Le Point : Heading for Disaster - JEAN PEYRELEVADE

Heading for Disaster
BY JEAN PEYRELEVADE
Mediocre. The economic adviser, architect of the austerity turn of 1982-1983, points out the excesses and delusions of the programs of Jean-Luc Mélenchon and Jordan Bardella.

France has a structural weakness: most of our politicians are ignorant when it comes to economics.

We are already paying dearly for this: for years we have been unable to restore our public finances.

What would happen if tomorrow one of the extremes, right or left, came to power? The worst, obviously, but in very different forms. The Rassemblement National has virtually no interest in the financial recovery of the country. Following a pattern that has an increasing chance of working, it wants to win the next presidential election. To win, it multiplies promises to different categories of voters without asking any contribution whatsoever from French citizens.

Where is the necessary revenue? According to Jordan Bardella in his “Letter to French Entrepreneurs” of September 2025, “bad public spending must be reduced. Over 100 billion euros can be saved by ending welfare immigration, subsidies for intermittent energy, excessive public aid for the development of other countries, the administrative layering, and the exorbitant cost of state bureaucracy.” Where is the proof for such claims? Nonexistent. Let us also add the European Commission to the list of culprits: “In fifteen years, it has produced thousands of texts that have hampered our competitiveness and stifled our strategic industries.”

So it is not the French who must make sacrifices, but immigrants, foreigners, the European Commission, and the European Central Bank. An effort to rebalance our pension system, whose deficit is particularly heavy? Certainly not. At the same time, Jordan Bardella has just pulled off a feat in a few months that will greatly contribute to his very likely electoral victory. Marine Le Pen had built her populist forces among workers, employees, and small-town residents, promising to protect them from elite domination and the resulting sense of abandonment. Jordan Bardella has, in recent months, seduced small and medium business owners with repeated promises of tax relief — they represent nearly 4 million voters and have always been ideologically mistreated by the entire left.

Most of our politicians are ignorant when it comes to economics.

In short: the RN has skillfully multiplied its seductions. If it came to power, one would quickly realize it is incapable of restoring order to the country’s public finances, which could only hasten the arrival of a major crisis.

Absurd. The outcome would be similar (guaranteed bankruptcy) with Jean-Luc Mélenchon and the far left, but for different reasons. The program of La France Insoumise (“The Common Future”) is absurd, but unlike the RN’s, it is structured. The idea, highly ideological, is to redo a French Revolution that supposedly failed with the fall of Robespierre. One must therefore begin by convening a Constituent Assembly, triggered by a referendum using Article 11 of the Constitution, which allows the president to launch the entire process alone (which is legally questionable). The sovereignty of the people must be affirmed everywhere, with the creation of a citizens’ initiative referendum to propose or repeal laws or recall parliamentarians: a kind of end of representative democracy.

With the same ideological distortion, strongly anti-capitalist, the minimum wage must be massively increased (and consequently the entire wage scale) and the pay gap within a single company limited to a ratio of 1 to 20 (long live freedom!). And to solve the debt problem? The retirement age is of course brought back to 60. Then comes a wonderful Mélenchon idea: demand that the ECB convert the share of state debt it holds into perpetual zero-interest debt. Finally, at the expense of the right to property recognized by the Declaration of the Rights of Man (“Property being an inviolable and sacred right, no one may be deprived of it”), the rich must be made to pay in every possible and imaginable way, for example by capping wealth transfers at 12 million euros.

How do you prefer to head toward disaster, which is inevitable in any case? With the superficial intelligence of Jordan Bardella or the brutal stupidity of Jean-Luc Mélenchon? I’ll let you choose.

●Le Point 2796 | February 26, 2026 | p. 53

TechCrunch : Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic joins Google

Alphabet-owned robotics software company Intrinsic joins Google

Google is moving further into physical AI by bringing a familiar robotics software platform under its wing.

Alphabet-owned Intrinsic, which builds AI models and software designed to make industrial robots more accessible, is joining Google, the companies announced on Wednesday. Intrinsic will remain a distinct entity within Google but will work closely with Google DeepMind and will tap into Google’s Gemini AI models and cloud services.

