Dec 18, 2025 4 min read Daily Rundown

⛵ The Reckoning

Plus: Waymo Briefly On Top, Databricks Valued at a $134B

Good Morning, Early Adopters!

Welcome to a moment where dominance is temporary and momentum is everything.

NEOCLOUD

CoreWeave and the Neocloud Reckoning

CoreWeave was supposed to be the cleanest pure play in the AI infrastructure boom. As a neocloud poster child, it rode GPU scarcity and hyperscaler demand into a market darling position. Recently, that story started to crack. The stock sold off sharply, wiping out a large portion of its peak valuation as investors questioned whether hypergrowth could survive real-world execution.

At the same time, credit markets turned openly hostile. CoreWeave’s CDS spreads surged toward 800 basis points, a level that signals deep concern about leverage, liquidity, and refinancing risk. Equity was nervous, but debt was panicking.

Management only added fuel. During the recent earnings call, the CEO downplayed a data center delivery delay as a minor, isolated issue. Moments later, the CFO contradicted him in front of investors, explaining that the delay stemmed from broader partner execution problems. The exchange exposed internal misalignment at exactly the moment credibility mattered most.

What this reveals is simple. In neoclouds, capital intensity plus weak execution turns growth stories into stress tests very fast. CoreWeave is no longer trading on vision. It is trading on survival.

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Databricks Locks In a Seat in AI Infrastructure

Databricks raised over $4 billion at a $134 billion valuation, jumping from $100 billion just months ago. This was not a momentum round chasing AI headlines. The company is already cash flow positive, running at $4.8 billion in revenue, with AI and data warehousing each above $1 billion. Investors are paying up for durability. Databricks now looks less like a fast-growing SaaS and more like core enterprise infrastructure in the AI era.

The logic is straightforward. As LLMs commoditize, value shifts away from models toward data control, governance, and deployment workflows. Databricks sells the layer that decides how enterprise data is accessed, secured, and operationalized by AI. Its neutrality across OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and open source models makes it a default control plane. The capital enables aggressive hiring, longer sales patience, and deeper platform lock-in.

For the market, this raises the bar brutally. Smaller data and AI platforms will struggle to compete on talent, pricing, or endurance. Model vendors lose leverage as enterprises consolidate around neutral platforms. Buyers gain flexibility but also concentrate power in fewer hands. AI infrastructure is hardening into an oligopoly, and Databricks just bought itself a permanent seat at the table.

ROBOTAXI

Waymo Briefly Claims the Robotaxi Crown

Waymo is reportedly preparing a $15 billion plus funding round at a $110 billion valuation, led by Alphabet. This is not speculative autonomy capital. Waymo is operating at roughly a $350 million revenue run rate, delivered 14 million paid rides in 2025, and is expanding city by city. The round signals market confidence in deployed robotaxis, not future slides.

This round temporarily makes Waymo the robotaxi leader. Verticalized hardware, a dedicated Arizona plant with Magna, and tight deployment loops turn autonomy into infrastructure. Smaller AV startups lose oxygen as the fight shifts to balance sheets, regulatory entrenchment, and curb access. Ride hailing rivals lose leverage as fleets are owned, not licensed. Tesla remains the credible chaser, with unmatched scale and a different autonomy thesis still converting into fleets.

Waymo now owns the crown. Capital secures factories, fleets, and permits, which wins the present. Tesla is built to compress gaps once it commits at scale. Leadership here is provisional, measured in burn endurance today and execution velocity tomorrow.

BAY AREA MEMOS

Warner Bros. Discovery rejected Paramount Skydance’s hostile bid, calling it illusory and reaffirming its binding merger agreement with Netflix.
The U.S. Senate has confirmed billionaire entrepreneur and private astronaut Jared Isaacman as NASA administrator
The US government has launched the Tech Force program, working with companies like Coinbase and Robinhood to fill tech talent gaps in federal agencies.
Adobe is facing a proposed class-action lawsuit alleging it trained its SlimLM AI model on datasets containing pirated, copyrighted books.
Meta has paused plans to share Horizon OS with third-party headset makers as it refocuses on first-party hardware and shifts investment toward AI.

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