Aswath Damodaran links to a blog post analyzing how trillions in AI capital expenditure affect book capital, earnings and cash flows across company financial statements. He argues the spending is distorting market valuation metrics.
As companies have invested trillions into AI cap ex, driven by the hope of riches, it is not just markets that have been roiled. I look at how the spending has percolated through financial statements distorting book capital, earnings and cash flows. aswathdamodaran.blogspot.com/2026/10/stock-pri…
Elon Musk says Starlink is licensed in more than 165 countries and has complied with Indian requirements for five years, asking why it still lacks a license. He suggests Mukesh Ambani has outsized influence over the government, quoting a post alleging crony capitalism.
Starlink is licensed in over 165 countries and has spent five years complying with every single law and requirement of the government of India, so why still no license?
Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi says he hosted Adani Group leaders Gautam and Jeet Adani at Uber. He notes Uber's partnership with seven Adani airports, including Navi Mumbai, and says the parties discussed AI, autonomous vehicles and the airport experience in India.
Great to host @gautam_adani, @jeet_adani1 from @AdaniOnline at @Uber. We’re partnered at 7 Adani airports, incl Navi Mumbai, that handle a quarter of India's air traffic. We talked about what’s next: AI, AVs + an even better airport experience for travelers across India, one of the world’s most exciting markets.
Vishal Misra argues that India has some of the world's cheapest mobile data and near-universal 4G coverage, crediting Jio, and that India chose the whole internet over a walled garden. He links to a Medium essay drawing on Dr. RS Sharma's account of the Free Basics decision.
India has some of the world’s cheapest mobile data, impressive bandwidth and near-universal 4G (~99.1% population) coverage. “Prime Minister Ambani” and Jio helped make it happen. But the real story is India chose the whole internet, not a walled garden.
Patterns reports that the Indian stock market added ₹18 lakh crore in a single day, its biggest one-day gain in at least five years. The post includes a photo.
JM US argues that the Indian stock market gained close to $200 billion after the H-1B announcement, with most gains in Indian IT firms. He contends restricting H-1B visas benefits India and that talent shortages push American firms to offshore work.
Indian stock market added close to $200 billion dollars today after the H1B announcement. Most gains came from Indian IT firms.
Here's what MAGA doesn't understand; H1B = America wins. No H1B = India wins.
The US economy is so massive that the 70,000 American citizens that graduate in IT each year are not enough to support the booming IT sector and the talent required to win the AI race against China.
If American tech companies can't hire talent in the US, they off shore it. Because there simply isn't enough talent. Nothing to do with Americans being "dumb". Americans are some of the smartest people in the world. It's everything to do with how massive the economy is.
What America loses with no H1B is an individual living in the US and paying taxes. Now employees hired in India will pay taxes in India.
Rapid Response 47 posts a video of Vice President Vance calling Microsoft the biggest abuser of the H-1B system. The post says Microsoft laid off 6,000 US workers in 2025 while receiving more than 6,000 H-1B approvals and filing 3,682 PERM applications.
.@VP: "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft."
Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 after certifying that it could not find qualified American employees — yet the company was approved for more than 6,000 H-1Bs and filed 3,682 PERM applications, including nearly 1,000 applications for the same positions as the laid off American workers.
.@VP: "The H1-B visa program is meant to allow companies to bring in really the best of the best from outside the United States of America for positions that are completely impossible to fill with American workers. Unfortunately, the program has become rife with fraud."
Rapid Response 47 posts a video of Labor official Sonderling announcing suspensions of Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe from the Permanent Labor Certification Program. The suspensions cite active federal investigations.
.@Sonderling47: "I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini — and also, due to multiple active federal investigations, @USDOL is suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the program."
.@VP: "There has been no company in the United States, unfortunately, that has abused this system more than Microsoft."
Microsoft laid off 6,000 American workers in 2025 after certifying that it could not find qualified American employees — yet the company was approved for more than 6,000 H-1Bs and filed 3,682 PERM applications, including nearly 1,000 applications for the same positions as the laid off American workers.
Satya Nadella announces a partnership with NVIDIA to start a new chapter for Windows, thanking Jensen Huang and Sriram Krishnan for joining the announcement in an attached video.
