The Projection — a symmetric watercolor butterfly

The Projection

The surface is never the system.

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pocket

Frontier labs

The model-makers — capital is raised compute money.

The metrics — aggregated from members; click for the breakdown

Posture
expanding — 7 of 7 (expanding 7) 7 members →
Capital · available
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →
Capital · operating
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →
Capital · deployed
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →
Capital · in
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →
Capital · out
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →
Optionality
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →
Gravity
across 7 members — open each for the figure + sources 7 members →

What's new this week

Members 8

Dario Amodei expanding us 14 threads

capital ~$120B cumulative raised (Series G $30B + H $65B dominate; + multi-$10B compute backing Amazon Rainier / Google …

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mixed — founder/board equity, no state; but heavily …
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>$5B/yr GROSS run-rate revenue, 300k+ business customers …

New 10-02 (afternoon): A $100M TRAINING PUSH. Anthropic launched Claude Frontier Academy, committing $100 million to train 10,000 'Frontier …

Sam Altman expanding us 21 threads

capital ~$180B cumulative raised/committed (2019-2026); the $852B valuation is the mark, not drawable cash

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locked — ~85-90% pre-earmarked (~$1.0-1.4T compute …
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~$1.0-1.4T anchored-compute STOCK (~$175B/yr GROSS …

New 10-02/03: SAFETY STAFF EXITS, MORE AGENT DISCLOSURES. David Robinson, who led the writing of OpenAI's safety reports, resigned (Business …

dormant fr 3 threads

capital ~$4.2B cumulative raised (€2B Sep-2025 incl ASML $1.5B/11%; $830M Mar-2026 for datacenters); valuation €12B/$14B …

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mixed — VC + strategic industrials; EU-sovereignty tailwind, …
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no clean $ figure — open-weight adoption + Accenture channel …

New 09-29: CEO Arthur Mensch called the US AI-safety debate "a cover for the negligence of some" and said Mistral will not slow down (CNBC). …

china 1 thread

capital self-funded via High-Flyer (Liang 84%); ~$300M first external round; core asset is a pre-export-control GPU …

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constrained — founder-controlled but compute export-locked …
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no clean $ figure — heavy open-weight adoption + ultra-cheap …

New 09-24: REVENUE AND A RAISE. The Information (via Reuters, 09-24) reported DeepSeek's annualised revenue run rate at about $1bn, more …

china 1 thread

capital ~$44B liquid (cash+STI Mar-2026), falling ~45% in two years into the ~¥380B AI buildout; market cap ~$269B

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constrained — cash-rich but China state-steered (MofCom …
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~$1.05T GMV GROSS (VERY gross — commerce GMV) + ~$22B/yr …

New 09-22/23: Alibaba unveiled the Zhenwu V900 chip (three times the M890, clusters of up to 500,000), Qwen 4 in training and a 20GW …

Elon Musk expanding us 8 threads

capital ~$16B cash + demonstrated ~$75B raise access (Jun-2026 IPO); market cap ~$1.52T (SPCX) is a separate label. NB …

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free — Musk ~82% voting so outside holders cannot bind him; …
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~$85B/yr GROSS orbiting (Starlink + launch-dependent + …

New 09-28: SpaceXAI launched Team Bots (shared Grok Bots); the NYC Council subpoenaed Elon Musk / SpaceXAI to testify at its 10-05 AI-safety …

expanding us 3 threads

capital CONSOLIDATED into spacex — ~$500M annualized revenue vs ~$1B/mo burn are operating color, not a separate capital …

New 09-25: COLOSSUS 2 DOUBLING. Musk said early on 09-25 that SpaceXAI's Colossus 2 in Memphis will add 220,000 Nvidia GB300s next week and …

Demis Hassabis us 1 thread

capital Alphabet-scale (parent commands $403B rev / $132B NI 2025 + $80B AI raise Jun-2026); own operating revenue only …

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constrained — parent-directed, cannot independently raise …
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~$58.7B/yr GROSS Google Cloud revenue (2025) + Gemini …

Alphabet subsidiary — parent-directed, cannot independently raise; same capital pool as google (don't double-count). Distinct science-rigor …

Vocabulary