Hello there.

TGIF! Get out your bingo cards! Who had “AOL will get resurrected with an Italian accent” on theirs? No one? Oh…

In this issue:

…Well, at least it’s a feel-good kinda thing. It’s nice to have a break from all the AI infighting. Now, over to you, Mr. Karp. 👇

So the CEO of Palantir, Alex Karp, went on CNBC this week and absolutely lost it. Like, the anchors didn't even know what to do with him. One of them said, "You sound pretty angry" and he responded with, "This is the voice of American business that is being channeled through me." Bit out of touch there, Alex.

Anyway, his main beef is that he thinks companies like OpenAI and Anthropic are basically scamming businesses. When you use AI tools, you pay for "tokens" (think of them like credits you spend every time you ask the AI to do something). Karp says these costs are getting out of control, and businesses are paying tons of money without really getting their money's worth. He also thinks companies might accidentally be giving away their secret sauce when they pump their data into these AI systems.

The timing was classically corporate. Palantir just announced a deal with Nvidia to build AI tools for the US government using "open" models that let companies keep their data in-house instead of sending it to OpenAI or whoever. So yeah, his rant was also basically a commercial for his own product. Investors didn't seem to mind, though. Palantir stock jumped about 9% after his little episode.

In the end, is he right that AI token costs are a problem? Maybe. Is he also trying to sell you his alternative solution while complaining about it? Absolutely. And for now, it appears to be working. Classic.

You’ve got mail! AOL just went public, and the stock popped 40% on day one. We are certainly living in… times, as they say.

Bending Spoons, an Italian tech company you've probably never heard of, hit the Nasdaq on Wednesday with a $1.7 billion IPO. They priced shares at $29 each, and by the end of the day, the stock was trading almost 40% higher, giving the company a market value of $25.2 billion.

Their whole business model is basically buying struggling tech companies and flipping them. Besides AOL (yes, that AOL, the one your parents used to get CDs in the mail from), they also own Eventbrite and Vimeo. The company's playbook is to buy these tired brands, cut costs, add some AI features, and turn them into subscription businesses.

For context on how far AOL has fallen: back in 2000, it was worth $164 billion. Then the dot-com bubble popped, and it's been passed around like a bad potluck dish ever since. Bending Spoons picked it up recently and is betting they can squeeze some more life out of it.

The IPO comes during a hot streak for companies going public, especially after SpaceX's massive debut last month. Whether Bending Spoons can actually turn these dusty internet relics into something valuable is another question. But hey, day one went pretty well.

In this episode of This Week in Tech, the hosts unpack a week where AI demand is driving up hardware prices, governments are reasserting control over advanced models, and the battle over who owns technology is becoming increasingly visible.

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Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake