📰On The Record – 23rd July 2026

AMD agreed to sell Anthropic tens of billions of dollars' worth of AI servers, while also investing up to $5 billion directly into the company building Claude. Anthropic will start deploying up to 2 gigawatts of AMD's next-generation chips from 2027 — enough computing muscle to meaningfully expand what it can offer. This mattered because it showed chipmakers no longer just sell to AI companies, they now bankroll them too, blurring the line between vendor and investor. It's a sign that the AI arms race has entered a phase where owning a piece of your biggest customer is the new competitive edge.

A consortium led by former QPR co-owner Amit Bhatia approached Amazon founder Jeff Bezos about joining a bid for a minority stake in Liverpool FC, in a deal that could value the club above $6 billion. The proposal would see the group buy up to 30% from current owners Fenway Sports Group, who confirmed talks over a strategic investment. Bezos hasn't decided whether to join. This mattered because it's the latest sign that tech fortunes are chasing trophy assets with cultural cachet, not just spreadsheets — and it hints at how thoroughly sport has become just another asset class for the ultra-wealthy.

The Motley Fool ran a piece asking the question everyone in tech has been dancing around: is the AI infrastructure build-out actually a bubble, or does the data tell a different story? It matters because AI capital spending is now approaching levels last seen at the peak of the dot-com era relative to GDP, yet the companies footing the bill largely have real cash flow behind them. It's the wider trend of 2026 in one argument — enormous conviction, enormous risk, and nobody quite agreeing which one wins.

Read the full piece here →

Paramount won conditional EU approval for its $81 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery, after agreeing to unwind a film distribution joint venture with Universal in Europe for the next decade. This matters because Brussels rarely waves through deals this size without a fight, and this one still faces legal and political battles in the US and UK. Translation: the merger is closer, but not close enough to celebrate yet.

German investigators searched Deutsche Bank's Frankfurt headquarters for the third time this year, probing allegedly fraudulent "cum-cum" trades at its Postbank unit between 2008 and 2010, which may have cost Germany around €350 million in lost tax revenue. This is important because it shows that even a bank in genuine financial recovery can't outrun its own paperwork from a decade and a half ago. Old sins, it turns out, keep excellent records.

Porsche's supervisory board backed a tougher restructuring plan, with reports suggesting up to 5,000 more jobs could go on top of 3,900 redundancies already announced. Weak China sales, tariffs and costly EV investment have squeezed the luxury carmaker's profits. It matters because it's a stark reminder that even prestige brands aren't immune to the industry's brutal transition years, and employees are the ones absorbing the cost of that transition.

Revolut confirmed a $115 billion valuation through a secondary share sale letting employees and early investors cash out, up more than 50% from its previous $75 billion mark. This cements Revolut as Europe's most valuable startup, riding record profits and a full UK banking licence. No new capital changed hands here — this was existing shareholders taking some chips off the table ahead of a possible future IPO.

Georgia Power signed a 25-year electricity deal with OpenAI to supply a new AI facility needing around 3,200 megawatts, with OpenAI agreeing to free up 1,000 megawatts during peak demand and fund grid upgrades, an $80 million community fund and coding credits for students. This shows how AI's power hunger is now reshaping utility planning decades into the future, for better and for worse depending which side of the meter you're on.

A daily score of business conditions (scored out of 100), with a breakdown of what’s driving it.

The Daily Business Index eased today as oil climbed back toward $94 a barrel following an eleventh straight night of US strikes on Iran, reviving cost pressures just as June's cooling inflation had offered some relief. The bigger story, though, was Big Tech's earnings verdict: Alphabet beat expectations with strong cloud growth, easing worries that massive AI spending isn't paying off, while Tesla's results landed amid sharp questions about whether record vehicle deliveries actually translated into profit. Jobless claims stayed low, a sign the labour market remains sturdy even as smaller companies quietly lagged the broader market — a reminder that not every corner of the economy is feeling the same conditions.

Most finance teams still track SSP in spreadsheets — manually updated, disconnected from billing. On July 22, Tabs' product and marketing leads show what changes when SSP runs natively inside your billing platform: built from real billing data, connected to your Product Catalog, and generating audit-ready documentation automatically.

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July 22, 2026 · 1:30–2:00 PM EDT · Live + recording

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Around one year ago, GE Vernova shares jumped 14% after the power equipment maker raised its full-year guidance, saying surging electricity demand was outweighing the hit from tariffs, which it now expected to land at the low end of its $300-400 million estimate. It was an early signal of the theme still playing out now: the world's appetite for power, driven largely by data centres and AI, was becoming the story that mattered more than trade policy. A year on, with Georgia Power just signing a 25-year deal to feed OpenAI's ambitions, that signal looks less like a one-off and more like the start of an entirely new demand curve for the energy industry.

What it means: A circular deal is when two companies fund each other in a loop — one invests cash into a partner, who then spends that same cash buying products or services back from the investor. It sounds efficient, but critics worry it can make demand look stronger than it really is. AMD's investment in Anthropic, paired with Anthropic buying AMD's chips, is a textbook example worth watching closely.

There's a strange ritual playing out across corporate earnings calls lately: executives posting record profits one week, then publicly preaching austerity and "efficiency" the next. Call it optics of scarcity. It's not really about the money — it's about signalling discipline to investors who've grown suspicious of anyone spending freely, even when the spending is justified. The irony is that genuine belt-tightening and performative frugality now look identical from the outside, which means shareholders increasingly can't tell if a company is actually careful or just good at appearing careful. Watch for which companies still invest boldly behind closed doors while talking tough in public — that gap is where the real story usually lives.

The best-run companies rarely need to tell you how disciplined they are.