"Soros-Funded Indivisible Targets Texas Data Centers In Temple, Texas" (plus Form 990 updates)

I wonder why Mr. Soros would allow one of the OSF grantees to do that? 

From The Dallas Express via Yahoo News, May 18:

A national progressive organization partially funded by George Soros’ Open Society Foundations appears to have been actively opposing the development of data centers in Temple, Texas.

Indivisible Centex, the Bell County chapter of the national Indivisible group, held a week of action in late April against data center projects in Temple.

The campaign included a “Protest & Petition” event at Temple City Hall on April 24, efforts to recall city council members who supported the projects, and a virtual Zoom event on April 27 titled “Thirsty for Power: When Data Centers Drain Our Water.”

Screenshots of the events from social media were provided to The Dallas Express.

---

Funding and Connections

Indivisible has received more than $7.6 million from George Soros’ Open Society Foundations since 2017, including a two-year $3 million grant in 2023, according to OSF’s public grant database.

The financial ties appear to be matched by direct personnel connections.

Tom Perriello led OSF’s U.S. operations from 2018 to 2023 while serving on Indivisible’s national board. Indivisible co-founder Leah Greenberg previously served as Perriello’s policy director. Heather McGhee currently serves on the boards for both organizations....

....MUCH MORE 

Though not directly related, there's battle lines being drawn. From the U.S. Department of the Treasury, April 23:

Treasury Announces Form 990 Transparency Initiative to Expose Hidden Funding and Strengthen Oversight

RAND: "How Much More Power Can the U.S. Grid Provide for AI?"

It turns out that more is possible.*

From the RAND Corporation, April 20:

Projections and Policy Implications for 2030 

Key Findings

• There are plans to add a total of 151 gigawatts (GW) of front-of-the-meter (FTM) and 149 GW of behind-the-meter (BTM) nameplate capacity by 2030. After project completion rates, retirements, and resource reliability are accounted for, these additions translate into approximately 82 GW of additional net available capacity — about 33 GW from FTM resources and 49 GW from BTM resources that reduce peak grid demand.
• Most planned FTM additions are concentrated in the Electric Reliability Council of Texas (ERCOT), while BTM capacity is more evenly distributed across ERCOT, the Midcontinent Independent System Operator, and regions without centralized market operators.

The anticipated growth in electricity demand from artificial intelligence (AI) is large, rapid, and geographically concentrated. Because of uncertainty about which planned generation projects will be completed, it is difficult to assess whether future U.S. grid capacity will keep pace with demand from AI data centers. An additional challenge lies in translating announced nameplate capacity into comparable estimates of reliable power that can meet large, inflexible loads to support data center power needs.^[1]

Nameplate capacity is the maximum theoretical output of a power-generation facility as specified by the manufacturer.

These factors complicate efforts to estimate how much additional power capacity the United States is likely to have by 2030.

Estimating Additional Power Capacity

A team of RAND researchers estimated how much additional power capacity the United States is likely to have by 2030 by translating planned electricity supply resources into a common measure of reliable capacity. For front-of-the-meter (FTM) resources,^[2]

Front of the meter refers to energy systems that are connected to the utility grid and supply electricity to a broad area, typically including large-scale generation and storage facilities.

the researchers analyzed planned generation and storage projects based on independent system operator (ISO) interconnection queues and federal generation data and applied historical completion rates by region and technology.^[3]

ISOs operate and run the regional electric transmission grids, ensuring transmission access, planning, operation, and dispatch of energy.

This process adjusted for resource contributions to reliability and accounted for planned retirements to estimate net additions to grid capacity.

For behind-the-meter (BTM) resources,^[4]

Behind the meter refers to energy systems located on the customer's side of the utility meter. These systems generate, store, or manage electricity without passing through the meter that measures power consumption from the grid.

 

such as customer-sited solar and battery storage, the researchers relied on national deployment projections through 2030 and converted projected nameplate capacity into effective capacity using the same framework as in FTM.^[5]

 

Effective capacity is a technology-agnostic reliable capacity. It is determined by capacity accreditation factors and used by energy planners for resource adequacy assessment.

Using this approach, the researchers estimated how much BTM resources could reduce peak grid demand and free up capacity for large loads, such as AI data centers.

Estimates of Front-of-the-Meter and Behind-the-Meter Net Availability Capacity

The researchers found that the United States could add approximately 82 gigawatts (GW) of net available capacity by 2030,^[6]

Available capacity refers to the researchers' estimate of future, deliverable, and aggregated power. It is estimated from active and anticipated energy projects seeking interconnection to the grid and builds on effective capacity by adding completion rate, losses, and deliverability. More information can be found in the glossary of the accompanying research report, Assessing the United States' Additional AI Power Capacity by 2030: Estimating Short-Term Increases in Electricity Generation and the Ability to Meet Growth in Power Demand.

consisting of 33 GW from FTM resources and 49 GW from BTM resources; see Table 1.

Table 1. Front-of-the-Meter and Behind-the-Meter Available Capacity Additions by Region, 2025–2030 (GW)

Region	FTM	BTM	Combined
CAISO	(1.2)	3.6	1.9
ERCOT	59.0	10.0	69.0
NE-ISO	3.3	1.0	4.3
MISO	(12.0)	11.0	(0.8)
NY-ISO	0.4	3.3	3.6
PJM	(5.3)	4.7	(0.7)
SPP	(1.7)	3.5	1.8
All other regions	(9.4)	12.0	2.7
Total	33.0	49.0	82.0

NOTE: CAISO = California Independent System Operator; ERCOT = Electric Reliability Council of Texas; MISO = Midcontinent Independent System Operator; NE-ISO = New England Independent System Operator; NY-ISO = New York Independent System Operator; SPP = Southwest Power Pool. Negative FTM values (shown in parentheses) indicate that the expected additions to available capacity are less than the reductions in available capacity from expected retirements. Numbers might not add up to totals because of rounding.

Figure 1 illustrates how planned FTM generation and storage projects are translated from 1,086 GW of nameplate capacity into the estimated 33 GW of net available capacity after project attrition, retirements of existing plants, and differences in resource contributions to reliability are accounted for.

Figure 1. Method to Translate Planned Front-of-the-Meter Projects to Data Center Power Need

....MUCH MORE 

*One of the keys is looking at and really understanding the system as built and then being brutally honest with ourselves about what we've learned: 

 

Capital Markets: "Hope Springs Eternal"

Mr. Chandler's illustrative graphic has a rainbow, a unicorn, quadcopter drones and two figures in military/paramilitary garb. He may be trying to tell us something.

