Syz the moment

Meta’s employees ran up a staggering internal AI bill in a single month. The number is reshaping how Big Tech thinks about the cost of intelligence.

The proposal, reportedly floated by Sam Altman, would see leading AI companies allocate a small ownership stake to the public through a vehicle similar to Alaska's Permanent Fund. The idea is simple: if AI is set to create trillions of dollars in value, the public should directly share in the upside. The move could also help ease growing political pressure as Washington scrutinizes AI over jobs, cybersecurity, data centers, and national security. OpenAI and Anthropic have already seen their latest AI models delayed by regulatory review. The proposal would ideally extend beyond OpenAI to companies such as Anthropic, Google, and Meta, although it remains unclear whether they would participate. The discussions are still at an early, conceptual stage and would likely require congressional approval. If implemented, it would mark one of the most significant shifts in the relationship between government and private technology companies, potentially creating a new model where the wealth generated by AI is shared not only with investors, but with the public itself. Source: FT

More than $730 billion in market value has been erased across Asian equity markets today as AI and semiconductor stocks came under heavy selling pressure. 🇰🇷 South Korea's KOSPI: -7.89% ($324B wiped out) 🇯🇵 Japan's Nikkei: -2.47% ($214B wiped out) 🇨🇳 China's Shanghai Composite: -2.1% ($191B wiped out) The selloff follows two major warnings over the weekend. The IMF cautioned that AI-related equity valuations have become increasingly speculative and detached from fundamentals. Meanwhile, Wealspring Asset, whose founder famously called the 2007 market peak, warned that a massive global AI bubble has formed, adding that its "collapse point may not be far away." After months of relentless optimism, markets are suddenly being forced to price in the possibility that AI expectations have run too far, too fast. Source: Bull Theory

Meta Platforms (NASDAQ:META) climbed more than 10% on Wednesday after a report said the social media company is developing a cloud computing business that would monetize surplus artificial intelligence computing capacity. Meta's plan to monetize excess AI compute may have exposed the first real crack in the AI CapEx narrative. If hyperscalers can generate revenue from spare capacity, or eventually reduce spending without sacrificing AI capabilities, the market's assumption of persistent compute scarcity comes into question. That would be a negative for the hardware and infrastructure layer, but potentially positive for hyperscalers that can monetize existing assets more efficiently (more here). Chart below shows KOSPI, SOX and META (inverted). Source: TME

Source: FT, RBC

The restrictions, imposed on June 12 over national security concerns, have now been fully removed after Anthropic agreed to strengthen safeguards and coordinate with the US government on AI security. Anthropic said it expects to restore user access starting Wednesday. Source: Bull Theory

Advisers have reportedly cautioned that OpenAI could suffer from a lack of enthusiasm from retail investors. Source: Trend Spider, NYT

Even Tim Cook recently said the current cost pressures are unlike anything he's seen in more than 40 years in the business. The first inflation wave came from supply chain disruptions. The second was driven by tariffs and energy prices. But this third wave could be different. Tariffs can be negotiated. Oil prices eventually fall as supply catches up. AI infrastructure spending doesn't work that way. This isn't a temporary supply shock. It's a massive demand shock that's still in its early stages. The five largest hyperscalers are expected to spend roughly $741 billion on AI infrastructure this year—up about 75% from last year. Much of that investment hasn't even translated into physical deployments yet. That means today's price pressures may be the beginning, not the peak. Here's why. AI requires enormous amounts of high-bandwidth memory and advanced chips. Those same components are also used in smartphones, laptops, gaming consoles, automobiles, and countless other electronics. As AI companies absorb a growing share of the available supply, they aren't just increasing the cost of AI—they're putting upward pressure on prices across the broader electronics market. We're already seeing signs of that. Apple and Microsoft recently raised prices on products including MacBooks, iPads, and Xbox consoles while pointing to higher component costs and memory constraints. Nintendo and Sony had already announced similar price increases weeks earlier. This isn't one company passing through higher costs. It's an entire hardware industry repricing around the same supply bottleneck. The Federal Reserve's long-term assumption is that AI will eventually offset these inflationary pressures through productivity gains. That may ultimately prove true. But several analysts, including UBS, argue those productivity benefits could take years to fully materialize, while the cost increases are happening today. That leaves the Fed facing a difficult balancing act: keeping interest rates elevated through a period where the technology expected to reduce inflation over the long run may be contributing to higher prices in the short run. If that's the case, this inflation cycle may prove more complex than the tariff- and energy-driven shocks policymakers have dealt with so far. Source: Bull Theory on X