"Yemen's Houthis weigh Bab al-Mandab blockade to back Iran, official says"

Ah, there they are. We had been wondering why the Houthis hadn't been heard from.

From Chinese state-owned international broadcaster, CGTN, March 20:

Yemen's Iran-aligned Houthi group is weighing the possibility of blocking the Bab al-Mandab Strait to vessels from nations it accuses of aggression against its allies in the "axis of resistance," RIA Novosti reported on Friday.

Mohammed al-Bukhaiti, a member of the Houthi political bureau, said that any closure would be limited to targeting ships linked to countries engaged in hostilities against Iran, Lebanon, Palestine or Iraq.

The group is examining various courses of action to bolster Iran amid its ongoing conflict with the United States and Israel, al-Bukhaiti added.

The Bab al-Mandab Strait, a strategic chokepoint linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, serves as a vital corridor for global trade, particularly oil and gas shipments between Europe and Asia.

Since the war broke out late last month and spread across the Middle East, the Houthis have so far limited themselves to threats and preparations. Meanwhile other "axis of resistance" groups like Hezbollah and Iraqi militias have launched attacks on Israel and US positions in a show of solidarity with Iran.

Houthi leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi has said his group is ready to act and is coordinating with Iran. The group describes a possible Bab al-Mandab blockade as a key option to support Tehran and pressure the West.

A Houthi blockade of the narrow waterway would force oil and trade vessels to reroute around Africa, raising shipping costs, fuel prices and inflation worldwide while deepening an oil crisis following Iran's blockage of the Strait of Hormuz. For the US, it would mean higher domestic energy costs and greater economic strain; globally it would send oil prices soaring and slow growth....

....MORE 

Outro, March 9 - "But what of the Houthis?"  

And March 13 - 

But what of Iran's BFFs, the Houthis? 

 

The Saudi East -West pipeline was a strategic necessity, capable of 7mm Bbl/day, but the Houthis can still target ships approaching or departing through the Bab-al-Mandeb connecting the Indian Ocean and the Red Sea. Meaning everything would have to move north through the Suez canal which limits the size of the tankers to 1mm Bbl per i.e the SuezMax ships:

Where this gets doubly interesting is the fact that one of only two Chinese overseas military bases (the other being on the west coast of Cambodia) is parked at the approaches to the Red Sea on that very same Bab al-Mandab. From December 2025's ""How China Built a Network of Ports Encircling the Globe"": 

As we've seen—most recently with Israel's Mossad in Iran and Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb in Russia—tractor-trailers and shipping containers make dandy places to hide your weapons of war. Also handy for transporting same. More after the jump....

....February 2024 -  "Red Sea Rivalries"

The most amazing thing that has been pointed out over the last couple months is that China's base on Djibouti's Gulf of Aden coast, at the approaches to the Bab al-Mandab chokepoint into the Red Sea, gives them the perfect location to monitor Houthi action and American reaction:

—China Officially Sets Up Its First Overseas Base in Djibouti, The Diplomat

From Phenomenal World, February 15....

July 2025 - Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore: "From Gallipoli to the Strait of Malacca: Why maritime choke points still decide the fate of nations"

So Mr. Risk Manager, what's your 2027 plan? 

"Oh So We’re Actually Going to Get Rid of Quarterly Reporting After All Huh"

From the audit mavens at Going Concern, March 18:

ICYMI: Last September, President Trump truthed about quarterly reporting at 8 in the morning in what seemed like little more than deep thoughts one has while sitting on the can at that hour: 

Subject to SEC Approval, Companies and Corporations should no longer be forced to “Report” on a quarterly basis (Quarterly Reporting!), but rather to Report on a “Six (6) Month Basis.” This will save money, and allow managers to focus on properly running their companies. Did you ever hear the statement that, “China has a 50 to 100 year view on management of a company, whereas we run our companies on a quarterly basis???” Not good!!!

This is what we had to say about it at the time:

President Trump’s Latest Shower Thought Is to Eliminate Quarterly Reporting 

Then we promptly forgot about it because it didn’t seem like the kind of thing that would go anywhere. Oops....

....MUCH MORE 

Also at Going Concern:

KPMG Brings Cheating Into the AI Age By Using AI to Cheat on AI Exams 

Also, also at Going Concern, they also cover tax preparation marketing:

Tax Prep But Make It Catchy

I should do some video marketing.

"Arm’s stock could rocket 50% as Wall Street wakes up to a ‘game-changing’ trend, analyst says"

There's a reason Nvidia really, really wanted to buy Arm. 

From MarketWatch, March 20:

Arm increasingly benefits from central processing units that are becoming ‘indispensable’ in AI data centers 

Wall Street isn’t giving Arm Holdings enough credit for a big business transformation, according to an analyst.  

Arm ARM +3.62%, a chip designer, has been broadening well beyond smartphones and now stands to capitalize even more on the booming market for server central processing units, HSBC’s Frank Lee wrote in a note to clients.

That “game-changing” transition is “still being undervalued by the market,” Lee argued, but he sees room for Arm’s stock to climb more than 50% as the company’s momentum becomes better understood. It’s up 3.9% in Friday morning action, bringing its year-to-date gains to about 23%. 

Lee double-upgraded Arm’s stock on Friday, lifting his rating to buy from reduce and meaningfully boosting his price target to $205 from $90. He wrote that agentic artificial intelligence will spur even greater demand for CPUs....

....MUCH MORE 

"Iran floats Hormuz transit tolls as Persian Gulf states warn of military response"

 From Iran International, March 19:

Iran is considering charging transit fees on ships passing through the Strait of Hormuz, a lawmaker said on Thursday, as officials in Tehran stepped up rhetoric over the strategic waterway after this week’s attacks on energy sites in the Persian Gulf.

Somayeh Rafiei said lawmakers are pursuing a bill under which countries using the strait for shipping, energy transit and food supplies would be required to pay tolls and taxes to Iran, framing it as compensation for providing security along the route.

“In the event that the Strait of Hormuz is used as a secure route for ship traffic, energy transit and food supply, countries will be required to pay tolls and taxes to the Islamic Republic of Iran,” Rafiei said.

She also said countries should pay what she described as a security tax in return for Iran maintaining regional security.

The proposal came as senior Iranian officials suggested the war could be used to redefine Tehran’s position in the waterway after the conflict ends.

