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ISSUE #37 · FRIDAY 13 NOVEMBER 2026
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AI & robotics investing — explained so you can actually act on it.
Nvidia lost its founder. SoftBank lost $3.7bn.
One of those was the week's headline. The other shows where AI's losses turn up next: in money paid before the power arrives.
On Thursday morning Nvidia's board said Jensen Huang had resigned, 33 years after he co-founded the company. The shares fell as much as 16% and closed down 4.3%. AMD rose 5.9%. Two days earlier SoftBank took a $3.7bn charge on power equipment it had ordered ahead and no longer needs. That one got a day of coverage. I think it's the story that repeats.
Two Fridays ago I said the cost of money would sort the AI spenders. Last Friday I added permission. This week showed where the two meet: in cash paid out before the power turns up.
📎 THIS WEEK'S DEEP DIVE: WHO PAID FIRST A map of the money paid ahead across the AI build (deposits, prepayments, guarantees, supplier stakes), who is holding each, and a three-line balance-sheet check for any holding. Read the full Deep Dive
MARKET SNAPSHOT
One-day moves on the dates shown.
Mon 9 Nov
Move: S&P 500 +2.35% to 7,550; Nvidia −4.27% to $178.67
Driver: Rebound from 5 November; Nvidia's board opens a CEO investigation
Tue 10 Nov
Move: S&P 500 −0.38%; Nvidia −5.47%; GE Vernova −3.9%
Driver: CPI +0.4% against 0.3% expected; SoftBank's charge
Wed 11 Nov
Move: S&P 500 +1.31%; chip ETF +4.82%; CoreWeave +24.7%
Driver: CoreWeave beats and raises
Thu 12 Nov
Move: S&P 500 −0.35% to 7,592; Nvidia −4.34% to $166.19; AMD +5.86%; Broadcom +5.54%; Nebius −16.84%
Driver: Huang resigns; Nebius trims its outlook
Thu 12 Nov
Move: VIX 18.70; 10-year 5.10%; Brent $95.82
Driver: December hike fully priced
Sources: Portfolio Terminal (closes) · StockAnalysis (NVDA) · StockTitan (9 Nov) · BigGo Finance (SoftBank, GEV) · Invezz (CPI) · Yahoo Finance (SMH) · AOL (CoreWeave shares) · Gotrade (AMD) · Motley Fool (Nebius) · Capp Notes (12 Nov close)
VIX, the 'fear gauge', prices expected S&P 500 swings over 30 days; above 25 is real anxiety. It was 28.18 a week earlier. Friday 6 to Thursday 12 November: S&P 500 +2.9%, Nasdaq +3.2%, chip ETF (SMH) +8.1%, Nvidia −11.0%.
Sources: Portfolio Terminal (closes) · StockAnalysis (SMH) · StockAnalysis (NVDA) · Gotrade (6 Nov closes)
Bottom line: the fear gauge dropped by a third in a week when the 10-year crossed 5% and Nvidia lost its founder. Somebody's too relaxed.
CHART OF THE WEEK
Chart of the Week · One-week market moves (as reported in Issue 37)
Sources: Portfolio Terminal (closes) · StockAnalysis (NVDA) · StockAnalysis (AMD) · Gotrade (AMD) · Yahoo Finance (AVGO) · AOL (CoreWeave shares) · StockAnalysis (SMH) · Yahoo Finance (GEV) · Gotrade (6 Nov closes)
Built for a phone screen, so share it. Nebius isn't on it: its damage came in one day, Thursday's 16.8% fall.
TOP HEADLINES
1 Nvidia loses its founder
Jensen Huang resigned on Thursday as chief executive and director, four days after the board began investigating reports that he'd been the target of a foreign intelligence effort. Finance chief Colette Kress is interim CEO and stays CFO; Harvey Jones becomes Nvidia's first chair. Results still land on Tuesday. The order book didn't change on Thursday. But Nvidia guarantees up to $108.5bn of its customers' data-centre leases, and the man who agreed to that has gone.
