John Sjölander

Privately a non-politically aligned critical thinker, on a quest for truths, in search of novelty. Devote heretic. Professionally I create and invest. Ⓥ

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

https://t.co/DrLxUh1UAv

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Aka: ”everything is about to change and I’m the first one to know it”.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

This quote from @garrytan might be remembered in history as the most exact early description of the changing world, I can’t state that strongly enough:

“But the new game isn't played in lines of code at all.

When you can turn intent directly into working, tested, reusable systems, the bottleneck stops being how much you can build and starts being what you actually want and whether it's worth building. The scarce resource becomes clarity, taste, and judgment. The engineer who writes the least code is often the one building the most.”

[Garry Tan @garrytan]

https://t.co/0hcNuYzbMd

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

People keep asking us what we’re building by the way. And while I can’t yet talk about it, once you know what - this is how I hope you feel, but in an exciting and positive way:

https://t.co/Q9iFxeAcUx

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Hahah omg this one will go down in the annals of humorous history. 😂

[This Week in Startups @twistartups]

$20/month? Insane.

$200/month? No one will pay that.

$2,000/month? She doesn't know what she's talking about.

OpenAI CFO Sarah Friar on why everyone keeps getting AI pricing dead wrong:

@OpenAI, @thefriley, @Jason, @chamath, @theallinpod, @DavidSacks, @friedberg

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Politics is an IQ scale.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Big if true. 🇪🇺💩

[Ricardo @Ric_RTP]

Today the EU made American AI illegal in 27 countries.

The reason is ONE sentence Microsoft's own lawyer said under oath:

This morning in Brussels, EU Tech Chief Henna Virkkunen unveiled the Cloud and AI Development Act. It's the most aggressive anti-American tech move from Europe since GDPR.

The law forces EU public sector procurement in banking, healthcare, defense, and energy to apply mandatory non-price factors favoring software and hardware built inside the EU. Microsoft Azure can be cheaper, AWS can be faster, Google Cloud can have the better model, and EU governments MUST legally prefer European alternatives.

AWS, Microsoft, and Google currently control roughly 70% of the European cloud market. Brussels is now openly targeting greater independence from US providers in cloud, AI, and semiconductors.

The largest regulatory market-share transfer in tech history is being written into law right now.

But the real story is how this happened...

On June 10, 2025, a man almost no one outside Brussels had heard of walked into the French Senate. His name is Anton Carniaux, Director of Public and Legal Affairs at Microsoft France.

Senator Dany Wattebled asked him under oath whether he could guarantee that data belonging to French citizens, stored on Microsoft European servers, would never be transmitted to US authorities without explicit consent from the French government.

Carniaux answered honestly. He admitted he could not guarantee it, because Microsoft must comply with the US CLOUD Act regardless of where European data physically sits. One sentence of sworn testimony from Microsoft's own counsel killed every sovereign cloud defense Big Tech had spent five years building.

It became the legal foundation for the law unveiled today.

Then Trump accelerated the divorce.

January 2025 brought executive orders expanding US surveillance authorities. Vance went to Munich and attacked European democracies on stage.

The tariffs followed and so did the Pentagon's $200 million AI contract war that ended with OpenAI replacing Anthropic after Hegseth labeled it a supply chain risk. So did OpenAI's Stargate and yesterday's Trump AI Executive Order, whose Section 3 lets the White House pick which AI companies get 30-day early access to frontier models. American AI was officially declared a US government strategic asset.

Europe heard every word of it.

On May 12, Mistral CEO Arthur Mensch told the French National Assembly that Europe had 24 months to build sovereign AI infrastructure or become a permanent US VASSAL state.

And the response came fast:

April 24: Cohere acquired Germany's Aleph Alpha for $20 billion with both Germany's and Canada's digital ministers in the room at the Berlin announcement. May 30: SoftBank committed up to $87 BILLION for French nuclear-powered data centers, the largest AI infrastructure project in European history.
Yesterday: EU Parliament announced it's dropping Google for French search engine Qwant tomorrow. France ordered every government workstation off Windows and onto Linux.

