July CPI, Retail Sales, & Nvidia Data Center

Dario Amodei broke his usual social media silence this weekend to push back on the idea that his repeated warnings about AI risk are what's driving public backlash - instead arguing that the real cause is a longer-running erosion of trust and AI companies' failure to yet deliver on their big promises. It was a pretty interesting thread, which you can read here.

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This Week in Crypto

No crazy movement this week for Bitcoin, sliding from the low $65Ks down toward $62,800 and then back up again.

• U.S. spot Bitcoin ETFs saw $389.7M in outflows between August 10-14, the largest weekly withdrawal in six weeks.

• Rates are the main reason for movement here: despite July inflation cooling and PPI coming in flat, Bitcoin fell on both prints.

• Futures are still pricing tightening by year-end at close to 70%, and a September rate hike is on the table at ~32% odds.

And some boring Washington news for you:

• The SEC abruptly canceled its Friday, August 14 meeting on new capital-raising rules for crypto startups, citing an unspecified "scheduling issue".

• Meanwhile the CLARITY Act got pushed to a September 15 cloture vote.

This Week in TradFi

Lots of data drops this week!

• July’s CPI rose just 0.1% MoM, with the annual rate ticking down to 3.4% - right in line with consensus.

  • Core CPI (without food and energy) also rose a small 0.2%, continuing the deceleration from earlier in the year.

  • Inflation is unfortunately still running hotter than wage growth, which was pacing at 3.2%.

  • Gas remains the main villain - with prices up 24.6% YoY.

• PPI came in flat for July, with core PPI up only 0.2%, just a tiny bit below forecasts.

  • June’s PPI got revised up from a 0.3% drop to just a 0.1% drop.

• Retail sales were the worst of the three data drops. Retail sales fell 0.6% in July, the sharpest drop in more than a year - far lower than expectations of a 0.1% gain.

• Taken all together, we saw cool CPI, cool PPI, and soft retail sales. These all point the same direction - but we’re seeing cooling because demand is cracking, not because the economy is getting healthier.

  • That’s the tension crypto and equities will keep pricing through September.

This Week in Tech

Nvidia locked in the Ohio mega-deal this week:

• After weeks of reports that ranged from $250B to under $120B, Nvidia confirmed Monday that it will back up to $105B in financing for a new OpenAI data center in Ohio.

• The company is also putting in $1.5B for SB Energy, which will build, own, and operate the campus under a 20-year lease to OpenAI.

Stripe has finalized a deal to acquire OpenRouter, the startup that lets developers pick and switch between different AI models depending on cost, performance, or task, for more than $7B.

• OpenRouter had just raised a Series B in May at a $1.3B valuation.

• OpenRouter routes across 400+ models for roughly 8M developers and reportedly processed about 1.5 quadrillion tokens in the past year.

  • Quadrillion is a number so big it literally sounds fake.

Everything else is just, as always, more AI capital.

• Big Tech's cumulative AI purchase commitments are closing in on $1.5 trillion.

And if you want a little break from being chronically online, a new messaging app dropped this week:

Arch is building a next-gen wealth management platform for individuals holding Alternative Assets. Our flagship product is the crypto-backed loan, which allows you to securely and affordably borrow against your crypto.

Disclaimer: None of the above is financial advice, seriously.