TheChek News Flow

The Department of Transportation (DOT) has paused funding for a $5 billion EV charging infrastructure program that Tesla has received at least $31 million from. The move is widely viewed to be illegal.

It’s the latest attempt from the Trump administration to hack away at federally funded renewable energy projects around the country, a clear priority for the president in his first few weeks back in office.

It’s also more evidence that Tesla CEO Elon Musk’s politics are increasingly at odds with his car company’s goal of advancing the transition to sustainable energy. By the middle of last year, Tesla had won around 6% of all awards from the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program in question, netting millions of dollars in the process.

One of the first executive orders Trump signed in January took aim at charging infrastructure programs, including NEVI.

Now, a letter sent Thursday to the directors of state DOT offices says that the “new leadership of the Department of Transportation” wants to “review the policies underlying the implementation of the NEVI” program.

The Federal Highway Administration, the DOT agency that wrote the letter, said it will update the guidance for NEVI and publish it for public comment in “the spring.” The DOT division says no new funding can go out until that new guidance is finalized. InsideEVs was the first to report the letter.

NEVI was part of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law signed into law in 2021.  Congress had appropriated $1 billion annually to the program from 2022 to 2026.

Beth Hammon, senior vehicle charging advocate at the Natural Resources Defense Council, said in a statement that the Trump administration “does not have the authority to halt it capriciously. ”

“Stopping funding midstream will result in chaos and delays in states across the nation. It will throw state efforts into turmoil, wreak havoc with the companies that install the chargers and risk the jobs of their workers,” she said. “The only winner from this chaos is the oil industry.”

Sierra Club’s Clean Transportation for All director Katherine García also said the action was illegal and was an “attack on bipartisan funding that Congress approved years ago.”

The Trump administration is trying to stop the flow of money appropriated by Congress all across the government — which legal experts say is a major breach of the constitutional order.

His Office of Management and Budget announced a government-wide spending freeze that has already been met with a number of legal challenges. It then rescinded that memo, though it’s been reported that some payment freezes continue. Musk, meanwhile, is marauding around multiple government agencies with a team of engineers and tech executives and wresting computer access to the payment and other sensitive systems.

The company made a big bet on green energy even as its rivals stayed focused on more-profitable fossil fuels.

BP has been falling behind its peers for years. If it doesn’t narrow the gap, its days as an independent company could be numbered.

The world’s fifth-largest oil major traces its origins to discoveries of oil in Iran in the early 20th century, but it has been on its back foot since the Deepwater Horizon oil spill in 2010, which cost the company $65 billion. BP’s decline has accelerated in recent years following a big and ultimately bad bet that demand for oil and gas wouldn’t stay strong, as the company leaned in hard on the transition to green energy. Rival energy companies that stayed focused on fossil fuels have fared better.

That bad bet could now push BP into the arms of its crosstown London rival Shell, or another suitor such as Exxon Mobil or Chevron in the U.S., if BP CEO Murray Auchincloss can’t find a way to bolster its flagging share price. In a worst-case scenario, BP could be dismantled and its profitable operations sold off.

“In the medium term, BP might be merging with Shell,” said Paul Gooden, a portfolio manager at Ninety One in London. “BP has been suffering from ‘noble cause corruption.’ They’ve been focused on something other than creating shareholder value.”

Gooden is referring to BP’s low-carbon investments in wind, solar, and other renewable-energy sources, which haven’t been as profitable as oil and gas. BP says it is committed to becoming an integrated energy company.

Its problem is that there is no easy way out. If the company stays on its current course, its performance compared with peers probably will only get worse—its total return, taking dividends into account, came to 39% for the past 10 years, compared with Shell’s 49%. It is even further behind Exxon’s 80% total return and Chevron’s 98%. But BP is also likely to be punished if it tries too aggressively to clean up its balance sheet. For example, slashing its stock-buyback program to pay down its debt, or selling off assets, could lead to an even sharper drop in the stock price.

