The CTO Show Brief: Issue 154

Author

Mehmet Gonullu
January 18, 2026

Welcome to Issue 154 of The CTO Show Brief.

The speculative era ended this week. Stargate operationalized, defense policy weaponized procurement, and crypto pivoted to payments infrastructure. Across every sector, the question shifted from "what is possible" to "how do we build it at scale, power it, and bill for it." The thesis is no longer software. It is electrons, production capacity, and regulatory clarity. 

Energy Is the New Compute

SB Energy secured $1B to build a 1.2 GW "private wire" solar facility for Stargate data centers in Texas. The signal: public grids cannot support the AI roadmap. Developers are bypassing interconnection queues that now stretch to 2030 by generating power on-site. "Energy-Compute" is emerging as a unified asset class. Investors can no longer evaluate AI infrastructure without auditing power purchase agreements. The constraint has moved from silicon to electrons. Ventures focused on grid-independent power, liquid cooling, and behind-the-meter generation will command premium valuations over pure software plays.

Defense Primes Face a Policy Reset

The "Prioritizing the Warfighter" Executive Order bans stock buybacks and dividends for defense contractors designated as underperforming. This is a direct attack on the financialization of the defense industry. Capital must flow to production capacity, not shareholder returns. The DHS simultaneously launched a drone office with $115M in immediate authority for counter-drone tech. Together, these moves create structural demand for defense tech startups that can deliver now. Anduril, Shield AI, and the "new guard" gain leverage. For MEA, this accelerates GCC localization mandates as traditional primes face domestic constraints.

Crypto Pivots to Payment Rails

Polygon's $250M double acquisition of Coinme and Sequence is not a trading play. It is an infrastructure play. Coinme provides money transmitter licenses in 48 states and 50,000 retail locations. Sequence provides wallet UX that abstracts gas fees and chain switching. Polygon is building the "Open Money Stack" to position stablecoins as settlement infrastructure, not speculative assets. In the UAE, DFSA shifted from a regulator-maintained token list to firm-led suitability assessments, treating crypto service providers like traditional financial institutions. The arbitrage: build infrastructure in the US, domicile in DIFC.

Agentic AI Arrives, Efficiency Threatens Scale

Google launched "Personal Intelligence" beta for Gemini, enabling reasoning across Gmail, Photos, and Drive. This marks the transition from generative AI to agentic AI. Simultaneously, DeepSeek's "Engram" architecture separates memory from compute, allowing smaller models to rival frontier performance on consumer hardware. The model layer is bifurcating: massive infrastructure (Stargate path) versus hyper-efficient edge deployment (DeepSeek path). The middle layer is dead. Startups must choose: build for scale or build for efficiency. For MEA, the efficiency path enables sovereign AI capability without trillion-dollar infrastructure dependency.

Usage Billing Becomes Default Infrastructure

Stripe completed its acquisition of Metronome, the billing platform powering OpenAI and Anthropic. The strategic logic: in an agentic economy, software is consumed by API calls and tokens, not human seats. Agents do not have seats. They have consumption. This is the financial plumbing required for the agent economy. Startups still selling flat-rate subscriptions are not AI-ready. Expect billing model audits to become standard VC due diligence.

The next 18 months will be defined by who controls electrons, who can deliver production at speed, and who captures the settlement layer of the agentic economy. Capital will flow to physical infrastructure, regulatory arbitrage, and usage-aligned monetization. The MEA region holds an unusual position: sovereign liquidity, regulatory clarity, and energy abundance. The corridor between US innovation and Gulf capital is now load-bearing infrastructure for the global tech stack.

🎙️Episodes Recap:

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, I’m joined by Ahmad Saleem , Founder and CEO of Podyssey. Ahmad’s journey is anything but linear. From working as a geologist in mining and natural resources to earning a PhD in economics, moving into private equity, and eventually founding an AI startup, his path reflects deep curiosity, resilience, and systems thinking. We dive into why podcast discovery is fundamentally broken, how AI and natural language processing can unlock the real value hidden inside long-form audio, and what it takes to build and scale a product in an uncertain, fast-moving market. This conversation blends founder storytelling, product strategy, and honest reflections on failure, team building, and the future of content discovery.

In this episode of The CTO Show with Mehmet, I’m joined by The Blind Blogger Maxwell Ivey , known as The Blind Blogger and a leading voice in digital accessibility. Max shares his remarkable journey from growing up in a family-run carnival business to becoming an accessibility advisor helping companies rethink how they design products, websites, and AI tools. We go deep into why accessibility is not a legal checkbox but a business, UX, and growth advantage, and why most modern AI tools are still failing real users. This conversation is a masterclass for founders, product leaders, designers, and executives who want to build inclusive, scalable, and future-proof products.

 

đź“– From Nowhere to Next

Every week I share startup lessons and stories through The CTO Show Brief. But if you want to go deeper, my book From Nowhere to Next brings together the experiences and insights that shaped my own journey.

Thanks for reading — and for being part of this growing, global-minded network.

— Mehmet