By Louis Lehot, Partner, Foley & Lardner LLP. Garage to global, since Y2K.#AskASiliconValleyLawyer · Vol. I, №35 · August 22, 2026

Friends,

The bond market spent the week reminding everyone who is really in charge, the first of our quiet September deals went public ahead of schedule, and Wednesday brings the most watched earnings report of the year. Thank you to everyone who joined us Monday night at the YC mixer, Thursday at our Ready for Anything panel on going public, and Friday on the water. TDK’s 100X is Tuesday and Wednesday, and legal tech’s biggest week starts tomorrow in Nashville. Here is the week.

In the Courts

◊ Paramount’s fight is now about the calendar and the money, in that order. At Wednesday’s case management conference, the judge urged both sides to be more reasonable with each other. Paramount has asked the court to make the states post a $1.88 billion bond to cover the cost of the delay, and the judge will not rule on that until September 24, days before the roughly $7 million per day ticking fee to Warner shareholders starts on October 1. Fact discovery opened Monday, and the parties are quietly identifying magistrate judges for a settlement conference. The trial date says March. The bond motion and the settlement track say the real deadline is October 1, so I would watch September closely.

Recent Deals

◊ Foley represented Riot Platforms in a 20-year AI datacenter lease worth approximately $9.1 billion. Riot signed a lease with a leading frontier AI lab for 191 megawatts of critical IT capacity at its Rockdale, Texas campus, with initial contract revenue of roughly $9.1 billion and extension options that could take the total to about $16.1 billion, and the first 96 megawatts expected in December 2027. This newsletter has been following the datacenter buildout for three editions. This is what it looks like at full scale.

◊ Foley represented Palona AI in its $20 million Series A. Palona is building an intelligence operating layer for physical businesses, and the round was announced this week. Readers of this newsletter knew something was coming: this is the first of the September announcements, arriving ahead of schedule.

◊ Foley represented LG Technology Ventures as an investor in Zenity’s $125 million Series C. The round was led by Norwest, with SoftBank Vision Fund 2, Qumra Capital, and Hitachi Ventures joining. Zenity secures and governs AI agents for large enterprises, which is quickly becoming its own category: someone has to watch the agents.

◊ And the queue is not empty. More closings are holding their announcements until after Labor Day, which is now two weeks out. Watch this space.

The Tape, Briefly

The stock market posted its first weekly loss since late July, and the reason was the bond market: the 30-year Treasury yield touched its highest level in nearly two decades, near 5.27 percent, before Friday’s rebound in stocks, and the Treasury said it will more than double its buybacks of long-dated debt. Health care had its best week since June after Moderna and Merck reported a successful late-stage mRNA trial on Wednesday. The week ahead is the one that matters: Nvidia reports Wednesday alongside the PCE inflation data, Jackson Hole runs Thursday and Friday, and Chair Warsh gives his first keynote there Friday morning, with the market putting roughly one-in-three odds on a September rate increase. One thing here matters most for dealmakers:

◊ The long end of the curve is now the discipline. The Fed may well hold in September, but a 30-year near two-decade highs reprices everything that borrows long, from buyouts to infrastructure to the datacenters above. The honest update to the financing thaw I have been tracking is that the relief is at the front of the curve and the tollbooth is at the back. Deals that pencil at today’s long rates are the durable ones, and Wednesday’s Nvidia report will tell us whether the capital behind the buildout still agrees.

From My Desk

Three new pieces this week:

◊ What Makes a Great CFO. The board meeting is running long, the CEO has just finished the growth story, and the room turns to the numbers. A companion to the Chief Everything Officer, on the seat that turns a story into something a board and an investor can underwrite, written the same week forty finance leaders joined us on the Bay.

◊ The Venture Market Is Not Recovering. It Is Reorganizing. The title is the thesis. This one follows the Q2 numbers piece: the old cycle is not coming back in its old shape, and founders and funds planning for a recovery should plan for the reorganization instead.

◊ Ready for Anything: Takeaways From a Panel on Going Public. My recap of Thursday night’s panel at Protiviti, alongside Golreez Naderi, Garett Poston of BMO Capital Markets, Yogi Goel, and Jeff Meyer. The short version: the window is open but pricing harder than it was in June, you do not control the timing, and the standard that matters is file-ready every day of the year, from a reconciled cap table to a public-company CFO and GC hired early. Optionality beats perfection, liquidity beats price, and readiness beats hope.