BP reports fourth-quarter earnings on Feb. 11, and it hosts a capital markets day on Feb. 26. A spokesman for BP declined to comment on the company’s plans ahead of those events.

Gooden expects a “course correction” rather than an “overreaching review.” Auchincloss was chief financial officer under Bernard Looney, the previous CEO, who set the company on its current trajectory.

Even though Auchincloss has taken steps to simplify and slim down the company—he announced cuts of 4,700 employees, or about 5% of the workforce, and 3,000 contractors in January—he still represents continuity.

“Strategically, BP lost their way,” said Biraj Borkhataria, global head of energy transition at RBC Capital Markets in London. “BP needs to show evidence that its new engines are providing earnings growth. 2025 is an important year.”

BP remains a profitable company with a dividend yield of more than 6%. The issue is the company’s hefty debt, which means that the dividend and share buybacks may need to be cut quickly if oil and gas prices should fall—something that President Donald Trump has promised to make happen.

“BP has the highest debt profile versus its peer group,” said Bill Selesky, a strategist at Argus Research. “Investors expect oil and gas to be highly volatile, and they want a less risky investment.”

To illustrate: BP’s debt-to-equity ratio was 23.3% in the third quarter. TotalEnergies was at about 13%. At the end of last year, Exxon’s was 13%, and Chevron’s was 13.9%. Shell lies in between—its ratio was 17.7% in 2024.

Like other big oil companies, BP made record profits in 2022 as crude prices spiked in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unlike its peers, the company didn’t use the funds to significantly reduce its debt load. Instead, it went shopping, snapping up firms like Archaea Energy, the largest renewable natural-gas producer in the U.S., and EDF Energy Services, a retail power company.

Auchincloss suggested in October that BP’s buyback plans may need to be revisited, indicating that investors are right to be worried that the distributions can’t last.

“High dividend yields are more of a red flag than a green light,” said Allen Good, a strategist at Morningstar. “Shell has the blueprint. They sold off some low carbon assets and reduced investment overall, while increasing investment in oil and gas, and they’re cutting costs.”

Good says a merger between BP and Shell isn’t out of the question, but it wouldn’t be easy. For one, BP hasn’t said it wants to sell, and Shell hasn’t said it’s interested in acquiring it. A spokesperson for Shell declined to comment.

Plus, Shell is still working to get its shares up after changing tack under CEO Wael Sawan, who took the reins at the start of 2023. Shell trades at 8.5 times forward earnings, the same as BP—which makes it hard to argue that BP’s shares are relatively undervalued in those terms. By comparison, Exxon trades at 13.7 times, and Chevron is at 13.8.

“Shell and BP trade on similar multiples, and so we don’t see the obvious accretion from a potential merger,” RBC’s Borkhataria noted.

BP could also consider splitting itself up. Its U.S. onshore oil-and-gas business, called BPX, is a prize asset. But if BP gets rid of its most promising oil and gas fields, it reduces its potential to grow.

It isn’t obvious how much time BP has before it reaches a crisis, but investors are getting frustrated. That could make them vulnerable to activist campaigns. One group, Bluebell Capital Partners, pushed for a strategy shift for years but just closed shop in December—ultimately, it was too small to wield much influence.

Others may see BP as ripe for a big shake-up. The pressure on Auchincloss is only going to increase.

Companies like Bank of America may soon be able to offer more crypto services as Trump’s pro-crypto policies take shape.

The last time crypto collapsed, regulators celebrated that the country’s biggest banks had few ties to Bitcoin and other digital assets, leaving them unscathed. Next time may be different.

After years of being stymied by the Biden administration, banks might soon get a green light from President Donald Trump and his top officials to start offering cryptocurrency services. Trump, who has launched his own token, is creating a pro-crypto government. Banks that were shut out of the industry are poised to join it, vying with firms like Coinbase Global, Robinhood Markets, and BlackRock for a piece of the crypto pie.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. plans to revise bank guidelines for crypto, aiming to allow banks to embark on some crypto activities without getting regulatory permission first. Some banks have met with government officials to push for offering custody of crypto assets, along with “tokenized deposits” that could put some checking accounts on blockchains, according to a person familiar with the matter.

