Authored by Victor Davis Hanson via American Greatness,

In the #MeToo years, the Left’s signature slogan was “Believe All Women!”

That directive was used to bolster Christine Blasey Ford’s preposterous and easily refuted 2018 allegations that some 35 years earlier she had been sexually assaulted by Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, when both were teenagers.

Two years later, the Left quietly junked that “Believe Women!” credo when Tara Reade came forward and lodged a far more credible charge that 2020 Democrat presidential nominee Joe Biden had sexually assaulted her when she was a Biden senatorial staffer.

Seven other women alleged that Biden acted toward them in sexually inappropriate ways. The Left more or less ignored these serial charges, and in Reade’s case, demonized her. Suddenly, the new mantra was “Believe women only if they prove useful to the Left.”

Since then, the grotesque sexual misconduct involving Democratic politicians—from New York governor Andrew Cuomo to California Congressman Eric Swalwell—has finally put #MeToo to rest. We were reminded of its demise when it was revealed that Maine senatorial candidate and socialist heartthrob Graham Platner had been discovered to possess a long social media history of crude and pornographic put-downs of women.

Indeed, an entire gaggle of former girlfriends has attested to his Nazi fascinations, his contempt for women, and his occasional physical violence against them.

So what?

Or as feminist icon and former #MeToo-er Senator Elizabeth Warren put it, speaking at a Platner campaign rally in Portland, Maine, “I’m here because Washington needs fighters, and Graham Platner is the fighter we need.”

But a fighter for what cause—and on whose behalf?

The demise of Black Lives Matter (BLM) offers another example of a recurring left-wing phenomenon: movements that begin as moral crusades and end as self-parodies. Almost every BLM cause célèbre has proved fraudulent, following a long tradition that stretches from Al Sharpton’s Tawana Brawley myth to the Duke lacrosse scandal.

The ginned-up BLM riots that followed the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, were all based on an abject lie. Brown never said, “Hands up, don’t shoot.” In fact, he attacked a police officer repeatedly and was lethally shot as he charged toward the officer.

Failing actor Jussie Smollett was never attacked by white MAGA thugs in the wee hours of a cold Chicago night. Instead, the faker Smollett hired two Nigerian-Americans, decked out in MAGA hats, to stage a mock attack. Only by staging such an attack could Smollett claim victim status, attract national sympathy as a target of white hatred, and attempt to revive his fading career.

Yet, for a while, the con worked. Soon-to-be Vice President Kamala Harris, who would go on to praise the often-violent mass George Floyd demonstrations of 2020, raged that the attack by anonymous white “racists” was an “attempted modern-day lynching.” Right—and she never apologized for spreading that lie.

The aftermath of the death of George Floyd did lasting damage to the country that still reverberates. Floyd was a career criminal. He had been imprisoned for participating in a home invasion where he pressed a gun into the stomach of a terrified young woman, who was beaten by one of his fellow criminals.

At the time of his arrest, Floyd was in poor condition both physically and legally—attempting to pass counterfeit currency, high on drugs, recovering from COVID, and resisting arrest.

He died after a police officer restrained him using an authorized but controversial protocol that involved placing a knee on the prostrate suspect’s neck—and did not heed in time Floyd’s call that he could not breathe.

What followed was the high-water mark of BLM. Four months of nightly riots led to some 35 deaths; 1,500 injured law enforcement officers; $2 billion in property damage; 14,000 arrests; and the torching of a police precinct, a federal courthouse, and an iconic Washington, D.C., church. The current leftist habit of urban intersection takeovers, statue-toppling, name-changing, and violent demonstrations is a legacy of that summer of lawlessness.

So we still live with the toxic ripples from the aftermath and the canonization of Floyd.

Thousands of police officers nationwide were laid off in “defund the police” madness. Faddish “critical race” and “critical legal” theories led to no cash bail and the near-immediate release of hundreds of thousands of arrested violent criminals.

Our supposedly best universities, in Pavlovian fashion, dropped the SAT admission requirement and upped race-based admissions.

Racially segregated graduation ceremonies, dorms, and “safe spaces” proliferated—along with newly introduced remedial math courses at our top campuses. Indeed, professors began handing out A’s to 80 percent of the student body, as Ivy League schools now inflated grades far more than did community colleges.

Administrators and bureaucrats soon created thousands of DEI positions across universities and corporations.

This craze led to McCarthyite “diversity statements,” an epidemic of alleged victimhood, untold billions of dollars squandered, and workplace productivity diminished. And the result was certainly not better race relations.

We were just reminded again of the absurdity of the immediate post-Floyd years, after learning that the inverse of Floyd’s death had recently transpired in the United Kingdom.

Eighteen-year-old Henry Nowak, a white male student, was fatally stabbed by a Sikh immigrant with his “ceremonial” sword. In truth, the weapon was an eight-inch knife mysteriously exempted from Britain’s otherwise tough laws against possession of knives.

According to reports, Vickrum Digwa called police and falsely claimed that the dying Nowak had initiated the confrontation with racial slurs, while family members attempted to conceal the weapon. (Would a Scottish highlander claim that he too had the right to carry an eight-inch broadsword as integral to his race, religion, and indigenous traditions?)

No matter—the police arrived hungry to deal with a sensational case of George Floyd-style, white-on-non-white racial violence.

Instead, they reportedly treated Digwa as the victim and handcuffed the mortally wounded and bleeding Nowak as he pleaded—nine times in total—that he could not breathe and was dying. They therefore almost certainly ensured his death. The national reaction?

No British politician went into full George Floyd take-a-knee mode—as they had in 2020, even across the Atlantic, for the felon George Floyd. The ensuing unrest, so far, seems mainly to have been limited to Southampton; there has been no mass destruction of property; there have been no mass assaults. Nowak was on the wrong side of the left-wing race-based binary of victim/victimizer and thus offered no fuel for virtue-signaling by hollow politicians. Such racial reductionism always trumps matters of class, evidence—and the truth.

As for the fate of the BLM architects? The founders never accounted for how their $90 million in donations was actually spent, but they did disappear into their newly purchased multi-million-dollar homes and have hardly been heard from since.

The episodes of existential psychodramas that come and go—after doing enormous damage to the nation—are nearly endless.

A number of American and international agencies and “experts” have now, mostly quietly, sighed that global warming was never really the existential danger that the Left swore would put “Earth in the balance” in a mere decade.

Nonetheless, once again, the toll has been enormous. Germany wrecked its economy to seek mythical “net zero” carbon emissions—by dismantling natural gas, oil, and nuclear power plants and turning to costly, inefficient, and unreliable solar and wind power.