Antonio Alonso-Stepanov reports that researchers with .edu, .gov or .mil emails can access 8x B300 nodes at $4 per GPU-hour, below on-demand prices elsewhere. He says the nodes are sourced through nationalcompute.com and booked via an AI agent, as announced by Anjney Midha.
if you have a .edu, .gov or .mil email you can now get a full 8x B300 node for $4/GPU-hour. nebius charges $9.50 on demand and a lot of clouds are sold out
AMD MI355X nodes are $3 and the wait right now is under a minute
you just ask marshall, their AI agent, and it finds you a node
this is a major public good for researchers who've been priced out of frontier compute
Daniel Di Martino comments on a Department of Labor announcement suspending Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, Capgemini, Microsoft and Adobe from the Permanent Labor Certification Program. He says the Microsoft inclusion is puzzling.
.@Sonderling47: "I am hereby suspending from the Permanent Labor Certification Program some of the largest IT outsourcing firms in the world — Cognizant, Infosys, Tata, Wipro, HCL, and Capgemini — and also, due to multiple active federal investigations, @USDOL is suspending Microsoft and Adobe from the program."
Moses Sternstein covers a working paper finding prediction markets show no statistically significant bias by party, gender, or age, and notes markets anticipated Bolsonaro's Brazilian first-round win. He also examines the declining usefulness of the Rule of 40 for software companies.
A tracker account relays Michael Burry's view that $573 billion in AI financing over the past year runs through eight companies that lend to, guarantee and buy from one another. Burry compares the setup to the 2000 telecom fiber bust and warns guarantees could be called if AI revenue disappoints.
Breaking: Michael Burry says the AI boom is running on one giant loop and time is running out
Here's his breakdown:
1. Burry shared a report from Wall Street lender Ares tracking $573B of AI financing from the last 12 months
2. All of it runs through just 8 companies: Meta, Oracle, Microsoft, Amazon, OpenAI, Anthropic, Broadcom and Nvidia
3. They lend to each other, guarantee each other's debt and buy from each other, so one company's loan is backed by another company's promise to keep spending
4. Every deal depends on one thing: AI spending never slowing down
5. If AI revenue disappoints for even one season, the guarantees could all get called at once, right when the companies backing them are at their weakest
6. Burry says it's the same circular financing that turned the 2000 telecom fiber boom into a bust
Burry claims the stock market in the first stage of grief and the crash is soon
Keshav Lohia highlights Mercor offering $20 per hour to watch Indian cricket matches to help train AI models. The post is a brief, promotional take with an attached photo.
The post argues the Navy turned to Anduril because only two U.S. yards build nuclear submarines and deliver far below the required rate, with China's shipbuilding capacity vastly larger. Anduril is investing $3.7 billion in a new Sparrows Point shipyard, Arsenal-2, with operations planned for 2030.
The US Navy just paid $2.9 billion to a company that has never built a submarine. Here's why they had no choice.
America has exactly two shipyards that can build nuclear subs. Electric Boat in Connecticut. Newport News in Virginia. The Navy needs two Virginia-class boats a year from them. They deliver 1.1.
Then it gets worse. Under AUKUS, America promised to sell Australia 3 to 5 Virginia-class submarines starting in the early 2030s. We signed a deal to export a product we can't build fast enough for our own fleet.
And the number behind all of it comes from the Navy's own intelligence office. China's shipbuilding capacity sits around 23 million tons a year. America's is about 100,000 tons. 230 times larger. One Chinese shipbuilder, CSSC, built more commercial tonnage in a single year than every American yard combined has built since World War II.
Both incumbent sub yards carry backlogs stretching past 2040, and the supplier base behind them shrank by thousands of companies after the Cold War. You cannot order your way out of that. There was physically no third option to call.
So the Navy invented one. Anduril adds $3.7 billion of its own money, breaks ground on the bones of Bethlehem Steel at Sparrows Point, once the largest steelworks on earth, shuttered in 2012, the yard complex that fed the fleet that won WWII. Hiring starts in 2029. Operations in 2030.
Four years from announcement to first output, and in American shipbuilding that counts as a sprint.
a16z contends that AI has removed data-access bottlenecks, shifting the CFO from scorekeeper toward builder of the operating system the company runs on. It highlights AI-native finance tools in its portfolio and the emergence of the finance engineer.
a16zby Seema Amble··✉ newsletter
“The last generation of software helped finance professionals manage the work. This generation does the work itself.”— Seema Amble
a16z's Ryan McEntush argues that data centers agreeing to curtail power during peak hours can connect to congested grids sooner. He cites Texas's queue growing to 474 GW, about 90% of it data centers, and estimates 100 GW of flexible capacity could be added without new plants.
