Welcome to today’s briefing.

Today we explore NVIDIA’s plan to launch data centers into orbit and how Edi Rama is betting to bring Mira Murati’s Thinking Machines Lab to Albania.

We will dive into the plans to create the Adria Corridor of investments for scaleup companies through the launch of Dare2Scale program, aiming to turn the Balkans into a global tech contender.

And further down the newsletter we talk also about some new AI releases, like the AI CMO and the new approach by Moonshot AI!

NVIDIA GTC 2026 has officially moved the goalposts. Jensen Huang’s keynote yesterday signaled the end of the "experimentation phase" and the beginning of the AI Factory Era.

Rubin & Vera - The new Vera Rubin AI system and the Vera CPU are the world's first hardware stacks optimized specifically for Agentic AI. Unlike Blackwell, these are built for "long-context" multitasking, supporting tens of thousands of autonomous agents running simultaneously on a single rack.

The Revenue Bombshell - NVIDIA projected that cumulative orders for AI infrastructure will exceed $1 trillion by 2027, effectively doubling previous estimates and dispelling fears of an "AI capex peak."

Space-1 - In a move that felt like science fiction, NVIDIA announced Space-1 Vera Rubin, a plan to take data centers into orbit to solve the terrestrial power and cooling bottlenecks that are currently throttling the US grid.

The Albanian government’s €10 million ($11 million) investment into Thinking Machines Lab is a strategic homecoming bet on Mira Murati, the former CTO of OpenAI. By backing her new venture, Tirana is attempting to bypass the traditional "outsourcing" model of the Balkans and secure a seat at the table of frontier AI development.

Here is the breakdown of why this specific investment is a pivot for the region:

Prime Minister Edi Rama personally negotiated the deal with Murati, framing it not just as a financial investment but as a national partnership.

The €10 million was reportedly allocated from seized and confiscated criminal assets, a symbolic move to use "bad money" to fund "future intelligence"

While €10M is a massive sum for the Albanian budget, it represents a tiny slice of Thinking Machines Lab’s target $2 billion seed round (which values the company at over $10 billion).

The term "Agentic" refers to AI that doesn't just answer questions (like a chatbot) but can autonomously execute complex tasks, like managing a supply chain or writing and deploying its own code.

The city is repurposing the Tirana Pyramid as a massive digital center. The goal is to house a new "Agentic" developer class that uses Murati’s tools to build autonomous systems for Europe.

The government is leveraging the TEDA Tirana (Free Economic Zone) to offer 0% or reduced corporate tax for R&D-focused AI projects. This is designed to attract the "Thinking Machines" ecosystem of partner startups to relocate to Albania.

Some critics (including reports from the Tirana Times) argue this is "political branding" or an "AI Facade." They point out that while Albania is chasing Silicon Valley stars, it was recently left out of the first wave of EU AI Factory Antennas funding, which went to Serbia and North Macedonia instead.

Just this week, NVIDIA announced its own strategic investment in Thinking Machines Lab. As part of the deal, the lab will deploy 1 Gigawatt of NVIDIA’s new Vera Rubin systems. Albania is positioning itself to be the regional host for these high-power clusters.

Albania is playing a high-risk, high-reward game. By tethering its national identity to Thinking Machines Lab, it is betting that Mira Murati’s software will become the "Operating System" for the agentic era.

If it works, Tirana becomes the AI capital of the Adria! If it fails, it will be remembered as a €10M "celebrity investment" that lacked local infrastructure.

The 2026 expansion of Endeavor Bulgaria’s Dare2Scale represents a pivotal moment for Southeast European (SEE) integration. By moving beyond its traditional Bulgarian and Western Balkan borders to include Croatia, Slovenia, and Serbia, the program is formalizing an "Adria Corridor" designed to turn the fragmented regional markets into a unified scaling platform.

Here is the breakdown of this expansion and its impact on the "Next Wave" of Balkan business:

This year’s expansion is the largest in the program's eight-year history.

Beyond the Western Balkans - While previous editions (2024–2025) integrated Albania, Kosovo, and North Macedonia, the 2026 edition specifically targets the Adria region (Croatia and Slovenia). This creates a bridge between the EU-member states and the emerging Western Balkan tech hubs.

Unified Market Logic - The goal is to solve the "Small Market Trap." By connecting founders in Sofia with those in Zagreb, Belgrade, and Ljubljana, Endeavor is allowing late-stage startups to treat the entire SEE region as a single 20 million-person market before expanding to the US or Asia.

Dare2Scale remains a non-equity accelerator, meaning it provides high-level institutional support without taking a slice of the company’s ownership.

Target Profile - The program is "industry-agnostic" but focuses on late-stage companies that have validated business models and established revenue (typically targeting the €1M–€10M range).

The PwC Partnership - Each selected company is paired with a senior consultant from PwC for one-on-one strategy sessions. For the 2026 edition, this includes cross-border strategy to help a Serbian SaaS company, for example, navigate the regulatory hurdles of expanding into Croatia or Bulgaria.

Applications opened on March 16, 2026. The selection interviews will occur in April and May, with the four-month program running from September to December 2026.

The 2026 expansion is being timed with the region's surge in Deep Tech and AI.

Regional Hubs - While the program culminates in a "Demo Day" in Sofia, it will feature in-person workshops across the "Adria Corridor," including sessions in Prishtina, Skopje, and Tirana, ensuring that founders are exposed to the unique strengths of each local ecosystem.

Success Stories - The program's network includes regional heavyweights like Payhawk (Bulgaria’s first unicorn), EnduroSat, and Gjirafa (Kosovo/Albania), who act as mentors and "role models" for the new cohort.

If you are a founder in the Adria region, the "Dare2Scale" expansion is your invitation to stop thinking locally. The 2026 focus is on Fundraising and International Scaling.

As capital begins to consolidate around the "Sovereign AI" narrative, being part of this unified corridor is the difference between being a local leader and a global scale-up.

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See you on the next edition,
Çelik