This green mania swept the Western world—as China built two to three coal-fired power plants a month.

The left-wing, postmodern, globalist notion of a borderless utopian world that would fuel endless “diversity” has done so much damage to Western nations that even the European Left now fears its own political suicide from the vast influxes of often hostile illegal aliens.

Millions of unlawful and unvetted entrants crashed the borders, with no desire to integrate, assimilate, or acculturate to their Western hosts. They have spiked crime, fueled anti-Semitism, and ensured unsustainable social welfare costs.

The transgender frenzy was to be the Left’s next civil rights crusade, as it constructed a new victimized class with reparatory claims against the guilty traditionalist majority.

It mattered little that gender dysphoria was an ancient phenomenon, documented even in classical literature as a rare and aberrant syndrome where physical sex was at odds with psychological sexual identification. That malady had also been well known to modern sexologists since the 19th century, who had documented it as rare, involving far less than 0.01 percent of the population.

Nevertheless, the Left invented the unnecessary Orwellian term “transphobe,” and suddenly we were off to the races with transgender biological men nude in gym showers with teen girls and transgender “women” with male musculoskeletal bodies dominating female sports.

Soon, an epidemic of teens began wondering whether they were in fact “trans” and pondering whether to undergo a battery of dangerous hormonal and chemical drug regimens—or calling themselves nonbinary, to the point where the new third sex sometimes seemed almost as numerous as the old two genders.

What accounts for these bouts of periodic, collective, and suicidal madness?

First, the craziness is almost always birthed in the contemporary, affluent, and leisured West, which alone has the capital and resources to afford such freakish sideshows.

Second, the frenzies are usually the creation of the Left, predictably birthed in universities, the media, and the bureaucracies. They appear with familiar symptoms. The irredeemable, deplorable, and “garbage” hoi polloi are supposedly too dense to be properly schooled and thus must be frightened to death in order to adopt agendas that otherwise appear to them as utterly insane.

Junk your natural-gas dryer and grill, or face massive floods on your coasts. Drop the SAT and defund the police or face endless race riots.

Hire thousands of race and gender commissars or be forever tagged as racists, sexists, homophobes, and transphobes. Open the border and let illegal aliens enter by the millions, and thus pay partial penance for “whiteness” as the nation “checks its privilege.”

The Left is correct that few Western voters will openly embrace the unpopular elite agenda of racial fixations, globalism, laxity on crime, and degrowth environmentalism.

So, their long-term solutions have four predictable aspects:

1. Open the borders to create a more diverse, impoverished, and needy constituency.

2. Create fake “working-class” pseudo-populist candidates like the pampered Graham Platner, the God-is-nonbinary “new Christian” Talarico, and, of course, the waxen effigy of “good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton.”

3. Destroy time-tested systems by seeking to demolish the Electoral College, the 50-state union, the Senate filibuster, and the nine-justice Supreme Court.

4. Gin up these end-of-days, pseudo-existential crises whose solutions require massive new taxes, bigger government, and more dictatorial elite managers.

One good sign of growing antidotes is that increasingly Americans, and indeed all Westerners, are saying no to green haranguers, no to the gender and sex demagogues, no to the race-baiting industry, no to the open-borders conglomerate, and no to ungrateful immigrants.

Their pushback might be summed up as follows: “We are no longer going to allow you to destroy ancient traditions that ensured our prosperity, security, and liberty, and which were handed down to us by generations far better than your own.”

OpenAI is moving along in talks to lease a proposed 10-gigawatt data center campus on federal land in Ohio, according to a new report from The Information, in a deal that could include financial backing from Nvidia. This comes as Ohio lawmakers unveiled new legislation aiming to regulate data center build-outs.

The massive 10 GW data center would be the largest data center development ever considered, with a potential buildout cost topping $500 billion based on current prices for chips, labor, and construction materials.

OpenAI in Talks to Lease 10 Gigawatt Ohio Data Center with Backing From Nvidia

OpenAI is in advanced negotiations to lease a proposed 10 gigawatt data center campus on federal land in Ohio as part of a deal that could include financial backing from Nvidia, according to the…

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) June 10, 2026

Under the proposed deal, OpenAI would control the chip stacks through a long-term lease and begin making payments once the facility starts operations.

The first phase is expected to come online in 2028. For some context, 10 GW of power is roughly the output of several large nuclear reactors or about 10 large gas-fired power plants running at full capacity. Each GW can power about 700,000 to 1 million homes.

The data center development would require dedicated power generation, substations, transmission lines, cooling infrastructure, access to water or advanced cooling systems, and phased construction over several years.

Simultaneously, Ohio lawmakers have unveiled Substitute House Bill 646, which aims to regulate data center buildouts in the state.

“The Joint Data Center Study Committee has done its job,” Senate Finance Chair Brian Chavez (R-Marietta), who is also the co-chair of the data center committee, said, and quoted by local outlet ABC News 5.

Bill 646 would create a new electric rate class for data centers to ensure that the costs of generation, transmission, and distribution are entirely paid by hyperscalers.

“Make sure the ratepayers are kept harmless, held harmless, and that data centers pay for whatever they’re causing,” Chavez said.

This year alone, Goldman calculates that hyperscalers will unleash $800 billion in data center capex.

Latest data center projects by scale:

Mapping the Buildouts 

The downside risk for the data center buildout boom is that an alarming share of projects are being delayed, scaled back, or canceled this year as local resistance groups intensify pressure campaigns over power demand, water use, land rights, and grid reliability.

Beyond NIMBY opposition, there is also growing concern that some anti-data-center movements may be amplified by foreign influence networks operating through left-wing nonprofits, and comes as China prepares to begin its data center buildout strategy.]

Today’s report also comes days after OpenAI submitted a draft IPO prospectus to the US Securities and Exchange Commission, formally kicking off the process for one of the year’s most hotly anticipated debuts.

Authored by Bryan Hyde via American Greatness,

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) General Counsel James Percival has directed Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to impose strict penalties, including deportation, on illegal aliens who vote in American elections.

According to a DHS press release, the Immigration and Nationality Act directs the removal of aliens who illegally vote or make a false claim to US citizenship.

🇺🇸 DHS told ICE to deport any undocumented immigrant who votes in a U.S. election.

The directive, signed Monday, ties directly to Trump’s executive order on election integrity.

Illegal voting and false citizenship claims are now being treated as deportable offenses under the… pic.twitter.com/HGSGkmewQR

— Mario Nawfal (@MarioNawfal) June 9, 2026

DHS states that these provisions allow for the removal of illegal aliens if they illegally participate in our elections. No criminal conviction is required for their removal.

