Cautious Optimism

Tuesday. Today we’re looking at historical trends in AI pricing. How did China become the low-price leader? What really made American AI reviled for its costs earlier this year? And what’s the current state of play? Today’s headline is a hint, but read the whole thing. It was really fun to write.

Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat. Monday. The United States and Canada are back in a trade war. A waste of economic growth and NATO unity.

Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat. Friday. Incredibly, I think we just had a slow news week. That’s worth a news piece itself given we’re in the AI era. Next week brings a run of SaaS earnings, plus data from Nvidia. The latter is a key hurdle; a single quarterly misfire from the company could sour AI sentiment around the world. No pressure! Today, we’re looking at Starcloud’s new capital; Replit’s new free mode; and Ramp data regarding LLM spend.

Thursday. Wish me luck. I’m taking my oldest to a park playdate today for her upcoming nursery school cohort. The goal will be a stiff upper lip and a bag full of pouches. Today, we’re looking at OpenAI’s early Q3 numbers, the Startup Media Collective, and then rounding off our coverage of OpenRouter’s sale by looking at Stripe’s investment memo.

Wednesday. The United States is buying back more of its own debt in a bid to steady borrowing costs rising around the world, rattling nations that run in the red. Stocks are mixed this morning amidst a slow week, with few large companies reporting quarterly results and economic data. Today, we’re looking at drone deliveries, the rapid implosion of data center polling, and whether or not we should write OpenAI off after a slow second quarter.

Tuesday. We have three big numbers to discuss, but first, I have to say my ‘Backing Customer AI Deals Is Not Circular Revenue‘ shirt has people asking a lot of questions already answered by my shirt! Today, we’re looking at how bipartisan data center agitation has become, food security, the value of data, and then 65, 100, and 400.

Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat. Monday. Nvidia is backing more data centers while the public turns against the AI infrastructure build out. Such are the times we live in. Looking ahead, this week is going to be full of interesting progress reports. We’ll be treated to Baidu, Klarna, and Pony AI’s earnings on Tuesday; Bill.com, Webull, Weibo, and Opera report Wednesday; and Thursday will bring numbers from Alibaba and NetEase.

Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat. Friday. I’m heading out on a poker trip shortly, so today’s newsletter will be slightly tömör. संक्षिप्त, if you will.

Welcome to Cautious Optimism, a newsletter on tech, business, and power. Modestly upbeat. Thursday. Going public? Might as well snap up a startup for $6 billion, right? That’s what Anthropic is considering. After all, what’s a single-digit-billion-dollar purchase when you are targeting a possible $2,000 billion valuation? Decart, the reported target, is a company I’ve interviewed before. It does two things: improves GPU efficiency and builds world models.

Wednesday.Inflation data for July met expectations. Headline inflation rose 0.1% in July and 3.4% in the last year. Core inflation, which strips out volatile energy and food prices, rose 0.2% in July and 2.5% in the last year. Stocks rose in response. This morning, we’re digging into the data-center backlash and how consumer agitation is winning a fairer deal for communities, without stopping most construction. Afterward, we’ll dig into CoreWeave and Nebius earnings.