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Monday, October 5, 2026

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Convequity on X

Renting AI capacity protects Microsoft ($MSFT) if the AI buildout busts. It leaves Microsoft exposed if compute gets scarce. On Q2 2026 data, Microsoft's implicit and off-balance-sheet infrastructure commitments were 17 times its headline borrowings according to our AI Bubble Barometer. 1. Microsoft signs a multi-year deal to rent capacity. The partner, a specialist AI cloud such as $IREN or Nebius ($NBIS), typically raises the capital, builds the site, buys the chips and owns the assets. 2. Construction risk, the risk that the GPUs lose value, and most of the financing sit with that partner and its lenders. 3. Microsoft swaps capital spending today for rental payments later. Compare Alphabet ($GOOGL) at 10.2 times. Almost all of its off-book commitments are purchase orders, $811bn of them, for chips and equipment Google will own. We read Microsoft's choice as less than full confidence in the buildout, and Google's as the opposite. In our view the market underweights the risk that compute gets scarce. The partners own any capacity beyond their Microsoft contracts and can sell it to whoever pays more. Microsoft would then have to wait or pay up, as it owns fewer of the data centres and chips it uses. That means higher compute costs and tighter margins. On our reading, Microsoft wins if AI demand falls short, because its partners carry most of the asset risk. If compute gets scarce, Microsoft loses, because renting gives it less control of supply, and Google wins because it will own the chips it ordered.
@BlueDuckCap

BDC on X

I don't see an easy turnaround at $nke. Social media has lowered the barriers to entry on athleisure. I get ads all the time from no name upstarts with cool stuff in my Instagram feed. Clearly Nike is losing share in China. Hard to see what turns that around. Most abstract but maybe most important is that the brand no longer resonates as high quality and certainly doesn't seem "cool" at least from what I can tell. 20x on declining EPS. Not sure what turns it.

Investor Letters

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