Mohammad Mokhber said one of the most important opportunities created by the war was the possibility of reshaping Iran’s role in the Strait of Hormuz.

“After the imposed war, by defining a new regime for the Strait of Hormuz, Iran will move from being under sanctions to a powerful position in the region and the world,” Mokhber said.

He added: “By using the strategic position of the Strait of Hormuz, we can sanction them and not allow their ships to pass through this waterway.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Related, from a 2015 post:

Old school rent extraction device

"The standard toll for an average ship in 1241 was 8 denari (1 denarus equaled 0.68 grams of silver)"

—TOLLING THE RHINE in 1254:  COMPLEMENTARY  MONOPOLY REVISITED

Capital Markets: "USD Comes Back Bid after Yesterday's Exaggerated Slide"

From Marc to Market:

The market seemed to overreact to the central bank meetings this week. The market heard Fed Chair Powell as more hawkish than the FOMC statement and took the dollar sharply higher. Yesterday, it overreacted to the Bank of England and European Central Banks and sold the greenback aggressively. The swaps market is discounting three rate hikes this year by the ECB and BOE, and about three basis points of tightening by the Federal Reserve.

Still, after yesterday’s sell-off the dollar has bounced back. The fog of war seems to contribute to the desire for short-term market participants not wanting to be short dollars into the weekend. Even though the US and Israel say that they will not strike Iranian oil infrastructure, there is little sign of de-escalation and yesterday, US Treasury Secretary Bessent made a reference to the possibility that Kharg Island could be taken over by the US. Adding to the mix is today’s “triple-witching” that see a relatively large, $5.7 trillion of options on individual stocks, indices and exchange-traded funds expire. This comes amid a further sell-off in stocks and bonds....

....MUCH MORE  

"German court blocks researcher’s attempt to access Angela Merkel files held in Stasi archives"

From ReMix News, March 16:

A Berlin court ruled that strict privacy protections governing the Stasi archives prevent the release of any files mentioning the former German chancellor 

A Berlin court has rejected a legal bid to obtain files relating to former German Chancellor Angela Merkel from the archives of East Germany’s secret police, ruling that the request does not meet the strict legal conditions governing the release of such records.

The lawsuit was filed by Marcel Luthe, chairman of the Good Governance Union, who argued that he required access to documents mentioning Merkel for a research project examining her conduct during the final years of the German Democratic Republic.

As reported by the Berliner Zeitung, the Berlin Administrative Court dismissed the claim and ordered Luthe to cover approximately €20,000 in legal costs.

In delivering the oral reasoning for the ruling, presiding judge Jens Tegtmeier said the Stasi Records Act does not grant a general right to inspect files about any individual. Instead, the law allows disclosure only under limited circumstances, such as if the person concerned is proven to have collaborated with East Germany or if they were already a public figure at the time the documents were created. According to the court, neither condition applies in Merkel’s case.

The Stasi records themselves are a vast collection of documents created by the Ministry for State Security, the secret police of the former East German communist regime. Before the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Stasi built one of the most extensive domestic surveillance systems in the world, maintaining millions of files on citizens suspected of political dissent or contact with the West. The archives include informant reports, surveillance notes, photographs, correspondence, and other material gathered through the agency’s network of officers and unofficial collaborators.

After German reunification, these records were preserved and placed under special legal protection. Individuals have the right to view files compiled about them, but access to documents concerning third parties is tightly restricted in order to protect personal privacy.

Luthe did not claim that Merkel had been a Stasi informant, but argued that questions remained about her activities in the late East German period, which justified access to the records.

Among the issues raised in court was an incident in which prohibited Solidarity movement material was reportedly discovered by East German border authorities when Merkel returned from a trip to Poland. Luthe’s legal team argued that similar cases had often resulted in serious consequences, raising questions about why the young Merkel was not punished.

The lawsuit also highlighted Merkel’s role at the Central Institute for Physical Chemistry in East Germany, where she served as Free German Youth (FDJ) secretary, the official communist youth organization of the former East German state.

In addition, Luthe’s representatives argued that Merkel’s role as spokesperson for the reform-era Democratic Awakening party in 1990 could qualify her as a “person of contemporary history,” a legal category that allows broader access to archival material.

The court rejected these arguments, suggesting Merkel was, if anything, only a “minor” political figure at that time and that disclosing her surveillance documents would not be justified. He also said there was no concrete evidence that Merkel had benefited from the Stasi or held a sufficiently prominent public role before German reunification....

....MUCH MORE 

Years ago, back during her time as Bundeskanzler, I recall seeing that she had gone through her files, something I believe was her right as a subject of the file. 

And, as noted in the outro from 2025's "Putin's KGB Masterstroke: Fracking Banned in Europe":

Just yesterday I was considering the old quip "You can take the girl out of East Germany but you can't take East Germany out of the girl" as our intro to "Angela Merkel ‘covered up report blaming China for Covid’" but because it is so difficult to definitively say she was working for the Russians, decided against it.

What you can say is she was probably the second worst Chancellor in German history and that it is hard to think of what she would have done differently, economically and socially had she been driven by that 'ol ostalgie.

As for Schroeder, it seems he was only about the euros (rubles, maybe Deutsche Marks too). From the introduction to 2021's "Ex-Chancellor Schroeder: Berlin Will ‘Cut the Branch It Sits On’ If It Halts Nord Stream 2’s Construction":

Before we get into the story from Russia's Sputnik I should probably reprise a note from a few years ago:

We've pointed out a few times:

...As the kids say: Find someone to look at you the way Putin looks at Gerhard Schröder.

They also hug a lot.
 A lot.

Herr Schröder was Germany's Chancellor before Mutti came in.
Gazprom has paid him a lot of money.

So I am left with, as Lieutenant Columbo would say, "just one more thing":  

What was the real reason Merkel was in Wuhan in September 2019? 

ICYMI: "Bank of England must plan for financial crisis sparked by aliens"

From the Times (o'London Town), January 16: 

A former analyst at the central bank has urged governor Andrew Bailey to put contingencies in place to prevent collapse if alien life is confirmed

The Bank of England must plan for a financial crisis being triggered by an official announcement confirming the existence of alien life, one of its former policy experts has claimed.

Helen McCaw served as a senior analyst in financial security at the UK’s central bank, preparing for events that could impact the economy.

