Today's free post is on the Layers of AI - a tech explainer into what is underlying this wave of Generative AI and LLMs. #AI #GenerativeAI #LLMs hhhypergrowth.com/layers-of-…

Apple $AAPL iPhone Duo can be ordered as of 10/16 (one week), and can be seen in stores 10/23 (two weeks). Supply is going to be very limited, and if you are serious about wanting one as soon as possible, see this “Get Ready” process where you can make it a one-click process at pre-order to secure it as quick as possible. macrumors.com/2026/10/08/iph…

I picked the wrong week to start my new diesel-powered AI data center

I missed that Amazon acquired DuckLabs and its DuckDB analytical db in August $AMZN $SNOW #Databricks aws.amazon.com/blogs/big-dat…

Apple $AAPL held its September event today to unveil the new iPhone, Watch/Ultra, AirPods... and... oh yeah... one more thing... They debuted their new foldable phone, iPhone Duo. apple.com/newsroom/2026/09/a… Here are some quick details if you are interested. * It has a 7.6" inner screen and 5.4" outer (front cover) screen. * It starts at $1999 for 256GB, and can be extended to up to 2TB of storage. (So it's 54% more expensive than an 18 Pro Max.) * You can preorder on 10/16, and it ships 10/23. * It has an extremely fancy multi-layered nano-texture display, and a precision hinge system that magnetically seals shut. * When closed, it resembles a small book (with the outer display as the front cover, and camera on the back cover), and can be used one-handed and fit in your pocket. * When open, it looks like a slightly smaller iPad mini, but with way better display resolution (and nearly triple the price). * Like the new 18 Pro line, it is powered by the A20 Pro chip, C2 chip, N1 chip, and has advanced thermal mgmt. * The battery is split into both sides, and AI helps utilize and charge it in a unified way. * It is the thinnest iPhone yet. Most of the other chips/sensors are fit into the camera bulge. * The back cover has 48MP main and ultra-wide camera lenses (you lose the telephoto lens), and there is a hidden FaceTime front-facing selfie camera under the inner display. * Instead of Face ID, it uses Touch ID on the thumb button. All the buttons are on the right-hand side, whether open or closed. (Eat it, southpaws! ... Wait, that's me.) * The 2 displays use the same aspect ratio, and the screen rescales as you open the device. The UX transition between screens looks pretty wonderful. * It can be used in a variety of display configurations, across open, closed, hinged facing down (like a desk calendar), or hinged facing up (like a mini laptop). * iOS has been completely adapted to each of those display configurations, as have all the main iPhone apps and several 3rd party apps (Zoom, Netflix, Slack, etc). * The inner display allows multitasking and SplitView like the iPad. * They are doing some unique things with the combination of both displays. For example, while open, the outer display (now pointing the same way as the main camera) can act as a display for the photo subject. Another example is, while hinged facing down, the StandBy mode can show a photo gallery, clock, or calendar like a smart display. * Later this year it will support using the Apple Pencil (only the kind with USB-C). This is the first non-iPad device to support Pencil. * They will also sell a new regular and Folio case (with kickstand) for $79/$129. Here are some of Apple's videos on the new Duo: * Short video demoing it: youtube.com/watch?v=FUfGcZ09… * Or jump to the last 25min of the full presentation: youtube.com/live/39BalPDuTo0…

This week in premium: a deep dive into NVIDIA's Q227 results, and its growing upstream and downstream commitments $NVDA Next up: the ongoing compute race between OpenAI & Anthropic, and the financial backstops from NVIDIA, Google, and Broadcom that are helping fund it $GOOG $AVGO also of interest to $MSFT $AMZN $CRWV $NBIS $IREN $HUT $WULF $CIFR $AMD and suppliers

If Reddit $RDDT is truly an AI rival to Anthropic, then we gonna need that $30b market cap to 10-30x runtimewire.com/article/redd…

apologies to my premium members ... in writing up my my piece on NaVIDIA's Q227, i went down rabbit hole after rabbit hole on their growing financial commitments, and the $NVDA news KEPT ON COMING (Anthropic/Lambda, Hugging Face, etc) at a firehose pace this week. I didn't get my earnings take out this week as desired, but wanted to let you know there is multi-post series coming on $NVDA, OpenAI & Anthropic buildouts, and Google's competing efforts that include $GOOG $MSFT $AMZN $CRWV $NBIS $IREN $HUT $WULF $CIFR $AMD and more

NVDA basically buying out frontier model maker Poolside… or, at least, scooping out the tech and 1/3rd of its employees

Databricks is growing over 80% at a $7B run rate - yet remains private. They just had a funding round (what is it, Series Z now?) at a $190B market valuation. cnbc.com/2026/08/13/databric… Come on in @Databricks, the water is fine.