Percival said, “The importance of free, fair, and honest elections is without question. Echoing the words of President Trump, ‘the right of American citizens to have their votes properly counted and tabulated, without illegal dilution, is vital to determining the rightful winner of an election.”

Percival added, “Illegal voting by aliens dilutes the votes of American citizens and undermines our democracy. It must have consequences.”

DHS says the directive will help further implement policies similar to those from President Donald Trump’s March 2025 executive order, “Preserving and Protecting the Integrity of American Elections.”

Trump’s order directs actions across the federal government, including the verification of voter eligibility, grant administration, information-sharing, enforcement of federal integrity laws, improving voting systems, and criminal prosecution of unlawful voting by aliens.

The latest directive follows an August 2025 announcement by US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which updated its policy manual to bar green card holders who have voted or registered to vote from obtaining citizenship.

In a world already drowning with debt, the only certainty is even more debt 

According to a new analysis by Bloomberg, governments are borrowing from syndicated bond markets at a record clip as public spending surges. That’s in addition to direct sales where the government auctions off debt to institutional investors and individuals.

Sovereign issuers have sold $504 billion of the debt – which is offered to investors via banks – so far this year, a new record. Thet’s more than in the first half of 2020, when in a global emergency nations were paying to support their economies during Covid-19 lockdowns.

Budget deficits have been climbing since the global financial crisis. They spiked during the pandemic, when interest rates were slashed to record lows, and are widening again as governments boost defense spending and try to protect households from price shocks driven by the Iran war. Aging populations and rising interest rates are adding to the pressure.

“The main driver of the supply is basically increased public spending, and thus bigger funding needs,” said Jens Peter Sorensen, chief analyst at Danske Bank, pointing to greater outlays on the military, infrastructure and transition to cleaner energy. 

Germany and other nations have been setting aside hundreds of billions of euros for weapons and ammunition, and the EU has relaxed its rules to allow extra spending on defense and energy initiatives that curb consumption of fossil fuels.

AS noted above, the sums raised from syndications are dwarfed by debt sold at regular government auctions, not least because the US Treasury only uses the latter to issue bonds. But hiring banks to sell offerings to investors is popular elsewhere, especially in Europe. It can be a less risky option when markets are volatile, and give debt managers greater control over the timing of the sale. 

According to Bloomberg, for eight of the last 10 years, Italy has been the biggest borrower in the market for sovereign syndications. It is leading again in 2026, having already raised nearly €70 billion ($81 billion) in the first six months. Germany, which eliminated its famous “debt brake” and rewrote its fiscal rules to splurge on defense and infrastructure, raised €14 billion from three syndications so far this year, while the UK, Belgium and Serbia sold their biggest-ever deals. Australia and Mexico are among this year’s top 10 issuers.

Since demand for government debt remains strong, particularly for shorter maturities, governments are seizing the chance to work through a busy refinancing schedule and fund higher spending despite an uncertain path for interest rates, said Johnathan Owen, a portfolio manager at TwentyFour Asset Management.

“They’re using this window while markets are healthy and willing,” he added.Of course, the more markets are “healthy and willing” the bigger the eventual revulsion will be when investors realize they have loaded up to the gills with another batch of debt that will never be repaid.

Meanwhile, as the inflationary shock of war in the Persian Gulf has driven up yields, the outlook for the global economy has deteriorated, scrambling predictions for rates. The European Central Bank is set to deliver its first hike since 2023 this week and the US Federal Reserve is expected to tighten monetary policy later this year, although what happens thereafter is less clear.

US Treasury auctions suffered from elevated rate market volatility in March, immediately after the start of the conflict. There have been few signs since that investors are losing their appetite for debt, but they are asking for more in return. A 30-year US bond auction in May was the first since 2007 to draw a yield higher than 5%. Meanwhile, the UK’s £15 billion ($20.2 billion) offering in April drew record orders from buyers attracted by the highest yield on 10-year debt since 2008.

Fueling the increase in issuance are higher than normal redemptions, as Covid era bonds begin to mature. Analysis by Natixis SA shows that refinancing deals by euro-area sovereigns have jumped by 26% in 2026, outpacing the 11% year-on-year increase in total syndicated issuance.

“This gap suggests the record first-half is primarily redemption-driven rather than opportunistic front-running ahead of potential rate hikes,” said Theophile Legrand, a rates strategist at Natixis, in comments made at the start of this month. Still, there are signs that some European borrowers may be looking to lock in costs before they rise, based on recent trends.

In May, “redemptions actually declined year-on year, yet syndicated volumes jumped from €32 billion to €45 billion, suggesting at least some degree of opportunistic front-loading,” Legrand added.

According to Bloomberg, the pace of issuance for the rest of the year will depend on what central banks do next. Syndications from Belgium, Spain, Austria and Portugal in May were “earlier than anticipated,” ING strategists including Benjamin Schroeder wrote in a June 3 note. Others are getting in ahead of the summer slowdown. Greece is tapping the market for €3 billion, garnering more than €36 billion of orders for a reopening of existing notes due in 2036. Meanwhile, Sweden is raising €2 billion of three-year debt. Both deals should price on Wednesday.

“There’s still plenty of euro zone sovereign debt to come to market in the second half of the year,” said Harvey Bradley, head of global rates at Insight Investment. And that’s just the start, because after the second half, there will be even more debt every year going forward as record amounts of syndicated debt, both for new issuance and refis, come to market to fund a fiscal model that no longer works. 
 

The Build America 250 bill is a proposed transportation infrastructure funding package covering federal projects between 2027 and 2031 and would succeed the Biden-era Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, which expires in the coming months.

Goldman analysts, led by Ben Rada Martin, stated that the Build America 250 bill has cleared House committee approval with limited amendments, providing greater clarity around $580 billion for highways, bridges, and other transportation infrastructure.

One main point from the Goldman note is that Build America 250 is not another IIJA-style boom. For the Federal Highway Administration, Martin sees only about an 8% nominal increase relative to IIJA levels, after IIJA delivered a more than 50% federal funding uplift.

Martin pointed out that bridge funding jumped by about 29%, while rail and transit programs face reductions. He expects public highway spending to grow by 6% in 2026 and 5% in 2027, though much of that reflects inflation rather than real volume growth. After adjusting for construction cost inflation, he expects flat-to-slightly negative volume trends.

