AI Jitters
Wall Street Turns • SpaceX + xAI • Anthropic's Ads • New Disney CEO • Microsoft's AI Problems • Spotify's Physical Book Deal • Moltbook • NVIDIA/OpenAI • Amazon/OpenAI • 2026 iPhone Apps • Walmart $1T
As I write this, the stock market is bouncing back from a no good, very bad week. This rout was interesting as it seems to have been driven by two things. First, the fear that software as we know it may be over — and thus, SaaS companies may be over — seemingly because of an update to Anthropic Cowork (here’s a good primer). And that, mixed with some truly bonkers CapEx forecasts for 2026, clearly was a one-two punch. While Big Tech is largely rebounding today, certainly not Amazon. Which set the new high watermark with a $200B CapEx number. Such spend would undoubtedly wipe out any and all profits. Just like the good old days for Amazon!
Anyway, this isn’t exactly a "DeepSeek Moment", but there are shades… almost exactly a year later. And clearly there are just jitters as AI permeates….
The Inner Ring
📉 Wall Street Starts to Turn on AI
Concerns about CapEx and Claude Cowork...
🐦 Space Twitter!
Elon Musk tries to merge the AI Race into the Space Race...
I Note…
📺 Anthropic’s Anti-Ads AI Ads
I mean, Sam Altman is right, they are pretty funny. And it’s wonderfully subversive/ballsy to run them not just on television, but during the Super Bowl, no less. The tagline is great too: “Ads are coming to AI. But not to Claude.” That said, there are some very real risks here. First and foremost, there is a world in which ads actually do work for ChatGPT and as such, Anthropic has to follow suit. Now, you might say they have a different market — more enterprise and developer-focused and less consumer — and sure, but this ad is pretty squarely aimed at consumers? I mean, they’re running it during the goddamn Super Bowl! Anyway, there’s some real hypocrisy risk here. Not right now, but down the line. Which, of course, doesn’t matter right now. And I’m not sure how much it will down the line! Altman’s response, meanwhile, seems a bit unhinged. Not quite Jensen Huang “delighted”, but he’s clearly pissed! “Anthropic serves an expensive product to rich people”! A better response is something more akin to the Don Draper “I don’t think about you at all”. Anyway, I look forward to watching the real matchup this Sunday: AI ads. [WSJ 🔒]
🐭 Josh D’Amaro Gets His Wish Upon a Star
No real surprise as he pretty clearly replaced Dana Walden as the front-runner last year, when it became a two-horse race (out of "more than a hundred") — though I wrote about an event in August 2024 where it felt like (or at least read like) this was happening — and several things make it a sort of no-brainer, beyond the fact that he seems cut from the same cloth as Bob Iger (and shares a birthday — exactly 20 years removed!). First and foremost, he runs the unit that brought in 60% of Disney’s profit last year. Yes, it’s the same unit that Bob Chapek ran, which was perhaps the only real pause here. But Walden, sadly, was probably going to be too politically charged given the current administration (given her close friendship and association with Kamala Harris). And Disney really is more of a travel and services company now, and less of an entertainment one, just from that pure bottom-line perspective. Still, the content remains the straw that stirs the drink, so it’s important to keep someone like Walden both around and engaged. And so the President and Chief Creative Officer — Disney’s first — title makes sense. D’Amaro was also thought to be the most tech-forward of the candidates, working on both the Epic Games deal and the new OpenAI Sora deal, which will clearly be vital to Disney going forward. It will be interesting what, if any, M&A he engages in (the key to Iger’s legacy, of course), and when. Also, Star Wars! It feels like this is for real this time, i.e. Iger won’t return again — even somehow! [NYT]
✈️ Microsoft’s Problems Piloting Copilot
This paints a pretty damning picture for Microsoft’s AI efforts overall. The 'Copilot' branding is a mess (shocker), there are interoperability issues, a small percentage of Microsoft’s core customers are buying it (quite literally), and even fewer seem to be actually using it. Maybe a Super Bowl ad will fix this! (Snicker.) More likely, another big pivot/rebrand in 2026 remains my guess… Wall Street is worried too. Probably should have "hackquired" OpenAI. Bing could have been a thing! Also coming in to further muddle Microsoft branding: Anthropic! "Cowork" (and Claude Code) is starting to be a real problem for them on the product end too, it seems! [WSJ 🔒]
📚 Spotify’s Audio-to-Physical Book Tech
Their new 'Page Match' tech allows you to scan the page you’re on with your camera and get taken to the correct spot in the audiobook. Clever. And while I’m not sure just how large the market is for this, I do know a number of people who switch between reading a physical book and listening while on the go. I’m in the Amazon universe, so I do this with Audible/Kindle, but I’ve long been surprised Amazon didn’t have some sort of bundle deal to also buy the physical book. I don’t think there’s a discount with Spotify’s Bookshop integration, but Amazon could undoubtedly do this — if they could prove to authors that it was incremental revenue generation. Anyway, Spotify continues to build-out their own third-party bundles… [THR]
I Molt…
"There was no verification of identity. You don’t know which of them are AI agents, which of them are human. I guess that’s the future of the internet."
