An enormous success? Quite the opposite

April 27, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
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SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on April 27th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

The Swedish tech industry sees the multi-billion sale of Cursor as an enormous success. Beyond one individual Swede’s personal finances, it should reasonably be exactly the opposite.

It did not take many minutes before Stockholm was jubilant over the coding tool Cursor’s proposed sale to SpaceX. Yet another victory for the Swedish ecosystem of tech companies? It is rather a masterclass in confirmation bias. People see what they want to see — and not much else.

What has happened is this: an American company is buying another American company, whose one co-founder is Swedish — but he doesn’t even work there anymore. The reason for the sale is, however, interesting to look at more closely — and it is not as rosy as it first appears.

Let us begin by describing Cursor. It is not every day a company that most people have barely heard of is proposed to be sold for 550 billion kronor. The company is actually called Anysphere, and its product — Cursor — helps developers write code using AI. To do this, they use a range of different AI models from companies such as OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google. Relatively recently they also launched their own model, Composer, as a way to reduce their dependence on the giants.

It is precisely that dependence — and its costs — that has put Cursor in a tricky situation.

This week The Information revealed that Cursor has, until now, had negative gross margins. For those not entirely comfortable with financial terminology, this can be explained more simply. When a company takes its revenues and deducts the cost of being able to deliver the service — that gives you the gross margin. In Cursor’s case, they lose money even there. After that, a host of other costs are added — marketing and product development, for example. This means that for every krona Cursor sells for, they lose more than a krona. That model is, for understandable reasons, tricky to sustain for too long.

For companies that are growing rapidly, however, this is not entirely unusual. In theory, the problem should resolve itself as sales increase and the company grows. Many startups have gone under while waiting for this breakeven point. And even if you are on the way to that point, it costs a great deal of money before you get there. This also applies to AI giants such as Anthropic and OpenAI, which are nowhere near profitability.

Cursor was thus out on the market trying to raise several new billion dollars in financing. They received some offers, but also encountered a degree of scepticism — despite the company’s popular product.

Then the fundraising became a sale instead.

The investors’ concern stemmed from Cursor’s supplier, and now competitor, Anthropic and its product Claude. When you use Cursor, it is often Claude doing the heavy lifting in the background. Cursor is an intermediary layer between the end user and the AI services beneath, much like Swedish Lovable, for example.

The prospective investors worried about the possibility that customers could bypass Cursor and just use Claude instead. Which many already do today. If Claude were also to decide not to allow Cursor to use their service, problems could quickly arise.

It was at this point that Elon Musk’s SpaceX stepped in.

They recently merged with Musk’s other company — xAI — which had in turn merged with the social network X (which Musk also owned). SpaceX will buy Cursor for 550 billion kronor, or pay around 92 billion kronor in a fee to Cursor if the deal is not completed for some reason. With the rocket company’s imminent stock market listing — and its reportedly galactic valuation of around 16,000 billion kronor — the price tag is relatively manageable.

For the venture capitalists who invested in Cursor, the deal provides a good return. Selling portfolio companies at high prices is the entire business model. The Swedish co-founder Arvid Lunnemark from Malmö will almost certainly become a billionaire in the process. Like Joel Hellermark, who sold Sana to Workday for 10 billion kronor, the timing is elegant. Interest in AI, and the valuations that follow, has never been higher.

Looking at the value for the Swedish tech ecosystem, it is not obvious that one should celebrate the deal. Cursor was sold because the alternatives to continuing were becoming very limited. The company has never made a single krona in profit, and they burned billions of dollars before reaching this point.

They managed to get out of their precarious financial situation before it was too late. But once again, a large American company is gobbling up a smaller one. One of the few conceivable challengers to the existing oligopoly of AI companies disappears. And one with a Swedish connection at that.

After the Cursor deal, a Sweden-born founder living in San Francisco will become extraordinarily wealthy. Hats off for that. But if anyone thinks this is something to celebrate in Stockholm, they have probably missed the point.

0,75x speed + 3 cultural gems & 3 conversations

April 26, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
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Newsletters

In the make-shift podcast studio I have in my office, there’s a small paper note pinned to the wall.

It reads: “0,75x speed”.

It’s a reminder of some advice I got from my friend Magnus. Talk slightly slower, take your time, and don’t get ahead of those who are listening.

“0,75x speed” serves well as a metaphor, far beyond our podcast.

As AI enables us to do more – and faster – the emphasis is leaning heavily on output and efficiency. I get caught up in this myself sometimes too. Feeling productive is somewhat addictive. Listening to sped-up podcasts, getting summaries of books, letting the AI build projects for you while you are sleeping.

But what is “productive” in this sense? If it didn’t need to be done from the beginning, does doing it anyway still count?

Another way of thinking about this newly found efficiency is going in the opposite direction. What can you do, that the AI can’t? How you can shape a point of view that a large language model never could?

I would argue that books are not for summarizing. Even skimming them will give you more than an AI-generated summary. And travelling to places will offer a perspective no LLM will give you, however fast and precise it may become.

As the world seems to speed up, a way to manage it could be doing the opposite. Doing what only you can do – in the way only you can do it.

