FT: “One reason why “knowledge-rich” curriculums have outperformed “skills-based” programmes is that we are terrible at predicting the future. How could it be otherwise? Someone starting compulsory education in Ohio in 1977 couldn’t possibly have been expected to know that by the time they left school, their state would have experienced significant deindustrialisation, the cold war would have ended and personal computers would have started to become affordable for much of middle America. What “skills” will today’s children need in the world of AI? History teaches us that those we once thought would ensure a reliable income forever are no guarantee of any such thing.”
Harry Nelis (Accel Europe): “One of the things that we’ve learnt over the years, is that venture is a people business. And what makes great companies is the entrepreneurs behind them. I think we continue to have a really steady flow of great entrepreneurs emerging. I don’t think much is holding them back. We have a pretty wide and long runway ahead of us. We have a fully functioning venture ecosystem here. We have universities that are educating business leaders and engineers at world-class levels. Great companies can come from anywhere. That’s the other key thing that we’ve realised. We’ve realised that Supercell came out of Finland, which was not a top five market. UiPath came out of Bucharest, Romania. Celonis came out of Munich. So great companies can come from anywhere. And there’s a steady supply of them.”
WSJ: “AI-powered advertising is part of Meta Chief Mark Zuckerberg’s grand vision for his company’s evolution. Advertising makes up the bulk of Meta’s business—it brought in more than 97% of overall revenue in 2024—and funds its multibillion-dollar investments in AI chips and data centers, and for training cutting-edge AI models. Using the ad tools Meta is developing, a brand could present an image of the product it wants to promote along with a budgetary goal, and AI would create the entire ad, including imagery, video and text. The system would then decide which Instagram and Facebook users to target and offer suggestions on budget, people familiar with the matter said. Meta also plans to enable advertisers to personalize ads using AI, so that users see different versions of the same ad in real time, based on factors such as geolocation, the people said. A person seeing an advertisement for a car in a snowy place, for example, might see the car driving up a mountain, whereas a person seeing an ad for that same car in an urban area would see it driving on a city street.”
Ruchir Sharma: “The dollar is not the world’s strongest currency and has not been for decades. That title goes to the Swiss franc, and the mighty franc has done nothing to undermine Switzerland’s competitiveness. The world’s richest major economy has both a strong currency and a strong manufacturing base. The Swiss franc has been the top-performing currency over the past 50 years, 25 years, 10 years and five years. It is near the top even over the past year when some of the more beleaguered currencies have staged a comeback against the dollar. Nothing can compare for durable strength.”
