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Sunday, November 1, 2026

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@SouthernValue95 1 click

SouthernValue on X

Ramp data shows VC-backed companies are spending 10x more per employee/month on AI vs. PE-owned and other companies. A bearish interpretation could be: token spend is being driven by VC-backed companies, making demand vulnerable to swings in capital cycle. Valid! However, on a longer timeframe, I think this is quite interesting as a leading indicator for the direction of software companies (VC-backed companies are mostly software or service-as-software companies). New companies are being built with a larger ratio of tokens vs. humans. Look at Anthropic itself, which pays 1/6 as much on intelligence as its customers (since it sells tokens marked up at 85% GM): Anthropic is spending ~9x more on compute than human salaries despite having access to tokens at cost. Cash payroll is annualizing ~$2B for a company with ~$60B of run-rate revenue in 1H26. Anthropic employs just 5k people. Wild efficiency in human capital. I suspect that the great software companies of the next decade, both new and incumbent, will insert AI into every aspect of their products so that using them feels like magic, and work happens seamlessly. Building a presentation in Claude feels like magic: I tell it what I want to put on a slide, and it appears like magic. As a user of Ramp, their products feel the same way: I make a purchase, take a picture of a receipt, and the expense is logged into my accounting system appropriately without the need for a human to type into a blank box. I think we will see most software become AI-native or be replaced by software that is. This is a significant opportunity for incumbents and startups alike. And I think this is a huge source of future token spend that will go to $AMZN and $GOOG where most software companies are built (on AWS and GCP) and where AMZN and GOOG are building the platforms for software companies to build AI capabilities into their products with choice around compute and model, embedded safety and governance, and unlimited scale. Amazon CEO @ajassy said on a podcast this week that AI spend is currently a "barbell-shape" with insatiable compute appetite of the AI labs on one side, and corporates using AI for cost savings on the other. In the middle is tokens embedded into "core workloads" which he says is growing but small today, but he thinks in 5 years might be the biggest category of token spend.
@convequity 1 click

Convequity on X

We think AI power users are overestimating how far enterprise adoption has progressed. Anthropic’s S-1 says over half the Fortune 500 were $100k+ annual customers as of September. Among those publicly traded customers, Anthropic spending averaged under 0.1% of total expenses in Q3 2026. That measures spending on one provider, so it cannot establish whether their AI deployments are succeeding. But the expectation gap is familiar. When you spend all day using the best models, it is easy to assume the rest of the economy is close behind. Building and running an enterprise’s own AI applications is a much harder undertaking. In Part 2 of our recent $NVDA report, we argued that successful adoption remains concentrated in a few exceptionally capable organisations, with Palantir ($PLTR) and coding agents the clearest examples. For Nvidia, adoption through clouds and model providers still leaves compute demand concentrated in intermediaries with the scale and incentive to develop their own chips. It needs more enterprises buying its compute directly. This is why we continue to see Palantir as a strategic enabler. The ability to help enterprises put AI into production remains scarce, even as access to capable models spreads. From Convequity’s “Nvidia at 16x Earnings: Bargain or Value Trap?” (Pt.2), 20 Oct 2026.

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When the liquidity does not add up

Arbor Realty Trust’s dividend suspension is presented as creating $60 million of liquidity, raising questions about its ability to meet…

ABR $2.2B
John Hempton's Newsletter 3 clicks

Verra veerer

Verra Mobility’s Avis termination threatens 2027 earnings, while Government Solutions profit rose 25% and implied fourth-quarter guidance…

VRRM $505M
The Oak Bloke 2 clicks

FTAI 3Q26: Aero margins in focus

FTAI’s Aerospace Products margin rebounded to 31% as CFM56 module output rose, while Power deposits and contracted deliveries fund its 2027…

FTAI $16B
Stock Thoughts 4 clicks

Microsoft's AI Boom Has A Cost

Microsoft’s Azure grew 48% as AI monetization accelerated, but doubled CapEx, largely for CPUs and GPUs, reduced quarterly free cash flow…

MSFT $3.9T
Yiannis Zourmpanos 2 clicks
T · short

At&t INC

AT&T’s stalled deleveraging and share repurchase case has prompted a bearish turn on the telecom stock.

T $144B
Value Investors Club

CVX Earnings Review

Chevron’s Q3 revenue rose 35% to $65.2 billion and EBITDA 75% to $20.2 billion, while production trailed guidance and refining margins…

CVX $465B
Cestrian Capital Research 3 clicks

SNY Earnings Review

Sanofi raised FY26 guidance after Q3 sales grew 14.3% at constant currency, led by 34.8% Dupixent growth; vaccines declined 6.6%.

SNY $108B
Cestrian Capital Research 1 click

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