Neural Newscast

Hi everyone, I am Nina Park. And I'm Daniel Brooks. Welcome back to Neural Newscast. So Daniel, we are seeing what looks like a massive strategic shift over at Meta today. The company just announced a new president and vice chair, Dina Powell McCormick. And honestly, this isn't just your standard executive hire. It seems to be a very, you know, very calculated move regarding Meta's relationship with both global finance and the whole political landscape right now. It definitely is, Nina. I mean, McCormick brings an incredible pedigree to this role. She served as the deputy national security advisor to Donald Trump and held senior roles under Condoleezza Rice. So she knows the DC Circuit. More recently, she spent 16 years at Goldman Sachs. What's particularly interesting from a policy perspective is that she is actually the second person with ties to the Trump administration hired by Metta in just a few weeks. She's the first person to be the president. That's right on the heels of their new chief legal officer, Curtis Joseph Mahoney. Right, exactly. And Mark Zuckerberg noted that her deep relationships globally are pretty much exactly what the company needs as it enters this next phase of growth. Even former President Trump chimed in on Truth Social, calling her a fantastic and talented choice. It really seems Meta is looking to build bridges and navigate the, well, the incredibly complex regulatory environments that come with being a global tech giant. Exactly. When you're dealing with global antitrust concerns and the future of AI regulation, having someone who understands the inner workings of Washington and international diplomacy is, it's a massive asset. But you know, it's not just about the people in the office. Nina, the scale of what they are planning to build physically is actually quite staggering. That leads us right into the meta-compute announcement. Zuckerberg unveiled this new initiative just hours after the McCormick news. They are talking about building tens of gigawatts of infrastructure this decade and eventually hundreds of gigawatts. To put that in perspective for our listeners, a single gigawatt can power about 750,000 homes. So we are talking about energy needs on the scale of entire countries. Mm-hmm. And from an urban policy and infrastructure standpoint, that is a monumental challenge. Building data centers at that scale involves massive land use agreements, partnerships with sovereign governments, and a significant strain on power grids. Zuckerberg mentioned that McCormick would be working closely with the technical teams specifically to manage those government and sovereign partnerships for financing and deployment. Yeah, it's a clear sign that Meta sees infrastructure as their primary, I guess, strategic advantage. They aren't just building software anymore. They are trying to own the foundation that the software actually runs on. This puts them in a direct race with Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, all of whom are, you know, hungry for more compute power. Definitely. And while we're seeing Meta invest heavily in their own future, Wall Street analysts are looking at the broader tech ecosystem and seeing a lot of green flags today. There's a general sense that the AI investment cycle is far from over. The language from analysts is getting very bold, Daniel. I mean, City just upgraded Palantir to a buy rating, suggesting that a super cycle is coming for the company in 2026. They actually said the recent growth acceleration has broken traditional valuation frameworks. Wow. Wow, that's a strong word to use in finance. And it's not just Palantir. Morgan Stanley upgraded Data Dog, citing the return of digital transformation initiatives and the need to monitor agentic apps. It feels like the market is shifting from just talking about large language models to looking at the actual software and infrastructure needed to keep them running. Right, and even the stalwarts are getting some love. Bank of America is reiterating its buy rating on Apple ahead of their earnings later this month, citing strong iPhone sales and growth in services. Meanwhile, Bernstein is sticking with Nvidia and Broadcom as their top picks, noting that AI spending shows no signs of slowing down. It's a fascinating contrast, isn't it? You have Meta hiring political heavyweights to manage the where and the how of building giant data centers, while analysts are focused on who is going to profit most from the software running inside them. It's all part of the same massive industrial shift toward AI. It really is the story of the decade. From the boardrooms to the power grids, the transition is happening fast. Daniel, it's going to be interesting to see how these gigawatt-scale projects actually get approved and built. I'll be watching the zoning and energy policy closely, Nina. That's where the rubber meets the road. I mean, eventually. I am Nina Park. And I'm Daniel Brooks. Thank you for listening to Neural Newscast. Neural Newscast is AI-assisted, human-reviewed. View our AI transparency policy at neuralnewscast.com.