Newsletter

The Missing Layoffs

Programming note: ARPU will return next Tuesday and take a look at the compute capacity constraints. What the Fed Discovered About AI If you are looking for a way to mathematically justify a $7.6 trillion AI build-out, the cleanest path is labor replacement. This is the AI maximalist
The Missing Layoffs

Finance Company in a Tech Trench Coat

Programming note: ARPU will return on Tuesday and take a look at some Federal Reserve research on the impact of AI. Neoclouds and the Return on Silicon If you want to understand the sheer scale of the AI build-out, you have to look at a rapidly growing category of
Finance Company in a Tech Trench Coat

Microsoft's Metering Pivot

Programming note: ARPU will return on Friday and take a look at the business economics of neoclouds. Software Gets an Expense Account A strange thing happens when software becomes useful enough to act like an employee: it starts demanding an expense account. At Microsoft's most recent earnings call,
Microsoft's Metering Pivot

The AI CapEX Story (Part 2): Awaiting the Business Model

Programming note: ARPU will return next Tuesday to look at Microsoft. The $7.6 Trillion Question Silicon Valley has always had a high tolerance for faith-based investing, but the current cycle has elevated this to an institutional doctrine: if you pour enough billions into building a technology, the business
The AI CapEX Story (Part 2): Awaiting the Business Model

The AI CapEx Story (Part 1): Trading Buybacks for GPUs

Programming note: ARPU will return on Friday with Part 2 of the AI CapEx story, exploring the macroeconomic paths to AI profitability. Manageable Luxury For the last two years, the stock market has treated Big Tech's AI infrastructure build-out as a manageable luxury. Sure, buying hundreds of
The AI CapEx Story (Part 1): Trading Buybacks for GPUs

Private Equity's Quiet Retreat

Programming note: ARPU returns next Tuesday with a two-part investigation into the macroeconomics of the AI capex boom, and the impossible choices it is forcing on the stock market. Dry Powder Is for Sitting On Quarterly earnings calls have a way of encouraging broad, optimistic narratives. They are highly
Private Equity's Quiet Retreat

Nokia's AI Halo

Programming note: ARPU will return on Friday and take a look at the sudden freeze in software buyouts. The 8% Halo If you are looking for the purest distillation of the current market cycle, you don't need to look at a Silicon Valley startup. You just need to
Nokia's AI Halo

Dell Makes Compute Visible Again

Programming note: ARPU will return next Tuesday and take a look at Nokia. AI Needs a Body In the early 2000s, "Dude, you're getting a Dell" was a catchphrase about buying a beige desktop PC to play Minesweeper or type up a college essay. Today, if
Dell Makes Compute Visible Again

SpaceX IPO Is the Ultimate Package Deal

Programming note: we will return on Friday and take a look at Dell. A Sentient Sun If you read the prospectus for SpaceX's upcoming initial public offering, you will find a document that reads less like a standard S-1 and more like a syllabus for a graduate
SpaceX IPO Is the Ultimate Package Deal

Huawei's Pivot to a New Scaling Law

Programming note: we will return next Tuesday with a look at SpaceX's IPO filing. Folding the Factory For decades, the chip race had one basic rule: make the transistor smaller. That rule is Moore's Law—the principle, first observed by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore in