April Tech Round-Up: Beyond Hormuz - A World on Edge is Reshaping Every Corner of Tech
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Dear reader,
Welcome to the April edition of Tech Round-Up. ‘Beyond Hormuz’ argues the world has crossed a threshold, and tech cannot pretend geography is optional anymore. Energy chokepoints, chip supply, sanctions, AI, drones and capex are all converging to reshape roadmaps like never before. Great skill will be required to navigate the next few years.
Original Thinking From North Ridge Partners
Beyond Hormuz: How a World on Edge is Reshaping Every Corner of Tech. What happens in the Strait of Hormuz never stays there. This month we look past the oil price headlines to the real story: geopolitics forcing its way into every tech boardroom on the planet.
It's happening at the worst possible moment. AI is rewiring the global economy, supply chains are being rebuilt from scratch, costs are spiralling - and Taiwan, the one place that makes advanced semiconductors, is looking more exposed by the week.
We put our core sectors Software & AI, Aerospace & Defence Tech, Travel Tech and Fintech under the same lens - and find a collision of risk and opportunity that almost nobody saw coming at once.
Short on Time? Listen to our AI Podcast
This month our AI podcasters, Ross Tradamus and Claire Voyant, discuss how a more fragmented and volatile geopolitical landscape is reshaping global technology - and what it means for investors and operators navigating an increasingly uncertain world.
Click here or on the banner below to listen. Enjoy.
Techtonic Shifts
SpaceX eyes $5b anchor capital. IPO season smells blood: SpaceX discusses a $5b anchor investment linked to an IPO. If it prices near the rumours, private space valuations will get a public reality check overnight.
OpenAI closes a record $122b. The capex era is official: OpenAI closes $122b at an $852b post-money valuation. Frontier AI is now an industrial buildout.
CoreWeave lands an $8.5b facility. GPUs now have mortgages: CoreWeave closes $8.5b financing as debt markets learn to price racks and contracts.
Asia Pacific Tech News
Cows and unicorns make great bedfellows: The Kiwis at Halter raise NZ$377m Series E at NZ$3.43b. The pasture now has product roadmaps.
A past written by ASIC, a future wired with GPUs: Curtis now co-leads Firmus, armed with ~A$830m raised and a US$10bn facility. Redemption is so sweet.
Atlassian and other tech companies are blaming AI for staff cuts - what’s really going on? Sydney Uni thinks they’re dressing up a pandemic hiring hangover as an AI transformation story.
Software & AI
Anthropic strikes again - this time at IBM’s (ageing) heart: IBM shares plunge 13% as Claude Code releases COBOL modernisation tools.
Meta funds seven gas plants for AI. Net zero quietly leaves the chat: The Cloud is still just electricity with branding, and physics is still undefeated.
Claude leaks and the internet adopts an AI Tamagotchi: Claude Code error exposes source maps, new features and always-on agents. Security teams everywhere feel a disturbance in the Force.
Aerospace & Defence Tech
Shield AI raises $2b and goes shopping. Autonomy gets a war chest: defence autonomy is now funded like infrastructure, not experimentation.
Rocket Lab signs $190m for 20 hypersonic tests. Cadence wins: Our client Hypersonix is on that list, as the pipeline moves from demo to repeatable.
Anduril wins the command layer. Everyone else sells the parts: US Army selects Lattice as the enterprise C2 platform for counter-UAS, starting with an $87m task order.
Travel Tech
In a temporary reprieve for the incumbents, ChatGPT pulls back from native checkout: proving that discovery is moving faster than transactions.
Travel Tech funding gets selective: Q1 2026 funding rounds show a bias to later-stage businesses with provable ROI and AI-led operational value.
Struggling GDS Travelport gets $50m to go faster and hires Microsoft veteran: New CEO John Mangelaars is out to prove a modern GDS can be the intelligence layer.
Fintech
9fin hits unicorn status. Private credit gets an AI co-pilot: 9fin raises $170m to scale AI-native intelligence for debt markets. The quiet revolution is that PDFs, emails and data rooms finally get indexed.
Laundromats get a $140m fintech glow up. Finally: Cents modernises laundromats with software, hardware and payments. Unglamorous, high-volume, and exactly where sticky fintech margins like to hide.
Kalshi raises $1b. Finance continues cosplaying as sport: Kalshi raises $1b at $22b. Whether it’s innovation or gambling with better UX, the category certainly scales - and the regulators will be watching.
Stuff We Found Interesting
Drone warfare gets weird. Hobby shop tech meets geopolitics: Drones blur the line between hobby hardware and military capability. Unsettling, but a clear window into a fast-moving supply chain and category convergence.
Robots have a big week. Someone ships 10,000 humanoids and calls it Tuesday: A robotics briefing reads like science fiction with receipts. Production milestones, robotaxis freezing, autonomous boats raising capital.
Greetings from Strait of Hormuz: Citrini Research wades into the debate.
Thanks for reading, and see you next month! The team at North Ridge Partners
Tech Investment Banking Across Asia Pacific
North Ridge Partners advises tech companies across the Asia Pacific on strategy, capital raising and M&A. We’re experienced dealmakers who have built and sold many tech companies. In partnership with GP Bullhound, we have 200 bankers in 17 global offices.
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