“If the rules come in and make it a real thing that you can actually do business with, you’ll find that the banking system will come in hard on the transactional side of it,” Bank of America CEO Brian Moynihan said in a CNBC interview at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, describing crypto as “just another form of payment.”

Banks aren’t entirely shut out of the crypto world, but allowing them to offer far more services and put deposits on blockchains would be a stark departure from Biden’s administration, which actively discouraged ties between banks and crypto. It would also be an about-face for independent regulators who have long worried about crypto’s uses for illicit activities and potential to destabilize the financial system.

Every major banking regulator—independent entities in the federal government—has raised alarms. The Federal Reserve, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the FDIC in 2023 issued a joint statement saying crypto raised “significant safety and soundness concerns” for banks. The regulators also required banks to get permission before embarking on significant crypto projects. Now—at least for some activities—that approach is going out the window.

The push is moving forward despite Trump having not yet appointed permanent leaders for the regulators, which are supposed to operate independently from the administration. The FDIC has a five-member board, with Republican Travis Hill as acting chair. Biden holdover Michael Hsu runs the OCC, though he’s expected to be replaced by Trump at any time. Changes might come slowest at the Fed Board, where Chair Jerome Powell’s term lasts through 2026.

“The industry is working with policymakers to remove the guardrails in the banking system that kept banks out of crypto,” said Mark Hays, an associate director at Americans for Financial Reform, a Wall Street watchdog that’s been critical of the crypto industry.

Banks say they can put up safeguards, and they no longer want to be shut out of crypto services and underlying blockchain technology—arguing it could help them reduce their own costs, speed up payments, and generate new sources of revenue.

So far they have taken baby steps. JPMorgan Chase, for instance, launched “JPM Coin” in 2019, an internal token to settle payments between clients, though its volume pales in comparison to traditional transaction methods. Goldman Sachs Group last year said it planned to spin out a blockchain-based platform that could be used to tokenize and trade real-world assets, like real estate. Citigroup has experimented with Wellington Management and WisdomTree to tokenize private funds.

The Bank Policy Institute, an industry lobbying group, said banks are “ideal vehicles for exploring the benefits of new technology like blockchain,” in a paper after the November election.

Even if big banks start delving more into crypto, it’s unlikely to move the needle on their asset bases or financial results—which are far more tied to loan growth, net interest income, and balance sheets. But with few exceptions, banks have left lucrative businesses like brokerage services, custody, and dollar-tied tokens to upstarts like Coinbase, Robinhood, and Anchorage Digital.

The push by banks also stems from the wild success of spot-based Bitcoin exchange-traded funds. Launched about a year ago, the ETFs have swelled to about $120 billion in assets, earning fees for managers like BlackRock and Fidelity as well as the custodians of the underlying Bitcoin, like Coinbase.

Crypto firms, meanwhile, are encroaching on a core activity in banking: taking deposits, lending some out, and earning a yield on the reserves held against them. The way that works in crypto is with stablecoins—tokens pegged to the dollar that can be used in transactions, lent as collateral, and deposited in accounts that yield interest. The tokens collectively have a market value of more than $227 billion, earning considerable interest for companies like Coinbase, Circle Internet Financial, and Tether Holdings.

To compete with stablecoins, some banks this year met with senior FDIC officials to talk about potentially offering “tokenized deposits,” among other things, according to people familiar with the matter.

Tokenized deposits are essentially tokens that represent traditional deposits in a checking or savings account and can be transferred almost instantly on a blockchain, the digital ledger underlying most crypto assets. Banks say can it can reduce their costs. Integrated with other blockchains, tokenized deposits can also be used more seamlessly for crypto trading, lending, and other activities.

