Monday, 23 February 2026

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📈 Data to start your week

Capex contribution ↑ Silicon speed ↑ Waymo operators ↓

Azeem Azhar and Hannah Petrovic

Feb 23

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Hi all,

Here’s your Monday round-up of data driving conversations this week in less than 250 words.

Let’s go!

The AI economy ↑ AI capex is estimated to account for 64-80% of US Q4 2025 growth.
Autonomy needs humans ↓ Waymo’s entire remote guidance operation runs on just 70 human operators — a 43:1 car-to-human ratio. GM’s robotaxi service Cruise had 1.5 staff per car.¹
Speed war ↑ Canadian startup Taalas’ latest hardware can run AI models nearly 10x faster than the previous state-of-the-art by hard-wiring the model directly onto chips.
New exit routes ↑ Secondary sales² of private startup shares have grown from 3% of all VC exits in 2015 to 31% today.