Rosa Del Mar

Daily Brief

Issue 15 2026-01-15

Macro Duration Risk And Financing-Continuity As An Existential Variable

  • A counter-argument presented is that OpenAI is not a credible goes-to-zero case because it has a massive user base (claimed ~800M), subscriptions, and a real business.
  • Andreessen Horowitz raised $15B, representing over 20% of total venture funds raised in 2025.
  • Substitution and cost-rotation pressures in AI software are expected as buyers start actively reducing stacked AI vendor fees.

Venture Firm As Reputation Transfer And Operator Platform

  • a16z aims to move founders from a vicious to a virtuous confidence cycle by providing hard-to-access operational help (e.g., executives, recruiting, marketing, government access) that enables faster decisions and stronger execution.
  • Ben Horowitz claims a key risk of an AI-enabled world is loss of grounded purpose/spirituality, increasing susceptibility to harmful ideologies.
  • Ben Horowitz claims Zoomer founders reject performative moral framing such as 'do well by doing good' and are more unapologetic about building successful companies.

Dispatchable Capacity Bottlenecks: Gas Turbine Undersupply And Thermal Capex Inflation

  • Global gas turbine production capacity is about ~60 GW per year, while near-term orders imply demand exceeding capacity by roughly ~20–40 GW annually.
  • ERCOT and Texas transmission service providers have sharply divergent 2030 electricity-demand forecasts: ERCOT at about 1,000 TWh and TSPs at about 1,600 TWh.
  • Globally, electricity spending has been stable at roughly 3–4% of GDP for decades.