Introduction
Welcome back to Controversies. This week, we track the emotional whiplash in Silicon Valley as AI turns boardrooms and build rooms into pressure cookers—where paranoia fuels pivots, margins bend under compute, and everyone is racing against an uncertain clock. Drawing from The Information’s reporting on how founders, investors, and employees are living through this inflection point, we parse the excitement from the anxiety and surface what truly matters for capital and code.
In this briefing, we’ll chart:
The Paranoia Premium: Why founders from Airtable to Ohara are rewriting playbooks at breakneck speed.
Margin Math in the GPU Era: How even 90% software businesses see profits wobble once inference hits the bill.
Revenue Reality Check: What $15 billion in “AI native” sales really means when 85% flows to just two firms.
Strap in as we navigate the line between hype and hazard—showing builders, operators, and investors how to find signal in the Valley’s age of AI paranoia.
