The interesting number isn't the $1.1 trillion. It's what happens when you put the two figures next to each other. Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Meta have spent $1.1 trillion on capex since the AI boom began in 2023. They plan to spend $745 billion of it this year. So one calendar year is going to come close to matching the three that preceded it, combined. That's the whole … [Read more...] about Big Tech Capex Reaches $1.1 Trillion Since 2023, With $745 Billion Planned for 2026
Reports
Amphenol’s Record Quarter Shows Where AI Capex Actually Lands
Amphenol reported record second quarter 2026 results. Benchmark reported a strong second quarter. Littelfuse and Sensata Technologies reported the same day. Four component and electronics manufacturing names, no AI accelerators between them, and collectively a better read on datacenter buildout than most of the companies that talk about it. The reason is structural. … [Read more...] about Amphenol’s Record Quarter Shows Where AI Capex Actually Lands
Paper Raises $34 Million and Figma (FIG) Has Already Lost Half Its Value on the Thesis
Paper announced a $34 million Series A on Wednesday, led by Accel and ICONIQ, with Designer Fund, Michael Grinich of WorkOS, Anton Osika of Lovable, and individual engineers and designers from Anthropic and OpenAI participating. Thirty-four million dollars is a rounding error in the current funding environment. Figma booked $333.4 million of revenue in the first quarter of 2026 … [Read more...] about Paper Raises $34 Million and Figma (FIG) Has Already Lost Half Its Value on the Thesis
Google Frozen v2 AI Chip Could Deliver 10x Efficiency Gains Over Current TPUs
Alphabet is developing a new AI server chip, internally known as Frozen v2, that would embed elements of its Gemini model directly into the hardware itself. The project, reported by The Information and confirmed in substance by multiple outlets, represents a meaningfully deeper commitment to custom silicon than Google's existing Tensor Processing Units already reflect. Where … [Read more...] about Google Frozen v2 AI Chip Could Deliver 10x Efficiency Gains Over Current TPUs
The Case for Shorting Budget Airlines as Oil Prices Rise
Ryanair just handed the market a preview of what a prolonged Iran war does to low-cost carrier economics: a 34% drop in after-tax profit, a 6% fare decline, and confirmation that even its unhedged fuel exposure — just 20% of total consumption — was enough to erase a third of quarterly earnings. If the best-hedged, lowest-cost operator in the sector takes that kind … [Read more...] about The Case for Shorting Budget Airlines as Oil Prices Rise
Morgan Stanley’s $2.3 Billion Capital Markets Haul Signals the AI Boom Is Just Getting Started
Morgan Stanley collected 2.3 billion dollars in debt and equity capital markets fees in the first half of 2026, up from 1.4 billion dollars in the same period a year earlier, and the bank's own numbers say the driver was AI infrastructure financing rather than the usual mix of corporate refinancing and opportunistic issuance. A 64 percent jump in fee income at a single bank … [Read more...] about Morgan Stanley’s $2.3 Billion Capital Markets Haul Signals the AI Boom Is Just Getting Started
Blackstone’s Futronic Deal Bets on Actuators as AI Robotics’ Physical Bottleneck
Blackstone's agreement to invest in Futronic, the Busan-based actuator maker, at a reported valuation near 675 million dollars is a small deal by the standards of the AI infrastructure trade, but the logic behind it is the same logic that has driven every AI-adjacent bottleneck trade of the past three years. If AI-driven robotics demand actually compounds the way its backers … [Read more...] about Blackstone’s Futronic Deal Bets on Actuators as AI Robotics’ Physical Bottleneck
Zhongji Innolight’s $8 Billion IPO Is a Customer Event for Marvell, Not a Competitive One
Zhongji Innolight's push toward an 8 billion dollar Hong Kong listing, potentially the city's largest since Alibaba's 2019 debut, reads on the surface like a new Chinese challenger stepping onto Marvell's turf. The supply chain says otherwise. Innolight is the world's largest optical transceiver assembler and a primary supplier to Nvidia and Google, but it does not design the … [Read more...] about Zhongji Innolight’s $8 Billion IPO Is a Customer Event for Marvell, Not a Competitive One
Wall Street Splits Between Oversupply Fears and an AI-Proof Supercycle Thesis
Memory chip stocks have sold off hard over the past month despite the sector delivering some of the strongest quarterly results in its history, and the split in how investors are explaining that gap has become the central argument in semiconductors right now. One camp treats the memory market as a commodity business that has never once escaped its own history: shortages inflate … [Read more...] about Wall Street Splits Between Oversupply Fears and an AI-Proof Supercycle Thesis
The AI Iron Curtain: Xi’s Shanghai Keynote Is the Fulton Speech of the AI Cold War
On March 5, 1946, a politician out of power stood at a small college in Fulton, Missouri, and named a division most of the world was not yet ready to admit existed. Winston Churchill, defeated at the ballot box the year before and speaking on foreign soil with President Truman seated behind him, declared that an iron curtain had descended across Europe. He did not create the … [Read more...] about The AI Iron Curtain: Xi’s Shanghai Keynote Is the Fulton Speech of the AI Cold War
