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Alphabet’s X moonshot factory is shifting how it brings ambitious technology projects to market, increasingly spinning them out as independent companies rather than keeping them within the Alphabet corporate structure, X’s head honcho, Astro Teller, revealed at TechCrunch Disrupt this past week.

The strategy hinges on a dedicated venture fund that exists solely to invest in X spinouts, and in which Alphabet is only a minority investor. “If Alphabet was the sole LP, the fund would be inside of Alphabet, and then when they invested in something from X, it would still be inside Alphabet,” Teller explained onstage. “So Alphabet can be a small LP, but if it’s more than a small LP, we undo the thing that we’re trying to accomplish.”

That fund is Series X Capital, which has raised over $500 million and is run by Gideon Yu, a former YouTube executive and Facebook CFO. Bloomberg first reported the fund’s existence last year. Unlike Alphabet’s other investment arms — GV, which invests broadly in early-stage startups; CapitalG, which backs growth-stage companies; and Gradient Ventures, which invests in AI startups — Series X Capital is legally obligated to invest exclusively in companies spinning out of X.

The approach represents a meaningful evolution for X, which has historically graduated successful projects like Waymo and Wing into standalone Alphabet subsidiaries. Teller said the lab has learned over the past decade that while some moonshots benefit from Alphabet’s resources and scale, others “can go faster and won’t really benefit from being part of Alphabet because they’re just so different.”

“Landing it just outside the Alphabet membrane, where we can be very tight with them, get a lot of strategic co-benefit with them, but not necessarily control them, makes sense,” he said.

At Disrupt, Teller explained that the spinout strategy only works because of X’s ruthless approach to intellectual honesty, including a culture that actively celebrates killing off promising ideas.

X defines a moonshot as having three specific components: it must attempt to solve a huge problem in the world, propose some kind of product or service that could make that problem disappear, and leverage breakthrough tech that creates a “glimmer of hope” that the team inside X can solve that problem. Critically, Teller said, “if someone is proposing a moonshot and it sounds reasonable, the company isn’t interested, because that, by definition, wouldn’t be a moonshot.”

What happens to ideas that meet these criteria? X tests them ruthlessly, looking for reasons to kill them, Teller said. “If you propose something and it sounds pretty wild, that has those three components, and it’s a testable hypothesis, for a small amount of money, we can learn something about whether it’s a little bit more crazy than we thought, or a little bit less crazy than we thought,” Teller explained. “If it’s a little bit more crazy than we thought, cool, high five, let’s put a bullet in its head and move on.”

This approach requires detaching people from their ideas, which is why Teller said he doesn’t even know who started most projects at X, including Waymo, the self-driving car company, and Wing, the drone delivery company now dropping off Walmart packages in roughly six U.S. cities. “If we’re going to go exploring something, and you [as the lead inventor] feel like ‘this is my baby,’ what are the chances I get you to practice real intellectual honesty?” he told the Disrupt audience.

In practice, this means X tackles the hardest parts of projects first, actively looking for reasons to shut them down. The result is a brutal 2% hit rate that Teller frames not as failure but as feature. X has killed off far more projects than it has launched, including entire categories that once seemed promising, like copywriting AI tools that foundation models eventually absorbed.

All that testing and failing can be expensive. The spinout structure solves a practical problem: while X previously had to find outside venture investors willing to take over at least 51% of a business to spin it out of Alphabet, by creating a fund that “deeply understands us” and is “legally obligated only to invest in things that come from us,” said Teller, X can systematize the spinout process while maintaining close strategic ties.

Despite the emphasis on detachment from ideas, X employees do have significant skin in the game when projects spin out. For those working on projects headed for independence, the financial incentive is substantial. “You and the rest of your team are going to get a chunk of that company,” Teller said. “It is about as much as you would have gotten if you had started from your garage at that stage of funding, but without taking any risk in the meantime.”

The pitch to potential X employees is explicit about this trade-off too. “Your four or five standard deviation upside is going to be bigger on the outside, I’m granting you that,” Teller said at Disrupt. “But if you come to X, what you get to do is be a card counter of innovation with us, with no fear and no financial risk to yourself.”

X employees are paid like other Google employees, with no equity in early-stage projects, because “it isn’t even a company; it’s an idea we’re trying to learn about,” Teller explained. This removes the financial pressure that prevents founders from killing their own ideas. “You can say, ‘Hey, this one’s not pulling our average up, let’s throw this one away,’” Teller explained. “And because you haven’t bet your kids’ college fund on that, that doesn’t scare you.”

