The Ledger
Every statement that passed quotation and attribution checks. Mix any filter with any other: certainty 1/5, debate potential 5/5, or both at once.
why aren't all 23 resolved? a statement only gets an assessment when the public record can support or contradict it. opinions and what-ifs never can, and 0 checkable ones are still open, waiting for their date. predictions held up or didn't; assertions are supported or contradicted. on every card: ▮▮▮▮▮ certainty · ▮▮▮▮▮ debate potential. speakers are clickable
Cahn: Chip makers finance AI buildouts to book revenue circularly
“The chip companies are now stepping up and saying, okay, we'll absorb some of the risk. We'll put in the capital to finance this build out where the demand on the other side is not so clear because of course the chip companies also get to book this as revenue.”
David Cahn: AI industry is at the start of data center construction delays
“One of the predictions I made last year, in addition to saying it was going to be the year of the data center in 20, 25, I said, Hey, we're going to have these construction delays. We're going to have issues now in building out these data centers. And the info…”
Cahn: Top AI researchers command $50M to $1B compensation packages
“If you're a 25 year old recent grad from an elite university who is perceived to be an AI expert, you can get a fifty hundred million dollar pay package right now. And if you are a brand name that everyone recognizes your name, you can get a billion dollar pay…”
Cahn: Over 80% of AI venture capital goes to compute producers
“And I think probably 80% plus of the dollars in AI are still going to producers of compute. Not consumers of compute.”
Cahn: Microsoft walked away from two data centers in early 2025
“Microsoft walked away from two data centers and it sent a message to the market like, hey, we're not stepping up.”
Cahn: AI infrastructure build-out is mostly equity and cash funded
“I actually think that what's interesting about this AI build out is that for the most part, and let's put Oracle aside, which maybe has some debt, but for the most part, the AI build out today has been equity funded and cash funded.”
Cahn: Factory Construction Rates Will Reach All-Time Highs Within 12 Months
“I think in 12 months you'll see all these charts coming out of, like, more factories are getting built than ever before, and all this stuff. The industrial revolution is just getting started.”
Cahn: Tech Giants Will Increasingly Use Off-Balance-Sheet AI Financing
“And so I think one thing that we're going to see more of is off balance sheet financing.”
Cahn: Power generators for data centers are sold out until 2030
“Generators are sold out until 2030”
Cahn: Building out one gigawatt of AI power costs $40B to $60B
“A gigawatt is forty billion dollars to build out. Jensen says it's 50 or 60 if you use the next generation Vero Rubin chips. So let's say it's somewhere between 40 and sixty billion.”
Cahn: The $250B Cloud Infrastructure Market Equals the Entire SaaS Sector
“This cloud business today is a two hundred and fifty billion dollar business. So the cloud business today is the same size as the SaaS sector. That's the business that Azure, Google and AWS control is the same size as the entire SaaS sector.”
Cahn: AI Data Centers Take Two Years and $2 Billion to Build
“Data centers take about two years to build. You are going to build, and it costs about two billion dollars per data center.”
Cahn: Coatue-Backed Battery Startup Built a $1B Factory in 12 Months
“I visited this company that's building long duration batteries that I had invested in at KOTU. They literally built a billion dollar factory in the last 12 months.”
Cahn: US power supply is insufficient for AI compute demands
“We don't, and I, you know, there's sort of an interesting phenomenon here, which is, you know, the Biden administration passed the IRA, the Inflation Reduction Act, and this was this huge stimulus bill that basically incentivized everyone to build solar and bu…”
Cahn: Sesame hit 1M users and 5M minutes within weeks of launch
“They launched this product, this AI voice product that you can talk to, got a million users in a few weeks, five million minutes, like just tremendous product market fit.”
Cahn: The global SaaS market is currently $250 billion
“The entire SaaS economy is a two hundred and fifty billion dollar market, right?”
Cahn: Labor is the Single Largest Cost in Data Centers
“I mean, labor is the single biggest cost in data centers.”
Cahn: GPUs Account for Half of Total AI Data Center Costs
“About half the cost of the data center is GPUs, half is everything else.”
David Cahn: AI Data Center Debt Yield Spreads Will Compress
“So I think prices will get bit like the spread between the risk-free You know, return and the sort of risk adjusted return will compress, which just means that it's going to be less of a good deal as more people do it.”
David Cahn: Expect More Deals Like Blackstone's CoreWeave Debt Financing
“And so you know, Blackstone did this core weave deal. They were one of the first and Blackstone are generally very good at structuring these type of creative deals. Good on them. And I think we'll see more of that type of deals going forward.”
Cahn: Zoom was profitable and didn't want capital when Sequoia invested
“When Sequoia invested in Zoom, they didn't want to raise capital, right? They were profitable. They were doing really well.”