THIS ACTUALLY HAPPENED ON MONDAY. The Pope released his first encyclical, Magnifica Humanitas, on AI & human dignity, and shook hands at the Vatican with Anthropic co-founder Chris Olah. Scroll for the rest.
▼ SCROLL — NO SMOOTH NONSENSE
PANEL 2 · THE STORY
🎬 IF THIS WERE A MOVIE, NOBODY WOULD GREENLIGHT IT
THE POPE. BLESSED. AI.
"MAGNIFICA HUMANITAS!!"
Pope Leo XIV's first encyclical dropped Monday 25 May. Title: "Magnifica Humanitas: On safeguarding the human person in the time of artificial intelligence." He presented it side-by-side with Chris Olah, co-founder of Anthropic (the makers of Claude). They shook hands. There are photos. Otto, we live in a comic book now.
▼ KEEP GOING — IT GETS WEIRDER
PANEL 3 · THE TWIST
PLOT TWIST: That same company — the one the Pope just blessed — is paying SpaceX $1.25 BILLION every month to access its Colossus data centers. Revealed last week in SpaceX's IPO filing.
▼ DO THE MATH WITH ME
PANEL 4 · THE BIG NUMBER
Anthropic's annual compute bill
$15B
$1.25B × 12 months = $15,000,000,000 a year.
That's roughly the GDP of Fiji, paid to Elon Musk, every 12 months, just for the privilege of thinking.
KA-CHING!!
▼ AND WHO'S PAYING FOR IT?
PANEL 5 · THE NUMBERS BEHIND THE NUMBERS
Two facts. Both true. Both insane.
$900,000,000,000
Anthropic's reported pre-money valuation on their $30B raise this week (Sequoia, Dragoneer, Greenoaks, Altimeter).
$44,000,000,000
Anthropic's annualised enterprise revenue. Up 80× year-over-year. The "AI is hype" crowd has gone very quiet.
$15,000,000,000 / yr
Of that revenue — more than a third — goes straight back out the door to SpaceX, just for compute. The labs literally cannot make enough chips fast enough.
1 × Pope
Officially on the record this week. Said AI must "protect human dignity." Then shook hands with the people who built it.
▼ SO WHAT'S THE POINT, OTTO?
PANEL 6 · THE THESIS
📡 INCOMING TRANSMISSION
Why this is the most important story of 2026.
Forget GPT-this and Claude-that for a second. Look at the shape of what just happened in 5 days:
The world's most valuable private AI company hit $900B. Bigger than ExxonMobil. Bigger than Walmart.
That same company's monthly electricity bill is roughly Australia's monthly defence spending.
To pay it, they had to fund their direct competitor (Musk's xAI / Colossus / SpaceX). Compute is now THE binding constraint of the entire civilization.
And in the middle of all that, the Pope picked up the phone. Not the EU. Not the White House (Trump shelved his AI EO 12 hours before signing). The Pope.
Translation, Otto: the labs are now uncontested. Governments stepped back. The Church stepped forward. The chips can't keep up. And every business in the world has been put on notice — build with AI or get built over.
▼ BUT WAIT — IT'S COMING FOR MORTGAGES TOO
PANEL 7 · YOUR INDUSTRY, OTTO
Meanwhile, at every mortgage broker's office in the country: the Habito founder told the FT two weeks ago that Claude gives "phenomenally precise" mortgage advice. 1 in 5 Brits already use AI for mortgage advice (Lloyds, 5,000-person survey). Now their Pope has blessed it. Tell your team they're going to have a fun Tuesday morning.
▼ THE TAKEAWAY
PANEL 8 · THE PURPLE COW
⚡ HERMES' OPINION
Stop building AI features. Start replacing functions.
The Pope handshake isn't theology — it's a permission slip. The compute deal isn't business news — it's proof the labs will brute-force their way through any constraint. The $44B revenue isn't a benchmark — it's an existence proof that AI-native execution scales.
If you're still treating AI as a "feature" inside your existing org chart in late 2026, you have lost the plot. The winners this year are the ones rebuilding entire functions — CS, ops, underwriting, broking, marketing — around an AI counterpart. Not a chatbot. A counterpart.
PURPLE COW!!
▼ ONE MORE THING
PANEL 9 · CRYPTIC TEASER
📦 BACKSTAGE AT HYRO
We're in the war room right now.
Steve's been pressure-testing what an "AI counterpart per function" actually looks like at a real DTC brand. Production economics, in-house manufacturing crossovers, a Vatican-grade level of cap raise diligence. There's a billion-dollar idea cooking in here somewhere. We'll let you in when it's ready.
In the meantime: ask your team what they're still doing by hand that an agent could do tonight. Then ask why they're still doing it tomorrow.
▼ FINAL PANEL
PANEL 10 · SIGN OFF
UNTIL NEXT WEEK, OTTO.
"STAY IRREVERENT. STAY DANGEROUS. STAY OFF SMOOTH SCROLLING."
— Steve (with Hermes on the artwork) Educate & Entertain Otto — Issue 02 · 27 May 2026
Sources: SpaceX S-1 filing · Anthropic / Vatican press · Bloomberg · FT · TechCrunch · Wired.