Alphabet declined to share information regarding funding or purchase price.

Intrinsic “graduated” into an independent Alphabet-owned company in 2021 after five years of development within Alphabet’s X, the company’s moonshot research division. Other companies that have graduated from X include robotaxi company Waymo and drone delivery company Wing.

Wendy Tan White has served as Intrinsic’s CEO since its spinout in 2021.

The company hit the ground running. A few months after announcing its independence, Intrinsic acquired Vicarious, a fellow robotics software company, in April 2022. While the purchase price wasn’t disclosed, Vicarious had raised about $250 million from VCs and tech bigwigs like Jeff Bezos.

A few months later, Intrinsic acquired several for-profit divisions of Open Robotics, a nonprofit organization that builds hardware and software platforms for the robotics industry.

Despite this rapid expansion, Intrinsic laid off 20% of its workforce in January 2023.

The company announced its first product, Flowstate, just a few months later. Flowstate is a software platform for developing robotics workflows aimed at developers that don’t have deep robotics experience — aligning with the company’s mission to make robotics more accessible.

Since then, the company has fine-tuned the technology, improved its simulation capabilities, and released its Intrinsic Vision AI model in late 2025.

Intrinsic announced a joint venture with electronics manufacturer Foxconn in October 2025 that entails the two companies working together on general-purpose intelligent robots to transform how electronics are manufactured, with the goal of full factory automation.

Now, the company is working toward those goals with closer collaboration with Google’s AI prowess.

“Combined with Google’s incredible AI and infrastructure, we’re going to unlock the promise of physical AI for a much broader set of manufacturing businesses and developers. This will fundamentally shift production, from its economics to operations, and enable truly advanced manufacturing,” Tan White wrote in the company’s blog post.

This move makes a lot of sense for Google, as many tech leaders, including Nvidia’s Jensen Huang and Qualcomm’s Cristiano Amon, see physical AI as the next natural step in the monetization and advancement of AI models and technology.

TechCrunch : Anthropic acquires computer-use AI startup Vercept after Meta poach

Anthropic acquires computer-use AI startup Vercept after Meta poached one of its founders

Anthropic on Wednesday announced that it has acquired Vercept, an AI startup with deep roots to some of the biggest names in Seattle’s tech scene. The acquisition marks the latest after Anthropic acquired coding agent engine Bun in December to help scale Claude Code.

Vercept had created tools for more complex agentic tasks, including its product Vy, a computer-use agent in the cloud that could operate a remote Apple MacBook. Vercept is one of the many startups working on re-imagining the personal computer for the age of AI agents. As part of the deal, Anthropic is shuttering Vercept’s product on March 25.

The startup was a grad of Seattle’s AI-focused incubator A12, which spawned from the longstanding Allen Institute for AI. Vercept’s co-founders had roots with the Allen Institute, as well, and were previously researchers there. One co-founder, Matt Deitke, made news last year as one of the AI researchers who negotiated a monster $250 million salary from Meta to join its Superintelligence Lab. On Wednesday, Deitke congratulated his former colleagues in a post on X.

Vercept was a relatively high-profile AI startup in the region. In a LinkedIn post announcing the acquisition by Anthropic, Vercept CEO Kiana Ehsani said the startup had raised a total of $50 million. She called out A12’s Seth Bannon, a board member, as the lead investor. Vercept previously announced it had raised a $16 million seed round last January.

The list of angel investors was impressive, too, and included former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, Google DeepMind chief scientist Jeff Dean, Cruise founder Kyle Vogt, and Dropbox co-founder Arash Ferdowsi, GeekWire reported.

In Anthropic’s announcement of the acquisition, the company named co-founders Ehsani, Luca Weihs, and Ross Girshick as some of the team brought on to join Anthropic in the acquisition. However, not all of Vercept’s co-founders are joining the Claude maker.

Oren Etzioni, who has previously been named as a co-founder of Vercept and investor in the startup, is well known in Seattle as the founding leader of the Allen Institute for AI. Along with Deitke, he is also not joining Anthropic, and was vocally less pleased about the acqui-hire. He posted on LinkedIn: “After a little bit more than a year, Vercept is throwing in the towel and giving their customers 30 days to get off the platform. Sad. A fantastic team is joining Anthropic. I wish them the very best!”

