JUST IN: Memphis Mayor reveals SpaceX data center taxes more than doubled to $54 million, after $25 million last year made it Shelby County’s second largest taxpayer
Paul Young was asked about Elon Musk’s claim that data centers have Memphis booming:
Q: “Recently, just speaking on the revenues the data centers are creating for Memphis. Elon Musk recently tweeted that Memphis is 'booming' because of the data centers. He said that hotels and restaurants are full and called, tax revenue in Memphis tremendous right now. Do you just have any thoughts on that?”
YOUNG: “Well, we’ve talked a lot about the financial aspects of the project. I think that as we talk about data centers in our city, we want to talk about it in a balanced way. Of course there’s an economic side. We want to make sure that we are articulating what protections and guardrails we’re putting in place for the environmental sides that, people are concerned about, the quality of life, noise, traffic, all of those aspects."
"But, there there is tax revenue. I think this year it was $54,000,000 in taxes that have been generated. And I know last year when they generated about $25,000,000 in tax revenue, it was the second largest tax paying property in Shelby County. I don’t know where $54,000,000 puts it, but it is significant taxes."
"And so as we look at, the tax revenue, we also wanna look at how do we ensure that there are proper protections. That’s what this ninety day executive order has been about, and, it’s the conversation that we’ll continue to have with the community.”
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President Trump reveals the DOJ warned the head of a major AI company "get ready to go to jail, please give your wife a kiss goodnight...do you like the color orange?"
Asked why he isn’t worried that AI builders say there’s a 10% chance it kills humanity:
TRUMP: “The DOJ. We had a situation where somebody was reported to us to be doing something bad with AI. We called them very strongly and said, get ready to go to jail. Please give your wife a kiss goodnight.”
Interviewer: “Who was this person?”
TRUMP: “I can’t tell you.”
Interviewer: “Or this company?”
TRUMP: “I can’t tell you. But we said, do you like the color orange? Because get rid. It said, go home right now. See your wife and children. Give them a kiss. Good night. And that’s the story.”
Interviewer: “If the Democrats wanted...”
TRUMP: “Because tomorrow morning you’re going to jail.”
Interviewer: “If they wanted to make a deal to put that to...”
TRUMP: “Let me tell you, this person totally changed everything. Totally. Yes, sir. Yes, sir.”
Interviewer: “Was it a leader of a major AI company?”
TRUMP: “One of the big ones, yeah.”
Interviewer: “Okay.”
TRUMP: “One of the big ones.”
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David Sacks predicts Democrats will use AI legislation and frontier-model approvals to create a surveillance and censorship state 'turbocharged by superintelligence'
“It’s 100% that Democrats are going to make a major push for AI legislation in the next Congress. The question is what that looks like. And I don’t think you have to speculate too much to understand where it’s going.
“I believe that Democrats want to create a surveillance and censorship state that’s turbocharged by superintelligence. I mean, that’s ultimately the end state.
“How do you get there? You create a department, a federal department of AI. You require that all the so-called frontier models have to be reviewed and approved by that. The regulators give their notes on it. You can’t get a model released unless you address their concerns.
“And their harms will include all the things that the government is telling us that social media companies should be concerned about, like disinformation and misinformation and dissonant thought. All the things that the government was pressuring the social media companies to crack down on and censor during COVID. How quickly we forget all of this.
“They’re going to basically reenact that whole regime again using AI, and it’s going to be infinitely more powerful because we’re talking about superintelligence here. So I do believe that that is the regime that we’re headed towards.”
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Data centers in Loudoun County, Virginia: “We get $1.2 billion a year in local tax revenue, about 40% of all of our tax revenue...on 3% of our land”
Buddy Rizer, the county's economic development chief, explained how “data center alley” grew:
“We would have never looked at having 55 million square feet of data center, 230-some buildings. That was not the plan. The plan was to utilize the fiber loop, the internet exchange, to utilize a reclaimed water line, and buildings that were already built. That was the plan, right? And so that made a lot of sense.”
“But, you know, fast forward, today we are largely dependent on that. We get $1.2 billion a year in local tax revenue, about 40% of all of our tax revenue. And while that looks overwhelming, data centers take only about 3% of all of our land in the county. So it’s quite a return on investment. You know, 40%, $1.2 billion, on 3% of our land.”
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SpaceX’s Arizona data center, per a county supervisor: “We could be reducing property taxes across the board in Cochise County, the entire county, by 20%”
Frank Antenori, whose district includes the site, brought up the county’s tax math during a live Q&A:
“Here’s just something to just chew on. Arizona has an expenditure limit requirement that is placed on counties. If we exceed that expenditure, we have to rebate back to the taxpayers a certain amount.”