The FDIC, under Hill, is considering making it easier for banks to offer custody services. And the FDIC is considering rescinding or reworking guidance that had required banks to get permission for crypto-related activities, instead offering upfront guidance on how banks can use the technology.

“We are actively reevaluating our supervisory approach to crypto-related activities,” Hill said in a statement on Wednesday, adding that the agency sought to give “a pathway for institutions to engage in crypto- and blockchain-related activities while still adhering to safety and soundness principles.”

Financial watchdogs say major safeguards will be needed to avoid a sequel to the crash of 2022 —when a wave of corporate crypto failures bled into the banking system, leading to the demise of Silvergate Bank and Signature Bank. In its autopsy report on Signature, the FDIC attributed its failure in part to its “strategy of rapid growth and expansion into the digital asset markets.”

“Real people’s money is at stake,” said Shayna Olesiuk, director of banking policy at industry critic Better Markets, pointing to the failures of Silvergate and Signature.

Some financial-stability experts think it can be done safely, and argue that letting large banks into crypto might actually be positive. One reason Silvergate failed is because it had a disproportionate amount of crypto depositors and was known as a “crypto bank.” When FTX collapsed, Silvergate depositors panicked, causing a run. That risk might be alleviated if more crypto deposits were held at bigger banks, constituting only a small part of their liabilities, says Steven Kelly, associate director of research at the Yale Program on Financial Stability.

“If the crypto industry can mature and the regulations around it can mature enough, that’s a safer outcome than having institutions known as crypto banks,” he says.

Banks, of course, are eager to tap the digital-asset profit pool as a new pro-crypto federal government takes shape. Trump signed an executive order to create a crypto “working group” to study pro-crypto policies, including the potential creation of a federal Bitcoin stockpile. The Securities and Exchange Commission now has its own crypto working group, led by Commissioner Hester Peirce, nicknamed the “Crypto Mom” for her pro-industry views.

Republicans in Congress want to move forward with bills that would establish rules for stablecoins and brokerages/exchanges like Coinbase. Republican lawmakers also sound sympathetic to claims by crypto executives that they had been “debanked,” or denied basic banking services, merely because of the industry they worked in.

The Biden administration “was explicit about not wanting crypto to touch the banking system, period,” said J.W. Verret, a law professor at George Mason University. With Republicans, “that war is over.”

Why is a phone company trading like a member of the Magnificent Seven? T-Mobile US stock is up 54% in a year and 694% over the past decade. That beats Amazon.com over the first time frame, Meta Platforms over the second, and Alphabet and Apple over both.

One theory doesn’t pan out: that a 2020 merger between T-Mobile and Sprint turned the industry into a lazy and lucrative triopoly. But a couple of antitrust oopsies might have played a role. More recently, telecom has been feasting at cable’s expense. T-Mobile’s frothy stock price of 23 times this year’s projected earnings might even be worth it, but parent Deutsche Telekom offers a cheaper way in.

Start with some merger history: A decade ago, Verizon Communications Communications and AT&T controlled a combined 72% of national cell service. T-Mobile and Sprint split the rest. T-Mobile was slowly gaining market share for two reasons. First, it was giving customers a better deal than the others, at the expense of its free cash flow, which was under $1 billion a year, versus $15 billion for AT&T and $21 billion for Verizon. Second, Sprint stunk, making it a market share donor.

The growth mismatch between T-Mobile and Sprint meant that T-Mobile was running low on wireless spectrum, whereas Sprint had plenty that it couldn’t use. So in 2018, T-Mobile said it would buy Sprint for $26.5 billion. Antitrust regulators challenged the deal, and then relented in 2019, with one main condition: T-Mobile had to sell its Boost prepaid cellphone service and some spectrum to Dish to create a new, fourth industry competitor.

