Chamath Palihapitiya
· Chamath Palihapitiya
· June 07, 2026 at 19:34
· ⏱ 4 min read
| Read on Substack ↗
Summary
The newsletter summarizes three major stories: a critical Zcash bug discovered by an AI model, Helion Energy's progress toward commercial fusion, and Berkshire Hathaway's acquisition of homebuilder Taylor Morrison. It argues that AI is accelerating security auditing, fusion is nearing commercial reality, and Berkshire is actively deploying capital under new leadership.
•Security researcher Taylor Hornby used Anthropic's Opus 4.8 AI model to find a critical bug in Zcash's Orchard shielded pool that allowed counterfeit ZEC generation; the bug existed since May 31, 2022.
•The bug enabled double-spending by allowing multiple nullifiers for the same coin; Hornby's proof-of-concept created 10 million ZEC.
•Zcash developers shipped an emergency soft fork on June 2, followed by a network upgrade on June 3; a proposed Ironwood upgrade would launch a new shielded pool for supply verification.
•This is the second critical Zcash bug in 90 days — the first was in March in the legacy Sprout pool.
•Helion Energy raised $465M Series G at a $15.5B post-money valuation to build Orion, its first commercial fusion plant, with a power-purchase agreement to deliver electricity to Microsoft by 2028.
•Berkshire Hathaway acquired Taylor Morrison for $6.8B (24% premium); it is Greg Abel's first multibillion-dollar deal since taking over from Warren Buffett.