“So, if we’re receiving revenue in from SpaceX, by law, we have to offset that to the taxpayers. We have the potential to reduce, based on the projected revenue they’re creating, as much as 20%.”
“Let me just say it again. We could be reducing property taxes across the board in Cochise County, the entire county, by 20% to offset for the revenue here, because we can’t spend all that money. So, we have to give that money back to the taxpayers. The law says we have to.”
“So, you could see a potential significant impact to local property taxes. What that is, I don’t know. We’re going to have to do the math on it. But the law, if we have this large increase in property tax revenue, we have to balance those rates. So that will reduce dramatically the property tax burden of every resident in the county.”
“The construction sales tax, which also is the TPT, the transaction privilege tax, the retail tax, and the jail excise tax. So that will be part of the construction tax. We could literally use that money to pay the jail off in 2 to 3 years, as opposed to the 13 to 20 years.”
“So this could be a revenue to eliminate the half-cent sales tax in 2 to 3 years. We can get rid of that half-cent sales tax.”
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Texas Governor-elect Gina Hinojosa: “It is not that I hate data centers. I hate the way they are taking advantage of Texas”
Asked whether data centers still have a future in Texas:
HINOJOSA: “Right. Well, we have always been a pro-business state in Texas. But what changes now with me as governor is it has to be a partnership that benefits Texans. And right now what has happened is data centers have moved into mostly rural communities and there are no rules and laws to protect Texans and Texans are being taken advantage of. So the difference is we will have laws to protect Texans and we need to stop what we’re doing with data centers until we have those protections. We can have a strong economy, strong industry and protections for the people of Texas. Those things are not mutually exclusive, and I’ll make sure as governor I lead to ensure that that happens.”
TAPPER: “So you’re not ruling out that data centers will be able to be built in Texas, it’s just you want there to be regulations to protect communities, is that right?”
HINOJOSA: “And that communities have a seat at the table to decide if and how these data centers come into their communities. Texas is like a country. We are so diverse in all the ways. Different communities have different needs. And those communities have to be able to walk away from the table to leverage what they need for their community. So absolutely, we need to make sure they are partners in this effort. And that has always been my position. It is not that I hate data centers. I hate the way they are taking advantage of Texas. And that stops when I’m governor.”
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JUST IN: SpaceX needs at least $200 billion to enter wireless once you add up spectrum, towers, and antennas, according to Deutsche Telekom CEO, who says "welcome to the party"
Tim Höttges (CEO): “And by the way, I take his attempt serious. He has now bought 76 megahertz of spectrum. By the way, we have 400 megahertz. So if you now say, okay, he can buy the spectrum prospectively, do your math. These are kind of triple digit billions, which are needed to gain the spectrum position. Okay, if he has the money, go for it."
"Then he has to build a network. I can tell you, we have 85,000 towers. No, he can rent towers, no question. But this is another 20 billion to 30 billion, which are required. Put antennas on it. Okay, you can buy antennas and you can get maybe even in a cheaper way or you construct it in a new way, but you need money for that."
"So therefore, my assessment is that SpaceX at least if they want to play in that industry needs at least minimum 200 billion, but even beyond that to play in an industry, which we have, let’s say, professionalized over the last twenty years. Okay, welcome to the party.”
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Dylan Patel says CoreWeave will not sell you compute for six months and Nebius makes you prepay a full year upfront or six months at a "ridiculous price"
“The key thing here is who actually can deliver on compute. We did ClusterMAX, which is ranking all the clouds. There’s 323 providers that we’ve tracked, 77 that we actually reviewed, and 19 that we gave medallions to.”
“What that means is CoreWeave and Nebius are the best providers in our view. CoreWeave will not sell you compute for the next six months. They’re sold out. Nebius will make you prepay a full year upfront or six months upfront at some ridiculous price, but that’s the only way you can get compute from those guys.”
“Oracle and Google are really good as well. Google’s been moving up. The first ClusterMAX, they were bronze, and then they moved up and up and up.”
________
Source and full breakdown of his presentation:
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Bill Ackman says Neuralink and other brain-computer interfaces will let the blind see again within "not too many years"
“And you know, my daughter, who lost pretty much basic function, ability to walk, ability to speak, ability to see, is regaining function. She’s cognitively, as far as I can tell, fine. She’s relearning how to speak, and she’s learning again how to walk. And I’m confident we’re going to get her back."
"Biggest challenge right now is that the optic nerve damage from the pressure on the brain has caused her to lose probably 98% of her vision."
