U.S. Midterms
The NASDAQ dropped over 5% on Thursday following the results of the midterms, largely due to investors losing confidence in the AI infrastructure buildout.
Key states for the data center expansion, such as Texas, Ohio, and Georgia, elected democratic senators, all of whom have communicated their goals to regulate AI and limit the infrastructure buildout.
Furthermore, the youth that supported Trump in 2024 appear to have changed their minds, which was a significant driver of the results of the midterms according to multiple sources.
Economic challenges and the rising costs of food, healthcare, and other essentials have resulted in increasing frustration among new entrants to the workforce.
Ironically, Proposition 40, which was California’s proposed wealth tax on billionaires of the state, was defeated.
Israel’s Politics
The move by Isaac Herzog signals growing confidence that the opposition could bring an end to Netanyahu’s historical term.
Given that Netanyahu’s campaign largely revolved around his alignment with President Trump, the Democratic sweep of the midterms may weaken his standing.
This could incentivize Israeli coalition partners to support new leadership that can repair relations with the U.S. by working with a blue Congress.
Europe’s Climate Protests
Citizens of the EU and the United Kingdom continue to protest the data center buildout, calling on leadership to implement a moratoria.
Most recently, individuals broke into a Microsoft data center site in Amsterdam. Dutch authorities ultimately detained 150 to 200 protestors for trespassing.
Major concerns are about the environmental implications of the facilities, given their rampant consumption of water and electricity.
Protestors worry that the facilities threaten local power grids and consume unsustainable volumes of water, which will have the greatest impact on local communities.
Berkshire Hathaway’s “poor” performance
Berkshire reported its Q3 earnings, demonstrating a 5.8% drop in year-over-year operating earnings and $9.6 billion (more than double from Q2) in share buybacks.
But the real highlight is the $377.4 billion cash pile it’s sitting on at the moment.
The lack of underwriting signals decreased confidence in current market opportunities, which one can interpret as largely being due to all of the investments tied to the AI wave (software, infrastructure, etc.).
It looks like the company is sticking with Buffett’s philosophy, namely, refusing to overpay for businesses.
COINS & China
The Comprehensive Outbound Investment National Security (COINS) Act is a framework to screen and restrict outbound deployment of U.S. capital and talent into foreign interests, particularly China.
Initially (December 2025), the act was focused on sensitive, dual-use technologies, such as semiconductors, artificial intelligence, etc.
Recently, the U.S. Treasury published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to classify biotechnology as a prohibited sector, with concerns about the development of biological weapons, vulnerabilities in critical U.S. pharmaceutical supply chains, and more.
Under the proposed rule, American investors and companies would be barred from making a wide variety of transactions in Chinese biotech entities, including equity stakes.
Many within the biotechnology industry feel that this would ultimately backfire given the importance of international collaboration for the efficient use of resources in capital-intensive projects, such as clinical trials.
The public comment period closes December 7th, 2026, and the Treasury Department must issue its final enforceable rules on or before March 13th, 2027.
VIVA and ASKA’s new platform
Speaking of international collaboration, Spain’s VIVA In Vitro Diagnostics has partnered with Germany’s ASKA Biotech GmbH (the CDMO) with the goal of industrializing their VIVA-ELISA platform.
The technology evaluates the functional response capacity of the NLRP3 inflammasome pathway through ex vivo stimulation and ASC-Speck detection, with sepsis being its first clinical indication under investigation.
Sepsis is a life-threatening medical condition where the speed of intervention is so strongly correlated with survival and long-term outcomes that the criteria used to screen for sepsis is as broad as they come in medicine.
Studies have demonstrated that every hour of delayed administration of antibiotics leads to a measurable increase in mortality.
The VIVA-ELISA platform could provide clinicians with real-time visibility into a patient’s immune system status, which would improve stratification of high-risk patients.
Dren Bio raises $350 million for Dibotatug
The company announced the closing of an oversubscribed $350 million in private financing, co-led by Juvia Group and Lightspeed Venture Partners (who also funded Anthropic) among others.
The capital will be used to support continued late-staged clinical development & planned commercial launch of Dibotatug (DR-01), a CD94-targeting monoclonal antibody.
CD94 is expressed on pathogenic cytotoxic T-cells and NK cells which drive certain rare malignancies, such as cytotoxic T-cell lymphoma.
By selectively binding and destroying cells expressing CD94, DR-01 can potentially deplete these rogue disease-causing cells while leaving the broader immune system intact (which is what many cancer therapies historically failed to do).
However, the $350 million round is not solely because of DR-01.
Dren Bio’s underlying Targeted Myeloid Engager and Phagocytosis platform is what appears to be anchoring its long-term enterprise valuation.
The platform enables depletion of pathogenic cells via a novel phagocytic receptor that is selectively expressed on myeloid cells (e.g., neutrophils, monocytes, etc.), which could present a better safety profile compared to existing therapies.
Investors will be keeping an eye on the following this week: