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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UnfocusedAI Strategy Du Jour: “We’re an Enterprise Company!”
To paraphrase Donald Rumsfeld, you go into the enterprise with the team you hired from Meta, not the team you might want or wish to have at a later time.
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Private Equity in Action: You Can’t Spell Extraction without AI
People are heralding this as a sign of private equity’s prescience. I think Dan Primack is closer to the mark:
Private equity wants a seat at the AI table.
Not only because portfolios are chock-full of software companies under siege, but also because many of their other portfolio companies don’t really know how to best integrate AI.
If you are cynical about private equity (guilty!), you would say they are in full extraction mode from their existing portfolio, which have been gutted of innovation capability. The money portfolio companies spend to “do AI” goes to a new portfolio company, which in turn is guaranteed returns from frontier model companies. Probably great financially for PE, but as usual at the expense of both their portfolio companies and those companies’ customers.
Previous:
Perfidious Private Equity, Software Migration Alerts for Private Equity Owned Companies, Private Equity in Action: Come for the Subpar Returns, Stay for the Illiquidity v2, Private Equity in Action: Come for the Subpar Returns, Stay for the Illiquidity, Private Equity in Action: From Famed to Fraught, Private Equity in Action: I’m Lovin’ It, Private Equity in Action: Narrative Collapse?, Private Equity in Action: The Great Garage Door Service Wars, Private Equity in Action: Having to Show Their Math is New Experience, Private Equity in Action: Underperforming
Related:
Anti-Private Equity Is Good Business, Private Equity for Retail Investors: “This is a predictable car crash, but no one is even checking the brakes”, “Invest in your local pitchfork sharpener.”
Quick(er) Hits
The Age of Fake Data Centers, Part 2 – Faster and Faker
The Tik Tok Travesty: TikTok Joint Venture Investors to Pay Trump Administration $10 Billion (That We Know Of)
The Tik Tok Travesty: “For context, a typical M&A banker would take 1% or 2% deal fee. With TikTok, the Treasury Department got over 70%.” (That We Know Of)
The Tik Tok Travesty: “You should FOIA the shit out of this.” (We Should Know)
This will end badly: Google Fiber will be sold to private equity firm and merge with cable company
Amazon says AWS’ Bahrain region ‘disrupted’ following drone activity
EU Insanity: Europe’s Digital Networks Act: A Foundation for the AI-Driven Economy. They just can’t stop.