"But even there I’m optimistic. Spent a lot of time in the last few months meeting with all these brain computer interface companies, obviously Neuralink being the most famous, but there’s some other very promising lower intervention technologies."
"And this will be a period, you know, AI is going to enable us. We’re going to be able to get more signal from the brain, and we’re going to be able to interpret that signal much more effectively than we had before. And the blind will see again, and people who have not been able to walk, so to speak, paraplegics, I believe will walk again. It’s a matter of not months but years, but not too many years.”
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Our civilization would be winning wondrously if we are exploring the galaxy with Von Neumann probes by 2100!
Larry Page might be right. He has correctly predicted many things.
Microsoft's Mustafa Suleyman reveals Larry Page told him at SpaceX that by the end of the century he’d be exploring the galaxies at the head of a von Neumann probe
“Yeah, I remember in 2015 being in the canteen at SpaceX.”
“And we had our first meeting of the Ethics and Safety Board. So when we sold DeepMind to Google, we made it a condition of our acquisition that we would have an Ethics and Safety Board with independent representation on the board."
"One of those independent members, because Google had to agree, which was obviously Larry, Sergey, and David Drummond at the time. And then me, Demis, and Shane had to jointly agree who those three independents would be. And so we jointly picked Elon as one of them.”
“No idea if that had an influence on the founding of OpenAI or not. But so then we had our morning session and we were sitting down for lunch and I was sitting next to Larry. You know, obviously he was suspicious of me as well because he was like, you know, you’re one of those speciesists.”
“And he said, you know, I think that what you don’t understand, Mustafa, is that by the end of the century, I’m going to be exploring the galaxies at the head of a von Neumann probe, which means a von Neumann probe is a kind of self-propelling kind of robot that is able to gather energy from space as it’s careening through the light years.”
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Elon Musk explains how Neuralink lets ALS patients who are tetraplegic communicate at similar bandwidth to a human with a fully functioning body (June 2025)
“What Neuralink can effectively do is solve the input output bandwidth constraints. Especially our output bandwidth is very low. The sustained output of a human over the course of a day is less than one bit per second. So there, you know, 86,400 seconds in a day, and it’s extremely rare for a human to output more than that number of symbols per day, certainly for several days in a row.”
“So with a Neuralink interface you can massively increase your output bandwidth and your input bandwidth. Input being write, you have to do write operations to the brain.”
“We have now five humans who have received the kind of the read input where it’s reading signals. And you’ve got people with ALS who really have no, they’re tetraplegics, but they can now communicate at similar bandwidth to a human with a fully functioning body and control their computer and phone, which is pretty cool.”
“And then I think in the next 6 to 12 months we’ll be doing our first implants for vision, where even if somebody’s completely blind, we can write directly to the visual cortex.”
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Early Neuralink speech restoration data:
We are enabling speech to text and voice at conversational rates in participants with ALS. One participant achieved 75 WPM at 5.8% WER on a 125k-word vocabulary in their first week.
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Elon Musk explains how Neuralink lets ALS patients who are tetraplegic communicate at similar bandwidth to a human with a fully functioning body (June 2025)
“What Neuralink can effectively do is solve the input output bandwidth constraints. Especially our output bandwidth is very low. The sustained output of a human over the course of a day is less than one bit per second. So there, you know, 86,400 seconds in a day, and it’s extremely rare for a human to output more than that number of symbols per day, certainly for several days in a row.”
“So with a Neuralink interface you can massively increase your output bandwidth and your input bandwidth. Input being write, you have to do write operations to the brain.”
“We have now five humans who have received the kind of the read input where it’s reading signals. And you’ve got people with ALS who really have no, they’re tetraplegics, but they can now communicate at similar bandwidth to a human with a fully functioning body and control their computer and phone, which is pretty cool.”
“And then I think in the next 6 to 12 months we’ll be doing our first implants for vision, where even if somebody’s completely blind, we can write directly to the visual cortex.”
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Early Neuralink speech restoration data:
We are enabling speech to text and voice at conversational rates in participants with ALS. One participant achieved 75 WPM at 5.8% WER on a 125k-word vocabulary in their first week.
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JUST IN: T-Mobile CEO says SpaceX’s strategy is shape-shifting and calls satellite an inferior version of fixed wireless
Srini Gopalan: “I saw your note as well in terms of the shape-shifting nature of SpaceX’s strategy. So it’s hard to refer to them now as a satellite provider or a satellite provider that is going to build terrestrial. So hard to think about whether this is SpaceX alone or all of satellites.”
