2026-05-22 21:37:18
Timing is rarely a coincidence. It's an opportunity. And we're clearly seeing quite a bit of jockeying right now amongst the three Big AI companies looking to go public. Over the next several months, we're about to see endless attempts to frame their own narratives so see what the public will buy. Quite literally.
M.G. Siegler
Happy long weekend (both Memorial Day and Bank Holiday). I'll be on the road next week. 🍻
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
💸 OpenAI's IPO Hedge – Beyond the obvious optics of leaking that you're going to file to go public right before your hated rival flips their S-1 public, assuming OpenAI does actually (confidentially) file today or early next week, it's clearly a maneuver to stay ahead of a would-be Anthropic listing. And a necessary one. If Anthropic goes out first, assuming their better growth and better margins hold, OpenAI's IPO is in a lot of trouble. The comp would have already been challenging from a bottom line perspective, as I detailed last year, but now that Anthropic has seemingly surged ahead in top line too... yeah. So the race is on. But as Sam Altman's comments to staff make clear, it's not a sure thing they're going to go public this year – many elements will factor in, including how SpaceX is received, overall macro sentiment, oh yes, and how their actual business is doing – but this clearly gives them optionality just in case they need to beat Anthropic to market (or, perhaps, if it looks like the market is about to collapse which could slam the IPO window shut for a long time, and as such, limit access to continued capital, which obviously would be very bad for OpenAI). [Information 🔒]
🎞️ IMAX Explores a Sale – Last summer, I had a new idea for Skydance following their purchase of Paramount: buying IMAX. As it turns out, they took my older, much larger idea, and bought Warner Bros Discovery instead. Still, given IMAX's relative price ($1.8B market cap before the pop on today's news), it could makes sense. Or it could make sense for the company that Paramount just paid a $3B breakup fee to in order to secure WBD. You know, the one that suddenly and surprisingly (except to me) loves movie theaters: Netflix. Certainly selling to someone right now makes some sense for IMAX, they're continuing to eat into box office share and 2026 is likely to be the best year for movies in quite some time (and perhaps for quite time after that). Sell high, as it were. [WSJ 🔒]
👶 Can Baby Yoda Save Star Wars? – Speaking of the box office. Sadly, signs are pointing towards "no" here as we head into the holiday weekend. An opening in the $80M range would be great for pretty much any movie, but sadly a Star Wars movie is not one of them. For context, Solo did $103M over the same weekend 8 years ago – and that movie was considered a disaster for Disney (it was fine, but unnecessary). Also, $103M is almost $140M in 2026 dollars. A bigger disaster for Disney (though not at the box office, but perception-wise) was what came next: The Rise of Skywalker. The last of the last trilogy and the last Star Wars movie we've seen until now was a retconning mess. Forget pent-up demand, it's wild that Disney let that after-taste linger all this time. And it's just going to be a hard sell trying to cleanse the palate while also trying to translate a Star Wars movie from streaming to the big screen for the first time. Anyway, Kathleen Kennedy is gone (though this is still obviously her Baby Yoda) and Dave Filoni is in place; a good transition as he co-wrote this film. His animated work has been generally excellent (including the current Maul!) but it's also a bit too in-the-weeds for the mass audience. Can he keep Star Wars truly mainstream? Next summer's Starfighter – well-timed for the 50th anniversary of the original movie, seems to have a decidedly better vibe around it. Could it be the start of a new trilogy? Something else? Moar Andor! Filoni (and Josh D'Amaro) is going to need to tackle it at some point... [Bloomberg 🔒]
Did NVIDIA just post the most profitable quarter in corporate history? Let's dive in...
M.G. Siegler
"I have a million ideas, from lab drug discovery to game design. I'd love to have some free engineers to go and do those kinds of things. I think it's a lack of imagination — and a lack of understanding of what's really going to happen."
– Demis Hassabis, talking about the movement to lay off engineers and replace their productivity with AI.
It's one of those quotes you certainly hope doesn't come back to bite if Google itself feels the need to follow much of the rest of the industry and do such layoffs (at some point, there will probably be pressure from Wall Street if nothing else).
"I didn’t want the second or the third in the company, I wanted only the top, and they’re here today to pay respects to you and to China."
