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Jack Dorsey just cut nearly half of Block's workforce, 4,000 people, and said most companies will do the same within a year. The stock jumped 25%. Meanwhile, German automakers were asked about autonomous driving and answered with a confident "only maybe". Are there other things in our beloved startupland than AI these days? Send us your thoughts. Follow the Gradient and stay tuned.

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OpenAI closed a $110bn funding at a $730bn valuation, backed by Amazon, Nvidia, and SoftBank. The company is targeting $600bn in total compute spend by 2030 and projects $280bn in annual revenue by then. Its previous record round was $40bn just a year ago.

The US Department of War designated Anthropic a "supply chain risk" after the company refused to remove two safety limits: no mass domestic surveillance and no fully autonomous weapons. Anthropic responded: "We cannot in good conscience accede to their request." So good old Sam jumped in. Who would have thought?

Munich-based Proxima Fusion is building a €2bn fusion test facility. It expects more than half from the federal government, with Bavaria pledging €400m. Alongside RWE and Max Planck Institute, the company aims to build Europe's first commercial stellarator fusion power plant, operational in the 2030s.

“In a Dark Company, the AI isn't the copilot; it is the engine.” There is a lot of talk going on how AI will change the structure of a company. We appreciated the views of Henrik Grosse Hokamp of Revent VC on how an entirely new type of organization is about to emerge, inspired by the existing term of “dark factories” which run fully on robots.