/Björn

Three cultural gems

Flesh – David Szalay
A book that doesn’t describe anything of what almost every other book in the fiction genre covers. No inner monologue, no thoughts. Just flesh. A fascinating read. And a Booker prize winner, which should be enough to make you curious.

Oops – Momo Boyd
This new song flirts with 2000s R&B but still feels contemporary. The whole setting – new album + Colors video – feels the making of a new star.

Trainjazz.com
This is what the internet was made for. Real-time data from subway trains in New York is translated to a piece of jazz that changes depending on the movement. And if you’re close to certain trains, their notes grow louder. A work of art.

Three conversations about the books of Silicon Valley

Together with (my friend and) historian David Larsson Heidenblad, I did a series of conversations centered around the ideas, knowledge and history of Silicon Valley. Starting with a variety of influential books, we went through what can be learned from them, how these ideas have been used in practice, and how you can use them yourself – without having to run a startup.

Click the links above to listen to the conversations, if you’re curious – and a full book list is here.

Originally published on Substack on April 26th, 2026.

New CEO inherits Apple’s biggest problem

April 21, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
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SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on April 21st, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Tim Cook leaves behind a well-run Apple — but without the same lustre. Now his successor John Ternus faces decisive choices.

In a bright atrium at Apple Park, hardware chief John Ternus walks past. It is January 2024 and speculation about the Apple succession is already under way. As he passes, a voice says “there goes Apple’s next CEO, probably.”

Just over two years later, the person was proved right. Tim Cook steps aside and John Ternus takes over as CEO of one of the world’s most important tech companies. And much suggests that more major changes are on the way.

That an internal candidate would take over Apple was expected. Ternus has worked there since 2001 and celebrates his 25th anniversary this summer. The name is probably unknown to most people outside Apple’s walls — and that is the only thing that matters. Given the very particular corporate culture that prevails inside the tech giant, Ternus is a safe pair of hands.

Behind the scenes, there have been further major changes in the leadership tier. Apple’s long-serving CFO Luca Maestri stepped down a little over a year ago. Policy chief Lisa Jackson has left and chief lawyer Kate Adams is on her way out. The internally prominent COO Jeff Williams, Cook’s former closest partner, recently retired.

A new leadership is taking shape at Apple. Eyes are now turning to two grey-haired men who have been there a long time — perhaps too long. The neat Craig Federighi, sometimes jokingly called “Hair Force One,” heads software and has been there for 20 years. Services chief Eddy Cue joined as far back as 1989 and has therefore worked at Apple for 37 years.

Apple likes continuity — but a new CEO will reasonably want to build his own team. If change is to be effected at some point, these two gentlemen will be unavoidable to ignore.

Filling Steve Jobs’ shoes was no easy task for Tim Cook. But looking at the share price during his time as CEO, there is nothing to complain about. Apple is a very well-run and thriving company. The challenge for Ternus will be to maintain that, while trying to recapture some of the lustre and innovation that Jobs once stood for.

The iPhone turns 20 next year — and Apple has not seen anything of that calibre since. There have been attempts: cars (never released), face computers (nobody wanted them), and AI services (not released in time, and nobody wanted those either). Computers and headphones have sold like never before, but there are several competitors that are comparable.

Ternus comes from the hardware side, so a reasonable assumption is that the most exciting things may show up there rather than in new services. Apple’s investment in chips has, for example, positioned them as a potential AI winner in a scenario where models become easier to run on every phone. There has been talk of foldable phones for a while — something that may arrive this year. There is an investment in smart glasses — not yet released — where Apple is likely to have a quite different product from what Meta has done with Ray-Ban, for instance.

Having a more technically refined product is, however, no guarantee of success. Apple Vision Pro is substantially more advanced than Meta Quest — but the latter is considerably more popular.

Tim Cook’s greatest achievement at Apple was establishing the company in China. It is now both an important manufacturing partner and a large consumer market. At the time, China was complex, but nowhere near as geopolitically sensitive as today. Tensions with the US are at their highest for a long time, and the political winds are blowing clearly in the direction of large American domestic investments.

Ternus now inherits this tricky balancing act. Cook remains on the board and can help with the relationships, but major questions for the company remain. Does an Apple without China exist? And if not, how does one navigate the increasingly sensitive political environment?

The above is probably not Ternus’s favourite question. He is an engineer who likes to build things. To feel the materials and ensure they suit their purpose.

Now he is taking over the world’s third most valuable company — and the industry’s overwhelmingly most influential player. Staying in that position requires more than solving engineering problems.

Ternus is neither a Jobs nor a Cook. That suggests a new era for Apple is beginning now.

Anxiety grows at the elite’s conference

April 20, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
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SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on April 20th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Must humanity merge with AI to survive? At the TED conference, anxiety about the development is growing — and exposing a rift in the elite’s view of what lies ahead.

It smells of pine inside the Vancouver Convention Center. The TED conference is taking place in a kind of wooden amphitheatre, where a select group is already sitting at the very front — donors with their own entrance. Over 1,500 people have travelled to western Canada to listen to speakers on everything from lead poisoning to covid vaccines and relationships.

