# La Lettre — 23/06/2026
## Résumé français
**Sanofi assume un cap M&A offensif.** Sa nouvelle DG Belén Garijo, en poste depuis le 2 mai, oriente résolument le groupe vers les acquisitions de biotechs pour préparer l'après-Dupixent (un quart du CA, brevet expirant en 2031 aux États-Unis). Le groupe peut mobiliser ~40 Md€ (dont 20 Md€ en endettement) : jusqu'à 15 Md€ pour le early-stage, 20-25 Md€ pour des cibles plus matures — bien au-delà des 5 Md€ évoqués sous Paul Hudson, évincé fin février. Acquisitions récentes : Dynavax Technologies (2,2 Md$, vaccin hépatite B). Sanofi convoite aussi Ocular Therapeutix (DMLA) depuis l'été 2025. En interne, ses propos sur les salariés (« des efforts sont à faire ») ont mal passé et ont été coupés au montage.
**Dominique de Villepin se positionne sur l'énergie.** L'ex-Premier ministre participe au colloque de l'UFE ce 23 juin, aux côtés de candidats déclarés ou potentiels à la présidentielle. Conseillé par Daniel Arlaud et l'X-Mines Pierre Jérémie (fonds hydrogène Hy24), il a multiplié les rendez-vous avec les patrons des énergéticiens (EDF, Engie) et les lobbys du secteur. Son cadre : éco-gaullisme et État planificateur, avec un discours attendu sur la sortie du gaz.
**Filière plastique vs « coûts disproportionnés ».** Le syndicat Polyvia (Xavier Chastel, 4 000 PME) se mobilise contre une clause de l'Industrial Accelerator Act de Stéphane Séjourné, qui permet aux acheteurs publics de se fournir hors UE si l'écart de prix dépasse 25 % — alors que les écarts avec l'Asie atteignent 50-60 % dans la plasturgie. Polyvia réclame la suppression de la clause et compte sur les rapporteurs Pierre Jouvet (S&D) et Christophe Grudler (Renew), avant les trilogues prévus début 2027.
**Cyberdéfense.** Le numéro deux du Comcyber-MI, le magistrat Jérôme Marilly, quitte son poste pour devenir président de chambre à la cour d'assises de Versailles. Son successeur devrait être lui aussi un magistrat.
**Macron, allié de la presse régionale face aux GAFAM et à l'IA.** Le président reçoit ce 23 juin les patrons de la PQR (SPQR) à déjeuner. Enjeux : fléchage des investissements publicitaires vers la presse, partenariat avec Mistral AI (demande de crédits France 2030 de 5-10 M€), et frustration après le report de la proposition de loi Darcos sur la « présomption d'utilisation » des contenus par les IA.
## English summary
**Sanofi embraces an aggressive M&A stance.** New CEO Belén Garijo, in post since 2 May, is steering the group decisively toward biotech acquisitions to prepare for life after Dupixent (a quarter of revenue; patent expiring 2031 in the US). Sanofi can deploy ~€40bn (including €20bn of debt capacity): up to €15bn for early-stage targets, €20-25bn for more mature ones — far above the €5bn floated under Paul Hudson, ousted in late February. Recent deals include Dynavax Technologies ($2.2bn, hepatitis B vaccine); Sanofi has also been eyeing Ocular Therapeutix (macular degeneration) since summer 2025. Internally, her remarks on staff ("efforts must be made") landed badly and were cut from the edited footage.
**Dominique de Villepin moves onto energy.** The former PM joins the UFE conference on 23 June alongside declared and potential presidential candidates. Advised by Daniel Arlaud and X-Mines engineer Pierre Jérémie (Hy24 hydrogen fund), he has held a string of meetings with utility chiefs (EDF, Engie) and sector lobbies. His framing: éco-gaullisme and a planning state, with an expected speech on phasing out gas.
**Plastics sector vs. "disproportionate costs."** The Polyvia trade body (Xavier Chastel, 4,000 SMEs) is mobilizing against a clause in Stéphane Séjourné's Industrial Accelerator Act, which lets public buyers source outside the EU when the price gap exceeds 25% — whereas gaps with Asia reach 50-60% in plastics. Polyvia wants the clause scrapped and is counting on rapporteurs Pierre Jouvet (S&D) and Christophe Grudler (Renew), ahead of trilogues expected in early 2027.
**Cyber defense.** The Comcyber-MI's number two, magistrate Jérôme Marilly, is leaving to become a presiding judge at the Versailles assize court. His successor is likely to be a magistrate as well.