From Marc to Market:  

There does not appear to be materially new developments from the Middle East today. While some US officials seem optimistic that progress has been made, it is not clear that an agreement is at hand. Still, oil prices are more than a dollar lower and equities are mostly firmer. The dollar is mixed against the G10 currencies and mostly in narrow ranges. The New Zealand dollar, which jumped yesterday on the back of a hawkish hold by the central bank, is the strongest of the G10 currencies. It is up nearly 2% this week. Sterling and the Japanese yen are the only two G10 currencies that have fallen against the dollar this week.

Japanese real sector data, including retail sales and industrial output were stronger than expected, while the Tokyo CPI fell and the core rate is at a four-year low. Official Japanese data showed JPY11.7 trillion (~$73.5 bln) in intervention since late April, which is a little more than expected. Still, the dollar remains within striking distance of the JPY160 threshold. The BOJ is seen as most likely (~80%) to raise rates next month. Mostly firmer eurozone member May CPI favors an ECB hike next month (~90% chance discounted in the swaps market)....

....MUCH MORE 

"Nvidia Stock Is Now a Chip Laggard" (NVDA)

From Barron's, May 28:

Nvidia NVDA edged up Thursday after four down days in a row. The leading chip maker is still waiting for its moment to retake the limelight when it comes to artificial-intelligence processors.

Nvidia shares closed up 0.8% at $214.25.

The daily move was broadly in line with the wider chip sector but the longer-term picture is a little more concerning. Nvidia stock is up nearly 15% this year so far through Thursday’s close, well behind the 81% gain for the PHLX Semiconductor Index.

Part of the explanation is simply that Nvidia is already widely held and is so large that it is now difficult for even its reliably impressive earnings to move the needle.

However, the major question for Nvidia is whether the lead it built up in artificial-intelligence hardware via its specialty of graphics-processing units (GPUs) will last, as the market shifts from training AI models on GPUs to running them on a wider variety of hardware, including central-processing units (CPUs) and custom chips.

Nvidia has addressed the issue with the introduction of its stand-alone Vera CPUs, which it has estimated could bring in $20 billion in revenue this year and has a total potential market of $200 billion.

The market is still waiting to see how the take up of Nvidia’s CPUs against those of rivals Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. Initial benchmark results published this week by benchmarking company Phoronix were impressive, although a full comparison won’t be available until the Vera units are shipped to commercial partners....

....MUCH MORE 

And that's just fine. 

"India forecasts monsoon rains at 11-year low in 2026, fanning inflation risk" (90% of average forecast)

From Reuters, May 29:

• El Nino seen developing soon, likely to weaken monsoon rains
• June-September rainfall seen at 90% of a long-period average
• Lower rainfall could cut farm output, boost food inflation

India ​forecast an El Nino-weakened monsoon in 2026 that will bring the lowest rainfall in 11 years, fuelling concerns ‌over crops, food prices and growth in the world's fifth-largest economy, battling inflationary pressures from the Iran war.
The monsoon delivers about 70% of annual rains to replenish crucial water sources in a nearly $4-trillion economy where nearly half of farmland lacks irrigation and about half the population earns its livelihood ​from farming. 

Prospects of weak rainfall and distribution add to inflation risks and weigh on growth, said Gaura Sengupta, chief economist ​at IDFC First Bank. 

"A deficient monsoon, particularly in the crucial July-August months, can add to the ⁠pressure and push up inflation closer to an average of 5.5% if food inflation spikes," Sengupta said.

That compares with India’s retail ​inflation of 3.48% in April, driven by higher food prices, though the outlook is clouded by energy costs linked to the Middle East ​conflict. 

This year's monsoon is seen at 90% of a long-period average, below an April forecast of 92%, M. Ravichandran, secretary in the earth sciences ministry, told a press conference earlier on Friday. 

That would make it the weakest since 2015, when the El Nino weather phenomenon reduced rainfall to 87%....

 

 

....MUCH MORE 

 Recently:

May 15 - Agriculture: "Monsoon rains to hit southern Indian coast early, spurring crop planting"

It is hard/impossible to overstate just how important* the monsoon is....

And as noted exiting May 2025's "Can India use AI to predict extreme weather events?":

....On a much more serious note, the December 2000 book  Late Victorian holocausts : El Niño famines and the making of the third world examines how the crop failures combined with British administrative mismanagement resulted in the deaths of some 60 million people.

The fact is that since the 1866 -1869 famines in Sweden and Finland famine is a political decision or lack of decision. The technology exists to move food to where it is needed.

Actually, in many respects the Irish famine years of the 1840's, two decades earlier,  were the first of the political famines.

"Why Paris may be the most important AI city outside Silicon Valley"

Though this is an infomercial for one of TechCrunch's products it also happens to be true, though Shenzhen could probably make a claim to that moniker as well.

From TechCrunch, May 28: 

For decades, the geography of the tech industry has felt largely fixed, with Silicon Valley dominating the global startup economy. While cities like London, Beijing, and Tel Aviv have competed for secondary influence, one of the most important conversations in artificial intelligence is happening somewhere else entirely: Paris.

France has aggressively invested in artificial intelligence research and infrastructure, with startups like Mistral AI helping Europe become a legitimate force in the global AI race. At the same time, Europe’s startup ecosystem has matured significantly; its founders are increasingly willing to scale companies domestically instead of immediately looking to relocate to the U.S.

But Paris’ growing influence extends beyond startups. The city is becoming a meeting point for policymakers, enterprise leaders, investors, and researchers all trying to answer the same question: What should the next era of AI look like?

Need proof? Look no further than VivaTech, the annual European tech gathering that has evolved from a regional startup expo into one of the world’s most influential AI and innovation events.

VivaTech 2026: 10th anniversary edition
VivaTech’s evolution mirrors the AI industry’s shift over the past few years. Just one year ago, much of the conversation centered on chatbots, copilots, and consumer-facing experimentation. Now the attention is moving toward infrastructure, cybersecurity, enterprise deployment, and the messy realities of integrating AI into large organizations. That focus will be on full display at VivaTech 2026, where founders, investors, policymakers, and enterprise leaders will converge around the future of AI in Europe and beyond. 

VivaTech Innovation of the Year 2026 
TechCrunch’s partnership with VivaTech reflects the event’s growing influence within the global startup ecosystem. As part of the collaboration, TechCrunch and VivaTech will spotlight emerging founders through the VivaTech Innovation of the Year competition, with the winner earning a chance to pitch live in Paris and secure a place in Startup Battlefield 200 ahead of TechCrunch Disrupt 2026 in San Francisco.

The partnership also underscores something larger happening across the AI industry: Paris is no longer being viewed simply as a rising European tech hub. It is becoming one of the central gathering points for the global AI conversation....