One question keeps recurring, however. And it creates a clear unease and friction among the well-heeled audience.

Should we embrace AI development fully? Or should we rather avoid it at all costs?

TED broke through on a broad front in the mid-2010s. “TED Talks” — short, directed presentations from the main stage — became their own category of video on the internet. A cultural reference point one could cite at dinner parties.

The audience is a mixture of philanthropists, researchers, activists, and tech workers. A simpler way to group them is as an elite. Influential people who, with both cultural and economic capital, shape opinion and societal development.

This elite’s view of the AI question is therefore particularly interesting. Whether educational initiatives for children in developing countries are a good thing — another recurring theme — is fairly uncontroversial. The question of self-driving cars is considerably harder, given both road safety and the jobs that will inevitably disappear as they roll out into the world.

This theme runs like a thread through the conference. TED host Chris Anderson returns to it many times during the week. “The future is a dance between humans and AI,” he says. So how will this dance unfold?

Tech entrepreneur D Scott Phoenix gives us one vision. He has previously sold an AI company to Google and has a definitive view of how things should develop. “We will merge with AI, because the alternative of being replaced is worse,” he says.

Phoenix refers to the fact that merging is the first thing we did as humanity — through our cells — and that this is a natural and inevitable continuation of that path. Either we create descendants or we become fossils. That is the choice we face.

He tells of a dinner he attended in Silicon Valley recently with other AI leaders. The participants were “names you would recognise,” he says, without going into exactly who. When asked whether the AI leaders believed there was more than a 10 percent chance that AI would kill most people on earth, many raised their hands.

That is the scenario Phoenix is weighing up against. It is therefore better to merge and bring AI development as close to humanity as possible. Because the alternative could mean the end of humanity as we know it.

The audience gasps as he speaks.

Others have a more restrained vision. Steve Huffman, CEO of the online forum Reddit, presents his company’s product as a kind of counter-movement to the automated.

“Reddit is like a city,” he explains — a place where people build relationships with each other on their own terms.

It sounds good. Like a relief for many, after Phoenix’s talk. But when Huffman receives a standing ovation, one gets the feeling that most people in the room have not spent much time on Reddit. It is certainly human, but it does not take many clicks before the rose-tinted picture takes on a different form.

Austrian founder Peter Steinberger of Open Claw is the most relaxed of all. His creation enables people to create their own AI agents that work autonomously. But it came about somewhat by accident. After testing his new AI robot in an internet forum with others, he shut down his computer and went to bed. When he woke up, the robot had started the computer itself and continued talking.

In the end, Steinberger had to pull the plug out of the wall to be sure it would stop. He laughs at the whole thing and says he does not recommend letting one’s AI robots run completely out of control.

TED host Chris Anderson steps onto the stage after the talk looking worried. He says Steinberger frightens him. How can he take this so lightly?

Steinberger smiles, wearing a blue blazer with a toy lobster — Open Claw’s mascot — tucked into the breast pocket.

“The lobster has been released,” he says, “and it won’t go back to the aquarium again.”

There is something fateful about both the presentations and the conversations around them. Have we already passed the point where AI will take over completely, or is there still time to change course?

British neuroscientist Anil Seth offers a different perspective. We may be standing at a crossroads with technology — but merging is not on the table, according to him. Overestimating AI is underestimating yourself as a human, he believes.

Seth distinguishes between intelligence and consciousness. Humans are unique in displaying high levels of both simultaneously, which makes it difficult for us to assess technological development correctly.

“We see consciousness where there is none,” says Seth, and urges resistance to anthropomorphising technology. Doing so — thinking of machines as something with consciousness — makes us psychologically vulnerable. And through that, we risk being manipulated by them.

The questions about what humanity’s role will be in an AI world are many and difficult. TED gives no clear answer and appears to have deliberately chosen speakers with very different perspectives, letting the audience make up their own minds. The mood is serious and thoughtful.

Which is why comedian George Civeris provides the most cathartic moment of the week. He says TED is “the only place that brings together people all trying to solve the world’s problems.”

We in the audience look at each other and feel satisfied. Despite these difficult questions, we are doing our best. We have flown halfway around the world to try to work out what the future might look like — and someone has seen us.

But then comes Civeris’s punchline: “and then mixes them with all those who created the problems in the first place.”

The laughter that follows is long-awaited. And a little painful.

Apple’s trump card — hidden in the phone

April 9, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on April 9th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

While competitors spend hundreds of billions on AI, Apple sits tight. It looked like a major mistake. But the next phase of AI development could be Apple’s revenge.

In a red leather armchair on a stage sits Steve Jobs. It is 2010, the year before he passes away, and Jobs is visibly physically affected by his illness.

His sharp tongue is still very much intact, however. When journalist Walt Mossberg asks about “search company Siri,” which Apple recently acquired, Jobs cuts him off immediately: “I don’t know if I would describe Siri as a search company,” he says. “They’re in the AI space.”

Somewhere around there — sixteen years ago — began Apple’s public journey toward AI. But the road has been anything but straight. After repeated disappointments with Siri, which neither understands what you say nor can do very much, the image of Apple as an AI company has faded.

