October reflected the next leg of AI’s shift from narrative to realized demand, as earnings showed AI workloads driving cloud usage and revenue impact. Google Cloud grew 34% and AWS grew 20% while Apple Services hit an all-time high, signaling that enterprise AI adoption is beginning to show up in P&L and capex guidance rather than just forward positioning. Platform strategy continued to evolve with OpenAI advancing restructuring, Nvidia reaching $5T, and Amazon accelerating a new $11B U.S. data center buildout, reinforcing that infrastructure leadership is now a multi-pole race rather than a single center of gravity.
Financing also remained strong with ~$13.8B deployed across ~206 transactions, and capital allocation continued to favor scaled stacks and deep moat layers over early exploration. Policy and governance entered the cycle in parallel as California introduced the first statutory framework for AI companions, showing that commercialization, regulatory posture, and infrastructure buildout are now all moving forward at the same time.
Stepmark Partners 