Inertia Enterprises burst onto the scene in February with a $450 million Series A, making it one of the best capitalized startups in the industry, aiming to bring laser-based fusion reactors to market.
According to the Registered Agents Inc. December Business Formation Report, more than 5.9 million new businesses were formed in 2025, an 8% increase over 2024 nationwide. And sure, it's easy to point to the usual heavy hitters, states like Florida and Texas, which posted another standout year and outperformed 2024 month after month.
Nscale has now raised over $4.5 billion across equity rounds in less than six months. The capital funds Nscale's vertically integrated AI infrastructure, consisting of GPU compute, networking, data services, and orchestration software, with expansion planned across Europe, North America, and Asia.
"That is not a thing the Patent Office is going to do, is try to say: 'This patent is worth X.' How in the world could we do that? How in the world could anyone reasonably do that?'" - Howard Lutnick During a Subcommittee hearing of the Senate Appropriations Committee today, Secretary of Commerce Howard Lutnick confirmed to Senator Chris Coons (D-DE) that he does not plan to implement his proposal to charge patent holders a percentage their patents' value.
With these arrangements sometimes called subscriptions or power purchase agreements (PPAs), a third party owns the panels and leases them back to the homeowner. But last summer, President Trump signed legislation that ended federal tax incentives that had cut at least 30% off the price of purchased panels. Similar incentives for leased panels remain.
"While it encouraging to see insolvency rates decrease, we know that big name brands are struggling and the outlook for 2026 is far from rosy. Retailers and hospitality businesses who had hoped for more support from the Autumn Budget are now facing increased uncertainty. It seems as though the New Year may already see another Government U-turn, this time backing down on plans to scrap business rates relief for pubs that has been in force since the pandemic."
The boss of UK Research and Innovation (UKRI), the public body which spends 8bn of taxpayer money each year on research and innovation in the UK, has warned the organisation faces "hard decisions" on funding future projects. In an open letter, Ian Chapman said the government had told it to "focus and do fewer things better", which "will result in negative outcomes for some".
But he'd been considering an idea for new technology-an autonomous, wind-powered cargo ship. Then, while on paternity leave in 2024, he discovered a free program that helps scientists and engineers launch businesses for the first time. Weeks after finishing the program, called 5050, Cymbalist had launched a startup called Clippership. The company's first ship is being built in the Netherlands this year. Without the accelerator, he says, the company likely wouldn't exist.
AI could have significant upsides for productivity, but countries will first have to navigate a complicated and expensive landscape as they create digital infrastructure and support disrupted workforces. For countries that already deal with constrained public finances, AI's capital costs could end up sharpening the policy trade-off between assuming higher near-term fiscal risk and delaying participation in AI-driven growth opportunities.
Introduced on Friday, Feb. 13 by Reps. Josh Gottheimer, D-N.J., and Mike Lawler, R-N.Y., the AI Workforce Training Act would modify the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 to support tax credits for companies providing AI training to employees equal to 30% of the qualified expense with a limit of $2,500 per employee. Eligible expenses are listed as accredited courses, workshops, certificate programs and in-house instruction covering areas like data literacy, machine learning fundamentals, prompt engineering, AI ethics education and more.
However, alongside these tangible indicators sits another layer of value, one that does not always surface cleanly in financial statements and may even remain invisible if it is not properly understood or articulated: Put simply, intangible assets are the non-physical elements a company has built that enable it to generate revenue, scale efficiently, or defend its market position. In technology companies, this typically includes proprietary software, intellectual property, datasets, customer relationships, brand equity, and internal systems or processes.
This tax year (2025/26), you can add up to £20,000 to one ISA or split the money between several of the various types; the most used being Cash ISAs and Stocks & Shares ISAs. Whichever type of ISA you invest in you pay no income or capital gains tax (CGT) on the returns - no matter how much they are.
The €12.3 billion figure, compiled from data tracked across major European venture databases and deal trackers, reveals a market that's concentrating capital rather than spraying it. Mega-rounds are returning - but only for companies with clear revenue trajectories and defensible technology. The spray-and-pray era of seed investing hasn't come back, and it probably shouldn't.