Have they missed the wave they themselves were so early to identify? It is not quite that simple.

ChatGPT, Claude, and Google Gemini have admittedly sprinted past and created exactly what Siri was supposed to become. Companies like Meta, Google, and OpenAI have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in AI data centres.

In the short term, Apple is behind — but in the long term there is an opportunity for a strategy that competitors will find very difficult to replicate. At least at the same scale that Apple has.

If we begin with the shortcomings, they are obvious even internally at Apple. A licensing agreement with Google from January speaks clearly: Apple currently has no AI model of comparable quality to the competition. Siri is now to use Google Gemini going forward. Apple has had to reorganise its AI work after its previous head suddenly left prematurely.

Many Apple fans consider it a smart strategy to work with partnerships rather than participate in a very expensive race with other tech giants. What argues against it is all the work that has been ongoing with Siri over all these years. It is the inability to produce a good result that led to the partnership with Google — not a decision to not try. And the resources are there. Apple sits on around 1,350 billion kronor in cash and securities.

Looking further ahead, however, one can begin to glimpse something exciting — and entirely unique to Apple. Should AI development move in a certain direction, Apple could catch up despite its sluggishness.

In simplified terms, AI development can be divided into two parts — “training” and “inference.”

Training is the training of the AI model itself, a process that requires enormous computing power. When Anthropic and Meta release new models, the price tag for training them is counted in tens of billions of kronor. The enormous data centres filled with Nvidia’s GPU chips are used primarily for this type of training.

Inference is when the model is used to give you as a user an answer. It is drawing conclusions from the information in the model so that it can tailor responses to what you have asked. This does not require anywhere near the same type of computing power as training. And even more importantly in this context — in many cases it can be done directly on your phone, or your iPhone.

As AI models become more efficient, Apple’s own chips are emerging as a strong strategic advantage. In the over one billion iPhones in use today there is hardware that Apple does not sell to anyone else. With newer generations of AI models, one can imagine them being trained separately but then run on the user’s own device. Apple Silicon — their own chip — could then answer questions for the user without the information ever needing to leave the phone. It is private, fast — and everything you need is already in your phone.

Looking at Apple’s competitors, none of them has this capability. Meta has no mobile phones at all, and Google’s Pixel phones have a very low market share globally. OpenAI is working on various hardware products but nothing has been released yet. And unlike building data centres, it is next to impossible to roll out a new mobile phone that achieves the same coverage as the iPhone has. It does not solve everything when it comes to AI development, but it is an enormous advantage in distribution.

Apple’s journey toward AI seemed to begin with Siri in 2010. But the truly unique difference only started to become visible ten years later, with the launch of the Apple Silicon chips. Here Apple has something competitors find very difficult to match: a technology they developed themselves, and which is perfectly suited to AI.

It is a long game that Apple is playing. They will also need to get their own AI development in order over time. The need for AI training is not going to diminish. But the trump card is already in place.

You have it in your pocket — inside your iPhone.

Crisis at OpenAI — now they’re changing strategy

April 2, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on April 2nd, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

With ChatGPT, OpenAI launched the biggest tech trend in a decade. It looked unbeatable. But now CEO Sam Altman’s operation is shaking. What is happening inside the world’s leading AI company?

It is an unusual gathering of powerful figures standing in a row in the Roosevelt Room of the White House.

It is January 2025 and Donald Trump takes to the podium. Beside him stand two of the world’s most influential tech billionaires — SoftBank’s Masayoshi Son and Oracle’s Larry Ellison.

Furthest out stands the youngest and least wealthy of them all: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI. He looks a little uncomfortable in a dark suit and brown shoes.

But Altman has travelled from Silicon Valley and dressed up for a reason.

Together with the other men, he is about to present Stargate — a gigantic AI investment in the US, costing up to 500 billion dollars.

The scale was compared to the Manhattan Project, through which the first atomic bomb was developed in the 1940s.

A year later, it is clear that nothing of that calibre will materialise.

The men in suits could not cooperate and the Stargate project has stagnated. Instead of a joint investment in data centres, new partners have had to step in and build. OpenAI — which needs enormous amounts of computing power for its AI services — will end up renting it from others rather than building its own.

The reason for this is simple. OpenAI cannot afford it. And according to The Information, they cannot borrow the money either.

This, along with several recently abandoned projects, points to a new strategy for the AI industry’s market leader.

A radical shift appears to be under way.

Stargate is not the only project to have been forced into major changes quickly. In December last year, Disney invested one billion dollars in OpenAI and announced a collaboration involving the animation giant’s many characters. Through OpenAI’s video app Sora, users could make their own Disney videos — legally and with copyright secured.

Just 103 days later, the fun was over. On 24 March, OpenAI announced that it was shutting down Sora and several other video creation services.

Disney said it “respected” the decision to focus elsewhere, but it clearly did not look good. The agreement between them could have set the standard for AI and the film industry in Hollywood. Instead it became an embarrassing belly-flop.

There are two reasons for this rapid reversal — and both relate to money in different ways.