“Nominal uplift, with a mix shift to bridges, transit sees cuts: We go through the 1,000-page draft document and amendments to date, with the recent bill implying a broad continuation in spending with a category mix shift toward bridges (+29%), while rail and transit administrations see cuts,” Martin wrote in a note published on Monday.

Highways in detail – Limited expansion, especially net of inflation

Goldman’s prediction model indicates that public construction should continue to grow, but at a slower pace after a very strong 2021 to 2025 period.

Martin said the stock impact of the Build America 250 bill on construction-linked companies is viewed as neutral to slightly negative.

Engineering and Construction – Neutral/Mix:

• US (GVA, AECOM, J): We view the bill as broadly net neutral for GVA (diversified civil contractor), as funding implies flat to modest real volume declines. For Jacobs and AECOM (engineering and design firms), we see a modest negative impact, reflecting cuts to rail and transit. While state and local infrastructure accounts for ~25–30% of revenue for both companies, we believe they are relatively overweight transit versus traditional infrastructure (e.g., roads, bridges, tunnels).
• EU (Ferrovial): The bill is likely to be neutral for Ferrovial’s construction division – with Webber and Ferrovial Construction largely exposed to the broad US infrastructure segment, across bridges, highways, waterworks, and energy. When it comes to future infrastructure projects (P3), Ferrovial could benefit from lower government infrastructure spend, given lower crowding out effects increasing private market opportunities and ROI.

Lightside building materials

• (EU – Sika, SGO) – Neutral: Construction Chemicals are used in more complex engineering projects and in greater quantities in infrastructure refurbishment. Hence, we see the uplift in funding towards Bridge renovations as a positive, while see this to be offset by lower funding in transport and transit related categories. Sika is the most exposed with US Infra representing c.7% of Group (GSe).

Heavyside building materials – Neutral/Mixed:

• Cement (EU – Buzzi, Heidelberg, Latam – CX) – Neutral: Cement in our view is relatively project agnostic between bridges and highways. Hence, we see neutral implications, with strong Bridge spend offset by lower transport funding and limited uplift in nominal highway spend.
• Aggregates (EU – Heidelberg, Latam – CX) – Slight negative: Given only a small nominal funding increase for highways (key aggregate end-market), and expectations of continued pricing growth (c. +MSD) and inflation in the category, we believe levels of volume growth may be muted. While other spend categories of growth (Bridges) are less aggregate intensive.

The understanding here is that Build America 250 keeps federal infrastructure spending ongoing, but it should not be viewed as a new infrastructure supercycle.

Professional subscribers can read the full GS construction note here at our new Marketdesk.ai portal

Authored by Michael Lebowitz via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

The media hype surrounding SpaceX’s upcoming mid-June initial public offering (IPO) is immense. The company recently filed its S-1 with the SEC, targeting a valuation of $1.75 trillion and a capital raise of up to $75 billion. Some believe its valuation could rise to $2 trillion after the IPO. In its wake, Anthropic (Claude) and OpenAI (ChatGPT) confidentially submitted IPO registration statements to the SEC. Expectations are that both AI model companies will enter the market within the next 3 to 6 months, with rumored valuations approaching or exceeding $1 trillion each. Stripe, the quickly growing payments company, is rumored to be on the IPO docket as well, with a valuation that could exceed $150 billion. Consequently, the coming IPO boom will have wide-reaching impacts.

The IPO market, which has been stagnant for the last four years, is bubbling with excitement. The headlines surrounding the IPOs are hyperbolic, banker fees are enormous, and social media is teeming with bullish sentiment on how high the new shares may trade after going public.

While IPO boom talk is great for clickbait, nobody is asking the most important question. Where will the money come from?

Putting Context To The IPO Boom

To understand the size of the coming IPO boom, some historical context is necessary. Prior to the pandemic, the US IPO market raised approximately $30 billion per year. In late 2020 and throughout 2021, the SPAC boom led to a surge in IPO offerings. Since then, however, as we share below, IPO issuance has been relatively lean.

The 2026 pipeline is shaping up to be the second-largest in at least the last ten years. SpaceX alone is raising up to $75 billion per its SEC filing. Add OpenAI’s expected cash raise of $60 billion, Anthropic at $15 to $20 billion, and Stripe around $10 billion, and the pipeline of known IPOs coming to market is approximately $160-$165 billion. Moreover, the total market valuation of these deals could surpass $4 trillion. Assuming no other deals come onto the market, the four deals would be larger than the last four years’ worth of deals combined.  

Dilution vs. Capital Absorption

Some pundits are using the word “dilution” to describe the impact of the IPOs on the market. While not necessarily misused, the term is most often used to describe what happens when a publicly traded company issues new shares in the market, diluting the value of existing shares. Simply, existing shareholders who do not buy new shares see their ownership percentage decline.

Given that the expected stock offerings are IPOs rather than add-on offerings by a publicly traded company, the term “dilution” is not appropriate to describe the upcoming offerings. The more accurate term is capital absorption.

Capital absorption is the process by which large new stock offerings pull money out of existing financial markets, as investors sell existing holdings or redirect cash to purchase newly issued shares. While it is true that someone must buy the shares being sold to fund an IPO purchase, that buyer, in most cases, is simply recycling existing market capital rather than introducing new money. Thus, while an IPO is not dilutive to the stock being offered, it is dilutive to the financial markets, as the total investible dollars, in theory, remain unchanged; they just get spread out a little more thinly.

Where Does IPO Capital Come From?

IPO capital comes from three primary sources, each with consequences for existing market participants.

The first is institutional rebalancing. A large asset manager running an equity portfolio that wants meaningful exposure to a new IPO must trim existing positions and potentially use existing cash or raise new funds to create room for the new holding. While selling by any manager is unlikely to create a ripple in the market, because the stocks, bonds, and other assets they sell vary widely, simultaneous selling across thousands of institutional portfolios can have an impact.

The second is retail liquidation. Similarly, individual investors who want to participate in an IPO need cash to do so. Some of that cash may come from savings, but like most institutional accounts, they will raise cash by selling existing equity holdings. Keep in mind that every retail investor who liquidates an S&P 500 index fund to buy SpaceX or another IPO is, de facto, a seller of all of the stocks in the index.

The third source is capital from sovereign wealth funds, pension funds, and foreign institutional investors, who are expanding their equity holdings. Often, their funds represent new money entering the financial markets rather than a rotation within them. The participation of these funds might reduce the impact of IPOs on other stocks and financial assets.  

The net effect of all three sources is that existing holdings largely fund new ones. At the scale being contemplated in 2026, that rotation is large enough to create a meaningful headwind across financial markets.