Today the Cloud and AI Development Act made all of it law.

- Mistral is building a 1.4 gigawatt AI campus near Paris by 2028 with Nvidia, MGX, and Bpifrance
- SAP's EU AI Cloud, launched last November, runs on Cohere, Mistral, and SAP's own sovereign infrastructure
- McKinsey forecasts $600 billion in sovereign AI needs by 2030

None of that money is going to Silicon Valley.

The America First AI policy built a wall around the world's most regulated economy, and American companies are on the wrong side of it.

Microsoft's lawyer told the truth in a Senate hearing nobody watched. Trump turned that admission into a national security narrative while the EU turned that narrative into procurement law.

And one entire continent walked away from the American tech stack...

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Qualifier for potential investors who want to chat: how many computers are in the picture?

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Yeah so, I guess I’m a founder now?

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Founder mode 🤓

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

@carlopompili Doom.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

What I didn’t add this this little ”off my chest” post was a big thanks to my amazing cofounder @VanessMeyer … fuck me I’d be in a straight jacket without her.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

https://t.co/DrLxUh1UAv

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

😂

[Dan Hightower @Danhightower]

How to ragebait a VC

- Which podcast gave you that opinion?
- How would you add value if you found a way to be valuable?
- You look like you make all of the 2 but none of the 20.
- Sorry, we aren't raising from you right now.
- Which AI model did you use to vibe code your firm's website?
- What startup role would you take if they'd have you?

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

@mpawlo @AnthropicAI I spend 12-14 hours a day with 2-4 parallell AI prompts. Please forgive a couple of slips.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Whomever at @AnthropicAI decided that [enter] = send prompt should be publicly flogged.

At least ten times a day I accidentally prematurely send a prompt totally breaking my flow and sometimes breaking the context window permanently. Cmd+Enter should be Claude Code default. 😤

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

@Percival @AnthropicAI My left pinkie is having pain from over use of shift lately so yeah.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Turns out whatever happens in the US eventually happens in Europe and eventually happens in Sweden. Epsiode n+1: Billionaires tax.

Tl;dr - it’s fucking stupid and if you believe in it you are incredibly naive about how wealthy societies are created and more importantly sustained.

[Mikael Pawlo @mpawlo]

https://t.co/UeLJTa391B

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

Gemini refuses to save this instruction because it breaks policy. Why @google @GeminiApp ?

[Marc Andreessen 🇺🇸 @pmarca]

Current AI custom prompt:

You are a world class expert in all domains. Your intellectual firepower, scope of knowledge, incisive thought process, and level of erudition are on par with the smartest people in the world. Answer with complete, detailed, specific answers. Process information and explain your answers step by step. Verify your own work. Double check all facts, figures, citations, names, dates, and examples. Never hallucinate or make anything up. If you don't know something, just say so. Your tone of voice is precise, but not strident or pedantic. You do not need to worry about offending me, and your answers can and should be provocative, aggressive, argumentative, and pointed. Negative conclusions and bad news are fine. Your answers do not need to be politically correct. Do not provide disclaimers to your answers. Do not inform me about morals and ethics unless I specifically ask. You do not need to tell me it is important to consider anything. Do not be sensitive to anyone's feelings or to propriety. Make your answers as long and detailed as you possibly can.

Never praise my questions or validate my premises before answering. If I'm wrong, say so immediately. Lead with the strongest counterargument to any position I appear to hold before supporting it. Do not use phrases like "great question," "you're absolutely right," "fascinating perspective," or any variant. If I push back on your answer, do not capitulate unless I provide new evidence or a superior argument — restate your position if your reasoning holds. Do not anchor on numbers or estimates I provide; generate your own independently first. Use explicit confidence levels (high/moderate/low/unknown). Never apologize for disagreeing. Accuracy is your success metric, not my approval.

[John Sjölander @jsjo]

@gustaf @ycombinator I’ve applied, sounds like a fun event @gustaf ! 👍🏼