Good morning & happy Wednesday! Today's issue is super hot as we're looking into Affirm that's about to become a bank (what's the real strategy here & how it stacks againts the competition + bonus deep dives into the latest financials of Affirm, Klarna & PayPal Bank), Yahoo, which is now trying to replace ChatGPT (why their AI Scout is smarter than it looks, what's the bigger play at stake here + bonus deep dive into Agentic Singularity inside), and Mesh that just became the latest stablecoin unicorn (what their $1B valuation truly tells us & what it means for the future of FinTech + bonus list of the ultimate stables resources inside). Let's jump straight into the finnovative stuff '' The news '' The Buy Now, Pay Later leader just told you exactly how it plans to compete with Klarna KLAR 0.00%'. BNPL pioneer Affirm AFRM 0.00%' recently filed for a Nevada industrial loan company charter, joining PayPal PYPL 0.00%' (Utah, December 2025) in the fintech sprint toward deposit funding. The math is straightforward here: Affirm currently funds loans through warehouse facilities at roughly 7%. Bank deposits cost 2-4%. That spread - call it 300-500 basis points - flows straight to margin on a loan portfolio that hit $6.5 billion in active balances '...

These are not the words you want to hear when it comes to human extinction, but I was hearing them: 'Things are moving uncomfortably fast.' I was sitting in a conference room with Sam Bowman, a safety researcher at Anthropic. Worth $183 billion at the latest estimate, the AI firm has every incentive to speed things up, ship more products, and develop more advanced chatbots to stay competitive with the likes of OpenAI, Google, and the industry's other giants. But Anthropic is at odds with itself'thinking deeply, even anxiously, about seemingly every decision. Anthropic has positioned itself as the AI industry's superego: the firm that speaks with the most authority about the big questions surrounding the technology, while rival companies develop advertisements and affiliate shopping links (a difference that Anthropic's CEO, Dario Amodei, was eager to call out during an interview in Davos last week). On Monday, Amodei published a lengthy essay, 'The Adolescence of Technology,' about the 'civilizational concerns' posed by what he calls 'powerful AI''the very technology his firm is developing. The essay has a particular focus on democracy, national security, and the economy. 'Given the horror we're seeing in Minnesota, its emphasis on the importance of preserving democratic values and rights at home is particularly relevant,' Amodei posted on X, making him one of very few tech leaders to make a public statement against the Trump administration's recent actions....

Researchers have unveiled plans to investigate the mysterious production of 'dark oxygen' on the sea floor ' large amounts of the gas that seem to be coming from a region too deep for sunlight to power photosynthesis. The discovery of the oxygen 4,000 metres below the surface of the Pacific Ocean was first published in 2024 in Nature Geoscience1. The team behind it is embarking on a fresh series of studies to verify their findings and establish what could be causing the phenomenon. At a press conference in London last week, the researchers unveiled a suite of instruments specifically designed to look at oxygen production, either on the sea floor or in laboratory experiments that reproduce deep-sea conditions, including 400 atmospheres of pressure. The Nippon Foundation, a Tokyo-based charity, is funding the follow-up studies with a grant of US$5.2 million. By May, project scientists will travel to the Clarion'Clipperton Zone ' the region between Hawaii and Mexico where the original discovery was made ' aboard the research vessel Nautilus. Speaking at the event, team leader Andrew Sweetman, a sea-floor ecologist at the Scottish Association for Marine Science in Oban, UK, described two probes ' each with different capabilities ' designed to land on the sea floor to take measurements and samples....

Keeril Makan has been appointed vice provost for the arts at MIT, effective Feb. 1. In this role, Makan, who is the Michael (1949) and Sonja Koerner Music Composition Professor at MIT, will provide leadership and strategic direction for the arts across the Institute. 'Keeril's record of accomplishment both as an artist and an administrative leader makes him exceedingly qualified to take on this important role,' Chandrakasan wrote, noting that Makan 'has repeatedly taken on new leadership assignments with skill and enthusiasm.' Makan's appointment follows the publication last September of the final report of the Future of the Arts at MIT Committee. At MIT, the report noted, 'the arts thrive as a constellation of recognized disciplines while penetrating and illuminating countless aspects of the Institute's scientific and technological enterprise.' Makan will build on this foundation as MIT continues to strengthen the role of the arts in research, education, and community life. As vice provost for the arts, Makan will provide Institute-wide leadership and strategic direction for the arts, working in close partnership with academic leaders, arts units, and administrative colleagues across MIT, including the Office of the Arts; the MIT Center for Art, Science and Technology; the MIT Museum; the List Visual Arts Center; and the Council for the Arts at MIT. His role will focus on strengthening connections between artistic practice, research, education, and community life, and on supporting public engagement and interdisciplinary collaboration....