Index Inclusion Impacts

The direct capital absorption from the IPOs themselves is significant, but it may not be the largest structural effect. The more consequential impact comes from index inclusion.

Passive index funds and other passive strategies do not choose their holdings. When a stock is added to the index they track, they must buy it in proportion to its weight in the index. Typically, this is a minor event, as most IPOs are small enough that inclusion is minimal. The 2026 IPOs are different.

Consider the top ten S&P 500 holdings shown in the table below. SpaceX at $1.75 trillion, combined with Anthropic and OpenAI at roughly $1 trillion each, represents approximately $3.75 trillion in total market weight. That is nearly equal to Apple’s entire market capitalization, the second-largest stock in the index. An S&P 500 index fund adding all three IPOs would need to proportionally reduce the weight of every other holding in the portfolio to make room for those additions.

Fortunately, the impact will happen in waves over time. SpaceX’s inclusion will trigger the first wave of forced rebalancing. Anthropic and OpenAI, expected to follow within months, each trigger their own.

Index Inclusion Timing

The impact of index inclusion, as discussed above, depends heavily on timing, and the timeline is accelerating in ways that are concerning for existing index investors.

Index providers have a financial incentive to include these large companies quickly. The more assets that track their indexes, the more licensing revenue they generate. An index that excludes the most valuable and talked-about companies in the market risks losing relevance and assets to competing benchmarks. That incentive is resulting in a significant rewriting of the rules by the indexing companies.

Nasdaq reacted first. In early May 2026, it revised its methodology to allow any newly listed company with a market cap in the top 40 to enter the Nasdaq 100 after just 15 trading days, eliminating the minimum float requirement entirely. Under those rules, SpaceX could be a Nasdaq 100 constituent before most investors have had time to assess its first earnings report.

The S&P 500 is moving more slowly but in the same direction. S&P Dow Jones Indices has proposed cutting the seasoning window from 12 months to 6 and waiving the four-quarter profitability requirement for companies above a certain market-cap threshold. Even under that accelerated timeline, a mid-June SpaceX IPO would not reach S&P 500 eligibility until around December 2026. Thus, the largest wave of forced passive buying may still be months away.

The market impacts begin at the IPO and may be felt for many months after.

Summary

Think of the stock market as a jar full of marbles. For the new SpaceX and other marbles to fit in the jar, either the jar must be enlarged, or some of the other marbles must shrink. 

Given the current monetary environment, the jar, or available capital, is unlikely to grow significantly. The Fed is no longer providing the flood of liquidity that enabled the easy digestion of the SPAC boom in 2020 and 2021. Rates are higher, savings rates are lower, and the equity market is already trading at elevated valuations. Simply put, there isn’t much extra liquidity.  Thus, the other option is for the collective market cap of everything else to decline.

In reality, there will be some shrinkage of marbles and an enlargement of the jar. The extent of both will help determine how the IPO boom is received and its impact on other stocks. 

Authored by Rob Sabo via The Epoch Times,

Homebuyers held more leverage over sellers in May, with sellers outpacing prospective buyers in 35 of the nation’s 50 most populous metropolitan markets, according to a June 9 report from real estate brokerage Redfin.

The number of sellers reached its highest level since 2020.

Home sellers outnumbered buyers by nearly 47 percent for the month, up slightly from 46.4 percent in April, but retreating slightly from the peak of 49.5 percent in December 2025, Redfin researchers said.

The numbers are in stark contrast to 2021, when there were 36.4 percent fewer sellers than buyers as mortgage rates under 3 percent sparked a buying frenzy.

A typical buyer’s market has 10 percent more sellers than buyers, which gives prospective buyers greater negotiating power since there are an abundance of homes from which to choose. 

“While the gap between homebuyers and sellers has narrowed slightly since the end of last year, house hunters still have far more negotiating power and less pressure to make rushed decisions,” Redfin senior economist Asad Khan said.

“Buyers in most of the country can be selective and ask for concessions, while sellers still need to price competitively to stand out.”

There were more than 1.48 million sellers in May, up by 0.4 percent from the previous month and the highest number of home listings since 2020, Redfin noted. On the other side of the equation, just 1.01 million buyers were looking for new residences.

Sellers entered the market in greater numbers in April in part due to a slight easing in mortgage rates, but buying demand compressed in May as mortgage rates crept higher, Redfin noted. The average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage for the week ending June 4 was 6.48 percent, Freddie Mac reported. At the end of May, however, that rate hit a year-high at 6.53 percent. 

Existing home sales increased by 3.2 percent in May, while total for-sale inventory ticked up by 3.2 percent, the National Association of Realtors reported. Homebuying may be slightly slower through the final two quarters of the year, however, as interest rates are expected to remain unchanged until the summer of 2027, Goldman Sachs researchers said. Elevated mortgage rates reduce homeowner affordability.

Multiple Sun Belt metros lead the nation in seller imbalance. The strongest buyers’ market was Nashville, Tennessee, which had 17,494 hopeful sellers versus 7,614 prospective buyers, an imbalance of 129.8 percent.

Miami, Florida, had 122.3 percent more sellers than buyers (19,426 to 8,740), followed by three Texas cities: Austin at 116 percent (18,281 to 8,462), Houston at 110.8 percent (45,968 to 21,809), and San Antonio at 107.5 percent (19,552 to 9,423).

Buyers outnumbered sellers in a handful of markets, creating more favorable conditions for purchasers, Redfin stated. Nassau County, New York, had 38.3 percent more buyers than sellers, Milwaukee had 29.1 percent, and Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, had 24.9 percent. Sellers in those markets can benefit from higher sale prices, multiple bids, fewer concessions, and reduced time on market, according to Freddie Mac.

Summary

• Trump says “Will be attacking Iran hard again today”
• Trump tells Fox he “may keep going” with strikes.
• Trump says Iran took too long to negotiate, and now “will have to pay the price”.
• Tehran claims prior night attacks in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan as fulfilment of its previously vowed ‘retaliation’ – targeted the Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, footage shows.
• Iran again signals it could cut off all indirect talks & any negotiations, says it is ‘reviewing’ US talks after latest exchange of missiles.

*  *  *

Trump says “will be attacking Iran hard again today”

Oil surged, jumping by more than a dollar with WTI rising above $91 with Brent touching $94 after President Trump vowed to strike Iran again and slammed the country for delaying talks on an interim peace deal, after renewed attacks overnight put further strain on a fragile two-month truce.

“We’re going to be attacking them, attacking them very hard,” Trump told reporters at the White House Wednesday. “We hit them hard yesterday, and we’re going to hit them hard again today.”

