qfx

There’s a handful of companies chasin’ this dream, tryin’ to build these fantastical machines. You’ve got the likes of Rigetti Computing (RGTI 1.09%) and IonQ (IONQ 3.16%), seein’ their stock prices climb higher than a kite in a hurricane. Investors are throwin’ money at ’em like they’re givin’ away free lemonade. But allow me to tell you, a fella needs to be careful where he lays his coin. There’s one company, I believe, that stands a better chance of seein’ this through, if a body were to put a dollar or two on the venture.

Progress, they call it. I call it a desperate scramble for altitude before the whole thing crashes and burns. But Joby has been making moves. They’re ahead in the FAA certification race, which, in this business, is like being the first rat to reach the cheese. Deals with Toyota, Delta, Uber… all these corporate behemoths throwing money at a dream of flying taxis. It’s beautiful, really. A symphony of greed and technological hubris.

The company, known simply as TSMC, had enjoyed a year of peculiar blessings. Shares had climbed, a dizzying ascent fueled by the insatiable hunger for chips, those tiny, inscrutable gods of the modern age. Fifty-nine percent, they said, a number that felt less like a statistic and more like a coded message. But the market, as Old Man Chen well knew, is a fickle mistress. A surge today is merely the prelude to a reckoning tomorrow. The reports spoke of a projected 26.3% increase in overall semiconductor revenue, a number that, while impressive, felt less like a guarantee and more like a postponement of the inevitable. A momentary reprieve in a world governed by entropy.

Enter CoreWeave. It’s a name that doesn’t immediately conjure images of silicon and supercomputers, but that’s precisely the business they’re in: renting out computing muscle to those who need it, providing access to the latest chips from the aforementioned Nvidia. When the company went public, it surged, becoming one of those AI stocks that everyone was talking about. It seemed a sure thing, a guaranteed path to riches. Or, at least, a decent return.