Chart Reveals Dramatic Trend Despite Revenue Recognition Caveats
There are plenty of caveats to this chart (not least how partnership revenue is recognised) but this is a pretty dramatic story
Airships Could Scout Below Clouds via Cable‑hung Explorer
My new favourite fact about airships is that if you were lost in cloud and didn't know where you were, you could put a man in a capsule and lower him on a cable below the clouds, so he could...
Manned Spaceflight: Expensive Self‑Expression Without Practical Value
My most contrarian opinion might now be that manned space light is a very expensive sort of self expression. There’s no scientific or economic or any other tangible value. We’re not going anywhere, there’s nowhere to go, and there’s nothing...
Study Overlooks Construction Heat, Skews Data Centre Impact
Looking at a viral academic study that claims to analyse local area heating effects of data centre construction on green-field sites, that does not control for the heating effects of *any* construction on green-field sites.
Hold Out for Nine‑Figure Exit, Not Just Revenue
If I had managed to create a media business did 1 million last year, would do 10 or 15 this year and 50 to 100 next year, I would hold out for nine figures as well. It’s not necessarily that you...
AI Agents on PCs Echo 90s Web‑server Hype
This week’s idea that the future of AI is everybody running AI agents locally on their computer reminds me a lot at the moment in the mid 90s when people thought that everyone working in a big company would have...
IPhones Democratize Video; Podcasts Now Cost TV‑level Production
iPhones have massively democratised video production. Also, every 'podcast' is now a TV show with a felt-lined room and $20k of gear.
Scanning a QR Code with CSAM: Who’s Criminally Liable?
A legal thought experiment: if you scan a QR code and it loads CSAM on your phone, who goes to prison?
More Business Seats Push Luxury Travelers Toward First Class
Idly wondering if the airlines’ expansion of business class to half the plane makes a certain kind of person more likely to buy First Class instead.
Subscriber Counts Are Vanity; Track Open Rates Instead
Newletter subscribers is the perfect vanity metric, especially for people with no opt-in or catchpa. What’s your open rate? How many people are actually reading it every week?
IPhone Was a Small Mac; iOS Mirrors macOS
The funny thing about people saying the MacBook Neo is just an iPad or an iPhone is that under the hood iOS is fundamentally the same thing as macOS, and indeed when Apple launched the iPhone they said explicitly...
Apple’s New Gemini Siri Can’t Fix the Liquid Glass Mess
Apple will launch a new Gemini-powered Siri soon, but half of the time I think fixing 'Liquid Glass' would be a bigger benefit. Just look at this mess. How did this ship?
Hidden Stripe Fees Lurk Beyond Dashboards
I wonder how much of Stripe’s margin comes from junk fees that aren’t on any of the pretty dashboards, only the CSV that takes 24 hours to generate.
OpenAI's Dilemma: No Core Product, Competing Everywhere
The strategic problem for openAI is that if the input box isn’t the product, then either the product is dozens of new apps or dozens of features in existing apps, and that means they’re competing with every startup on earth...
AI Now Dominates Tech: 2025 Macro Trends Unveiled
Twice a year, I produce a big presentation exploring macro and strategic trends in the tech industry. New in November 2025, ‘AI eats the world’. https://www.ben-evans.com/presentations
OpenAI Lacks Platform Power Without Network Effects
Posit: OpenAI’s fundamental problem is that it cannot become a platform company as long as the models it wants to use as a platform have no network effects and remain pure commodities. People had to use Windows, but there is...
AI Hype May Be a Bubble, yet Results Prove Usefulness
It’s quite possible there is a bubble in AI… But looking at the last week’s results you’d have to be just completely delusional to claim that none of this works, none of it is useful and no-one is using it.
OpenAI Targets $1 Trillion Annual Compute Spend
OpenAI clarifies it has about 30GW of infra committed now. And aspires to a run-rate of one new GW/week at $20bn/GW, meaning (say) $1tr/year