The Only Narrative That Matters

Episode 264 of The Compound and Friends, recorded in front of a live audience of University of Miami students, features Josh Brown and Michael Batnick with guest Steve Eisman. The discussion centres on the AI build-out and its financing: requests by AI labs to be regulated, the shift away from tokenmaxxing toward cheap open-weight models, whether AI companies have moats, CoreWeave's debt and the durability of AI funding, Nvidia's customer concentration, the chip selloff and the AI price war. The conversation also covers why the guests argue this is not 2008, how OpenAI and Anthropic became systemically important, Oracle's OpenAI backlog, hot inflation and what the bond market signalled about

1. The guests discuss why AI labs are asking to be regulated and the rise of cheap open-weight models after the end of tokenmaxxing
2. They examine whether any AI company has a moat, CoreWeave's debt and whether AI funding is close to breaking
3. The episode covers Nvidia's customer concentration, the chip selloff and the rush to call the next Big Short, alongside the AI price war bear case and Oracle's OpenAI backlog
4. Also discussed: hot inflation and what the bond market revealed about the AI trade, the Anthropic IPO, the housing market, and what it was like to be right in 2008