Newsletter

Two Ways to Slice the AI Pie

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
Two Ways to Slice the AI Pie

Gloves Off in Enterprise AI

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
Gloves Off in Enterprise AI

The Moving Finish Line of AI CapEx

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
The Moving Finish Line of AI CapEx

Microsoft's Thin Layer Prophecy

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
Microsoft's Thin Layer Prophecy

Vibes vs. Margins

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday to look at Microsoft. The Audited Margins of AGI The thing about going public is that Wall Street does not trade in vibes. In the private markets, you can raise tens of billions of dollars on the promise of building artificial general intelligence,
Vibes vs. Margins

Megawatts for Rent

Programming note: ARPU will return next Friday and take a look at recent moves by frontier AI labs. Not All FLOPs are Created Equal If you read the financial press over the last few weeks, you might have noticed a glaring contradiction in the AI compute narrative. On one hand,
Megawatts for Rent

Meta Has Some Spare GPUs if You Want Them

Programming note: ARPU will return this Friday and take a look at the fragmentation of the AI compute market. Zuck's Accidental WeWork There are two ways to enter the cloud infrastructure business. The first is to spend twenty years meticulously building a global platform of enterprise software, storage,
Meta Has Some Spare GPUs if You Want Them

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