Happy Tuesday.
The current thing in tech and business is the bull frenzy around memory stocks like Micron.
Today’s lineupShopify President Harley Finkelstein at 11:30 AM
GE Vernova CEO Scott Strazik at 11:45 AM
Blitzy Co-Founder & CEO Brian Elliott at 12:10 PM
Lambda Co-Founder & CTO Stephen Balaban and CEO Michel Combes at 12:20 PM
GameStop Chairman & CEO Ryan Cohen at 12:30 PM
by John Coogan
OpenAI vs. Elon Trial Continues
It’s week two now and the Oakland courthouse continues to deliver top-tier tech drama. Elon testified for more than seven hours last week, now Greg Brockman is getting grilled over personal financial incentives, his $30B OpenAI stake, and links to various angel investments.
Mike Isaac has a great play-by-play of the Brockman testimony.
U.S. Government Will Review AI Models
OpenAI and Anthropic actually signed on two years ago to give the U.S. government early access to unreleased frontier AI models for national-security testing. Now, Google, Microsoft, and xAI have agreed as well. I’m wondering why Meta is not in on this? The Commerce Department’s AI safety body can test versions with reduced or disabled safeguards to test for dangerous capabilities like cyber, bio, or national security risks. Probably good news for everyone? (George Hotz doesn’t think so.)
Coinbase Lays Off 14% of Staff
Coinbase is cutting about 700 employees, or roughly 14% of its workforce, as Brian Armstrong tries to flatten the company, reduce costs, and push harder into AI-driven productivity. Questions about the framing: AI is not the number one cause, and the team is not insanely huge, but the goal is clearly lightly AI-enabled leanness. Fewer layers and managers, larger teams and more individual-contributions. Some debate here over crypto market cycles and the realities of managing a large organization. Is it actually underrated to be able to scale a workforce up and down quickly?
Digesting Meta Earnings
Meta’s core ad business is ripping, Q1 up 33%. Strong ad impressions and margins, but the market is worried that the beautiful cash machine is turning into an AI capex furnace. $125-145B is a lot of capex, especially for a company without a cloud business that can resell capacity. Even xAI is finding it hard to drive demand for near-frontier, but slightly lagging models, but Elon has moved quickly to solve the problem with a Cursor partnership. The stock is cheap right now, but investors are unclear about the payoff around all the AI spend. There’s also legal/regulatory risk. The cash machine is a really good cash machine though.
HeadlinesBrad Gerstner makes bull case for memory stocks on CNBC
Michael Burry: $56 Billion for eBay, Makes Perfect Sense
EBay responds to GameStop’s takeover bid
𝕏 user makes AI bottlenecks dashboard
David Sacks says AI capex will add 2.5-3% tailwind to GDP
WSJ: GE’s Latest Invention? ‘Vernova,’ the New Name for Its Power Business
WSJ: GE Vernova Lifts Outlook on Surge From Data Center Demand
ElevenLabs crosses $500M in ARR
WSJ: How Jet Engines Are Powering Data Centers
WSJ: Google, Microsoft and xAI Agree to Share Early AI Models with U.S.
Reuters: Crypto exchange Coinbase to cut about 14% of workforce in AI-driven restructuring
WSJ: James Murdoch in Talks to Buy Vox’s New York Magazine and Podcast Division
WSJ: Meta’s Cheap Stock Is an Investor Trap
FT: Elon Musk and SEC propose to settle Twitter lawsuit for just $1.5mn
WSJ: The U.S. Wants to Break China’s Drone Dominance. Here’s Where It Will Struggle.
FT: The law firm that shaped Wall Street and the world
WSJ: Is Technology Taking the Sport Out of Hunting and Fishing?
Bloomberg: Anthropic Unveils AI Agents to Field Financial Services Tasks
FT: Everyone loves Nintendo — except investors
New trailer for Christopher Nolan's ‘THE ODYSSEY’ released
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