Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery!
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On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week.
- Is Software Dead? Software stocks have been in a free-fall all week, up-t0-and-including the biggest software company of them all: Microsoft. It’s tempting to say that everyone is over-reacting to the threat of AI — and they are, in the short run — but history shows that fundamentally changing in industry’s inputs transforms that industry in the long run, to the detriment of incumbents: just look at what the Internet did to content. Given that, Microsoft’s urgency in building out its own AI products, even if that meant missing on Azure numbers, is the right choice. Oh, and did I mention that tech is facing a massive compute supply crisis? — Ben Thompson
- SaaSmageddon and Super Bowl Ads. Building on that Microsoft article, Ben and I discussed the future of Saas companies on this week’s Sharp Tech, including a more than half-trillion dollar collapse of the Nasdaq 100 this week. Is the market’s skepticism fair? We dive into why software companies have more moats than their skeptics acknowledge, but nevertheless face a variety of headwinds that are likely to spur painful corrections to the valuation of these companies, consolidation, and substantial layoffs. Additionally, we had a great time talking through deceptive Anthropic Super Bowl ads —a series of broadsides at OpenAI’s nascent advertising play — that Ben hated, why Sam Altman’s response was spot on, and who their real audience is. — Andrew Sharp
- Madness in Basketball and Football. Speaking of Sunday… I don’t have a Seahawks-Patriots preview for you, on Sharp Text, but I did celebrated the occasion with a tribute to the madness and sneaky depth of Any Given Sunday. Elsewhere in the Stratechery sports universe, the NBA Trade Deadline came and went on Thursday this week, and Greatest of All Talk covered a very busy week of transactions across the association. Come to hear my anxious and unconvincing endorsement of my Wizards’ move to add Anthony Davis, and stay for thoughts on a topsy turvy deadline where the worst teams were buyers, the Celtics look like evil geniuses, and Giannis Antetokounmpo is staying in Milwaukee for at least few more months. — AS
Stratechery Articles and Updates
- Microsoft and Software Survival — Microsoft got hammered on Wall Street for capacity allocation decisions that were the right ones: the software that wins will use AI to usurp other software.
- Apple Earnings, Supply Chain Speculation, China and Industrial Design — Apple’s earnings could have been higher but the company couldn’t get enough chips; then, once again a new design meant higher sales in China.
- An Interview with Benedict Evans About AI and Software — An interview with Benedict Evans about the crisis facing software, the future of the corporation, OpenAI, and the struggle to define the LLM paradigm.
Sharp Text by Andrew Sharp
- What ‘Any Given Sunday’ Gets Right — ‘Any Given Sunday’ is a product of its time, and its treatment of modern pro football is both more alive and more poignant than just about any sports movie to emerge since.
Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber
Asianometry with Jon Yu
Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop
Greatest of All Talk with Andrew Sharp and WaPo’s Ben Golliver
- Deadline Notes and All-Star Announcements, The Scintillating Charlotte Hornets, Flagg, Dybantsa and Darryn Peterson
- Trade Deadline 2026: AD to DC?, A Topsy Turvy Week, Pacers Bet Big on Big Zu, Jazz and JJJ, Evil Celtics, and Lots More
Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson
This week’s Stratechery video is on TSMC Risk.