2 SoftBank's $3.7bn lesson in deposits
SoftBank booked a ¥597.2bn ($3.7bn) charge on power equipment for US data centres, ¥457bn of it advance payments it can't get back. It had paid $9.48bn ahead by September, reportedly to reserve more than 13GW of gas turbines, mostly from GE Vernova. The quarter swung to a ¥1.12tn loss. In this build a default doesn't have to be a missed coupon. It can be a deposit, written off.
🌱 NEW TO INVESTING? HERE'S WHAT THIS MEANS A non-refundable deposit is a bet on your own timetable. Pay a builder up front for six kitchens, decide you need four, and he keeps the money for the other two. SoftBank's ¥457bn is the two kitchens.
3 CoreWeave held its line. Nebius didn't.
I named both 'likely more pressured' last week. CoreWeave then reported revenue up 168%, kept its year-end target of more than 1.85GW and said most of its Texas power is online or fully permitted; the shares rose 24.7% on Wednesday. Nebius cut 2026 revenue to the low end of its range, blaming construction delays at data centres other people own, and fell 16.8%. One against me, one for. What separated them was who controls the site.
Sources: CoreWeave Q3 release · CoreWeave Q3 call (AOL) · AOL (CoreWeave shares) · Motley Fool (Nebius)
4 Anthropic's suppliers are buying its shares
The range got the headlines: $70 to $78 a share, with pricing reported for 18 November. Read the line underneath. Seven chip and cloud companies will buy another $26bn of stock at the IPO price, led by Google and Nvidia at $10bn each. At the midpoint Anthropic nets about $84.6bn, against roughly $69.8bn of commitments due within a year. The firms it pays for chips and compute are funding the firm that pays them.
Sources: CNBC (Anthropic) · FinanceFeeds · TechCrunch (proceeds) · Anthropic S-1/A (SEC)
🌱 NEW TO INVESTING? HERE'S WHAT THIS MEANS When a supplier funds its customer, some of that money comes back as orders. Think of a brewery lending a pub the money to open, provided it stocks the brewery's beer. Sales look fine until the pub struggles.
5 A December hike is back
October CPI rose 0.4% against 0.3% expected. The 10-year closed Thursday at 5.10%, from 4.86% a week earlier, and futures fully price a quarter-point rise on 9 December. Last Friday the next hike was a March story. Every deposit in this issue just got dearer to carry.
OUR INVESTING ANGLE
Everyone's watching the empty chair at Nvidia. I'd watch the deposits.
The thesis: for the next two quarters, losses in AI infrastructure will show up as write-offs of money paid ahead, not as missed debt payments. Funding is moving from lenders, who reprice risk every day, to customers and suppliers, who mark it once a quarter.
Count this week's examples. CoreWeave won't sell unsecured bonds while its 2032 notes yield about 14%, so it expects roughly $9bn up front from customers within three months. Nebius says prepayments covered the whole cost of its third-quarter builds. Chip and cloud firms are putting $26bn into Anthropic. Nvidia stands behind up to $105bn of OpenAI's Ohio leases. And SoftBank paid $9.48bn ahead for power kit, then wrote off a chunk of it.
None of that is a bond. So the usual alarms won't ring.
Likely better placed: whoever holds the cash. CoreWeave and Nebius on liquidity, though not on debt; GE Vernova, which keeps the deposit and can resell the slot while there's a queue; and self-funders such as Alphabet, Microsoft and, once it prices, Anthropic. Likely more pressured: whoever paid first on a stretched balance sheet: SoftBank; Oracle, which builds for OpenAI and sold $10bn of notes at 7% to 8.65%; and IREN, which is slowing expansion as financing tightens. Nvidia I can't place yet. Its sales didn't change on Thursday. Its appetite for underwriting customers might.
Three tests, set now:
Write-offs. By 31 March 2027, one more listed company books $1bn or more against advance payments, deposits or cancelled orders for AI power or compute: supports. None: against.
Deposits. CoreWeave's roughly $9bn of prepayments, checked at fourth-quarter results, expected in February. $9bn or more received: supports. Under $6bn: customers are balking, against. In between: inconclusive.