Enough time has gone by to make judgments about who stuck what to whom. Boost, now owned by EchoStar, remains a nonfactor. The U.S. industry is a triopoly. But it isn’t a “cozy” one, according to a paper last year in the journal Regulation Magazine; it’s competitive. The deal has resulted in “substantial improvement in consumer welfare,” argue researchers at Clemson University and Technology Policy Institute, a think tank. T-Mobile has led on 5G deployment, making service faster. Adjusting for this service improvement, the real price of wireless service fell 15.3% over three years after the deal, versus a 9.8% decline over the three years prior.

If the deal had hurt competition, all industry participants would be enjoying the benefits. But since the April 2020 merger closing, T-Mobile stock has gained 191%, versus 15% for AT&T, and a 25% decline for Verizon.

T-Mobile is still thriving. On Jan. 29, the company reported record gross additions of postpaid accounts last year, along with record-low churn. It’s no longer giving it away; free cash flow is running around $17 billion a year—close to that of Verizon and AT&T. One reason for T-Mobile’s success is that although the government failed to create a fourth rival, it succeeded too well in keeping Verizon and AT&T out of the bidding for that Sprint spectrum. The study authors calculate that T-Mobile paid no more than 65 cents per MHz-pop, a measurement that factors in radio frequency and population. Competitors buying spectrum elsewhere at auction had to cough up $1.10.

T-Mobile is focusing growth efforts in rural markets, as well as the 30% of top 100 markets where it remains underpenetrated. Business services, where it is a laggard but is growing quickly, are another priority. One of the sweetest growth opportunities is home broadband service. Cable companies, stung by customers canceling their television channel bundles, ratcheted up the price of high-speed internet to make up for lost revenue. Telecoms, flush with cash now that their 5G networks are built, have swooped in with broadband service of their own.

One service type is called fixed wireless, and involves using a cellphone signal for home broadband. The main appeal there for T-Mobile is that it can earn money on unused spectrum. The bigger long-term moneymaker is fiberoptic service. With prices up, and customer churn typically low, management reckons that internal rates of return on fiber are over 20%.

That provides T-Mobile with a profitable place to direct its now-hefty free cash flow. It has used joint ventures with regional players to get a jump on boosting its fiber footprint. J.P. Morgan predicts that T-Mobile will grow its share from 4% to 10% by 2030. Earnings are seen growing by double-digit percentages over the next five years, which could make the stock’s premium valuation worth paying. But Deutsche Telekom, which owns a majority stake, offers a cheaper way to invest.

Deutsche Telekom shares are up more than 120% over the past five years, but earnings per share have risen just as fast, so shares still trade below 16 times earnings. Remarkably, J.P. Morgan counts only 10 large-cap European companies whose earnings are expected to grow at double-digit rates. Deutsche Telekom is one of them, even if the U.S. is driving its growth. The other nine companies trade at an average of 23 times earnings, just like T-Mobile. Deutsche Telekom’s lower valuation leads JPM to conclude that its shares are headed 30% higher. They pay a 2% dividend.

Quick note on an overly complicated topic: Collateralized loan obligations only sound thermonuclear. Ones rated AAA and AA have never had a loss. There are exchange-traded funds for them now, like Janus Henderson AAA CLO. Last April, I laid out BofA’s case that these are a better deal for yield hunters than pricey private credit. I should have known better.

Buyers of that Janus ETF have done fine. They’ve made 5.5%, which annualizes to just over 7%. But so much cash has sloshed in from investors seeking higher yields in fancy places that assets under management tripled last year to over $20 billion. Janus is suddenly the third-largest active fixed income ETF seller. That means that what I really should have told investors to buy is stock in Janus Henderson Group, which has returned 49% with dividends since then.

Renault has reactivated talks with Taiwanese iPhone contract manufacturer Foxconn regarding its stake in Nissan following the collapse of merger talks between the Japanese carmaker and its rival Honda.

Renault’s move to launch its own search for new investors came on the back of concerns that it would be left with depressed shares in Nissan, with the Japanese group lacking a new partner, according to people with knowledge of the situation. The search will be expansive with approaches to be made to technology groups worldwide including Apple, they added. 

