strategy

Spain is burning and its nuclear power plants notice it. This is your strategy to endure

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Spain is sweating again. extreme temperatures At the end of June, alarm bells have gone off in a good part of the country, and the Spanish nuclear park, responsible for about 20% of electricity what we consume, is not alien to this phenomenon. However, it is worth clarifying something from the beginning: whether a plant reduces its power or stops during a heat wave has nothing to do with a security failure. The seven nuclear reactors in operation in Spain (Almaraz I and II, Ascó I and II, Cofrentes, Trillo and Vandellós II) have been dealing with demanding summers for several decades, and their cooling systems were designed precisely with scenarios like this in mind. The Nuclear Safety Council publishes in real time the operational status of each plant, so anyone can check how they are responding. The key is in the external cooling circuitresponsible for evacuating the heat dissipated by the electricity generation process into the environment. In pressurized water plants, such as Almaraz, Ascó and Vandellós II, this circuit is the third in the installation, independent of the primary (which surrounds the core) and the secondary (which moves the turbine). Cofrentes, the only Spanish plant with a boiling water reactor, has a different architecture, a direct cycle, but it also depends on that same external circuit to cool the condenser. And this is where each plant plays its own cards depending on its geographical location. Three ways to beat the heat Ascó I and II, Cofrentes and Trillo are fed by river water, but they do not return it directly to the riverbed after using it. First, it passes by the cooling towers, those structures more than 160 meters high that we have described so many times when explaining the internal workings of a nuclear power plantand that dissipate heat into the air by convection and evaporation before any pouring. This drastically reduces the amount of water they need to extract from the river, up to twenty or thirty times less than if they did not have that tower. The sea has a thermal stability much greater than that of a river Almaraz represents a particular case because it does not depend on the flow of a natural river. It uses the artificial Arrocampo reservoir, conceived as a closed system that acts as a large heat exchanger. This independence of the river regime allows it continue operating normally even when temperatures soar, something especially relevant in a plant that will be the first to shut down: Almaraz I will close in November 2027 according to the current government calendar. Vandellós II draws on another resource: the water of the Mediterranean. The sea has a thermal stability much greater than that of a river, so it absorbs heat without its temperature rising appreciably. And, what’s more, it varies much less during heat waves. It is the same thermodynamic logic that explains why so many power plants in the world, from those that are cooled with seawater to those that use closed circuits like the one in Almaraz, prioritize the thermal stability of the cold source over any other consideration. When safety forces you to stop What can happen, and in fact happens quite frequently during the strictest summers, is that a nuclear power plant reduces its power or stops temporarily. The reason is not to protect the reactor, but the aquatic ecosystem. And the regulations limit the temperature at which water can be returned to a river or the sea, and if these limits are close to being exceeded, the facility prefers to slow down rather than breach them. It is an environmental decision, not a safety emergency. Meanwhile, the clock of the Spanish nuclear blackout continues to tick in parallel to these episodes of extreme heat. The current calendar starts in 2027 with Almaraz I, followed by Almaraz II in 2028. In 2030 it will be the turn of Ascó I and Cofrentes; Ascó II will close in 2032; and The process will be closed in 2035 with Vandellós II and Trillo, the last two plants to go out. Until then, each summer will be another test of resistance for a park that continues to provide a fifth of the national electricity. Image | Nuclear Forum More information | Nuclear Forum In Xataka | SMR reactors are going to make the never seen a reality: the first floating nuclear power plants

Experts agree that opening windows at night and closing them during the day is no longer the best strategy against heat.