– US President Donald Trump to Chinese president Xi Jinping during their meeting in Beijing with yes, many tech CEOs in tow.
Just a few days ago, I wondered if the tech company CEOs weren't starting to "outsource" their dealings with Trump to other "emissaries" on their teams, and if that in turn might annoy Trump. Well, I think we have our answer...
See also: the notion that Trump may have postponed the AI model executive order signing in part because a lot of the CEOs wouldn't be there and were sending "lower executives" in their place...
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• SpaceX's 'Fast Entry' to the Market
• Bezos on the Melania Doc
• SpaceX to Act Fast to Complete Cursor
• Murdoch Buys Vox
2026-05-22 00:31:19
Yesterday afternoon, news broke that OpenAI was preparing a confidential filing for an IPO. This was a few hours before the stock market closed for the day after which SpaceX filed their first public S-1. Shortly thereafter, word leaked about Anthropic's updated financials – notably that the insane growth they're seeing meant that they were likely to turn a profit this quarter well ahead of previous expectations. A profit? In AI?!
The fact that these stories all hit in the same general window on the exact same day... to quote Jeremy Culhane's impression of Tucker Carlson, "Huh. Really?" And I'm supposed to believe this is a coincidence? Really? It feels like jockeying...
2026-05-21 17:53:54
Mirror, mirror on the Wall Street, who's the most profitable of them all?
Meaning, what's the most profitable quarter any company has ever had? Following NVIDIA's (once again) blockbuster earnings yesterday, I had a feeling they may had just broken the all-time record. They were close last quarter, with only a Saudi Aramco quarter from 2022 (shortly after the Ukraine war broke out, sending oil prices surging) seemingly ahead of them. Yes, they had even managed to top Apple's insanely great most recent holiday quarter. So this latest quarter for NVIDIA with new all-time highs must be the best, right?
This is a question which is not as straightforward as you might imagine. So much so that even AI struggles with it a bit (mainly due to the data cut-offs, forcing web searches to augment any lists with newer data). Further, there are different ways that different companies report profit (I'll get to that). Anyway, I've done the legwork and helped guide some AI friends to what I think is the answer.
From a pure operating profit, Saudi Aramco's Q2 2022 likely remains king. But that too is quite complicated and perhaps a bit unfair given the whole state-owned monopoly thing. So if we want to just make it a bit cleaner and just consider corporate America. Yes, NVIDIA takes the crown.
$53.5B in operating profit in the just-reported Q1 fiscal 2027 is the record holder, just beating out Apple's Q1 fiscal 2026 (which yes, is their most recent holiday quarter, and technically would have lined up with NVIDIA's Q4 fiscal 2026 – again, complicated) of $50.9B.
Let's just take a moment to sit on that number. $53.5B in profit. In one quarter. Earned by one company.
Okay, moving on. I had previously thought NVIDIA had overtaken Apple in profit last quarter, but there I was looking at net income. That number, at least when it comes to GAAP standards, is bullshit. No less than Warren Buffett has long harped on this because Berkshire Hathaway's business involves investing in other companies and the accounting principles dictate you have to mark such investments to market when you report earnings. This means that Berkshire's "profit" swings wildly based off of how their holdings are valued. Of course, that's not profit in money you actually make – unless you sell your holdings, of course – but simply the value of it.
This has come into play in the tech world in recent years because of the investments the Big Tech companies are making. This has actually long been the case – I worked for over a decade at Google's venture arm which yes, made outside investments that from time to time would move the net income needle for Alphabet – but the difference is the size and scope of these investments in AI.
Case in point: the actual record holder when it comes to net income for a quarter is not NVIDIA. Nor Apple. It's not even Saudi Aramco! It's Google.
Last quarter, the company wowed Wall Street in reporting a staggering $62.6B in net income. It was so far above and beyond analyst expectations that everyone pretty quickly realized what was going on. That surge had little to do with Google's underlying business (which, to be fair, remained great) and everything to do with one or two massive mark-ups in large Alphabet holdings. Namely, Anthropic and SpaceX. A full $36.9B of that $62.6B – more than half – was a result of those mark-ups.1
Again, that's silly since Alphabet didn't actually see any of that $36.9B come into their bank accounts. It's simply a paper gain. Yes, they could have sold it, but they didn't. Also selling those stakes would have brought a massive tax bill which would have cut those numbers significantly as well. Sure, they could leverage those holdings I suppose, but it's Google, they don't need such leverage. So until they sell those holdings and get the actual proceeds,2 it's just a weird way to talk about profits.
