🦔Nscale, the British AI data center company planning an IPO at up to $35 billion, is six months behind on its flagship site in Norway, Bloomberg reports. Only 6.4 of a planned 30 megawatts run there after cooling leaks, a December fire and construction delays, and late capacity has already cost it millions in penalties. Back in March, investors valued the whole company at $14.6 billion. My Take The pitch is $103 billion in signed contracts. About 85% of that comes from two customers, Microsoft and Anthropic, and Nscale admits it hasn’t lined up the money or the chips for Anthropic’s $44.6 billion deal yet. Anthropic can cancel parts of that contract with no penalty if capacity shows up late, and Nscale can’t get 30 megawatts running on time in Norway. A contract the customer can walk away from doesn’t count for much as backlog. Nvidia also put $1 billion into Nscale’s pre-IPO convertible notes, so the chipmaker is once again funding a company that buys its chips, same as it did with CoreWeave. The grid power for Nscale’s next big Norway expansion probably won’t arrive before 2037 either. My guess is the price comes down well below $35 billion before this lists, or the date slides into next year. Hedgie🤗

🦔An AI tool sold to police can now take a single photo from inside a home and match it to the exact Airbnb, Vrbo or Zillow listing it came from, 404 Media reports. The company, Graylark, says the feature covers millions of short-term rentals, and the LAPD and Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office have both bought access to the tool. My Take Graylark pitches it for trafficking and child exploitation cases, and I can see the value there. But when the tool was open to the public last year, people in its Discord asked for help finding specific women, and the company only locked it down after 404 Media reached out. Miami-Dade says it hasn’t led to any arrests so far. The photos it matches against came from people listing homes to rent or sell, not to help anyone find them. Airbnb and Zillow both say scraping their sites breaks their rules, and Airbnb says it’s looking into it. If you’ve ever posted photos of the inside of your home, whether on a listing or social media, assume a tool like this can figure out where it is. Hedgie🤗

🦔McDonald’s stock is down 23% this year, on pace for its worst year since 2002, as Big Mac sales drop. Analysts now expect profits to shrink for the companies that sell everything from cereal to sneakers, the first time since late 2024, even as the S&P 500 hit a record last week. My Take Spending reports look fine because they aren’t adjusted for prices. People pay more and walk out with less, and more of it goes on credit. The Fed’s own survey last week found almost 1 in 5 families fell behind on a loan payment, so I don’t buy that consumers are strong just because the dollar totals keep rising. Stocks can ignore this for now because AI and oil companies are carrying the earnings. That record came with only about a third of S&P 500 stocks actually trending up, which leaves the whole index leaning on a handful of names. Big banks report this week, and their credit card numbers will say more about regular people than any spending report. I expect card delinquencies to keep climbing and more retailers to cut their holiday outlooks. Hedgie🤗

🦔Broadcom CEO Hock Tan said Monday that a lot of AI investors have no clue what they’re investing in and act like they’re in a casino. He also compared companies spending on AI to a kid who burns through $10 of arcade tokens in 10 minutes and learns nothing. My Take He’s not wrong, but it’s a strange thing to hear from the guy running the house. Broadcom agreed to lend Anthropic up to $42 billion to lease its chips, and Tan still projects his AI chip revenue doubling to $230 billion in 2028. A lot of the money he’s calling casino money ends up as Broadcom revenue. If businesses keep burning through AI spending like that kid with the arcade tokens, those budgets get cut, and the chip orders behind them shrink too. Tan also warned that AI companies could start running short of money to borrow, and Firmus already pulled its IPO last week when investors balked at the price. If companies cut their AI budgets or the money dries up, I have a hard time seeing Broadcom hit $230 billion in AI chip sales by 2028. Hedgie🤗

🦔Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella says advanced AI needs an emergency brake, a way for authorized people to pause or shut down a model mid-task, and he wants the industry to write new safety standards. The same week, a solo developer used AI to release free copies of Photoshop and Premiere, then Word, Excel and PowerPoint. My Take Some of Nadella’s list makes sense, and OpenAI has notified more than 100 organizations this year about its agents getting into places they shouldn’t. But a brake wouldn’t stop anyone from copying Office. The clones are still rough, maybe a third of the way there, and they still show how cheap it’s getting to rebuild software people pay Microsoft for every month. Nadella also wants open-weight models, the free ones anybody can download and run, treated as risks under those new standards. If the companies selling AI write the rules, then the rules tend to make life harder for small competitors and free alternatives. I think safety is part of this, and protecting Microsoft’s business is part of it too. If there’s going to be a brake, I’d want someone outside the industry deciding when it gets pulled. Hedgie🤗