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For decades, long before air conditioners and the fans will take Every corner of its geography, Spain knew how to handle the heat: during the day, everything was closed tight; at night, everything open and ventilate. It sounds rudimentary, but in 2026 that is still the strategy we recommends the Ministry of Health. And yet, there is a problem. The Spain of the blinds game did not sleep in cities at 26 degrees at four in the morning. Not 26, not 28, not more than 30, as has been happening these days in Almería. The arrival of the ‘hellish nights’ challenges everything we thought we knew about domestic heat management. Therefore, we have asked ourselves… and now what? What we were doing until now. That popular knowledge I was talking about goes viral every time the heat makes an appearance. And, like I say, it makes sense. In a world where it cools down at night, the winning strategy is night cooling and daytime insulation. What he says Health Plan against high temperatures. The central issue here is that that world has ceased to exist. Because the key is not the time, it is the thermometer. In reality, what we are looking for is to open when it is cool and close when it is hot. It’s usually cool at night, but… What if he stops doing it? Summer has stretched on for five weeks and Spain is about two degrees warmer than at the beginning of the eighties. The torrid nights (with minimums of 25 degrees or more) have multiplied by ten since 1984 in the ten most populated capitals and, according to AEMET data, this affects about nine million people. Even the tropical ones (minimums of 20 or more) today add a dozen more a year than decades ago. We can’t sleep… although researchers have not agreed on the ideal temperature for sleeping (some point which is about 18.3ºC, but there is no consensus), they have done so on a fundamental idea: sleeping in the heat is objectively a bad idea. For whatever reason, it is true that our temperature changes between wakefulness and sleep. In fact, “thermal regulation is a significant factor” in sleep control, explained the teacher Cameron Van Den Heuvelfrom the University of Adelaide. “About an hour to thirty minutes before sleep, the body begins to lose body heat. This increases feelings of tiredness in normal healthy adults.” People with insomnia, without going any further, “show that they have a higher basal temperature just before sleeping than people who do not have sleep problems.” Ambient heat does not help this thermal reduction and it seems to be proven that when the temperature is very high, it is more difficult to fall asleep and, when it is achieved, it is of very poor quality. And then what do we do? In the interior of the peninsula, as the thermal amplitude remains high, opening at dawn works. There is nothing to change. The problem is for those who live on the coast or in the big city. When the night exceeds 20 degrees, the strategy is reversed. Ventilating at night is no longer the main technique and the battle is won during the day: you have to seal the house as soon as the street heats up, squeeze out the thermal inertia and use the air conditioning wisely. However, as the nights get warmer the household tricks come to an end. If the trend is confirmed, we will have to assume that the housing stock must be transformed: sun protection, rehabilitation and climate shelters will be the buzzwords in a few years. Image | Fernando Rosado In Xataka | ENT doctors agree: “Sleeping with air conditioning forces the nose to work excessively”

The long waits between seasons of series have doubled in five years. Some platforms have turned it into a strategy

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Some cases of recent successful series in which a more than proven trend is detected: ‘Stranger Things’ took more than three years to launch its fifth season. ‘Separation’, almost the same time for his second. ‘Wednesday’ was not the fastest series either. The pattern is so clear that they have even given it a name. And for once we can’t put all the blame on the pandemic or the writers’ strikes (although they played a role in getting us to this point). The figures. Ten years ago, the average wait between seasons of original series on the main streaming platforms was 10 months. In 2025, this figure reached 21 months, according to a Ampere Analysis report published in May 2026. This analysis covers 1,611 original series on very diverse platforms, such as Netflix, Prime Video, Apple TV+, Disney+, HBO Max, Hulu, Paramount+ and Peacock. The firm has dubbed the phenomenon “the Stranger Things effect.” It was seen coming. But although the pandemic is not the final cause of this phenomenon, its impact is indisputable in the paradigm shift. The gap between seasons was already growing slowly until the 2020 pandemic he shot her 12 to 16 months in a single year. After that, the data relatively stabilized until the strikes of writers and actors 2023 caused the second big jump: from 17 to 21 months between 2023 and 2024. In 2025 the trend stabilized, for now definitively. But you have to understand the context beyond “the industry was paralyzed by the pandemic.” For example, in 2022 we were at the height of the “streaming war”, and the large platforms published 599 seasons of original series, that is, more material than in the entire period 2015-2019. Granted, the pandemic had devastated more than one economy in the industry, but that volume of production also exhausted human resources, studies and calendars. When the forced shutdowns came, first due to the pandemic and then due to strikes, the bottleneck was inevitable. The counterpart: it works. The point is that contrary to what common sense might dictate, the report detects that the series that returned after more than thirty months of hiatus (that is, two and a half years) registered the highest search activity on the internet in the month of release. For example, ‘Stranger Things’ accumulated a 300% increase in views during the second half of 2025, before the premiere of its final season, with an especially strong rebound from the first season: it was new viewers discovering the series and fans reviewing previous episodes. ‘Wednesday’ and ‘Separación’ almost doubled the average engagement on their platforms. Movies on television. There is a possible reading of this data: the model of the blockbusters cinematographic films has migrated to television. If a highly anticipated movie in a franchise generates expectations months before its release, a highly anticipated season of a series does too, in a way that a routine annual release does not. Which is combined with another reason: sometimes highly complex series (effects, script, post-production, cast, as is the case with the three mentioned) require more time. The case of the second season of ‘Separation’ and its multiple rewrites It is significant. That is to say, just like blockbusters, there are series that require more filming time than average. Because of this, they take longer to see the light, but they also generate more expectation because the public expects the wait to be compensated with more spectacle. The risk. This practice can generate anticipation, yes, but there is a danger for the platforms that Ampere specifies: “Streamers need to balance production deadlines for big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around star titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” It is the phenomenon of churn and returnthat is, canceling a subscription and renewing it when the series returns, something that from the point of view of monthly income, is basically the same as not being subscribed. Generate excessive expectation or ensure a loyal and expectant audience, accustomed to an almost continuous supply of episodes, as is happening, for example, with ‘The Pitt’? Virtue lies in the middle ground, possibly: neither stretching the rope until it breaks nor suffocating the viewer with excess content. Late for that last one, on the other hand. In Xataka | 29 years later, Netflix has become the television it promised to replace. That’s why Wall Street has punished her Ampere analyst Christen Tamisin put it this way in the report: “Streamers need to balance the production timelines of big titles with a constant flow of content. Long gaps can generate anticipation around flagship titles, but they can also encourage audiences to cancel subscriptions and return only when their favorite series are back.” The paradox does not have a simple solution: reducing the wait can mean compromising the quality that, precisely, turns these series into events.