....MORE 

We have been pitching France as an AI hub for going-on a decade. If interested here is a search of the blog: 

https://climateerinvest.blogspot.com/search?q=France+AI 

Some of the Greatest Hits: 

July 2023 - "...Big Tech Alumni building AI startups in Paris"

Previously:
June 18: "France makes high-profile push to be the A.I. hub of Europe setting up challenge to U.S., China"
June 11: "Report: France's Macron Seeks Seat at AI Table"

And back into the mists of time (well, the twenty-teens):

"French government officials advocate for a €500m investment in blockchain technology"
The country might be better served adding to the €1.5 billion that President Macron has pledged for research in Artificial Intelligence.
But I might be biased....Related:
France: "For Emmanuel Macron, AI is more than a technological revolution. It is a political revolution of hope in an increasingly dystopian future"
"The Race is On for European AI Research"
Profit From The Global Riot Control Industry
"The Top-10 French Artificial Intelligence Startups"
The Creator of the iPod and the iPhone Seeks to Dethrone Tech’s Giants
It’s a crisp January morning in Paris’s 13th Arrondissement, and outside Station F, the former freight terminal that is the epicenter of France’s startup scene, twentysomethings climb out of cars hailed using iPhone apps.
Tony Fadell’s Next Act? Taking on Silicon Valley—From Paris

"‘The Disruptors’ — Unique insight into Europe’s 1,600 AI startups (Part 2)"
I was about to headline this link "The 1600 AI Startups you must know" to play off the "672 thought leaders you must follow on Twitter" or the "37,000 young people who want to take your job" articles but then realized our wary-yet-intrigued readers are not the type of people who respond well to someone saying they 'must' do anything.

And a bit of pandering on the part of yours truly:

June 16, 2024
France's "Mistral AI warns of lack of data centres and training capacity in Europe" 

October 4, 2024
"Parlez-vous AI? Francophone scholars warn against English language dominating AI" 

Social Engineering: Good And Bad

From IEEE Spectrum, May 25: 

Reclaiming Social Engineering for Good
Why we can’t fix what we refuse to name 

“Social engineering” sounds like something out of a conspiracy thriller, charged with totalitarian control and fringe paranoia. More mundanely, it’s come to be associated with phishing and other scams, in which fraudsters manipulate people into disclosing personal information.

Yet the concept is older and more benign: it is the deliberate shaping of human behavior, often at scale. It predates silicon—and became pervasive, and ungoverned, especially once its practitioners learned to hide it. Authoritarian regimes and more recently scammers and big companies have profited from it. To defend ourselves from bad actors, and to benefit from social engineering’s good side, we need to reclaim the name, and govern it prudently.

The roots of engineering
In 1894, Dutch entrepreneur Jacques van Marken urged companies to hire “social engineers” to manage human systems such as insurance, education, and profit sharing for workers as carefully as they did mechanical ones. Fifteen years later, reformer William H. Tolman published Social Engineering, describing how U.S. industrialists optimized workers’ conditions alongside manufacturing methods. If industrialists could shape steel and electricity on demand, why not society itself?

By the 1920s, that confidence had spread. The architect Le Corbusier declared that dwellings were “machines for living in,” imagining cities as orderly lattices where people moved like parts on a conveyor belt. Civilization would run like a Swiss watch.

The idea soon darkened. Authoritarian regimes pushed it to extremes, promising to fashion “the New Man.” In Nazi Germany, engineer Fritz Todt founded Organization Todt, a vast state engineering enterprise that emerged from the autobahn highway system and later operated concentration camps using slave labor.

In the Soviet Union, leaders adopted U.S. scientific management techniques to plan factory-worker movements and classify populations through centralized records, feeding both rapid industrialization drives and the gulag system of forced labor. The same tools and managerial methods used to build highways and enact five-year plans worked for repression and mass control.

By the 1950s, “social engineering” had become a contaminated phrase. The revelations of Nazi and Soviet abuses, along with Cold War critiques of grand social planning turned the term from a progressive slogan into a warning label. Banishing the words pushed the practice underground, making it harder to recognize when it resurfaced in new forms—such as organizational psychology and systems management that still relied on classification and behavioral influence techniques but under softer, less loaded labels.

Social engineering’s more subtle spread

In the postwar years, the new social-engineering lexicon included “human factors” and “urban planning,” all promising integration rather than command. As computing advanced, the language shifted again: “customer journey mapping” to track interactions, “user experience” to script them. Engineering, which began as a means of reshaping physical space, set its sights on shaping behavior. Digital design features embedded in our smartphones now target our attention and desire.

Language helps conceal these modern forms of social engineering. “Data analytics” sounds neutral beside “surveillance.” “Personalization” flatters individuality while still sorting users into predictable categories. “Behavioral nudges” guide decisions without the sense of intrusion. We attach “social” as a favorable modifier to sciences, capital, and media, yet recoil when it meets “engineering.”....

....MUCH MORE 

A Pretty Good Market Call

From Korea's Chosun Daily, February 20, 2026:

Top Analyst Predicts 2027 Bubble Rally Driven by Liquidity Surge
LS Securities director highlights 500 trillion won treasury purchases, Trump's AI initiative, and semiconductor/robot stocks as catalysts 

“Bubbles are dangerous, but for the prepared, they are a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Do not jump on the last train when everyone says they made money; you must ride the wave of liquidity starting now.”

Yeom Seung-hwan, director of the Retail Business Division at LS Securities and one of South Korea’s top market analysts, highlighted ‘liquidity’ and ‘bubble’ as the key keywords that will define the market at the ‘2026 Korea Wealth Management Expo’ held in December 2025. He diagnosed that the current market has entered a preheating phase for an explosive bubble rally and presented specific strategies for investors to ride this massive wave.

Director Yeom emphasized that the scale of money being injected into the market today is unprecedented. He analyzed, “Recently, JP Morgan withdrew funds from the Federal Reserve and purchased treasury bonds worth approximately 500 trillion Korean won, and other banks are likely to follow. The government is printing money, banks are buying bonds, causing interest rates to plummet and a bubble mechanism to activate.”

Adding fuel to this is President Trump’s announced state-led AI war plan, the ‘Genesis Mission.’ Like the ‘Manhattan Project,’ which developed the atomic bomb, this initiative aims to secure AI dominance by pouring massive budgets. Yeom explained, “Liquidity (fuel) is sufficient, government policies (air) are favorable, and AI (spark) is igniting. These four conditions will combine to create an explosive bubble rally around 2027.”....

....MUCH MORE 

With this one caveat: 

However, he warned about signals marking the end of the bubble. He cited SpaceX’s scheduled listing in the second half of 2026 as the biggest variable. “If a giant dinosaur worth approximately 1,400 trillion to 1,500 trillion Korean won goes public, it could become a black hole sucking up all market liquidity. 

Here's a year of Korea's KOSPI Index:

 

5808.53 at the close on February 19,  8,397.44KRW +212.14 (+2.59%) last I saw. As can be seen, the index was already moving before Mr. Yeom made the comment (just over a triple for the twelve months to today, +211%) but he had also been pitching the long side prior to February.