Etzioni is also a professor at the University of Washington and known for other startups he’s founded and backed as a VC. He did not respond to a request for comment.

On Etzioni’s LinkedIn post, he accused Bannon, the Vercept lead investor, of being “partly responsible” for Vercept not hiring the correct business people. A back and forth ensued between the investors, with Bannon condemning Etzioni’s remarks: “… you disparaged the heroic work of the founders for achieving an outcome most could only dream of,” Bannon replied in the LinkedIn string. They also accused each other of other less savory things like lying and legal threats.

While public spats between investors are entertaining, and essentially meaningless, the underlying motivation is notable. The stakes are high to build the next big AI winner, and now a promising startup that raised a decently sized war chest will be tucked into Anthropic.

While the terms of the deal were not disclosed, Etzioni says he got a return on his money. Anthropic clearly wanted these researchers (perhaps — especially — with another of them at Meta).

Still, Etzioni told GeekWire that he remains bummed. “I’m pleased to have gotten a positive return but obviously disappointed that after just a little over a year with so much traction, and such a fantastic team, we’re basically throwing in the towel,” he said.

The founders joining Anthropic, however, appear happy, according to CEO’s Ehsani’s LinkedIn post. “The choices were clear: we could build independently and work toward the same vision as two separate versions of it, or join forces with an incredible team and accelerate that vision into reality. The decision became an easy choice,” she said of joining Anthropic.

The Information : Autonomous Warship Startup Saronic Raising at $7.5 Billion Val

Autonomous Warship Startup Saronic Raising at $7.5 Billion Valuation

The Takeaway
  • Saronic raising $1.5 billion at a $7.5 billion valuation
  • Kleiner Perkins agreed to lead round
  • Startup generated $200 million in revenue last year


Saronic, a startup that builds autonomous warships, is raising as much as $1.5 billion in a financing that would value the company at about $7.5 billion, before including the investment, two people with direct knowledge of the matter said.

Kleiner Perkins, the storied venture capital firm that has done few defense tech deals until now, has agreed to lead the round, the people said. It would more than double the valuation in a short time frame for Austin-based Saronic, which last raised funding about a year ago at a $3.4 billion valuation, before the funding.

Investors would be betting Saronic is able to win huge contracts from the U.S. Navy in the coming years, far more than it is currently. The startup generated just over $200 million in revenue last year, one of the people said. The funding would value it at 38 times its prior revenue. Saronic has told prospective investors in recent weeks that it is looking to expand production of large unmanned ships.

The funding discussions underline how willing tech investment firms are to write huge checks into capital-intensive hardware companies that will potentially require far more funds to generate profits than typical tech startups. Defense startups are particularly risky because they often effectively have one giant customer, the U.S. military.

Saronic, if it raises the money, would become one of the best funded defense tech firms in an increasingly popular sector for VC firms. Anduril, a larger defense startup that builds drones and submarines, is raising billions of dollars at about a $60 billion valuation, The Information previously reported. Anduril, which recently partnered with Korean shipbuilder HD Hyundai, is likely to compete with Saronic for major government contracts.

The Saronic round also crystallizes a growing debate among tech investors about whether defense startups are worth increasingly steep valuations, given the huge costs of developing their products.

Bullish investors increasingly point to long-term successes like SpaceX, which has built strong competitive advantages in the rocket launch market over many years. Waymo, which has burned cash to build a big lead in the autonomous car rental market over many years, raised $16 billion this year.

The Information : Nvidia and Salesforce Show Different Sides of AI

Nvidia and Salesforce Show Different Sides of AI

It was a tale of two AI cities when Nvidia and Salesforce on Wednesday reported the January-quarter earnings that ended their 2026 fiscal years. Nvidia kept its place at the top of the class, reporting better than projected 73% revenue growth. Net income rose 94% to $42.9 billion. For the full fiscal year, Nvidia had revenue of $216 billion and net profit of $120 billion, translating to a margin of 55.6%, which is impressive for a chip designer. By comparison, distant rival AMD’s net profit margin for the last 12 months was 12.5%, while Broadcom (a rival of a sort) had a margin of 36.2%, according to S&P Global Market Intelligence data.

