Good morning,

As always, it was a remarkable week: Matt Belloni reviewed David Ellison’s first day atop Paramount while Kim Masters identified his next potential M&A target; Julia Alexander detailed Bob Iger’s super-app ambitions; Eriq Gardner delved into an HBO legal pickle; Ian Krietzberg collected reactions to the GPT-5 debut; John Ourand revealed how the ESPN–NFL Media deal came together; Bill Cohan explored a potential issue with Meta’s income statement; Lauren Sherman unpacked a plot twist in the LVMH succession saga; Rachel Strugatz interrogated a Gwyneth-ologist; Sarah Shapiro offered a talmudic reading of the denim landscape; Marion Maneker elucidated some proprietary Picasso and Basquiat auction data; Julie Davich scrutinized the trend of wearable art; and Dylan Byers peered into the CBS News crying rooms.

Meanwhile, Julia Ioffe pondered the right’s growing Israel schism; Leigh Ann Caldwell documented the emancipation of Marjorie Taylor Greene; and Abby Livingston considered the Texas redistricting butterfly effect.

Check out these stories, and others, via the links below. And stick around for the backstory on how it all came together.

P.S., If you’re in L.A. this upcoming Thursday, August 14, Julia Alexander will be in town to moderate a panel in West Hollywood with the talented casting directors behind a handful of Apple TV+’s award-nominated series: Debby Romano (Shrinking), Melissa Kostenbauder (The Studio), and Rachel Tenner (Severance). Click here to RSVP while spaces are still available; the conversation will take place from 5 to 7 p.m. PT.

Lauren Sherman explains Frédéric Arnault’s Loro Piana opportunity.
and…
Rachel Strugatz creates a Gwyneth Paltrow HBS case study.
meanwhile…
Sarah Shapiro charts the creative director musical chairs in the denim market.

Marion Maneker weighs in on proprietary 1H25 auction results and looks into the Karpidas sale crystal ball.
and…
Julie Davich evaluates the designer jewelry marketplace.

Matt Belloni details The Ellison Plan. 
and…
Kim Masters delineates the new mogul’s next acquisition targets.
and…
Eriq Gardner wonders aloud whether Bill Maher will get Loomer-ed.
meanwhile…
Julia Alexander assesses Bob Iger’s refined streaming strategy.

Ian Krietzberg inspects the A.I. market for bubble behavior and puts GPT-5 in context.

Dylan Byers separates fact from fiction at CBS and heralds a news media duopoly.
and…
John Ourand explains how ESPN and the NFL completed each other’s sentences.
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Julia Alexander analyzes Fox’s Dave Portnoy plan.

Bill Cohan chats about Meta’s earnings with the legendary short seller Jim Chanos.

Leigh Ann Caldwell chronicles M.T.G.’s political migration.
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Abby Livingston uncovers how the Texas redistricting mess threatens to engulf the midterms.
and…
Julia Ioffe investigates the right’s Israel civil war.

Dylan and Wired editorial director Katie Drummond discuss media brand reinvention on The Grill Room.
and…
WWE president Nick Khan tells Ourand about his new ESPN deal on The Varsity.
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Lauren welcomes the serial founder Yael Aflalo onto Fashion People.
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John Heilemann and political entrepreneurs Dan Squadron and Adam Pritzker discuss their plan to revive the left on Impolitic.
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Matt and Monday guy Lucas Shaw contemplate the new Paramount top team on The Town.
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Kim and Peter Hamby plot out David Ellison’s plans for world domination on The Powers That Be.

As a reminder, you can update your profile at any time to get more stories like these directly in your inbox. Click here to customize your email settings.

I’ve lived through a number of hypercharged investing sprees in my day, some of which have proved prescient, and others decidedly less so—the first internet surge, the rise of the alts, fracking, the most recent mobile-fueled Silicon Valley venture bubble, and the streaming wars, to name just a handful. But I’ve never seen anything like the unprecedented capex emanating from our economy’s so-called hyperscalers—Meta, Google, Amazon, and Microsoft, etcetera—in pursuit of artificial intelligence hegemony.

The Four, which earn between $50 billion (Meta) and $175 billion (Amazon) per quarter, are on pace to spend a staggering $360 billion on A.I. infrastructure this year as they buy G.P.U.s, build out extensive data centers, and manage the costs and hazards of operating these extraordinary cloud computing mini cities. Their logic is simple, if somewhat imprecise: A.I. and superintelligence will become the transformative technology of our time, of course, and while its impact will be vast and ubiquitous, the platform shift won’t confer a rose to every suitor. 

The Four, along with Apple, have been the most prosperous companies of the internet age—and, you could argue, of all time—with attendant fortress balance sheets. They may have created their fortunes in software, products, and logistics, but they aren’t going to cede their advantages to upstarts like OpenAI and Anthropic—both of which are spending like mad, too. Meanwhile, equity analysts are rewarding these companies for using their billions to moat their traditional businesses while investing in their futures; Morgan Stanley analysts predicted in a recent note that an additional $3 trillion could be invested in data centers through 2028. Also, none of their A.I. businesses are yet profitable. Heavy cake.

In a pair of extraordinary pieces this week, my newest partner, Ian Krietzberg, assessed the less appreciated economic underbelly of the A.I. revolution: We’ve gone full throttle into a Wild West—a true gold rush. In A.I. Bubble Bust Theories, Ian looks for clues regarding whether these extraordinary investments are actually trickling down into their operating plans, and what a correction might look like—and which companies and sectors it could impact. And in a subsequent piece, Slaughterhouse GPT-5, he offered an acute look at the industry’s most famous insurgent—and how it’s managing the comedown from its latest hype cycle.

But if you only have time to read one piece this weekend, I’d turn your attention to my partner Bill Cohan’s latest masterstroke, Jim Chanos in the Metaverse. Bill phoned up the legendary short seller on a late summer pleasure cruise and engaged him and his newest fixation: Meta’s depreciation schedule for, you guessed it, the company’s massive program of capital spending. Chanos’s insights are provocative and compelling, and merely the latest indication that we’re in the prehistory of this extraordinary saga—one of the true stories of our time, and especially what you should expect to read about voraciously at Puck.

Have a great weekend,

Jon

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