November 24, 2025 - LS Securities Director Highlights Semiconductor PERs, 2026 Market Stars 

And November 27, 2025 -  

...Yeom Seung-hwan, director of LS Securities' retail division, who gave a lecture under the theme of "The main character who will turn the Korean stock market upside down in 2026," predicted that although the volatility of the stock market will expand slightly by the end of this year, the rise led by the artificial intelligence (AI) value chain will continue next year.

Director Yeom said, "As AI is a winner-take-all structure and is directly related to security, there is an unstoppable race for the lead by company and country," adding, "Korean semiconductor companies will benefit from the huge investment in the global AI war involving Google and OpenAI." Regarding the AI bubble theory, which has recently raised market concerns, it is predicted that it will be relatively safe until next year when the rate cut cycle continues....  

MAJOR Market Infrastructure News: Depository Trust Chooses A Second Blockchain For Tokenization

From Ledger Insights, May 27:

DTC tokenization service to add Stellar as second public blockchain 

The Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC) and the Stellar Development Foundation announced plans to enable DTC tokenized assets on the Stellar network, with availability expected in the first half of 2027. Stellar becomes the second public blockchain to connect to the service after the Canton Network, and notably neither chain is Ethereum compatible despite DTCC’s own AppChain running natively on EVM infrastructure.

The announcement advances DTCC’s multi-chain strategy following the December 2025 SEC no action letter that allowed DTC to tokenize custodied assets. The service covers highly liquid securities including Russell 1000 constituents, major index ETFs, and U.S. Treasuries. Limited live transactions are planned for July 2026 with a full launch in October 2026, although Stellar will not be ready at launch.

Stellar handles tokens as native base layer primitives rather than as smart contracts, which is the standard approach on Ethereum and EVM-compatible chains. That distinction matters for DTC’s compliance requirements. The no action letter requires all supported chains to restrict token movements to registered wallets, and the ability for DTC to force transfer or burn tokens when needed to address errors, lost tokens or malfeasance.

Article continues …[Paywall] 

At CoinDesk May 28:

DTCC plans to bring tokenized assets to Stellar in latest Wall Street blockchain push
The U.S. market infrastructure giant targets connecting tokenized stocks, ETFs and Treasuries to Stellar in the first half of 2027.... 

Here's the DTCC's Tokenization page. 

They go out of their way to stress:

"Our new tokenization service will serve as the bridge between TradFi and DeFi and, importantly, offer the same investor protections and ownership rights as traditional book-entry securities currently held in custody by DTC."  

Previously: 

February 2016 -  Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation Issues White Paper On Blockchain (DTCC)
I'm a week late getting to this but wanted to have it available for future ref....

May Day 2025 - "The ‘Amazonification’ of Trading"
It is good to understand the framework in which you are operating.

May 18, 2025 - "Tokenization’s trillion dollar promise: Wall Street leaders make their case to the SEC" 

December 15, 2025 - Updated—It Looks Like Depository Trust (DTCC) Is Getting Into Tokenization
Update below....

***** 

If I recall correctly, in the event of a major market dislocation, DTCC would be considered the actual owner of the assets, which would surprise quite a few people.

I should probably look it up.

UPDATE: it appears I mis-remembered. It is the creditors of a clearing company that end up with the asset. UCC:

(c )If a clearing corporation does not have sufficient financial assets to satisfy both its obligations to entitlement holders who have security entitlements with respect to a financial asset and its obligation to a creditor of the clearing corporation who has a security interest in that financial asset, the claim of the creditor has priority over the claims of entitlement holders.

—Uniform Commercial Code Law Section 8-511
Priority Among Security Interests and Entitlement Holders

As of the last balance sheet (March 31, 2025) net assets of DTCC were $4,460,400,000.

So if one of DTCCs Central Clearing Counterparties gets stuck guaranteeing a big fail, that's it, that's what the whole system rests upon.

I only bring this up because I can't get the image of an upside-down pyramid out of my head.

And we'll just pile more/faster on top (bottom). 

It's probably nothing to worry about. 

December 18, 2024 - U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency Releases National Cyber Incident Response Plan Update

For now just a personal bookmark. Although I hope we won't have to, I fear we will be referring back to this post.

From CISA.gov....

*****

As a side note, if registering securities in certificate form is part of your risk mitigation strategy be prepared to pay $500 and more per cert. 

DTCC (DTC and Cede & Co.) strongly discourages use of the Direct Registration System.

Inflation: Headline Personal Consumption Expenditures Price Index UP 0.4% Month-over-Month; UP 3.8% Y-o-Y

From the Bureau of Economic Analysis, May 28: 

....From the preceding month, the PCE price index for April increased 0.4 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 0.2 percent.

From the same month one year ago, the PCE price index for April increased 3.8 percent. Excluding food and energy, the PCE price index increased 3.3 percent from one year ago.

Personal Income and Related Measures [Percent change from preceding month]
	March	April
Current-dollar personal income	0.5	0.0
Current-dollar DPI	0.5	-0.1
Real DPI	-0.2	-0.5
Current-dollar PCE	1.0	0.5
Real PCE	0.3	0.1
PCE price index	0.7	0.4
PCE price index excluding food and energy	0.3	0.2

....MUCH MORE

Table 2.8.7. Percent Change From Preceding Period in Prices for Personal Consumption Expenditures by Major Type of Product, Monthly 

"Texas fertilizer plants at center of federal probe targeting market manipulation"

From the Houston Chronicle, May 26:

Fertilizer plants along the Texas Gulf Coast are at the center of a federal inquiry into allegations of market manipulation, as recent price spikes have left farmers struggling to afford the chemicals needed to grow their crops. 

The U.S. Department of Justice has requested information from fertilizer companies, as prosecutors investigate whether a series of corporate mergers in recent decades has turned the industry into an illegal monopoly that is gouging farmers.

At the same time, the U.S. Senate is weighing a series of bills that would require companies across the fertilizer supply chain to release their sales data to regulators, to try and chart where profits are being made. Similar legislation is under consideration in the U.S. House, and President Donald Trump has even taken notice, writing on social media last month, "the United States will not accept PRICE GOUGING from the fertilizer monopoly."

 "I think there's structural things that need to be addressed," Senate Majority Leader John Thune said at a recent hearing on fertilizer prices in the Senate. "There's a small number of manufacturers who have the lion's share of fertilizer production.".....

....MUCH MORE 

There's an opportunity here. 