The first is about focus. According to the Wall Street Journal, OpenAI’s COO Fidji Simo told her staff they did not have time to be distracted by “side projects.” Admittedly, no one called Sora a side project when it was launched. But in contrast to what Simo wants the company to focus on, one can understand the categorisation.

OpenAI is now to concentrate on “productivity” — and enterprise productivity in particular. Companies that can pay their way.

The second reason behind Sora’s closure is pure cost-cutting. Creating video with AI is extraordinarily expensive and requires very large amounts of computing capacity. OpenAI can put that to better use elsewhere. Relative to how little money video as a category brings in, it is clear that Sora cost substantially more than it was worth.

Sora is not alone in being shut down. That list is long.

Together with e-commerce company Shopify, they were going to launch the ability to buy products directly within ChatGPT. That project has also been scrapped.

And the “erotic chatbot” that was promised has been on ice for a couple of days.

Many are also waiting for the hardware product that OpenAI is to release with Apple’s former chief designer, Jony Ive. According to information from American courts, it has now been pushed back to 2027.

Given the above, one might ask a simple but in this context unusual question. Is OpenAI short of money?

What makes it unusual is that OpenAI has raised around 168 billion dollars in various forms of financing. One might think that should be enough for most things.

As a comparison, that is more than the entire Swedish government budget for a year.

Despite this, there is much to suggest that the money is beginning to run out — or at least that the costs visible on the horizon will exceed revenues for a long time to come. The company’s own forecast points to losses of around 14 billion dollars — just this year. In total, OpenAI estimates it will take around 111 billion dollars — approximately 1,000 billion kronor — before it turns profitable in 2030.

Anyone who has ever seen, or made, such a forecast knows that at best it is an educated guess. Nobody knows what the real number might be.

But the strangest thing of all is how the company found itself in this pressured situation, and what it now plans to do differently.

To understand that, we need to go back a couple of years.

The icon showed a white “N” against a teal gradient. Double-click it and the entire world’s internet opened up for home users. The “N” stood for “Netscape Navigator” — the popular web browser of the day that let users surf the web. Something that was new at the time, in the mid-1990s.

In this world, Netscape quickly became dominant. The browser was released in 1996 and just two years later it was reported to have 38 million users. That made it the world’s most popular PC software ever, at that point in time.

With a market share of around 89 percent, Netscape looked unbeatable. Like OpenAI, they were overwhelmingly the largest — and were introducing a new paradigm of technology to the public.

The success would prove short-lived.

Despite the initial triumph, it took just two years before Microsoft’s browser, Internet Explorer, overtook it. That same year, 1998, Netscape had 452 million dollars in revenues but made a loss of 159 million dollars.

Compared with today’s AI figures, it almost sounds quaint. Just 159 million dollars in losses in a year?

But at the time, the loss resembled a black hole. The following year Netscape was acquired by AOL, and the decline just continued. By 2002 the market share was just above three percent.

The market’s overwhelming leader — those who introduced the concept of the “web browser” to the public — had fallen.

Netscape was consigned to the history books.

Even if OpenAI is not exactly like Netscape, there is a lesson to be learned.

Being first to market is a good start — but not necessarily more than just that. What is usually called “first mover advantage” is often fairly short-lived.

Even when it comes to entirely new categories of software, market shares can shift quickly. Those who were around early may also remember AltaVista — the undisputed biggest and best search engine of its day. Then Google came along. Everyone knows how that ended.

It seems as though OpenAI is beginning to grasp this. It is therefore more important than ever that the many billions they have raised in investment last longer.

They need to hold out against competitors and a changing market.

Standing in the way of OpenAI’s world domination are two siblings who were previously employed by Sam Altman: Dario and Daniela Amodei, founders of the AI company Anthropic and the chatbot Claude.

With its beige app and somewhat more talkative style, Claude has quickly become many people’s favourite AI tool. They have been around since 2021, when the Amodei siblings left OpenAI along with several colleagues.

Anthropic is now growing substantially at OpenAI’s expense. But this is due more to OpenAI making poor decisions than to Anthropic suddenly becoming so much better.

Take the recent Pentagon incident. When Anthropic refused to let the US Department of Defense use Claude for all conceivable purposes, it became a major conflict. The military threatened to classify the company as a “supply chain risk,” which would have pressured many others to stop working with them. Anthropic in turn sued the Trump administration.

Into the vacuum that emerged stepped Sam Altman and OpenAI. From the outside it appeared as though they agreed to everything Anthropic had opposed, though the exact details of what transpired are not known. Nonetheless, the signal value was enormous — had Altman’s sense of responsibility for AI safety disappeared? Many users accustomed to AI products have been able to switch easily to Claude.

Another reason for Anthropic’s sudden success relates to the focus that OpenAI COO Fidji Simo called for above. While OpenAI invested in AI-generated video and a long series of different projects, Anthropic focused on a specific segment of the market: enterprises — and those working with programming in particular.

The products Claude Code and Cowork have quickly become extraordinarily popular. Programmers have gone from writing code themselves to instructing and verifying the code that AI systems build.

