Four charts worth thinking about:
- The sharp rise of open-weight models as corporations shift away from the frontier
- How private equity became the new bad guy in current politics
- The AI boom is pulling forward years of GPU demand
- Canada is seeing near-record outmigration
1. Open-weight models are taking AI usage. Profits are likely next.
Open-weight models now account for more than half of AI token usage, while capturing only 14% of spending.
The market has decided that many AI workloads do not require the most expensive proprietary models. Good-enough intelligence is becoming cheap and widely available.
As open models continue improving, pricing power will move away from the model layer and toward the companies that own distribution, data, workflows, and customer relationships. For the moment, the wall of money keeps crashing down.
Source: FT
2. Private equity has become the new political target
Private equity has moved from an obscure corner of finance into the center of political attacks.
After the financial crisis, politicians focused their anger on banks. In this U.S. election cycle, private equity is increasingly filling that role. Private equity now owns large parts of healthcare, housing, retail, restaurants, and local businesses. Housing, in particular, has American voters furious at bidding against private equity.
Election politics tends to find irritating symbols of power. Private equity has become one.
Source: FT