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The Lions' Share

Three companies are racing to own the machine that will think for everyone — and now they want the public to pay for the privilege. This thread follows the money: the IPOs, the trillion-dollar valuations, the compute and capital and attention swallowed whole. Every other thread in this paper asks who you are; this one asks what is left to eat. An open thread: if the feast is being served over your head, you are a chapter.

Morgan Times began with a question about names, and turned next to the wounds institutions leave. This thread starts at the table — and asks who is eating.

Three companies are building the same machine: one meant to think in place of the rest of us. To build it they need more than anyone has ever needed — more money, more compute, more data, more of the world’s attention — and there is only one trough large enough to feed all three at once. Ours. The plan, said plainly, is to take them public: to ask the hungry to fund the lions, and to call it an opportunity.

This Strang follows the meat. Not the press releases — the math. Where the capital comes from and where it goes; what a trillion-dollar valuation is actually a claim on; what it means when three firms own the means of thought and then sell shares in it back to the people whose thinking they intend to replace. We are told the savanna is endless. It is not. When the lions have eaten, we count what is left.

Dispatches I’m seeking for this thread:

  • From inside the feast. You work at one of the labs, or for the money behind them. What does the plan look like from the table — and who is it really for?
  • From the rest of us. You watched the thing you do get automated, undercut, or swallowed whole. What did it cost you — and who got your share?
  • From the math. You can read a balance sheet, an S-1, a valuation. Show us what the numbers say that the announcements don’t.

If that’s you, the door is open. → Write for us

In this storyline

  1. 9 Jun 2026

    The Last Emperor Wants to Go Public

    Today the news dropped: the last of the three wannabe AI Emperors wants to go public. An open letter to Elon, Sam & Anthropic — explain an IPO and AI first. If three lions eat all the meat in the savanna, what's left for the rest of us?

    By Abraham Hdru

  2. 11 Jun 2026

    Elon Is Not a Mad Genius

    He is not a mad genius — he just got lucky at the right time. Was PayPal really revolutionary? Did he come up with the idea of Tesla? SpaceX is amazing — but the team behind him built that rocket ship. He just paid for the innovation. lol

    By Abraham Hdru