Trump declined to say what targets US forces would hit in Iran. The president renewed earlier criticism that Tehran has taken too long to negotiate an end to the conflict. 

“I’ve been working with Iran for a number of months, and they should sign their deal,” he said. “It was just tap, tap, tap, I don’t know what they’re doing.”

BREAKING: President Trump says he is going to continue bombing Iran “very hard” after it shot down a U.S. helicopter over the Strait of Hormuz.

“We’re going to be attacking them and attacking them very hard.”

“I’ve been working with Iran for a number of months, and they should… pic.twitter.com/tlO6S10uyo

— Fox News (@FoxNews) June 10, 2026

Trump said he retaliated against the Islamic Republic for shooting down a US Apache helicopter near the Strait of Hormuz. Tehran has not confirmed shooting down the aircraft and said it was reconsidering whether to persist with negotiations in light of the US attacks.

“The diplomatic process doesn’t happen in a vacuum and to advance any diplomatic process you need a minimum space to be able to move forward,” Esmail Baghaei, a spokesman for Iran’s Foreign Ministry, was cited by the state-run Islamic Republic News Agency as saying. “Wherever necessary, our armed forces will respond to the enemy with authority.”

Trump’s comments came after the two sides once again exchanged strikes, underscoring how high tensions are running and the risk that intermittent indirect talks between Iran and the US may be derailed. The overnight clashes followed a direct confrontation between Iran and Israel earlier this week, but halted after Trump called on both sides to stop.

The S&P extended its decline to more than 1% and WTI climbed above $91 a barrel to session highs, after Trump’s comments.

Since almost the start of the conflict, Trump has swung from threats of intensified attacks to touting that a deal is within reach. Even with tensions escalating since last week, he had signaled he wants to contain hostilities and avoid a return to all-out war before the new post. 

A White House official said talks are still ongoing and that the US will exert maximum pressure until a deal is reached. Fox News first reported the status of the talks. The semi-official Iranian Students’ News Agency reported that a Qatari delegation arrived in Tehran on Wednesday to discuss the diplomatic process to end the war.

The US military said it had completed an operation that saw fighter jets strike Iranian air defenses, ground control stations and radar sites near the Strait of Hormuz. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps launched missiles on four American targets, including shelters housing F-35 fighter jets and a command center for the US military at Al-Azraq Air Base in Jordan, state-run IRIB News said on Wednesday.

Iran also said it fired drones at the main US naval base in the Middle East, located in Bahrain, and struck Ali Al Salem air base in Kuwait.  Kuwait’s defense ministry said it had intercepted projectiles early Wednesday, while Jordan said it had intercepted five Iranian missiles.

Tehran said it had exercised its “inherent right to legitimate self defense” and warned regional states not to allow the US and Israel to use their territory as a staging post for strikes on the Islamic Republic.

There were no immediate reports of casualties in any of the attacks.

* * * 

Could ‘Keep Going’ With Strikes: Trump to Fox

More strikes coming? Trump is certainly strongly hinting at this, and yet an overall strategic vision still remains murky and ill-defined. Once again he in a short 12-hour period went from hyping a deal being a few days away, to now threatening yet more attack waves on Iran, in wake of last night’s:

President Trump said Wednesday that he’s close to ordering more strikes on Iran after the country’s attacks targeting American bases in Persian Gulf nations, according to Fox News’ Trey Yingst.

Mr. Trump said he “may keep going” with strikes, which he said would target power plants and bridges, because Iranian negotiators are “tapping the United States along,” according to Yingst.

He wrote on Truth Social just before these comments that Iran will have to “pay the price” after taking too long to proceed with negotiations. 

Trump: Iran Took Too Long To Negotiation, Now Will ‘Pay’

As part of what the United States is calling its latest ‘defensive strikes’ after Iran shot down an Apache helicopter in the Hormuz region, American forces overnight into the early Wednesday hours targeted “air defense, ground control stations, and surveillance radar sites” – the Pentagon said. Iran confirmed that there were indeed fresh attacks around Bandar Abbas and Qeshm Island, but gave no details on the damage, or info on other strikes potentially conducted elsewhere across the Islamic Republic.

“The operation was a proportional response to recent attacks on U.S. forces and international commercial ships transiting regional waters,” US Central Command (CENTCOM) said. Trump is meanwhile again lashing out at Tehran, claiming its military is now a “complete and total mess” – and yet it keeps responding:

Oil reacts, sensing no peaceful off-ramp or de-escalation on the horizon…

Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan Hit Hard by Iranian Overnight Attack

Tehran later claimed attacks in Kuwait, Bahrain and Jordan as fulfilment of its previously vowed ‘retaliation’ – and given these countries host American forces. This marks merely the second time this week the ceasefire was ignored (or rather, shattered – though the White House is maintaining it’s still on) with major tit-for-tat strikes, as each side asserts that it is acting ‘defensively’.

Iran has been saying it’s going to keep up the pressure on Washington and its Gulf allies through both the ‘battlefield and diplomacy’ – with Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson Esmaeil Baghaei freshly charging that the US is “undermining” the diplomatic process through “contradictory messages, frequent shifts in its positions and demands, as well as repeated violations of the ceasefire.”

He indicated that at this point there’s not even the “minimum level of conducive conditions” that is “required in order to carry out diplomacy effectively.”

Bahrain and Kuwait got hit hardest in these newest strikes, with reports saying the US Fifth Fleet base came under fire:

BREAKING: Footage shows a ground-level explosion in Manama, Bahrain from an Iranian missile strike in the direction of the US 5th Fleet HQ minutes ago, with up to 20+ separate explosions now reported across the city. pic.twitter.com/LCHlZBGKra

— The Hormuz Letter (@HormuzLetter) June 10, 2026

Iran Touting Both ‘Diplomacy & the Battlefield’

“The Zionist regime is also damaging this process through its repeated violations of the ceasefire in Lebanon,” Baghaei said, adding “any diplomatic process is harmed by the use of force and unlawful actions.”

“Diplomacy and the battlefield are not separate matters. Together they serve as instruments for safeguarding Iran’s national interests and security,” he stressed in a familiar refrain of late.