X has spun out at least two companies in 2025: Taara, which develops wireless optical communication technology, and Heritable Agriculture, a biotech company using machine learning to accelerate crop breeding. Previous spinouts that raised external funding include Malta (renewable energy storage), Dandelion (geothermal heating), and iyO (AI-powered earbuds).

On the eve of Disrupt, X announced its newest moonshot company: Anori, a “new AI platform to help real estate developers, the architecture and construction industries, and cities untangle the complexities of new building projects,” as it describes itself. Asked onstage about what makes this particular AI platform a “moonshot,” Teller pointed to the size of the problem — and opportunity.

“The built environment is about 25% of the world’s solid waste, [and] about 25% of the world’s [carbon dioxide] output. It’s literally on the Maslow’s hierarchy of needs — it’s where we live, where we spend most of our time. It’s a big chunk of the world’s GDP output. So it would be hard for it to matter more as an industry.”

David Cote’s CompoSecure is buying molding-equipment specialist from Platinum Equity

The former leader of industrials conglomerate Honeywell International is going on a shopping spree in a bid to create Honeywell 2.0.

A firm backed by David Cote is set to acquire Husky Technologies, a provider of injection-molding equipment, from Platinum Equity for roughly $5 billion including debt, according to people familiar with the matter.

The details

Cote’s company, CompoSecure CMPO 1.48%increase; green up pointing triangle, is set to unveil the deal Monday, the people said.

Last fall, Cote and former Goldman Sachs banker Tom Knott acquired a majority stake in CompoSecure as their next act, with the plan to use the entity as a platform for future deals. The maker of metal credit cards has a market value of over $2 billion.

The Husky deal is set to be partially financed with a roughly $2 billion so-called PIPE, or private investment in public equity, that is expected to be offered at $18.50 per share of CompoSecure common stock, the people familiar with the matter said.

Cote’s family office already has around $1.1 billion invested in CompoSecure that will be rolled into the deal, and Platinum will roll over about $1 billion to keep a little less than a 20% stake in the combined business, the people added.

The context

Husky was founded in 1953. Its machinery is used to create a variety of plastic products, including medical devices and beverage containers. Platinum bought Husky from Berkshire Partners and Omers Private Equity for around $4 billion in 2018.

It is likely the first of many deals for Cote and Knott, who see a chance to combine private-equity-backed companies to create a new industrials conglomerate, the people familiar with the matter said.

In February, the duo spun off a publicly traded business called Resolute Holdings from CompoSecure. Resolute oversees CompoSecure’s operations and capital allocation, and helps look for deal opportunities. Knott is CEO of Resolute, and Cote is executive chairman.

Cote, Honeywell’s chief from 2002 to 2017, is known for leading a turnaround of the company, which is now in the midst of breaking itself up.

In 2019, Cote teamed up with Goldman to acquire Vertiv Holdings from Platinum and take it public. Cote is still executive chairman of Vertiv, which provides equipment for data centers and has a market value above $70 billion.

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EU grant applications hit record in 2025 amid surge in interest from American academics

The EU has seen a surge in interest from American academics applying for grants, as US researchers increasingly look for options abroad in response to President Donald Trump’s attacks on higher education.

The EU received a record number of applications for its top research and innovation grants this year, including a tripling of US bids for a key fund compared with 2024.

“In general, it’s not positive what has happened,” the EU’s research commissioner Ekaterina Zaharieva told the Financial Times, referring to the situation in the US. “We are not celebrating what is happening with scientists, but we want to provide those scientists opportunities to continue their work.”

Trump’s attacks on higher education have included cuts in funding and restrictions on academic freedom, leading to initiatives from other countries to lure researchers abroad.

Applications to the European Research Council (ERC), the EU’s funding organisation for basic research, and the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA), the EU’s initiative for doctoral and postdoctoral research, hit all-time highs in 2025.

Zaharieva did not go as far as saying Trump was helping Europe win the race for talent. “The fierce competition is about talent, not about funds,” she said. “Everyone wants to attract talented people.”

ERC grants aimed at early career researchers saw a 22 per cent increase in applicants compared with last year, with a record 4,807 proposals. Nearly 250 of those came from outside Europe, including 169 from the US — nearly triple the 2024 figure.

Applications for ERC grants targeting more senior researchers were up 31 per cent from last year and 82 per cent from 2023.