She has now written to Andrew Bailey, the Bank’s governor, urging him to organise contingencies for the possibility that the White House may one day confirm we are not alone in the universe.

• UFO hearing: Congress tells government to come clean on what it knows
McCaw, a Cambridge graduate, believes a declaration of that magnitude would send shockwaves through the markets and could trigger bank collapses and civil unrest.
Until recently, suggestions that governments were covering up the existence of alien life were limited to a small coterie of conspiracy theorists and UFO activists.

However, a host of senior American officials, including the secretary of state, Marco Rubio, the New York senator Kirsten Gillibrand, and James Clapper, a former director of national intelligence, have recently indicated their belief in the possibility of intelligent non-human life. 

Rubio, a close ally of President Trump, told the makers of the recently released UFO documentary The Age of Disclosure: “We’ve had repeated instances of something operating in the airspace over restricted nuclear facilities, and it’s not ours.” 

This month, The Sunday Times disclosed previously classified state files, which showed that the British military sought to obtain “extraterrestrial” technology after receiving credible intelligence that UFOs appeared to be real and could outperform any known human craft. 

McCaw, who worked for the Bank of England for ten years until 2012, insists that politicians and bankers can no longer afford to dismiss talk of alien life and snigger about “little green men”....

....MUCH MORE

And more recently: 

March 15 - "Meanwhile, In Extraterrestrial Markets... (UFOD)" 

March 19 - "White House registers ‘Aliens.gov’ domain name, sparking hope of Trump news on UFOs"

Personally I don't think there will be any mass panic from a jaded and satiated public, maybe a listless "Meh". 

If interested see Krugman (2011).

Paul Krugman: An Alien Invasion Could Fix the Economy 

Creighton University's "Rural Mainstreet Index Falls Below Growth Neutral Again"

From Creighton's Heider College of Business, March 19:

Conflict in Iran Creating Significant Volatility in Ag Sector

March 2026 Survey Results at-a-Glance:

• The overall RMI dropped below growth neutral for March to its lowest level since October 2025.
• Weakness in the farm sector is spilling over into the business community with approximately 27.2% of bankers reporting that small businesses in their area were experiencing declines in business activity.
• After falling below growth neutral for January and February, the March farm and ranchland index rose to 50.2 from 45.5 in February.
• The 2026 conflict in Iran has created significant volatility in the agricultural sector, primarily impacting agricultural equipment sales, with the index falling below growth neutral for the 31st straight month.
• More than half, or 52.4%, indicated no change or declines in delinquency rates, with 47.6 percent reporting that loan delinquency rates increased modestly.

Creighton University Rural Mainstreet Index (RMI)

OMAHA, Nebraska (March 19, 2026) - According to the latest monthly survey of bank CEOs in rural areas of a 10-state region dependent on agriculture and/or energy, the overall Rural Mainstreet Index (RMI) dropped below growth neutral for March to its lowest level since October 2025.

Overall: The region’s overall reading for March plummeted to 40.9 from February’s 47.9. This marks the 13th time since January 2025 that the index has moved below the growth neutral threshold. The index ranges between 0 and 100, with a reading of 50.0 representing growth neutral.

“Weakness in farm commodity prices and elevated agriculture input costs are spilling over into the business community. Approximately, 27.2% of bankers reported that small businesses in their area were experiencing declines in business activity,” said Ernie Goss, PhD, Jack A. MacAllister Chair in Regional Economics at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business.

Farming and ranchland prices: After falling below growth neutral for January and February, the March farm and ranchland index rose to 50.2 from 45.5 in February. “Farm and ranchland prices have been holding up much better than farm income,” said Goss....

....MUCH MORE

The Rural Mainstreet Index is one of two monthly coincident indicators that Professor Goss puts together, the other being the Mid-American Economy Index.

There is nothing else like them and when I write that I include the output of the big four ag-adjacent Federal Reserve Banks: Chicago, Minneapolis, Kansas City and St. Louis.

Media: "Business Insider has added AI-generated Q&A to stories"

 From TalkingBizNews, March 19:

Business Insider chief product officer Jeff Rabb sent out the following on Thursday:

Today, we’re launching an exciting new feature directly on our story pages to help readers dig deeper into topics related to our coverage....

....MUCH MORE 

"Jeff Bezos aims to raise $100 billion to buy, revamp manufacturing firms with AI, WSJ reports"

From Reuters, March 19:

Jeff Bezos is in early discussions to raise $100 billion for a new fund that would acquire ​manufacturing companies and seek to use AI to ‌drive and speed up automation, the Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday. 

The Amazon.com (AMZN.O) founder is holding talks with some ​of the world's biggest asset managers to secure ​funding for the project, WSJ said.

Bezos traveled to ⁠the Middle East to discuss the new fund ​with sovereign wealth representatives in the region a few ​months ago, according to the report.

Described in investor documents as a "manufacturing transformation vehicle," the fund aims to target companies in major ​industries such as chipmaking, defense, and aerospace, the ​Journal said.

Last year, The New York Times reported that Bezos would ‌serve ⁠as co-CEO of a new startup called Project Prometheus focused on AI for engineering and manufacturing computers, automobiles and spacecraft....

....MORE 

The Journal says the big money is in the Middle East and Singapore. It reads as though the new venture is separate from Project Prometheus.

Here's the 2025 NYT story:

"Jeff Bezos Creates A.I. Start-Up Where He Will Be Co-Chief Executive"

"White House registers ‘Aliens.gov’ domain name, sparking hope of Trump news on UFOs"

From the New York Post, March 19:

A new White House URL is out of this world (wide web).

The eyebrow-raising domain name — “Aliens.gov” — has been added to the federal government’s official website registry, amplifying speculation that President Trump could be gearing up to pull back the curtain on what US intelligence agencies really know about whether we’re alone in the universe.

Though the website is not yet live, the government has reserved the domain name for an as-yet-unknown purpose, registry records show.

The revelation came after it was flagged by an automated tracker of new federal websites on Wednesday, almost exactly a month since the president said he would order top administration officials to identify and release government files related to UFOs and extraterrestrials....

....MUCH MORE 

This follows on March 15's "Meanwhile, In Extraterrestrial Markets... (UFOD)":

ETF Bets on Alien Tech With UFO Disclosure Strategy
A new actively managed ETF is positioning for a hypothetical “Disclosure Day,” when UFO enthusiasts believe the U.S. government could reveal evidence of non-human technology.