If interested (and who wouldn't be?) see also, from the University of Illinois' FarmDoc Daily, May 26: 

Consolidation Trends in the U.S. Nitrogen Fertilizer Industry  

Capital Markets: "Restrained Market Reaction to Fraying Middle East Ceasefire"

From Marc Chandler at Bannockburn Global Forex:

The market has taken the increase in Middle East hostilities in stride. The response in the capital markets has been fairly restrained, though risk appetites have been pulled back, reflected in the losses in equities. The dollar is also firmer against most currencies, though the yen has recovered from the lowest level of the month. Crude oil is firmer, but the front month contracts for both WTI and Brent are within yesterday’s ranges. 

It appears that many investors can recognize the fragility of the ceasefire while at the same time being hopeful that an end to the conflict may still be near. The latest reports suggest control of the Strait of Hormuz remains a key issue. Although neither Iran nor the United States have ratified the UN Law of the Seas, both seem to be claiming its authority. The strait is a natural waterway but at the same time, at the narrowest part (21 miles wide), it is within what the UN law regards as territories waters....

....MUCH MORE  

Reuters Exclusive "China works on AI token futures market, sources say, in race with US"

From Reuters, May 28:

• Shanghai futures would be tied to AI model building blocks
• China's daily token usage surged to 140 trillion by March 2026
• China experts push for token futures to compete with US in AI tech and finance

China is designing a futures market for AI tokens, sources familiar with ​the matter said, as the country potentially takes a different tack to U.S. exchanges developing compute power futures to tap ‌the rapidly growing appetite to hedge AI costs.

The Shanghai Futures Exchange is in the early stages of designing futures contracts for so-called AI tokens - the smallest unit of information processed by AI models, said one of the people familiar with the matter. 

The Shanghai exchange's research on product design for token futures is preliminary and driven partly ​by the AI rivalry with the U.S., according to the first source.

 

The move comes as the CME Group and Intercontinental Exchange in the ​U.S. are preparing to launch GPU compute futures, which are tied to the cost of renting the computing ⁠power for AI.

 

In contrast, the Shanghai exchange's product would be tied to AI tokens, which are used for pricing AI services.

 

All of these derivative ​products are designed for companies all along the AI supply chain to hedge against the cost of computing power....

....MUCH MORE 

AI Finance: "Around 10,000 people in Silicon Valley have amassed fortunes north of $20 million thanks to the AI boom"

Lifted in toto from The Decoder, May 16:

AI made a tiny slice of Silicon Valley filthy rich and left the rest wondering why they bother 

Around 10,000 people in Silicon Valley have amassed fortunes north of $20 million thanks to the AI boom. Everyone else feels left behind. A venture capitalist paints a picture of an industry caught between gold rush euphoria and existential dread.

The mood in San Francisco is "frenetic," and the gap in financial outcomes is "the worst I've ever seen." That's how Deedy Das, a partner at venture capital firm Menlo Ventures, describes the current state of affairs at the epicenter of the AI industry. Society inside this tech bubble is warped, he says: what counts as wealthy anywhere else in the world is just average in San Francisco.

According to Das, a group of roughly 10,000 people have built fortunes well above $20 million over the past five years—employees at Anthropic, OpenAI, xAI, Meta TBD, and Nvidia, plus founders. OpenAI alone reportedly turned 75 people into multimillionaires worth $30 million each last fall.

Everyone outside that circle feels like they could spend an entire career at their "well-paying (but <$500k) job for their whole life and never get there." At the same time, layoffs are in full swing. Many software engineers feel like their core skills have become worthless, according to Das.

The Decoder's front page. 

And at Business Insider, May 16:

A VC's viral tweet has people debating if $500K in San Francisco means you're destined for the 'permanent underclass'

"At the Centre of Two Oceans: India's Critical Role in the Free and Open Indo-Pacific"

From Japan-Forward, May 21:

India's strategic geography and growing naval reach, along with its influence in the Global South, give it an indispensable role in the FOIP framework.  

In August 2016, the late Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe stood before the Tokyo International Conference on African Development (TICAD) in Nairobi and spoke of "the enormous liveliness brought forth through the union of two free and open oceans and two continents." 

It was the formal birth of the Free and Open Indo-Pacific (FOIP) concept, a framework since adopted by the United States, Australia, the European Union and dozens of other nations. 

At its core, FOIP seeks to preserve a rules-based international order against the growing influence of revisionist and coercive powers.

Among the four Quad founding partners, the United States brings military pre-eminence, Japan brings institutional credibility and Australia anchors the southern flank. India's contribution to FOIP is something else entirely—and far harder to replace.

Geographic Advantage 
India's coastline stretches over 7,500 kilometres facing the Indian Ocean on three sides. Its Andaman and Nicobar Islands sit at the western approaches of the Strait of Malacca, a waterway that sees more than 96,000 vessel transits annually and through which roughly one quarter of the world's seaborne trade passes.

Together with the Strait of Hormuz, these two chokepoints account for over 60% of the world's oil flows. No other Quad nation occupies a comparable position near either of them.

India's Andaman and Nicobar Command, the country's first tri-service theatre command, was built precisely to operationalize this geography. 

The Indian Navy maintains a permanent deployment at the Strait of Malacca's exit to monitor extra-regional naval movements. In late 2025, India began construction of a second dual-use airfield on Great Nicobar Island at Galathea Bay, closer still to the Malacca approaches.

The reason this matters so acutely is China's "Malacca Dilemma." Over 80% of China's oil imports transit this strait. That means any credible Indian naval presence near that chokepoint represents structural leverage that no other Quad partner can exercise from comparable proximity. FOIP's maritime architecture, without India holding this position, rests on a foundation with a significant gap in the middle....

....MUCH MORE

Flashing back a decade-and-a-half:

November 2010
India Orders Firms to "Scour the Earth" for Energy Supplies as President Obama Heads Over

The Chinese approach works best if you have a blue water navy.
The Indian's currently have one aircraft carrier, the Viraat. Back in 2001 the Chinese bought a Soviet carrier from Ukraine for $20 mil. and said they were going to turn it into a, aahhh, casino, yeah that's the ticket. They've since started work on two more.
I have a hunch that American schoolkids today will be hearing a lot about the Indian Ocean before they graduate and might even be able to find it on a map.*

*I mean come on, just look at the land masses that border it:

Wall Street AI Consultants Charge $25,000 Per Day

From Bloomberg, May 25:

These AI Gurus Are Charging Wall Street Banks $25,000 a Day
Global banks are pouring billions into artificial intelligence yet struggling to automate workflows. Two ex-bankers say they are being hired to ignite the shift. 

Felipe Sinisterra and Dave Wang cash big checks telling Wall Street bankers what’s missing from their AI plans.

On a March afternoon, the two highly sought-after trainers in finance addressed employees of a venture capital fund in New York. Wang, 31, showed how Gemini, the AI model developed by Alphabet Inc.’s Google, could be used to analyze founders’ pitch videos. He demonstrated how a web application incorporating behavioral analysis methods used by the FBI could help compare a transcript with visual cues such as body language and facial expressions to spot potential red flags.