Meanwhile, the MSCA postdoctoral fellowships received 17,058 applications — the most for any funding initiative in the 40-year history of the EU’s research framework programmes.

For the Bulgarian commissioner, the increased interest from researchers in Europe is part of the “Choose Europe” strategy launched in May, which wants to help innovative companies to operate and grow in the bloc.

Earlier this week, she had a meeting with several private investors to establish the Scaleup Europe fund, which is set to invest in the European companies in strategic sectors, such as artificial intelligence, quantum, semiconductor and biotech. Still, European tech companies have historically often had to turn to US markets for investment.

The potential private investors include Novo Holdings and Denmark’s EIFO sovereign wealth fund and Spain’s Criteria Caixa. The goal is for the fund to do its first investments in the spring of next year. The idea was to start with an initial budget of €2,5bn, Zaharieva said, which would then grow to €5bn.

The Trump administration has cancelled billions of dollars in federal research funding to US universities this year, as it seeks budget cuts overall and the elimination of grants on topics including diversity and climate change that it considers not aligned with its policies. 

It has frozen funding as a way to pressure academic institutions led by Harvard to overhaul their governance and promote “viewpoint diversity” on campuses, prompting several academics and students to seek places in other countries.

It has also imposed tougher disclosure requirements on universities abroad that receive US federal funding, including scrutiny of additional funding from other countries and controls over intellectual property.

Dealmaker chief is clinging to his ambition to build a pan-European banking powerhouse despite M&A roadblocks

At an event this year marking UniCredit’s new sponsorship deal with Ferrari’s Formula 1 team, the bank’s chief executive Andrea Orcel drew parallels between the two companies.

“These are two brands that started in Italy with dreams of creating something more global,” Orcel said. “In the case of Ferrari, truly global. And in the case of UniCredit, pan-European.”

However, his ambition for UniCredit is under threat. German opposition to an acquisition of Commerzbank by the Italian lender has forced Orcel to put takeover plans on hold, while Rome used extraordinary powers to block his attempt to buy smaller Milanese rival Banco BPM.

The setbacks raise questions about whether Orcel, a hard-charging dealmaker with a reputation for ruthlessness, will remain content running UniCredit in its current form, and whether Europe’s best-known M&A banker was wrongfooted in what should have been his natural territory.

He is clinging to his ambition of turning the bank into a regional powerhouse, telling the Financial Times that “when you talk about . . . the dream of Europe having large, pan-European banks, then we would be the first one to do it”.

But with two major targets off the table for now, analysts, investors and rivals want to know what Italy’s most valuable bank will do next.

Less than a year ago UniCredit believed its plan to seal two transformative deals was still on track, as it aimed to fully integrate BPM by June 2026 before launching a move on Commerzbank, according to people familiar with the matter.

But Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni’s government deployed its so-called golden power — originally introduced to vet foreign takeovers of strategic assets — to block the swoop on BPM.

And while UniCredit rapidly built a 29 per cent stake in Commerzbank through share purchases and derivative transactions, opposition from the German bank’s board and Berlin — as well as a jump in Commerzbank’s market value — has forced it to wait until 2027 before deciding on a full takeover. Critics argue that career dealmaker Orcel misjudged the political mood.

“Banks are sovereign assets and important assets for a country,” said one senior European banker. “You cannot just decide to force your way in if a government is not comfortable. He wanted to push his way forward without taking into account the local sensitivities, which are important. He misread the political context.”

Another seasoned M&A banker was more blunt, saying the UniCredit chief “could have got these deals done if he was more conciliatory and there was less hubris”.

Orcel disagrees, saying Berlin was initially supportive of the plan by UniCredit — which already has a presence in Germany via its HypoVereinsbank subsidiary — to build a stake in Commerzbank.

Meanwhile, a postmortem carried out by UniCredit’s board concluded that political manoeuvring by the Italian government after the bank moved on BPM made it almost impossible for the bid to succeed.

“We didn’t expect the depth of political opposition around BPM given how much the transaction made sense, nor the way the golden power was ultimately applied,” Orcel said.

Despite the M&A roadblocks, shareholders and analysts remain bullish on UniCredit. Since Orcel took charge in April 2021 its share price has climbed almost 650 per cent — eclipsing its large European peers over the same period.

The stock has risen two-thirds this year, and analysts see further upside despite challenges. Of the 23 analysts covering the company, only two assign UniCredit a negative rating, according to Bloomberg.

