Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
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News
The Nuclear Call to Action
To revisit my agenda from a couple years ago:
The best time to build new nuclear plants was 20 years ago. The second-best time is now. MAGMA should help finance and accelerate the building of new plants (and they’re welcome to collaborate – northern Virginia might be a great place to start). They can make procurement commitments as they do for solar and wind, as well as invest directly in new plants in conjunction with utilities or by themselves (the utilities are both too timid and playing with too short a stack of chips to really take the lead here – the parent companies of the top four US utilities annual CAPEX spend is about what AWS alone spends). The new generation of small modular reactors look especially attractive to add to the grid or even potentially deploy alongside data centers (let the grid be the source of backup power). MAGMA can also push on licensing and regulatory reform, which today is either designed to ensure nothing happens or is so poorly designed that nothing happens.
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Cloud Power Up, Starting to think my nuclear power cheerleading work is done…, Yay Google: Nuclear Edition!, It’s Time to Build: Energy Edition, An Even More Nuclear-Powered Cloud, The Nuclear Power Vibe Shift Continues, Not That Kind of Nuclear Cloud, Better Late Than Never, Power Crunch, Behold the Nuclear Cloud, Nuclear Powered Cloud Data Centers Are Happening, A Nuclear-Powered Cloud, When Nuclear-Powered Data Centers?
Nuclear: To SMR or Not to SMR?
The nuclear train keeps rolling. Both Google and Amazon announced small modular reactor (SMR) projects this week. Google’s deal is to buy electricity from Kairos Power, an SMR developer. Amazon announced similar deals with Dominion Energy (the utility serving data center epicenter Virginia) and Energy Northwest (a consortium of utilities in Washington State), as well as an investment in X-Energy, another SMR developer working with those utilities. And Oracle has hinted it is looking at powering data centers with SMRs (we have been digging into the database vampire’s plans and will write about them soon).
The big downside of SMRs is timing. Google expects Kairos Power reactors to begin to come online in 2030 while Amazon didn’t set timing expectations. These are new reactor designs that still have lots of licensing and permitting hurdles to surmount. The other option would be to invest in a more traditional (and larger capacity) design. Northern Virginia really could do with an endless horizon of nuclear cooling towers.
Nuclear: To PPA or Not to PPA?
Another important distinction in these announces is whether the Big Tech companies are putting their balance sheets to work now to accelerate reactor deployment or leaving that to others. The Google deal (and the Microsoft Three Mile Island deal) are Power Purchase Agreements, where they commit to buy power if and when the reactors are live, but don’t help get the reactors built. Amazon’s investment in X-Energy actually helps get reactors built, in addition to their PPA commitments to the utilities to buy the power ultimately generated. Platformonomics’ view on this matter is “MOAR CAPEX”.
Fractional CEO Discovers Negative Network Effects
Thin-skinned fractional CEO Elon Musk is discovering that politicians can play politics too, without regard for corporate boundaries.
And unfortunately SpaceX, the (only?) one of Elon’s companies that is kicking ass, bears the biggest brunt.
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Elon’s “Just Irresponsible” Gigafactory of Compute, Can Elon Build a Data Center?, Pollyanna Showdown, The Supreme Court has Ruled, Elon Musk Threatens to Ban Oracle?,
Who’s Getting the GPUs? Elon Shell Game Edition, Platformonomics ClownWatch™: Tesla, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon Musk Part II, Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Elon/Twitter, Company Killed By Its Customers, Elon Cashes in All the Trust He’s Banked with Twitter, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 147, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 148, Do Not Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 149
Shouldn’t This Say “AMD and Intel”?
Both alphabetically and market cap suggest AMD goes first:
AMD: $253.3 billion
Intel: $96.8 billion
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Amazon Leads Industry in Preventing North Korean Infiltration
Software Migration Alerts: SquareSpace, Zuora
Private equity is amalgamating, so get busy migrating. Former Google Domains customers in particular.
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M&A is PE. PE is M&A.
This seems more relevant than ever:
Even without a time machine, it is hard to miss the impending customer harm that will come from private equity’s zeal for software. So (finally!) a proposal: Antitrust authorities should channel their antipathy toward technology and acquisitions into a very high bar for approving purchases of software companies by private equity. It is hard to argue that private equity software acquisitions are in the public interest (there are others who will make the case for prohibitions on private equity ruining things beyond software). And they are hard to top as antitrust villains.
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Media Self-Harm: Business as Usual
I can’t stop thinking about the meetings where media discuss how to address their precipitous loss of trust. What gets said? Do they actually have those meetings?
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Media Self Harm: Lobbying vs. Innovating, Yay Google: New Zealand Edition!, Wrapping Oneself in the Flag: Seattle Times Edition, Media Self-Harm: Time Magazine Edition, Living in a Glass House: Pet Bereavement Accommodations Edition, Living in a Glass House: It’s a Union Shop, Living in a Glass House: Inflation Numbers, Existential Corner: What is the New York Times? Living in a Glass House: The New York Times On Tech, Living in a Glass House: What is the New York Times?, Aspiring Technology Company Neither Interested in Technology Nor Understands Technology
Media Self-Harm: Declining Time Magazine
No comment from Benioff on whether his abasement of Time Magazine contributed to a presidential candidate declining an interview with a declining publication.
Maybe what Time Magazine really needs to return to relevance is a mascot?
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Media Self-Harm: Time Magazine Edition,
Salesforce + Indian Mystic + AI = ???, “There’s an art to this kind of horseshit, and Benioff is its Michelangelo”, The Hard Thing About “Hard Pivots”, Thought Leadership (in Mascots), Salesforce Rallies Its Deep Bench of AI Experts (and Cartoon Characters), Bluster, Bombast and Bullshit: Just Another Day at Salesforce, Salesforce’s Shamelessness is Staggering, Salesforce Gonna Salesforce, The Spectacle that is Dreamforce
McKinsey’s “High Standards”
“Our past work for opioid manufacturers, while lawful, fell short of the high standards we set for ourselves,” the firm said.
Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Apple Part II
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Useful Idiots, Fellow Travelers and Unregistered Foreign Agents: Angelist, Elon Musk Part II, The Donald, Jeff Yass, Microsoft Bing, DC Lobbyists Part III, Hollywood, DC Lobbyists Part II, NBA, Warner Bros. Discovery, Germany, DC Lobbyists, Elon/Twitter, The Hugo Awards, Harvard University, Wall Street, Apple