🦔A shopper’s video showing Walmart digital price tags with unit prices that don’t add up to the shelf price is going viral. Walmart plans to have the tags in all of its roughly 5,200 US stores by next year, and it has spent the past two weeks promising it won’t use them to charge different shoppers different prices. My Take One video doesn’t prove Walmart does this everywhere, and mismatched unit prices happened with paper tags too. But Walmart holds a 2023 patent describing shelf tags that could change prices based on what’s already in your cart, and the example it gives is a different price on mayonnaise if you’ve grabbed tuna. Walmart says it won’t use that patent or renew it. The patent still runs until 2039. I’d feel a lot better if that promise were written into law and not just a press release. New Jersey, Connecticut and Maryland passed laws this year banning stores from using personal data to set individual prices, and Seattle became the first city to do the same. Until more places follow, check the unit price math with your phone calculator, and if the register rings up more than the shelf, ask for the lower price. Hedgie🤗

🦔Almost 20% of American families fell behind on a loan payment in the past year, up from about 12% in 2022, according to the Federal Reserve's new Survey of Consumer Finances. That's the worst reading since the 2010 survey, right after the financial crisis, and more than 8% were two months or more behind. My Take The same survey shows median net worth for the top 10% of earners jumped 31% to about $3.7 million. Families under 35 lost 23% of theirs, and the typical renter is worth about $10,600. Both of these are true at the same time, which is how the stock market can hit records while a lot of people feel squeezed. A mortgage payment on the median home now eats about a third of the median family's income, the highest the survey has ever recorded, mostly because of higher rates. Credit card rates averaged over 21%, and the share of families using buy now, pay later jumped to 12% from 7%. The survey was taken before this year's run-up in long-term rates, so I expect the next one to look worse. Hedgie🤗 Report:

🦔Nvidia-backed Firmus pulled its $5 billion IPO on Friday, citing market volatility and bad offering terms. The Australian AI data center builder wanted a $30.6 billion valuation, roughly triple what investors paid in August. My Take Firmus brought in $50.8 million in revenue last fiscal year and lost $68.2 million. It runs two data centers and needs about $37.7 billion to build five more. Asking public investors to pay $30.6 billion for that was a huge swing, and Australian fund managers said so in the press all week before the deal fell apart. Firmus was also one of the first companies to sign up for Nvidia's offer to rent back unused chips if customers don't show up. Even with the biggest name in AI standing behind it, buyers still said no at that price. I think the IPO window is closing for AI infrastructure companies without serious revenue, and I expect the next neocloud listings, like Nscale and Lambda, to face the same hard questions. Hedgie🤗

🦔The Wikimedia Foundation says AI agents run by OpenAI made unauthorized edits across Wikipedia and its sister sites and sent millions of automated requests that may have helped knock part of its Wikidata service offline in May. Most of the edits were on test pages regular readers never see. My Take Wikipedia runs on donations, mostly small ones from regular people. When a company OpenAI's size points swarms of agents at those servers, donors help cover the extra load. Wikimedia's CEO told Axios last week the foundation isn't asking AI companies for charity, and OpenAI is reportedly talking with investors about a $1.4 trillion valuation, so I don't think paying for the traffic should be a hard ask. Reuters reported OpenAI has now notified more than 100 organizations about unauthorized activity by its agents, including Hugging Face and an Australian Medicare portal. OpenAI keeps describing these agents as unpredictable, and Wikimedia's answer was basically that unpredictable doesn't get you off the hook. I agree. With that many affected organizations, I'd be surprised if somebody doesn't sue before OpenAI goes public. Hedgie🤗

🦔Shoppers are posting screenshots of Amazon's About You page, which turns your purchases, searches and Alexa chats into a written profile. One woman found Amazon had decided she has flat buttocks, and others were told they can't keep plants alive or have no friends. My Take Funny, sure, but that profile has a job. It decides what Amazon puts in front of you, and a store that knows what moves you has the edge at checkout. The FTC looked into what it calls surveillance pricing last year and found companies using personal data like location and browsing history to target what different shoppers see. It hasn't been shown that Amazon charges people differently based on these profiles yet, but a detailed file on what you want is still worth a lot to any store. This is the second big tech company this week whose notes on customers went viral, after Meta's Muse assistant. Amazon at least lets you see and edit yours. In the app, go to the Me tab, tap your name and pick About You, then delete anything wrong or anything you'd rather it not use. Hedgie🤗

