Category: Insights
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The State of AI: 2025 Year in Review
Table of Contents Introduction 1. 2025 in Review: Macroeconomic Backdrop 1.1 Markets and Monetary Policy 1.2 Asset Class Performance 2. 2025 in Review: Technology Sector 2.1 Industrial Policy and Sovereign Capital 2.2 Selected Technology Transactions 2.3 Energy and Power for AI 2.4 Hyperscaler Capital Deployment 2.5 Neocloud Infrastructure Buildout 3. 2025 in Review: Frontier AI…
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Meta and AI Ads
Zuck’s vision of having AI generate marketing collateral and automatically run ads is closer to reality than most people think. Ironic that Gemini is making this process so easy, which means Meta has a clear path in making it happen. Shrimp cocktail (Fri/Sat only) from Cook’s Seafood in Menlo Park. From Meta’s Q2 2024 earnings…
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Oura Ring: Using AI Image Recognition to Track Meals
My wife recently stopped using the Oura Ring and became a Fitbit user, so I became a proud owner of a new tech gadget. If you haven’t heard of the Oura Ring before, it’s a ring-like device that you wear on your finger and throughout the day, it records your biometrics data such as heart…
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November 2025 AI Financing Report
November reflected broad infrastructure acceleration and deepening capital concentration as Hyperscalers, model labs, and investors expanded long-term AI commitments. OpenAI secured a $38B, seven-year AWS cloud agreement to lock in Nvidia GPU supply, while Microsoft advanced $9.7B in partnerships with IREN and Lambda to extend multi-region training capacity. Meta and Anthropic added more than $650B…
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Consumer GPUs Might Make Neoclouds Optional
Open Source Catches Up, and Consumer Hardware Is Ready Open-source large language models have quietly caught up to their closed-source cousins. Models like OpenAI’s gpt-oss-20B, Meta’s Llama, and many models coming out of China can now deliver reasoning, code generation, and conversational ability that would have seemed like science fiction three years ago. And they’re…
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October 2025 AI Financing Report
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…
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How Big Tech Is Rewriting M&A: The License and Acqui-hire Era
Authors: Justin Wang (Analyst), Evelyn Xie (Analyst) Table of Contents Introduction Inflection & Microsoft (Mar 2024) Adept AI & Amazon (Jun 2024) Covariant & Amazon (Aug 2024) Character.AI & Google (Aug 2024) Windsurf & Google + Cognition AI (Jul 2025) Scale AI & Meta (Jun 2025) Enfabrica & Nvidia (Sep 2025) Takeaways Introduction A new…
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September 2025 AI Financing Report
September’s activity reflected continued movement from hype to scaled execution as leading players doubled down on infrastructure and distribution. OpenAI advanced on multiple fronts, closing a $6.6B secondary sale at a $500B valuation, striking a landmark $300B compute deal with Oracle, and expanding U.S. datacenter plans, while Nvidia drove aggressive dealmaking including up to $100B…
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Reflections on China’s Tech Scene: EVs, AI, and Everyday Innovation
After a month-long trip to China this August, I found myself reflecting on the rapid pace of technological change and how much of it is shaped by China’s state-managed economy. As I rest on my flight back to the U.S., I could not help but notice how different the consumer experience felt, from transportation to…
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August 2025 AI Financing Report
August’s headlines reflected a shift from hype to execution as tech giants and leading startups moved aggressively to scale. Nvidia posted record revenues despite export headwinds, Anthropic secured a $13B round to extend its lead in safety and education, and OpenAI both expanded through the acquisition of Statsig and stumbled with a controversial GPT-5 rollout.…
Stepmark Partners 