One of the strangest ETFs to ever hit the market, the Tuttle Capital UFO Disclosure ETF (UFOD) aims to invest in companies that it says could benefit from “advanced or reverse-engineered alien technology.”

Yes, really....

"Human Brain Cells Run New Data Centers in Singapore, Melbourne"

From Bloomberg, March 9:

Biotech startup Cortical Labs is working on two small data centers run by human brain cells, putting lab-grown neurons onto silicon in an experiment that could one day challenge chips from the likes of Nvidia Corp.

The Australia-based startup unveiled its first biological data center in Melbourne and is building another in Singapore with partner DayOne Data Centers Ltd., it said in a statement on Tuesday. Instead of racks of servers running on conventional processors, the facilities will house biological computers known as CL1 units, powered by human brain cells.

While years or decades away from challenging mainstream technology, the project highlights scientists’ search for novel solutions to address problems arising from an artificial intelligence-induced need for increasing amounts of computing capacity. The swift buildout of AI data centers across the planet has led to environmental concerns over their power needs and water consumption as well as shortages in silicon....

[They grow up so fast.] 

...The computing capacity of Cortical Labs’ systems is modest, but the company is making progress. One of its earlier achievements was to teach its brain cells to play the rudimentary computer game Pong. Last month, it said it had trained them to play the much more advanced title Doom....

....MUCH MORE 

From playing Doom one month to running a data center in Singapore the next. 

March 7 - "Human Brain Cells Learn to Play Doom in Cortical Labs Experiment"

Possibly also of interest:

September 2018 - Lab Grown Mini-Brains Raise Some Ethical Questions

June 2024 - Another Way To Beat AI's Power Consumption Problem: Brain Organoids

Previously in organoids and such:

"Lab-Grown Mini Kidneys 'Go Rogue,' Sprout Brain and Muscle Cells"
Getting into a weird area here.

Ah, the Swiss: "Nestle Finds a Reliable Supply of Brain Cells"

ICYMI: "Researchers Teach Human Brain Cells in a Dish to Play 'Pong'"

"Cyborg computer with living brain organoid aces machine learning tests"

The Act of Thinking Can Accelerate Brain Tumor Growth
Yikes. Shut it down, shut it down, Ōm shanti shanti shanti, Ōm.

"Is proximity to doom good or bad for the stock market?"

A repost from 2016.

Ahead Of This Weekend's Votes In Italy and Austria: Is Doom Bad For The Stock Market?

TL;DR: No

Unless it's doom like getting caught on the wrong side of the Denarius/Shekel pair in A.D. 70 where it wasn't just the FX guys but the real estate developers out at the "Future site of Masada Manor" who got hammered.
Then it's a problem and you should probably brush up on your Latin.

From CXO Advisory:
Is proximity to doom good or bad for the stock market?

To measure proximity to doom, we use the Doomsday Clock “Minutes-to-Midnight” metric, revised occasionally via the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, which “conveys how close we are to destroying our civilization with dangerous technologies of our own making. First and foremost among these are nuclear weapons, but the dangers include climate-changing technologies, emerging biotechnologies, and cybertechnology that could inflict irrevocable harm, whether by intention, miscalculation, or by accident, to our way of life and to the planet.” Using the timeline for the Doomsday Clock since inception and contemporaneous annual returns for the Dow Jones Industrial Average (DJIA) during 1947 through most of 2016 (23 doom proximity judgments), we find that:
The following chart relates annual DJIA return (2016 partial) to same-year “Minutes to Midnight” judgment as available over the sample period based on two assumptions:

1. Changes in “Minutes to Midnight” occur near the beginning of years. For example, the 3-minute proximity to doom for 2015 relates to the 2015 DJIA return of -2.2%.
2. When there is no change for a given year, “Minutes to Midnight” is that same as the most recently issued judgment. For example, the proximity to doom for 2013 and 2014 is the same as that for 2012.

The Pearson correlation between these two series is -0.04 and the R-squared statistic 0.001, indicating practically no relationship between proximity to doom and annual DJIA return.

Might there be a lag between proximity to doom and stock market return?

The next chart summarizes annual correlations between “Minutes to Midnight” and DJIA annual return for lead-lag relationships ranging from DJIA return leads proximity to doom by five years (-5) to proximity to doom leads DJIA return by five years (5). All correlations are too small to indicate any relationship....MORE

Comments On Nvidia From Some Fans (NVDA)

As GTC, San Jose, 2026 wraps up, some commentary.

First up, Yahoo Finance, March 19:

Nvidia's changing its strategic approach to AI, going all in on inferencing and agents 

Jensen Huang took the stage at Nvidia’s (NVDA) GTC event in San Jose, Calif., on Monday, clad in his usual leather jacket, to provide the world with an update about what the world’s most valuable company has been cooking up over the last few months.

Huang was as indefatigable as ever as he ran through his roughly two-and-a-half-hour keynote in front of some 30,000 attendees. But what’s come to be known as the Super Bowl of AI featured a noticeable shift in Nvidia’s overall AI strategy — a deeper focus on inferencing, or powering AI models, and agents.

Nvidia’s chips are traditionally known for their general-purpose use. They can train and run AI models, power robots, and serve as the backbone of self-driving cars.

And while Nvidia’s offerings are still the industry standard, upstart chip companies like Cerebras and Groq have begun designing and rolling out processors geared specifically toward running AI models, creating a potential threat to Nvidia’s formidable AI moat.

Huang and company answered that at GTC with a slew of announcements meant to prove Nvidia is the inferencing leader to beat, including the debut of its Groq 3 chip and rack system.

Nvidia didn’t just go further with its inferencing capabilities, though. The company also showed off its addition to the much-hyped world of OpenClaw high-powered AI agents.

OpenClaw, which debuted as Clawd in November 2025 before being renamed Moltbot and finally OpenClaw in January, has taken off thanks to its ability to run AI agents powered by different AI models on users’ machines via apps like WhatsApp, Discord, Slack, and others.

Now, Nvidia is getting in on the buzz with its NemoClaw platform designed to improve the security and privacy of the agents.

“They are evolving in a big way, not only in inference, agentic, too,” TECHnalysis Research founder and chief analyst Bob O’Donnell told Yahoo Finance.

“The switch to OpenClaw, and now NemoClaw, to me, is even more indicative of this. It just shows how quickly they are reacting to the market.”

