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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Our annual CAPEX festivities have drawn to a close. Another great year!
My Writing
Follow the CAPEX: Cloud Table Stakes 2024 Retrospective
My annual analysis of Biggest Tech CAPEX spending is up. Amazon, Google and Microsoft just passed a TRILLION dollars in cumulative CAPEX spend, amongst other interesting facts involving a lot of digits.
News
2025 Will Not be the Year of Agentic AI
How do I know? Amway Salesforce CEO Benioff doubled down on his over-promising and under-delivering with an incoherent Superbowl ad.
The Agentic Abyss of Disillusionment will be “brought to you by Salesforce”.
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The Agentic Abyss of Disillusionment, Salesforce is Not a Technology Company: Nor a Dogfood Company, What’s Bugging Marc Benioff – Continued, Benioff’s Blizzard of Bluster, 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
Retiring the Platformonomics Repatriation Index™
The Platformonomics Repatriation Index™ has hit yet another record low. Cloud repatriation isn’t a thing and never was a thing. It is time to retire the Index as this debate is over.
Perhaps the venture capital industry can borrow from Google’s “spring cleaning” and start officially offering mea culpas and deprecating failed investment themes (metaverse real estate needs that treatment too). Perhaps restitution for any entrepreneurs who fell for it?
We do reserve the right to make fun of the data center industry for not benefiting from AI either, despite all the money pouring in.
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Platformonomics Repatriation Index™ – Q3 2024,
Q2 Platformonomics Repatriation Index™, ClownWatch™: Digital Realty Trust Q2 Update, Platformonomics ClownWatch™, Cloud Repatriation is Going Just Great: Equinix, New Cloud Repatriation Hypothesis, Cloud Repatriation Where Art Thou?, Cloud Repatriation: The Search Continues, Cloud Repatriation: Still Not a Thing, Platformonomics Repatriation Index™ – Q1 2023: Surf’s Up?
Elon Announces $97.4 Billion Spite Budget
Thin-skinned fractional President, CEO, and public sector volunteer Elon Musk says “It’s time for OpenAI to return to the open-source, safety-focused force for good it once was.”
For a guy who is such a big AI safety proponent, why isn’t xAI the clear AI safety leader? Former leaders have abandoned that ship. Even the EU is hinting it may have gone too far (see below, and it did). Musk could hire all the safety people and make xAI the clear AI safety leader. And if I have to hear from Elon 24×7, AI safety platitudes, which admittedly are not my favorite thing, would still be an improvement…
Or is an AI safety fixation simply something you wish upon your competitors?
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The Arc of the Generative AI Universe Bends Towards Cash: Anthropic Edition, Where Do We Deport AI Safety People To?, Competitive Strategy: AI Safety Edition, We Can Only Hope, Whatever Happened to the AI Safety People?, Everyone In Silicon Valley Wants To Be Henry Kissinger, Existential Risk Now Has a Precise Threshold, You Can’t Spell Alien Invasion Without A and I, Existential AI Risk + Twitter-level Nuance , Fractional CEO Adds to Responsibilities, 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
Stargate: $5 Trillion and Counting
Never mind that they haven’t managed to raise their first $100 billion yet, but Stargate’s ambitions just 10x-ed. At an order of magnitude a month, we’ll be into the quadrillions by May.
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Le Stargate: One Gigawatt and Counting
The French at least have tech envy, putting them ahead of the rest of Europe. But it takes more than government edicts.
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EU Insanity: Peak EU AI Regulation?
Khakiocrat JD Vance absolutely unloaded on the EU at the Paris AI Summit. He rejected the entire premise of the event. The list of indictments will be familiar to readers. It is worth watching just to see the Eurocrats squirm in the background.
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Welcome to the Khakiocracy, Existential Corner: EU Agrees It Faces ‘Existential Crisis’, EU and What Army?, EU Insanity: Thierry’s Termination Tizzy, EU Insanity: Experts Agree, EU Insanity: EU Goes Too Far, Even for EU, Move Fast and Regulate Things: Welcome to the Morning After, Move Fast and Regulate Things (You Don’t Understand), When “Move Fast and Regulate Things” Breaks Down, AI Regulation: Move Fast and Regulate Things, EU Insanity: Regulating Blue Checks, EU Tweets While Ukraine Burns, EU Insanity: AI Regulatory Suicide, EU Insanity: Mistral Edition, The EU Will Continue to Fiddle While Rome Burns, EU Insanity: AI Energy Suicide, EU Insanity: AI Energy Suicide (Part Deux), The European Union is STILL an Advanced Persistent Threat, BREAKING: European Union Designated an Advanced Persistent Threat
ClownWatch™: The European Union
“Catch up”? Chortle. Our hyperCAPEX companies spent over $250 billion on just CAPEX in 2024.
It is disappointing it has taken them this long to write this press release, but delighted to finally be able to add the EU officially to ClownWatch™.
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Private Equity Buys Software Company from Private Equity: Solar Winds
Hopefully you’ve already migrated away from this poster child for private equity cybersecurity prowess!
If you’re not very good at operating software companies (or cybersecurity), one way to maintain the valuation fiction is to sell to another PE company.
