Jim Ormonde

Ex BBC, accidental ninja, besotted by English brands, builds great businesses from time to time. Founder of

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

Very excited to bring this amazing project to life. Find the best version of you at https://t.co/fvw49SIhSw

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@JakeFleshner Wellness Spotify

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@boardyai

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@guilleflorvs @deel Thrives is Spotify for self improvement where we compound and monetize intentional content completion not attention. Our first wedge is wellbeing but Thrives infrastructure will expand across all aspects of human flourishing over time.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@ColinGardiner Your own when there's divided opinion - and only yours. Gut, not head or heart.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@paulg That I can get on board with.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@paulg Disagree (respectfully)!
Unique "voice" is our only legacy. Sure ––most people exaggerate with filler and filters. But if you pare everything down to the bone, this paragraph would now read, simply: I disagree.
Dull. Misses the point.
Be you. Be expressive in your efficiency.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@MattWallace888 Sure. Or she's just doing her job.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

Hate this post. The reason speculative gambling in BTC (and crypto generally) has the potential to hurt so many people when it all goes wrong. Bitcoin could be worth $0 and you would owe the bank $120,000 with no collateral so you'd lose your home, possibly your family, and no doubt your self worth. If you can afford to lose $120k, don't borrow, just invest at your own risk and be prepared to lose everything. Any asset which serves no fundamental purpose will always have the potential to deliver massive gains based on unpredictable hype or wipe you out completely. Invest wisely. Don't believe the hype!

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@JoeNordWest Lucid AI Agent is gold 👏 An abject lesson in how to filter - not least as it instructed me to connect (which I'll do on LinkedIn). Good luck guys - we need more of this in Europe.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@pmitu Spotify for self improvement.

[George Noble @gnoble79]

SpaceX just acquired xAI in a deal valuing the combined entity at $1.25 trillion.

Elon says it's about building "data centers in space."

But let me translate what's really happening here...

xAI is burning through $1 billion per month.

The company generated $107 million in revenue last quarter while hemorrhaging $1.46 billion in losses. It burned nearly $8 billion in cash through the first nine months of 2025.

That's not a business.

SpaceX meanwhile generated $8 billion in profit on $15-16 billion of revenue last year. It's the ONLY Musk company that actually prints money.

So what do you do when your AI startup is drowning in red ink ahead of your mega-IPO?

You fold the cash-burner into the entity that can still raise absurd amounts of capital.

And we've literally seen this exact thing before:

In 2016, Tesla acquired SolarCity for $2.6 billion.

SolarCity was bleeding cash, drowning in debt, and trading near all-time lows.

Tesla - the only Musk company at the time that could access the capital markets - absorbed it.

Wall Street analysts called it a "bailout dressed as synergy." Tesla's stock dropped 10% on the announcement.

The SpaceX/xAI deal is the same playbook.

Musk's stated rationale - that AI compute will be cheaper in space within 2-3 years - is the kind of thing that sounds visionary until you think about it for 5 seconds...

SpaceX builds rockets. xAI trains large language models.

These are wildly different businesses with zero operational overlap.

Imagine Microsoft acquiring a cement and steel conglomerate and claiming "tilt-up concrete slabs are essential for data centers."

That's the level of logic we're working with here.

The real play is simple: prop up xAI's insane burn rate with SpaceX's funding access ahead of what could be the largest IPO in history.

And xAI isn't alone in this capital-devouring spiral.

The entire AI sector has become a web of companies cross-subsidizing each other's losses.

OpenAI squeezes billions from Microsoft. Nvidia invests billions in xAI while selling them chips.

Everyone's propping everyone else up.

The investment thesis across the industry has devolved into:

"Please keep the Ponzi spinning long enough for someone else to be left holding the bag."

Meanwhile, the end product - AI - delivers marginal productivity gains for trillions in capex, soaring power costs, and balance sheet carnage.

If these services were priced to reflect their true economic cost, most users would find negative value.

But investors stopped reading balance sheets and cash flows long ago.

The AI models probably can't read them either.

What a time to be invested.

So what's the play?

AVOID the AI infrastructure complex.

When everyone's propping everyone else up, you don't want to be holding the bag when the music stops.

Look instead at sectors that have suffered from years of underinvestment: energy and commodities.

While trillions have been funneled into AI infrastructure, capital spending in oil, gas, and metals has been starved.

That's how cycles work - underinvestment leads to supply constraints, which leads to rising returns on capital.

Tech has the opposite problem. Overinvestment is destroying returns.

When you're burning $1 billion a month to generate $107 million in revenue, that's not a business model - it's a wealth transfer from investors to chip manufacturers.

Emerging markets are also attractive here.

They've been ignored while capital chased the Mag 7, and valuations reflect that neglect.

The Mag 7 now represent roughly a third of the S&P 500.

When this unravels - and it will - capital will rotate into the parts of the market where returns on capital are rising, not collapsing.

Energy. Commodities. Emerging markets.

POSITION ACCORDINGLY

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@guilleflorvs Count me in for a coffee! Let me convince you that the Thrives payment rail for self improvement can become essential infrastructure and our cognitive platform for human flourishing will become the Spotify of wellness.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@Matt_Pinner Remove as many zeros as you like and I’d still do it.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@intro @SelfMadeMastery Momentum!

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@NWischoff What a brilliantly honest and humble post @NWischoff. Enjoyed your commentary this year. And you’ll do brilliantly, of course, because you pause to analyse and are hopelessly self aware like all the best founders. Good luck in 26.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@vxylily Go back to sleep.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@livewithnoregrt Time. The only thing money can't buy.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@guilleflorvs Building Spotify for self improvement - a verified outcomes payment rail that turns cognitive effect and behavioral change into clearable value at scale. Our first wedge is wellbeing but Thrives' infrastructure can be expanded into all aspects of human flourishing over time.

[Jim Ormonde @jimormonde]

@zebird0 Robin I'd love your take on VC fundraising to build Thrives, "Spotify for wellbeing", incorporating a new payment rail for behavioral change. Been following a while.