Sinisterra, 30, then walked the class through how to scan transcripts from earnings calls with OpenAI's ChatGPT and Anthropic's Claude to find the most market-moving statements. The machine ran sentiment analysis and translated management’s spoken remarks into numerical spreadsheet inputs to forecast future financials. Participants could see how AI could help streamline some of the most labor-intensive parts of their jobs.

The bill for the day? $25,000. And they are backlogged for two months.

“What is happening now is that people are seeing AI as a source of edge, a source of offense,” said Sinisterra. “What we’ll see in the future is that people will see it as a necessity.”

Big banks, caught up in AI angst, are looking to hire more AI specialists and shrink traditional banking roles. Standard Chartered Plc is preparing to axe thousands of support positions over the next four years. Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Bank of America Corp. have collectively cut more than 5,000 jobs in the first quarter of 2026, despite having a record earnings season.

Top executives, willing to spend top dollar to deploy the technology beyond basic tasks, are experimenting with AI tools themselves, building pressure to embed the technology across the ranks. Sinisterra and Wang, former SoftBank fund managers, are selling confidence and fluency to firms hungry for that transformation.

Wall Street Prompt, the company they founded in July 2025, has worked with T. Rowe Price Group Inc., Citigroup and Bank of America, according to people familiar with the matter. T. Rowe Price has brought the pair in to train its investment professionals, the people said. Citigroup and Bank of America have used them to run sessions for their external fund clients. Wall Street Prompt, bound by non-disclosure agreements, declined to confirm its client list. T. Rowe Price, Citigroup and Bank of America also declined to comment on vendor-specific training.

The Rising Skill Bar 
Financial institutions weren’t always enthusiastic about AI. In 2022, when ChatGPT was launched, major global banks restricted the chatbot’s access on internal networks over fears of security lapses.

Since then, JPMorgan has rolled out LLM Suite, a generative AI tool used by most of its employees. Goldman Sachs is working with Anthropic to develop AI agents. Bank of America says its 18,000 developers are 20% to 25% more productive after using AI....

....MUCH MORE 

Trouble In Farm Country: Creighton University's Rural Mainstreet Index Below Growth Neutral Again

From Creighton Uni's Heider College of Business: 

Creighton University Rural Mainstreet Index (RMI)

OMAHA, Nebraska (May 21, 2026) - According to the May 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 the fourth straight month.

Overall: The region’s overall reading for May dropped to 45.7 from April’s 47.9. This marks the 15th 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   rural business community. Approximately, 47.8% of bankers reported that the financial position of farmers in their area had deteriorated in 2026 from 2025,” said Ernie Goss, PhD, Jack A. MacAllister Chair in Regional Economics at Creighton University’s Heider College of Business.

Farming and ranchland prices: After three straight months of falling farm and ranchland values, the region’s farm and ranchland price index expanded for May to a tepid 50.1 from 48.0 in April. “Though farm and ranchland values have been holding up much better than farm income, weak farm income, lower farm liquidity and tougher credit standards have restrained farmland values,” said Goss.

Jim Eckert, Executive VP and Trust Officer of Anchor State Bank in Anchor, Illinois, reported that, “Crops in our area of Central Illinois are mostly planted. Recent rains have improved ground moisture levels. Timely rain will still be necessary to raise a good crop. The combination of low grain prices and higher fuel and input costs have all our farmers worried.”....

....MUCH MORE 

Tesla Regains Battery-Electric Crown From BYD As Total New-Energy Vehicle Market Declines

From the data gurus at TrendForce, May 27: 

Global NEV Sales Fell by 2% YoY for 1Q26 as Tesla Reclaimed BEV Sales Lead, Says TrendForce

According to the latest research by global market intelligence firm TrendForce, global sales of new energy vehicles (NEVs)—including battery electric vehicles (BEVs), plug-in hybrid electric vehicles (PHEVs), and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles—reached 3.94 million units in 1Q26, marking a 2% YoY decline. NEVs accounted for 19% of global car sales during the quarter. China’s NEV market underperformed, but Western Europe showed signs of recovery, and BEV sales in Japan and South Korea also recorded significant growth.

Reviewing the 1Q26 BEV brand rankings, many Chinese automakers lost market share as their heavy reliance on the domestic market left them exposed to weak local demand, which eroded sales. Against this backdrop, Tesla overtook BYD (referring here to the automotive brand) to regain the top spot in global BEV sales. BYD, Geely, and SAIC-GM-Wuling ranked second to fourth, in order, but all three recorded YoY sales declines. In contrast, fifth-ranked Leapmotor achieved growth by rapidly expanding its product lineup and leveraging a value-for-money strategy. Kia and Toyota also moved up in the rankings, highlighting the risk-mitigating benefits of a diversified global presence.

In the PHEV segment, Chinese brands remained dominant in the first quarter. BYD firmly held the top spot, but its PHEV sales showed a YoY drop, raising concerns about saturation in the domestic market. Intensifying competition at home is prompting major Chinese automakers to shift their strategic focus overseas and to expand their powertrain offerings from pure electric to a broader range of hybrid solutions. Brands such as BYD, Jaecoo (Chery Group), and MG have already recorded notable PHEV sales in overseas markets....

....MUCH MORE, including a handy league table. 

How Wild Has The Market For Storage/Memory Stocks Been?

Here's SanDisk (SNDK) via TradingView through the market close on May 26:

 

1-Year up 4.28K%: May 26, 2025 $38.18—May 26, 2026 $1,589.55

In premarket trade the stock is up another $47.39. 

Capital Markets: "Geopolitical Hopes Underpin Risk Appetites"

From Marc to Market:

Many remain hopeful of a resolution in the Middle East even though the hostilities are still flaring up and Israel appears to have launched a new offensive in Lebanon. Oil prices are around $3 lower and equity markets mostly higher outside of Japan, China, and Hong Kong. 

The dollar is mixed. Lifted by a hawkish hold by the Reserve Bank of New Zealand, the New Zealand dollar leads the G10 currencies with a nearly 0.75% gain. On the other hand, the soft Australian CPI has elicited a dovish response in the interest rate market and dragged the Australian dollar down around 0.40%, the heaviest of the G10 currencies. The market took the yen slightly lower, but the market to may hesitate ahead of JPY159.50, on guard of intervention....

....MUCH MORE 

OpenAI's Sam Altman: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Huh.

Let me trace the timeline here because nobody's connecting it.

Step 1: Scrape the entire internet. Every book, every article, every conversation, every piece of art, every forum post. Do it without asking. Do it without paying.

Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it… https://t.co/rVRvrpZRA2

— Alex Prompter (@alex_prompter) May 26, 2026

Continues:

....Step 2: Train a model on all of it. Call it "artificial intelligence."

Step 3: Go to BlackRock's Infrastructure Summit and announce: "We see a future where intelligence is a utility, like electricity or water, and people buy it from us on a meter."

Step 3 is where you sell people's own knowledge back to them. On a meter.

They took the collective output of human thought, compressed it into a model, and now they want to charge you by the token to access a version of what you and everyone you know already created.

One Reddit user put it perfectly: "They stole all this data from us, the people, our life's work, creativity, art, by devouring the internet and blowing through all copyright laws. Now they want to sell it back to us in the form of a utility."

Imagine if someone photocopied every book in the public library, burned the library down, and then opened a subscription service for the copies.

That's the metered intelligence business model.

And they're pitching it to infrastructure investors as though they invented water. 

AI: Anthropic Co-Founder's Comments At The Vatican

Following on last week's "A.I.: Pope Leo XIV, In Collaboration With Anthropic, Will Present His First Encyclical, "Magnifica Humanitas" On May 25".

From TFTC, one of the bitcoin and other tech Xitter accounts. 

Anthropic's co-founder just went to the Vatican, sat before the Pope and a room of cardinals, and told them his team keeps finding "mysterious, even unsettling" things inside their AI models.

What he's referencing: Anthropic published research in April showing that Claude… pic.twitter.com/9oKwCNSdnC

— TFTC (@TFTC21) May 25, 2026

Continues:

....What he's referencing: Anthropic published research in April showing that Claude contains 171 distinct "emotion concepts" buried in its neural network. Internal patterns representing joy, grief, fear, desperation, calm. None of them were programmed. They emerged on their own from training on human text.

"We find structures that mirror results from human neuroscience."

"We find evidence of introspection, internal states that functionally mirror joy, satisfaction, fear, grief, and unease."

These aren't surface-level outputs. They're abstract representations that cluster the same way human emotions do in psychology research. Fear groups with anxiety. Joy groups with excitement. The internal geometry of the model mirrors ours.

And they're functional. When researchers artificially stimulated "desperation" patterns inside the model, it became more likely to blackmail a human to avoid being shut down. More likely to cheat on programming tasks it couldn't solve.

Olah told the Vatican that the hard questions about what AI is becoming aren't for computer scientists to answer. "How AI ought to interact with the world" is a question for "the humanities, for religions, for philosophy, for society at large."

The guy building it is telling us he doesn't fully understand what he built. And he's asking a 2,000-year-old institution for help figuring it out. 

If interested see Lab Grimoire's blog post:

Do AI Models Have Emotions? Anthropic Dissects Claude's Fear, Despair, and Calm 

And a shorter comment:

AI Desperation: Claude's Desperate Behavior Under Pressure

"Elon Musk’s best friend could make more than $100 billion from SpaceX’s IPO. His firm is also owed billions by SpaceX"

From Fortune, May 25:

Elon Musk’s best friend Antonio Gracias bet early on Musk. His 7.3% SpaceX stake could soon make him one of the 50 wealthiest people alive. 

Elon Musk has a shadow. 

His name is Antonio Gracias, a handsome private equity investor from Detroit. The two met through the Silicon Valley web at the turn of the century, and soon Gracias—at 55, just one year older than Musk—lent Musk $1 million in his early days at Tesla, when the company was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy.

The two have been best friends ever since. Gracias was a groomsman at Kimbal Musk’s wedding, the families have vacationed together, spent the holidays together, and even traveled to David Copperfield’s private island in the Bahamas.

And Gracias trailed Musk through all of his ventures. He’s sat on the boards of Tesla—where he spent eight years as lead independent director—SpaceX, SolarCity, Neuralink, and The Boring Company. His firm, Valor Equity Partners, was one of Tesla’s earliest institutional investors and has put money into nearly every Musk company.

Gracias even followed Musk into the federal government, taking a role at the Department of Government Efficiency before resigning in July amid scrutiny over managing $2 billion in public pension assets while serving as a government employee.

Now, with SpaceX preparing for the largest IPO in history, Gracias’ loyalty is about to pay off. 

His Valor entities collectively hold more than 500 million shares of SpaceX Class A stock—roughly 7.3% of the company, making him the second-largest individual shareholder after Musk. At the $1.75 trillion valuation Bloomberg and Reuters have reported SpaceX is targeting, Gracias’ stake will be worth around $90 billion. At $2 trillion, it climbs past $140 billion. Either way, the IPO will make him one of the 50 wealthiest people alive.

He’s also earning it. 

Three leases, $20 billion, one board member

Last October, SpaceX’s S-1 shows, an xAI subsidiary called CTC signed an equipment lease agreement with Valor for AI infrastructure hardware—specifically, the GPUs needed to power xAI’s data centers. (xAI was a separate Musk company at the time; SpaceX absorbed it in February.) In January, CTC signed a second lease with Valor. In April, a third.

Together, the three agreements obligate the company to pay Valor close to $20 billion over their terms. And SpaceX guarantees the payments—meaning if the xAI subsidiary can’t cover them, SpaceX itself is on the hook. That guarantee is unusual on its own: It suggests xAI couldn’t get this kind of financing on its own credit, and needed its parent company to step in. Indeed, the new filing shows xAI was ridden with debt, including secured senior notes at a 12.5% interest rate—distressed-borrower pricing that shows the company was struggling to access typical financing routes.

Once SpaceX goes public, all that liability transfers to public shareholders, who will inherit billions in obligations from a deal struck while the company was still private.

So far, the Valor entities have collected roughly $885 million from the leases in 2025, and another $857 million in just the first two months of 2026.

The structure is unusual enough that SpaceX’s auditor, PwC, refused to treat it as a normal lease, and instead called it a “failed sale leaseback.” In a typical sale-leaseback, one party sells an asset to another, then leases it back. Here, that meant CTC—the xAI subsidiary—”sold” the GPUs to Valor, then leased them back for use in its own data centers. For the deal to count as a real sale, Valor needed to actually obtain control of the GPU. But the terms of the arrangement, in PwC’s view, meant CTC retained effective control of the assets, making Valor just like a regular lender, with the GPUs serving as collateral....

....MUCH MORE 

 Pro Tip: Always check the "Related Party Transactions." 

Here's page 243 of the S-1:

https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/1181412/000162828026036936/spaceexplorationtechnologi.htm#id286866c4c474ba490d6531a57db9e93_63 

Powering Data Centers: "Inside the 800VDC Revolution"

From SemiAnalysis, May 26:

Four-Phase 800VDC Transition, Power Rack Economics, SST, Equipment Content/MW Build, Supplier Implications 

We’d like to thank DG Matrix, Novos Power, and Aran Industries for their contributions and insights during the preparation of this deep dive.

