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Wednesday, October 28, 2026

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@convequity

Convequity on X

Jeff Dean’s departure is a seminal moment for $GOOG I’ve been watching this closely and the picture keeps getting clearer — and more concerning. Google is still treated as the safe consensus AI bet. Full-stack ecosystem, consumer reach, TPU muscle. But the competitive status of its frontier models looks increasingly dubious. The one-way talent flow tells the story. Google has seen massive outflows to OpenAI and Anthropic (reports put the numbers in the high hundreds to over a thousand in recent periods) while inbound from those labs remains tiny. This is not normal churn. It signals a structural talent problem that shows no sign of being fixed anytime soon. Jeff Dean leaving with Sanjay Ghemawat, Quoc Le and Oriol Vinyals, while Demis Hassabis steps back from day-to-day leadership, is the clearest signal yet that the research edge has peaked. Top talent does not want to waste cycles inside a large, conservative organization when the progress window is this narrow. We’ve flagged Google’s cultural and leadership issues in our recent rebalancing work. This just cross-validates it hard. What’s especially striking is the internal dynamic. All signs point to Koray Kavukcuoglu having been central to the environment that produced these outcomes — yet he has now risen to Chief AI Architect and the unchallenged operational AI leader, reporting directly to Pichai. The research org is fraying rapidly while the executive who oversaw much of that period moves up the ranks. That is a strange incentive structure. Large orgs struggle to deliver breakthrough AI. Talent density, bold vision and nimble execution matter more than scale. Meta rebuilt around an independent lab. SpaceX is doing the same with xAI. Google may eventually follow, but the current setup still seems unwilling to fully accept the reality. That said, the TPU and infra side continues to execute well with far less leakage. The competitive edge is shifting toward infrastructure, chips and consumer distribution — not frontier model leadership. This remains the biggest news of the week for a reason.
@junkbondinvest

junkbondinvestor on X

Strategy ($MSTR) has $15bn of preferreds, all yielding 10%+ Here's a quick summary of the situation > ~$22bn of debt + preferred vs. ~$54bn of BTC > Current interest/dividend obligation is now $1.75bn+ per year > $6bn+ of converts (1st tranche putable beginning in '27); all busted > Saylor beginning to sell $BTC and has a $4bn USD reserve which funds 2+ years of fixed obligations > Most junior preferred, $STRD, trading at 64 cents / 15.8% > Most senior preferred, $STRF, trading at 96 cents / 10.6% Is there a relative value trade here? My thoughts below

Investor Letters

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Danaher’s robotics era

Danaher’s new CEO paired a Q3 beat and raised EPS outlook with a 2027 4%-5% organic-growth starting point, while pitching AI-enabled…

DHR $165B
Best Anchor Stocks 1 click

Meta Earnings, Muse and the Frontier, Musebook

Meta’s earnings hinge on whether investors back Zuckerberg’s Muse vision and the compute spending required to build it.

META $1.6T
Stratechery by Ben Thompson – On the business, strategy, and impact of technology. 1 click

ORCL Update

Oracle rose about 12% intraday on October 28, 2026 as AI infrastructure and cloud-demand sentiment improved and credit-spread concerns…

ORCL $363B
Cestrian Capital Research 2 clicks

Anthropic Deep Dive

Anthropic’s $80.7 billion first-half loss was mostly fair-value marks, while $16.3 billion revenue and compute economics showed a $974…

AMZN $2.9T
CV's Substack 7 clicks

My Last GFL Update - Hopefully

GFL’s take-private structure hinges on BC Partners rolling 60% of its stake to preserve debt portability under the 40% permitted-holder…

GFL $20B
310 Value’s Newsletter 5 clicks

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