Nvidia moves further into inferencing 
Nvidia’s decision to include Groq 3 as one of the seven chip platforms that make up Vera Rubin is part of its effort to stay ahead of the broader industry.

Nvidia signed a $20 billion deal with Groq in December, hiring founder Jonathan Ross, president Sunny Madra, and other members of the Groq team and giving Nvidia access to Groq’s intellectual property.

The results of the deal are Nvidia’s new Groq 3 language processing unit (LPU) and Groq 3 LPX server rack. That’s right, Nvidia now has graphics processing units (GPUs), LPUs, and central processing units (CPUs). It’s a lot of units....

....MUCH MORE 

And at Barron's March 19:

Nvidia Is Giving Apple Vibes. Why That Spells Big Things for the Stock.

The artificial-intelligence revolution has entered a new phase, one in which running AI models, known as inference, is taking over as the main source of demand for AI computing. Nvidia was the winner of round one when training the AI models drove chip sales. But things change quickly in tech, and the company still has to convince the market and customers that it remains indispensable.

CEO Jensen Huang devoted his keynote address at Nvidia’s GTC conference this past week to make the case. He reminded everyone that Nvidia had spent two decades building an ecosystem of hardware and software that makes its platform the least costly for AI. By the end of his speech, Huang had delivered a vision of Nvidia that reminded me of just one other company: Apple.

For years, Wall Street didn’t appreciate that Apple was more than just a hardware firm. Apple’s version of consumer technology provides a carefully thought-out bundle. The hardware is expensive, but it comes with a lot of free software and services that bring everything together seamlessly. In the end, the platform is sticky and full of value.

This is sometimes called Apple’s “walled garden.” iPhones, Macs, and Watches work like one because Apple controls the entire technology stack: the chips, the devices, the operating systems, the applications, and the cloud services. It’s all developed together, so it all just works together.

You’re free to leave the garden through a well-hidden gate, but the flowers are nice and the sun is shining, so why would you?

Nvidia is employing that Apple model of full control in an entirely different market: AI computing. More and more, Nvidia is moving toward being a full platform with an ecosystem of hardware, software, and partnerships that could be sticky like Apple’s, notwithstanding growing competition in the AI chip market.

It begins with Nvidia controlling as many layers of data center infrastructure as it can, what CEO Jensen Huang calls “extreme codesign.” A lot of attention is paid to Nvidia GPU chips, the workhorses of AI data centers, but there are five other Nvidia chips inside its coming Vera Rubin AI server, each with a crucial role in making a product that can’t be matched. The chips work better because they are designed together to work together.

Nvidia also makes data center network switches that alleviate a key computing bottleneck. In the last quarter, networking sales were responsible for 16% of Nvidia revenue, up from 8% the year before. It’s now the fastest-growing unit in Nvidia’s reporting.

This year, Nvidia will integrate a new server design built around AI inference chips from start-up Groq. Vera Rubin will work in concert with Groq on demanding inference tasks. Creating a data center with mixed servers that collaborate with each other is a thorny problem that Nvidia solved with software called Dynamo. Nvidia’s hardware still leads the industry, but the deepest part of the company’s moat is all the software it’s created to run on its hardware.

Huang began his GTC keynote by talking about the 20th anniversary of Nvidia’s most important software known as CUDA, or Compute Unified Device Architecture. In 2004, Nvidia hired Ian Buck, an engineer fresh out of Stanford University, to create a way for programmers to use Nvidia GPUs for a lot more than just computer graphics and gaming. Two years later, CUDA was born.

Nvidia kept developing the software, and by 2012, AI researchers had made Nvidia’s platform their preferred kit. A whole generation of researchers grew up on it. When ChatGPT triggered the generative AI craze in 2022, no one was more prepared for it than Nvidia.

Buck remains a Nvidia employee.

Nvidia has continued to build the ecosystem on top of the GPU-CUDA combination. The company’s online code portfolio has 700 repositories, including specialized software for engineering, physics, weather, and medical science, along with tools for AI training, inference, and agents. These are active projects with new versions rolling out all the time. Over a third of the repositories have received updates in the past month.

Nvidia is also the world’s largest contributor to open-source AI models with 715 of them available for download....

....MUCH MORE 

Also at Barron's, March 18:

Sure, Nvidia Stock Is Stuck. But Don’t Ignore Its Huge Cash Returns

The stock is down $2.45 (-1.36%) at $177.95.

This week:

• As Nvidia's Developer Confab Kicks Off, Some Hard-Won Insight (NVDA)
• Highlights Of Jensen Huang's GTC Keynote Speech, March 16, 2026 (NVDA)
• Transcript: Analyst Q&A, Nvidia GTC, March 17, 2026 (NVDA)

Sadly, I don't think we'll see anything as insightful as 2024's "Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang debuts new $8,990 lizard-embossed leather jacket, also says something about AI GPUs: (NVDA)

Although....looking back to 2016's "Huh, This NVIDIA Company May Be On To Something (NVDA)" it's possible I''ll come up with something.

After a series of all-time highs last week the stock looks set to open up a couple pennies at $44.35.
From the Wall Street Journal:

New Chips Propel Machine Learning  

Divide by 40 to account for the stock splits and we see $1.11 on the old stock. 

"'Worse Than Nord Stream': Iran's Attack On Qatar's LNG Sends Shockwaves Across Global Energy Markets"

Seeing Brent futures above $119 while WTI was trading around $96 [and oil for delivery to Asian refiners was commanding $150+] earlier today was a bit of a jolt.

From ZeroHedge, March 19:

Brent crude futures surged toward $120/bbl, while WTI remained muted around $96/bbl, as Wednesday marked a major escalation in the US-Iran conflict. Israeli fighter jets struck Iran's giant South Pars gas field with air-delivered munitions, triggering a retaliatory chain reaction in which IRGC forces targeted critical energy infrastructure across the Gulf.

Iranian drone and missile strikes caused heavy damage to Qatar's Ras Laffan LNG hub, while gas plants in Abu Dhabi shut down, Kuwaiti refineries were hit by drones, and Saudi refining assets were targeted.

Unlike temporary shipping disruptions in the Gulf waters or the Strait of Hormuz, damage to upstream energy assets, such as production and LNG facilities, is far more serious and could take months or even years to repair, raising the risk of prolonged tight global supply.