Andrew Coombs, an analyst at Citigroup, said UniCredit had “significantly enhanced” its performance through steps including robust cost discipline, and that factors such as low credit provisions, rising fee income and efficient capital deployment should “drive further improvement” in returns.

But the boost to European lenders’ net interest income — the difference between the interest banks receive from borrowers and pay out to depositors — from higher rates in recent years is starting to wane. UniCredit’s NII fell more than 5 per cent in the three months to the end of September compared with the same period last year.

Orcel thinks the sector is facing a tougher period following several years of bumper returns. “The market has gone from being very pessimistic on European banks to potentially being overly optimistic,” he said. “We are preparing for a tougher environment.”

One thing that will help UniCredit is its stakebuilding in Commerzbank and Greece’s Alpha Bank, which Coombs at Citi forecasts will together add an incremental €800mn a year in revenues.

UniCredit’s 29.5 per cent stake in Alpha, which the Greek government has supported, raises the prospect of the Italian bank launching a bid for the €8.1bn lender, although Orcel has said that for “the time being” it will “remain at a level of participation below a full offer”.

But compared with some of its large European peers, UniCredit lacks comparable business lines in areas such as asset management, insurance, payments and investment banking that generate fee income.

The Italian lender’s previous leadership rationalised the bank by offloading subsidiaries, including the sale of asset manager Pioneer to Amundi and of online brokerage Fineco.

With few obvious large M&A targets left, industry observers speculate that Orcel’s focus will now turn to this fee-earning side of the group.

“In Italy, there are practically no [retail M&A] options left for UniCredit,” said a senior executive at another Italian bank. “It will now be about developing in areas like asset management, private banking, investment banking, expanding its international footprint and continuing to grow organically.”

Orcel, who says he will soon outline a growth plan for the bank in Italy that will be “all organic”, is already in the process of rebuilding parts of the bank’s asset management unit.

UniCredit has a contract with Amundi that allows the Italian lender to distribute the French asset manager’s products until 2027. Amundi, meanwhile, manages almost €70bn in assets for UniCredit in Italy.

Orcel is seeking to increase the portion of fees the bank takes in on the sale of funds, and has previously said UniCredit may not renew the Amundi contract. If it pulls its funds from Amundi, the Italian lender would have to decide whether it wants to manage them internally or strike a new deal with another asset manager.

“We have and will continue to build our own capabilities internally,” Orcel said, adding that when the bank achieves the capability “we will focus more on how we can increase the assets under management”. He said the focus would then turn to private banking, with the lender looking to expand the business by increasing its “mass affluent” client base.

He added that the bank would also focus on accelerating improvements to its technology to rival the “best-in-class fintechs”, as well as targeting a number of products and geographies that were deserted during the post-financial crisis retrenchment, including expanding in eastern Europe.

“I understand that it’s not as exciting as 2022-2023 when we were doubling net profit every year,” he said. “It’s not as exciting as last November when we announced a bid on BPM. But that’s how it is.”

Orcel added that he was “not excluding that we will bid on other things but, for now, we are exclusively focused on beating peers on profitable growth and outsized distributions”.

He also pointed out that M&A deals can act as a distraction, saying it had sometimes been “a struggle” to keep his management team and the organisation focused and disciplined on the basics over the past year amid the wrangling over BPM.

Meanwhile, UniCredit’s Russian business continues to pose a strategic problem for the group. Orcel previously said the bank’s commitment to leave the country was “absolutely clear” but was being held up by legal and regulatory hurdles imposed by Moscow.

He told the FT that efforts to wind down the unit — something it has come under pressure from the European Central Bank to accelerate — were ongoing, adding that it would be “practically eliminated” from the group by next year.

Shareholders appear sanguine about the position in which the bank finds itself. UniCredit has pledged to distribute at least €9.5bn to investors through share buybacks and dividends for its 2025 financial year, with Orcel saying in September that the bank had excess capital of €10bn-€11.5bn.

“He’s shown immense discipline,” said Cole Smead, chief executive of UniCredit shareholder Smead Capital Management. “Orcel has been the best at allocating capital among European banks. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.”

Another senior Italian investment banker cautioned that Orcel would lose leverage if he handed the excess capital to shareholders. “If he returns all of the capital, he loses the notion that he can pull off a big M&A deal.”

For all the challenges and setbacks, Orcel appears undeterred in his mission.

“UniCredit is a strange, wonderful animal,” he said. “We have a logo on the Ferrari. [We have] . . . the best income ratio and return on equity of our peers. The job is so fulfilling.”