TRO | Trump Lifts Export Restrictions On Claude Fable 5

Plus, An Italian Tech Giant Goes Public and Portugal Joins Europe's Sovereign AI Race

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Meliora Company
July 06, 2026 • Estimated Reading Time: 4 minutes

 Subscribe | 6th July, 2026

In this fast-moving Vertical AI economy, headlines are everywhere but optimism is rare.

Here’s our take on 3 stories that will help you be relentlessly optimistic about the future.

1. Trump Lifts Export Restrictions On Claude Fable 5

The Trump administration has lifted the export restrictions it placed on Claude Fable 5 and Mythos 5 in June, after weeks of negotiations with Anthropic. The Commerce Department confirmed the decision after Anthropic agreed to proactively detect and address security risks, work with the government on protocols for future model releases, and report any malicious activity it identifies. Anthropic began restoring global access to both models on 1 July. The restrictions had been widely criticised by cybersecurity experts, who argued the ban was driven more by political pressure than genuine security concerns.

Here’s why this matters: The speed of the reversal tells the more important story. Within weeks of the ban, Asian AI companies including Fugu and Tulonfeng had released models approaching Mythos-level capabilities, shifting the competitive calculus for the US government almost immediately. Restricting Anthropic's most powerful models while rivals closed the gap was an untenable position, and the administration reversed course. For the AI industry heading into an IPO window, the episode has confirmed something significant: frontier model releases are now subject to government review, and the rules governing that process remain unclear. The Trump administration's approach to AI policy is the most significant regulatory risk facing the industry right now.

2. The Italian Tech Giant That Owns AOL And Vimeo Is Going Public

Bending Spoons, the Milan-based technology company that has quietly acquired AOL, Vimeo, Eventbrite, Evernote, WeTransfer, and more than 50 other digital brands, is seeking to raise US$1.62 billion in an IPO on the Nasdaq at a US$19 billion valuation. Revenue more than doubled to US$601 million in Q1 2026, with the company swinging from a US$112 million loss to a US$27.5 million profit year on year. The company serves 500 million monthly active users across its portfolio.

Here’s why this matters: The most significant number in Bending Spoons' filing has nothing to do with revenue. In Q1 2025, AI authored less than 10% of code changes across the company's engineering operations. A year later, that figure had risen to more than 90%, with around 70% written entirely by AI. Revenue per employee more than doubled from US$1.12 million in 2023 to US$2.57 million by 2025. In 2025, the company received 800,000 job applications and hired just 286 people. For the technology industry, that is the most precise real-world demonstration yet of what AI-native software development looks like at scale and what it means for the economics of building software.

3. Portugal Joins Europe’s Sovereign AI Race

Portugal has launched Amália, its first national open-source large language model, releasing the model, datasets, and source code under an open-source licence for governments, businesses, universities, and researchers to use and build on. Designed specifically for European Portuguese, Amália is intended as public digital infrastructure rather than a consumer chatbot, and forms part of a broader push by Portugal to reduce reliance on foreign AI technology. The launch was confirmed by Prime Minister Luís Montenegro's office and accompanied by a separate announcement that Portugal will invest up to €200 million in an AI gigafactory as part of a joint Iberian bid under the European EuroHPC programme.

Here’s why this matters: Portugal's launch is the latest in a wave of European sovereign AI moves that has gathered significant pace in 2026. Germany has announced SOOFI, Switzerland launched Apertus, Poland released PLLuM, and the EU's EUROPA consortium is building a 400-billion-parameter open-source model covering all 24 official EU languages. The Anthropic export ban in June changed the calculus for European enterprises overnight. What had been a political talking point about AI sovereignty became an urgent operational requirement. For the TMT industry, the practical implication is clear: the market for sovereign AI infrastructure, tools, and services in Europe is no longer speculative. It is being built right now, with public and private capital flowing at scale.

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Firmus Technologies, an Australian AI infrastructure start-up valued at US$5.5 billion, has signed a strategic partnership with Nvidia to deploy 170,000 GPUs across a new data centre in Batam, Indonesia, beginning Q1 2027. The deal is expected to generate up to US$30 billion in revenue over six years. Firmus is positioning the facility as a lower-cost AI compute option for start-ups priced out of hyperscaler infrastructure.

Venice AI has raised US$65 million in its first external funding round at a US$1 billion valuation, led by Dragonfly with participation from Coinbase Ventures. The platform gives users access to over 200 AI models with full privacy: all queries are encrypted client-side and never stored. Already profitable with US$70 million in annualised revenue and 3 million active users, the company plans to use the funding to build its own data centres.

Before an AI agent can be trusted to book your trip or run your financial analysis, someone has to stress-test it. Patronus AI has raised US$50 million in Series B funding led by Greenfield Partners to do exactly that, building simulated digital environments where agents are tested across thousands of real-world scenarios before deployment. Revenue has grown 15-fold in the past year, with virtually every frontier AI lab now a customer.

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