⛵ Bottleneck Behind AI

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

Memory is tightening the bottleneck behind AI’s growth, and the race is shifting from smarter models to securing the infrastructure that keeps them alive.

DATA CENTER

Copper Becomes the Bottleneck Behind AI Expansion

👀 What’s happening: Rio Tinto agreed to supply copper to Amazon’s AI data center buildout under a two year deal, using output from its Nuton bioleaching program in Arizona. The copper will flow into parts made for Amazon Web Services. No volumes disclosed. The signal matters more than the contract.

🌍 How this hits reality: AI data centers are copper heavy. Power delivery, racks, cabling, cooling, transformers. Analysts now expect AI to drive a 50 percent jump in global copper demand by 2040 while supply stays tight. Prices are already above $13,000 per ton on the London Metal Exchange, up roughly 40 percent in a year. Tech firms are moving upstream because waiting is no longer an option.

⛵ Key takeaway: AI scaling is colliding with physical limits. Chips get headlines, but metals decide timelines. Expect more direct supply deals, more pressure on legacy miners, and copper quietly becoming a gating factor for cloud, energy, and AI economics.

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MARKET

Wall Street Tests a Market That Never Closes

👀 What’s happening: Intercontinental Exchange, the parent company of the NYSE, has built a new platform for trading tokenized securities with on chain settlement. The system is designed for 24/7 operation, instant settlement, dollar denominated order sizing, and stablecoin based funding. It is awaiting regulatory approval, but the core infrastructure already exists.

🌍 How this hits reality: U.S. equity markets still assume fixed hours, delayed settlement, and layers of intermediaries. This platform challenges all three. If approved, capital can move continuously instead of in daily bursts. Settlement compresses from days to seconds. Global demand for U.S. stocks no longer has to wait for New York to wake up. Banks like BNY and Citigroup supporting tokenized deposits suggests the plumbing is shifting, not just the interface.

⛵ Key takeaway: This is less about crypto and more about time. If markets go always on, trading, treasury operations, and risk management all rebalance around speed. Commercial advantage shifts toward firms built for nonstop liquidity, not legacy market hours.

M&A

Micron Buys Taiwan Memory Capacity

👀 What’s happening: Micron Technology agreed to buy Powerchip Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp’s P5 fab in Taiwan for $1.8 billion cash, pushing Powerchip shares up nearly 10 percent. The plant adds cleanroom space and locks in DRAM capacity from 2027. This feels different because it is outright ownership, not another supply deal.

🌍 How this hits reality: Memory demand keeps outrunning supply as AI training and inference eat bandwidth. TrendForce sees this single site equaling over 10 percent of Micron’s output by late 2026. That tightens leverage for Micron and pressures buyers used to yearly price resets.

⛵ Key takeaway: This is capacity becoming strategy. As Micron, Samsung, and SK Hynix secure physical fabs, memory turns into a longer cycle bottleneck.

BAY AREA MEMOS

• Reuters reports that Donald Trump bought about $100 million in municipal and corporate bonds, including debt from Netflix and Warner Bros Discovery.
• Isar Aerospace plans a second Spectrum launch on Jan 21, 2026 to advance Europe’s sovereign access to space.
• Google has appealed a ruling on its search monopoly, warning the remedies could harm privacy and innovation.
• Revolut has applied for a full banking license in Peru as part of its expansion across Latin America’s digital banking market.
• UK gambling regulators accuse Meta of ignoring illegal online casino ads on its platforms despite having the ability to detect and block them.

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