Tech's Wild Monday: AI Deals, Meme Stock Dumps, and the Usual BS
Another Manic Monday in Tech? Shocker.
So, another Monday, another avalanche of press releases designed to pump up stock prices and distract us from the impending heat death of the universe. Let's dive into this steaming pile, shall we?
Iren, the data center folks, jumped 22%? Big deal. They're selling access to Nvidia's GB300 GPUs to Microsoft for $9.7 billion. Nine. Point. Freaking. Seven. Billion. Over five years. That sounds like a lot of money, but let’s be real. Microsoft probably makes that much in spare change they find between the couch cushions.
And of course, this “lifts investor sentiment on semiconductor demand.” Oh, does it now? Translation: "We're all gonna get rich off AI, even though nobody actually knows what AI is or what it's for, beyond generating creepy deepfakes and writing garbage articles faster than I can."
Nvidia rose nearly 2% because the US government gave Microsoft permission to ship chips to the United Arab Emirates? Are we seriously celebrating geopolitical wheeling and dealing as a win for tech? Give me a break. It's just more of the same old, same old... power plays disguised as innovation.
Kenvue and Cipher Mining: The Shiny Objects
Kenvue, the Tylenol and Band-Aid people, got acquired by Kimberly-Clark for $48.7 billion. Forty-eight point seven billion? For Tylenol? I'm in the wrong business. I should've invested in headaches instead of cynicism. According to Stocks making the biggest moves premarket: Iren, Kenvue, Cipher Mining, New Gold and more, several companies experienced significant premarket activity.
Then there's Cipher Mining, surging 17% after "exceeding expectations." Okay, let's unpack this. They lost less money than expected. They posted a narrower-than-expected loss of one cent per share. One. Cent. That's the victory we're celebrating? The bar is so low, it's practically subterranean.
But wait, there's more! Cipher also signed a 15-year lease agreement with Amazon Web Services valued at approximately $5.5 billion. Five. Point. Five. Billion. Now we're talking.
Except... they're going to deliver 300 megawatts of capacity in 2026. 2026! That's like, a geological epoch away in tech years. Who even knows if AWS will still exist in 2026? Or if we'll all be living in underground bunkers, powered by hamsters on tiny treadmills?
And they're building a 1 gigawatt site in West Texas with American Electric Power? Targeted energization in 2028? This is all vaporware until I see the electrons flowing.
The CEO, Tyler Page, said, "Cipher is among the best-positioned companies in the world to seize additional opportunities created by the growing power shortfall." Power shortfall? Is that code for "we're gonna suck the grid dry to train AI models that will eventually replace us all?"
Beyond Meat's Meltdown: A Meme Stock Reality Check
Oh, and then there's Beyond Meat. The meme stock darling that's now delaying its earnings report because... wait for it... they're trying to calculate the cost of a non-cash impairment charge.
Translation: "We screwed up. Big time. And we're trying to figure out how to hide it from you for as long as possible."
Shares dropped 8%. Serves them right. Maybe if they spent less time trying to convince us that lab-grown protein is the future and more time, y'know, actually making a product people want to eat, they wouldn't be in this mess.
Then again, maybe I'm the crazy one here. Maybe everyone else is happily slurping down their fake meat and cheering on the AI overlords.
So, What's the Real Story?
It's all smoke and mirrors, folks. A carefully orchestrated dance of press releases, stock buybacks, and empty promises designed to enrich the few at the expense of the many. Don't fall for it.
