Tony McGovern

Building markets for AI infrastructure to make compute tradable.

Founder: to @AshMcGovern

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

Updated county-level 2024 U.S. Presidential Election results here:

#election2024 #election2024results #ElectionResults

https://t.co/3S9vnmzvQ2

[Ananyo Bhattacharya @Ananyo]

Our @Nature comment this week on the use of AI in maths and theoretical physics - and why the community should embrace it!
Authors @London_Inst & @GoogleDeepMind.
First draft 8 months ago but edited many times as the field steamed ahead!
Free-to-read link at the end of 🧵1/

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

@MerriamWebster still baffled by this pronunciation of the word ‘accoutrement.’

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

Reverence for Chinese AI models stems from a lack of understanding of what AI is, what it does, and what makes it useful. Chinese models look like magic to these people.

It's no accident that all the major scientific breakthroughs are happening with U.S.-led foundational models.

[Dean W. Ball @deanwball]

I find it so interesting how persistently unable the strategic classes of free society are to analyze AI well. So many keep getting stuck in these basins of delusion. I was at a conference where it was not just asserted but taken for granted that Chinese models have dominant global inference market share.

The 2024/early 25 version of the delusion was “mode collapse/data wall” (even after reasoning models!), then it was “AI is plateauing and a bubble” for most of 2025, now it’s “Chinese OSS is good enough.”

The share of people in the strategic classes who think this is gradually declining, but it is still sufficiently common that you can attend a prestigious conference and encounter a room principally filled with basin-dwellers.

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

@paulg Should we be concerned about the quality of medical devices built this quickly?

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

@TheStalwart I had to instruct Opus 4.8 to speak plainly and clearly

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

added a new rule

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

@davidad https://t.co/MwW4NJedIo

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

The most pernicious outcome of LLMs: AI that talks like a tech bro.

I keep getting results filled with pretentious words that sound profound but really are just vague, meaningless jargon-filled slop.

If I see “substrate” one more time, I’m going to lose it.

[Mapbox @Mapbox]

☑️ In a few days, see how modern election maps are built.

We’ll walk through:
✔️ High-precision boundary data
✔️ Interactive, customizable map design
✔️ AI-powered workflows for faster delivery

Secure your spot before it fills up: https://t.co/R22nreHE0Z

#BuiltWithMapbox #ElectionTech #Visualization

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

added a new rule

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

The most pernicious outcome of LLMs: AI that talks like a tech bro.

I keep getting results filled with pretentious words that sound profound but really are just vague, meaningless jargon-filled slop.

If I see “substrate” one more time, I’m going to lose it.

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

this is an outstanding question.

[Whitney Baker @TotemMacro]

Requesting someone explain to me how there’s a “compute shortage” when new datacentres are sitting at 11-45% utilization, and why demand is lagging buildout, rental rates have halved, xai is leasing out its capacity, and codex et al downloads have topped? I’m not getting it.

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

The most pernicious outcome of LLMs: AI that talks like a tech bro.

I keep getting results filled with pretentious words that sound profound but really are just vague, meaningless jargon-filled slop.

If I see “substrate” one more time, I’m going to lose it.

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

Skepticism about compute being a tradable commodity

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

In today’s newsletter I wrote about GPUs

[Joe Weisenthal @TheStalwart]

In today’s newsletter I wrote about GPUs

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

crypto, defi, and blockchain represented well here
https://t.co/K78Q8mFeML

[Tyler @rezoundous]

Opus 4.8 is insane guys. It one shotted my session usage limit.

[Cris Daniluk @CrisDaniluk]

The dotcom era was category creation. Doing new things in old ways.

AI is different. Doing old things in brand new ways. It’s pure efficiency and leverage.

We don’t have to figure out what to do with it.

We need to figure out how to best use it. And we will.

Entirely different paradigms.

[Paul Graham @paulg]

@charliermarsh Sometimes they're a good reason to work on something. When people say a market is "crowded," what that often means is that there's a real problem and none of the solutions are good enough yet.

[Brandon Carl @brandonjcarl]

Earnings Before Tokens

[Tony McGovern @tonmcg]

Could demand for stablecoins help the treasury market?

[Mark Zandi @Markzandi]

Treasury yields have jumped in big part due to the Iran War and the resulting increase in inflation expectations, but also to the ballooning federal budget deficit and surge in Treasury securities issuance necessary to finance it. Gross Treasury issuance of T-bills, T-notes, T-bonds, and TIPS topped a monthly record of $3 trillion in March. While issuance has since fallen back a bit, it is on track to increase by 10% this year, with monthly issuance equal to a stunning almost 10% of GDP.

While Treasury supply is surging, it is increasingly unclear where the new Treasury demand will come from, at least at current interest rates. The Fed is no longer aggressively expanding its Treasury holdings, banks have been more circumspect buyers since their bond portfolios were turned upside down when the Fed jacked up interest rates a few years ago, and big global investors such as the Japanese and Chinese are less avid buyers for obvious reasons. That leaves highly leveraged, capricious hedge funds as the dominant new buyers.

Interest rates go up, and down, and all around…but cutting through the volatility, the direction of travel for rates is higher.

[Mark Zandi @Markzandi]

Treasury yields have jumped in big part due to the Iran War and the resulting increase in inflation expectations, but also to the ballooning federal budget deficit and surge in Treasury securities issuance necessary to finance it. Gross Treasury issuance of T-bills, T-notes, T-bonds, and TIPS topped a monthly record of $3 trillion in March. While issuance has since fallen back a bit, it is on track to increase by 10% this year, with monthly issuance equal to a stunning almost 10% of GDP.

While Treasury supply is surging, it is increasingly unclear where the new Treasury demand will come from, at least at current interest rates. The Fed is no longer aggressively expanding its Treasury holdings, banks have been more circumspect buyers since their bond portfolios were turned upside down when the Fed jacked up interest rates a few years ago, and big global investors such as the Japanese and Chinese are less avid buyers for obvious reasons. That leaves highly leveraged, capricious hedge funds as the dominant new buyers.

Interest rates go up, and down, and all around…but cutting through the volatility, the direction of travel for rates is higher.