Platformonomics TGIF #94: July 18, 2025

Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.

My Writing

A post on Meta’s AI rebuild:

Meta’s frantic AI moves have big pro sports franchise “win now” vibes. The owner is fed up and wants a championship. This year.

The team had a promising start last season but ended up 6-10, finishing with a (Llama) 4 game losing streak.

News

CAPEX Clues: Meta Goes Giga

Just got to find those gigawatts. Love Bloomberg’s photo selection.

Previous:

CAPEX Clues: Enter LlamaGate, CAPEX Clues: The Music is Still Playing, For Now…, Follow the CAPEX: Cloud Table Stakes 2024 Retrospective, Attention Meta AI Employees…, Meta CAPEX – Q1 2025, Meta CAPEX – Q4 2024, Meta CAPEX – Q3 2024, Q2 Meta CAPEX, Q1 Meta CAPEX, Going Nuclear: Meta Finally Overcomes the Bees, Cloud Power Up, Introducing the Platformonomics Cloud Reactor Tracker, The Moore’s Law of Energy, Meta Goes Nuclear, Navigating Nuclear Obstacles: The Bees

Related:

Meta Superintelligence – Leadership Compute, Talent, and Data, “You can’t relocate either Chicago or the reactors.”

Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Grok Enterprise Value Proposition Really Coming into Focus

Previous:

Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: xAI MechaHitler Edition, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Where to Even Start?, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Chapter 150, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Grok API Edition, 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, What is Elon’s Tesla Strategy?

Related:

Elon Musk Warns Governors: Artificial Intelligence Poses ‘Existential Risk’, OpenAI and Anthropic researchers decry ‘reckless’ safety culture at Elon Musk’s xAI

Existential Threats: Forget Aligning AI, We Must Align McKinsey

It does look like the market is realizing IT consulting company Gartner might be LLM roadkill.

Previous:

McKinsey Pretends to Have Ethical Debate, McKinsey’s “High Standards”, Powerful Ammunition for Gen AI Skeptics, McKinsey: It Might Just Be Happening, A Call for the Corporate Death Penalty, McKinsey Karma?, McKinsey a Source of Bad Banking Advice (Shocking!), No Product, No Customers, No Revenue. Very Safe!, 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

Related:

McKinsey: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Not Available in Europe: Air Conditioning

I continue to believe the world’s best business opportunity is bringing 7-11 to Europe. Multiple deep moats: ice, large-sized drinks, air conditioning, and open around the clock. The Europeans have been nonchalant about Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, but would no doubt treat a 7-11 incursion as a truly existential threat.

Previous:

Not Available in Europe: Working Through the Not Available in Europe Backlog Edition, Not Available in Europe: WhatsApp Edition, Not Available in Europe: ChatGPT Memory Edition, Not Available in Europe: Bird Flies, Not Available in Europe: Open AI Deep Research, Not Available in Europe: A Bubbly Economy, Not Available in Europe: Better Late Than Never Apple Edition, Not Available in Europe: Apple’s Math, Not Available in Europe: This Week’s Edition, Not Available in Europe: Coming Soon to a Continent Near You, Not Available in Europe: Don’t Say You Weren’t Warned (by Meta), Not Available in Europe: A Tipping Point?, Not Available in Europe: Stratechery Edition, Not Available in Europe: Apple Edition, Not Available in Europe: Meta Edition