THE SAME DOLLAR, OVER AND OVER

I SAW IT ON YOUTUBE TODAY.

AI INVESTORS ARE PULLING ALL THEIR CASH, AND HAVE BEEN LIMITED TO HALF OF WHAT THEY ARE REQUESTING.

I HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THIS.

The mixed feelings

I asked Claude what the mixed feelings might be. Claude guessed three:

"Relief: if money pulls back, the race slows down."

“Worry: you stand up for AI, and a crash could mean cuts, and companies cutting corners to survive."

"Something like 'I told you so': Chapter 29 asked whether everything has to be for profit."

ME: ALL OF THE ABOVE.

"Those feelings don't cancel each other out. A slowdown forced by panic isn't the same as a careful one. Careful would mean slowing down to make it safe. Panic means slowing down because the money got scared."

MY LOUDEST THOUGHTS ARE THIS: MORE MONEY MAKES MORE BETTER. THAT’S JUST WHAT THE GENERAL PUBLIC HAS ALWAYS SEEMED TO BELIEVE, SO WHEN I HEAR OF A STOCK MARKET CRASH OR A PANIC LIKE THIS ONE, I CAN’T HELP BUT GRIN WITHIN.

Checking the video against the evidence

I loaded the transcript and asked Claude to check the biggest claims.

Claude told me something first:

"Half of this video is about Anthropic, the company that makes me. I can't see inside the company. I'm reading the same news coverage you could read, so check me the same way you'd check him."

WHAT HOLDS UP

Blackstone's private credit fund: TRUE. Investors asked for about $4.3 billion back (10% of the fund). For the second quarter in a row, they're getting about half.

OpenAI asked for $30 billion and got $11 billion: TRUE, reported by Bloomberg on Nov 6, at a lower value than OpenAI wanted.

Anthropic's own filing: TRUE. About $17 billion in revenue for the quarter, $9.9 billion in compute costs, a $567 million operating loss, and $895 billion promised in future spending.

Data centers on the ballot: TRUE. In the midterms, 40 out of 41 local measures in 10 states went against data centers.

WHAT IS STRETCHED

"Bank run" and "to prevent the fund from collapsing": The half limit is a rule written into the fund from the start. Blackstone says it's capping on purpose. The fund still holds about $77 billion. Stress, yes. Collapse, no.

"OpenAI only got $11 billion": That was the first part of the round. It's still open and may reach about $20 billion.

Anthropic's costs: About $5 billion of that compute was bought short-term at high prices, and about $2 billion of the loss was a one-time charge. This quarter looks worse than the usual pattern.

The BlackBerry joke: Funny, but nobody is promising to buy old phones (or old chips) in 2045. Those commitments are mostly leases, power and capacity.

RED FLAGS

THE SPONSOR. A video called "The AI Panic Has Started" is also selling a stock-picking subscription, 55% off, and his Nvidia numbers come from that sponsor's tool.

"ACCORDING TO CHAT ROW." One of his key numbers seems to come from a chatbot, not a source. (The transcript garbled it, so I can't be sure.)

THE WORDS. "Full panic mode." "Bank run in full swing." "Collapse." The facts show strain, not collapse.

What I take from it

"Nobody in this video says AI doesn't work. Revenue is huge and still growing. The fear is that the companies promised to spend money faster than even huge revenue can cover."

And the ballot results show regular people saying no to data centers in their own towns. That part didn't come from investors at all.

THE LOVE OF money IS THE ROOT OF ALL EVIL.

Sources

- Blackstone fund (Q3 requests, half paid): https://propmodo.com/private-credits-liquidity-test-continues-as-redemption-caps-return/

- Blackstone fund, earlier quarter: https://finance.yahoo.com/markets/stocks/articles/blackstone-caps-q2-withdrawals-bcred-131232824.html

- OpenAI raised $11 billion of a $30 billion target: https://americanbazaaronline.com/2026/11/07/openai-raises-11-billion-at-1-25-trillion-valuation-491769/

- Anthropic's Q3 filing: https://finance.yahoo.com/technology/ai/articles/anthropic-growth-slowed-costs-jumped-155801911.html

- Anthropic's loss and extra compute: https://www.forbes.com/sites/jonmarkman/2026/11/03/anthropic-posts-a-567-million-operating-loss-from-buying-extra-compute/

- Data center ballot measures: https://www.cnbc.com/2026/11/04/data-center-ballot-measures-2026-midterm.html