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The AI Handholding Economy

Adoption-Impact Gap We can think of enterprise AI adoption like a nationwide gym membership drive. In 2025, every company signed up. Executives touted their commitment to fitness on earnings calls. Employees logged into the app. Everyone has the membership card. The only problem is, almost nobody is getting stronger. And

The Logic of the AI Stack

Financing Jensen's Cake Nvidia's Jensen Huang has offered a clean, orderly way to think about the AI economy. At a recent conference, he described the industry as a "five-layer cake." At the bottom, you have Energy. Then comes Chips, Infrastructure, AI Models, and finally,
The Logic of the AI Stack

AI's Unit Math Problem

$800 Billion Interest Payment The unit math of AI is usually presented in terms of compute: teraflops, parameters, and tokens. But occasionally, someone does the math in terms of dollars, and the result is enough to make a CFO faint. Last week, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna provided one of the
AI's Unit Math Problem

The Business Model of God

Programming note: ARPU will be off  Monday, back on Wednesday. OpenAI's Reality Check The story of OpenAI's original business plan is already the stuff of Silicon Valley legend. Back in 2019, Sam Altman proposed a simple three-step process: build a God-like intelligence, ask it for a
The Business Model of God

The Friendly Fire Trade War

TSMC Enforces a Non-Compete The basic premise of United States industrial policy right now is that semiconductor manufacturing is a matter of national security. The government has poured billions into subsidies—and, under recent administration moves, even taken an equity stake—to ensure that Intel can build leading-edge chips on

Enterprise SaaS and AI Narrative

Programming note: We've just released our thematic report: Google's TPU and the New Economics of AI Deployment. It's an 18-page analysis deconstructing how Google is breaking Nvidia's monopoly on AI compute by exploiting the market's shift to inference. Access a
Enterprise SaaS and AI Narrative

Google's TPU Yard Sale

Google's Chips vs. Nvidia's Margin Google and Meta have long been fierce rivals in the world of digital advertising. They fight for every second of user attention and every cent of marketing budget. But in the basement of the internet—the data center—they are fast
Google's TPU Yard Sale

The Disposable Interface

Infinite App Store The primary way we interact with computers is through "apps." In essence, an app is a durable tool you acquire and keep on your phone or desktop. If you want to calculate a mortgage, you get a mortgage calculator app. If you want to play
The Disposable Interface

Microsoft's $30 Billion Round Trip

Programming note: We've just released our new thematic report: Enterprise AI Monetization: 2025 Scorecard. It's a 24-page analysis deconstructing how software giants are winning the AI revenue race—and who is falling behind. Access a free copy here. The Infinite Cash Glitch If you loan a
Microsoft's $30 Billion Round Trip

China's Efficiency Hack

The Post-Text Pivot We talked recently about how the "Scale is All You Need" dogma—the Silicon Valley belief that you just need vastly more compute to process vastly more data—is running headfirst into the laws of physics. It turns out that even if you have infinite
China's Efficiency Hack