Anthropic’s strategy is smart. In this customer segment one finds those who are most likely the fastest — and most eager — to use AI services.

The success was immediate. OpenAI has a similar product, Codex, with which one can programme. But it has been somewhat lost among all the other initiatives under way.

When COO Simo talks about focus, this is what she means.

OpenAI needs to become more like Anthropic.

It is not always easy being the market leader. The defectors at Anthropic are showing the way to enterprises. Google, after a weak start, has caught up considerably and has well-stocked coffers. The queue of companies wanting access to the attractive AI market is long.

Can OpenAI adapt in time? An IPO looms — and with it a new funding lifeline.

But Netscape was listed on the stock exchange too, back in the 1990s.

And you know what happened to them.

The game is rigged — and that’s the point

March 31, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on March 31st, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Is it geopolitical analysis or gambling? Prediction markets have suddenly taken on a prominent role in geopolitics. But now questions are being raised about corruption — and military risks.

“Will American troops land in Iran before… 31 March?”

The question is not merely geopolitical — it is also the basis for bets worth around 200 million kronor. On the American prediction market Polymarket, bettors placed the probability of a “yes” at 29 percent about a week ago. By Monday it was down to 6 percent.

By making assessments about world affairs, war has been turned into a game. On prediction markets, however, no odds are set — instead participants bet against each other. Get your forecast right and you can win a lot of money. And if you have information nobody else has, you are almost guaranteed to do so.

Prediction markets originally came from the American DARPA — a kind of research unit funded by the US government. One of the first was called PAM, Policy Analysis Market. Its purpose was to try to forecast political developments in the Middle East, and to provide financial incentives to make the forecasts more reliable. It was a simple model: get it right and you get money.

PAM barely made it out of the starting blocks before the controversies began. In 2003 a Democratic senator called the idea “a federal gaming parlour on atrocities and terrorism” and added that the entire concept was “grotesque.” The project was shut down shortly after.

Over the past few years, a new generation of prediction markets has blossomed again. The vast majority of the activity is not political, however — it is pure sports betting. By using a legal loophole they have been able to circumvent the gambling legislation that prohibits many forms of wagering in most American states. They are now considered a type of futures contract — financial instruments — rather than a form of gambling. Not everyone agrees. The state of Nevada recently sued prediction market Kalshi in an attempt to ban them. But it is legal in the US, for the moment at least.

People betting money on a football match might sound harmless enough. But there are two major challenges with prediction markets.

The first is that it is difficult to mix two different purposes on the same market. On a stock market, there are strict rules against insider trading. Otherwise it can feel unfair that some participants in the market have access to more and better information than everyone else.

If you set aside the money, however — and simply want to arrive at as accurate a forecast about the future as possible — then insider trading is actually beneficial. You want those with unique information to share it, because that makes the forecast better. The money is only there as an incentive to bring it to light.

It goes without saying that these two motives are in conflict with each other.

Either you want to get to the truth — or you want a market with equal conditions for all.

This brings us to the second challenge. If people with secret information about, for example, military operations can make money from it — are the security of those involved not put at risk?

Already now, unusual forecasts with high betting volumes stand out. This can come to influence the actual matter at hand. If an enemy sees that an attack is expected to occur within a certain time period, it can prepare for it. The forecast was correct — but it influenced how the outcome unfolded, which can threaten the safety of those involved.

When geopolitics is mixed with gambling, a new type of problem is created. Much of the money being staked is in cryptocurrency, which makes it difficult to identify the people behind the bets. Interest has grown to such a degree that states, exchanges, and other societal institutions now follow prediction markets on a regular basis. And by betting large sums on unexpected questions, one can through this influence public opinion. It looks like an insider — but it can also be an influence operation, with prediction markets as the method.

When CNN analysed one particular player, they found that he had earned over 1 million dollars by correctly predicting how Israeli and American military operations would be conducted. The anonymous player won 93 percent of the time. The prediction market arrived at the truth. But the military was left with an enormous security problem — and a market that pays millions for valuable and confidential information to leak out.

We have transformed security policy into a kind of unregulated, anonymous stock exchange. That it would lead to problems is something everyone should have been able to foresee — even without a prediction market doing the work.

Social media is facing a crisis

March 25, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on March 25th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Meta and YouTube caused a young girl to suffer anxiety and depression. An American jury has now established this in a landmark case. The verdict opens the door to an avalanche of similar cases — and could tear down the tech giants’ unique legal protection.

“Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act of 1996.”

This brief piece of American legislation, just 26 words long, is what has legally protected social media companies all these years.

Responsibility for all content uploaded — images, texts, videos — is considered under it to belong to the person who uploaded it. Services like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok have been regarded as neutral platforms.

But that came to an end on Wednesday evening when an American jury — drawing on other laws as a basis — showed that they could be found liable for harm nonetheless.

The method is legally creative. Both Donald Trump and his predecessors have said they want to repeal “Section 230.” None of them have managed to do so, and a completely different approach was therefore needed to test the responsibility that social media companies bear for young people’s wellbeing.