Slots. GE Vernova expects its turbine slots through 2030 to be mostly sold by the end of 2026. At fourth-quarter results, expected in late January, confirming that with no further cancellations makes SoftBank a one-off: against. Stopping short, or disclosing more cancellations: supports.
⚠️ WHAT COULD GO WRONG? (THE BEAR CASE) 1. SoftBank is a one-off. It reserved more than 13GW, far more than one campus needs, and says the loss is unrelated to Ohio. GE Vernova says buyers are booking slots into the 2030s. 2. Prepayment is the healthy version. An investment-grade customer paying up front beats a junk bond. CoreWeave says over 75% of its committed capex through 2027 is tied to investment-grade and enterprise customers. 3. Rates swamp the sorting. A half-point hike on 9 December would hit payers and holders alike. Size positions for the possibility that the thesis takes longer to prove, or proves wrong.
Sources: FourWeekMBA (CoreWeave debt) · CoreWeave Q3 call (AOL) · Motley Fool (Nebius) · Nvidia 8-K, 17 Aug (SEC) · TIKR (Oracle raise) · Bytes Europe (IREN) · FourWeekMBA (GE Vernova) · BigGo Finance (SoftBank, GEV)
📎 THE WORKING BEHIND THIS The deep dive maps who has paid whom ahead and how much of it is refundable, then gives you a three-line balance-sheet check. Read the full Deep Dive
TRIPWIRE TRACKER
Scoring Issue 36's calls on the permit gate, plus one carried over from Issue 35.
CoreWeave, 10 Nov: a cut to 1.85GW, blamed on permits
Happened?: No. Target kept; over 1.7GW active
Thesis: Against, for now
Returns test from 5 Nov (test date 31 March 2027)
Happened?: Week one: builders +15.8%, owners +3.3%, S&P 500 +3.2%
Thesis: Running against. I started the clock at the low
Policy test: do state restrictions still bind?
Happened?: Yes, in Texas. Audit due in December; the governor-elect wants the halt kept until January
Thesis: Leaning supports
Issue 35: Fed pricing; Meta–Microsoft five-year CDS gap
Happened?: Changed back. December hike fully priced. No fresh public CDS print (0.61 points on 28 Oct)
Thesis: Supports on rates; CDS not re-measured
Sources: CoreWeave Q3 release · DCD (Texas) · Texas Tribune · Capp Notes (12 Nov close) · Crypto Briefing (Barclays CDS)
Price returns from the 5 November close. Owners: Microsoft −2.4%, Amazon +2.8%, Alphabet +5.7%, Equinix +7.1%. Builders: CoreWeave +29.6%, IREN +8.0%, Vistra +19.2%, GE Vernova +6.2%.
Sources: StockAnalysis (MSFT) · Gotrade (AMZN, 5 Nov) · MarketAlleys (12 Nov closes) · StockAnalysis (GOOGL) · Fox Business (EQIX) · StockAnalysis (CRWV) · Motley Fool (Nebius) · Gotrade (6 Nov closes) · StockAnalysis (VST) · Yahoo Finance (VST) · StockAnalysis (GEV) · Yahoo Finance (GEV)
THREE IDEAS TO RESEARCH THIS WEEKEND
Not recommendations. Starting points for your own research.
1 GE Vernova: who keeps the deposit?
Why now: it fell 9.9% at Tuesday's low on SoftBank's charge and closed down 3.9%. The case: a cancelled reservation leaves the maker with the deposit and a slot to resell, and only about a fifth of its gas-turbine customers are data centres. The risk: it's the first cancellation anyone has seen, and a book of reservations is only as good as the buyers behind it. Tripwire: the slots test above. How to research: GEV's third-quarter release. Split firm orders from slot reservations.
