Field Notes · 27 Jun 2026
Best explained
Ryan Detrick's framework for when the AI trade is over: watch for a sustained 6-month rotation where tech goes flat while healthcare, financials, and communication services outperform.
By the numbers
An AI marketing agent was estimated to replace roughly 60% of the basic functional output of a VP of Marketing role.
New today — Evidence added
Trajectory.ai reduced model onboarding time from 3 months on the first Harvey engagement to under 1 month, and then down to approximately 1 week for subsequent customers.
Ronak MaldeMicron executives forecast the memory market will be undersupplied for at least the next year, with gross margins expanding to 86% in Q4.
Nathaniel WhittemoreLowering the price of frontier AI models causes consumption to increase far more than expected, demonstrating Jevons paradox.
Dylan PatelNew today — Sharp calls
Anthropic accused Alibaba of accessing Claude models nearly 29 million times via a network of 25,000 fraudulent accounts, which Anthropic calls the largest distillation attack ever detected.
Nathaniel WhittemoreRory O'Driscoll on the fragility of startup moats in the LLM era.
Rory O'DriscollOver the last 27 days, the S&P 493 (equal-weight ex-Magnificent 7) has outperformed the Magnificent 7 by 18%, the largest such spread since 2018.
Ryan DetrickBenchmark scores can be artificially inflated by scaffolding multiple model runs together, making cross-model comparisons misleading.
Noam BrownNew today — Useful context
Coca leaf is scheduled alongside fentanyl and heroin in the UN system, placing a plant with 8,000 years of traditional use in the same danger tier as synthetic opioids.
Andrew WeilLowering the price of frontier AI models causes consumption to increase far more than expected, demonstrating Jevons paradox.
Dylan PatelNew today — Watchlist
Kevin Warsh reduced Fed statement length by 130 words.
Ryan Sean AdamsKirkland & Ellis's $500M AI investment is a reallocation of less than 1% of revenue and will go unnoticed.
Jason CalacanisTotal software spend growth accelerated from 12.8% last year to 15% this year.
Jason LemkinTool watch
OPSD is a training technique being discussed as a replacement or complement to RLVR, notable for not requiring a verifiable outer-loop reward signal and potentially enabling personalized model updates.
Worth quoting
“You're spending a trillion dollars a year and the revenue on AI talk about maybe 70 80 billion.”Rajiv Jain
“If you live in a state where there is an arbitrary power who can have you put to death, you are a slave.”Ada Palmer
“We believe it would be good for the world to have the option to slow or temporarily pause frontier AI development.”Jason Calacanis
“You cannot sell Bitcoin. If you are selling Bitcoin, the whole system breaks.”Michael Saylor
“40 to 41% of employees saying they ship AI work that they couldn't explain if asked. This is bot f***.”Rebecca Hinds
“The moon's gravity on Earth is the same no matter what the phase of the moon is.”Neil deGrasse Tyson