**Macron positions himself as ally of regional press against Big Tech and AI.** The president hosts regional press chiefs (SPQR) for lunch on 23 June. Key issues: steering advertising spend toward the press, a partnership with Mistral AI (a €5-10m France 2030 funding request), and frustration after the shelving of senator Darcos's bill on a "presumption of use" of content by AI firms.
>>> Up
* Apetit Raised to Reduce at Inderes; PT 12.50 euros
* Demant Raised to Overweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 290 kroner
* DSV Price Target Raised to DKK 2,300 from DKK 2,200 by Goldman Sachs
* DWS Raised to Outperform at BNP Paribas; PT 74 euros
* Fevertree Drinks Raised to Hold at Peel Hunt; PT 780 pence
* GEA Group Raised to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; PT 60 euros
* GEA Group Raised to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley; PT 60 euros
* Hilton Worldwide Raised to Hold at CFRA; PT $358
* Hyatt PT Raised to $209 from $189 at CFRA
* ICG Raised to Buy at UBS; PT 2,150 pence
* Kainos Raised to Buy at Panmure Liberum; PT 1,040 pence (+)
* Sobi PT Raised to 550 kronor from 525 kronor at Berenberg
* Sonova Raised to Equal-Weight at Morgan Stanley
* Standard Chartered Raised to Buy at Deutsche Bank
* Telia Raised to Equal-Weight at Barclays; PT 51 kronor
>>> Down
>>> Down
* Apogee Therapeutics Cut to Hold at Craig-Hallum; PT $135.11
* Apogee Therapeutics Cut to Neutral at UBS; PT $135.11
* Apogee Therapeutics Cut to Hold at Deutsche Bank; PT $135
* Apogee Therapeutics Cut to Neutral at Wedbush; PT $135
* BioMerieux Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 64 euros
* BioMerieux Cut to Underweight at Morgan Stanley; PT 64 euros
* Epiroc Cut to Sell at UBS; PT 230 kronor
* Hermes Cut to Hold at HSBC; PT 1,870 euros
* KBC Cut to Hold at ING; PT 119 euros
* L'Oreal Cut to Sell at Deutsche Bank; PT 340 euros
* Pierre Et Vacances SA Cut to Hold at Portzamparc; PT 2 euros (+)
* SUSS MicroTec Cut to Sell at DZ Bank; PT 80 euros
* Telenor Cut to Underweight at Barclays; PT 140 kroner
* Yara Cut to Hold at Jefferies; PT 470 kroner
* Yara PT Cut to 390 kroner from 460 kroner at Nordea
>>> Initiation
>>> Initiation
* Adobe Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $340
* Akamai Assumed Underweight at JPMorgan; PT $100
* AL Sydbank Assumed Buy at Jyske Bank; PT 750 kroner
* Arista Networks Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $200
* Catena Rated New Buy at Nordea; PT 460 kronor
* Ciena Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $635
* Cisco Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $120
* Cloudflare Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $145
* Coherent Corp Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $380
* CoreWeave Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $105
* Credo Technology Rated New Buy at GF Securities; PT $343
* Datadog Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $320
* Dell Technologies Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $500
* DKSH Rated New Overweight at Barclays; PT 77 Swiss francs
* DKSH Rated New Overweight at Barclays; PT 77 Swiss francs
* Doxee Rated New Buy at Intesa Sanpaolo; PT 6.70 euros (+)
* Dropbox Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $25
* Exail Technologies Rated New Buy at Stifel; PT 140 euros
* FedEx Freight Rated New Buy at Jefferies; PT $200
* Flutter Rated New Hold at Freedom Capital; PT $81.19
* GE Healthcare Rated New Outperform at RBC; PT $80
* HP Inc. Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $26
* HubSpot Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $425
* Intuit Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $605
* Jabil Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $450
* Louisiana-Pacific Rated New Buy at Jefferies; PT $93
* Lumentum Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $1,130
* Microsoft Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $550
* Mobileye Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $9
* NP3 Fastigheter Rated New Buy at Nordea; PT 320 kronor
* NetApp Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $150
* Nutanix Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $50
* Oracle Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $210
* Qualcomm Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $265
* Sanmina Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $210
* Seagate Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $920
* SMG Swiss Marketplace Group Rated New Buy at Berenberg
* Snowflake Assumed Overweight at JPMorgan; PT $285
* Super Micro Computer Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $32
* TE Connectivity Assumed Neutral at JPMorgan; PT $260
* TotalEnergies Rated New Outperform at CICC; PT 90 euros
* Trastor Real Estate Investment Rated New Buy at Jefferies
* Turkcell ADRs Rated New Outperform at BNP Paribas; PT $8.20
>>> Call
* Barclays Raises S&P 500 Target Over Improving Earnings Outlook
* Baidu Rises as Citi Opens Positive Catalyst Watch on Stock
* Baidu Rises as Citi Opens Positive Catalyst Watch on Stock
* Fevertree Nearing Earnings Inflection Point, Peel Hunt Upgrades
* GEA Group is Upgraded at Morgan Stanley Following De-Rating
* Morgan Stanley Selective in MedTech, Makes Four Rating Changes
* SMG Swiss Marketplace De-Rating Unjustified, Berenberg Rates Buy (+)
* Sobi Price Target Increased to Joint Street-High at Berenberg (+)
* Umicore Gets Positive Catalyst Watch at JPMorgan Into Results
* Yara Cut at Jefferies on Step Down in Agriculture Fundamentals
Nvidia wants to cut data center water use, but that’s not the same as fixing AI’s water problem
Nvidia just announced a warm-water cooling system that it says can dramatically reduce the amount of water a data center uses — eliminating “pretty much all water usage” inside the data center, according to an Nvidia executive in a press release.
