Newsletter

Programming note: * Our field report on enterprise AI adoption is now available, based on interviews with three operators with experience at Anthropic, OpenAI, Palantir, Salesforce, ServiceNow and SAP. [Read the report] * ARPU will return next Tuesday to look at Anthropic's IPO filing. AI Is a Bond Market Problem

Programming note: ARPU will return on October 1 to examine the evolving AI debate across capital markets. When Cash Burn Meets Science Fiction If you spent the past week reading the dispatches coming out of Silicon Valley's frontier AI labs, you could be forgiven for thinking you were

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday to look at the latest developments of frontier AI. When 15-Year Debt Meets 5-Year Silicon In the early days of the AI boom—say, 18 months ago—there was a comforting argument you heard whenever someone questioned the staggering cost of

Programming note: ARPU will return next Tuesday to look at data center financing. Turning the Singularity into a Bookkeeping Problem There are two ways to announce a multi-billion-dollar technology acquisition. The first way is to explain that you are buying a strategic platform to optimize cross-model API

Programming note: * We've invited a small group of former leaders from frontier AI labs and enterprise software platforms for a limited Q&A series on whether enterprise AI adoption and spending are gaining real traction. We'll introduce the first Q&A topics and experts

Programming note: ARPU will return next Thursday to look at the US-China AI race. Project Finance Comes to Silicon Valley We talk a lot here about how the AI era has murdered the concept of "capital-light" software. But for decades, that was the entire foundational appeal

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday to take another look at the financing of AI. The Micro-Macro Split If you want to understand how institutional investors are trying to process the $2 trillion AI infrastructure boom, a recent debate on X between two very different types of fund

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday to unpack the divide among institutional investors over the AI trade. The AI Colonization Palantir CEO Alex Karp has a highly specific, highly entertaining way of speaking, which often makes it easy to dismiss him as eccentric. This week, during Palantir's

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday to look at enterprise AI. Show Me the Money Earnings season occasionally produces a perfect A/B test in market psychology. This past week, two tech giants delivered similarly stellar results—and Wall Street reacted as though one had discovered a new profit

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday to look at some assumptions behind the AI buildout. Trash-Talking Your AI Partner There is a distinct flavor of awkwardness in corporate tech that comes from spending $100 billion on a strategic partner, only to end up training your sales force to