Oct 19, 2026 · 12 min · 11 segments
LSEG confirmed talks to buy credit-data firm Octus from Permira for about $3.5 billion, nearly triple Permira’s 2022 valuation. Nvidia took stakes in French startups including Doctolib, and Anthropic…
McPhee's analysis covers a week where, you know, tech deals were happening everywhere.
But the actual bottleneck wasn't the money.
It was power grids and regulators and bank licenses.
Yeah.
The real world friction.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a dynamic playing out across basically every sector if you're paying attention to the underlying mechanics.
Right.
You've got billions of dollars just sitting there ready to fund the next AI supercomputer.
But then wall.
A very literal wall.
Yeah.
Made of high voltage copper wire and bureaucracy.
Which brings us to the most tangible constraint right now, which is electricity.
Oh, the NScale deal?
Yes, exactly.
So they reportedly just walked away from this agreement for NScale's data center over in Loudoun, Essex.
And the reason is grid officials basically told them power won't reach that site until the 2030s.
Which is just brutal timing for N scale, by the way.
Oh, for sure.
Because, I mean, they just filed for a U.S. IPO last month.
The newsletter had this great quote, actually.
McPhee's analysis covers a week where, you know, tech deals were happening everywhere.
But the actual bottleneck wasn't the money.
It was power grids and regulators and bank licenses.
Yeah.
The real world friction.
Yeah.
I mean, it's a dynamic playing out across basically every sector if you're paying attention to the underlying mechanics.
Right.
You've got billions of dollars just sitting there ready to fund the next AI supercomputer.
But then wall.
A very literal wall.
Yeah.
Made of high voltage copper wire and bureaucracy.
Which brings us to the most tangible constraint right now, which is electricity.
Oh, the NScale deal?
Yes, exactly.
So they reportedly just walked away from this agreement for NScale's data center over in Loudoun, Essex.
And the reason is grid officials basically told them power won't reach that site until the 2030s.
Which is just brutal timing for N scale, by the way.
Oh, for sure.
Because, I mean, they just filed for a U.S. IPO last month.
The newsletter had this great quote, actually.
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