◊ Not mine, but worth your weekend: the Strebulaev-Jackson Venture Rankings. Stanford’s Ilya Strebulaev has built the first transparent, fully data-driven ranking of venture investors, where every point traces to a specific investment in a specific company on a specific date, with a decay factor that rewards investors who are good now rather than famous for one old win. The series covers the Top 100 US firms, the best angel investors, and the backers behind America’s unicorns, with the methodology published alongside, and the biotech Top 50 came out Thursday: ARCH and OrbiMed lead, and 28 of the top 50 appear nowhere in the overall top 100, which tells you sector lists matter. If you are choosing investors, or measuring your own performance, this is a better map than the reputation rankings, because the data is shown.

New in the GC Seat

The seat kept turning this month. If you or a friend just took one, reply and we will note it here.

◊ Bay Area life sciences: 10x Genomics in Pleasanton promoted Dr. Randy Wu to general counsel, succeeding Eric Whitaker after more than eight years, a Stanford JD with a UCSF doctorate in biophysics, which is about as on-brand as this neighborhood gets.

◊ And elsewhere: Artios Pharma named Michael Alrutz general counsel, arriving from Chimerix, where he helped steer the $935 million merger with Jazz Pharmaceuticals.

◊ And our own seat is still open: we are hiring. The Foley growth team is adding lawyers, and the posting is here.

Legal Tech, Briefly

◊ ILTACON opens tomorrow in Nashville, August 23 to 27. Last week this newsletter said the big legal technology conference is an AI conference this year, and the agenda reads that way: the platform consolidation question, which tools lawyers actually want, and how firm knowledge gets wired into the systems. The Zenity round above is the same story from the security side, because every legal and compliance team about to deploy agents will need someone governing them. If you are working through the buy-or-build question for your legal function, I am glad to compare notes when everyone is back from Nashville.

On the Calendar

Thank you to everyone who came out this week: the YC founders who filled our San Francisco office on Monday night, everyone who joined Thursday’s Ready for Anything panel on going public, and the finance leaders who spent Friday on the Bay with us. Four hours, forty people, one boat, exactly as billed. There are photos and thanks in my post. Thank you to our co-hosts at Open Future Forum, and to Jan Bertold, Murray Newlands, Yvonne Newlands, and Christina Bui. A few frames from the water:

CFO’s on the Bay

This month

◊ Final call: TDK Ventures 100X. Tuesday and Wednesday, August 25 and 26, San Francisco. Proud sponsor of TDK Ventures’ annual deep-tech gathering. If you are building in hard tech, message me this weekend.

◊ How Women Lead · Thursday, August 27 · Foley Silicon Valley office, Palo Alto. An 80-person reception and panel discussion.

September

◊ GC Lunch Series · September 11 · Palo Alto. The next installment of our general counsel lunch series. Details in my post.

◊ Women’s Leadership Meeting · September 17 · Foley SF office. A 75-person gathering of women leaders in tech and law.

October · Tech Week season

◊ SF Tech Week: Sidebar Summit · week of October 5. Capital Markets Event · October 6 · Foley SF office, an in-office IPO panel and reception with Open Future Forum, details in my post. AI Strategy at Microsoft: CFO Forum · October 7, details in Murray Newlands’ post. Founders n Funders · October 8.

◊ CTA Advanced Manufacturing Event · October 13 · Foley SF office. LP/GP Event with Jersey Finance · October 14 · Foley SF office. LA Tech Week: Sidebar Summit · week of October 12.

◊ AI/Tech Investing Forum · October 20 and Family Office & Private Wealth Management Forum West · October 21–23, both Opal Group events. One Way Ventures Summit · October 28, where we are a proud sponsor.

The full fall list, with descriptions, is in last week’s edition.

Closing Argument

◊ The Paramount bond motion is a reminder that leverage in a deal fight comes from the calendar. Every dispute has a date that changes the economics. Know where yours sits, on both sides of the table, before the other side does.

◊ If your deal borrows long, price it at this week’s curve, not last year’s hope. The transactions that pencil at a 30-year near 5.25 percent are the durable ones, and they will be the ones still standing whatever Jackson Hole brings.

◊ September is two weeks out. The announcements are queued, the calendar is full from the Bay to Nashville to LA, and my inbox is open. If you are raising, selling, or hiring into the GC seat, I am glad to make the introduction.

— Louis

Standard disclosures: opinions my own, not my firm’s. Not legal advice. Attorney advertising. Prior results do not guarantee a similar outcome.