Perfect timing

The right excuse at the right moment. Dario Amodei (Anthropic), Sam Altman (OpenAI) and Elon Musk (SpaceX) are calling to ease off on AI development. Officially, the plea aims to protect humanity. Unofficially, it mostly aims to protect their own interests.

The call for caution is admirable, but the timing raises eyebrows. The debate over AI risks is nothing new, so why break cover now?

A clear conscience makes a convenient cover, but the real answer lies with interest rates.

The unavoidable monetary tightening puts credit risk back in the spotlight. Capital intensity, negative cash flows, circular financing. For AI hyperscalers, the cost of funding is the sinews of war. With money more expensive, valuations could collapse like a house of cards.

Rather than absorb the brakes forced on them by rising rates, the Tech triumvirate chose to get ahead of it: their failure to deliver on their wild promises won’t look like a piloting error, but a deliberate slowdown.

A masterclass in financial communication that conveniently lets OpenAI justify pushing back its IPO without losing face with investors. The question now is whether this unexpected statement might be an early warning sign of a Fed rate hike.

Under pressure from Friday’s inflation figures, the US central bank could raise its key rates as soon as this week (90%), though a new status quo can’t be entirely ruled out (10%).