He also indicated the question of negotiations will be “reviewed” in light of last night’s developments, and further emphasized, “Wherever necessary, our armed forces will respond to the enemy with authority.“

Only when you see it with your own eyes you start to appreciate how impressive a salvo of 10 Kheybar-Shekan Aero-Ballistic missiles is…

(especially when timed on purpose at dawn) pic.twitter.com/6JpTRBvBHW

— Patarames (@Pataramesh) June 10, 2026

“Every Side Believes They Can Control the Escalation”

But it’s also clear Tehran feels it must assert strong red lines immediately and without hesitation if it is to survive this now several months-long military confrontation with Washington. On this, longtime regional war correspondent and analyst Elijah Magnier has some insight as to each side’s calculus: 

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Magnier said it’s a volatile situation with no “stable political exit” as peace is far from being achieved while Lebanon and Gaza remain outside of any final settlement.

“The most dangerous thing is that every side believes they can control the escalation. However, a repeated incident can erode restraint, and if talks collapse completely, this controlled escalation could widen into a much larger conflict,” he said.

History has shown if “one strike crosses the red line” the attacks can spiral out of control, said Magnier.

Indeed in many ways that’s how we got here in the first place.

Vital water infrastructure reportedly struck in Iran during this new round of intense but brief escalation:

U.S. military strikes reportedly hit drinking water storage tanks in the Bamani district of Sirik county, Hormozgan province, Iran. pic.twitter.com/GMw8Ha9DaH

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 10, 2026

The White House believed it could control the outcome from day one of Operation Epic Fury, and then perhaps a bit of panic set among US officials in when it was realized the government in Tehran would not so easily fall, and that the military apparatus would become hardened, and its power expanded. 

Reports of another US MQ-9 Reaper drone shot down over Iran:

Footage of U.S. MQ-9 Reaper falling down over Jam county, Bushehr province, Iran after it was hit. https://t.co/nJHBkyF2cz pic.twitter.com/99evGPBrgm

— Clash Report (@clashreport) June 10, 2026

From there it took many weeks to get the naval armada in place, enough to where a blockade could be enacted against Iran’s ports and its crucial oil exports. The White House continues to face several ‘bad’ and ‘worse’ options for dealing with the crisis, as energy prices are set to soar this summer.

More Latest Developments

via Newsquawk…

• US President Trump told ABC that the US was responding to Iran and that it is important to respond to Iran downing the helicopter, as well as noted that the response is very strong and powerful.
• US VP JD Vance said the US is very close to reaching a deal that would address Iran’s nuclear programme for the long term, which could come next week or months from now, but absolutely before the midterms, according to CBS.
• White House senior official said nothing has changed in their position regarding an agreement with Iran and it is still close despite the strikes.
• A US official said the US military carried out strikes on almost 20 targets inside of Iran, but noted preliminary assessments indicate most Iranian missiles and drones were successfully intercepted.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson Baghaei said they need to reassess, following the overnight clashes, when questioned on talks with the US, SNN reported.
• Iranian Foreign Ministry statement strongly condemns America’s crime in its military aggression against Iran.
• An Iranian military source tells IRIB that no offensive military operations have been conducted in the Strait of Hormuz over the past 24 hours. Warned that if the enemy carries out another hostile action under the pretext of the military helicopter crash, it will face a decisive response.
• A massive fire in the centre of Erbil and an explosion has been heard near the US base in the vicinity, Mehr news reported citing sources.
• Local sources reported that an explosion was heard in the area of Qeshm city, Mehr News reports. However, this was later denied by the Qeshm governor.
• UN Security Council debated reviving the Iran sanctions panel, although Russia and China opposed the revival of the Iran sanctions committee, according to Tasnim.
• Israeli air raids hit the Lebanese towns of Touline, Srifa and Kafra. It was separately reported that missiles were spotted from Lebanon that were headed towards Kiryat Shmona and its surroundings, while rockets launched from Lebanon towards Upper Galilee were also detected.
• UKMTO has received a report of an incident 20nm Northeast of Oman’s Sohar.
• UKMTO reported an incident involving a cargo vessel 88 nautical miles southwest of Balhaf, Yemen.

One week ago, SpaceX kicked off its institutional roadshow, headlined by JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon, who hosted a nationwide “live interactive discussion” with private wealth clients.

The latest signal of investor demand comes from the Gulf, where massive sovereign wealth funds are reportedly seeking allocations in the IPO ahead of its expected Friday debut, according to Bloomberg News.

The report says Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund and Kuwait Investment Authority have each placed orders for the IPO worth $1 billion to $5 billion, while the Qatar Investment Authority is also expected to make a significant commitment.

The report continued:

Entities based in the region are already prominent shareholders in Elon Musk’s rocket, satellite and AI firm, and many are sitting on large paper gains based on the billionaire’s targeted valuation of $1.8 trillion, the people said. It wasn’t immediately clear how much of the planned outlay is intended to prevent dilution of existing stakes after SpaceX’s listing.

The interest from the Gulf is part of a broader rush into the deal from global institutional investors, whose orders have exceeded the number of shares on offer. Some have bid for $10 billion or more of stock, Bloomberg News has reported, though the eventual allocations might be smaller.

In a separate report, Reuters says the IPO is three-and-a-half to four times oversubscribed, highlighting massive institutional demand for what is shaping up to be the largest listing on record and a defining moment for the space economy.

Elon Musk has joined several Zoom meetings with potential investors, while SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell and CFO Bret Johnsen were expected to meet with roughly 300 institutional investors at a Morgan Stanley lunch in Manhattan.

Goldman Sachs was selected as the lead bank for the IPO, alongside Morgan Stanley. JPMorgan, Bank of America, and Citigroup are also among the 23 banks working on the deal, offering a staggering $75 billion by selling about 555.6 million shares. The planned IPO price is about $135 per share.

Why SpaceX’s IPO Is drawing record investor demand…

We offered readers a complete deep dive into the mechanics of the SpaceX offering and how to trade the world’s biggest IPO (read the report). SpaceX’s underwriters have shut off investor access to the offering in China and Hong Kong, primarily due to regulatory and compliance concerns.

However, there is a concerted effort by unhinged leftist lawmakers (such as Elizabeth Warren) and left-wing pension funds to delay or deny the SpaceX IPO, mainly for political brownie points. They appear to view the sudden new wealth generated for Elon Musk (and his employees and investors) as absolutely horrifying…

NEW: Elizabeth Warren is calling for the SEC to delay the mega SpaceX IPO.

Warren cites concerns about “questionable valuation,” governance structure & mandatory arbitration pic.twitter.com/4mQqzTtYRs

— Matt Egan (@MattEganCNN) June 10, 2026

… given that Musk is pro-humanity and seeks to liberate the world’s minds from toxic progressive causes.

When the world and their pet rabbit was buying the hype and extrapolating trends to infinity and beyond, we dared to highlight a few ‘economic’ realities of the new ‘tokenomics’.