Read overnight report:

• Iran's Attack On Qatar's LNG Plant Is Bad; The Math Behind The Global LNG Fleet Is Far Worse

Some 20% of global LNG exports originate from Gulf countries, and the latest round of Israeli and IRGC attacks on upstream energy assets shows how the conflict has entered an entirely new phase where energy infrastructure is being directly targeted.

Disruptions at Qatar's LNG facilities threaten to tighten the global gas market, with ripple effects quickly spreading worldwide - across Asia, Europe, and even U.S. gas prices.

European natural gas benchmark futures jumped as much as 35% today, pushing prices to more than double their pre-war levels, as traders brace for what only appears to be a prolonged period of disruption from critical LNG hubs that account for a fifth of the world's total supply.

QatarEnergy warned earlier that LNG facilities inside its Ras Laffan Industrial City were attacked by missiles, "causing sizable fires and extensive further damage."

"This could be a game changer for the LNG industry, akin to the attack on Nord Stream or possibly even worse," Susan Sakmar, visiting assistant professor at the University of Houston Law Center, said, quoted by Bloomberg. "This is a sudden disruption, with no indication that Qatar could restart anytime soon."

Global Risk Management analyst Arne Lohmann Rasmussen warned, "LNG from Qatar could in principle be offline for months and, in the worst case, for years. For the gas market, the crisis does not end simply because the war ends and the Strait of Hormuz reopens."

UBS analyst Matt Salmon commented on the exploding energy risk premia due to overnight war developments:

Geopolitical risk premia in the energy complex rose further following attacks on energy infrastructure in the Middle East, after President Trump failed earlier this week to establish an international coalition to support the resumption of shipping through the Strait of Hormuz. In a clear escalation of hostilities, Iranian energy infrastructure was targeted for the first time in the conflict, with Israel striking the South Pars gas field, while the US claimed no prior knowledge.

Iran had warned early in the conflict that there would be "no red lines" around retaliatory actions, and it made good on this threat with two strikes in less than 12 hours on Qatar's Ras Laffan Industrial City, home to the world's largest LNG facility, with state operator QatarEnergy reporting "extensive damage."

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Norway’s Equinor Drills A Wildcat Well, Hits Oil

Henceforth (and perhaps forevermore) Australia to relinquish the moniker "The lucky Country" to Norway. 

From OilPrice, March 18:

Norway’s Equinor Makes Oil Discovery Near Huge Arctic Field 

Equinor has made an oil discovery in a wildcat well in a prospect close to the giant Johan Castberg field in the Barents Sea, the Norwegian Offshore Directorate said on Wednesday.    

Equinor, as the operator, and its partners in the Polynya Tubåen prospect, Var Energi and Petoro, estimate to have found between 14 and 24 million barrels of recoverable oil equivalent, and are now considering whether they could tie the discovery back to the Johan Castberg field.

In 2025, Equinor started up the Johan Castberg project, which last summer hit full capacity of 220,000 barrels per day (bpd) of crude oil production.

Johan Castberg will produce crude for 30 years, boost Norway’s oil exports, and bolster the role of Western Europe’s biggest oil and gas producer as a reliable and long-term supplier of energy, Equinor said....

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Earlier today:

As Fuel Runs Out: "Australia stops in three weeks"

Capital Markets: "Limited Follow-Through Dollar Today After Yesterday's Surge"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex: 

The US dollar rallied strongly during the Federal Reserve’s press conference yesterday as rates jumped in response to what was widely seen as a hawkish hold, especially given Chair Powell’s framing. There has been limited follow-through dollar sales today, but the technical damage inflicted on many pairs has not been reversed. The Bank of Japan, the Swiss National Bank, and Sweden’s Riksbank have announced unchanged policies, as expected, and now attention turns to the Bank of England and the European Central Bank. Neither will move, but how they view the risks is important. We expect both will indicate the lack of urgency. 

The war appears to have been extended with the attack on the South Pars gas field jointly run by Iran and Qatar. News reports say that President Trump is urging restraint, but the horse seems to have bolted already. Given the feints and attack on Iran during negotiations and after the US claimed to have destroyed Iran’s nuclear capability last June, it is difficult to know what is real and what is a war tactic. May WTI is within yesterday’s range, but the front month Brent contract made new highs today....

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As Fuel Runs Out: "Australia stops in three weeks"

From Australia's MacroBusiness, March 18:

As we know, China has banned refined fuel shipments, restricting the world’s supply. Overnight, Korea capped exports at 2020 levels, and Thailand banned them.

As well, Singapore refinery runs have begun to wane, with capacity utilisation down meaningfully from 20-50% as it runs out of oil.

These shortages have not even arrived in Australia yet, but will over the next week or so as tanker volumes fall away.

80% of the volumes that flowed through the Straits of Hormuz went to Asia. That is, Asia has lost 12mb/d of its oil supply. It consumes about 40mb/d so that’s about 30%.

I really can’t see how or why Asian refineries are going to be allowed to ship fuel to Australia when home country supply is at risk.

This raises the likelihood that Australia will lose a much larger share of its fuel supply than the 15% of global supply offline.

30% seems more probable within a month.

The nightmare scenario, which is also the base case, is that resource nationalism overruns the oil market globally.

The US, which is legally able to limit oil shipments under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act (IEEPA), is currently the focus of attention.

The ban on exports there, especially for refined products rather than crude oil, is a strong possibility as prices climb....

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At the moment, "Exxon, BP, Vitol ship most US fuels to Australia for a single month in three decades, traders say".

From Reuters, March 19:

At least 200,000 tons of refined fuels to be shipped

Tankers will mostly be loaded by the end of March

Voyage typically takes 30-40 days

Australia usually relies on Asia for most of its fuel imports

ExxonMobil, BP and Vitol are shipping a record volume of oil products to Australia ‌from the United States in March, shipping data from trading sources shows, filling a gap left by the loss of regular supplies from Asia as the Iran conflict disrupts supplies.

 

Australia usually relies on Asia for the vast majority of its oil product imports, but China and Thailand have banned fuel exports to preserve domestic supplies ​and refiners across the region are cutting output as Iran's blockade of the Strait of Hormuz sharply cuts crude exports from the ​Middle East.

