Slate Money – "Three-Headed AI Unicorn" (Sept 27, 2025)

Host: Felix Salmon
Guests: Elizabeth Spiers, Emily Peck, Max Chafkin
Podcast Theme: A sharp, insightful, and witty weekly round-up of the week’s biggest business and finance stories.

Main Theme & Purpose

This episode dives into three major stories:

1. The circular and possibly bubble-like nature of artificial intelligence (AI) financing, focusing on the $100 billion Nvidia-OpenAI-Oracle deal.
2. The recent chaos surrounding H1B visa policy changes and their impact on the US economy and immigration landscape.
3. The story behind the faux resurrection and ironic collapse of Enron as a meme project, exploring the merging of satire and cryptocurrencies.

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Circular Financing of AI – Is There an AI Bubble?

[02:44 - 13:42]

• Nvidia & OpenAI’s $100 billion Deal:

  • Felix kicks off with the question: Is Nvidia really investing $100 billion in OpenAI, only for that cash to flow in a circle through data center vendors, back to Nvidia?
    • Felix: "So Nvidia is investing $100 billion in open AI so the open AI can then give the money to Oracle so that Oracle can then give the Money to data centers who can then give the money to Nvidia?" [02:47]
  • Max clarifies this is a huge, almost surreal amount for private deals and raises questions of "round tripping" (artificially inflating revenues in a closed loop).
    • Max: "This whole AI bubble feels like a lot of companies sort of doing business with each other. Like it's all this self dealing... this is a sign that this is a bubble." [04:35]
  • Emily uses a metaphor: “It’s like I give Felix $100, he gives me $100 back, and then we ... keep adding a hundred plus a hundred plus a hundred, we never subtract. And that kind of seems like a little bit what’s happening.” [05:15]

• Vendor Lock-in and Monopoly Concerns:

  • The panel discusses Nvidia’s strategy of locking customers into the Nvidia ecosystem, creating a "monopoly" via programming dependencies and long-term support, not just chips.
    • Felix: “Even if you want at some point in the future to buy someone else's chips ... you're basically not going to be able to do that because you're so locked into the Nvidia ecosystem ... I do think it's a monopoly, but as we have discussed on this show, being a monopoly doesn't seem to be illegal anymore." [11:08]

• Antitrust and the Changing Nature of Monopolies:

  • Emily brings a fun analogy: Nvidia’s dominance is like Coca-Cola giving you a soda case that only fits Coke bottles, and raising the price after you're hooked.
    • Emily: “Then over the years, they just keep raising the price ... And then you have no other options ... and you have a caffeine addiction and it’s just downhill.” [12:18]

• Skepticism About Current AI Revenue:

  • Max and Emily note that most AI companies, aside from Nvidia, aren’t yet profitable. The boom is self-referential, based less on organic demand than hype and reciprocal business deals.
    • Emily: "No one's really making money from AI yet except for Nvidia." [08:54]
    • Felix: "This whole AI revolution needs to solve ... the much more urgent... financial one, which is ... $7.9 trillion on data centers ... that is an amount of money that just is almost impossible to comprehend..." [07:10]

2. The H1B Visa Chaos & the Rethinking of Immigration Policy

[14:52 - 32:32]

• The H1B $100k (per year) Fee Shock:

  • The Trump administration abruptly announces a $100,000/year fee for H1B visa holders, causing panic and confusion nationwide.
    • Felix: “They put out an official executive order basically saying every single person who has an H1B needs to pay $100,000 when they come into country.” [19:10]
  • Emily describes “absolute chaos”: “Every lawyer I spoke to this week was like, I didn’t sleep all weekend ... Companies were freaking out, everyone. Just absolute chaos.” [19:54]
  • Elizabeth pithily summarizes Trump’s policy strategy: “Trump only has one policy tool ... everybody give me money.” [20:11]

• Philosophy and Impact on US Innovation:

  • Debate between using immigration to drive American innovation vs. preference for restricting visas to ‘protect’ US jobs, with the show agreeing that harming H1B inflows harms US economic primacy.
  • Emily highlights the downstream benefits of skilled immigration: “Even if you are underpaying H1B visa holders ... they’re still contributing to the local economy and a broader sort of job ecosystem.” [27:43]

• The Shift from Lottery to Skills and Wealth:

  • Under the new plan, the lottery element of H1B would be replaced by prioritizing highest-paid or most ‘skilled’ applicants — but the effect is neutralized (and worsened) by the massive fee.
    • Felix: "...we are not going to make H1BS a lottery anymore ... we are going to hand them out to whoever the most skilled applicants are..." [23:54]

• ‘Trump Cards’ for Green Cards:

