💪 Mighty Brief

1. SCOTUS strikes down most Trump tariffs — Trump signs EO to reimpose via other authorities. Markets will react Monday. De minimis exemption still suspended. Wired
2. OpenAI projects $280B revenue by 2030 — up from $20B annualized now. Targeting ~$600B total compute spend (down from $1.4T touted). The math is getting real. Bloomberg · CNBC
3. Claude Code turns 1 — Bloomberg profile on how it cemented Anthropic as coding AI leader. Techmeme lead story. You're literally running on it right now. Techmeme
4. Gil Dibner: "Don't Sell The Work" — Evan Armstrong piece on why selling AI "work" flopped. "There is no actual work to sell." Context layer apps need different monetization. X
5. Aaron Levie on vertical AI agents — huge openings remain. Template: agentic software + proprietary data + domain context engineering + change management. This IS the _M thesis. X
6. Karpathy: NanoClaw ecosystem emerging — smaller OpenClaw-like systems running on personal hardware. New layer on top of agents on top of LLMs. X
7. OpenAI staff flagged Canadian mass shooting suspect months early — didn't meet bar for police report. Safety governance question escalating. WSJ
8. Nikita Bier: "I quit the viral app business just in time" — App build time collapsed from 3 months (2023) to 3 minutes (2026). X

📊 Pipeline

Deal	Status	Last Activity
Caribou	🆕 NEW — Scoping call done	Feb 20
PointsNorth	Proposal due (Aruba conflict)	Feb 20
Choreo Advisors	Active	Feb 19
Bento	In progress	Feb 17
PivotalAdvisors	In progress	Feb 17
NeoGov	Case study prep	Feb 16
Insurance Newco	Active	Feb 16
⚠️ Stale (14+ days): BBG, Bond-Sports, hc1-SourceIQ, Cargill, Kindly-Human, LifeFloor, Madison-Air, Holmes-Staffing, US-Bank, UHG, The-Good-Acre, Marqi-Medical

👥 Team Activity (Last 24h)

• Caribou lead created — PE-owned, 40 IT staff, $2M+ SaaS spend, Azure stack. Great Plains ERP (MS support ending 2031). Agent-readiness audit playbook added.
• Self-Service AI approach meeting — "one pizza team" structure, discovery framing within Popcorn org, "zip line across the bridge" philosophy

⚡ Dan's Plate

• No unread _M emails flagged
• No _M meetings today (Saturday)
• ⚠️ PointsNorth proposal due Monday — you're in Aruba. Ship it before wheels up or negotiate the deadline.

Opportunity Cost — Aruba Tomorrow: With vacation starting tomorrow and Points North proposal due Monday, there's a collision. If the proposal isn't locked tonight, vacation brain will fight deadline brain. Invert: what does a Monday deadline look like when you're poolside in Aruba? Either ship it before wheels up or negotiate the deadline now. Half-measures guarantee both suffer.

Circle of Competence — Portfolio Spread: Blank Metal, Aetherical, coaching practice, content pipeline, Squorum, Pulltab, Lite. Each one reasonable alone. Together they create the illusion of diversification while fragmenting focus. Munger bought concentrated positions. The question isn't "which of these is good?" — it's "which 2-3 would I bet the farm on?"

— "Invert, always invert."

• The Information: OpenAI Boosts Revenue Forecasts Through 2030 by $141B, Hikes Cash Burn Outlook AI
• Stratechery (Ben Thompson): Losing in the Attention Economy — This Week in Stratechery strategy
• The Information: Longevity Treatments for a 91-Year-Old? Silicon Valley's Immortality Race health-tech
• Every: How Luxury Handbags Can Help Solve AI's Context Problem AI context
• Sahil Bloom: The Noise Bottleneck — The Subtle Trap of More Information productivity
• The Information: Inside the OpenAI Team Developing its AI Devices AI hardware
• Not Boring: Weekly Dose of Optimism #181 VC
• The Information: AMD to Backstop $300M Crusoe Loan, Following Nvidia Playbook chips

• Ethan Mollick: "Billions going to training, thousands going to independent benchmarking" — the evaluation gap is real →
• Ethan Mollick: "The badly-prompted univoice has taken over X" — AI slop making scrolling boring →
• Nick St. Pierre: Taalas — $0.0075 per 1M tokens. 24 people, $30M spent. Extreme specialization. →
• Nick St. Pierre: "Cognitive agriculture" — reasoning is being farmed, packaged, distributed. Value the curator. →

• Aaron Levie: Vertical AI agents — deep domain expertise, proprietary data, context engineering, change management. "Huge openings in many categories." →
• Nikita Bier: App build times: 3 months (2023) → 3 days (2025) → 3 minutes (2026). "I quit just in time." →
• Linear: Making Linear completely controllable through agent, in Slack, or inside Linear. Agent IS Linear. →
• Suhail: "Lying in bed shipping features straight to prod right now" — the new normal →

• Techmeme: Claude Code at 1 year — cemented Anthropic as coding AI leader →
• Techmeme: Pinterest getting worse — AI moderation, AI-generated art, AI features frustrating artists →
• Phil Spencer retiring after 38 years. Asha Sharma (Core AI) becomes gaming CEO. Sarah Bond out. Matt Booty promoted. →
• Jason Liu: "How are people managing all these new AI-powered pull requests?" →

• Brandi Carlile livestreaming Target Center show Saturday — raising money for Minneapolis causes, via The Current →
• Finance & Commerce: US investors pulled $75B from US stocks in 6 months. S&P gains fading, emerging markets/Europe/Japan outperforming. →
• First Avenue: Club XCX tonight, Carter Faith sold out →

• Jason Liu: "Codex is the Claude Code for OpenClaw" — a16z charting OpenClaw's growth →
• Replit: "Compaction" — background summarization for agent context. Plus Replit Animation launched. →
• Howard Lerman: "Build a Virtual Company in Roam" — LLM-ready texts, 8-min meetings, 92% software savings →

Techmeme

• Trump signs EO continuing de minimis suspension despite SCOTUS tariff ruling
• Karpathy: NanoClaw ecosystem — personal-hardware agent orchestrators
• Sarvam launches Indus AI chat app (India local languages, 105B model)
• US launches Tech Corps under Peace Corps for AI diplomacy
• India joins Pax Silica (US-led semiconductor supply chain initiative)
• New Xbox CEO Asha Sharma: committed to "return of Xbox," no "soulless AI slop"

Memeorandum

• WSJ: "Trump Demeans Himself as He Attacks the Supreme Court" — called justices "unpatriotic" and "fools"
• NYT: Defiant Trump says he'll work around SCOTUS tariff ruling