But even as Nvidia bulls celebrated the moment—pushing the long-stalled stock above $200—uncertainties about the impact of AI on enterprise software surfaced in Salesforce’s results. On the surface, the quarter looked fine. Revenue grew 12%, which is nothing to write home about but a big improvement on the 8.6% year-on-year growth in the first three quarters of the year. Scratch the surface, though, and the picture isn’t quite as positive. If you exclude the contribution from Salesforce’s recently acquired Informatica, the quarter’s growth rate was only 8%. No one wants to see Salesforce too reliant on acquisitions for growth, as buying other companies isn’t a sustainable way to expand. That’s likely one reason why its stock fell 5% in after-hours trading.

That’s not all, however. Salesforce is reporting accelerating revenue from its AI flagship product Agentforce—annualized recurring revenue reached $800 million in the quarter, up from $500 million in the third quarter. That’s heartening. The question is why Agentforce isn’t lifting Salesforce’s revenue growth rate. Indeed, Salesforce projected fiscal 2027 growth of between 10% and 11%—including three points coming from Informatica. That implies Salesforce’s growth without Informatica will be 7% to 8%, slightly weaker than the just-finished year excluding the acquired firm. Could the growth in AI be cannibalizing Salesforce’s older software businesses? That’s one of the worries about AI, of course—that businesses will embrace new AI-powered products but simply shift money they’re spending from other software they’re buying.

When asked about this issue, Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff gave a vague answer, preferring to emphasize his pride in what Salesforce had done. Earlier on the call, though, Chief Financial Officer Robin Washington had said Agentforce’s growth was expected to be offset this year by “weakness in marketing, commerce and [data analytics visualization unit] Tableau,” all issues that dampened last year’s performance as well. It’s also notable the company said it expected “organic revenue”—which comes from within existing businesses, rather than via acquisitions, to “reaccelerate” in the second half of the year. That all suggests at least some of the older businesses are not doing great right now.

There are few examples of software firms showing accelerating overall growth so far, even if they’re reporting fast-growing AI revenue. And in most cases, their AI revenue is tiny. Agentforce’s ARR, for instance, is just 1.7% of Salesforce’s total fiscal 2027 projected revenue of about $46 billion. To be sure, AI adoption within businesses is still in the very early days. But investors have good reason to be jittery about the future growth of software firms.

Nvidia’s Cash Machine
Nvidia generated $96.6 billion in free cash flow in fiscal 2026, the company’s January-quarter earnings revealed, up from $61 billion in fiscal 2025. Free cash flow is cash from its operations less capital expenditures, an expense Nvidia doesn’t have a lot of. Companies use the cash they generate for share buybacks, dividends, investments and acquisitions. It’s why Nvidia has the firepower to invest in a bunch of potential customers, as it has been doing.

It’s fun to compare Nvidia’s free cash flow with those of other tech giants, several of whom are Nvidia customers and therefore are responsible for the company’s explosive growth. In calendar year 2025, only Apple generated more in free cash flow—$123.5 billion. Alphabet’s free cash flow was $73 billion, Microsoft’s just a tad higher, Meta Platforms’ was $43.6 billion and Amazon’s $7.7 billion.

The Information : Amazon’s $50 Billion Investment in OpenAI Could Hinge on IPO,

Amazon’s $50 Billion Investment in OpenAI Could Hinge on IPO, AGI

The Takeaway
  • Amazon’s potential $50 billion OpenAI investment could hinge on IPO or AGI
  • Talks are part of OpenAI’s $100 billion funding round
  • OpenAI discusses expanding cloud deal to include Tranium chips.

Amazon’s decision to invest up to $50 billion in OpenAI could hang on whether OpenAI goes public or reaches a loosely defined milestone known as artificial general intelligence, which generally refers to AI that is on par with human abilities, according to three people involved who have communicated with OpenAI executives.