 

At least 200,000 metric tons of gasoline, diesel and jet fuel have been loaded, or will be ⁠loaded, by the end of March from the U.S. Gulf Coast and West Coast for shipment to Australia, shipping data from three trade ​sources shows.

 

The volume represents the most fuel shipped to Australia from the U.S. for a single month in more than three decades, based ​on U.S. Energy Information Administration data....

....MUCH MORE, including a handy conversion table:

(1 ton = 7.45 barrels of diesel)

(1 ton = 7.88 barrels of ​jet fuel)

(1 ton = 8.45 barrels of gasoline)

Inflation: BLS Producer Price Index Comes In Hotter Than Predicted

From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, March 18:

PRODUCER PRICE INDEXES - FEBRUARY 2026 

The Producer Price Index for final demand increased 0.7 percent in February, seasonally adjusted, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Final demand prices moved up 0.5 percent in January and 0.4 percent in December 2025. (See table A.) On an unadjusted basis, the index for final demand rose 3.4 percent for the 12 months ended in February, the largest 12- month advance since increasing 3.4 percent in February 2025.

More than half of the February rise in prices for final demand can be attributed to a 0.5-percent advance in the index for final demand services. Prices for final demand goods increased 1.1 percent.

The index for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services rose 0.5 percent in February, the tenth consecutive advance. For the 12 months ended in February, prices for final demand less foods, energy, and trade services increased 3.5 percent.

Final Demand Final demand services: The index for final demand services rose 0.5 percent in February, the third straight advance. Nearly three-fourths of the February broad-based increase can be traced to prices for final demand services less trade, transportation, and warehousing, which moved up 0.6 percent. The indexes for final demand trade services and for final demand transportation and warehousing services also rose, 0.4 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively. (Trade indexes measure changes in margins received by wholesalers and retailers.)

Product detail: About 20 percent of the February advance in the index for final demand services is attributable to a 5.7-percent jump in prices for traveler accommodation services. The indexes for food and alcohol wholesaling; securities brokerage, dealing, investment advice, and related services; fuels and lubricants retailing; long-distance motor carrying; and inpatient care also rose. In contrast, margins for apparel, footwear, and accessories retailing fell 4.5 percent. The indexes for gaming receipts (partial) and for airline passenger services also decreased. (See table 2.)

Final demand goods: Prices for final demand goods increased 1.1 percent in February, the largest rise since moving up 1.6 percent in August 2023. Forty percent of the February broad-based advance can be traced to the index for final demand foods, which jumped 2.4 percent. Prices for final demand energy and for final demand goods less foods and energy also increased, 2.3 percent and 0.3 percent, respectively.

Product detail: Over 20 percent of the February rise in the index for final demand goods is attributable to a 48.9-percent jump in prices for fresh and dry vegetables. The indexes for diesel fuel, chicken eggs, gasoline, jet fuel, and tobacco products also increased. Conversely, prices for jewelry and jewelry products fell 4.0 percent. The indexes for home heating oil and for soft drinks also declined....

....MUCH MORE, tables, narrative

Core PPI rose 0.5% on the month, above 0.3% forecasts. The core PPI inflation rate picked up to 3.9% from 3.6%.

Memory: Shortage Could Last Five Years, It's The Wafers

One of the first sources to relay the concern that the memory chip shortage would not be over quickly was Tom's Hardware in October 2025, linked here on the blog on January 3:

"AI data centers are swallowing the world's memory and storage supply, setting the stage for a pricing apocalypse that could last a decade" 

Now we return to Tom's to see what the head honcho at #2 memory chip maker SK Hynix has to say, March 18:

SK Group chairman says memory chip shortage will last until 2030 — wafer supply trails demand by 20% 

SK Hynix's CEO is expected to announce price stabilization measures soon. 

SK Group chairman Chey Tae-won told reporters at Nvidia's GTC conference in San Jose on Monday that the global memory chip shortage is likely to persist for another four to five years, with industry-wide wafer supply lagging demand by more than 20%, Bloomberg reported. Chey, whose conglomerate controls SK Hynix, said leading memory makers are expanding capacity but are unlikely to fully meet demand until around 2030 because securing additional wafers takes at least four to five years, according to The Korea Times. 

Chey warned that excessive focus on high-bandwidth memory could lead to shortages in conventional DRAM, potentially affecting smartphones and PCs. SK Hynix, Samsung, and Micron have shifted production in recent years toward HBM for AI accelerators, and the resulting shortfall in conventional DRAM output has driven steep price increases across consumer electronics.

SK Hynix holds roughly 57% of the global HBM market and 32% of overall DRAM, and the company is currently building a $13 billion HBM packaging and testing facility at its Cheongju complex in South Korea, with construction scheduled to begin next month and completion targeted for the end of 2027.

Article continues below...

....MUCH MORE  

And it's not just silicon wafers for memory chips.

From SemiAnalysis, March 12:

The Great AI Silicon Shortage
TSMC N3 Wafer Shortages, Memory Constraints, Datacenter Bottlenecks, Supply Chain Wars Winner 

Token demand is skyrocketing and the need for AI compute continues to accelerate. The improvement in model capabilities combined with the rapid emergence of agentic workflows has driven a surge in user adoption and aggregate token demand. Anthropic added a staggering $6B of ARR in the single month of February alone driven by broad adoption of agentic coding platform Claude Code, and if Anthropic had more compute they would have added more. Despite a huge AI infrastructure buildout over the past few years, available compute is scarce. On-demand GPU prices continue to go up even for Hoppers which are almost 2 generations old.

From our own experiences, we have reached out to every neocloud we know asking if they have small clusters available, but everything is already firmly locked up. This tight supply environment explains the sharp reset in hyperscaler capex plans. Consensus estimates have moved materially higher across the board, with Google standing out as the most extreme example, where 2026 capex expectations have roughly doubled versus prior expectations, primarily driven by datacenter and server spend.

 

Source: Company Earnings, Bloomberg

This is a tremendous level of spending, and hyperscalers would deploy even more capital if they could, but they are constrained by one critical factor: silicon supply. There is simply not enough advanced logic and memory fabrication capacity to support the pace of compute deployments. While the AD (After Da launch of ChatGPT) era has been riddled with various constraints such as CoWoS packaging and datacenter power, we are now firmly in the silicon shortage phase.

