Hey Nutters. ☕🥜

Today's edition is all about a question investors keep asking:

Who actually wins the AI boom?

Is it the companies building the models?

The companies hiring the researchers?

Or the companies selling the picks and shovels behind the scenes?

Today we have:

🧠 Google losing some of its most important AI talent.

💾 Micron becoming one of the hottest stocks on Earth.

⚡ Data centers consuming enough power to run entire cities.

And a surprising reminder that Wall Street still can't decide whether growth or safety deserves a premium.

Let's dive in.

Google investors got a rude surprise this week.

Not because Search is struggling.

Not because YouTube is slowing.

And not because Gemini is falling behind.

Instead, Wall Street reacted to something much harder to quantify:

Two of Google's most important AI researchers just walked out the door.

The stock fell more than 5% Monday as investors digested the departures of Noam Shazeer and John Jumper, two names that carry enormous weight inside the AI world.

Shazeer left for OpenAI less than two years after Google effectively paid $2.7 billion to bring him back through its CharacterAI deal.

Days later, Nobel Prize-winning scientist John Jumper departed for Anthropic.

For many investors, the message was simple:

If AI talent is the new oil, Google just lost two major wells.

The departures come at a time when Google is already spending aggressively.

Management recently guided investors toward a staggering:

💰 $180B–$190B in capital expenditures for 2026

Meanwhile:

📉 Free cash flow fell 47% to $10.1 billion last quarter.

That combination—higher spending and lower cash generation—is never an easy sell on Wall Street.

Yet despite all the panic, Google's business remains remarkably strong.

Google Cloud backlog:

☁️ $462 billion

📈 Nearly doubled in just three months

Meanwhile:

🔍 Search remains dominant

📺 YouTube remains one of the world's most profitable media platforms

📈 Earnings growth reached 82% over the past year

Compare that with Apple:

🍎 Forward P/E: 31x

📈 Earnings growth: 22%

Google?

🧠 Forward P/E: 24x

📈 Earnings growth: 82%

In other words:

The market is currently paying a higher valuation for Apple's brand stability than Google's faster-growing profits.

Google losing AI talent isn't new.

Geoff Hinton left in 2023.

Mustafa Suleyman left for Microsoft in 2024.

Yet somehow Google still managed to build Gemini into one of the world's leading AI models.

That's why some investors see this latest selloff as an overreaction.

Others see it as a warning sign that the AI talent war is only getting more expensive.

Wall Street currently trusts Apple's certainty more than Google's ambition.

Over the next year, the earnings numbers will decide who's right.

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While everyone debates OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google...

One company quietly became one of the biggest winners of the AI boom.

Micron.

The memory-chip maker has surged an astonishing:

🚀 +880% over the past 12 months

🏆 Market cap: $1.3 trillion

🌎 13th-largest public company in the world

Not bad for a business most people couldn't explain at a dinner party.

AI models don't just need processors.

They need memory.

Massive amounts of it.

Every chatbot query, every AI image, every reasoning model requires huge quantities of DRAM and storage hardware.

And that's where Micron enters the picture.

The company sits at the center of one of the most severe memory shortages the tech industry has ever seen.

Together:

💾 Micron

💾 Samsung

💾 SK Hynix

Control roughly 89% of the global DRAM market.

When supply gets tight, pricing power explodes.

And that's exactly what's happening.

According to ING:

💰 DRAM prices have quadrupled over the past year.

Micron's most recent quarter delivered:

📈 Revenue: $23.8 billion

🚀 Nearly 200% year-over-year growth

Wall Street now expects:

💰 $35.5 billion in revenue next quarter

More than triple last year's level.

Needham recently boosted its price target to:

🎯 $1,550

Bernstein raised theirs to:

🎯 $1,300

Both maintained Buy ratings.

Not everyone is convinced.

The memory business has historically been brutal.

Boom.

Bust.

Repeat.

Entire companies have disappeared when supply eventually catches up.

Morningstar recently called Micron:

"Outrageously overpriced."

And despite the rally, Micron still trades at just:

📊 10x forward earnings

Compared with:

📊 24.4x for the Nasdaq-100

That tells you many investors still don't trust the sustainability of current profits.

Historically, memory demand depended on:

📱 Smartphones

💻 PCs

🎮 Consumer electronics

Today?

The demand is coming from AI data centers.

And those investments don't reset every holiday season.

They compound.

As hyperscalers continue spending hundreds of billions of dollars on AI infrastructure, memory becomes less of a commodity and more of a strategic asset.

The AI gold rush may not be won by the companies building models.

It might be won by the companies supplying the memory those models can't function without.

Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan passed away at age 100. Greenspan led the Fed from 1987 to 2006, guiding the U.S. economy through Black Monday, the dot-com boom, and multiple economic crises. For nearly two decades, he was arguably the most influential economic policymaker on the planet, helping shape modern central banking as we know it today.

Vice President JD Vance announced that Iran has agreed to allow nuclear inspectors back into the country, a move viewed as an important confidence-building measure in ongoing diplomatic discussions. Markets reacted positively, with Brent crude falling below $78 per barrel as investors reduced geopolitical risk premiums tied to Middle East tensions.

Canada unveiled an ambitious nuclear strategy that includes plans for up to ten new reactors. Officials hope expanded nuclear generation will strengthen energy security, support AI-related power demand, and position Canada as a major global energy exporter in the decades ahead.

Building materials giant CRH announced an $8.5 billion acquisition of Arcosa, expanding its footprint across construction and infrastructure markets. Arcosa shares jumped roughly 7% on the news as investors welcomed the premium offered in the deal.

Goldman Sachs reinstated coverage of Estée Lauder with a Buy rating and a $100 price target, implying approximately 18% upside. Analysts cited improving leadership, a clearer turnaround strategy, and a revamped operating model as reasons the struggling beauty giant could finally regain momentum.

Chevron signed a 20-year agreement to provide natural gas for Microsoft's massive Project Kilby data center in West Texas. The facility is expected to consume roughly 2.7 gigawatts of power—enough electricity to supply nearly two million homes. It's another reminder that AI is increasingly becoming an energy story as much as a technology story.

Getty Images surged nearly 200% after announcing a licensing partnership with OpenAI. The agreement will integrate Getty's vast image library into ChatGPT's search and discovery experiences, creating a new revenue stream while helping OpenAI access professionally licensed visual content. Investors clearly believe copyrighted content may become one of the most valuable assets in the AI economy.

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We'll be back tomorrow with another bite-sized breakdown of the stories moving markets.