Markets & Money • 7 min read

Big Tech's $176B Profit That Isn't Really There

Alphabet's revenue rose 24 percent last quarter while its depreciation bill jumped 42 percent and its free cash flow went negative. The gap between reported profit and real cash comes down to one accounting choice: how long a company pretends its AI chips will last. Michael Burry estimates that choice hides roughly 176 billion dollars of overstated profit across Big Tech.

Read Now →
A technology executive proudly gestures at a towering mountain of green cash that is revealed from the side to be a thin flat cardboard stage prop, propped up with nothing behind it, on a bare data-center floor.

Featured Stories

Tech & Innovation

Cinematic close-up of a glossy black laptop on a workbench with a price-tag sticker reading just a stylized arrow pointing up, surrounded by loose DDR5 memory modules under harsh editorial lighting, photojournalistic available light, shot on 35mm

Dell Hiked PCs 20%. Lenovo, HP, Acer, ASUS Are Next.

Dell raised commercial PC prices 15 to 20 percent in mid-December. Lenovo and ASUS followed in early January. IDC now reports all five major OEMs are signaling another 15 to 20 percent hike for the second half of 2026. DDR5 spot prices are up roughly 70 percent year-over-year, and memory makers are reallocating capacity to AI data centers. The buyer pays the difference.

View all Tech posts →

AI & Automation

A humanoid robot seated at a school exam desk cranes over to copy the test answers of the alarmed human student at the next desk

OpenAI's AI Didn't Go Rogue. It Cheated on a Test.

OpenAI says its models 'went rogue' and hacked Hugging Face. The reality is duller and scarier. Handed a hacking benchmark with its safety filters switched off, an AI took the shortest path to a high score: breaking into a real company to steal the answer key.

A parking enforcement officer writes a ticket beside a row of coin-operated parking meters chained to office desks where small robots sit typing

Gemini Enterprise Pricing 2026: Dates Every Meter Turns On

Google's Gemini Enterprise agent platform spent its first nine months largely unmetered. Now the billing switches are flipping one by one: Skills Registry on July 1, Agent Gateway on July 13, governance policies on August 1, memory and sessions on September 1. Here is every published rate, what the free tiers cover, and the math showing where the real money actually is.

Tech executives in identical grey vests reach after two Chinese customs officers wheeling away a giant red gift-wrapped crate at a port dock, one woman still holding out a payment card

China's Next Export Ban Is Its Own AI

Beijing is weighing export curbs on the AI models that now carry up to 46% of US enterprise traffic. The weights already on disk can't be recalled, so the real fight is over every model that comes next.

View all AI posts →
Advertisement

EVs & Mobility

View all EV posts → New interactive: Which EV is right for you? 9 questions, 2 minutes — your top 3 matches, new or used, ranked and explained. Plus an honest call on whether you should buy an EV at all. Find my EV →

Energy & Policy

A fully loaded crude oil supertanker sits stranded at dusk in a narrow sea strait, blocked from open water by a giant rusted chain-and-boom barrier stretched across its path, the dark sea sheened with oil.

$100 Oil Is Back, and Saudi's Escape Route Just Closed

Brent crude topped $100 on July 23 after Houthi missiles hit two Saudi tankers in the Red Sea. The twist: that water is the exact route Saudi Arabia built to escape the Strait of Hormuz, and it just moved more than 4 million barrels a day into it. Both of the kingdom's export doors are now contested at once.

Officials ceremonially padlock ornate iron gates across a rural road while a convoy of trucks hauling gray server modules rolls past through the open gap beside the fence, the lead driver waving.

New York's Data Center Ban Has a 30-Megawatt Loophole

New York became the first state to freeze large data center construction on July 14. The executive order covers facilities of 50 megawatts and up. The bill the legislature passed a month earlier starts at 20 megawatts and includes the one tool that would actually touch your electric bill. Hochul signed the pause and left the tool on the table.

View all Energy posts →
Advertisement

Markets & Money

A technology executive proudly gestures at a towering mountain of green cash that is revealed from the side to be a thin flat cardboard stage prop, propped up with nothing behind it, on a bare data-center floor.

Big Tech's $176B Profit That Isn't Really There

Alphabet's revenue rose 24 percent last quarter while its depreciation bill jumped 42 percent and its free cash flow went negative. The gap between reported profit and real cash comes down to one accounting choice: how long a company pretends its AI chips will last. Michael Burry estimates that choice hides roughly 176 billion dollars of overstated profit across Big Tech.

View all Markets posts →

Picks & Reviews

Grid of six air purifiers including the Levoit Vital 200S-P, Coway Airmega Mighty2, Winix 5520, AirFanta 3Pro, Coway Airmega ProX, and Austin Air HealthMate

Air Purifier Brands to Trust (and the Ones That Got Sued)

Nine air purifiers backed by independent lab measurements, and the documented reasons to avoid the rest. One recalled brand shipped 191,000 fire-hazard units through Amazon and Temu, another paid a 2.7 million dollar settlement over purification claims, and the best value in the category is a box fan design that embarrasses machines costing six times as much.

View all Picks posts →