“So let me answer that question in its broadest terms, right? Here’s the way we think about broadband. We’ve got a great product in FWA and really in many ways, except for some deep rural parts, satellite is an inferior version of FWA with even more constraints in terms of things like what is the size of the beam, right? So I don’t see the synergy there between FWA and satellite.”
“In many ways, two-thirds of our FWA customers come from dense urban areas. We see huge growth opportunities in those areas still, all under the fallow capacity model. So we don’t really see a synergistic opportunity with satellite providers, and that’s a broader piece.”
“We see it as a complementary product, very much in the nature of T-Satellite. But if you’re thinking of that in broader MVNO terms, I think it comes back to the philosophy with which we operate MVNOs, which is what is the incremental TAM that something opens out? And am I willing to get into a deal for the incremental TAM?”
“If it’s a complementary product, I’m very happy to look at a resale arrangement, which is exactly what T-Satellite was, which gets built into it. But an MVNO is a wholly different thing. So I hope that clarifies where our head’s at on MVNOs and more broadly satellite.”
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BREAKING: Verizon CEO admits he assumes everything SpaceX says it will do, it will do, and execute flawlessly, and says he takes its terrestrial moves "quite seriously"
Dan Schulman (CEO): “I also operate under the assumption that everything SpaceX says they will do, they will do, and that they will execute flawlessly. That’s my operating assumption on it. I think to assume anything else, makes no sense from my perspective."
"And everything that we’ve seen so far, all of their announcements, everything we’re hearing in the market, and I’ll talk about that in just a second, is so far the path that we’ve basically predicted that they would do."
"We always knew that they needed a terrestrial network to have any chance at providing a competitive service. I don’t really need to re-review the satellite beam physics, but just suffice to say that without a terrestrial network, their addressable market for broadband services is relatively small.”
"It’s in very rural areas, and their service just can’t compete with a terrestrial network. In suburban and urban areas where like 98% of our revenues are, we’re somewhere between 100 to 1,000 times more efficient than they are. And when you think about wireless, it’s even more difficult with them to compete on a satellite basis."
"And so I think that SpaceX realizes this, and they’re exploring a potential path to creating a terrestrial network. It’s not surprising they said it on their call, so I think we should take it quite seriously.”
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Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai says AI is now increasing Google’s training and launch velocity and expects the next 12 months to accelerate because of RSI
“We are rolling Carbon out, first to a subset of trusted cyber defenders, before we expand access, and it’s being tested by the U.S. government. Beyond our Gemini 4 series, yesterday we announced Genie 4, our most advanced world model yet that simulates safe, realistic, interactive worlds with native audio in real time. This is an important building block for training robots and agents.”
“This rapid progress underscores our incredible model momentum. We are at the point where AI is helping us increase our training and launch velocity. I would expect the next 12 months to see continued acceleration because of RSI.”
“We have more models coming soon, including more efficient versions to help developers optimize for speed and cost, and to deploy across our billions of users.”
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Sundar Pichai reveals Google can already see Gemini 5 will be much better than Argon, and cites durable demand signals with long-term contracts backing its compute buildout
PICHAI: “The strength and durability of the demand signals we are seeing...to do something like this, you need to be confident at multiple levels.
“One is that we are fortunate to have early signals from such a diversified opportunity set, all the way from consumer to enterprise. We are seeing robust demand signals.”
HEATH: “You probably have more signal than any company on Earth, actually.”
PICHAI: “I haven’t thought about it that way, but you could arguably make a case for it.
“You have those robust demand signals. We also have the demand signal from Google itself, which is a cutting-edge enterprise in terms of how we are using and adopting AI.
“You’re also seeing the capability frontier. Independently of the demand signals, you’re able to objectively assess how that frontier is progressing: how that curve looks like, the scaling laws, how our new models are doing compared with our old models, the complexity of the tasks we are able to tackle, and our internal evaluations and benchmarks. You’re getting a firsthand sense of it.
“You’re also getting a sense of the breakthroughs coming from research, which gives you a sense of whether Gemini 5 will be much better than where Argon is. The answer is yes.
“You’re getting all those confidence signals across that layer of the stack. We also have durable, long-term contracts with committed revenue that we are signing. It’s not just hope. You’re planning to a book of business as well.”
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Oracle co-CEO explains why he doesn’t see GPUs outrunning demand anytime in the next three to five years:
Clay Magouyrk: “Now, if you’re asking, that’s kind of the supply side. I also think that people do not understand the immense nature of the demand, right? I think if you look at any of the stuff that we talked about over the past couple of days at AI World, it is changing very, very rapidly, and I don’t think people can understand yet the rate at which compute is going to be needed to fund the AI demand.”