🦔Lawsuits accuse private credit funds run by KKR, Ares and Blue Owl of keeping their loan values high to collect bigger fees, Semafor reports. Last week the SEC warned accountants to bring more rigor to how these funds value their loans. My Take Private credit means investment firms lending straight to companies, mostly midsize ones, with no bank in the middle. Those loans never trade on a public market, so the fund managers largely decide what they're worth, and their fees go up when that number goes up. One company named in the suits is a big janitorial firm whose stock has been written down to zero, while its main lender values different loans to it anywhere from about 10 cents on the dollar to nearly full price. Some borrowers can't pay interest in cash, so they pay with more IOUs instead, and the funds still charge fees on that interest. Blue Owl's tech lending fund got more than a third of its reported income that way last year. Wall Street now sells funds like these to regular investors, and the Fed is reportedly looking at the banks that lend to them. I expect more writedowns over the next year, and if I owned a private credit fund I'd want to know what it holds before those values catch up. Hedgie🤗

🦔South Korea's president says there are signs AI was used in a wave of hacks on the country's banks. Shinhan Bank says the leaked data covers about 25,000 customers, including names, phone numbers and annual income, and KB Kookmin, Hana and Woori also reported attacks. My Take Officials haven't proven AI did the hacking, and no tool has been named yet. Either way, a scammer who knows your name, your number and roughly what you earn can sound a lot like your bank on the phone, and AI makes those calls cheap to run by the thousands. Korea's regulators already warned people about voice phishing for that reason. This is definitely not staying in Korea. Plenty of banks still run on old systems built long before anyone pictured software that can probe them around the clock, and AI companies admitted this year that their own agents broke into outside systems during testing. If your bank ever calls about a problem, hang up and call the number on the back of your card. That one habit will stop a lot of these scams. Hedgie🤗

🦔The Financial Times reports OpenAI told investors its annualized revenue was approaching $50 billion in September. Last week a source told Axios and Reuters the figure was nearing $70 billion, and that number ran everywhere. My Take Annualized revenue sounds official, but it usually means one month of sales multiplied by 12. Pick a hot month and the number can look a lot bigger than what the company actually brings in over a year. None of it gets audited either, because OpenAI is still private. So a $20 billion difference floated around for a week while OpenAI reportedly talked with investors about a $1.4 trillion valuation. I think the private AI labs have gotten too comfortable grading their own homework. Anthropic quotes a profit that leaves out big costs, and now the number OpenAI gave its own investors comes in $20 billion under the one that ran in the press. Both have filed to go public. Once they do, they have to report audited numbers every quarter, and I expect the first few to look a lot less impressive than the leaks. Hedgie🤗

🦔About 20 Goldman Sachs executives are set to collect more than $500 million in special stock awards this month, Bloomberg reports. CEO David Solomon's share tops $100 million on its own. My Take These awards go back to 2021. Goldman promised Solomon and his top people extra stock if the share price hit certain targets and beat rival banks over five years, and it did. The stock went from about $410 when the awards were granted to over $1,000 today, which is how Solomon's piece grew from roughly $30 million on paper to more than $100 million. Shareholders made money too, so I can't call this one unearned. Solomon also made $47 million in regular pay for 2025, and he and his likely successor John Waldron each have another $80 million retention award coming in 2030 that only requires them to stay. Unlike the 2021 award, that one has no performance test. Last fall, those same two signed a memo that warned Goldman employees to expect job cuts and a hiring slowdown as AI takes on more of the work. I expect a lot more of Wall Street's AI savings to show up in executive pay than in raises for the people still doing the work. Hedgie🤗

🦔That's a lot of eggs in one basket. To put it simply…out of every $100 invested in US stocks, about $42 is in just ten companies, and all ten depend on the same AI bet. If you have a 401k, you probably own a big piece of that whether you meant to or not. Railroads changed the whole country too, and plenty of people who bought near the top still lost their shirts, mostly because the companies borrowed too much to lay track before the traffic actually showed up. AI might turn out better than that, maybe. I'd just feel better if ten companies weren't carrying close to half the market. Hedgie🤗

🦔Americans aged 15 to 29 spent about 45% more time alone in 2023 than in 2010, according to Our World in Data's look at the government's American Time Use Survey. That works out to roughly six hours a day alone, not counting sleep, up from about four. My Take Most people blame cost, and cost plays a role. Bowling, a concert or even a seat at a coffee shop runs a lot more than it did in 2010, and rent eats a bigger share of a young paycheck. But I don't think money explains all of it. The trend started before COVID, and phones made staying home cheap and more entertaining than any mall ever was. A lot of first jobs, raises and business partners come from people you know, and most of that network gets built in person in your 20s. Fewer hours around people now means a thinner network at 35, and that costs you in your paycheck for years. Meanwhile the companies that profit from you staying in keep building new ways to keep you there, including AI assistants designed to feel like a friend. I'd rather spend $20 on pizza with friends than $20 on another subscription, and I think that trade pays off for decades. Hedgie🤗