Renault has been reducing its stake in Nissan following a restructuring of the carmakers’ 25-year alliance in 2023. At present, it holds a 36 per cent stake in Nissan, including a remaining 18.7 per cent held in a French trust that it wants to offload. 

Jun Seki, chief strategy officer for Foxconn’s electric vehicle division and a former Nissan executive, met Renault’s chief executive Luca De Meo in December for talks about acquiring the shares held in the trust, triggering panic within Nissan and frantic negotiations with rival Honda that fell apart earlier this week. 

“There is no need to defend against Foxconn. They should at least be considered [as a potential partner],” said one person close to the discussions.

n a statement, Renault said it was “assessing all options” and that it would “vigorously defend” the interests of the group and its stakeholders. “Today, the priority is Nissan’s turnaround,” it added. 

Shares in Nissan rose more than 7 per cent on Friday following a media report that Foxconn’s chair Young Liu instructed Seki to connect with Renault. 

Foxconn did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Nissan declined to comment. 

But even if Renault is open to selling its shares in Nissan, the Japanese group has the first right of refusal so it would be difficult for the sale to materialise without its agreement.

One banker involved in automotive deals said Renault “wanted to play an active role in the situation”, adding that it was torn between the idea of selling and recouping cash or remaining involved with Nissan. “They are not in a rush,” he said.

Nissan is also conducting its own search for a strategic partner in the tech industry after its board decided to end talks with Honda to create the world’s fourth-largest carmaker.

The discussions fell apart after Honda demanded that Nissan accept a new offer to become a fully owned subsidiary, deviating from the initially agreed structure of a joint holding company.

Nissan has come under financial pressure due to competition from Chinese rivals and a lack of strong product offerings. As part of its turnaround efforts, the company has said it plans to cut 9,000 jobs and a fifth of its production capacity.

The Week’s Biggest Funding Rounds: BlinkRx, Tidal Vision Lead Another Slow week

For the past couple of weeks large rounds have barely trickled in, and this week continues that trend. Just three deals hit $100 million or more as investors seem to have pulled back on big rounds early in the year.

1. (tied) BlinkRx, $140M, pharmaceutical: The biggest raise this week came from the pharmaceutical and prescription industry. BlinkRx, a prescription access platform, raised a $140 million Series D led by 1789 Capital. Donald Trump Jr., a partner at the investment firm, was named to the New York-based startup’s board. BlinkRx promises price transparency on drugs and delivery. Founded in 2014, the company has raised $315 million, per Crunchbase.

1. (tied) Tidal Vision, $140M, biotech: Biotech firm Tidal Vision tied for the biggest round this week, raising a $140 million Series B financing from several investors including Eni Next. The Bellingham, Washington-based company creates scalable biomolecular solutions for critical industries — including water treatment, agriculture and material science. Tidal is building new infrastructure in Europe, Texas and Ohio and will use the new cash to accelerate research and development in chitosan — a nontoxic biopolymer — and adjacent technologies. Founded in 2015, the company has raised nearly $224 million, per Crunchbase.

3. Semgrep, $100M, cybersecurity: Although cybersecurity venture funding bounced back some last year, it ended 2024 being relatively stagnant. This year, not much has changed, but this week did see the biggest round of the year so far for the industry. Application security startup Semgrep raised a $100 million Series D funding led by Menlo Ventures. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the company’s $53 million Series C in 2023. Founded in 2017, Semgrep has raised $204 million, according to the company. Semgrep’s autonomous code security platform allows developers and security engineers to create guardrails that proactively secure application development.

