20VC: Anthropic vs The Pentagon: Who Wins | The Ultimate Stock Picks: What to Buy | The Data Centre Arms Race: Is the Capex War Stalling | The Era of Public Company Deceleration is Dead

**Rory O'Driscoll** (0:00)
And I think the consensus is, in law, Anthropic will probably win a good slug of this case, which is different than saying they're going to win the fight. The idea that you can just have all this shit for free is at some point going to stop because someone's going to have to cover their nut.

**Jason Lemkin** (0:13)
I think getting rid of juniors is where we get budget for these data centers in part.

**Rory O'Driscoll** (0:17)
This goes on really cold. You can have dispossessed urban poor forever and nothing happens. But if you piss off the 20-something year old middle class, the overeducated elites, they tend to cause trouble. OpenAI and Anthropic have the most amount of surface area to attack of any company in the world right now.

**Jason Lemkin** (0:36)
The era of gentle deceleration has ended. It's dead.

**Harry Stebbings** (0:40)
This is 20VC with me, Harry Stebbings, and it's my favorite show of the week. Rory O'Driscoll, Jason Lemkin, analyzing the biggest news in tech this week. First on, Anthropic sues the US government for being labeled a supply chain risk. Oracle and OpenAI end plans to expand flagship data center, Meta moves in to absorb the Surplus AI data center capacity, then CrowdStrike, they beat expectations, but trade down? And then finally, we have our stock picks. What to buy, what to sell, public market predictions coming up. But before we dive into the show today, are you a founder working non-stop to raise your next round? Are you an investor doing all you can for your portfolio companies to help them stand out? Funding and scaling a vision is challenging. Banking should not be. HSBC Innovation Banking caters to tech and healthcare founders all over the world who need a really great banking partner that matches their pace, offering fast onboarding, product packages designed for your business, and capital solutions built for high-growth startups and the VCs investing in them. With HSBC Innovation Banking's rapid onboarding, you can get access to your new accounts and facilities quickly, so your team can stay focused on building and scaling what's next. You'll be paired with your own dedicated team of Venture Ecosystem Veterans who have the network and experience to guide companies in your specific sector, at your specific stage. And behind that support is this real strength, HSBC's $3 trillion balance sheet and global network that provides this stability and international reach needed to grow your operation with confidence. To see how HSBC Innovation Banking can support you, whether you're on day one or day a thousand, visit innovationbanking.hsbc to learn more and connect with an Innovation Banking Specialist. That's innovationbanking.hsbc.
While HSBC manages your corporate banking needs, Deal helps you build the global team behind it. Founders scale startups faster on Deal. Grow without borders. Deal handles the hard parts of global hiring, so you can stay focused on growth. Set up payroll for any country in minutes, hire anyone anywhere and get visas handled fast. Deal takes care of onboarding, HR, IT, EOR, benefits and compliance. Everything your startup needs to scale quickly, all done fast in one place. And that's why 37,000 fast-growing companies trust Deal to move really fast and get back to building. Visit deal.com/20vc.

**Rory O'Driscoll** (3:14)
That's dealdeel.com/20vc.

**Harry Stebbings** (3:19)
Once Deal helps you hire your global team, Framer gets them wowed on the way in. You know that moment when marketing wants a landing page, design mocks it up and engineering says, yeah, we'll get to it. Thousands of businesses from early stage startups to Fortune 500s are choosing to build their websites in Framer where changes take minutes instead of days to solve this very problem. Framer is an enterprise-grade, no-code website builder that works like your team's favorite design tool. And it's used by companies like Perplexity, Miro, Mixpanel to move faster. Designers and marketers can fully own the site with real-time collaboration, a robust CMS built for SEO, and advanced analytics that include integrated A-B testing. So you're not just shipping pages, but you're maximizing what works. And when you're ready to ship, changes go live in seconds with one click. Publish without relying on engineering. Plus, Framer is built for scale with premium hosting, enterprise-grade security and 99.99% uptime SLA's. Whether you want to launch a new site, test a few landing pages or migrate your full.com, Framer has programs for startups, scale-ups and large enterprises to make going from idea to live site fast. Learn how you can get more out of your.com from a Framer specialist or get started building for free today at framer.com/20vc for 30% off, 30% off a Framer Pro annual plan. That's framer.com/20vc for 30% off.
framer.com/20vcrules and restrictions may apply.