Anyway, back to the land of actual profits, NVIDIA is now king. Again, at least in corporate America. Just to note the Saudi Aramco situation, it's likely that in that Q2 2022 quarter that they booked something along the lines of $80B - $90B in operating profit.3 Yes, wild. But again because of their structure, a huge portion flowed back to state royalties and taxes immediately. That left them with a "mere" reported $48.4B in net income.
Speaking of, because NVIDIA is now by far the most active corporate investor – far outstripping Alphabet at this point – their numbers are likely to be all over the place in the coming quarters and years. Because it's a relatively new operation for them (at least at scale) and more so because of the insane growth of the actual underlying business, the paper gains/losses haven't had a big impact on the numbers yet for NVIDIA. Though they did boost net income this quarter in a way that is visible.
When everything is up and to the right, this obviously looks great – including on the all-important earnings-per-share (EPS) line. But if the market turns and/or some of those investments start to lose steam and value... just be ready.
For now, just from a pure operating profit perspective, NVIDIA is still growing an absolutely staggering 147% year-on-year. Even if that slows quite a bit (as the law of large numbers must dictate at some point, though NVIDIA keeps pushing those limits!), we could be looking at $100B in quarterly earnings for NVIDIA in relatively short order.
At that point, there would be no question who is king of the profit hill.
One more thing: I would just continue to point out how much of NVIDIA's business is built on the back of Big Tech. In a way, they're basically vacuuming up all of their cash flow (aside from Apple, of course). This is great for NVIDIA given the current state of things, but if something shifts...
M.G. Siegler
M.G. Siegler
1 And, I should note, it's going to happen again soon when SpaceX goes public in June. And then when Anthropic goes public after that... ↩
2 Again, see: said IPOs – though we'll see if Google exits as quickly as they can given the deals they're working on to use SpaceX rockets to get to their own payloads to space! It will likely remain a very strategic investment. Perhaps Anthropic too for the Cloud and TPU usage! ↩
3 This is a bit opaque without the same type of reporting standards, but can be sort of backed into knowing the low cost of producing a barrel of oil relative to the price surge back then (and knowing the reported net income, guesstimating the cut,taxes, etc). ↩
2026-05-20 20:21:03
The weeks and months leading up to the Google I/O conference are funny in the Age of AI. Everyone online seems to talk themselves into the notion that Google has fallen behind because they're seemingly more quiet than their rivals. After a slow start, they were able to catch up, so why hasn't Google kept their foot on the gas? That's the general sentiment. Then I/O hits and it showcases Google putting their pedal to the metal, zooming back in front of the pack.
At least, that was last year. This year was a bit different.
While yesterday's keynote showed the company effectively using their size and scale advantages with a wide array of announcements across a huge swath of services (many of which have billions of users – 13 of them now over 1B, as CEO Sundar Pichai highlighted front and center), it also felt a bit underwhelming, if I'm being honest. Perhaps that's just AI as a technology maturing and those of us living with it daily getting naturally numb to the incredible capabilities (as always happens with all technology). But it also feels a bit like Google may need to rethink their strategy around how they handle such roll-outs.
I'm not saying they need to ditch I/O, but I do think they'd be wise to make it less of a big public showcase event and more of an actual developer event. Google naturally followed Apple down this big keynote path, as did everyone else. And the strategy seemed to work well when Android was combating the iPhone. But the Age of AI is different. And most notably, that includes the cadence of releases.
Obviously Google doesn't fully wait for I/O each year to release what they've been cooking up over the past many months. Like every other AI lab, they're constantly pushing out new models and capabilities. But at the same time, unlike the other AI labs, Google clearly also holds some things back in order to make a splash at I/O. Only this year, the cupboard seemed relatively bare.
Don't get me wrong, a lot of what they talked about and showcased looked cool. The problem is that almost none of it actually seems ready to roll. As in out.