4. (tied) Hidden Level, $65M, defense: Another day and another big round for a defense tech firm. Hidden Level raised a $65 million Series C led by DFJ Growth. The Syracuse, New York-based startup said the new cash comes six months after it raised a previously unannounced $35 million Series B. Hidden Level’s passive radar systems allows users to detect and track drones and other objects in the air — a more common tactic in modern warfare. The passive radar systems cannot identify approaching aircraft without being detected. The company has contracts this year to support deployments for the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, U.S. Africa Command, U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, U.S. Central Command, U.S. Northern Command and other federal, state and local agencies. Hidden level is just the latest startup to collect a big check — or two — from VCs interested in defense tech. Just last week, El Segundo, California-based Castelion, a defense manufacturer developing long-range hypersonic strike weapons, raised a $100 million Series A in a mix of debt and equity. Lightspeed Venture Partners led the equity portion.

4. (tied) Nextworld, $65M, enterprise software: Denver-based Nextworld, a provider of enterprise platforms that enable businesses to create tailored software solutions, closed a $65 million Series F led by the McVaney Investment Partnership. The company plans to grow strategic partnerships and accelerate its research and development capabilities. Founded in 2016, this is the first announced round, per Crunchbase.

6. (tied) Berry Street, $50M, healthcare: New York-based Berry Street, a nutrition counseling platform, raised $50 million. No lead investors were named, but investors included Northzone, Sofina and others. Founded in 2022, the company has raised $59 million, per Crunchbase.

6. (tied) Fay, $50M, healthcare: Staying in the same nutritional sector, San Francisco-based Fay, a digital nutritional therapy platform, locked up a $50 million Series B led by Goldman Sachs at a $500 million valuation. Founded in 2022, Fay says it has raised $75 million.

8. (tied) 75F, $45M, smart building: Minneapolis-based 75F, a developer of AI-driven commercial HVAC automation, announced a $45 million Series B funding round led by Accurant International’s Net Zero Alliance. Founded in 2012, the company has raised nearly $75 million, per Crunchbase.

8. (tied) MagicSchool AI, $45M, edtech: Denver-based MagicSchool, an AI platform for education, raised a $45 million Series B led by Valor Equity Partners. Founded in 2023, the company has raised $62 million, per Crunchbase.

10. 7AI, $36M, cybersecurity: Boston-based 7AI, an agentic security platform, raised a $36 million seed. Investors included the likes of Greylock Partners and Spark Capital. Founded in 2024, this is the company’s first raise, per Crunchbase.

Big global deals

The largest deal of the week came from our neighbors to the north.

Toronto-based StackAdapt, a multichannel programmatic advertising platform that uses AI and automation in its software to enhance capabilities and user experience, raised a $235 million growth round led by Teachers’ Venture Growth.

Judge slams Ofwat and government for not attending Thames Water hearing

Court will decide whether to approve emergency £3bn loan for UK’s biggest water utility

A high court judge who will decide whether to approve a £3bn bailout of troubled utility Thames Water has criticised the British government and water regulator for failing to engage in the process.

Mr Justice Leech, who is presiding over the week-long hearing on whether to approve an emergency loan from Thames Water’s senior lenders, said that the lack of engagement in proceedings from water regulator Ofwat and the government was “unfortunate”.

“It would have been nice, I think, if either Ofwat or the secretary of state had felt the need to turn up and explain the position to the court”, Leech said.

He later added that the lack of government testimony on the costs of a temporary renationalisation had also placed the court in a “very difficult position”.

The hearing comes at an existential moment for Thames Water, the UK’s biggest water company, which is struggling under its £19bn debt mountain. If the court does not approve the emergency loan, the judge has acknowledged that the utility will “inevitably” fall into the special administration regime, a form of temporary renationalisation.

Thames Water told the court that, absent a deal, it will run out of cash on March 24 — triggering the first temporary renationalisation of a water company since utilities in England and Wales were privatised in 1989.

At the High Court proceedings this week, rival creditors went to war over the future of the struggling utility, which supplies almost a quarter of the UK with water and sewerage services. Thames Water’s lower-ranking lenders are trying to challenge the plan for the emergency loan and force the utility to accept their own cheaper £3bn loan.

