Value in AI is moving to the layer that owns the land and energy infrastructure SpaceX's Q2 earnings, its first full quarter with xAI consolidated, look like a company losing the model race and spending to stay in it. The structure of the market points the other way. The short version is that capable models are multiplying while land and energy infrastructure is scarce, so value is migrating from the model at the top of the stack to the physical plant at the bottom. The dat

Why the AI Labs Win Volume and Lose the Margin. AI demand will compound for a decade. The surplus won't reach the labs producing it. The AI industry is having the wrong argument confidently. The argument on the table is whether demand for intelligence keeps compounding as the technology gets cheaper and better. It does, and it will. That much is settled, and the people who settled it are right. My problem isn't with the answer. It's that this is the wrong question to feel cer

What happens when the vendor, not the buyer, holds the risk. Based on the a16z article by Joe Schmidt IV and Julian Marx, “Lighthouse or Landgrab?” Source: https://a16z.com/lighthouse-or-landgrab-how-to-pick-your-ai-sales-strategy/ This article by Joe Schmidt IV and Julian Marx, “Lighthouse or Landgrab?”, is foundational reading on enterprise AI go-to-market. The premise underneath it is the one worth sitting with: the buyer who signs is pricing their own risk, not evaluatin

The Opening Salvo What a $53 billion bid for PayPal teaches us about how mispriced companies get taken out. On Wednesday, PayPal’s stock closed up more than 17 percent. Stripe, in partnership with the private equity firm Advent International, had reportedly offered to buy it for around $53 billion, about $60.50 a share, a 28 percent premium to the prior close. The market read it as a win. A premium, a pop, the possible start of a bidding war. But the more useful way to read t