⚡ Who Pays AI’s Power Bill?

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Big Tech just got told to bring its own electricity.

Trump posted on Truth Social that new, large data centers are "mandated by me" to make their own power.

Not just enough to run the servers either. Any excess gets given or sold back to the local community or grid.

Think of it as a house party where every guest has to bring a generator. And share it with the neighbours.

Trump's argument: if data centers stop leaning on the grid, electricity prices could see "a substantial decrease."

He described some of these facilities as "gigantic," which is fair. AI runs on servers, and servers run on enormous amounts of power.

The post didn't include details on how the mandate would actually be enforced.

Trump also told tech companies to pay a "dividend" to communities hosting data centers.

Cash for the town, or for individual residents. His logic: projects that started out unpopular won local support once companies struck financial deals.

His closing line: "MAKE DEALS, and get them built!!!"

Three exclamation marks. Zero ambiguity.

AI data centers are driving up power demand, and people are worried their electricity bills will foot the bill.

So the administration has been pushing tech to pay its own way. On March 4, it launched the Ratepayer Protection Pledge.

Seven companies signed up: Amazon $AMZN ( ▼ 0.1% ), Google $GOOG ( ▼ 1.62% ), Meta $META ( ▲ 0.47% ), Microsoft $MSFT ( ▲ 0.2% ), Oracle, OpenAI and xAI. Basically the entire AI arms race in one group chat.

They agreed to build, bring, or buy new power generation and cover the cost of grid upgrades, instead of passing it on to households.

Today's post turns the volume up on that same idea.

Who knew the hottest job in AI would be "electrician"?

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An early SpaceX investor thinks it'll be worth $100 trillion.

That's roughly the size of the entire global economy. For one company. That started out launching rockets.

Here's the pitch 👇

Peter Diamandis, founder of the XPRIZE Foundation, told CNBC that SpaceX $SPCX ( ▲ 7.8% ) will become the first $10 trillion company.

Why stop there? He didn't. $100 trillion, eventually.

Diamandis has held SpaceX since 2013. He's seen the ride up close, and he has every reason to cheer for it.

His argument is that SpaceX has outgrown launches.

In his words, it's now a "super intelligence company," a "global communications company," and a "dominant infrastructure company."

It's also generating real revenue and profit now. That cash funds the moonshots. Literally.

Next on the build list:

Diamandis says chips are no longer the main bottleneck. Energy and infrastructure are.

He reckons nobody is better placed to solve that than Musk. "He consistently hits his target," he said.

He also called SpaceX "buttoned-up" financially. High praise for a company famous for blowing up prototypes on live TV.

Diamandis also backed the idea of SpaceX buying Tesla $TSLA ( ▲ 3.41% ).

The logic: put the whole Musk empire under one roof. Rockets, satellites, AI, Optimus robots, CyberCab robotaxis.

He described it as a company "integrated up and down the superintelligence stack."

Basically, Elon's side projects forming one very expensive supergroup.

I think this is where you lose me. Diamandis pointed to a recent Musk tweet suggesting SpaceX could one day be worth multiples of Earth's entire GDP.

His back-of-napkin result: a quadrillion-dollar company.

That's $1,000 trillion. Roughly ten global economies, stacked in a trench coat.

Giant price targets make great headlines. Worth noting who's making them:

The real signal: the SpaceX bull case now rests on AI and infrastructure, with launches as the foundation underneath.

When you hear people hype SPCX, that's the story being sold. And valuations built on "eventually" tend to swing hard in both directions.

Meta $META ( ▲ 0.47% ) just made $64.6 billion in three months.

That's roughly $700 million a day, weekends included.

Revenue jumped 26% from a year ago, beating Wall Street's $63.32B forecast. Shares popped as much as 7% in after-hours trading.

Profit nearly tripled to $3.83 per share, vs $3.56 expected.

And that's with a $9.89 billion litigation charge in the way. Strip it out and adjusted profit hit $7.40 a share vs $6.80 expected.

Costs rose 68%, mostly thanks to lawyers. Pricey hobby.

Ads did basically all the work: $63.1 billion, about 98% of total revenue.

Meta is an ad company that occasionally sells VR headsets.

User growth was a bit meh. Daily active people hit 3.64 billion, up 3% but just shy of the 3.66B expected.

When nearly half the planet already uses your apps, there aren't many new humans left to sign up.

Ad impressions grew 10%, also below the 12.3% forecast.

So how did revenue still beat? The average price per ad jumped 14%, vs 11.2% expected.

Meta's AI is getting better at putting the right ad in front of the right person, and advertisers are happily paying extra for it.

Reality Labs brought in $443 million (vs $517.7M expected) and lost $4.13 billion.

That's roughly $9 lost for every $1 earned.

Still, Wall Street had braced for a $5.2B loss. Low bar, cleared. Meta now expects Reality Labs losses to narrow to $18B to $19B.

Meta launched Muse and Muse Wonder, its first frontier AI model.

Zuckerberg says the new AI businesses could start adding revenue next year, and Muse turns profitable once its revenue lines are "at scale."

Which is CEO for "eventually."

The bill keeps growing too. Capex is now $135B to $145B, with the bottom of the range raised from $130B.

At the midpoint, that's roughly Slovakia's entire annual GDP, spent on data centres and chips.

Meta itself admits these AI investments will take longer to pay off than its core business.

For Q4, Meta expects $73B to $76B in revenue vs $73.75B estimates. No guidance yet for next year.

If you own an S&P 500 index fund, you already own a slice of Meta. So this matters even if you've never bought the stock.

The core story is simple: the ad business is firing on all cylinders, and AI is already juicing it through pricier, better-targeted ads.

The open question is the spending. Bigger capex means less free cash left over, so the market is betting the AI payoff shows up before patience runs out.

Two numbers worth watching next quarter: price per ad and capex. One shows the AI working. The other shows what it costs.

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