gm.
wild week in the AI capital cycle. some bets are paying off huge. some blew up spectacularly.
3 things worth your time
1. an AI hedge fund blew up 67% in a week, then survived.
leopold aschenbrenner (a 24-year-old former openai researcher whose 2024 essay predicted the AI infrastructure boom) runs an AI-focused hedge fund called situational awareness. it was one of the top-performing funds in the world, up 439% through june. then last week happened.
on thursday, CNBC reported the fund was down 67% in july. it had piled into AI infrastructure stocks (SK hynix, micron, coreweave, sandisk, nebius) with up to 4x leverage. when AI stocks sold off, prime brokers (goldman, JPM, bank of america) issued margin calls. by thursday, WSJ reported ken griffin's citadel bought the fund's entire public stock portfolio in a forced fire sale. fund assets dropped from ~$45 billion in june to ~$10 billion.
then friday came. aschenbrenner sent a letter to investors saying the fund is "very much still in it," down 67% in july but still up 80% year to date. the fund still holds its private stakes (including a ~$5 billion position in anthropic). the AI stocks in his old portfolio then rebounded sharply on friday. classic AI capex bubble whiplash.
2. microsoft just posted the biggest single-day market cap gain in US history.
on thursday, microsoft gained roughly $450 billion in market cap in a single day, the largest one-day gain ever for any US public company. the stock jumped 16% after earnings. that beats the prior record (nvidia in april 2025 at $441 billion).
what drove it: azure (microsoft's cloud) grew 43% and crossed $100 billion in annual revenue for the first time. microsoft also disclosed that openai contributed $24.1 billion to its fiscal 2026 revenue. copilot (microsoft's AI assistant) added 10 million more paid seats in the quarter.
not every big tech company got the same reception. amazon also jumped (up 10-14% friday) as AWS grew 37% to $42 billion. but meta fell 8% on thursday because its free cash flow dropped roughly 91% (per fortune) as AI spending ramped up. the market wants meta to justify its AI spending with actual revenue. google is still under pressure from last week's $811 billion future spending disclosure. the market is starting to separate AI winners (microsoft, amazon) from AI question marks (meta, google).
3. the US just banned chinese humanoid robots.
on tuesday, the FCC (federal communications commission) issued a fact sheet banning new imports of chinese humanoid robots, robot dogs, and power inverters on national security grounds. FCC chair brendan carr said the move is intended to "secure america's critical supply chains." the ban applies to newly submitted device models. previously approved products can still be sold.
context: china currently dominates the global humanoid robotics market. two chinese companies (unitree and agibot) each shipped over 5,000 units in 2025, out of about 15,000 humanoid robots shipped globally. american companies like tesla and figure (a US humanoid robotics startup) shipped only a few hundred each. china controls about 85% of the global humanoid market.
china's foreign ministry condemned the move as "protectionism" and vowed "all measures necessary." the ban adds tension ahead of a planned september meeting between president trump and chinese president xi jinping. also, robots are apparently a real geopolitical issue now.
Nobody wants to say no to their team. Ramp does it for you with AI-powered cards that automatically block out-of-policy spend. Let Ramp be the bad guy.
two more quick things
big tech's AI spending just crossed $1 trillion.
according to a financial times report, cumulative AI infrastructure spending by amazon, google, meta, and microsoft has topped $1 trillion since 2023. and they're not done. an additional ~$745 billion is expected across the four companies in 2026 alone. amazon just raised its 2026 CAPEX guide from $200B to $220B. this puts a real number on the AI capex bubble everyone (including leopold, story 1) has been trading around.
tesla is reportedly weighing selling its china business to pave the way for a spacex merger.
on wednesday, WSJ reported that tesla executives were told to prepare for a potential separation of its china business. the reasoning: spacex has significant US defense contracts (about 21% of 2025 revenue), and defense work conflicts with tesla's massive shanghai gigafactory operations. musk denied the story on X, calling it "absurdly fake news." but WSJ is standing by the report. we'll see.
see you thursday.
not financial advice. aggregated community trends and commentary.