than Google, Amazon, Apple, Nvidia & Netflix combined.

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