Hello there.
Happy Friday! Big tech is going bigger, raising more money for more data centers through more debt. Oh, and the guy from The Big Short has beef with Palantir again.
This week:
💻 $30 Billion in Debt? Sure, Why Not
⚡️ Depop Just Got Dropped by eBay
🕵️ Inspector Burry, On the Case
🤖 Is It Just Me, or Has Airbnb Felt a Little…Robotic Lately?
🎙️ Image Pickles & the Addiction Trial
Man, imagine what investing must’ve been like in the 80s… so simple. IBM was the biggest company, and it was “only” worth $100B. Anyway, back to the $3T and $4T AI behemoths…
In partnership with Porter’s Daily Journal
Don’t Be Fooled by Bread and Games
It’s happening right now…
A turning point that the former CEO of Google says is:
“The most important thing that’s going to happen in about 500 years – maybe 1,000 years of human society – and it’s happening in our lifetime.”
Yet very few are fully warning you of what’s coming.
Instead you’re kept distracted by the inane trivialities of “bread and circuses” while the very fabric of our lives erodes beneath our feet.
As one former U.S. Treasury Secretary says:
“When your great-grandchild writes the history of this period, my guess is that stuff about Donald Trump and Xi will be the second or third story.”
The first story they write about?
You and I have never seen anything like it before…
The dot-com collapse, global financial crisis, COVID-19 pandemic… nothing we’ve seen in our lifetime holds a candle to what’s coming next.
In short, I believe we are about to be plunged into a period of dramatic, almost unimaginable change.
And you need to be ready, or risk being left behind.
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Porter Stansberry
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💻 $30 Billion Doesn’t Spend Like It Used To
Google parent Alphabet just decided the best way to fund AI ambitions is the same way most people finance college: borrow a metric ton of money and hope it works out.
The company expanded its bond sale (i.e. raised money through more debt) past $30 billion, joining a parade of mega-cap tech firms lining up at the debt window like it's Black Friday at Best Buy.
UBS analysts lifted their forecast for big tech bond issuance this year, which is banker-speak for "we underestimated how much cash these companies want in order to keep their AI hype trains running." The pitch is pretty straightforward: interest rates are still manageable, AI companies still need boatloads of cash to build their data centers, and shareholders would riot if companies actually sold stock to fund expansion. So debt it is.
The bet works if these companies' AI projects actually start making money before they have to pay back all the debt. That might be a big “if”. Big Tech is taking on billions in debt while the actual return on AI investment only exists in predictions in glorified PowerPoint investor presentations. Every CFO in Silicon Valley is basically placing the same wager that their AI products will print money before the debt load becomes a problem. What could go wrong?
🎤 What do you think?
Is it over for software or is this an overreaction to AI?
⚡️ The Tech Ticker
Etsy is selling Depop to eBay for $1.2 billion, offloading the secondhand clothing app nearly five years after acquiring it for $1.62 billion.
Amazon has quietly shelved its Blue Jay warehouse robot just months after unveiling it, saying it was too expensive and difficult to do.
Rivian rolled out a dedicated Apple Watch app with vehicle controls, digital key functionality, and a battery status complication right on your wrist.
Google's Gemini app can now generate custom music using DeepMind's Lyria 3 model, turning text prompts into 30-second tracks with lyrics and cover art.
TikTok's Chinese parent ByteDance has an app that could replace Hollywood, according to a new report on the company's entertainment ambitions.
🕵️ Palantir vs. The Big Short Guy (Again)
Palantir went from "Brave New World" to "wait, what does this company actually do?" real quick.
Michael Burry, the Big Short guy who called the housing crisis and loves being publicly skeptical, doubled down on his Palantir short with accusations of accounting fraud. His thesis: the company is using aggressive revenue recognition tactics, with accounts receivable ballooning twentyfold while revenue only 6x-ed.
Bank of America piled on, booting Palantir from its US 1 List of top investment ideas. That's Wall Street code for "we're no longer willing to defend Palantir’s current stock price in client meetings." The stock now trades at its biggest discount to analyst price targets since late 2022, which is either a screaming buy signal or a flashing warning that the AI emperor has no clothes.
Burry's core argument remains that Palantir is a consulting firm cosplaying as a software company cosplaying as an AI company. His general criticisms: they don't have a plug-and-play app to sell or any real "AI" of their own. Palantir's counterarguments: 1) you can't solve huge government or industrial problems with a generic "plug-and-play" app. 2) Their systems are what let institutions use AI like ChatGPT safely in the first place.
The truth is probably somewhere in the middle, but retail investors who bought at $80 hoping for $150 are currently learning an expensive lesson about hype versus fundamentals.
🤖 All Eyes on AI
Airbnb’s CEO says its custom-built AI agent now handles roughly a third of customer support issues, claiming the tech outperforms human agents.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei refused to hold hands during an awkward solidarity moment at India's AI Impact Summit.
Former SpaceX engineers raised $50M to fix AI networking, betting that something called “optical transceivers” will become the new AI hotness.
xAI is losing cofounders left and right following its SpaceX merger, with former employees citing frustrations over NSFW Grok content.
WordPress.com launched an AI assistant built directly into its editor, letting Business and Commerce users adjust layouts and get writing help.
🤡 Meme of the Week
🎙️ Image Pickles & the Addiction Trial
In this episode of This Week in Tech, the panel dives into the courtroom battle that could redefine social media, why Big Tech is suddenly allergic to the word “addiction,” and how AI, surveillance, and subscriptions are quickly reshaping the digital world around us.
📻 Tune in to:
Unpack the landmark US trial where Meta and Google are accused of “engineering addiction,” what Instagram’s chief had to say on the witness stand.
Break down the growing surveillance backlash, from Amazon Super Bowl controversy to Discord’s messy age-verification pullback.
Catch up on the AI arms race as the FTC probes Microsoft’s cloud dominance, and SpaceX pivots toward a lunar “self-growing city” before Mars.
🎧 Listen on:
⭐️ What did you think of today's edition?
That’s all for today. Write us and let us know your thoughts on the market, the newsletter, or the weather—we’d just love to hear from you.
Till next time,
— Brandon and Blake
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