The AI Essays Are Moving Markets
Episode
20 min
Read time
2 min
Topics
Investing, Fundraising & VC, Leadership
AI-Generated Summary
Key Takeaways
- ✓AI Essay Market Risk: Viral investment research can now move entire sectors — Citrini Research's Sunday post caused AppLovin, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Expedia to each drop over 7%, a State Street software ETF to fall 5%, and private equity firms like KKR to lose 9%. Investors should monitor high-circulation AI disruption analyses as leading indicators of sector volatility.
- ✓COBOL Modernization Disruption: Anthropic's Claude Code targets IBM's core mainframe business by automating COBOL legacy code analysis — mapping dependencies across thousands of lines, documenting workflows, and surfacing risks in hours rather than months. IBM stock dropped 13.2% on the announcement. An estimated 95% of US ATM transactions currently run on COBOL, representing a massive addressable disruption target.
- ✓Chinese Model Distillation Scale: Anthropic documented over 16 million unauthorized Claude interactions by DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax — with MiniMax alone responsible for 13 million prompts. Distillation allows competitors to replicate frontier model capabilities at a fraction of development cost and time, raising both competitive and US national security concerns about capabilities flowing into military and surveillance systems.
- ✓Meta-AMD Chip Deal Structure: Meta secured up to six gigawatts of AMD MI450 computing capacity over five years in a deal exceeding $100 billion, with AMD granting Meta warrants for 160 million shares at one cent each — roughly 10% of the company — contingent on AMD stock reaching $600 from its current $196.60. This circular financing model mirrors AMD's earlier OpenAI deal structure.
- ✓ASML EUV Power Breakthrough: ASML increased EUV light source output from 600 to 1,000 watts by doubling tin droplets to 100,000 per second and using two laser shaping bursts instead of one. This 67% power increase reduces chip exposure time, enabling approximately 50% more chip production per hour by 2030, widening ASML's lead over US and Chinese competitors attempting to replicate the technology.
What It Covers
A Citrini Research essay on AI disruption triggers broad market selloffs across software, fintech, and private equity sectors on February 24, 2026, while Anthropic reveals Chinese firms trained models using Claude 16 million times, Meta commits over $100 billion to AMD chips, and ASML boosts EUV output by 67%.
Key Questions Answered
- •AI Essay Market Risk: Viral investment research can now move entire sectors — Citrini Research's Sunday post caused AppLovin, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Expedia to each drop over 7%, a State Street software ETF to fall 5%, and private equity firms like KKR to lose 9%. Investors should monitor high-circulation AI disruption analyses as leading indicators of sector volatility.
- •COBOL Modernization Disruption: Anthropic's Claude Code targets IBM's core mainframe business by automating COBOL legacy code analysis — mapping dependencies across thousands of lines, documenting workflows, and surfacing risks in hours rather than months. IBM stock dropped 13.2% on the announcement. An estimated 95% of US ATM transactions currently run on COBOL, representing a massive addressable disruption target.
- •Chinese Model Distillation Scale: Anthropic documented over 16 million unauthorized Claude interactions by DeepSeek, Moonshot, and MiniMax — with MiniMax alone responsible for 13 million prompts. Distillation allows competitors to replicate frontier model capabilities at a fraction of development cost and time, raising both competitive and US national security concerns about capabilities flowing into military and surveillance systems.
- •Meta-AMD Chip Deal Structure: Meta secured up to six gigawatts of AMD MI450 computing capacity over five years in a deal exceeding $100 billion, with AMD granting Meta warrants for 160 million shares at one cent each — roughly 10% of the company — contingent on AMD stock reaching $600 from its current $196.60. This circular financing model mirrors AMD's earlier OpenAI deal structure.
- •ASML EUV Power Breakthrough: ASML increased EUV light source output from 600 to 1,000 watts by doubling tin droplets to 100,000 per second and using two laser shaping bursts instead of one. This 67% power increase reduces chip exposure time, enabling approximately 50% more chip production per hour by 2030, widening ASML's lead over US and Chinese competitors attempting to replicate the technology.
Notable Moment
Samsung's $2,899 Galaxy Z Trifold receives a review recommending most buyers wait — not because the device fails, but because both Apple's forthcoming foldable iPhone and Samsung's own Galaxy Z Fold 8 are expected to deliver comparable video experiences at significantly lower price points within months.
Episode Transcript
Welcome to the Tech Brew Ride Home for Tuesday, 02/24/2026. I'm Brian McCullough. Today, that AIS AI shared with you yesterday sure got Wall Street's attention. Anthropic says Chinese models are training off of Claude, a significant new breakthrough in chip production technology, and as fun as that trifold phone might be, you probably wanna wait for later iterations of the form factor. Here's what you missed today in the world of tech. Remember that essay I shared with you just yesterday from Citrini Research? There's a reason I've been sharing AI essays that get chatter of late. They tend to move markets all of a sudden. Quoting the journal, The weeks long sell off in software stocks deepened Monday amid general unease about the threat posed by AI. Software makers AppLovin, CrowdStrike, Datadog, and Expedia were all among the S and P five hundred's worst 10 performers on Monday, dropping at least 7%. A State Street fund tracking S and Ps software and services index fell more than 5%. Several of Monday's biggest decliners were discussed in a now viral Sunday night post from Citrini Research, which outlined a hypothetical scenario where AI profoundly impacts the economy in the near future, end quote. And quoting Sherwood News, Mastercard, American Express, Visa, Synchrony Financial, and Capital One are stocks that are all suffering from severe selling pressure on Monday, which were flagged in the scenario analysis as facing headwinds from agents looking to avoid fees and white collar workers being displaced, end quote, and quoting the Feet. Ares, Apollo, and Black Stone all fell at least 5%, while KKR lost 9% as shares in the companies extended a poor start to the year amid concerns that market volatility caused by worries about AI disruption could slow fundraising and delay asset sales. Blue Owl slid 3%, bringing its fall for the year to about 30%. The software sector accounted for roughly 18% of US private equity deal value in 2025 according to PitchBook data, end quote. But wait. There's more. Not related to that essay specifically, but definitely AI related, quoting CNBC. International business machine stock is getting slammed Monday, becoming the latest perceived victim of a rapidly developing AI technology after Anthropic said its Claude Code tool could be used to modernize legacy systems that run COBOL. Shares of IBM closed the day lower by nearly 13.2% after Anthropic on Monday said Claude Code could be used to automate the exploration and analysis work that drives most of the complexity in COBOL modernization, a key IBM business. IBM has long sold mainframe systems that are optimized for large scale transaction processing where COBOL has often been used. Short for common business oriented language, COBOL is a dominant code system developed in the late nineteen fifties often used in business data processing such as payment processing and retail transaction systems. An estimated 95 of ATM transactions in The US use COBOL, according to Anthropic, making it a prime target for cost …
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Tools
by Anthropic
“Anthropic's Claude Code targets IBM's core mainframe business by automating COBOL legacy code analysis — mapping dependencies across thousands of lines, documenting workflows, and surfacing risks in hours rather than months.”
Gear
by Samsung
“Samsung's $2,899 Galaxy Z Trifold receives a review recommending most buyers wait — not because the device fails, but because both Apple's forthcoming foldable iPhone and Samsung's own Galaxy Z Fold 8 are expected to deliver comparable video experiences at significantly lower price points within months.”
by Samsung
“Samsung's $2,899 Galaxy Z Trifold receives a review recommending most buyers wait — not because the device fails, but because both Apple's forthcoming foldable iPhone and Samsung's own Galaxy Z Fold 8 are expected to deliver comparable video experiences at significantly lower price points within months.”
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