Excess Returns

Podbit · Excess Returns

The Trillion Dollar Gap | Aswath Damodaran on SpaceX, AI and the Big Market Delusion

Explore episode Jun 19, 2026
Technology
AI's Cost Structure May Never Allow Scale Economies

The Trillion Dollar Gap | Aswath Damodaran on SpaceX, AI an… · Jun 19, 2026 Technology

Software companies enjoy near-zero marginal costs at scale — the next unit of output costs almost nothing. AI may be fundamentally different: like Spotify, where every stream requires a new payment, LLMs may face persistent per-unit costs from power, water, data, and compute that never scale away. If true, the margin expansion the market is pricing in for AI may never arrive.

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CxMT's Record-Breaking Shanghai Debut

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Chinese chipmaker CxMT became the most valuable company listed on China's stock exchanges after its shares soared on debut in Shanghai. Its chips power AI servers and consumer smartphones — a direct play on China's race to build semiconductor independence amid U.S. export restrictions.

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Anthropic's Open Source Argument Is Self-Serving

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When Anthropic argues that restricting open source is the best way to hurt China, the actual translation is: restricting open source is the best way to help Anthropic by eliminating a competitor. Sinofsky calls it un-American and un-tech — an industry that was built on open academic research trying to pull up the ladder behind it.