It’s a clue to Microsoft’s next strategy

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This past weekend, the summer Xbox Games Showcase has attempted to reformulate gamers’ perception of Microsoft and Xbox. To do this, it has had some heavyweights from its catalogue, such as the future ‘Gears of War: E-Day’, it has made the odd announcement regarding exclusivity and has presented a new-old console: the Xbox Series X25 Limited Editionan Xbox Series X with a translucent casing in the green tone of the brand’s first console. What’s inside. Technically, the X25 is an Xbox Series Accompanying the console is the Xbox X25 Special Edition wireless controller, also translucent, with the original ABXY buttons and some bumpers that replicate the black and white buttons of the one known as “Duke”, the bulky remote with which everything started in 2001. The console plus controller pack will arrive in some selected markets in November, as a limited edition, and the controller will also be sold separately. At the moment nothing is known about the price. Microsoft has announced that we will have more information on pricing and pre-sales “soon.” Currently the standard 1TB Xbox Series The hook is you two decades ago. Two years ago, Xbox began publishing titles first-party on PlayStation 5: games developed by studios that Microsoft owns, available on rival console. Phil Spencer enunciated the philosophy of that movement by saying that the future of Xbox is not in the hardware, but in the services and the catalog. The idea was that Xbox was, essentially, Game Pass. And although the strategy had its logic, the results have not convinced Microsoft, which has seen hardware sales sink and the brand was becoming less and less relevant. Because if the games come to PS5, why buy an Xbox? With its new CEO, Asha SharmaMicrosoft wants to recover the brand’s personality, and the X25 is the first response in object form. Sharma wrote in X after the showcase: “That means giving you something made for Xbox. ‘Gears of War: E-Day’ and ‘Clockwork Revolution’ will be exclusive to the console.” The topic of exclusives. Xbox has announced that many of the future Xbox releases will be absolute exclusives, not temporary. ‘Gears of War: E-Day’ and ‘Clockwork Revolution’ have been expressly mentioned, while it has also been confirmed that everything announced as multiplatform will maintain that condition: ‘Fable’, ‘Senua’ (the new Ninja Theory game announced at the event) and ‘State of Decay 3’, for example. Each exclusivity will be discussed on a case-by-case basis, and when a release date is announced, it will also be announced which platforms the game will appear on. At the moment it is not clear what determines the exclusivity, although it is possible to think that games that make up the Xbox identity, such as ‘Gears’, will be. Or maybe not, because as far as we know, we will see the new ‘Halo: Campaign Evolved’ on PS5. In any case, the strategy is to gradually return to providing a touch of exclusivity to Xbox. This movement plays into that strategy, as does the launch of the Xbox Series X25, which returns to the time when the console’s catalog was overflowing with exclusive games. What X25 actually is. It is a skin for a Series X openly aimed at those who have not purchased Xbox hardware in this generation. And for this we appeal to the times when an Xbox could be worse or better than a Playstation, but of course, it was something with its own identity. It is only the first step in a strategy that at the moment (two exclusive games) is advancing only lukewarmly. If from there we go on to experience a true identity battle, it is something that, of course, can pepper the next few years of console battles. In Xataka | Project Helix is ​​the new Xbox machine and the warning is clear: it is not going to be cheap