Reddit $RDDT up strong afterhours on news it is joining S&P500 on Aug 18

This week in premium: a look at AppLovin's dual flywheels being unlocked by their push into self-service consumer advertising, and setting Q2 expectations $APP And more, after Q2 results tonight

The market is being very stupid about Reddit's Q2 report, after its weakness in US DAUq combined with comments about 'choppy' search referral traffic. $RDDT This rising era of "Google Zero" (zero click-through) from AI search summaries has the market way too skittish here. Yes, US DAUq (daily uniques) retreated -300K sequentially. It means users that were using the site/app daily didn't engage every single day in the middle of summer. Those users are now likely in US WAUq (weekly uniques), which grew +700K. The market is forgetting that net new DAUq in Q2 is always seasonally weak. A sequential pullback like this has happened 6 times in 6 years, half of which were in a Q2. What I think is vastly more important as a gauge of Reddit's ongoing executional success is their +64% ad revenue growth. This primarily comes from higher user engagement (more opportunities for ad impressions) and a rise in ad pricing from improved ad performance and/or higher demand. (Another lever they have is the number of ad impressions over a piece of content, which they thankfully pull infrequently. The COO says so when they do, and she did not mention it.) If you invest in $RDDT you need to downplay the importance of DAUq/WAUq in your quarterly measures of executional success. These user-focused KPIs mask the fact that mgmt isn't giving you enough info to gauge user engagement & ad impressions on your own. So you have to trust the revenue numbers and ARPU (rev per DAUq) being generated as your primary view. DAUq/WAUq KPIs only tell you frequency of visits. It tells you nothing about the amount of user engagement per visit and from that, the number of ad impressions served to the user over that time. As a rough example of why the underlying user engagement is the key factor (which DAUq is a secondary input into), a daily user might be coming to the site for 5 minutes per day (35min a week). Another weekly user might be coming to the site two days a week for an hour each (120min a week). These 2 users end up with wildly different engagement times that are completely masked by these "critical" KPIs. In my example, that weekly user is driving over 3x the enagement of that daily. We also have no idea what each user is doing in that time per visit: are they reading long threads in the comments? visiting multiple posts in rapid fire without diving in depth into comments? moderating a subreddit? scrolling a feed? using DMs? or watching linked videos on a single page? A user watching linked videos are not generating anywhere near the same amount of ad impressions than a user reading deep into the comments across multiple posts. So the real levers for Reddit operationally are in how many ad impressions and what types of ads and content (posts, comments, feeds, searchs) they are exposed to during that each visit, and ultimately, the performance of their ad engine in matching these ads to high-intent users. ARPU rose +51% in the US despite the sequential drop in DAUq. That tells us that Reddit is successfully improving ad monetization through higher engagement and improved ad performance leading to higher pricing/demand. The 'choppy' click-through from AI search summaries are giving everyone across the open web some slight to severe weakness in referrals. Reddit has several paths forward should it worsen (including its still ongoing data licensing renegotiation with Google). But all of the signs within revenue/ARPU are pointing to continued strong execution by the Reddit team over the levers they can control. (You can read a lot more $RDDT in my Premium coverage.)

This can't be good

This week in premium: an extensive walk through Reddit’s strategy, Q1 results, mgmt shifts, and platform expansions to drive engagement and automation. Also a look at the evolving content discovery landscape, over AI citation shifts, legal battles, licensing deals, and key changes coming to Google’s AI search that look to benefit Reddit heavily. $RDDT $GOOG $META $APP

Watching Brazil - Norway game with a bunch of Brazilians in the streets of Lisbon is very entertaining.

This AI thing seems to have legs.