While they did seemingly move the entire stack to Gemini 3.5 Flash, the actual frontier model, the Pro variant, clearly isn't ready. To the point where it was only mentioned by Pichai in passing, noting that it would be coming next month. The audience didn't like this too much. And while it's undoubtedly better to let a model bake longer rather than show it off (let alone push it out) prematurely (just ask Meta to know how that goes), it sort of highlights my point: what's the point of a big, forward-facing single keynote in the Age of AI?
You either have to hold stuff back to show it off there, which is bad when your competitors aren't doing that. Or you have to move stuff forward to be able to showcase it – but not ship it – at the event, which is arguably worse.
Again, there was a lot of the latter. Nearly everything shown off on stage was either going to be coming later this year or would be rolling out in beta mode to those willing to pay for the 'Ultra' tier of Gemini.1 If you're just a regular old Gemini user – or even a mere 'Pro' peon – there's not a lot for you to actually try today.
I'm not suggesting this will be like the don't-call-it-vaporware – but awfully vaporware-y – AI that Apple talked up at WWDC two years back. But again, Google just held a giant event to talk up a bunch of products and functionality coming soon. The other AI labs also do some previewing, but they also don't hold events at the scale of I/O. And their previews are often a result of them being either resource constrained – or they're Anthropic worried that 'Mythos' could end civilization as we know it. Again, Gemini 3.5 Pro seemingly just isn't ready.
And that's fine! But maybe hold a smaller Gemini 3.5 press conference say, next month, when it is ready?
Same with the new 'Omni' class of models. Again, the new video generation looks good, but it's also clearly a fraction of what Google is hoping to do here. This also felt a bit underbaked in terms of delivery to the public. And even the more limited subset starts by rolling out only to paid users at first.
'Gemini Spark' – how cold of Google is it to name their OpenClaw-killer after Meta's first attempt to catch up in frontier models? – will come to "trusted testers" first. Then to the 'Ultra' tier. Then to the others at some later point. It will apparently be baked into Chrome "later this summer" but probably not everywhere, and probably not for everyone.
'Android Halo' is also coming later this year, though no one seems to have any idea what that is beyond the extremely vague mention of agents by Google. (It may just be a UI tweak for Android?)
Antigravity did get a "2.0" version launched yesterday, but people seem fairly underwhelmed in the space that's arguably the most competitive and important right now in all of AI? Google perhaps should have waited for 3.5 Pro to ship it? Again, that will be next month, it seems.
There are a number of new things coming to Google Search itself – almost all of which are coming later. The generative UI? This summer. Agents and mini-apps? This summer. The new shopping capabilities? This summer.
Wait a minute. The new voice capabilities demoed for the Gemini Mac app? This summer. Google's new 'Pics' photo editor? This summer. Again, Spark in Chrome? This summer.
It almost feels like Google should have instead held an event... this summer.
The new 'Daily Brief' feature in Gemini is apparently rolling out soon, but to paid users at first. At least the new "Neural Expressive" UI seems to be actually live – and looks quite good, I might add!
How about the Gemini-powered Smart Glasses – sorry, 'Intelligent Eyewear'? These have been teased or previewed at least three or four times already, maybe more. Surely they're ready by now to meet Meta in the market, right? Right, if by "now" you mean this Fall. For the 'Audio Glasses' (yuck branding) at least. The ones with the display in the lens? That's looking like next year.
So we'll presumably see them previewed or showcased at least a few more times before they actually ship.
Look, I'm being a bit of a jerk here. My point is simply that I'm not sure how much it makes sense to use Google I/O as a showcase in the Age of AI. Things are just moving much too fast (or in some cases, too slow) for a once-a-year big event. I think it makes sense to convene your developer ecosystem in such a way, but just like with Apple's WWDC, these have morphed into being too forward-facing (with the expectations to boot). For actual products (and models), it probably doesn't even make sense to follow Apple's other Fall event (sometimes two) and/or Spring event cadence. Instead, perhaps do what OpenAI does and just convene people when you actually have something to talk about and showcase. Ideally right around when the work is actually ready to roll.
A few more things:
1 Google did lower the price of the 'Ultra' tier, but it almost felt like a move made knowing how annoying restricting so much new functionality would be, and trying to throw a bone to those who will undoubtedly want to try some of this stuff now. ↩
2026-05-19 03:42:21
While it's easy to dismiss those pushing back against AI as "Luddites" – there's actually a far more interesting argument that there are some parallels with the actual movement from the 1810s...