 

Source: SemiAnalysis Accelerator Model

The TSMC N3 Shortage

One of, if not the, biggest constraints is TSMC’s N3 logic wafer capacity. TSMC’s N3 family started shipping for revenue in 2023, with demand initially driven primarily by smartphones and PCs. N3 got off to a shaky start, with the first variant “N3B” having yield issues and being too expensive relative to the density improvement. Greater adoption came with the refined N3E process, a relaxed variant with far fewer EUV layers and therefore lower cost. Key smartphone and PC customers include Apple, which uses N3 variants for its M3 to M5 Mac chips and A17 to A19 iPhone processors, Qualcomm for its Snapdragon 8 Elite series, MediaTek for its Dimensity smartphone SoCs as well as select automotive and PC chips, and Intel for its Lunar Lake and Arrow Lake client processors.

 

Source: SemiAnalysis Foundry Model

Up until today, N3 demand has been driven primarily by consumer electronics. In 2026, all the main AI accelerator families are transitioning to N3, and AI will account for the majority of N3 demand before transitioning to N2 and beyond.

We can see in the table below the industry-wide convergence toward TSMC’s N3 family as the leading process node for AI accelerators heading into 2026. NVIDIA transitions from 4NP with Blackwell to 3NP with Rubin. AMD, typically the earlier adopter of new nodes, has already adopted N3 for MI350X and will stay on N3 for the AID and MID tiles for MI400 (XCD is N2). Google’s TPU roadmap shifts fully to N3E starting with TPU v7, with TPU seeing a huge upsize in program volumes this year. AWS also transitions to N3P with Trainium3. Meta’s MTIA follows a similar path, though it will be at much lower volumes.

 

Source: SemiAnalysis Accelerator Model

This shift is not limited to XPU silicon. The Vera CPU used in VR racks uses N3P for all its silicon. There is also networking silicon in the form of the NVLink 6 switch, as well as scale out switches like Tomahawk 6 and Spectrum 6. With Rubin offering 1.6T of scale out network per GPU, Rubin kicks off the adoption of 3nm 200G optical DSPs.

This sudden convergence of N3 adoption coupled with the continued growth of AI compute demand has resulted in a huge demand shock for N3 wafer capacity. TSMC has been caught flat-footed, with wafer capacity expansion failing to keep pace with surging AI demand. How did this happen? Although the greatest compute buildout in history began in late 2022, TSMC’s capex only exceeded its previous peak in 2025. This year, TSMC is going to smash through last year’s record Capex, because they have realized how far customer demand is exceeding their capacity....

....MUCH MORE 

It's a pretty big deal. If interested see:

Memory: "The inflation spark that could become a deflation shock?"

From M&G's Bond Vigilantes, February 27:
Memory chips have quietly become the most important commodities in the global economy.

 “'Entry-Level PC Segment Will Disappear by 2028,' Says Gartner, as Soaring Memory Costs Start to Cripple Manufacturers"

"....Micron, SanDisk & Memory Stocks Are Crashing Today"

 Thanks for the Memories: "South Korea’s Kospi plunges 12% amid broader declines in Asia markets as Iran conflict rages"
The index, which has been driven by the memory chip makers, Samsung Electronics Co. and SK Hynix Inc. et al., up over 145% from March 2025 to the February 25, 2026 peak is now down 10% on the day, March 4th....

Google vs Tesla: "Waymos and Cybercabs see the world through very different sensors" (now with more DARPA)

From Asterisk Magazine, Issue 13, March 2026:

Seeing Like a Sedan 

Waymos and Cybercabs see the world through very different sensors. Which technology wins out will determine the future of self-driving vehicles. 

Picture a fall afternoon in Austin, Texas. The city is experiencing a sudden rainstorm, common there in October. Along a wet and darkened city street drive two robotaxis. Each has passengers. Neither has a driver.

Both cars drive themselves, but they perceive the world very differently. 

One robotaxi is a Waymo. From its roof, a mounted lidar rig spins continuously, sending out laser pulses that bounce back from the road, the storefronts, and other vehicles, while radar signals emanate from its bumpers and side panels. The Waymo uses these sensors to generate a detailed 3D model of its surroundings, detecting pedestrians and cars that human drivers might struggle to see.

In the next lane is a Tesla Cybercab, operating in unsupervised full self-driving mode. It has no lidar and no radar, just eight cameras housed in pockets of glass. The car processes these video feeds through a neural network, identifying objects, estimating their dimensions, and planning its path accordingly.

This scenario is only partially imaginary. Waymo already operates, in limited fashion, in Austin, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Atlanta, and Phoenix, with announced plans to operate in many more cities. Tesla Motors launched an Austin pilot of its robotaxi business in June 2025, albeit using Model Y vehicles with safety monitors rather than the still-in-development Cybercab. The outcome of their competition will tell us much about the future of urban transportation.

The engineers who built the earliest automated driving systems would find the Waymo unsurprising. For nearly two decades after the first automated vehicles emerged, a consensus prevailed: To operate safely, an AV required redundant sensing modalities. Cameras, lidar, and radar each had weaknesses, but they could compensate for each other. That consensus is why those engineers would find the Cybercab so remarkable. In 2016, Tesla broke with orthodoxy by embracing the idea that autonomy could ultimately be solved with vision and compute and without lidar — a philosophical stance it later embodied in its full vision-only system. What humans can do with their eyeballs and a brain, the firm reasoned, a car must also be able to do with sufficient cameras and compute. If a human can drive without lidar, so, too, can an AV… or so Tesla asserts.

This philosophical disagreement will shortly play out before our eyes in the form of a massive contest between AVs that rely on multiple sensing modalities — lidar, radar, cameras — and AVs that rely on cameras and compute alone.

The stakes of this contest are enormous. The global taxi and ride-hailing market was valued at approximately $243 billion in 2023 and is projected to reach $640 billion by 2032. In the United States alone, people take over 3.6 billion ride-hailing trips annually. Converting even a fraction of this market to AVs represents a multibillion-dollar opportunity. Serving just the American market, at maturity, will require millions of vehicles.

Given the scale involved, the cost of each vehicle matters. The figures are commercially sensitive, but it is certainly true that cameras are cheaper than lidar. If Tesla’s bet pays off, building a Cybercab will cost a fraction of what it will take to build a Waymo. Which vision wins out has profound implications for how quickly each company will be able to put vehicles into service, as well as for how quickly robotaxi service can scale to bring its benefits to ordinary consumers across the United States and beyond....

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