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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Welcome to 2026! (Admittedly a leisurely start at our end).
At the beginning of the year I always have grand ambitions to write more, truly let go of some of my thoroughly beaten hobby horses, and drink deeply of new topics. But idiocy never sleeps, so it is not an easy transition.
CAPEX and the Great Game (currently manifested in AI, and only AI) will remain the central theme here. Everyone is now a CAPEX obsessive, which is great, but also exhausting. The game gets harder from here, as the many new entrants must turn press releases into reality. Building at hyperCAPEX scale is extraordinarily hard, and getting harder with ever greater contention for the same resources (land, power, GPUs, talent). Can any of the new aspirants achieve scale? Or find business models to pay for their investment? What happens if the money stops flowing so lavishly? Expect further politicization, as data centers are an easy target for populists of all stripes (and politicians who want to distract from their own ruinous roles in creating energy scarcity). I’ll update the Cloud Reactor Tracker one of these days, but feel like there is plenty of time for that.
Then there are topics I’d like to let go of but history says I will struggle to ignore. Hopefully some of these will find their way to the new Quick Hits section at the bottom of this page. If I already have a snappy recurring headline, I shouldn’t need to explain the whole thing every time.
- Antitrust – Hipster antitrust is now completely discredited (between the Meta antitrust/time travel case, Roomba, and Within), while its successor (grievance antitrust? cult of personality antitrust? anti-antitrust?) may be even worse. Make antitrust great again?
- The EU – I’ve called them an advanced persistent threat, the superpower of cheese, and the cookie continent, but henceforth they shall just be an NPC, the Non Player Continent. Western Civilization needs Europe to get its act together, but there is no sign they are getting serious. Cosplaying feature PM for US Big Tech is not going to solve any of Europe’s existential issues. And we’re still tragically early in Europe’s populist dalliance.
- SaaSmageddon and Private Equity – in a cruel twist of fate, private equity is left holding a lot of the SaaS bag. What an amazing opportunity to show they are the “operators” they claim to be, and lead their (debt-laden) portfolio companies through a technology transition. It would help restore some “lost luster” to the asset class, even if they don’t seem to believe their own story. (This trainwreck will be the hardest to look away from).
- And let the record show I spared you the 20th anniversary Platformonomics retrospective. Maybe we’ll do the 25th.
Topics I’d like to spend more time on:
- The Other Great Game – geopolitics is back with a vengeance. Will Western Civilization find a more optimal path than “it will get worse before it gets better”? Can we accelerate a New Enlightenment? Will Hollywood rebound and make sufficiently entertaining entertainment to draw people away from seeking their entertainment from politics? What lessons can we draw from the geopolitics of technology? At minimum, the Platformonomics Geopolitical Game Board is long overdue for an update.
- Orbital Computing – the data centers in space (always to be voiced like “pigs in space“) story is a nice narrative for a fractional CEO aspiring to become more singular, but is too far ahead of reality, physics, and economics. The near term battle is around networking, and in orbit we’re still living in pre-internetworking times.
News
Elon’s Enterprise AI Ambitions
Fractional CEO and polarizing guy with negligible distribution Elon Musk is spending a lot of money on the fascinating AI industrial engineering problem. How he plans to build a business with that investment remains TBD. Bloomberg reports:
XAI used almost $8 billion in cash on investments through the first nine months of 2025.
In June, the firm told investors it hoped for $500 million in revenue for the year. Through September, xAI reported over $200 million in sales.
XAI just raised another $20 billion but the GTM plan remains unclear beyond benchmark tuning.
This juxtaposition in my feed reader sums up Elon’s problem:
Elon is a proven blue ocean guy. We’ll see how he does in the reddest of red oceans (AI).
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No Revenue? No Problem!, They Do Have the Debt, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: The Chaos Continues, Antitrust Incoherence: Elon Musk Edition, Ask Not What Elon Can Do For You, Ask What You Can Do For Elon, Fractional CEO Adds to Responsibilities, Company Killed By Its Customers, Never Take a Dependency on Elon Musk: Grok Enterprise Value Proposition Really Coming into Focus, 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?
Gartner Pantses Itself
Another Gartner embarrassment, as they let IBM “self-report” on their AI prowess. IBM modestly rates its models ahead of Anthropic in both features and future potential. Gartner evidently saw nothing wrong with that claim or what it says about the value of their research.
Meanwhile, IBM’s CEO is auditioning to be the Meg Whitman of AI.
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SkiFree on Your Stove
The lingering cultural impact of the Windows Entertainment Pack (code-named “Dragon Breath”, much to the consternation of certain Microsoft Office marketing functionaries) continues to amaze. You can now play SkiFree on an induction stove.
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Quick Hits
Here we relegate 1.) punchlines you can write yourself 2.) topics I’ve beaten to death and/or 3.) things I’m feeling uncharacteristically succinct about:
- My ChatGPT Annual Review: “A new idea will begin as a joke and end as a graph” (maybe we have reached AGI after all).
- My Media Appearances: Bloomberg quote in which I make fun of an FTX spokesman turned AI data center developer (and, of course, private equity).
- ClownWatch™: FTX spokesman’s 17BW (braggawatt) Alberta data center.
- ClownWatch™: Real estate developer Brookfield challenges cloud giants with new offering.
- ClownWatch™: NVIDIA’s DGXCloud goes to live on a farm upstate.
- ClownWatch™/Not Available in Europe: GAIA-X doesn’t even qualify for a euphemistic demise.
- US Government sanctions aspiring global hall monitor Thierry Breton