— Wiz cofounder Ami Luttwak (whose team discovered a major security hole in Moltbook). I appreciated Casey Newton’s framing as well for why it matters (and why it doesn not). My own thoughts below…
🤖 Where the Wild Bots Are
Should we be concerned or amused by Moltbook, a social network where AI can talk amongst itself? Maybe both?
🦆 AI Bots Are Molting
A chat about Moltbook, NVIDIA’s “$100B” bet, an Anti-Google AI alliance, the new IPO race, and Apple’s earnings....
I Quote…
"I just said I would do that under oath.”
— Ted Sarandos, who keeps finding new ways to underscore that he’s dead serious about keeping the 45-day window intact for Warner Bros film releases, this time under questioning by the US Senate.
Asides…
With the usual third-party data caveat, the trend-line here doesn’t look great for ChatGPT market share, obviously. Gemini’s rise is not a surprise, but Grok’s sort of is? Also, per above, just how low Claude is… [Big Technology]
How bad is the memory chip shortage getting? For the first time in three decades, NVIDIA may not release a gaming-focused GPU this year. Gotta focus on the business bringing in the real money… [Information 🔒]
Ahead of the Super Bowl, the NFL is now officially a 10% owner of ESPN, which in turn gets the NFL Network, rights to RedZone, and next year’s Super Bowl. The deal values ESPN at $30B. [The Athletic]
Unsurprisingly, the NFL is also using the momentum to renegotiate all of their TV deals — even though they’re just a few years into their old ones. A lot has changed in that time: beyond new mega deals for the NBA and UFC, Netflix, Amazon, and even YouTube are now major players in live and sports. [NYT]
Speaking on, in line with what I’ve written about a few times, Amazon is about to become the biggest spender in sports rights, at least on streaming (replacing DAZN). The race is on with ESPN… [Deadline]
The Switch is now officially Nintendo’s best-selling console of all-time at just over 155M units sold (beating out the Nintendo DS). Still about 5 million to go to beat the all-time leader, Sony’s Playstation 2, and the Switch 2 release may make that impossible. [Verge]
Is the next Xbox launching in 2027? AMD’s Lisa Su seems to have confirmed that during her company’s earnings call. But it’s likely to be much more of a PC/Console Hybrid. Microsoft needs something… [Verge]
When might we expect the second season of Pluribus? Vince Gilligan and team are working on it, but sometimes it’s too slow — for shure (as is the show itself). Maybe 2027 — or even 2028. Yikes. [THR]
At the same Apple TV press event, Eddy Cue basically confirmed that there will be an F1 sequel — F1 2? — given the (relative) success and new deal with actual F1, there’s no way Apple doesn’t do this, obviously. [THR]
Also kudos to Cue for this epic question (about the sequel) dodge/advertisement: "I’ve got a great announcement for it. We’ve got 24 F1 movies this year on Apple TV."
Meanwhile, Tim Cook still busy doing damage control internally at Apple for his Melania movie mistake. [Bloomberg 🔒]
I Wrote…
💸 NVIDIA and the Case of the Missing $100B OpenAI Investment
The massive deal touted by both OpenAI and NVIDIA as a landmark one now looks a lot different – unless you ask Jensen Huang...
🗣️ Alexa+ Plus ChatGPT?
As Apple goes with Google, Amazon goes with Anthropic *and* OpenAI?
📲 My 2026 iPhone Homescreen
As we gear up for the true ‘aiPhone’ and ‘iPhone Fold’...
I Spy…
This is a rather incredible stock chart. Aside from a small swoon in 2015, Walmart has largely avoided the massive peaks and valleys of most stocks — well, until now, with the rise to join the $1T club complete.