M.G. Siegler
Inklings is a newsletter featuring links and commentary from M.G. Siegler on timely topics found around the web.
⚖️ Well, There Goes That Dream – I had a feeling the jury deliberation in the Elon vs. OpenAI trial might not last long. It didn't even take two hours for them to unanimously reject Musk's claims on the grounds that he failed to bring them within the statute of limitations. In other words, everything else argued and presented in the case didn't matter. What a colossal waste of time. Serious question: can citizens of California sue over a waste of tax payer dollars? (ChatGPT doesn't think so – Claude concurs.) And, of course, Elon's lawyers have already announced he'll be appealing. We'll see (and if so, he should probably get a new lawyer?). He wasn't there. Nor was Sam Altman nor Greg Brockman, which was a bit surprising given their attendance throughout. Hopefully they're back to work. [NYT]
💫 Big Tech's Emissary Movement – Given Dina Powell McCormick's previous roles in administrations (including Trump's first term) it obviously makes sense for her to serve as Meta's liaison at political events. But I also wonder if we're not starting to see a shift where the tech leaders get some distance from the administration (after doing everything to be as close as possible) as we head towards the midterms (and tip into Trump's "lame duck" era). Beyond McCormick spelling Zuck, Tim Cook is continuing his duties in this regard even though he's handing over the CEO reigns to John Ternus this year. Might we see more of say, Brad Smith instead of Satya Nadella? In a way, Amazon and Google have been doing this already with founders Jeff Bezos and Sergey Brin sometimes stepping into such a role in place of Andy Jassy and Sundar Pichai, respectively. If Trump stops getting CEOs and gets more and more of these emissaries, will he start to get annoyed? [Bloomberg 🔒]
🥫 Apple's 'Dinged Can' Strategy – When I was a kid – okay, not a kid, but younger – I was told that Keystone Light was the same as Coors Light but cheaper because they used cans that were 'dinged' in the process. As it turns out, that's not true. But it is essentially what Apple is doing with the MacBook Neo. Essentially, they're using A18 Pro chips that ended up slightly defective, but fine if you simply shut off one (graphics) core. And actually, this is a strategy that Apple has long leveraged with various chips (starting with Apple TV and continuing on to HomePod, and even less expensive iPhones). This is highlighted now because the Neo is proving so popular that Apple ran out of defective chips to use, so they're reportedly having to spin up new processes to make more chips – many of which obviously won't be defective, but they may "bin" on purpose anyway to keep the product the same. Sort of a fun/weird problem to have (and especially complicated for Apple right now because NVIDIA now commands so much of TSMC's time – hence, the new Intel deal!). By the way, while it wasn't true of Coors cans, it is obviously true of a lot of fruit (how fitting!), where "deformed" (or dinged!) supplies move to other places to sell for less... [WSJ 🔒]
"I have my AI agent talking to their AI agent to request these refunds, which is quite fun."
– Tyler Cadwell, a founder and developer talking about his use of tools such as OpenClaw to run his startup. While much of the talk has been about tasking agents to do work to date, when agents start talking to other agents and simply send you any "human do-dos", things could start to get really interesting...
Fine, here's a pic of Tom, only because it's so comically an aspirational James Bond shot...
Below, members of The Inner Ring will find thoughts on:
• Siri Heads Back to "Beta"
• The Great SF AI Divide
2026-05-18 23:04:20
I've long known and used the term "Luddite". But I really only knew it in the generic, general sense in which it is used in modern times: a phrase leveled against someone who is opposed to new technology.1 But the reality is actually far more nuanced and interesting, especially as it relates to our current age.
It naturally popped into my mind yesterday when my entire social feed was suddenly stuffed with clips of former Google CEO Eric Schmidt's commencement speech at The University of Arizona. The speech is going viral, but not in the way that Schmidt might have hoped – not in the way that Steve Jobs' Stanford commencement speech continues to be viral some 20 years after it was given. No, Schmidt's speech is making the rounds because of the reaction from the crowd. That is, the boos.
So are these students simply Luddites? Well no, not exactly. But also perhaps in a way. And not the modern pejorative way, but closer to the literal way...