Hello TWIF UK & Europe friends,

This week Palantir CEO Alex Karp was interviewed on CNBC - went after the Frontier Models in an eviscerating monologue where he claimed enterprises felt there “was a level of discomfort and loss of trust” in recent days and weeks following moves by the Anthropic and Open AI.

Several months ago, Anthropic launched Claude Code, effectively hamstringing their partner Cursor.AI in one product update. Later, Anthropic CPO resigned from Figma’s board just day’s before they announced Claude Design, a tool that allows users ro quickly spin up prototypes, and visual assets that allowed Anthropic to compete in the Design category.

Now Anthropic has launched Claude Science. How can they spin up such multivaried businesses so quickly? The answer is staring us in the face. Their customers were building on top of Anthropic’s own models.

It’s clear they want to dominate the model layer, but are systematically moving across every lucrative industry and deploying vast resource to outcompete the very clients that are paying them to accelerate their own businesses.

Back to Alex Karp’s point, if you are a customer of the frontier models, why would you want to share any data with them, when they are better equipped to use that data than you are. Especially at they are likely ingesting your competitors data too and as a result have a view of the horizon unlike any single competitor.

In our space, FIS were one of the first to announce getting into bed with Anthropic. A move which most likely stemmed from a sheep-like clamour from bored shareholders demanding an “AI strategy”. And whilst we all agree AI is here to stay, rushing into wolves mouths has been the lemming-like manifesto of all “normie-scalers” who need to show they are doing something to future proof themselves.

But this ‘something’ increasingly looks like fintechs are starting to write their own obituaries in the most expensive ink possible; Competitor Compute. IP from across industry is under an assault. In Fintech that means, regulatory interpretation, risk scoring and governance implementation, Onboarding journeys and UX, customer service, margin management, fraud management, AML and TM, marketing, ledger management, client money segregation and safeguarding. Regulatory arbitrage, velocity limits, FX spreads and book management. The IP is colossal, and it is being chipped away, by its own users. And the fragment by fragment the debris of intelligence is seemingly landing in the dust tray of the frontier models, and being swept up and reabsorbed, to improve the next response to a prompt for all, and simultaneously to feed the hand that will bite us.

But, what is increasingly obvious is that the Frontier Models - while undoubtedly ahead in the race, maybe don’t have the gap that we (and they) thought. Shortly behind them are the Opensource (AKA - Chinese models) which are scorching the economic earth behind them. Chamath Palihapitiya noted that whilst slower, opensource models (and some self-promotional jiggery pokery) contributed to at more than 16 x reduction in cost for similar output.

With those kind of numbers you have to think that that between the pincers of threat of loss of IP and dramatic cost savings more and more fintech enterprises are going to to adopt this…model. And I think we will begin to see a follow on wave. If fintechs want to own their own models (a natural progression of tweaking open-source models to your own needs), then its not a unthinkable that they would also want to own their own compute. And in that world I think we start to see a regression to a historical mean from a data residency persepctive. For those of us over 40, we probably remember seeing the sweaty IT guy, gasping for oxygen as he came out of the “server room”.

I thinks fintechs the world over are waking up to the fact that they’ve been fattening themselves up for slaughter at the table of the (intelligence) farmer. And I think it was Chuck Norris that once said, “Dario puts the laughter in Slaughter” (that jokes works better in the verbal medium and has a high context threshold for you to get it…but rest assured its hilarious).

Anywhere, where was I, oh yes, go buy some servers, stick em in your office. At least that way they can work for you while your staff Cosplay WFH. And you can protet your IP. Hell, you can probably even sell some of your compute back to the rest of the companies who share your office. Like your very own Amazon Web Cumulus humilis.

You heard it here first!

Happy Reading fintechers!

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Highlights below of deals since the last post in the fintech space across the UK & Europe. Deal data powered by Dealroom.

Spend-management fintech Ramp raised $750m in growth financing led by Iconiq, GIC and Ontario Teachers, hitting a $44bn valuation.

AI decisioning platform Taktile secured a $110m Series C led by Goldman Sachs Alternatives to automate bank and insurer decisions.

Canadian digital mortgage lender Nesto sealed a CAD 302m Series E at a CAD 1.47bn valuation, becoming the fortnight's newest unicorn.

Payments processor Nuvei agreed to buy US paytech Payoneer for $2.75bn to build a global cross-border commerce platform.

Barclays acquired kids' money app GoHenry, giving under-18 users a pathway into adult banking.

Italy's Intesa Sanpaolo launched a €30.6bn takeover bid for rival Monte dei Paschi di Siena, potentially the largest deal in Italian banking history.

Digital business bank Grasshopper launched Grasshopper Treasury with robo-advisor Waldo, auto-allocating idle cash for yields of up to 5%.

X Money went live for US Premium subscribers, offering 6% APY via Cross River Bank, 3% cashback and a Visa debit card.

UK challenger Monzo partnered with Fair4All Finance to pilot Flex Build, a deposit-backed credit-builder card unlocking up to £250.

Fashion search app Hey Savi teamed up with PayPal to launch the UK's first in-app agentic commerce checkout, with Debenhams Group as debut retailer.

A 140-plus-company consortium including Visa, Stripe, Mastercard and Coinbase launched Open USD (OUSD), a fee-free, shared-reserve stablecoin.

Circle shares tumbled more than 17% after the OUSD consortium unveiled its rival stablecoin network.

MoneyGram rolled out MGUSD, its own dollar stablecoin on the Stellar network, to power global payouts.

Japan's megabanks MUFG, SMBC and Mizuho unveiled plans for a joint yen stablecoin targeting B2B settlement by March 2027.

Solana prediction market 'World' debuted inside the Phantom wallet, bringing on-chain betting to a mainstream audience.

The EU's MiCA regime reached full enforcement, with the grandfathering window for existing crypto firms closing on 1 July 2026.

ESMA released an updated Interim MiCA Register on 12 June, listing authorised CASPs, stablecoin issuers and notified white papers.

The UK's FCA published its final cryptoasset rules and guidance on 30 June, applying to firms authorised from October 2027.

The US SEC and CFTC issued a joint interpretation clarifying how securities and commodity laws apply to crypto assets.

Thanks for reading!