Mostly Borrowed Ideas
Equity Analyst at MBI Deep Dives
Amazon's AWS AI rents look limited because NVIDIA backs neoclouds and Anthropic can set AWS's cut of Bedrock Claude tokens. Those tokens run on AWS-funded Trainium. Enterprise AI earns ~2 points above capital cost in the 2035 base case; shared hyperscaler advantages and new rivals limit upside, though 1-5 points is plausible. Retail ads pose a fat-tail risk despite a base case that Amazon figures them out. Market skepticism about AWS capex has toned down the bearish view. x.comÂ
Google Cloud's accelerating growth positions it to lead the AI cloud market, strengthening Alphabet beyond Search. It may pass Azure next quarter, then AWS, rising from #3 to #1 in 18-24 months. Selling its Anthropic stake could fund 12-18 months of capex and buybacks, but moving roughly $300B at market price without harming their TPU and Cloud partnership is unlikely. Alphabet is cheaper than Anthropic on sales or earnings multiples; the market likely expects a 2027 capital raise. x.com x.com … Show more
Low Anthropic spending relative to customer expenses points to an enterprise AI adoption gap that leaves Nvidia reliant on intermediaries able to build their own chips. Anthropic's S-1 says over half the Fortune 500 were $100k+ annual customers as of September, yet spending among its publicly traded customers averaged under 0.1% of expenses in Q3 2026. That measures one provider and cannot show whether AI deployments succeed; Nvidia needs more enterprises buying its compute directly. x.comÂ
Amazon's AWS acceleration keeps the AI investment bet compelling, but its financing burden is growing. AWS grew 39%, its fastest in five years, and operating margin reached a record 13.9%. Yet trailing free cash flow is negative $42.4B as capex exceeds cash generation, and long-term debt rose from $65.5B to $173.1B. The long-term bet is that AI changes everyday life enough to justify that spend. x.comÂ
NVIDIA's free-model plan could defend chip demand as the two largest AI labs cut reliance on its hardware. OpenAI is building a chip with Broadcom; Anthropic mostly uses Google and Amazon chips. NVIDIA is putting together Reflection AI (in talks), Hugging Face and Groq for free models and paid chips. At 11x expected 2029 earnings versus ~19x for Microsoft, Alphabet and Amazon and 32x for Apple, its price reflects fears of slower AI spending and lost customers. NVIDIA is a 'Maximum Opportunity'. … Show more
More AI tokens mean more compute demand for Nvidia even as pricing power starts to slip. OpenRouter data via the FT show weekly token use up ~250-fold since January 2025; the FT links the surge to agents' long call chains. Bloomberg's breakdown of a 1 GW AI campus that could cost roughly $30B puts well over half the bill in chips and servers, most landing at Nvidia as GPU racks. Servers wear out in 5-6 years, making AI capex a recurring chip refresh. x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.com x.comÂ
Amazon's record AI spending looks backed by AWS demand, despite pressure on near-term profit. AWS grew 39% to $46bn, and CEO Andy Jassy projects growth above 40% in both 2027 and 2028. Quarterly capex reached $77.3bn, almost $20bn above expectations; the Q4 profit guide missed and retail ads softened. AWS acceleration makes the drop worth buying. Overweight; $370 target. x.com x.comÂ
Nvidia's AI profits are real, but its compute demand depends heavily on fragile venture funding. Per Chamath, 1% of firms account for 90% of AI spending, and 72 cents of each dollar comes from unprofitable VC-backed firms. Venture money passes through startups to Nvidia and cloud suppliers; if the next raises fail, concentrated orders could contract together. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Alphabet's shift to renting neocloud GPUs threatens significant margin compression while AI monetization remains in doubt. Analysts say Google has yet to find a way to monetize AI. Google said it began using third-party compute at the end of Q3, will ramp usage in Q4 and expects near-term margin headwinds and significantly higher capex in 2027. x.comÂ
AWS's rapid growth in a huge business makes the long-term outlook decisively bullish for Amazon and the AI ecosystem. AWS revenue grew 39.3% year over year in September 2026; management guides for growth above 40% in 2027 and 2028. Amazon is always very conservative with guidance, making that AI outlook doubly bullish. x.com x.com x.comÂ
Premium-model inference revenue could support much higher compute pricing for AI infrastructure providers. Evercore models over $120M/MW in potential lab revenue while labs pay roughly $30-50M/MW for compute. With power and GPUs scarce, SpaceX AI, Nebius, IREN and CoreWeave can capture the biggest uplift over historical pricing if they deliver contracted high-density capacity. x.com x.comÂ
