TG-AI-F: Big wins for Google & Nvidia, + political AI headwinds and Big Tech 'loopification'

Screw jet lag. I strapped into the AI news roller coaster this week and hung on for the ride.

photo courtesy of Google Nano Banana Pro

I’m back with an end-of-week TG-AI-F! It’s been a long time since I did these, so…fun!

I started my week by flying back from Copenhagen, where I spent a week visiting my nephew who is studying abroad. At least he says he’s studying — considering he was in Portugal the previous weekend and was headed to Prague as soon as I left, I’m not sure, lol.

I was lucky to be flying west so that I could wake up with a bang Monday morning at about 5 am. I had to be fully awake to tackle “one of those weeks” on the AI beat at Fortune.

All reporters covering AI know what “one of those weeks” are like — a semi-regular industry weather pattern when monster AI releases meet uber-hyped quarterly earnings meet eye-opening political happenings. It can be overwhelming, so one must be ready — especially when your editor is in Kuala Lumpur for a conference and you have to be available to fill in even more.

Here’s what I worked on this week:

Monday: Jeff Bezos is putting $6.2 billion—and himself as co-CEO—behind a new AI startup. Bubble? That’s no trouble

My Fortune colleague Allie Garfinkle, who writes our daily Term Sheet newsletter, hit me up early Monday to pitch in on the next day’s edition while she was traveling to NYC. I quickly turned my attention to the New York Times report that Bezos has helped fund a new AI startup called Project Prometheus, which—with $6.2 billion in backing—would make it one of the most well-financed early-stage startups in the world. Notably, as co-CEO alongside Vik Bajaj, a physicist and chemist who previously worked at Google X, the company’s “Moonshot Factory,” Bezos has taken a formal operational role in a company for the first time since stepping down as Amazon CEO in July 2021.

The bottom line: AI bubble talk continues to fizz, but Amazon founder Jeff Bezos—one of the world’s richest people—doesn’t seem bothered by the mounting foam.

Monday: Google releases its heavily hyped Gemini 3 AI in a sweeping rollout—even Search gets it on day one

On Monday, I also had to attend a press preview of Google’s Gemini 3, which after weeks of social media hype, vague posting, and wink emojis, I knew was going to be a big deal. I spent the rest of the afternoon writing up a story, and sure enough, by Tuesday morning, An early-morning leak of the Pro version’s model card—which outlines key details about the system and its benchmark performance—had developers posting on X as though Santa had arrived early.

The bottom line: Gemini 3 got a sweeping day-one rollout across a large swath of Google’s ecosystem with its billions of users—including its fastest-ever deployment into Google Search. Gemini 3 is yet another reminder that few companies, if any, have the data foundation or the global reach to ship AI at this scale.

Tuesday: AI politics breaks into a New York congressional race — and signals more fights to come

Typically, my colleague and AI editor Jeremy Kahn leads the Eye on AI newsletter and writes it on Tuesdays, while I take the Thursday send. But while he was in Kuala Lumpur I was happy to fill in.

I got a reach-out from the PR of Alex Bores, a Democratic congressional candidate running for the New York seat being vacated by Rep. Jerrold Nadler after three decades in Congress. The PR let me know about how Leading the Future — a $100 million pro-AI super PAC formed in August and backed by Andreessen Horowitz and OpenAI president Greg Brockman — had identified Bores as its first target because of Bores’ co-sponsorship of NY’s RAISE Act.

Since I had covered Greg Brockman recently, I hopped on the phone with Leading the Future co-head Josh Vlasto and got his side of the story for what I think was a really interesting edition of Eye on AI. And this was all before the news later in the week about the Trump administration drafting an executive order to attempt to challenge state AI laws.

Bottom line: With Silicon Valley money flowing in and rising debates over AI regulation, it’s clear this first strike against Bores won’t be the last in the growing AI political wars.

Wednesday: Nvidia blows past revenue targets and forecasts trillions in AI infrastructure spending by end of decade

Wednesday was all Nvidia, all the time. At 4 pm ET, the earnings would be released (and I am on ET). I prepared a few paragraphs to slot in the new earnings and also struggled to think about the bigger headline, especially as concerns about AI bubble and Nvidia’s fizzy part in that worried investors. Notably there were jitters about recent Nvidia deals with companies like OpenAI and Anthropic that have raised concerns over a “circular” business model that could overstate the true level of demand for AI products. In recent weeks, investors have been reassessing expectations, said Daniel Newman, analyst and CEO of the Futurum Group: “Has there been too much exuberance? Is this demand real?”

My Fortune editors and I played a waiting game on Slack late in the day, where we each came up with song ideas related to Nvidia. I suggested N-V-D-A (sung to Y-M-C-A). Matt suggested Green Day’s “American Idiot” (Don’t want to be an American Nvid-iot). We also had the 80s hit “Everybody Jensen Huang-Chung Tonight” and I suggested the “Fate of Nvidia” (sung to Taylor Swift’s “Fate of Ophelia”). Matt even made a Spotify playlist of our Nvidia jams.

The bottom line: Nvidia blew past Wall Street financial targets in its third quarter, posting a 62% surge in revenue and better-than-expected growth for the current quarter, as executives shrugged off concerns of a potential AI bubble and added fuel to the fire, forecasting trillions of dollars in industry-wide spending on AI infrastructure by the end of the decade.

Thursday: The ‘loopification’ of AI is making me dizzy

I’ll admit it: ChatGPT gave me the idea for “loopification” — I always give credit where credit is due! But by EOD Wednesday I was running on fumes. I had to get the Eye on AI newsletter out early because I had to get into Manhattan to attend an OpenAI breakfast about some announcement that was embargoed for Monday (stay tuned!).

In fact, I had to loop in my colleague Beatrice Nolan to write the other sections for Eye on AI while I rushed to put together the essay. I decided to focus on those circular deals I mentioned above: These are not just limited to Nvidia — in fact, it’s becoming the dominant business model of the AI industry. Hyperscalers, model labs and infrastructure companies are increasingly forming closed-loop partnerships that function as a kind of AI mutual-assurance pact: everyone is a partner, a vendor, and a customer at the same time. I couldn’t help but think that ChatGPT’s idea of calling it ‘loopification’ was a great idea. But the fact that it makes me completely dizzy? That’s all me.

The bottom line: Nvidia’s strong quarterly results may have calmed AI bubble fears–for now–but how long can this loop-de-loop business model continue? I don’t know the answer. But at this point, I might need some Dramamine.

Friday: Slack, Zoom, Substacking, social media scrolling to a week’s close

I’m over my jet lag, but that just means it’s harder to drag myself out of bed. And wrapping up a crazy AI week like this one just makes me want to take a nap. Alas, I was up early to catch up on the news and by mid-morning I was on a Zoom with my editor Jeremy, freshly back from Malaysia to his home base in London.

We caught up on all the things and agreed I would write something up on the OpenAI news for Monday. Yesterday, I met with Matt and Indrani about starting reporting on a long-form feature about the massive AI data center boom, which I’ve been wanting to do for a while. Then, I’ll have to figure out what comes next. The good news is, the AI craziness means I always have a zillion things to choose from.

My music trio has a gig on Saturday night, so we’re rehearsing after work today. Then, definitely some Pilates over the weekend and that well-earned nap I’m craving.

The bottom line: TG-AI-F! Have a great weekend.