the cash cow strategy

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The hardware market in 2026 It’s complicated, no, the following. The memory crisis has caused a domino effect that has made renewing a PC or building it from scratch almost a luxury. Given this situation, AMD has decided that the best attack is a good defense. Its strategy is striking: extend the life of what already works. difficult times. During the Computex celebration, AMD has made several launches that appeal precisely to that practical and conservative spirit. In fact, there is also a striking commitment to nostalgia and a clear message: if you need to update your PC, there are ways to do it without having to take out a second mortgage. Nostalgia made processor. To start, AMD has relaunched the Ryzen 7 5800X3D with a “10th Anniversary Edition”. It is a striking launch because we are dealing with a chip for Socket AM4 that, as its name indicates, was already launched 10 years ago. It sells for $349 and seeks to attract users who do not want to make the leap to Socket AM5 and prefer to opt for a chip that was the most popular a decade ago. Obviously it is no longer, but it is still an interesting proposal for a certain sector of users. The reasonable option. The real protagonist is the new AMD Ryzen 7 7700X3D, a processor for socket AM5 that is launched at a recommended retail price of $329. Its 104 MB of cache in total make it more than suitable for gaming equipment, and it is a very interesting alternative to the top of the range, the 7800X3D. Extending the life of the plate. AMD knows that it is not the best time to update equipment from scratch, so it has given some reassuring news: official support for the AM5 socket will be extended until 2029, three years longer than expected. It is a way to extend the validity of a platform that still makes sense, especially with the current market situation. A peculiar graphic. We recently told how, for the first time in 30 years, Nvidia predictably will not present new GPUs for gamers in 2026. AMD does have something new: the Radeon RX 9070 GRE, which will have 12 GB of GDDR6 memory. It costs $549 and has 22% more performance than the 16GB RTX 5060 Ti. It’s not exactly a bargain, but it gives something that is appreciated in these times: options. Deprogrammed obsolescence. At this Computex 2026 fair it seems to be confirmed that the industry is stopping the usual planned obsolescence, and it is doing so out of pure economic necessity. Savings have become a priority in view of the situation, and the PC segment is currently moving away from the search for the “fastest and best.” In Xataka | A man paid $23 for a PC case at an auction. He discovered inside a 24-core CPU and an RTX 3080 Ti

It’s a survival strategy

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On July 7, the Noto Satoyama airport, in the Ishikawa prefecture in Japan, will open its doors again with a new name and design: The classic corridors and high ceilings of aseptic light colors will give way to a more theme park aesthetic because that day it will be called “Noto Satoyama Pokémon With You Airport” and yes, it will be a Pokémon themed airport. Pokémon airport. This intervention will change the aesthetics of the airport from beginning to end: The main atrium, entrance columns, boarding gates and commercial spaces will have elements of the video game and entertainment franchise that just turned 30 years old. The star element will be a giant Pikachu balloon along with a replica of an aircraft inside the terminal, surrounded by representations of 111 species of Flying-type Pokémon. In the access columns there will be several Pokémon to generate an immersive experience from the beginning. Why is it important. The change of face and name aims to reactivate the flow of visitors to a region that continues to recover from one of the worst natural disasters in its recent history, the earthquake of January 1, 2024. The idea is to use a transportation infrastructure with direct international traffic in a tourist attraction to regenerate the territory’s economy. Pokémon It is the most successful franchise in the world and of all times, with an estimated brand rating in more than 100,000 million dollars and about estimated income of 147,000 million dollars. Associating a public infrastructure with such a successful asset represents an enormous visibility lever. All you have to do is take a look at the stratospheric numbers of the Pokémon GO Fest: in 2024 it generated 200 million dollars in Madrid, New York and Sendai, according to Niantic Labs. Context. The 2024 earthquake affected the Noto peninsula (where the airport is) and had a magnitude of 7.6. The figures of the earthquake are horrifying: 228 deaths, 30,000 buildings destroyed or seriously damaged, transport routes unusable, ports unusable due to the rise of four meters in sea level, as Nippon account. The Japanese government estimated a damage cost of up to $17.6 billion. This transformation is not only a matter of marketing: it is also a matter of connectivity and marketing of the region. Ishikawa’s reconstruction plan was structured in three phases. First came housing and restoring infrastructure, with the aim of returning normality and promoting the economic and cultural development of the prefecture. The Japanese Prime Minister himself explained in 2025 that this “creative” reconstruction of the Noto airport at the February 2025 follow-up meeting, noted that the creative reconstruction of the Noto region should serve as a reference model for the recovery of rural areas throughout the country. In this framework, the themed airport fits as an emblematic project within the official reconstruction strategy. MDPIPrime Minister’s Office of Japan How are they doing it. This reconstruction will be carried out through public-private collaboration between Ishikawa Prefecture and the Pokémon Foundation of Japan. The design of the venue will be based in the 111 Flying-type Pokémon as the thematic common thread, displayed at all contact points for those who step foot in the airport from the first moment: façade, columns, transit area, boarding gates and even the gastronomic proposal, with pancakes and themed drinks served on exclusive placemats. The commercial area will offer limited edition products such as t-shirts, keychains and luggage accessories, so that the airport is more than just a connecting link to reach your destination: the airport itself will also offer its own unique experience, especially interesting for fans of the saga. Yes, but. Converting a critical infrastructure such as an airport into a hybrid between airport and theme park has its B side: it depends enormously on the future of the brand and the cost of maintenance increases, as it requires investment in new content, aesthetic renewal or licenses. And how warns Bloombergdepopulation and reduced tax revenues in Japan are making it difficult to maintain basic infrastructure and recover from disasters in rural areas. If the flow of visitors does not reach the profitability threshold, the initiative can become a heavy burden for a region that is already undergoing a very expensive reconstruction process. In Xataka | In 2016, millions of people went out to hunt Pokémon on the streets. In 2026 there will be autonomous robots guided by this In Xataka | Younger millionaires have found a more profitable investment than the S&P500: Pokémon cards Cover | PR Times