From Singularity To Tokenomics: The AI Narrative Just Hit A Serious Snag

Was Amazon’s Tokenmaxxing Fiasco Behind Claude’s $500M Mystery Bill?

From Singularity To Tokenomics, Part II: The Subsidy Just Ran Out – And GitHub Users Went Splat

This morning we got confirmation of this AI reality questioning from none other than Goldman Sachs Partner, Rich Privorotsky, who highlighted that Token Spend had ‘peaked’…

And now, Citrini Research – who infamously issued a less than utopic view of the world under AI back in March – has written a follow up on the status quo of the AI ecosystem, noting that in just weeks we’ve gone from tokenmaxxing to tokenpanic.

In March, we and many others were writing about the astounding growth in token consumption driven by the release of agents and more intensive models.

This was enough to send the infrastructure trade sharply higher – the market value of the semiconductor industry doubled in two months.

But that goldilocks narrative is beginning to hit a wall. The corollary of explosive token usage is explosive cost to customers, which is coming just as the US labs and hyperscalers are turning up the dial on monetization. The public story is increasingly turning to corporate pushback.

The first real signs of this shift were from the much-discussed report of Uber burning through its entire AI budget in just four months.

Then there was the anonymous report of a $500 million oopsie.

In the past week, the idea has turned into a media avalanche.

According to The Economist’s reporting, Anthropic’s ARR has increased 5x since the start of the year, reaching $45 billion in May.

Great for the lab, but it also means the “AI Opex” line item on P&Ls is going through the roof.

The issue is not just Anthropic. Sam Altman also confirmed that all of a sudden cost is a huge issue (and acknowledged the virality of the idea).

“Probably the second biggest theme is just around cost. People are really saying, it’s kind of become a meme now, but, “My company spent my entire 2026 budget in Q1. Can you make this more efficient?” We are continuing to push on that more with models. I think we’ll have a lot of ways we can help people get more value for less spend, but that went from, at the beginning of this year, an issue that never came up. I know. People were totally happy with the amount they were spending, to all of a sudden, a huge issue.”

Microsoft’s AI Chief added to the unflattery this week after cancelling Claude Code licenses in May.

“Anthropic is extremely expensive, and I think many people are urgently looking for alternatives”

This cost concern didn’t just come out of nowhere.

First, agents and more advanced reasoning models use orders of magnitude greater tokens.

Corporates have widely distributed these tools and encouraged their use just as the average user was gaining the ability to casually run enormous bills.

Second, prices for frontier models are increasing as providers are flipping to usage models and preparing for public market debuts.

In a unified front – OpenAI, Anthropic, Microsoft, and Google – have all implemented pricing shifts towards usage/tokens, as they simply can’t afford to endlessly subsidize their products for power users.

• April 2: OpenAI changed Codex pricing to align with API token usage instead of per-message pricing

• May 19: Google changed Gemini subscriptions from “daily prompt limits” to a “compute-used” model.

• June 1: Microsoft’s GitHub Copilot transitioned to usage based billing

And what does a rate sheet mean really if you have no idea what your usage burns in practice?

Claude’s Opus 4.7 & 4.8 have the same “list price” as prior versions, but use a “new tokenizer” that may use up to 35% more tokens for the same fixed text.

Is this an existential problem or just the VC playbook at unimaginable scale?

Subsidize demand, gain market share and lock-in, then monetize. After all, companies are spending a trillion in capex to make trillions in revenue, right?

Well either way we’ve reached Monetization, and maybe not by choice. As fast as lab revenue is growing, the fundraising has grown even faster.

The money going towards building and running AI has exploded. The deepest pockets in the world – hyperscaler cash flow, venture capital, sovereign wealth, public credit, private credit, public equity – are footing most of the bill. Eventually, customers have to start picking up the tab.

Free-AI is ending. Tokenomics is beginning.

What happens when underlying costs of compute become more transparent and directly traceable to outcomes? The ROI debate is about to be answered in real time, across millions of users and use cases.

For the median user, maybe not a whole lot changes. But science projects, freewheeling agents, and curiosities will either get cut or offloaded to open source models. Companies will restrict AI functionality and invest in oversight and observability. Budget constraints will pit AI spend against headcounts. Providers will become more competitive on pricing and will begin to optimize physical and digital architecture for efficiencies.

In many (most) situations, good enough will do. The cost of running open-source, discount, or mini models is going down while their capabilities only improve. This week saw another batch of open source models like Nvidia latest Nemotron family which includes advanced general-purpose models as well as highly efficient, compact versions optimized for local deployment and specialized agentic uses. As the frontier continues to advance, inference costs drop precipitously for a fixed level of intelligence. Why rent a Ferrari when a Vespa does the trick?

Of course, frontier models with highly specialized functions can continue to command an intense premium, but will serve a smaller segment of the market. A top lawyer can still bill at thousands per hour, even if millions of other workers are making minimum wage.

But even across the high end, the gap between US and Chinese offerings is worth noting. Qwen 3.7 and Deepseek V4 are still behind Opus 4.8 and GPT 5.5 in terms of benchmarks, but they are 10x – 25x cheaper.

Since releasing V4 Pro and V4 Flash in April, Deepseek has shot past Anthropic to the top of the charts on OpenRouter in terms of tokens processed.

Meanwhile, Cursor, one of the most used coding agents, released their new model that was post-trained on compute provided by xAI after their $10 billion deal. The base model is a different Chinese open source model by Moonshot and it was trained on data Cursor gets from its customers. The results are even stronger than Deepseek, it’s comparable to 4.7 and 5.5 for 10x lower cost per task and is one of the fastest frontier models.

There are obvious other “considerations” for large US enterprises that may prevent a mass exodus to Chinese alternatives. Plus, greater integration into workflows adds to lock-in. But there is a growing trend of application layer companies that will continue to post-train on open source base models for specialized workflows like coding and legal.

But what does this mean for the AI trade?

First, to be clear, revenues for labs and hyperscalers are going to grow. Token usage for top Anthropic models continues to go higher. Regardless of the pushback, frontier models can certainly create meaningful value especially in high-stakes fields like tech and finance, and there are still plenty of levers to pull in the monetization phase. The entire point is for them to start making money.

Likewise, this won’t fix near-term compute constraints.

But we do think that cost and efficiency only become more important as the bills get bigger. Themes of local inference, miniaturization, smart routing, observability, price competition, and efficient model architecture will grow. Competitive pressures and price competition are likely to stay.

Subscribers can read the rest of Citrini’s note here…