Apparently, negotiations are at a standstill again, as Iran is stopping talks and now is vowing to completely block the Straits.
Meanwhile, I guess the president doesn’t care if the talks are off..
Ok, enough of that boring stuff, let’s get on to something more interesting.
Late last week, Costco announced its fiscal 3rd-quarter earnings. Not shockingly, in a time of higher inflation, people are looking to save money wherever they can. Case in point, Costco gas was a big winner as people were looking to save a few cents on every gallon. CEO Ron Vachris said this:
It makes sense. I am either going to Costco for my gas or using my Kroger discount on fuel. If you’re looking for a way to increase those points, shoot me an email and I’ll give you a tip.
AAA has said that gas prices are down a bit from a week ago. Here’s the new map.
Moving from the ordinary (gas) to the extraordinary (A.I.), I mentioned a few weeks ago that I started reading a book called Life 3.0. It’s about Artificial Intelligence and its possible effects on people. Well no doubt, some of the possibilities are scary and downright apocalyptic, but some are reasonable and could very well help humans. How it works out depends greatly on regulation and how quickly General AI develops. Some say it could happen soon, others say maybe never. I think I’m probably in the camp of this century.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI (builder of ChatGPT) is at the official groundbreaking today of a $16 billion Data Center in Saline Township, Michigan. He mentioned the following:
There’s no question the AI industry is hot. The question is whether it hot for real or just hype? OpenAI is projected to go public this year. Their last private round of funding was $852 billion, a stratospheric valuation recently eclipsed by Anthropic (builder of Claude AI). They measured in at a cool $965 billion. And now news today:
That will likely be over a $1 Trillion market cap, taking in a short window, two companies public at over that trillion-dollar market cap each. The question is will that pull money from the existing market or is there enough money floating around to soak up these hot new names? We will find out. Of course, not to be outdone, SpaceX is leading the way, expected to go public on June 12th at a mere $2 trillion valuation. How the market absorbs that one will perhaps tell us a lot about what to expect when these two big AI names roll out later this year.
That’s it for this week, I hope you have a good week. If you have any questions or comments about this or any other topic. We will certainly be happy to have a conversation.