China only wants Chinese appliances. So Samsung has had to change its strategy

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Samsung entered China in 1994 with a television factory in Tianjin. In 2006 led the Chinese TV market selling three million units of its Bordeaux model annually. Twenty years later, its share in televisions is 3.62%. The story of Samsung in China is the story of how a market can build its own champions and expel outsiders without having to close the doors. Strategic change in Samsung’s commercial policy in China. Rumors about an exit in its home appliance division were on the table since April, and at the beginning of May the company itself has confirmed it. Samsung is withdrawing from the home appliance market in China to focus on mobile phones and semiconductors. what has happened. Samsung leaves the Chinese market for home appliances and home products. Televisions, AC systems, refrigerators, washing machines, audio equipment and all home-related products will no longer be sold in China. The company will maintain after-sales and warranty services and will continue to “continue to comply with relevant laws and regulations” of consumer protection. “The company will do everything possible to minimize any impact on customers arising from this decision and is reviewing various support measures for its business partners.” The reasons. Samsung has communicated that the decision comes after a “prudent study”, without going into excessive detail about the reasons why it is abandoning the Chinese market in this product category. Despite this, it is clear that the numbers have had something to do with it. Samsung barely had a 3.62% market share in televisions, and did not reach 1% in categories such as refrigerators or washing machines. China is a country in which the local market has greater weight than in any other territory, and the rise of manufacturers such as Hisense, TCL or Xiaomi in these product categories has been noticeable. The Chinese market. The Chinese home appliance market is dominated by domestic manufacturers. In refrigeration, Haier has a 45% share, followed by places like Midea and Hisense. Chinese brands control more than 90% of the television market in Chinawith an important boost in the form of state subsidies. This 2026 is being a year of important renewal cyclewith subsidized exchange programs in order to boost sales of local products. And now what. Samsung’s plan is not to completely close itself to China. It will continue to sell smartphones, tablets and accessories, although for years it has not risen to a top 5 in which only Apple manages to sneak among the national giants. The question that remains in the air is not whether Samsung has lost China. It is whether what has happened in household appliances is a dress rehearsal for what can happen to the rest of the Western manufacturers with a presence in China. In Xataka | The last thing I expected in 2025 was to have a party and for the refrigerator to become a karaoke

Anthropic and OpenAI know that where AI is making money is in companies. They have found a way to squeeze that strategy