Sources: MLQ (GE Vernova) · BigGo Finance (SoftBank, GEV) · Motley Fool (GE Vernova) · FourWeekMBA (GE Vernova)
2 SoftBank: has it finished writing things off?
I keep coming back to this one. Why now: the shares rose about 14% in Tokyo on Tuesday, then fell as much as 11% once the results were out. The case: the pain is taken early, and rebates of up to $2.1bn on future purchases aren't on the books. The risk: the charge covers well under half of the $9.48bn paid ahead, and the finance chief has promised a 'thorough reassessment' of procurement. Tripwire: third-quarter results, expected in February. A second charge on advance payments says the reassessment isn't over; none says this was a clear-out. How to research: 9984.T's consolidated financial report, the note on Silver Bands 7.
Sources: The Next Web (turbines) · Bloomberg (SoftBank) · Bloomberg (turbine stocks) · MLQ (GE Vernova)
3 Nvidia: a discount for one person, or for the cheque book?
Look, I can't call this one. Why now: down 11.0% on the week to $166.19, with results on Tuesday. The case: Colette Kress has presented these numbers for 13 years, and nothing customers ordered was cancelled on Thursday. The risk: three House committees want to question Huang, shareholders have sued, and there's that $108.5bn of guarantees. Tripwire: 17 November. A guide above this quarter's revenue, with the guarantee table unchanged, says business as usual. New guarantees say the cheque book is still open; talk of tightening says it isn't. How to research: NVDA's CFO commentary, the 'Guarantees' section.
Sources: StockAnalysis (NVDA) · Yahoo Finance (Nvidia preview) · CNN (Congress) · Gotrade (NVDA, 9 Nov) · Nvidia Q2 CFO commentary (SEC)
FRAMEWORK: CHANGES THIS WEEK
Chips: Nvidia carries a key-person flag until a permanent CEO is named. Power: now tracked by cancelled turbine slots as well as permit risk. Everything else holds. Full seven-layer framework:
WHAT WE'RE WATCHING
17 Nov · after close
Checkpoint: Nvidia Q3
Question: The guide, any US deployment delays named, and the guarantee table
18 Nov (reported)
Checkpoint: Anthropic prices
Question: Where in $70–$78, and whether the banks take up their extra shares
9 Dec
Checkpoint: Fed decision
Question: A quarter point or a half
December (expected)
Checkpoint: ERCOT audit
Question: Does finishing it lift the Texas halt?
Sources: Nvidia 8-K (SEC) · CNBC (Anthropic) · FinanceFeeds · BBN Times (Fed) · DCD (Texas)
YOUR MOVE
Open your largest AI holding's latest balance sheet and find two lines: what it has paid ahead (prepayments, advances, deposits) and what it's been paid ahead (deferred revenue, customer deposits). Whichever is bigger tells you which side of this week it sits on. Then search the notes for 'non-refundable'. If it isn't there, that's a question for investor relations, not a red flag.
Know someone building an AI position? Forward this. New here?
P.S. Last week's third idea, CoreWeave: $43.66 at the close on Thursday 5 November, $56.60 a week later, up 29.6%. I said I wasn't sold. On its cash position I'm warmer. On a $1.1bn quarterly interest bill, still not.
P.P.S. Last Friday I asked whether your largest AI holding discloses where its unbuilt capacity sits. Results not provided. This week: does it disclose how much it has paid ahead? Reply yes, no or not sure. Results next Friday.
QUICK GLOSSARY
Advance payment: money paid to a supplier before delivery, often to hold a place in the queue.
CDS (credit default swap): insurance against a borrower defaulting. A higher price means the market sees more risk.
Key-person risk: the chance that a company's value depends on one individual staying.
Residual value guarantee: a promise to cover the shortfall if a leased asset can't be re-let or sold for an agreed minimum.
Slot reservation: a paid place in a manufacturer's production queue, short of a firm order.
Unsecured debt: borrowing with no asset pledged against it, so lenders charge more.
Write-off: removing an asset from the books because it's no longer worth what was paid.
Disclaimer: This newsletter is for informational and educational purposes only and does not constitute financial advice. This publication is not a registered investment adviser. Always conduct your own research and consult a qualified financial professional before making investment decisions.
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