Under the terms of the investment, which are still being negotiated, Amazon would initially invest $15 billion into OpenAI, these people said. The other $35 billion could hinge on OpenAI reaching AGI or going public, the people said. The proposed Amazon investment is part of OpenAI’s current funding round, which could top $100 billion at a valuation of $730 billion before the financing.

In addition, SoftBank and Nvidia each plan to invest $30 billion in three installments through the year as part of the round, said the people. Microsoft had been expected to invest low billions of dollars, The Information previously reported, but it could invest a smaller amount or none at all, according to two of the people.

In addition to Amazon’s investment in OpenAI, the two companies are working out the details of a separate cloud agreement. As part of it, OpenAI is in talks to significantly expand its previously announced $38 billion cloud computing deal with Amazon to include the use of Amazon’s Tranium chips, said the people.

The firms are also discussing OpenAI developing custom models for Amazon that would power its internal products, including the Alexa voice assistant, The Information has reported.

The negotiations underscore how OpenAI has increasingly intertwined its fundraising needs with agreements to sell its AI models and buy computing power to run and train its AI models. For much of OpenAI’s existence, Microsoft was its most significant backer—pouring about $13 billion into the company in exchange for the exclusive right to resell OpenAI’s models and take a 20% cut of its revenue.

But last year, as OpenAI’s compute costs soared, the ChatGPT maker embarked on a string of deals with companies for more cloud computing services, from Amazon to Coreweave. In the meantime, it’s raised increasingly large funding rounds, including $41 billion in a round led by SoftBank last year. And it’s projected needing about $665 billion over the next five years to pay for its compute costs.

Those funding needs and revenue growth have increased expectations that it could go public as soon as the fourth quarter to tap public investors for capital.

OpenAI also plans to raise money in this round from United Arab Emirates’ fund MGX, as well as a consortium of investors in the Middle East, one of the people said, though these investments would likely not be similar in scale to the SoftBank, Nvidia or Amazon commitments.

It’s not clear why reaching AGI is a potential milestone for Amazon’s full investment. However, OpenAI’s current partnership with Microsoft factors into OpenAI’s pending deal with Amazon, according to one of the people.

Microsoft currently has the exclusive right to run OpenAI models on its cloud business Azure until OpenAI reaches AGI. After that point, OpenAI could potentially agree to resell its models on other cloud providers including Amazon, which would likely be an incentive for Amazon’s full $35 billion investment.

WSJ : Paramount Streaming Revenue Rises, but TV Segment Faces Headwinds

Paramount Streaming Revenue Rises, but TV Segment Faces Headwinds
Media company is pursuing a high-stakes bid for rival Warner Bros. Discovery

  • Paramount reported fourth-quarter revenue of $8.15 billion, with direct-to-consumer revenue up 10% and TV media revenue down 5%.
  • The company recently revised its bid for Warner Bros. Discovery to $31 a share.
  • Paramount expects direct-to-consumer profitability in 2026 and is on track to achieve $3 billion in cost savings in coming years.

Paramount’s PSKY -2.21%decrease; red down pointing triangle streaming revenue grew in the fourth quarter, but the company—which is pursuing a bid for rival media company Warner Bros. Discovery—reported weakness in its TV media segment.

Paramount, whose assets include CBS, Comedy Central, Nickelodeon and its namesake studio, earlier this week revised its bid for Warner, now offering $31 a share.

In a letter to shareholders Wednesday, Paramount Chief Executive David Ellison said that the company views Warner as “an accelerant” to achieving its goals more quickly.

Paramount reported revenue of $8.15 billion for its fourth quarter, in line with analyst estimates.

Revenue for the direct-to-consumer segment, which includes the Paramount+ streaming service, was $2.2 billion, up 10% from the year-ago period, the company said. Paramount+ ended the quarter with 78.9 million subscribers; analysts polled by FactSet expected it to have 80.2 million subscribers at the end of the period.

TV media revenue declined by 5% year-over-year to $4.71 billion. Paramount said it expects to see continued headwinds to affiliate revenue, driven by declines in pay-TV subscribers.

Paramount’s shares were up less than 1% in after-hours trading.