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We end users no longer matter much to the AI ​​giants. These companies are confirming that income is currently in the professional world, and they are already making moves to conquer that segment. And if they have to do it company by company, so be it, because now OpenAI and Anthropic are a little less AI companies and a little more consulting. AI is more business than ever. Anthropic and OpenAI have understood that the real business of AI is not currently in individual $20 subscriptions, but in integrating their AI models into all types of corporations. Both companies have almost simultaneously launched alliances with other companies to provide consulting services. The objective is simple: to stop being external web tools to become the “operating system” of thousands of businesses through these exclusive sales channels. Anthropic on the one hand… The company led by Dario Amodei has formed a joint venture with Blackstone, Goldman Sachs and Hellman & Friedman valued at $1.5 billion. This new firm will act as a consultancy bringing Claude directly into the operating environments of mid-sized businesses, from mid-sized banks to local manufacturers to healthcare systems. These companies have committed to provide $300 million each for AI engineers to work closely with these clients to integrate custom solutions. …and OpenAI on the other. In turn, Sam Altman’s company has not been slow to replicate that initiative with the creation of the so-called The Development Company, an entity valued at about 10,000 million dollars. It is backed by funds such as TPG, Bain Capital and SoftBank. Theoretically, OpenAI has already raised $4 billion to accelerate the adoption of its AI models in more than 2,000 companies that are already part of those investors’ portfolios. The initiative is led by Brad Lightcap, until now COO of the company, and who wants to make the GPT family models an integral part of the operations of all types of companies. Engineers on the line of fire. To promote these strategies, both companies are adopting the so-called ‘Forward Deployed Engineer’ (FDE) model, a deployment system that was already popularized by Palantir and that consulting firms traditionally use. Instead of simply selling an API, Anthropic and OpenAI will send their engineers to work with doctors, financial analysts, or IT staff so that their AI models can be seamlessly integrated into those professionals’ real-world workflows. Going public as a goal. In recent months we seem to be experiencing a race against the clock towards the IPO in both cases. With absolutely stratospheric valuations (OpenAI 852 billionAnthropic hanging around 900,000 million), the pressure to justify these figures to the public market is immense. The integration of programming tools such as Claude Code has been a clear driver of recent growth, but the real gold mine is in the automation of processes in sectors such as health or finance. If you are joint ventures fail to scale quickly, the valuation bubble could deflate before those IPOs. Conflicts of interest. When a venture capital fund invests in a technology provider and simultaneously pressures its portfolio companies to adopt that same technology, competition ceases to exist. Many companies will not have much real choice based on product quality. What is reinforced here It is that “circular economy” in which innovation is not chosenbut is imposed by financial and business interests. The customer does not buy because he needs the tool, but because his own financial owner has a stake in whoever supplies that tool. But wouldn’t AI automate everything? The dependence on the FDE model is paradoxical. Theory tells us that software must be infinitely replicable at zero marginal cost. However, these alliances show that AI is still not smart enough to operate without direct human supervision. We need someone to teach us how to use it well, the companies say, and both OpenAI and Anthropic are going to take advantage of that need even if what we really have is luxury personalized consulting. For now, AI will be more part of the services offered by a consulting firm than a truly autonomous “plug and play” tool. New Job: Deployment Engineer. Now Anthropic and OpenAI will not only be AI companies: they will also be consultancies in need of manpower. That also serves as an example that although AI theoretically will eliminate jobswill also create new ones. Here we face a growing demand for “deployment engineers” —OpenAI already requests them—, professionals who are precisely in charge of adapting these AI models to the needs of companies that want to implement them in their daily lives. And the data, what. There is another fundamental problem: medium-sized companies will not have much capacity to manage their data sovereignty. For Claude or GPT to function properly in the business, they will need access to critical workflows, medical records, or sensitive financial data. And when one cedes that control to third parties, they remain vulnerable. Not only that: the security of this data is compromised because in order to process it, it must leave and be processed in the cloud of an external provider. The AI ​​models of these companies can also probably learn from these processes, although it is reasonable to think that Zero Data Retention policies will come into play (“No data retention”). Image | TechCrunch | Wikimedia Commons In Xataka | The White House wants to review new AI models before anyone uses them: first the Pentagon, then the rest of the world

The banks didn’t want anything to do with oil. Wall Street has solved it with the 2008 mortgage strategy