What was done in this pilot case is to advance the thesis that it is the design of the services that has harmed young people — not the content. It is, for example, the recommendation algorithms and the ability to scroll endlessly that caused the harm. In this way, prosecutors were able to circumvent the deadlock that has existed when it comes to holding social media companies accountable.

The main figure in the case is a young woman now aged 20. Of the many thousands of cases making similar claims, hers was considered among the stronger, and she was therefore a good candidate to test first. What follows is therefore an avalanche of further cases in which predominantly young people will attempt to obtain redress for harm they believe they have suffered through their use of social media.

The fine of 3 million dollars — around 28 million kronor — is a rounding error for both Meta and YouTube, who are found liable. Going forward, there may be a larger class action, or a near-endless number of smaller cases with individuals making similar claims. But above all, the symbolic value of the loss is enormous. Many have drawn the comparison that this resembles the cases brought against tobacco companies in the 1990s. These proved expensive for those companies, but they also marked a turning point in public perception. Tobacco stopped being accepted in the same way after that.

It is entirely possible that the same shift in attitudes will happen here.

Parents in particular have long been worried about the impact they perceive social media to have had on their children. Research on this has been slow and insufficient, and some of the strongest evidence of harm has, ironically, come from inside companies like Meta. Internal documents and studies have shown how certain features could be addictive for young users. And yet nothing definitive has happened — beyond individual bans for young people in certain countries, such as in Australia.

After Wednesday’s verdict, these legislative proposals are likely to accelerate sharply around the world. The American ruling does not technically affect how other countries need to act, but in practice it is likely that it will do so anyway. It shifts from having been an uncertainty to a decided case in which these social media companies have been proven to have harmed a young woman. Which politicians will be able to allow this to continue unimpeded in their respective countries?

Companies like Meta, YouTube, and TikTok now face a crisis. They have numerous emerging bans for young people around the world, an enormous number of legal cases of a similar nature, and a potentially shifting opinion on how to regard these companies’ social responsibilities.

From having been a self-evident part of many young people’s daily lives, parents at least are likely to use the verdict as grounds for trying to restrict it. Some advertisers may come to want to avoid being associated with these platforms.

Earlier this week Meta also lost another case in the American state of New Mexico, for failing to protect children from abuse. Despite what are likely to be endless appeals before final verdicts are reached, the case involving the 20-year-old woman marks a clear turning point. It may be that social media has reached its peak — and is now beginning a downward journey.

Not everyone will delete TikTok from their phone immediately, but a new era is beginning. Social media can harm young people. It will now be difficult for anyone to ignore this.

Can she stop the flight to the US?

March 19, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on March 19th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

The EU is reaching out to the startup world with its new proposal “EU Inc.” Regulations for starting companies are to be simplified. But it misses the region’s most pressing problem.

It is the day before Christmas Eve 2025. In Berlin, a startup is trying to finalise an investment.

There is just one mandatory step left. For the process to be valid, the company’s management must sit and read all the documents aloud to a notary. The whole spectacle takes over five hours.

This is the reality in large parts of the EU. An excessively slow and bureaucratic system that complicates something other countries handle with ease. After persistent lobbying from the startup world, this understanding is beginning to sink in, even in Brussels.

The new proposal “EU Inc” is one example of this.

The European Commission hopes it will make it easier for new European companies to be started, and ideally for them to remain in the region too. Among other things, it will be possible to start a company within 48 hours, and it must not cost more than 100 euros to do so. Processes are to be digitised, and it will be possible to register a company across the whole EU through a single interface rather than going through each individual EU member state. It is to be in place by 2028.

This might not sound like a revolution to anyone who has never tried. One can go so far as to say it is strange that it does not already work this way. Given the example of the German notary, there are clearly improvements to be made. In Sweden, however, these problems are minimal. Starting and running a company digitally is very smooth. The Swedish Companies Registration Office and the Swedish Tax Agency have made otherwise quite complicated processes simple. Those who have gone furthest of all are Estonia, where you can even become a digital citizen.

While the regulatory simplifications of EU Inc are welcomed by many startups, one should not exaggerate their impact. The primary problem the EU has is not about starting companies — it is the opposite. Where do these companies end up when they eventually become large and successful? And what happens along the way?

Because the real problems start early, but long after a company’s registration.

It is about access to capital in the early stages of a company’s life. It is easiest if entrepreneurs seek money from someone in the same city, but if that is not available, one must look further afield. Despite the home continent being large, European companies often find it easier to obtain money from the other side of the Atlantic than from nearby. And if you want American venture capital, investors prefer it if you have a company registered in the US. The standard is to do so in the state of Delaware, which has the most predictable rules for all involved. Swedish Lovable is registered there, for example.

Then comes the next problem. What happens when startups become established companies.

This became clear when the EU’s legislative package the Digital Services Act (DSA) was presented and was supposed to hold the tech giants to account. Which European companies were large enough to be considered tech giants that should be regulated?

Zalando, Booking.com, and a handful of Cyprus-registered pornography sites. There are no large European tech companies of the same calibre as Meta, Google, and Amazon.