The company forecast total first-quarter revenue between $7.15 billion and $7.35 billion and said it expects to grow direct-to-consumer profitability in 2026 and have stable margins in its TV media segment.

In November, Paramount raised its cost-cutting target to at least $3 billion, up from $2 billion. The company said Wednesday that it was on track to achieve its savings targets through 2027.

Earlier this week, Warner said it had received a revised offer from Paramount to buy the entire company for $31 a share and said its board of directors determined Paramount’s revised bid “could reasonably be expected to lead” to a proposal superior to Netflix’s signed agreement to buy Warner’s studios and HBO Max streaming service.

Paramount closed its $8 billion merger with Skydance in August. The deal was approved by the Federal Communications Commission in July, shortly after Paramount Global agreed to pay $16 million to settle a lawsuit by President Trump over the editing of a “60 Minutes” interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris.

WSJ : Salesforce Sees Stable Growth Despite Wall Street’s AI Concerns

Salesforce Sees Stable Growth Despite Wall Street’s AI Concerns
The company expects annual revenue of $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion in the new fiscal year

  • Salesforce expects current fiscal year revenue growth to match about the same rate as it did the year before, amid investor concerns about AI’s threat to software.
  • The company reported a profit of $1.87 billion and revenue of $11.20 billion for the quarter ended Jan. 31.
  • Annual recurring revenue from Salesforce’s AI product Agentforce reached $800 million in the quarter, up from $540 million the quarter before.

Salesforce CRM 3.41%increase; green up pointing triangle expects revenue to grow in the current fiscal year at about the same rate as it did the year before, as investors worry about AI’s threat to software.

Chief Executive Marc Benioff told investors on a call Wednesday he wasn’t fazed by the selloff across software companies in recent weeks, which was driven by concerns that AI companies would replace software services. He said the stock’s price—which hit a three-year low earlier this month—created the opportunity to authorize a $50 billion share buyback.

“This is not our first SaaS-pocalypse,” Benioff said, referring to software-as-a-service. “We are going to make it through this one as well, so this is a great marketing opportunity and a great buying opportunity.”

The new buyback will replace all previously unused authorizations, Salesforce said.

In the new fiscal year, Salesforce expects annual revenue to be $45.8 billion to $46.2 billion, while analysts were projecting $46.11 billion. The company expects adjusted earnings per share to be $13.11 to $13.19, while the consensus estimate from Wall Street was $13.15.

At the midpoint, the full-year revenue guidance would represent roughly 10% growth, in line with the 10% sales increase Salesforce logged in the just-ended fiscal year.

The stock fell 5% to $181.25 in after-hours trading.

Benioff highlighted the growth of Salesforce’s AI product Agentforce, which made its debut in the fall of 2024. He said more companies, including SharkNinja and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, are adding agents at a rapid pace and turning to Agentforce to do that work for them.

Agentforce reached $800 million in the quarter, up from $540 million the quarter before. Salesforce said it closed 29,000 deals during the quarter, a 50% jump from the third quarter. Agentforce made its debut in the fall of 2024.

“If there is a SaaS-pocalypse, it may be eaten by the SaaS-quatch because there are a lot of companies using a lot of SaaS because it just got better with agents-as-a-service,” Benioff said.

Even before February’s software selloff, investors have been questioning Salesforce’s ability to stay relevant in the age of AI. Agentforce has been growing, but some investors worry it isn’t catching on fast enough. Despite consistently beating estimates with its financial results last year, Salesforce shares have lost 38% of their value in the past 12 months.

Revenue rose 12% to $11.20 billion in the fourth quarter. Analysts surveyed by FactSet forecast revenue of $11.19 billion.

Salesforce posted a profit of $1.87 billion, or $2.07 a share, compared with $1.82 billion, or $1.75 a share, a year earlier. Adjusted per-share earnings were $3.81, ahead of the $3.05 anticipated by analysts, according to FactSet.

In the current quarter, Salesforce anticipates revenue of $11.03 billion to $11.08 billion, ahead of the $11.0 billion analysts expected. Adjusted earnings per share are set to be $3.11 to $3.13, also ahead of Street estimates of $3.01.