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Oil and gas producers in the United States are turning to the financial magic of Wall Street to fuel their acquisitions in a frenetic race for growth. To achieve this, they are packaging thousands of pots into investment vehicles and selling stakes to American investors, replicating the exact same model that has long been used for mortgages, auto loans and other sources of securitized income. Away from the spotlight, the number of these operations has grown rapidly in recent years. Industry experts consulted by Financial Times They estimate that the total amount of debt issued through this format already ranges between 20,000 and 30,000 million dollars. It is a fundamentally opaque market, where most transactions are closed privately. Historically, independent oil and gas producers financed its operations through loans reserve-based (RBL) and high-yield debt. However, the situation has changed drastically. Some commercial banks have reduced their exposure to the extractive sector to meet their sustainability strategies under environmental, social and governance (ESG) policies, or in response to public concern over climate change. Added to this is the fear of traditional investors of “stranded assets” and the general uncertainty about the long-term viability of the sector in the midst of the energy transition. In addition, rising interest rates have raised costs, making high-yield debt too expensive or inaccessible for many producers. To survive, companies They have found an alternative way: They transfer their mature wells, known as proven, developed and producing (PDP) reserves, to a newly created Special Purpose Entity (SPE). This entity operates independently and is structured to be “bankruptcy-remote”, ensuring that the transferred assets are completely separate from the balance sheet of the producing company and safe in the event of its bankruptcy. Attracting conservative money By isolating these high-quality assets, the bonds issued by the SPE manage to achieve an “investment grade” rating. This seal of quality attracts a new class of investors who would normally avoid oil risk: pension funds, insurance companies and large asset managers looking for structured financial products with stable returns. For the oil companies, business is great. The securitization allows them to obtain advance rates (advance rates) of between 55% and 75% of the value of the reserves, figures significantly higher than those available in traditional RBL loans. To convince credit rating agencies, the secret lies in diversification and insurance. On the one hand, thousands of assets are grouped together; for example, Raisa Energy closed an operation combining more than 3,000 wells operated by more than 50 companies in more than 20 counties. On the other hand, long-term hedges are contracted to protect investors from oil fluctuations, reaching up to 85% of the entity’s production for a period of five to seven years. The “time bomb” and the cracks in private credit But financial engineering sometimes hides structural cracks. Brandon Davis, founder of energy intelligence company AFE Leaks, describes in FT These price hedges act as a “ticking time bomb” in case other production costs increase. If the price of oil rises, the company’s income is capped because the difference goes to the hedging counterparty (usually a bank). However, if at the same time there is inflation in operating costs, such as field services or water treatment, the profit margin backing the bonds could be seriously eroded. The cracks in this engineering are not an isolated case in the energy sector, but a symptom of a greater malaise in the opaque world of private credit on Wall Street, where patience (and money) is beginning to run out. This risk is framed at a time of growing tension for the entire private credit ecosystem on Wall Street. Investors are starting to demand their money back. In Cliffwater’s $33 billion fund, clients requested to withdraw 14% of their capital in a single quarter, but the firm said it only I would pay around 50% of those requests, forcing the other half to wait. If the panic spreads, traditional banks will not escape unscathed either. Lending by US banks to non-depository financial institutions, which includes private credit, reached 1.2 trillion dollars in the middle of last year, almost tripling its share compared to a decade ago. Furthermore, as with oil wells, the securitization market as a whole is extremely sensitive to external regulatory or macroeconomic shocks. A clear example occurred recently in another sector: Mpower Financing had to postpone the sale of almost $250 million in bonds backed by loans to international students. The cause was investors’ fear of the new restrictive visa policies of the Donald Trump administration. If regulatory changes or geopolitical crises hit the energy sector unexpectedly, oil securitization could face a similar collapse in demand. The danger of forgetting the nature of the business Wall Street has packaged a high-risk industry into a tame-looking product, but geology and the global market are difficult to tame. “The trick has always been to convince the rating agencies that measures have been put in place to mitigate the risk,” warns Olivier Darmounieconomist specialized in credit markets at HEC Paris. “But that’s the inherent thing about oil and gas, it’s an inherently volatile business.” Darmouni points out the ultimate risk: “If something goes wrong, the main problem will be that oil and gas will run out of capital” if producers start defaulting on bond payments. As long as the money keeps flowing, the machine will not stop. But as Laura Parrott warnshead of private fixed income at Nuveen, the market is experiencing a lot of effervescence. In scenarios of such investment fever, he concludes, “people are going to be trapped.” Image | Photo by David Vives on Unsplash Xataka | Climate change is no longer profitable: WallStreet and large investors abandon green policies

Amazon is clear about its strategy for the AI ​​war: if you can’t beat your enemy, invest in them

