The numbers are not a typo. OpenAI closed a $110 billion funding round anchored by Amazon ($50B), SoftBank ($30B), and Nvidia ($30B), valuing the company at $730 billion pre-money and $840 billion post. Amazon also deepened its infrastructure commitment, expanding its AWS deal with OpenAI by $100 billion over eight years. This isn't a bet on AI anymore, it's a land grab. (TechCrunch)

Amazon Web Services is dealing with a major outage across its UAE and Bahrain regions after 'objects' struck one of its UAE data centers, triggering sparks, fire, and a full power shutdown. Two availability zones are currently offline. AWS has not confirmed whether the incident is connected to Iranian strikes on neighboring Gulf states, but it hasn't denied it either. Full recovery is expected to be 'many hours away.' (Reuters)

For the first time, Claude is the #1 app on the App Store, overtaking ChatGPT. The timing tracks: Anthropic's funding news, Claude's expanding capabilities, and growing enterprise adoption all hit at once. If you haven't stress-tested Claude against your current AI stack recently, now's the time. (9-5 Mac)

Instagram just made content scheduling, the insights dashboard, and trending audio tools available to all public accounts. Until now, these were locked behind a creator account switch. Once you hit 1,000 followers, additional tools unlock, including Trial Reels, which let you test content with audiences beyond your existing base. If organic social is part of your distribution strategy, this lowers the barrier to doing it right from day one. (Social Media Today)

An AI-native biotech with Stanford deploying 37,000 AI agents running a fully virtual drug discovery operation, pulled off a $400 million IPO, the largest in the sector since 2024. The model: no labs, no wet benches, just agents running simulations around the clock. This is what the next generation of biotech looks like, and investors are buying in. (Fierce Biotech)

There’s a misconception that the world’s top talent exists only in New York, London, or San Francisco.

If you’re building a team, it’s natural to default to hiring locally. And great companies absolutely do hire locally. But the world’s best companies don’t limit themselves to just one geography.

Companies like Accenture, Deloitte, and Amazon hire around the world, not as a fallback plan, not as a “cheap outsourcing” tactic, but because certain regions have competitive advantages in specific skills.

They build hubs where talent thrives.
And that talent is everywhere.

If trillion-dollar companies are hiring across South Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, and the U.S., it’s not because they “have to.”

It’s because it works.

Most founders know that Amazon Web Services (AWS) has a presence in South Africa, but fewer people realize just how deep it goes.

AWS has had engineering operations in Cape Town for two decades. In fact, some of the engineering behind Amazon Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) (which is literally the foundation of AWS) was developed by teams in Cape Town as early as the mid-2000s.

According to its own economic impact study, AWS plans to invest the equivalent of approximately $2.5 billion in Cape Town between 2018 and 2029. That investment is projected to contribute roughly $4.3 billion to South Africa’s GDP and support about 5,700 full-time jobs annually during that period.

That’s long-term conviction.

So why South Africa?

Cape Town’s startup scene grew by about 13.6% year over year, according to StartupBlink’s 2025 report. Industry reports also project South Africa’s ICT market to grow between 6–9% annually through 2028.

That growth shows up in real skills:

This is the definition of competitive global talent.

South Africa doesn’t just produce task executors. It produces managers and leaders who understand Western business culture. Many have worked at global companies like Amazon, Walmart, and Sony. They combine technical expertise with leadership skills, making them valuable far beyond just code execution.

The cost savings are massive. A junior Software Engineer in South Africa earns around $1200 per month. That’s a fraction of what a similar hire would cost in the U.S., but without any drop in quality. This is the kind of opportunity that allows companies like Amazon to scale smarter.

The best talent is not concentrated in just one city. It’s distributed.

And, the best companies have realized that if you want to access the top 1%, you have to look beyond borders.

Take one of our candidates, for example. He’s originally from Poland and works at Accenture, leading enterprise-wide initiatives for over 700,000 employees.

Some of his recent achievements:

He does all of this remotely, across time zones, and across multiple cultures. He’s an enterprise operator executing at the level of the world’s largest firms.

Yes, hiring globally can save you up to 70% on payroll. That’s real. But the bigger win is access to elite talent with global experience, cultural intelligence, and proven systems-level expertise inside Accenture, Deloitte, Amazon, and similar firms.

If trillion-dollar companies use globally distributed teams to stay competitive, it’s worth asking where your next strategic hub should be.

Hiring globally isn’t about replacing local talent. Trust me, we place amazing candidates in the U.S. every day.

But a global talent pool expands your access to the top 1%, wherever they are.

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