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Hot takes from the C-Suite corner office,
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Six links. Six verdicts. Don’t make me repeat myself.
Coinbase already priced a Clarity Act failure and kept selling
Jensen restated $3 to $4 trillion by 2030 and dared you to fade him
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$800,000 a day is the new price of sailing past Iran
Baltic Middle East-to-China VLCC rates just printed $800,000 a day after U.S. forces wrecked five Iranian-linked tankers. Crude is still moving. The invoice is not. U.S. Gulf-to-Asia now costs $29.5 million a voyage, $15 a barrel before war-risk. In “The Iran deal and the Space X IPO” I said the Hormuz premium got vaporized temporarily. That pause just died.
Winners? VLCC owners, two-year lessors, and war-risk desks. Kpler keeps earnings above $100,000 a day into early next year. Morgan Stanley sees leases jumping another 20% to 30%.
Losers? Asian refiners eating $15 a barrel freight, pump buyers, and every central bank fighting imported inflation. Iran’s shadow fleet is now target practice and a rate spike.
Next? Rates stay bid. The Gulf of Oman-to-East Asia benchmark is already up 85% to almost $386,000 a day. Ship-to-ship transfers keep barrels moving. Hormuz is a tax, not a shutdown.
Vitol says 10 million barrels a day still cross. Goldman says 15 million. Volume is not the story. Transit is. HPCL-Mittal already said it: the crude is there, the ships are the choke. Freight inflation stacks on crude inflation and lands on gasoline, diesel, and store shelves. Short the peace. Long the boats.
Odds surge on Tesla merging with SpaceX before 2028
The odds of Tesla merging with SpaceX before 2028 have surged according to the latest data from Kalshi.
Elon’s Mega Corp: Elon Musk, fresh off the back of the SpaceX IPO has been rumored to be debating the move.
A Pattern Emerging: Prior to the SpaceX IPO several of Musk’s ventures were brought in under the SpaceX umbrella. This included the satellite internet division Starlink and the xAI division which runs the AI model Grok.
Do you think Tesla will be acquired by SpaceX?
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Coinbase already priced a Clarity Act failure and kept selling
Senate cloture on the Clarity Act hits September 15. Senator Lummis says if this Congress blows it, the next real window is 2030. Coinbase CFO Alesia Haas told Goldman she never bet the firm on one vote. Three paths: Congress, the agencies, or the courts. Fail the floor, and she launches through Atkins at the SEC and Selig at the CFTC anyway.
Winners? Coinbase either way. Congress is the rocket. Agency rulemaking is the grind. Compliant exchanges that already built the stack collect sideline capital first.
Losers? Anyone who treated September 15 as binary for the entire U.S. crypto complex. Offshore cowboys if America stays in the fog. Idle cash that needed a statute before it would move.
Next? Cloture is the tape. Fail, and Lummis’s 2030 clock starts. Haas still ships via Atkins and Selig. Clarity speeds sideline money. It does not invent the business.
This is not bravery. This is optionality. Coinbase spent years leaning into regulation so a Senate procedural vote cannot kill the roadmap. The stock was up 1.34% while they said the quiet part out loud. The industry wanted a law. The CFO bought three exits. September 15 decides the speed. It does not decide whether Coinbase keeps selling.
SpaceX just put orbital compute on a 2027 clock
CFO Bret Johnsen finally dated the science project. First orbital compute satellites next year. Huge compute into space in 2028, faster than the Street modeled. SPCX sits at $149.83, glued to the $150 battle line from “SpaceX’s biggest holders finally show,” after the August 3 washout at $104.83. Starship flies later this month, revenue-generating, loaded with production V3 Starlink birds.
Winners? SPCX holders and anyone long the $26 billion Anthropic-Google run-rate we flagged. Evercore stayed Outperform. Eighty percent of the sell-side is still Buy.
Losers? Ground-power landlords praying permits stay the bottleneck forever. Skeptics who priced orbital compute as 2030s vapor. Anyone fading a name that just gave the Street a date.
