Bullpen.News From Edwin Dorsey
Get Daily Recap Feedback

Latest News

Market capOver $2B
All Over $50MOver $300MOver $2BOver $10B
All Under $1BUnder $10BUnder $100BUnder $500B
SectorsAll
Filter by sector
Wednesday, October 21, 2026· 7973 stock ideas· 218 writers·
22,661 views· 10,577 clicks

From X

@convequity

Convequity on X

The $3T “hidden AI debt” number is not the story WSJ just put a headline on the shadow capex we’ve been tracking for a while. Purchase commitments + leases that have not started. Most of it never hits the balance sheet. The $3T is real. The interpretation is not. Add the explicit debt-like items on the books of $GOOGL $MSFT $META $AMZN and you get ~1.69x. Widen the definition to implicit / off-book instruments and it can balloon to 8.36x — approaching that $3T figure. That is the chart. It is not the economics. 1. Most of this is contract value, not a hard legal obligation to pay. A lot of it is pay-as-you-go. The commitments they actually have to fund already sit on the balance sheet. 2. The implicit load is shared. It is spread across financial players — private credit and equity — who are underwriting the build. Their IRRs are not insane. Current ROIC on this spend is still high. This is not a bubble from here. 3. AI ROIC can compress later. I would not be surprised. Near-term it is more likely to stay elevated or even rise. Compute is still short. Efficiency gains are raising, not lowering, the value of each incremental GPU-hour. 4. What the hyperscalers are actually doing: paying a bit more, accepting a slightly lower margin, and sharing a slice of the economics with investors who want the risk. That is risk offload, not hidden leverage. The cleaner setup is still the player that can keep building more capacity internally without leaning as hard on this structure. SpaceX is the extreme version of that. It also means more profit pass-through to the specialized GPU clouds sitting in the middle of this: $IREN $NBIS $CRWV and others. The $3T is a real number. Treating it as imminent balance-sheet stress is the wrong read. Pictures below are snapshots from our AI Bubble Barometer.

Investor Letters

All letters

Free Recaps of the best new stock ideas, delivered every morning.

Read past recaps

Why I sold OB pick for 26 SVM

Silvercorp’s falling Ying grades, prolonged GC suspension, El Domo execution risk and Chaarat funding needs weaken its valuation despite…

SVM $2.1B
The Oak Bloke 16 clicks

Vicor Update, Part Three

Vicor’s $66.6 million in AI power-delivery royalties generated about $50 million of operating profit, eclipsing its module business as…

VICR $10B
CV's Substack 26 clicks

Heico Corporation

HEICO sells FAA-approved aircraft replacement parts at 30% to 50% discounts to OEMs, gaining customers as restrictive aftermarket contracts…

HEI $43B
D Invests 13 clicks

Copper Fox Metals: Research Flash

Copper Fox’s C$9.1 million Schaft Creek program advances metallurgical, tailings, water and road studies toward a pre-feasibility study,…

TECK $31B
Atrium Research - Equity Research 6 clicks

Have a source we’re missing? Send your pick

Recent recaps

Latest recap

Tuesday, October 20 55 stock ideas
  • Vicor Update, Part Three CV's Substack
  • Is Microsoft Over-Earning on OpenAI? MBI Deep Dives
Read the recap

All recaps

Publications we follow

Every publication on this site, hand-picked.

128 publications

Newsletters 108

YouTube 4

Blogs 15

Seeking Alpha 54 of 245

Nominate a publication

X accounts we follow

Every account on this site, hand-picked.

90 accounts
Nominate an account

Investor letters we follow

189 firms

Sectors

Ordered by how often our editor reaches for them.

Anything we’re missing?

Send us a pick