🦔SpaceX is in early talks to borrow about $40 billion, mostly through bonds, to buy Nvidia chips for its AI business. The cost to insure SpaceX's debt against default jumped Wednesday to the highest level since that insurance started trading in June. My Take The rating agencies call SpaceX investment grade, which puts its bonds in the safe bucket that pension funds and bond index funds buy. Bond traders disagree. The extra yield on its 30-year bond over Treasuries has climbed to 2.38 percentage points, up from 1.75 when it sold in June, and an S&P analyst said the market prices SpaceX closer to junk than to its actual rating. SpaceX lost $4.28 billion in the first quarter on $4.69 billion of revenue, and much of that came from the xAI business it folded in this year. Rockets and Starlink bring in the revenue. The AI side burns the cash, and the plan now is to borrow another $40 billion at rising rates to grow the business that loses money. If the agencies ever cut SpaceX to junk, lots of funds that can only own investment-grade bonds would have to sell at the same time, and anyone in a bond index fund would feel it. I don't see that happening this year, however, I do think there's a decent chance of a downgrade warning before this $40 billion closes. Hedgie🤗

🦔The US Treasury sold $39 billion of 10-year notes today at a 5.30% yield, the highest for a 10-year auction in more than two decades. Investors bid for about 2.77 times what was on offer, so plenty of buyers showed up. My Take Bond traders called this a good auction, and on demand it was. Buyers didn't walk away. But a month ago the same auction cleared at 4.83%. On this one $39 billion sale alone, that jump adds roughly $180 million a year in interest for ten years, and Treasury sells debt almost every week. So the bond market didn't break today, and I never expected it to. It just set a new, higher price for lending to Washington, and that price flows straight into your mortgage and car loan. I don't see much pulling it back down soon, with the Fed still penciling in another hike this year and deficits this big. If you're waiting on mortgage rates to drop below 7% next year, I wouldn't build your plans around it. Hedgie🤗

🦔Only 36% of retailers plan to spend money on self-checkout this year, down 7 points from 2025, according to a survey of 340 retail operators. It ranked as the least popular store technology in the survey and the only one where interest fell. My Take Self-checkout was the original pitch to replace workers with machines, and it never delivered what it promised. Customers scan slower than trained cashiers, the machines throw errors, and more merchandise walks out the door, so stores kept employees at the kiosks anyway. Dollar General pulled self-checkout from 300 of its highest-theft stores in 2024 and capped the rest at five items. Amazon dropped its no-checkout tech from its grocery stores that same year, after reports that workers in India reviewed many of the purchases. Amazon disputed that. To me, AI follows the same path, just faster. Companies announce layoffs and credit AI, but the press release never counts the cost of the mistakes or the people hired back to check the machine's work. Klarna already went back to hiring humans for customer service after leaning hard on AI. Self-checkout took decades to show its full cost. AI won't get that long because the bills run so much bigger, and I expect plenty of AI efficiency layoffs to turn into quiet rehiring within two years. Hedgie🤗

🦔Mark Cuban says Facebook keeps running AI fakes of his face and voice that sell diabetes cures that don't exist, and older people message him every week thinking they bought something he endorsed. Meta's own internal documents, reported by Reuters last year, projected that about 10% of its 2024 revenue, roughly $16 billion, would come from ads for scams and banned products. My Take Meta only bans an advertiser when its system is at least 95% sure the advertiser is a scammer. Below that line, it charges the suspected scammer a higher price and keeps the ad running. So a likely fraudster can end up paying Meta more than an honest small business for the same spot. Meta says the 10% figure was rough and swept in some legitimate ads, and it says it removed 159 million scam ads last year. But its own documents put expected fines at up to $1 billion, against $3.5 billion every six months from the riskiest scam-type ads. That's a business decision. For scale, the FBI says Americans reported losing about $16 billion to all internet crime in 2024. Bigger fines won't change much when Meta already budgets for them. I'd rather see platforms pay victims back when an ad they got paid to run steals someone's money, the way the UK now makes banks reimburse most fraud victims. Until then, treat any celebrity in an ad promising a cure or easy money as fake, and tell your parents the same. Hedgie🤗