usdaed

Among the dancers, SoundHound AI (SOUN) pirouettes with particular flair. This voice AI virtuoso has turned its revenue into a quadrille of triple-digit gains, while its shares have performed a dizzying pirouette of 90% in three months. One might ask: Is this a standing ovation or a curtain call? Let us don our opera glasses and inspect.

Let’s be honest: I still haven’t mastered the art of compound interest, but I’ve perfected the art of panicking when a stock surges 300%. Case in point: CoreWeave (CRWV) and Circle Internet Group (CRCL). Two IPO darlings, now trading like they’ve been handed golden tickets to Wall Street’s most exclusive tea party. Billionaires are throwing money at them, and frankly, I’m here for it-if only to avoid looking like the last person to buy a Birkin bag before it became “aesthetic.”

It is an open secret that Nvidia’s wealth is bound up in the growing ecosystem it has, with clever hands, helped nurture. But behind this sprawling empire of chips and servers, there lies something more subtle, something perhaps less glorious, but no less significant: its partnership with CoreWeave (CRWV), a company that-much like its larger counterpart-is learning to dance on the edges of promise and reality.

The top 10 stocks in the S&P 500 now account for 40% of its market cap. This is not a new trend-it’s a quantum leap backward in terms of diversification. If the S&P were a dinner party, these ten stocks would be the ones hogging the main course, leaving the rest of the guests to nibble on appetizers. Goldman Sachs’ David Kostin, with the solemnity of a man who has seen too many spreadsheets, warns that this concentration could lead to “lower S&P 500 returns over the next decade.” (He also probably owns shares in the company that sells spreadsheets. Full disclosure: this is not a financial tip. It’s a story about a teapot.)

LET’S TALK ABOUT THE CHAMPIONS: AMAZON AND MICROSOFT. THESE AREN’T JUST COMPANIES-THEY’RE FORTRESSES OF INNOVATION, SPENDING BILLIONS TO BUILD A FUTURE THAT FEELS LIKE IT WAS TORN FROM A SCIENCE-FICTION NOVEL. IF YOU’RE LOOKING FOR LONG-TERM BONANZAS, THESE ARE THE GAMES TO PLAY.

The federal government is capitalizing on AI too, including at the Department of Defense, the biggest department in the U.S. government. Just last month, the Pentagon moved its Chief Digital and Artificial Intelligence Office under the Office of the Undersecretary of Defense for Research and Engineering as part of its effort to “become an AI-first enterprise, one that rapidly adopts cutting-edge commercial AI technologies, exploits data at scale to generate operational advantage, and leads the discovery of new ways to fight and win.” (One could argue that the Pentagon’s new office is less about AI and more about finally figuring out how to organize a spreadsheet that’s been in the works since the Cold War.)

Now that you’ve stared at the numbers long enough to develop a twitch in your left eye, let’s dissect why these three companies are the financial equivalent of a three-legged stool. Stability? Sure. But also a precarious balancing act that might just work if you’re lucky, delusional, or both.