Left: Texas's grid only maxes out about 200 hours a year, roughly 2% of the time.
Right: New data centers that agree to cut back during peak hours can skip the wait for more capacity. US grids could add 100 GW of them without building a single new plant.
Why Texas Is Making Data Centers Wait — At the end of 2024, Texas’ grid operator had 63 GW of large new customers in its queue. By this June, that figure reached 474 GW, more than five times record peak demand, about 90% of it data centers.
Tanay Jaipuria reports that Micron expects humanoid robots to require memory and storage comparable to Level 4 autonomous vehicles, including over 200GB of DRAM and terabytes of NAND. Micron's CEO believes physical AI could become a significant memory demand driver by decade's end.
Stratechery's weekly digest highlights pieces on Apple's AI-era walled garden, an interview with former Facebook election head Katie Harbath, and U.S.-China trade dynamics.
Developer Levelsio reports that many hotels are owned by governments, including Shanghai's municipality via Jin Jiang International's 539 hotels, and says he added a government-owned filter to his hotel-ownership site.
TIL a crazy number of hotels is owned not by public stock holders, not by private owners, not even by private equity funds, but by governments!
You don't see this easily, because you have to dig quite deep (or well dig upward actually) and they cover it up in lots of constructions
Like this hotel in Paris "Le Ballu", sounds French? Yes and it's owned by Hotels & Preference, which on paper is a French international hotel chain
Hotels & Preference itself is owned by the Louvre Hotels Group, sounds French too? Yes
But Louvre Hotels Group is owned by Jin Jiang International, that doesn't sound so French anymore? So it must be a Chinese company? Right?
No! It's the municipality of Shanghai!?
Yes the the local council of Shanghai somehow owns 539 hotels around the world including Raddison, Park Plaza, Vienna House, Golden Tulip, Campanile, Kyriad etc.
Other big government owners are the government of Dubai, Brunei and Qatar
So I added a filter [ Government-owned hotels ] and every hotel page shows the TRUE owner of a hotel, not just the chain!
🔲 Public company ☑️ Privately owned 🔲 Government owned
I love ETFs as much as the next guy but they do put a pressure on stocks to grow by 10%/year or more
Hotels have a hard time doing that, so how do you grow? You cut costs and big hotel chains have been doing that in the name of DEI and ESG and wokeness a lot. Locking down ACs, no daily cleaning, cutting corners, etc. it all saves money
Those cost savings mean higer profit margins mean growth!
Great as an ETF or stock holder, terrible as a hotel guest
Commentator Matthew Berman praises Tesla's Full Self-Driving for his 83-year-old father's independence and says Powershare Home Backup, now available for new Model 3 and Model Y with Powerwall 3, can extend whole-home backup by over two days using a vehicle.
Tesla FSD already turns a car into autonomous transportation. It's one of the most impressive products I've ever used. My 83-year-old father told me he didn't think he'd be able to drive much longer. Then he got Tesla FSD and can maintain independence.
Now your Tesla can also back up your house.
The biggest drawback of battery backup vs. a gas generator has always been limited capacity. This largely solves it.
If your Powerwall runs out after two days, drive to a Supercharger, charge for 30 minutes, come home, and you've got roughly another two days of whole-home backup.
Amanda Orson compares Trammel Crow and Sam Zell's real estate strategies through the 1970s rising-rate environment, quoting Zell on accumulating assets with cheap fixed-rate debt during inflation.
"We realized that if we could accumulate assets – particularly in an inflationary time – with cheap fixed rate debt, it was hard not to make a fortune."
Most of us weren't alive during the last rising-interest-rate environment in the 70s but let's rewind through the lens of two different investors:
Trammel Crow and Sam Zell
Crow pioneered warehouse development and was doing both lots of projects and some BIG projects (Embarcadero in SF, Peachtree in Atlanta). He had a decentralized partnership model. By the end of 1974 (inflation peaked around 12%) his annual cashflow was -$25M and he had hundreds of partnerships and $400M in short-term debt, of which $151M was PGed. (🤢)
By 1972, Zell not only had stopped his own apartment acquisitions (th…
Bill D'Alessandro argues that GLP-1 weight-loss drugs are disrupting every category of consumer packaged goods, from snacks to supplements. He advises investors in consumer stocks to try the drugs themselves to understand the shift.
Ryan McEntush explains why Texas grid operator ERCOT's queue of large new loads grew to 474 GW, mostly data centers, and why the state froze new permits. He covers interconnection, colocation and cost allocation issues.