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Just two months ago Amazon announced a astronomical investment of $50 billion in OpenAI. Today he made a movement very similar to the announce which will invest $5 billion in Anthropic and could invest an additional $20 billion “tied to certain commercial milestones) in the future. There are counterparts and some circular financing, of course, but also a clear pattern: Amazon has no winning horse in the AI ​​race, so it is betting on its competitors. More circular financing. Amazon now has alliances in the form of active investment with the two leading AI companies in the world. In return, both OpenAI and Anthropic commit to huge spending on their services on AWS. There is a lot of circular financing here: me I lend you the money so that you spend it on me. Those houses of cards that OpenAI and Anthropic are building have clear risks, but the industry is totally immersed in that maelstrom. In Xataka OpenAI is making the tech industry unite its destiny with yours. For the sake of the global economy, it better work Analysts warn. There are concerned analysts here and others who defend this type of agreement. M. Mohan asked in X why regulators are not on top of these types of financially dangerous agreements: the domino effect if OpenAI or Anthropic fall could be terrible. For others like the well-known Jim Cramer this is not circular financing. According to him, circular agreements are designed to inflate profits, and here no one’s profits are being inflated. Their argument is that Amazon has real computing, Anthropic needs real computing, and the value of the investment is genuine. History repeats itself. The same debate occurred in January with OpenAI, and the conclusion was the same then: the image of circular financing is there but it does not necessarily imply fraud, it implies that Amazon has found a way to monetize the AI ​​​​craze without betting on any particular model. Or for the two who seem to be winning the race. But everyone is doing it. The numbers of the agreement with Anthropic. Amazon puts up $5 billion immediately, taking advantage of the company’s current valuation of $380 billion. It is also committed to investing up to an additional $20 billion linked to “certain commercial milestones” that have not been specified. In exchange, Anthropic commits to using Amazon technology, and specifically its Trainium and Graviton chips, for the next decade. No less than 5 GW of computing capacity is secured, which is more or less the capacity consumed by New York City. This is perfect for Anthropic. He Anthropic statement about the agreement contains an interesting paragraph. In it, the company admits that the demand for AI by companies, developers and users is generating “inevitable tension” in its infrastructure. Or what is the same: they can’t do everything, so they are resorting to measures that “penalize” the excessive use of their AI models. They restrict session limits during peak hours, change the pricing model in companies to a “pay as you go”, or change the level of effort of their models and they sign up for token inflation. The agreement with Amazon makes it possible to mitigate the problem of computing shortages. The race for gigawatts. The truth is that Anthropic has been moving for months to try to avoid more and more problems with the computing capacity they can access. In a few weeks we have seen how Amazon’s 5 GW have been secured and also “multiple gigawatts” computing teams contracted with Google and Broadcom. What Amazon is actually building. Viewed as a whole, Amazon’s strategy is simple and elegant. You don’t need to win the AI ​​modeling race, which is unpredictable and extraordinarily expensive. It only needs that whoever wins it depends on it and its infrastructure. By investing at the same time in two rivals like Anthropic and OpenAI and securing massive spending contracts from both, it achieves something striking. Turn uncertainty into an asset: it doesn’t matter who wins, because she will end up getting paid. This also reinforces the relevance of its Trainium and Graviton chips, something that validates its commitment to its own chips. {“videoId”:”xa4n2g8″,”autoplay”:false,”title”:”An initiative to secure the world’s software ｜ Project Glasswing”, “tag”:””, “duration”:”349″} Win-Win. The agreement seems perfect for both parties. Amazon ensures, as we say, consumption in its infrastructure for the next ten years, and Anthropic achieves an investment that increases its market value again. The same happens with OpenAI, and in both cases these agreements and financial support only reinforce expectations about their imminent IPOs. Image | Fortune Brainstorm TECH In Xataka | OpenAI and Anthropic have proposed the impossible: lose $85 billion in one year and survive (function() { window._JS_MODULES = window._JS_MODULES || {}; var headElement = document.getElementsByTagName(‘head’)(0); if (_JS_MODULES.instagram) { var instagramScript = document.createElement(‘script’); instagramScript.src=”https://platform.instagram.com/en_US/embeds.js”; instagramScript.async = true; instagramScript.defer = true; headElement.appendChild(instagramScript); – The news Amazon is clear about its strategy for the AI ​​war: if you can’t beat your enemy, invest in them was originally published in Xataka by Javier Pastor .

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