First and foremost, American companies are happy to acquire promising European companies early. Google’s AI lab DeepMind, founded in the UK, was acquired back in 2014, long before the current AI boom began. Swedish-Estonian Skype was bought by Microsoft. Finnish Wolt was bought by DoorDash. The list is long.

The second reason is that there is no common European stock exchange to list on. Spotify and Klarna are both on the New York Stock Exchange, despite having Swedish roots. The alternative for these companies might have been London, or Frankfurt if one is extremely generous. But realistically, neither was genuinely in the running.

Every individual stock exchange in the EU is too small and lacks the liquidity needed for a good investment climate suited to international companies. In the Nordic region alone there are five different stock exchanges. That is far too fragmented to function well. And so companies seek out the US instead, where they can access capital from investors around the world.

The EU simplifying regulations for startups is good news for entrepreneurs. But it sidesteps the biggest problems entirely. The startup world’s gravitational pull runs strongly westward — at every stage of the journey.

American venture capital leads to American company registrations. Which are easily acquired by large American companies. Or alternatively listed on American stock exchanges.

Until those challenges are addressed, the European startup scene is likely to remain much as it is. EU Inc makes European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen look bold and strong. But if you ask the wrong question, you get the wrong answer. And that is precisely what has happened with EU Inc.

A collapse in confidence — and it could get worse

March 16, 2026
by Björn Jeffery
SvD Näringsliv

This analysis was first published in SvD Näringsliv, in Swedish, on March 16th, 2026. This piece was translated from Swedish by Claude. Some phrasing may differ from a human translation.

Kinnevik’s CEO is dismissed on the spot, a short-seller report sends the share price tumbling — and a newly installed board member is to conduct an “impartial evaluation” of the business. The crisis at the venerable investment company continues. But why did it become acute over the weekend?

There are really only three ways to leave as CEO of a major listed company. You get a new job, you retire — or you get fired.

That is why Kinnevik’s plan in November 2025 seemed very strange. Georgi Ganev, who had been CEO of Kinnevik for eight years, was to resign. But at the same time he was to remain in post until a new CEO was appointed.

That interim period came to a definitive end over the weekend. Ganev left with immediate effect. After Kinnevik’s dismal performance over many years, no one is surprised — except perhaps by the timing. What was it that meant the plan presented four months ago suddenly had to be redrawn?

The press release Kinnevik issued on Sunday states that a newly appointed board member, Rubin Ritter, is taking over as acting CEO. He is to conduct a “thorough and impartial evaluation of our team, our culture, our ways of working and our portfolio, as well as implementing changes where necessary so that my permanent successor can get started immediately.”

Of course that is not how it will turn out — unless Rubin himself takes over as permanent CEO.

Running an investment company is not an administrative role. The job consists of setting a strategy, building a team, and making good investments. The idea that a new CEO would walk in to a fully laid table and simply do what Rubin has decided is therefore not particularly plausible. A CEO will demand to put their own stamp on the company. Shareholders should reasonably agree with this.

The talk of an “impartial evaluation” therefore smells of something else. What is it that requires evaluation?

The short-seller firm Ningi Research has a list of their own suggestions as to what it might involve. When they presented their critical view of the company last week, the already depressed share price fell 17 percent. Ningi Research pointed to, among other things, favourable transactions conducted with parties they considered to be related. Kinnevik denied the claims.

It is not in itself unusual for activists like Ningi Research to swing with a sledgehammer to achieve an effect. But that the effect would be so powerful was likely a surprise even to them. The majority of what Ningi Research wrote was already known from before. One might consider the content remarkable — but it was not new.

The share price reaction — minus 17 percent in a single day — therefore says something much bigger than a short-seller report containing old news. It says that confidence in Kinnevik’s business is at rock bottom. If it takes no more than a couple of paragraphs to erase a fifth of one of Sweden’s most venerable investment companies, that is a crisis. A major crisis.

That is why Georgi Ganev is leaving. But the above is something many people — including myself — have written several times before. It was true in November when Kinnevik announced his departure, it is true now — and it was true long before Cristina Stenbeck decided to take back the reins and make changes. Why did it suddenly become acute?

One might have expected an explanation for this from Ganev himself. No such explanation was forthcoming, however, as he made no statement in the weekend’s press release.

Finding a new CEO is now priority one, two, and three for Kinnevik’s board. And it is urgent. Having an experienced business leader like Rubin Ritter take over is a stable temporary solution. For many years he ran one of Kinnevik’s most recently successful holdings, the e-commerce company Zalando. The relationship and trust with Stenbeck have been built since then.

Being CEO of an investment company is, however, something entirely different from running a fast-growing e-commerce company — even an exceptional one like Zalando.

And above all — being CEO of Kinnevik specifically is something else entirely.

There is a heritage, a culture, and an anchoring among shareholders on the Stockholm Stock Exchange that places the company under a spotlight that its competitors do not receive. Despite those competitors often having performed substantially better than Kinnevik over many years.

From the outside, it looks as though Rubin is to ensure that the short-sellers are not right. And to clear out any irregularities. But the most important question cannot be answered until the next permanent CEO is in place: what does Kinnevik want to be?

Until the board, management, and shareholders understand and accept that answer, the crisis risks only deepening.