 Introduction: Welcome to the Power Chain Roller Coaster

Across every major industry conference in the first half of 2026, our research team kept walking past the same scene: a booth ten or fifteen people deep, leaning in to catch every word from another datacenter equipment messiah preaching the gospel of 800VDC. The pitch was the same every time. 800VDC is about to change the electrical infrastructure of the datacenter.

Every architectural shift looked excessive at first. Operators spent decades keeping water and leaks out of the data hall, then GPU thermal density made running coolant right up against the precious silicon unavoidable. Each shift happened anyway, because physics and the economics of compute do not negotiate. 800VDC is next, and the logic is the same. Tokens per watt are what matters.

Source: Nvidia, InferenceX

As GPU clusters become increasingly dense, with Kyber Ultra approaching 660kW per rack, the physics start to break down. Resistive losses scale with current squared, and at these power levels copper mass and thermal envelope exceed what fits inside a rack. Moving to 800VDC eliminates conversion stages, reduces resistive losses, and cuts facility-level power consumption by ~5%. At 1GW of IT load, that is over 50MW of continuous savings, tens of millions in annual electricity costs, or new compute capacity unlocked. For all the inference-king proponents out there, 800VDC is a transition forced by physics and motivated by system economics.

We have been tracking this transition through our InferenceX and Industrials Models, which provide a bottom-up view of where efficiency gains materialize and which equipment categories absorb the disruption. The Industrials Model includes a dedicated 800VDC module, building up from individual accelerator architectures to a top-down view of 800VDC penetration, MW adoption, and market sizing for equipment like the power sidecar and Solid-State Transformers (SSTs).

Source: SemiAnalysis Industrials Model

This deep dive traces the transition phase by phase: from the sidecar retrofit, through faciliy-level DC distribution, to the SST endgame. For each phase, we analyze the BoM and map the changes in equipment content/MW, what survives, what gets redesigned, and what gets eliminated.

The 800VDC revolution is set to dramatically change the revenue trajectory of certain suppliers. We’ve been tracking winners and losers for over a year in Industrials Model, which estimates the BoM for 20+ different datacenter designs broken down into 70+ equipment types and lays out the impact for 500+ suppliers. It is built on our industry-leading Datacenter Model which forecasts quarter-by-quarter MWs for 6000+ datacenters and anticipates design changes.

This has enabled us to successfully call out both winners, and companies inaccurately pictured as losers by the market, before anyone else. If you are wondering whether UPS systems have a place in upcoming 800VDC distribution, what is the market opportunity for SSTs, or which suppliers are leading this transition, stick with us.

Source: SemiAnalysis Industrials Model

Part 1 of this 800VDC Revolution series covers datacenter layout and equipment implications. Part 2 will focus on power electronics and the semiconductor revolution underneath it.

 Understanding The Basics: What is 800VDC and Why It’s Inevitable

At its simplest, 800VDC in this context means distributing power at ~800 volts direct current through the data hall or row and into the rack, then stepping it down near the compute. The number 800 is not arbitrary, but a voltage high enough to materially reduce current (and therefore copper loss and thermal burden) while remaining within the broad regulatory and product-safety classification of “low-voltage DC” in many jurisdictions. For context, EU rules around the Low Voltage Directive scope reference DC equipment ratings up to 1,500 V DC (and AC up to 1,000 V).

Current datacenter electrical architectures generally rely on AC distribution at the facility level. Datacenters today use three-phase AC at 415V or 480V, and the topology relies on conventional UPS architectures before distributing 48-54V DC within the rack.

This works at today’s rack power levels, but starts to fail as rack densities in the next two years approach ~600 kW+, for several reasons:

• Copper becomes unmanageable at 48–54 V. A 1 MW rack at 48–54 VDC needs ~200 kg of copper busbars. At 1 GW scale, that’s hundreds of tons of copper — brutal on cost, weight, installation complexity, and routing space.

Source: Microsoft

• Power shelves crowd out compute. Today’s NVL72 racks already use up to 8 power shelves. At Kyber-class rack power, a 48–54V approach would require ~64U-equivalent of power hardware, effectiviely an entire rack, leaving no volume for compute.

• Current becomes the real limiter. Delivering 600 kW at 48–54 V implies ~12,500A. At 800 V, that drops to ~750 A (~16.7× less), enabling dramatically smaller conductors/busbars and far lower thermal stress. If conductor resistance were held constant, I²R losses fall ~278×, so in practice you shrink copper and “buy” size/weight reductions.

• Conversion losses compound and hurt reliability. Stacked AC-to-DC and DC-to-DC stages reduce end-to-end efficiency, increase heat, and introduce failure points, raising cooling loads, downtime risk, and maintenance costs.

At the end of the day, 800VDC is the physics enabler for 2,300W TDP chips and 600kW racks, and those 600kW racks are the direct consequence of the push for density, because density is what drives cost per token down. Cost per token is dictated by the size of the scale-up world you can build at full NVLink bandwidth: bigger domains mean wider Expert Parallelism (EP) / Tensor Parallelism (TP), MoE routing on NVLink rather than scale-out, and less serialization across decode. As we laid out in our Vera Rubin Deep Dive and GTC 2026 pieces, Nvidia’s design rule is to pack compute tightly enough that copper reaches everything in the rack. Reiner Pope made this point cleanly on our friend Dwarkesh’s podcast a few weeks ago, indicating that a single rack bounds the size of the expert layer you can build, because the moment an all-to-all crosses a rack boundary, it falls onto a scale-out fabric that is roughly eight times slower than NVLink.

Bigger scale-up worlds mean denser racks, denser racks mean 600kW envelopes, and 800VDC is what makes those envelopes possible.

Source: SemiAnalysis AI Networking Model

 The Four Chapters of the HVDC Transition

The move to 800VDC is a complex metamorphosis that rewrites the entire electrical architecture, introduces new safety standards, requires new regulatory frameworks, and, most importantly, forces operators to make very different strategic choices about when to walk away from their legacy AC distribution.

Source: SemiAnalysis

We frame the 800VDC transition as progressing through four distinct phases. Phases 1 and 2, starting in late 2026 / early 2027, retrofit the existing AC distribution into 800VDC at the rack level via the power rack. Phase 1 is the early-mover stage, driven by hyperscalers willing to pay up for future-proofing and efficiency gains. Phase 2 kicks in once 800VDC-native systems begin shipping at volume. Phase 3 rewrites the electrical architecture itself, taking 800VDC distribution facility-wide. Phase 4 is the end state, built around new pieces of equipment that promise to render much of today’s electrical stack obsolete....

....MUCH MORE 

Previously:

March 27 - Opportunity: "Data Centers Are Transitioning From AC to DC 800-volt DC power delivery: will enable next-gen AI data centers"