Next? Watch that September Starship. Cadence and reuse still decide broadband, mobile, and orbital compute. Miss the flight and 2027 slips. Hit it and 2028 gets believed.
Q2 capex printed $18.4 billion against a $6 billion guess. Record high remains $225.64 from the June debut. In “SpaceX IPO raises total of $85.7 billion” I called orbital AI data centers the new gold rush. Johnsen just put a year on that rush. This is a launch manifest, not a science fair.
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Nvidia restated $3 to $4 trillion by 2030 and Jensen dared you to fade him
One year later, same Goldman conference, same call. Jensen Huang says the AI market still hits $3 trillion to $4 trillion by 2030. Last quarter: $96.2 billion revenue versus $92.3 billion expected, $2.22 adjusted EPS versus $2.09. He sees 70% revenue growth in fiscal 2028 against Street 45%. Unconstrained demand is over 100%. Memory shortages are the only lid.
Winners? Nvidia, and the memory names I crowned in “Wall Street crowns Micron the next Nvidia.” Jensen just admitted growth tops 100% without DRAM and HBM. RAMageddon talking.
Losers? Bubble tourists waiting for him to blink. Street models stuck at 45% growth. Anyone selling the shortage as demand death. The shortage is the tell. Demand is screaming.
Next? He reprints $3 trillion to $4 trillion until a quarter misses. Fiscal 2028 at 70% is a $680 billion machine. Memory relief is torque. Shortage is the governor.
A GPU is not $399 anymore. It is an $8.5 million NVLink animal with 2 million parts and 250,000 kilowatts, and they ship thousands. Grace-Blackwell racks are growing 27% month over month. Last-twelve-month revenue is $303 billion with gross margin near 75%. He is not pulling the 2030 number. He is collecting on it.
Jensen Huang just called the AI doomsday tour a product launch
Huang walked into Goldman and called the extinction roadshow demand generation. Cybersecurity chatter exists, he said, because the industry is launching products. Then the knife: “What better way to create demand than to create a problem?” Anthropic’s Jacob Coxon quit warning AI could kill us by decade’s end. Jensen’s July line: complete nonsense.
Winners? Nvidia. Fear does not cancel purchase orders. Cyber vendors if they convert hysteria into contracts. Every lab still buying racks while the priests scream about the end.
Losers? The doom chorus trying to legislate a halt. Coxon’s resignation makes headlines. It does not un-order a single rack. Job-apocalypse slides from Gates included.
Next? The fear narrative keeps gaining ground, as Michigan’s Erik Gordon said. Jensen keeps talking his book because the book is the order file. Watch the theater. Watch the racks ship.
He has three lines and he has not moved. It will not kill jobs. It will not kill the world. It is not a circular-check bubble. He sells the picks. Of course he wants the mine open. One speech is morality. The other is $96.2 billion of revenue. NVDA still printed green, up 0.61%.
Uber just fired 3,300 people so your next ride costs less
Dara Khosrowshahi cut about 10% of corporate roles, roughly 3,300 bodies, then told Goldman the savings go into lower prices, better selection, and growth. Insurance-cost savings ride along. He bought about $10 million more stock. Shares rose about 2% Thursday. He called it a cut from a position of strength. Some companies wait. He does not.
Winners? Riders if prices actually fall. Shareholders if volume follows. Dara, who bought his own paper instead of waiting for a recession to grow a spine.
Losers? The 3,300. Corporate bloat that waited. Competitors still priced off the old cost base. Anyone who thought a beat-and-raise machine would stay fat forever.
Next? Price cuts hit the app. Selection improves or the speech was perfume. Watch bookings, take rate, and whether insurance savings survive the next claim cycle.
Cheap rides are the customer-acquisition budget now. Dead weight is the funding source. Capitalism is not a therapy session. It is a transfer from headcount to the rider and the shareholder. Dara just announced the wire. In “Uber’s HR massacre” I said expect more of this disciplined approach and shareholders win. Thesis confirmed.