Platformonomics TGIF is a weekly roll-up of links, comments on those links, and perhaps a little too much tugging on my favorite threads.
Get Platformonomics Updates By Email
Service has been restored!
This May Day we celebrate basic financial controls, one of the cornerstones of advanced civilization!
My Writing
Follow the CAPEX: Q1 2026 Scoreboard
Over $133 billion in Q1 hyperCAPEX spend. Not a bad start to the year. Three of the four hyperCAPEX companies raised their guidance, so we’re now expecting over $700 billion for the year. Some estimates say data center CAPEX was 75% of Q1 GDP growth.
You Can’t Blame Data Centers in Seattle for Our Skyrocketing Electricity Prices
Since I wrote that post, there have been a number of developments:
The Seattle City Council has announced plans to introduce an emergency moratorium on data centers in Seattle. Evidently some “impact studies” are needed.
They of course hypocritically used data centers to complain about data centers, and gave some insights into why progressives hate accounting so much (see multiple items below that help our appreciation for basic financial controls):
“Water, land, and air are life-giving resources not to be moved around on a balance sheet. Extraction culture speaks about these resources in the language of accounting rather than finite, precious resources for all people, prioritizing short-term gain over the well-being of all. These proposed centers raise serious ethical questions if they proceed without safeguards or policies to protect our resources.”
Local newsletter The Seattle Times has upgraded the proposed data centers in Seattle from “large” to “massive” (average load 68 megawatts, so not even remotely AI data centers).
I omitted sewage issues from the litany of utility issues Seattle faces, but double digit sewer rate increases are on the way!
Meanwhile, in Maine, which has been on the forefront of performative bans of data centers that weren’t actually coming to their state, the governor vetoed the legislature’s 18-month moratorium.
News
Cloud Growth Rates – Q1 2026
Mid double digit growth on 11 to 12 digit revenue bases is hugely impressive. But one of these is not like the others.
Private Equity in Action: Medallia
The only thing worse for a software company than a private equity owner is a private credit owner. But then I repeat myself.
Previous:
Perfidious Private Equity, Software Migration Alerts for Private Equity Owned Companies, Private Equity in Action: You Can’t Spell Extraction without AI, 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
Don’t be Cleveland: Seattle Hits New Record for Office Vacancies
Seattle’s office vacancy rate keeps going up and is now one of the highest in the country (24.8%). The vacancy rate for prime real estate is double any other major market. What is the mayor’s target here? 50%? 100%? At some point, even data centers might look like good tenants…
Previous:
A Warning to Seattle: Don’t Become the Next Cleveland, Don’t be Cleveland: Snap Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Howard Schultz Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Seahawks Edition, Don’t be Cleveland: More Inebriation in Olympia, Don’t be Cleveland: Starbucks Says “Bye Bob”, Don’t be Cleveland: Amazon’s Exit, Don’t be Cleveland: Drunken State Spending, Don’t be Cleveland: Meta, Oracle, and Others Say “Bye Bob” (Ferguson), Don’t be Cleveland: What if the “Budget Emergency” was Spending, not Revenue?
Don’t be Cleveland: Credit Rating Downgrade for Washington State
With the governor’s approval, the Legislature outspent the state’s tax revenues and depleted the state’s rainy-day fund, earning Washington a dubious distinction: no state has a lower percentage of financial reserves. The state is dead last — 50 out of 50.
Cleveland defaulted in 1978.
Don’t be Cleveland: The Regional Homeless Authority
The news stories on the collapse of the Regional Homeless Authority are actually very charitable. The headlines say they can’t account for $13 million, but much more damning is spending over $500 million without the most basic of financial controls.
No one got fired. No one got indicted. No one took responsibility. No politician tasked with oversight took responsibility. Homelessness is of course up (and seemingly highly correlated with spending on homelessness).
But sure, we have a revenue crisis, not a crisis of basic governmental competence.
Don’t be Cleveland: More King Country Fraud
This incident is a tiny drop of outrage in the ocean of wasted taxpayer money, but the story speaks at length to the lack of functioning financial controls.
Don’t be Cleveland: Seattle Mayor Says Bye
Comrade Katie repeats the party line that reports of people leaving Washington state are “overblown”, but if they do leave, she says “bye”.
Don’t be Cleveland: Seattle Mayor Retcons Her Starbucks History
Comrade Katie’s story on Starbucks is their move to Nashville has been in the works for years and has nothing to do with her calling for a boycott of Starbucks after being elected or claiming to have authored Seattle’s headcount tax on large corporations.
