The best Stratechery content from the week of November 17, 2025, including the arrival of Gemini, the most takeable companies in tech, and China's unhappiness with Japan's new Prime Minister.
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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
Gemini 3 Arrives. There was about a week of high hopes preceding the Gemini 3 release, and sure enough, Google’s new model is apparently state of the art across the board (although Anthropic maintains a lead in one coding benchmark). So what does that mean? Wednesday’s Daily Update was exactly what I wanted to read in the Gemini aftermath, as Ben explored the implications for the rest AI ecosystem; this week’s Sharp Tech episode builds on that analysis with an extended discussion of winners and losers from Gemini week. And there is good news: contrary to the claims of many anon accounts on X this week, the Gemini gains aren’t necessarily a death knell for Nvidia or OpenAI, even if, with apologies to Satya Nadella, it appears that Google very much knows its way around the dance floor. —Andrew Sharp
The Most Takeable Companies in Tech. Our goal here with Stratechery Plus is to provide rock solid analysis of tech first-and-foremost, but also China, the NBA, etc. Andrew is in the middle of that as the host of Sharp Tech, Sharp China, and Greatest of All Talk. However, at the end of the day, takes still matter: people get bored with spreadsheets and spreadsheet writing; it’s the opinions on the unknown that are the most entertaining and attention-grabbing. To that end, Andrew, an expert takesman, has produced the most important ranking of the year: the most takeable tech companies, from 15 to 1. My take on this very entertaining Article is that the first 14 companies were a preamble to explain why we just can’t stop talking about OpenAI. —Ben Thompson
China Is Very Unhappy with Japan’s New Prime Minister. In the past two weeks, Chinese diplomats and pundits have called new Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi an “evil witch,” an “American running dog,” and warned that her “dirty neck” will be “cut off” if she sticks her head into China’s internal affairs. This week’s episode of Sharp China explores why Takaichi’s comments on Japan’s options in the event of Chinese invasion of Taiwan inspired this reaction, including the history of recent tensions with Japan, and why the Chinese rhetoric is as much a signal to the rest of Asia as it is to Japan. Also discussed: Hasan Piker’s viral travels through China, and thoughts on a Useful Idiot Industrial Complex that continues to thrive in the digital age. —AS
