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"Lawyer up."

That was the whole message the incoming House Oversight chair sent Big Tech on election night. Two words. No emoji needed.

Democrats just won the House and the Senate, and the subpoena printers are warming up.

According to The Washington Post, they're lining up investigations into Apple, Meta and businesses linked to Elon Musk.

Here's the hit list…

The probes will look at corporate dealings with the Trump administration and controversial business practices over the past two years.

Early items under consideration:

Your chatbot helps you write passive-aggressive emails. The President's reportedly helped plan a capture operation. Different tiers.

Democrats are not being subtle about this:

Somewhere, a paper company is having its best week in years. 🌲

Companies and executives are already getting legal advice on how to handle subpoenas, public hearings and requests for information.

Jamie Bair, head of the congressional investigations practice at Crowell and Moring, says control of both chambers means probes are expected to move quickly.

"This is the story on everybody's mind," he said.

Robert Kelner of Covington & Burling went full Game of Thrones: "We've been telling clients all year that winter is coming. Now winter has arrived." ❄️

Another lawyer at a big Washington firm warned execs in a private meeting that if your company gets dragged in, expect it to be much more highly publicized.

Bring a good suit and a better PR team.

Should you panic because a senator posted about forests? Probably not.

Investigations make headlines a lot faster than they change earnings. Hearings and subpoenas cost time, legal fees and executive attention, but on their own they rarely move a company's cash flow much.

What they do create is headline risk. One bad hearing clip can knock a stock around for a few days.

If you own an S&P 500 index fund, you already own a slice of this drama. Apple and Meta are among the biggest names in it.

The real thing to watch is whether these probes turn into actual legislation or regulatory action. That's when it starts to matter for the numbers.

Until then, it's mostly noise. Very loud, very televised noise.

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OpenAI is now worth $1.25 trillion.

That's roughly $150 for every person on Earth. And the company isn't even on a stock exchange.

OpenAI just closed an $11 billion funding round, according to Bloomberg.

That money pushed the ChatGPT maker's valuation to $1.25T. It's now in the trillion-dollar club without ever ringing an opening bell.

There's a catch, though. OpenAI originally wanted $30 billion or more.

So it raised about a third of what it asked for. Imagine asking for a Ferrari and getting the key fob.

But the round isn't finished.

A source told Bloomberg that the round could climb to $20 billion once the rest closes in the coming weeks.

That's still short of $30B. Only in AI could "only $20 billion" count as a letdown.

You can't buy OpenAI shares in your brokerage app. So why should you care?

Because private AI valuations set the tone for public AI stocks. When investors pay a trillion-plus for OpenAI, it shows they still believe in the AI spending boom.

The gap between the $30B target and the $11B raised is worth watching. If the full amount never turns up, that suggests even AI's biggest believers have a limit.

The AI money printer is still running. It's just printing a bit slower than OpenAI wanted.

Microsoft just passed on a deal worth tens of billions of dollars.

The money would have gone to Nscale, a British AI cloud company. Microsoft decided against expanding their agreement at a Texas data center.

For Nscale, that's the kind of contract you frame and hang in reception. Now it's a "thanks, but we're good" email.

And Nscale isn't the only one getting ghosted.

Microsoft is winding down a deal to rent AI computing power from Oracle, Bloomberg reported on Friday.

It's been quietly switching off Oracle's servers for months, after choosing not to renew the contract.

The deal was announced in 2023. Oracle's servers were meant to power the AI-assisted version of Bing. (Yes, Bing. It's still alive.)

The full value of the deal was never made public.

So why pull the plug? The servers ran on older-generation Nvidia chips and no longer met Microsoft's requirements.

In AI, last-gen chips age like milk left in a hot car.

Microsoft is getting more cautious about renting computing power from third-party AI providers. Its worries:

Meanwhile, it's putting more money into building its own data centers.

Think renting vs. owning. Rent, and you're stuck with whatever ancient boiler the landlord installed. Own, and you pick the boiler.

Microsoft wants to pick the boiler.

The AI spending boom is still very much on. But the biggest buyers are getting choosier about where their money goes.

That matters if you follow companies that rent out AI computing power. Their growth can depend heavily on a handful of giant customers.

When one of those giants walks, it leaves a crater.

It's also a reminder that AI hardware gets old fast. Servers that were cutting-edge a few years ago can turn into very expensive furniture.

So the question for any AI infrastructure story is simple: who are the customers, and what happens if they leave?

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