“The water consumption challenge for data centers is largely solved,” Josh Parker, chief sustainability officer at Nvidia, recently told Axios.
But that’s only part of the water story. As long as AI data centers run on fossil fuels — a choice tech companies are increasingly making — the savings stop at the data center’s walls.
The core issue is how Nvidia measures data center water use. According to its blog post, the company essentially draws a line around the data center. Anything inside gets counted, and anything outside gets ignored.
To be fair, Nvidia’s system does appear to deliver on its facility-level promise — the coolant runs in a closed loop, filled once and recirculated for the life of the facility, meaning no new water is consumed to cool the chips. In favorable climates, the company says, that can amount to a 100% reduction in on-site water use.
TechCrunch has asked Nvidia to clarify the matter, and we’ll update this article if we receive a reply.
The problem is, water use outside of the data center — primarily in electricity generation and chip manufacturing — can double or triple the total water footprint of a facility. That means Nvidia’s solution addresses about a quarter to a third of AI data centers’ total water consumption.
The new system is clever, pumping coolant into racks at 45°C (113°F). That’s hot for humans but not for computer chips. After passing through a server, the coolant emerges at 55°C (131°F), Nvidia said, bringing a significant amount of heat away from the hardware.
At that temperature, the outside air in most climates can draw heat off passive radiators without evaporative cooling or, in some cases, fans. A data center without fans or chillers would not only use less water, but it would also be more efficient and quieter.
But no data center can operate without an electricity supply, and many types of power plants are themselves major water consumers.
Fossil fuel power plants are one of the largest water users in the U.S., consuming 2.7 billion gallons per day, according to the U.S. Geological Survey — most of it for evaporative cooling. Natural gas power plants use 1.17 liters of water for every kilowatt-hour of electricity they generate, according to a recent study. Coal plants are even more water-intensive, using 2.2 liters per kilowatt-hour. Fossil fuel power plants collectively generate about half of all data center power today, according to the IEA.
Hydropower dams, which supply around 10% of data center power, don’t consume water in the same direct way, but evaporation from their reservoirs amounts to 6.8 liters lost per kilowatt-hour generated. Geothermal, a source that tech companies are starting to explore, varies widely — it can be higher or lower depending on the specific technology. Some enhanced geothermal startups, like Fervo, have pledged to use mostly “degraded” water that would otherwise go unused.
Wind and solar power, on the other hand, use vanishingly small amounts of water, about 0.01 liters and 0.03 liters per kilowatt-hour, respectively — figures that include the water needed for manufacturing and cleaning solar panels.
While renewables are providing a growing share of new electricity capacity, natural gas and coal are expected to provide more than 40% of new electricity needed to meet data center demand through 2030, the IEA projects. Without major changes to that trajectory, data centers will still consume large amounts of water, regardless of what Nvidia does inside its walls.
A new unpatchable flaw in Apple chips opens the door to an iPhone jailbreak
A company that sells spyware and hacking tools to government agencies has published details of a vulnerability in Apple chips that can potentially help hackers unlock older iPhones.
This release opens the door for other researchers who specialize in finding iOS vulnerabilities, such as those working for governments or their contractors, to develop effective hacks for iPhones, provided they can find additional vulnerabilities to chain together with this one. This could help security researchers develop a so-called iPhone jailbreak, a technique to hack into Apple’s mobile operating system and remove all the restrictions the company puts on it.
