Friday June 5, 2026
Digital innovations have been about to eat the grid since 1990
Every fifteen years, someone publishes a report warning that computers are about to eat the electric grid. In 1990 it was the personal computer, flagged by the EPA as 5% of commercial electricity. In 1999, Mark Mills told Congress the internet would consume half of America’s electricity within a decade. Then came bitcoin, compared to Argentina and Norway in every other op-ed by 2021. And earlier this week, the United Nations University reported that global data centers now use more electricity than all but ten countries on earth, and by 2030 they will rank sixth.
Four waves, four panics, four comparisons. The pattern has become its own meme.
The alarmists have been directionally right and quantitatively wrong each time, which means the cumulative load has grown faster than the skeptics predicted even when the headline forecasts overshot. The aggregate is no longer a rhetorical device. AI data centers in Virginia already consume a quarter of the state’s electricity. Ireland is heading toward a third. Global data center demand is on track to match Japan’s entire electricity use by 2030.
Everyone is looking for a “clean” answer. Solar, wind, nuclear, fusion. The IEA projects renewables will supply more than 450 terawatt hours of new data center demand by 2035. Useful, but not on the timeline the buildout actually requires. The honest answer for the next decade is hydrocarbons, particularly natural gas, with coal still doing real work in Asia. Roughly 40% of the additional data center load through 2030 will be supplied by gas and coal regardless of what anyone prefers.
This is the uncomfortable truth of the energy transition. The AI revolution runs on the energy stack we already have, not the one we are still building. The investable thesis is the picks and shovels of that reality. Turbines, pipelines, transmission, and the unloved hydrocarbon producers feeding the load. The headlines may be uncomfortable, but the cash flows will be very clear.
◾ Trump administration seeks US ownership stakes in major AI companies (NOTUS)
◾ House Ways and Means readying crypto tax bill banning wash sales (Bloomberg)
◾ Anthropic urges coordinated pause if humans lose control of AI (WSJ)
Government & NGO Actions
◾ Japan warns of becoming “AI colony” if development falters (Reuters)
◾ War Secretary Hegseth denies request to reconsider Anthropic’s defense supply-chain risk designation (Politico)
◾ CISA close to binding directive on frontier model use (Federal News Network)
◾ Utah rolls out statewide framework for AI in classrooms (KSL)
◾ China builds institutional framework for orbital compute (SpaceNews)
◾ SEC Commissioner Peirce: DeFi code is protected speech (Cointelegraph)
◾ Republican senators push to replace Basel’s 1,250% capital risk weighting on digital assets (Lummis)
◾ House to unveil draft bill preempting state AI laws (Politico)
◾ OCC chief accuses Democrats of political pressure on World Liberty Financial charter (CoinDesk)
◾ Carney launches “AI for All,” Canada’s new national AI strategy (PR Newswire)
Financial Notices & Public Company Releases
◾ Operation updates:
CleanSpark $CLSK May’26: Bitcoin produced 671 | Bitcoin sold 654 | Op HR 50 EH/s | BTC holdings 13,470 (PR Newswire)
◾ S&P keeps index eligibility rules unchanged ahead of SpaceX listing (Reuters)
◾ SpaceX holds IPO price at $135/share (Reuters)
◾ SpaceX blocks access to IPO materials in China and Hong Kong (Reuters)
◾ Goldman Sachs $GS projects SpaceX AI revenue to grow 100x by 2030 (FT)
◾ Honeywell’s Quantinuum raises $1.6B in IPO (Reuters)
Crypto Protocols, Applications & Business News
◾ $CME CEO Duffy warns of systemic risk from crypto perps (Reuters)
◾ Cosmos Labs acquires Mintscan, forms Cosmos Labs Korea (PR Newswire)
◾ Cash App unveils magic-wand accessory for payments (Business Wire)
◾ Coinbase $COIN and Better launch first token-backed Fannie Mae mortgage fund (Business Wire)
◾ Bybit first major exchange to integrate Western Union $WU USDPT stablecoin (PR Newswire)
◾ Travala unveils AI travel booking protocol on Base (Cryptonews)
◾ Goldman Sachs $GS to tokenize real estate funds on internal blockchain (Apex Group)
◾ Coinbase $COIN to offer pre-IPO perps, starting with SpaceX (Coinbase)
◾ Lukka acquires PEER DATA to build institutional control layer for digital assets (PR Newswire)
AI Models, Applications & Developments
◾ OpenAI agrees to US government review before releasing new AI models (CNBC)
◾ ChatGPT rolls out improved memory (OpenAI)
◾ Jane Street to build own data center as compute runs scarce (Bloomberg)
◾ Microsoft AI chief: Anthropic models too expensive (Bloomberg)
◾ OpenAI and Anthropic sign letter against AI-developed bioweapons (Wired)
◾ Rumble $RUM signs Together AI deal to deploy NVIDIA $NVDA Blackwell compute-as-a-service (GlobeNewswire)
◾ Sam Altman calls AI token costs a “huge issue” (Tom’s Hardware)
◾ OpenAI to give $45M in free Codex credits to 450k Michigan college students (Detroit Free Press)
◾ Amazon $AMZN engineers question data center spending amid layoffs (CNBC)
◾ Kevin O’Leary shrinks Utah data center footprint 50% after backlash (Bloomberg)
The Attention Economy, Gaming & Interactive Shifts
◾ Samsung debuts next-gen Galaxy Watch with AI health companion (Samsung)
◾ Apple $AAPL approves first third-party AI agent for Business Messages (9to5Mac)
◾ Instagram Plus launches on iPhone (9to5Mac)
Space Systems, Satellites & Cosmic Activity
◾ USSF: Blue Origin still in running for top military launches despite explosion (Bloomberg)
◾ AstroForge completes second spacecraft for asteroid mining (AstroForge)