There is a parallel effort to raise billions of pounds in new equity to fix Thames Water’s balance sheet, overseen by Rothschild & Co.

Rothschild initially approached more than 50 potential investors such as infrastructure funds and private equity firms, according to a letter submitted to the court and which was obtained by the Financial Times.

It does not state how many submitted non-binding proposals by the last deadline in December.

The letter also noted that one bidder had “made some criticisms of the process”, adding that this bidder also holds lower-ranking class B debt. Thames Water’s barrister Tom Smith KC said this was probably Covalis Capital, which was revealed in court to have backstopped part of the junior bondholders’ rival £3bn loan plan.

Covalis said it “cannot conclude whether it is possible to deliver a binding bid by the end of April 2025” unless it has more access to information and engagement with the utility’s management, according to a separate letter sent by Covalis to Judge Leech on Thursday. Neither the chair or chief executive had attended the most recent briefing to equity providers on January 28, the letter said.

The class A creditors, which include US hedge funds Elliott Management and Silver Point, are preparing a “creditor bid” for the utility in the event the Rothschild process does not succeed, the court also heard.

While the next round of bids is due on Monday, Leech is not expected to make a ruling on the loan until the end of next week at the earliest, and there is potential for an appeal.

“The government is closely monitoring the situation, and it would be inappropriate for the secretary of state to comment further on ongoing legal proceedings or private company financial matters,” the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs said.

Ofwat declined to comment.

The absence of Ofwat and the government left the public interest case to be made by Charlie Maynard, a Liberal Democrat MP, whose barrister argued that only a third of the emergency loan’s proceeds would reach the utility after interest payments and other costs. Under cross-examination, Thames Water’s chief financial officer conceded its total bill on restructuring lawyers and advisers could also climb to £200mn.

“It shouldn’t have taken a pro bono intervention by a junior to cross-examine the CFO for those sorts of costs to come out,” William Day, Maynard’s barrister, said in his closing argument.

Thames Water declined to comment.

Activist investor Bill Ackman has taken a stake of more than $2.3bn in the ride-share company Uber, snapping up shares that he said were priced at a “massive discount”.

Ackman announced the new stake after Uber posted weaker than expected fourth-quarter earnings this week, but heralded what it claimed was a more than “$1tn-plus opportunity” that autonomous vehicles could revolutionise rather than disrupt its business.

On Friday, the company’s stock closed 6.6 per cent higher, giving the group a market capitalisation of almost $160bn.

“We believe that Uber is one of the best managed and highest quality businesses in the world,” Ackman, who runs hedge fund Pershing Square Capital Management, wrote on Friday on X.

“Remarkably, it can still be purchased at a massive discount to its intrinsic value. This favourable combination of attributes is extremely rare, particularly for a large cap company.”

Pershing Square and Uber did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

While Ackman said in the post on X that Uber had “suffered from erratic management” over the years, he praised chief executive Dara Khosrowshahi for finally making the group profitable.

Khosrowshahi replaced Uber co-founder Travis Kalanick in 2017 after he became ensnared in a string of scandals, including allegations that he led an organisation that turned a blind eye to workplace sexual harassment.

Ackman said that his hedge fund began buying up Uber’s stock in early January and that the group now owned more than 30mn shares. He made his first investment in the company around its founding in 2009, with a small stake facilitated through a venture capital fund.

Uber reported its first annual operating profit last February, a turning point for the Silicon Valley company.

It had a difficult period around its initial public offering in 2019, which failed to meet expectations of a $120bn value. When it did list, Uber’s debut was the worst first-day dollar loss for a US company going public.

Last February, Khosrowshahi said the results were “an inflection point for Uber, proving that we can continue to generate strong profitable growth at scale”.

The company reported annual profitability again last year, and aims to integrate autonomous vehicles into its fleet. It signed a deal with Alphabet subsidiary Waymo last year, and this week opened a waiting list for its self-driving vehicles in Austin, Texas.