The AI debate tends to start in the same place. How much smarter will the models get? Who builds the best one? Who wins the race to superintelligence? I would ask a different question. At some point, does smarter stop mattering?
Read AnalysisHow much revenue does the AI buildout have to generate to pay for itself? I ran the arithmetic. For 2026 the answer is about $248 billion. By 2030 it is $1.26 trillion a year. $148 a year for every person alive.
Read AnalysisWe are in a historic buildout of AI, and I think this goes the way of every other revolutionary advance. Boom, then bust. This time is not different. Phase One gets the headlines. Phase Two gets the compounding.
Read AnalysisSpaceX has always captured my imagination. So did Asimov, Philip K. Dick, and yes, Star Trek: The Next Generation. What changed is that a public listing makes investing in space tangible. The question is what the risk looks like, and where value gets created.
Read AnalysisA 26-foot U-Haul from Beverly Hills to Austin costs $6,316 today. The same truck, same day, Austin to Beverly Hills: $2,008. U-Haul is not registering a political opinion; it is solving a logistics problem. For allocators, the price of the truck is trivia; the direction it points is the thesis.
Read AnalysisThe dominant narrative around AI assumes two things: it will eliminate jobs, and it will be deflationary. Both may be backwards.
Read AnalysisLast month I argued that infrastructure booms follow one pattern. The builders create the conditions. The adopters capture the gains. What triggers the handoff? Price wars begin when three conditions converge: capacity, interchangeability and buyer revolt. Own what absorbs the cheap input.
Read AnalysisThe AI deflation narrative may be correct. At some point. Between now and that payoff sits $1 trillion in annual spending, a set of supply bottlenecks with multi-year resolution timelines. The oil deal will take some pressure off energy costs. Two rate hikes in the next twelve months are a floor.
Read AnalysisI watched a lecture by Chad Jones, an economist at Stanford, on AI and long-run economic growth. He opened with a simple chart: US income per person since 1870, plotted on a log scale. A straight line. ~2 percent annual growth for 150 years. Will AI enable that to continue or will it bend the curve?
Read AnalysisLeopold Aschenbrenner, the former OpenAI researcher whose "Situational Awareness" essay became required reading across institutional finance, entered into $8.46 billion in put notional. The true believer is hedging.
Read AnalysisIt was exactly 30 years ago when then-Fed Chair Alan Greenspan became convinced that the 1990s technology boom would drive inflation lower. He was wrong. Fast forward to today. Kevin Warsh has a theory. AI will turbocharge productivity and drive inflation lower. I think he's half right.
Read Analysis“If the change outside your business is faster than the change inside your business, you’re going out of business. You just don’t know it yet.” – Jack Welch, 2000 Welch made that observation at the height of the first internet wave. Twenty-five years later, the same clock is running.
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