“And so the cool part is that we continue to, you know, a year ago, using AI for software development was an idea, but it was not rocking. It’s there now. I think every year you’re going to see significant new industries that are turned on, right? If you look at kind of what’s happening with mathematics or science, and then you look, you know, part of this is, it’s nice to be in my position because you get to talk to a lot of the people doing the research and you see what’s coming.”
“I just don’t think people understand the breadth of demand that’s out there. So I am not worried about a situation. Like, I think people are like, but what if somehow we’re able to build just so many more GPUs than there is demand for? I just don’t see that. Not for the timeline that I feel like I can, you know, confidently have some perspective on over the next three to five years. I don’t see it happening.”
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Oracle CFO Hilary Maxson says Oracle is renewing 4-year-old GPUs at 20% premiums to their original contract price
“Of course there’s a question of recontracting and the necessity for the renewal of GPUs at the end of our various contracts. Mahesh walked through the differentiation we have in terms of technology and how we’ll continue to drive value for our customers over time. We’re building a business for today and tomorrow, and we expect to recontract at similar margin rates or better than what we have today.”
“In the case of renewal of GPUs or other IT equipment, we gave a real life example in our Q1 where we’re selling or renewing 4-year GPUs at 20% premiums to their original contract price. We put that information into the slide here. We think that’s a powerful example of the potential upside from the GPUs we have in our portfolio today. We won’t count on it, but we do think that these are valuable assets both for today and into the future.”
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Oracle CFO Hilary Maxson says Oracle is renewing 4-year-old GPUs at 20% premiums to their original contract price
“Of course there’s a question of recontracting and the necessity for the renewal of GPUs at the end of our various contracts. Mahesh walked through the differentiation we have in terms of technology and how we’ll continue to drive value for our customers over time. We’re building a business for today and tomorrow, and we expect to recontract at similar margin rates or better than what we have today.”
“In the case of renewal of GPUs or other IT equipment, we gave a real life example in our Q1 where we’re selling or renewing 4-year GPUs at 20% premiums to their original contract price. We put that information into the slide here. We think that’s a powerful example of the potential upside from the GPUs we have in our portfolio today. We won’t count on it, but we do think that these are valuable assets both for today and into the future.”
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Gavin Baker says the compute market is now in contango per Silicon Data and his portfolio companies are shocked at how much more they have to pay for clusters in 2027
“You know, Silicon Data, which I do think is, my firm is an investor in them, but I do think they’re the most authoritative data source. Carmen Li, the founder, stood up at GTC and said that the compute market is now in contango. It’s not just that the spot market is tight. If you want a cluster a year from now, you have to pay a lot of money."
"And then this is maybe another discontinuity between public and private markets. But just the number of companies we have in our portfolio who are like, okay, we got a cluster of 4,000 Blackwells, and we got it in May or June ‘26, and we wanna bring on another cluster of 4,000 in September 2027, and they’re shocked by how much more they have to pay in the future."
"And it’s not like everybody is unaware of this. Everybody’s aware of the supply that’s coming on. But even with all of that supply coming on, it is hard for the companies in our portfolio to find compute even well into ‘27. So for, you know, all the commodity experts who are focused on backwardation and what that implied, I got news for you. We’re not in backwardation anymore.”
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BREAKING: Fed Chairman Warsh says the FOMC held rates at 3.75% to 4% because inflation remains elevated even as the economy expands at a strong pace
“This morning, the FOMC decided to maintain the target rate for the federal funds rate at 3.75 to 4% in support of the Federal Reserve’s dual mandate. Economic activity is expanding at a strong pace."
"While uncertainty remains, owing in part to geopolitical developments, domestic spending has been resilient. Productivity growth is strong and capital investment robust. Job gains have kept pace with the workforce and the unemployment rate has changed little, but inflation remains elevated."
"The Committee believes that the accumulation of more information will help it determine the policy stance appropriate to ensure a timely return of inflation to the 2 percent goal.”
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Fed Chair Kevin Warsh says forward guidance has outstayed its welcome and can lead markets, businesses, and households astray
"Forward guidance as a regular practice was adopted by my colleagues and me during the global financial crisis."
"It was essential at the time, and we introduced it with much fanfare."
"But as with other legacies of crisis past, I believe the practice has outstayed its welcome."
"In normal times, the role of forward guidance should be limited and circumscribed."
"Otherwise, it risks creating ambiguity in the name of clarity."
"Oversharing policy deliberations and overcommitting to future decisions can lead markets, businesses, and households astray."
"And I believe when policymakers make quasi-commitments on interest rates throughout the cycle, we inhibit our own freedom to make the right calls when it's time to decide."
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