The release is also a reminder that while Apple has made iPhones extremely hard to hack, there are and will always be vulnerabilities that sophisticated hackers can take advantage of to break in.
On Friday, Paradigm Shift, an offensive cybersecurity company based in Barcelona, published a blog post about the vulnerability, which it dubbed “usbliter8.” The company also published a proof of concept that shows how to exploit the vulnerability, which requires physical access to the target phone.
The flaw and related exploit affect iPhones that have Apple-made chips A12 and A13, which were released in 2018 and 2019, and are included in older iPhones such as the XS, XR and up to the iPhone 11.
The release of usbliter8 is significant in the world of security research and spyware and hacking tools’ makers, but it does not mean that older iPhones are easily hackable by anyone.
The bug found by Paradigm Shift affects the iPhone’s Boot ROM, which is the first piece of code that runs when an iPhone is turned on and, consequently, its first line of defense against hackers. To hack an iPhone with physical access to it — meaning having the ability to connect a cable to it — hackers need to first exploit the Boot ROM. Now, they can do that thanks to usbliter8, which allows them to potentially defeat and bypass further security checks.
Paradigm Shift wrote in its blog that “as these vulnerabilities reside in immutable code, affected users should be aware that migrating to newer hardware remains the most effective mitigation.”
In other words, given that the Boot ROM is burned into the chip, it can’t be changed and flaws in it cannot be patched.
Generally speaking, companies that sell systems to hack iPhones seized by authorities, such as Cellebrite and Magnet Forensics need, and likely already have at their disposal, techniques similar to usbliter8 to break into iPhones. However, hackers still need to incorporate other techniques to access the user data stored in the phone.
Public iPhone jailbreaks were relatively widespread in the past, but they have become rarer in the last decade. Jailbreaking an iPhone is often the first step to research other vulnerabilities on the system. Researchers — intent on finding valuable iPhone flaws and ways to exploit them — have few incentives to release that information publicly, because that would lead to Apple fixing the flaws and setting the researchers back.
Paradigm Shift did not respond to a series of questions related to usbliter8.
Tesla pushes back on Autopilot narrative after fatal Texas crash
A fatal crash in which a Tesla plowed through a brick home in Katy, Texas, killing a 76-year-old woman, set off alarms about the company’s driver-assistance technology. By Monday afternoon, Tesla was fighting back against the framing.
The crash occurred Friday night when a Tesla Model 3, driven by Michael Butler, left the road and slammed into the home of Martha Avila, who was airlifted to a hospital and later pronounced dead. Butler told Harris County sheriff’s deputies that the vehicle was on Autopilot at the time. That detail spread quickly, and by the weekend the story had become the centerpiece of long-running debate over Tesla’s Autopilot and Full Self-Driving (Supervised) driver-assistance systems.
But Tesla, a company that famously dismantled its PR department years ago, broke from its usual silence Monday to push back.
Ashok Elluswamy, vice president of AI software at Tesla and the first engineer hired for the Autopilot team back in 2014, took to X to offer a very different account of what the data showed. “In this case, the driver manually overrode self-driving by pressing the accelerator all the way to 100% of the accel pedal in this residential area,” he wrote. “They reached a speed of 73 mph during the crash, and had the accelerator pressed even after the crash.”
The implication was that whatever system may have been engaged, a human foot on the pedal at full throttle was responsible for what ensued, not the car.
Elon Musk amplified Elluswamy’s point on his own X account soon after. “This [allegation] makes no sense. FSD drives slowly through neighborhood streets and this was a high speed crash!” he wrote.
Tesla discontinued Autopilot, its basic driver-assistance system, in January, following a California ruling that the name was misleading to consumers. Full Self-Driving (Supervised), which requires a $99 monthly subscription, handles driver maneuvers, including route navigation, steering, lane changes, and parking but still requires the driver to actively supervise the system at all times.
Either way, federal regulators appear determined to come to their own conclusions. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration confirmed to TechCrunch on Monday it was opening a special investigation into the crash. The probe is reportedly the latest in more than 40 such probes the agency has launched into Tesla crashes believed to involve advanced driver-assistance systems in recent years.
The Harris County Sheriff’s Office said it would present its findings to the local district attorney to determine whether criminal charges are warranted.
Whether the Autopilot system was truly active, overridden, or malfunctioning likely won’t be resolved until investigators finish combing through the vehicle’s data logs.