Ron Patel

Ron Patel covers cryptocurrency markets, blockchain developments, and digital asset news for Startup Fortune. With a background in financial journalism and over eight years tracking crypto markets through multiple cycles, Ron brings analytical perspective to Bitcoin, Ethereum, and emerging token ecosystems.

Sort by:

Latest

Showing 754 articles

Ron Patel · Jun 15, 2026 · 12:00 PM

Three-quarters of Irish adults use Revolut but the real test is what comes next

Three-quarters of Irish adults hold a Revolut account, making Ireland the most penetrated neobank market in the world. But Revolut's target of up to $200 billion at IPO demands bank-grade revenue, and in its strongest market the company still doesn't offer mortgages or operate under a full Irish banking licence. The incumbents responded too slowly, and the real question now is whether Revolut can convert daily habit into lasting financial relationship.

Ron Patel · Jun 15, 2026 · 6:19 AM

Anthropic CEO called for AI oversight powers and the US just used them on him

The US Commerce Department issued export controls on Anthropic's most powerful models last week, forcing the company to disable Fable 5 and Mythos 5 for every user worldwide after CEO Dario Amodei refused to fix a government-reported jailbreak. The episode establishes that Washington can shut down a frontier AI product overnight using existing export control authority, with no court order required. Anthropic's leadership is in DC trying to negotiate a resolution, but the precedent is already set

Ron Patel · Jun 14, 2026 · 9:11 PM

Škoda is stretching its EV brand from bargain Epiq to flagship Peaq

Škoda is preparing two very different EVs, the affordable Epiq and the larger Peaq. The move shows how Volkswagen Group is using shared platforms to defend price, scale, and brand positioning as Chinese EV pressure builds in Europe.

Ron Patel · Jun 14, 2026 · 3:00 PM

GM is keeping robotaxis alive by turning autonomy into a car feature

GM is rebuilding its robotaxi optionality through Super Cruise and eyes-off driving rather than reviving Cruise as a standalone fleet business. The strategy gives GM a lower-burn route back into autonomy while Uber, Rivian, Motional and Waymo keep the robotaxi market moving.

Ron Patel · Jun 14, 2026 · 10:24 AM

Anduril wants export controls to catch up with drone warfare

Anduril CEO Brian Schimpf is pushing Washington to rethink arms export controls so allies can help produce US-origin weapons. The fight now is less about whether defence tech can raise money, and more about whether factories, ITAR rules and allied politics can keep up.

Ron Patel · Jun 14, 2026 · 1:12 AM

Bitcoin's rebound is still waiting for ETF money to agree

Bitcoin is trading near $64,000 again after a slide toward $59,000, helped by falling oil prices and tentative U.S.-Iran peace hopes. The rebound remains fragile because ETF outflows and competition from large tech and AI narratives are still pulling at the same pool of risk capital.

Ron Patel · Jun 13, 2026 · 7:04 PM

Disney is turning AI coding into an operating discipline

Disney's streaming technology leaders are urging engineers to use AI coding tools more aggressively while warning against wasteful token use. The move shows how enterprise AI is shifting from pilots and enthusiasm to budgets, dashboards, code quality, and operational control.

Ron Patel · Jun 13, 2026 · 11:25 AM

China pushes back as the Pentagon widens its tech blacklist

China has objected after the Pentagon expanded its Chinese military companies list to include Alibaba, Baidu, BYD and several chip, robotics and hardware firms. The designation is not full sanctions, but it can still shape contracts, capital and customer risk.

Ron Patel · Jun 13, 2026 · 4:31 AM

Oil falls as traders price in a possible US Iran deal

Brent crude hit a three-month low after Trump said the US was close to an Iran deal, giving markets relief from the Hormuz risk premium. The move could help growth and AI infrastructure stocks, but only if shipping through the Strait of Hormuz actually normalizes.

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 9:42 PM

Taiwan is using a $200 million data center to keep its last South American ally

Taiwan and Paraguay are jointly financing a $200 million AI data center targeting 10 megawatts of compute capacity and operations by end of 2027. Taiwan's International Cooperation and Development Fund has approached Google, Microsoft, and Amazon to serve as investors or anchor customers, though no commercial terms have been announced. The deal is as much a geopolitical instrument as an infrastructure project, designed to keep Paraguay, Taiwan's only South American diplomatic ally, from drifting

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 5:17 PM

Opposition groups halted $130 billion in data center projects in Q1 2026

Opposition groups blocked or delayed at least 75 data center projects worth nearly $130 billion in the first quarter of 2026, the highest quarterly toll on record according to Data Center Watch, the AI intelligence firm 10a Labs' tracking project. With 833 active groups now operating across 49 states and New York's legislature passing a one-year construction moratorium, the resistance has formalized into a structural constraint on the AI buildout. For investors and developers, the calculus has s

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 2:54 PM

Pokémon Go players trained a military drone navigation system and never knew it

Thirty billion AR scans collected from Pokémon Go players formed the training dataset for Niantic Spatial's visual positioning system, which the company has now licensed to defense firm Vantor for GPS-denied military drone operations. The data flowed from a consumer game through a Saudi sovereign wealth fund's portfolio company to a US defense prime, with players consenting to none of it explicitly. The case is forcing AI startups and VCs to treat downstream-use clauses in data licensing agreeme

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 1:07 PM

Singapore will reward SMEs that make AI show its working

Singapore's SME AI Impact Awards will recognise up to 30 companies that can show measurable gains from using AI. The awards are part of a wider national programme to help 10,000 local enterprises adopt AI and train 100,000 workers over three years.

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 12:04 PM

Nvidia courts China with Vera CPU while aiming directly at AMD and Intel

Nvidia is pitching its new Vera CPU to Chinese clients including Alibaba and ByteDance, with availability as early as August, exploiting a regulatory gap that targets GPUs rather than CPUs. Jensen Huang frames the chip as opening a $200 billion market opportunity while directly threatening AMD EPYC and Intel Xeon in the data center. The competitive response from both incumbents is already shaping up as a core architectural debate over how agentic AI workloads should be served at rack scale.

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 9:41 AM

Infineon opens its €5 billion Dresden megafab on July 2 as Europe's power chip ambitions meet their real test

Ron Patel · Jun 12, 2026 · 7:19 AM

PIMCO declares AI has crossed a macroeconomic threshold while warning the credit loss cycle has already begun

PIMCO's Richard Clarida says AI infrastructure spending could add $14 trillion to global capex over five years, enough to reshape macroeconomic outcomes and compress inflation faster than markets expect. But the firm's credit team declared this week that a loss cycle has already begun, with lower-quality borrowers in leveraged loans and private direct lending facing significantly higher defaults as AI investment strains corporate balance sheets.