No. of Recommendations: 5
> Seems?
Those are more public examples. That is at most half of what Brockman has donated. That is direct support, and symbolic. The real support is via lobbying, which is much, much larger and connects very directly to policy decision makers.
SamA's donation is just performative ring- and ass-kissing.
Think more about the lobbying, the federal contracts, and the players in Stargate.
Anyway, this is METAR: connecting it to macro trends - consider AI and AI related companies very volatile in the near term because it is so innately connected to funding in an industry operating at loss and trying to make it up on scale. Keep an eye on
* levels of token subsidy by foundational model platforms
* Ali Cloud research and Qwen, specifically, among international competition
* data center write downs and cancelled infrastructure products
AI is real. AGI may yet be real, and distinction may not be clear. The degree to which it is profitable in the long term remains to be seen. The massive compute investment will suffer real depreciation faster than other hardware. GPUs and NVMe under heavy usage will have a duty cycle less than 5 years. NVDA, STX, WDC will do well while the funding and corporate mandates last. MU may have mixed headwinds and tailwinds. They are vulnerable to growth falling below projections.
A heavy handed and heavily partisan approach to the US AI industry is going to be extremely harmful to a field that is in hot international competition for a small pool of elite research talent, is losing the trust of a population feeling layoffs and increased power and water bills, and is getting unpopular for moronically clumsy usage (Flock, Ring, ICE's Palantir apps, generated targeting that killed the 200 little girls in Minab, et alia).
If the US falls behind in this area - and it is at real risk of rapidly losing its early lead - it may be a difficult gap to close.
