Klarna and credit
Owe, owe, owe
Klarna's listing at a third of its private-market peak shows that buy-now-pay-later is a lender's business, and its customers and regulators should treat it as one
Leaders
Our view on the week’s biggest argument in technology, in the house voice.
Algorithmic stablecoins
Dollar days
Congress should stop letting tokens that promise a dollar without holding one call themselves stable, and write rules by what a coin promises rather than by who issues it.
Rivian's listing
If you build it
Investors who pay a Detroit-sized price for a firm that has delivered 156 pickups are buying a story, and should demand that the story be audited like a factory.
Archegos and the banks
Margin for error
The collapse of Archegos shows that banks, not regulators, were the only ones who could see a family office's leveraged swaps, and the law should make them say what they see
NFTs and ownership
Right-click, save
The $69.3m paid for Beeple's collage buys a verifiable record of who owns a picture the whole world can still look at, which is a real novelty but not remotely worth the price, and buyers should insist on being told what the receipt actually covers
Nexperia and the state
Dutch courage
The Netherlands was right to stop a Chinese-owned chipmaker moving its crown jewels abroad, but a scarcity law is the wrong tool, and The Hague should now give the intervention a deadline and a proper legal home
Intel and the state
Government inside
Washington's stake in Intel should be a short loan of patience, with a public timetable to sell, not a permanent seat at the chipmaker's table
Chips and China
Duty free
An export licence is a judgement about security, not a toll, and a government that takes 15% of what it permits has a reason to permit more.
TSMC in Arizona
Pledge allegiance
Tariff-driven factory pledges buy goodwill and a headline, not wafers, so Washington should demand schedules and count each dollar once.
Stargate and AI spending
Open sesame
Stargate's $500bn is a promise, not a budget, and America should judge it by the data centres that get built and keep Washington out of the cheque-writing
AI and electricity
Meltdown on the meter
Microsoft's restart of a reactor at Three Mile Island is the right way for a data centre to buy power, and regulators should make it the rule, not the exception, so that ordinary households stop paying for the machines' appetite
America v Google
Spare the Chrome
Judge Mehta was right to leave Google its browser and its phone software, and America should now spend its energy on making the data-sharing order work rather than on an appeal for a break-up.
The CrowdStrike outage
Blue screen of debt
The CrowdStrike outage shows that firms with deep access to everyone's computers should be treated as infrastructure, with staged updates and liability to match, rather than as software vendors who can disclaim everything
Acqui-hires and merger review
Hire power
Microsoft's hiring of Inflection's leaders and staff should be reviewed as the merger it resembles, because a deal that moves a company's people but not its shares is still a deal
OpenAI's governance
Return of the king
OpenAI's board did exactly what it was built to do and lost within five days; the lab should stop pretending a charity can steer it and let competition and the law do the job
Privacy and power
Please don't ask
Apple's tracking prompt is good for users and better for Apple, so regulators should insist that the firm lives under the same rule it imposes on everyone else
Australia v Facebook
Breaking news
Australia was right that platforms hold too much power over news, but a law that prices links is a clumsy tool, and the countries now eyeing it should copy the leverage, not the mechanism
Platform power
Unfollowed
Twitter and Facebook were within their rights to cut off Donald Trump, but a power this large needs published rules and an appeal, not a decision made on a Friday evening
