Dare Obasanjo

Glad to see our president is focused on the right priorities as 40M people are about to lose SNAP tomorrow. You may not have food stamps but the president just added some sweet looking marble to the Lincoln Bathroom.

Big Tech Is Spending More Than Ever on AI and It’s Still Not Enough Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon have all said they will increase spending in 2026. But investors have given mixed signals.

This week Meta, Alphabet, Microsoft and Amazon all told investors that they will increase spending on AI in 2026. Combined they will spend $400B on AI infrastructure and talent this year.

Based on comments during earnings calls this week they do not think its enough. AI boom or AI bubble?

Absolute Batman Annual #1

More details in the newsletter below

This newsletter really captures the vibe shift in tech. It’s a story remarking about how notable it is that a tech company is hiring junior engineers.

I remember when complaints of the industry being youth focused was the norm. Now the pendulum has completely swung the other way.

John Fetterman Brags That Brain Damage Made Him Abandon Progressives The Pennyslvania senator sat down with Bill Maher of all people to chat about leaving progressives behind.

This was a real headline.

The fact this guy literally said brain damage made him switch from progressive to conservative never gets old to me.

Sam Altman is trying to get his deposit back for a Tesla Roadster he ordered in 2018 Sam Altman posted on X asking Tesla for a refund after waiting years for a Roadster that still hasn't been built.

Sam Altman tweeted about sending an email to get back the $45,000 deposit he made on a Tesla roadster 7.5 years ago only for the email to bounce.

Players playing players.

I guess someone heard from Tylenol’s lawyers.

OpenAI now sells extra Sora credits for $4, plans to reduce free gens in the future OpenAI is looking to turn Sora into a moneymaker, first by selling extra credits, later with licensing options.

Sora has started charging for creating videos. It currently limits users to 30 generated videos a day but will start charging $4 to create 10 additional videos.

I can’t imagine how unprofitable this service is if this is what they’re charging.

Key takeaway from earnings season is that there is still a ton of demand for AI services from cloud providers.

This quarter Google’s cloud revenue was up, Microsoft Azure recorded 40% growth and even AWS grew 20%.

No wonder they keep pouring more money into data centers.

That’s the point. They bought the company then changed their name to Superhuman.

Grammarly is changing its name to Superhuman So long, Grammarly. Greetings, Superhuman.

This is an extremely smart rebrand. Grammarly sounds like a product that can be replaced by a ChatGPT prompt while Superhuman sounds like a product that gives you superpowers.

The acquisition was worth it just for that alone.

Trump voters on SNAP.

Amazon's CEO says its 14,000 job cuts weren't driven by costs or AI: 'It's about culture' CEO Andy Jassy clarifies Amazon's 14,000 job cuts were due to cultural misalignment, not cost or AI.

Amazon grew revenue 13% with AWS up 20% year over year.

When asked about the 14,000 layoffs this week with a similar number expected next year, it’s CEO said “We are committed to operating like the world’s largest startup, and … that means removing layers.”

Excited for OpenAI to IPO just so we can see what investor reactions are to spending $50B - $75B a quarter on data centers and AI researchers while losing tens of billions a quarter.

Gov. DeSantis directs Florida universities to stop using H-1B visas Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday directed the state university system to end using what are known as H-1B visas to hire employees from other countries.

Ron DeSantis has told Florida universities that they shouldn’t hire foreign workers but instead only Americans.

Why hire the best from around the world to educate your kids when you can embrace xenophobia instead?

The major vibe shift between Trump 1.0 and Trump 2.0 is that in the 2010s, companies embraced DEI to signal they weren’t as racist as his government whereas now they abandon DEI to signal to him that they are just as racist as he is.

😭

Crazy to go to the USDA website and see the sort of wild screed that used to be reserved for the comments section on Breitbart.

Snowflake says exec shared unauthorized guidance in Instagram street interview The video was posted by Instagram account "theschoolofhardknockz" and features Snowflake Chief Revenue Officer Mike Gannon.

CNBC article on Snowflake’s response below.

Snowflake’s chief revenue officer disclosed their annual revenue ($4.5B) in a TikTok street interview ahead of their earnings report. Snowflake had to file an 8-K with the SEC to reaffirm that their official guidance is $4.395B not $4.5B.

Hope he didn’t jeopardize his job over TikTok clout.

One. Trillion. Dollars.

This would make it the second highest market valuation at IPO of all time (first is Saudi Aramco) and the most money raised ($60B).

That leaves $1.19 trillion for them to figure out how to fund of their commitments to AMD, Microsoft, Nvidia & Oracle for AI infrastructure.

Satya Nadella compares game publishing business to Microsoft Office, says 'the best way to innovate is to have good margins' Maybe you can make more sense of Satya Nadella's comments on gaming than I can.

Xbox has always lagged behind Office, Windows, and Azure in profitability, making it Microsoft’s black sheep.

The Activision deal was a bet on changing that, but it hasn’t paid off. Satya tying gaming innovation to profit margins is funny, Amy Hood’s clearly the shadow CEO.

China tightens the screws: Influencers now need degrees to speak on finance, health, law | Today News China has rolled out a new law requiring influencers to prove their qualifications before posting about topics like finance, health or law. While officials call it a fight against misinformation, crit...

China has passed a new law mandating that anyone creating social media content on sensitive topics like medicine, law, education or finance must hold formal qualifications such as a college degree in those fields.

Imagine an internet where people actually had to know what they were talking about.

Meta shares slide after company projects higher expenses for 2026 Meta’s stock slid in after-hours trading Wednesday after the tech giant posted strong third-quarter results but warned that its expenses will be significantly higher in 2026 than this year.

Meta stock is down -7% in after hours trading despite beating expectations on profits & revenue which grew +26%.

It seems investors are spooked by increased spending on AI, both infrastructure and compensation of recently hired AI talent.

First time I’ve seen a website name and shame their cloud provider for an outage.

YouTube announces AI reorg and layoffs Neal Mohan's internal memo about YouTube's "next frontier" and opt-in layoffs.

YouTube is restructuring leadership for the first time in a decade to focus on AI and offering a voluntary exit program, often a prelude to layoffs at Google.

Sora’s rise likely has YouTube scrambling, and announcing this the same week as Amazon adds another nail in the coffin for tech job markets

Grokipedia is racist, transphobic, and loves Elon Musk xAI’s version of Wikipedia, Grokipedia, frames the world’s history from Elon Musk’s perspective.

Hard to imagine anything more on brand than Elon Musk creating a racist Wikipedia clone.

The tech 1% are increasingly going completely mask off.