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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We are all truly now CAPEX obsessives and it is exhausting.
Another candidate for describing our noble readers: platformniacs. No small number of you are no doubt reading (only) because you’re having trouble sleeping!
My Writing
They Don’t Have the Money: OpenAI Edition
OpenAI needs hundreds of billions of dollars of actual money to do what they’ve announced. Vendor financing and financial games aren’t going to get it done.
News
They Don’t Have the Margins
Hard to run a complex and capital-intensive business on 14% gross margins.
This story spurred an incredible amount of cope and redefinition of “gross margin” away from unit economics.
But maybe Oracle is going to abandon its past profitable ways and become a high-volume, low-cost provider. Crazy Larry passes the savings onto you! Sora declined to put Larry in a sales video, so here’s Crazy Eddie selling GPUs.
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They Don’t Have the Money, They Don’t Have the Money: Oracle and Tik Tok, Remaining CAPEX Obligation, Why Can’t Oracle Afford Data Centers?, Why Can’t Oracle Build Data Centers?, Oracle Still Can’t Build Data Centers, Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties, Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties: FY25 Q1, Oracle’s Data Center Difficulties: FY25 Q2, ClownWatch™: Oracle FY25 Q3, Why Can’t Oracle Build Data Centers? FY25 Q4 Edition, Words are Cheap, CAPEX is Expensive: Oracle Edition, Why Can’t Oracle Build Data Centers? (Or Subcontract Them?), Follow the CAPEX: The Clown Car Race Checkered Flag, Stargate Struggles to Get Out of Gate, Stargate: “Science fiction, just like the movie it is named after”, CAPEX Clues: The B Word, And You Thought Softbank Was the Dumb Money, Follow the CAPEX: Cloud Table Stakes 2024 Retrospective, Stargate: So Many Mouths to Feed, CAPEX Clues: Softbank Needs More Cash, Stargate: $5 Trillion and Counting, Stargate: A New Hope?
Dreamforce Evacuation Alert
Salesforce puts the A and I into revival next week, and this year’s spectacle promises to be a doozy, even by Salesforce standards. Benioff is under the gun, insisting Salesforce is “not a company in crisis“. The stock is down 27% this year and the Superbowl ad isn’t panning out. So expect a blitzkrieg of banality, bluster, bombast, and bullshit.
Can Salesforce’s dream team of bands, mascots and celebrities turn things around for the company in the AI era? Jane Goodall won’t be able to make it this year, so the pressure is really on Matthew McConaughey, Metallica, and Will.i.am to pick up the slack and persuade us Salesforce is actually a software company.
Here’s your annual refresher to prepare for Dreamforce.
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Salesforce “is not a company in crisis”, You Can’t Spell Metallica Without A and I, Benioff’s Blizzard of Bluster: FOOM Edition, Salesforce is (Still) Not a Technology Company, Salesforce Holds “Developer” Conference, Salesforce is Not a Technology Company: Nor an AI Company, 2025 Will Not be the Year of Agentic AI, 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”, Bluster, Bombast and Bullshit: Just Another Day at Salesforce, Salesforce’s Shamelessness is Staggering, Salesforce Gonna Salesforce, The Spectacle that is Dreamforce, The Hard Thing About “Hard Pivots”, Thought Leadership (in Mascots), Salesforce Rallies Its Deep Bench of AI Experts (and Cartoon Characters)
Not Available in Europe: Online Political Ads
The Superpower of Cheese (and Regulation) just has the worst luck. So much brilliant regulation, yet so many unintended consequences.
Fresh European Union rules intended to improve transparency around online advertisements have sparked a wave of criticism, as major platforms shut down political ads instead of complying.
Campaigners say the law will cause a harmful loss of information after it triggered companies including Google, Meta and Microsoft to implement a blackout on political advertising. Politicians on both sides of the aisle said it could be detrimental to democratic debate.
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Not Available in Europe: Single-Sided Printing,
Not Available in Europe: Data, Not Available in Europe: AirPod Live Translations Edition, Not Available in Europe: Email Archives, Not Available in Europe: A Tech Champion, Not Available in Europe: Meta AI, Not Available in Europe: Spinal Fortitude, Not Available in Europe: Air Conditioning, 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
Not Available in Europe: Apps in ChatGPT
Already On Their Fifth Republic: October 2025 Edition
I resisted titling this “Not Available in Europe: A French Government” because France isn’t the only country without a functioning government.
I’m sure someone has already likened French prime ministers to Spinal Tap drummers.
Hopefully monthly editions will be sufficiently frequent to keep up with the pace of French governmental change.
Bronny Buys Bari
Bronny Ellison buys The Free Press. Chattering classes chortling over a vision statement of “news that reflects reality”. Would definitely be a first!
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Noble Intent, Nobel Prizes
Due to a surge in demand for Nobel Prizes, the Nobel Prize Foundation should create some new Nobel Prizes. How about:
THE ALL CAPS NOBEL PRIZE. The Nobel (Consolation) Prize for Peace. The Nobel Prize for Peace (Except Domestically and Aboard Venezuelan Fishing Boats). The Nobel Prize for Peace (Through Appeasement). The Nobel Prize for Peace (and Pedophilia).
