👀 OpenAI fires three

SCOREBOARD

Thursday close. S&P up 0.2%, with Nvidia up 1.1% and Alphabet down 1.7%. On the week: Nvidia +2.8%, S&P −0.5%, Nasdaq −0.3%. Prices via CNBC.

ON WATCH

OpenAI has fired three safety researchers it accuses of passing confidential company information to an outside AI safety group. The Wall Street Journal broke the story on Thursday, and OpenAI hasn't named the group or said what was shared.

It lands in the same week OpenAI said it had warned more than 100 organisations that its testing agents may have bypassed their security or otherwise hit them. It's still reviewing about 50 petabytes of records to find the full list.

Congressman Greg Casar, who chairs the Congressional Progressive Caucus, wasted no time. "Looks like they're firing whistleblowers. What are they hiding?" he posted, promising to send OpenAI a demand for transparency.

OpenAI says its investigation confirmed the three "mishandled sensitive information outside established company procedures." It says that broke "the trust essential to our work."

Set against that, OpenAI has given staff a formal way to raise alarms: it set up a misalignment reporting process on 16 Sep. It's also the one publishing its agents' incidents, which most companies would rather keep in a drawer.

SPONSORED

The next Apple may already exist. Insider sources say Elon has spent two years building a secret device inside Tesla's facilities — one he claims will be "10x bigger than the largest product in history."

There's just one problem: the company is private, and unless you know Elon personally, you can't buy a single share. That was true until Guardian's research team found three public ticker symbols sitting in the launch supply chain.

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You won't hear these names on CNBC — Wall Street hasn't published a word on the connection. But when the launch hits September 21, that quiet ends.

Some are already calling this the biggest opportunity since AI. For anyone who missed Apple before the iPhone, this may be a second look at that kind of setup.

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THE MACHINE

Anthropic's IPO filing shows Broadcom agreeing to lend it up to $42 billion to lease Broadcom's own chips, Reuters reported. That could cover about a third of a $125.2 billion, five-year deal for Google's TPU chips, and Broadcom can swap the debt for Anthropic shares.

The same day, the Financial Times reported that Amazon wants to put about $8 billion of Nvidia chips into a separate company. Investors would buy in through debt and up to 10% of the equity, and Amazon would rent the chips back.

Let Meerkat translate. When the seller lends you the money to buy from the seller, the sale looks bigger than the cash behind it. Anthropic's own filing flags "potential conflicts of interest" in Broadcom being both supplier and lender.

The bull case is that the demand behind it is real: Broadcom expects about $115 billion of AI chip sales in fiscal 2027 and $230 billion the year after. Anthropic has also put cash in a locked account for Broadcom as security.

SOMEONE SMART SAID

Cook said it on Thursday at a New York Fed event, calling AI one of the main things that concerns her for 2027. Companies have announced about $2 trillion of AI investment plans, mostly data centres, and she pointed to costs like electricity, with key inputs each up around 5% in a year.

Cook voted for last month's rate hike, and the Fed fights inflation with higher interest rates. If AI building keeps prices up, that's an argument for keeping rates high.

She still expects AI to lift productivity in the long run. Her worry is timing: "when the productivity gains that would produce disinflation will come."

THE CHART

The 10-year Treasury yield, the rate that steers mortgages and company loans, touched 5.34% on Thursday, its highest since 2002. It closed at 5.24%, according to the Treasury's own figures.

That's the rate the AI building boom borrows against. Data centres, chip leases and deals like Broadcom's are all priced off it, so every borrowed dollar costs more.

In fairness, the market took it in its stride. Yields eased off the high and the S&P 500 still closed up 0.2%, with Nvidia up 1.1%.

HEADS UP

ON THE HORIZON

Fed dates via the Fed.

MEERKAT ON YOUTUBE

WTF Is Happening To The AI Bubble? Everyone's watching the stock market for the crack, but the first one shows up somewhere almost nobody looks: the price of insuring a company's debt. For one of the biggest names in AI, that price just hit an 18-year high. Watch on Meerkat Explains.

THE BURROW

Quick vote. OpenAI fired three safety researchers for sharing information with an outside safety group. What's your read?

Trivia. In May 2024, OpenAI's "superalignment" team, set up to keep future AI under control, lost both its leaders. One was co-founder Ilya Sutskever. Who was the other? Answer's at the bottom of the email. No peeking.

ALSO WORTH YOUR INBOX

The daily crypto brief from the same burrow. Crypto Nutshell is Bitcoin, the news and the numbers in a five-minute read.

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TRIVIA ANSWER

Jan Leike. He left saying safety had "taken a backseat to shiny products" and joined Anthropic weeks later.