🤖 Amazon Wakes Up in AI - Just as America’s Energy Bills Explode

Hey nut fam 🌰 — Amazon finally flips the AI switch, U.S. gas prices have gone full plot twist, and Paramount just showed up to the Warner Bros fight like the chaotic cousin at Thanksgiving. Let’s dig in 👇

🏭 Business Nuts

🤖 Amazon Finally Finds Its AI Footing After a Slow Start

After a year of playing catch-up, AWS shows its teeth.

Turns out Amazon wasn’t behind — it was buffering.
After months of criticism about its AI strategy, AWS just dropped its strongest slate of AI tools yet, instantly changing Wall Street’s tone.

AWS CEO Matt Garman admitted the company “took half a step back” during the early AI explosion while rivals sprinted ahead. That breather let Microsoft and Google hog the headlines — until now.

⚡ Amazon’s New AI Arsenal

AWS unveiled:

• Frontier agents that can run complex tasks for hours or days

• Nova Forge, letting companies train private Nova models

• Trainium3 chips, delivering 4× the speed of prior versions

And the real flex?
Trainium3 can cut training + operating costs by up to 50% compared to similar GPUs. But AWS isn’t trying to replace Nvidia, says VP Ron Diamant — it’s aiming for efficiency dominance.

📈 The Numbers Are Turning

• AWS Q3 revenue up 20% YoY — its fastest pace since 2022

• Trainium chips already power Claude for Anthropic, using 1M+ Trainium2 units

• Its $15B debt sale saw $80B in demand, priced just 80 bps above Treasuries

• Amazon is now neck-and-neck with Walmart for world’s largest company by revenue

🟢 The Big Picture

Amazon’s “slow start” was actually infrastructure setup.
Now, with 29% of the cloud market and an annualized run rate of $130B, AWS doesn’t need to win every AI battle — it just needs to keep customers inside its data fortress.

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💥 Trump’s Energy Dominance Dreams Backfire as Gas Prices Surge

Exports boom, consumers gloom.

Despite promises of “energy abundance,” Americans aren’t seeing cheaper bills.
Natural gas prices are up 70% YoY, hitting $5.20 — the highest since late 2022.

Driving forces:

• Record U.S. LNG exports

• A cold snap boosting heating demand

• Infrastructure choke points

Meanwhile…

• Electricity prices up 5.1% YoY

• Residential piped gas up 11.7%

• Households expected to pay 4% more this year

🚢 Exports Are Eating the Market

America shipped a record 9.41M metric tons of LNG in September — mostly to Europe.
Producers love it. Consumers? Not so much.

Industrial winners:

• Argan ($AGX): +122.8% YTD

• Solaris Energy Infrastructure ($SEI): +82.7% YTD

With Gulf Coast LNG capacity set to double by 2030, expect higher and more volatile prices to stick around.

🟡 The Political Plot

Trump campaigned on cheap U.S. energy.
Instead, exports and global pricing are pushing U.S. costs up, not down — setting up a messy policy fight over whether “energy dominance” helps voters or just boosts corporate profits.

📰 Other News — Quick Bites

• 🎬 Paramount launches hostile bid for Warner Bros after losing to Netflix — escalating a Hollywood feud with huge political undertones.

• 🛍️ Five U.S. cities dominate the live-shopping boom — Atlanta, Chicago, Dallas, Miami, and Phoenix now lead a trend projected to hit $2T by 2030.

• 💰 287 new billionaires minted this year as rising markets push global wealth to $15.8T. The U.S. led with 92 self-made billionaires.

• 🇨🇳 China’s trade surplus breaks $1T, with exports up 5.9% YoY despite U.S. trade friction — thanks to booming demand from the EU and ASEAN.

💡What else are we reading and seeing?

• Deprecation

• NVIDIA Isn't Enron - So What Is It?

• Why Your CTO Might Start Coding Again

• LLM weights vs the papercuts of corporate

• Going direct: notes on Eli Lilly at a trillion

• Has the cost of building software just dropped 90%?

🌰 That’s a Wrap

Amazon’s AI finally hits its stride, U.S. energy prices aren’t living up to their political promises, and Hollywood’s corporate warfare is now officially a telenovela.

Thanks for cracking open today’s Cash Nut 🌰
We’ll see you tomorrow for more markets, chaos, and crunchy insights.

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