  • The administration also unveils “Trump Gold Card” (cost: $1 million) and “Trump Platinum Card” ($5 million, comes with tax perks and residency time restrictions) as a mechanism to raise funds and further restrict immigration to the ultra-wealthy.
    • Felix: "Now Trump is coming up with a third ... way, which is just whoever can afford to pay a large amount of money ..." [29:12]
    • Felix: "My favorite thing is not only do you have to pay $5 million, you also have to spend no more than 270 days a year in the country." [30:42]

• Broader Inequality and Social Risks:

  • Emily: "The Trump administration clearly values rich people over everyone else and is structuring policy that way too ... we’re sort of barreling towards this very unequal, very gilded era ...” [31:27]

3. The Ironic Return (and Collapse) of "Enron" as a Meme Project

[35:34 - 46:53]

• Enron as Satirical Meme Business:

  • Social media pranksters (of "Birds Aren't Real" fame) launched a parody Enron brand, trademark and all, deliberately mocking corporate culture and the original Enron’s infamy.
    • Max: "What proceeded was ... very funny social media campaign poking fun at the way corporations like talk to us." [36:33]
  • Things went haywire when crypto investors muscled in, turning it into a genuine meme cryptocurrency—and a real, if small, financial collapse reminiscent of the real Enron.
    • Max: "...the crypto guys ... turning it into a thing that they were trying to satirize." [38:08]

• Satire to Reality – The Meme Money Phenomenon:

  • Felix: “This ability to turn something funny and stupid into something real is like a defining feature of where we are today ... your Birds Aren't Real guys were doing a satire, but then the crypto backers were like, well, great. Satire is something that is real and we can monetize.” [39:41]
  • Max: “You actually can't start a fake Enron without becoming a real Enron.” [42:08]

• Cryptos, Meme Coins, and Gamble-as-Consumption:

  • The group discusses if meme coins are gambling or just ironic consumption: “…losing money in crypto is a consumption good. It’s what people do for the lulls…” – Felix [45:22]
  • Max notes journalists struggle with labeling this: “I feel like shitcoin was a better way to describe it ... than meme coin ... it’s very easy, in the same way ... in casinos ... to convince themselves that they are going to win and then can ruin their finances ...” [44:30]

4. Numbers Round – Quirky Data & Pop Economics

[47:55 - 56:20]

• Willingness to Pay (for Ice Cream off the Ground):
  • Elizabeth: “My number is 1 million ... how much I told my 10 year old son that I would take to eat some ice cream off the ground ... while we were doing this experiment, he started developing these fungible items for negotiation...” [47:58]
• $8.9 Billion for the Chicago Bears:
  • Felix: “My number is 8.9 billion ... the current valuation of a sportsball team called the Chicago Bears ... the highest valuation ever seen in the history of sports or something.” [49:59]
• AI-generated “Work Slop”:
  • Emily: “My number is 40. 40%. That is the share of office worker adults who say they’ve encountered work slop in the past month ... all the AI-generated stuff that workers are now sending to each other: emails, slide decks, docs generated by AI ...” [51:50]
• Peter Thiel & the Antichrist Lecture Series:
  • Max: “My number is 16 ... the number of hours that attendees to Peter Thiel's Antichrist Lecture series ... will be spending ... His theory ... is the Antichrist is anyone who wants to regulate his investment portfolio.” [53:02, 53:24]
  • Felix: “I thought he identified with the Antichrist.” [53:57]
  • Elizabeth: “There are a lot of descriptions of the Antichrist that make the Antichrist sound a lot like Donald Trump.” [57:12]

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On the AI Funding Bubble:

  • Max: “This whole AI bubble feels like a lot of companies sort of doing business with each other. Like it's all this self dealing...” [04:35]
  • Emily (on the circularity): "It's like I give Felix $100, he gives me $100 back ..." [05:15]

• On Monopoly by Lock-in:

  • Felix: “I feel like Nvidia has basically at this point managed to get itself a real monopoly.” [11:08]
  • Emily’s Soda Shop Analogy: "...And then you have a caffeine addiction and it's just downhill. Have I gone off the rails? But I was just trying to make it ... relatable." [12:18]

• On the H1B Visa Disaster:

  • Felix: “So like, everyone on planes was getting off planes. People were trying to get back into the country before the deadline, only for the White House to go ... We didn’t actually mean that ... So the whole thing was rolled out with maximum chaos.” [19:10]
  • Elizabeth: “Trump only has one policy tool ... everybody give me money.” [20:11]

• Meme Business, Ironic Scams & Enron:

  • Max: “You actually can't start a fake Enron without becoming a real Enron." [42:08]
  • Felix: "This ability to turn something funny and stupid into something real is like a defining feature of where we are today..." [39:41]

• On Inequality and Gilded Age 2.0:

  • Emily: "...we’re sort of barreling towards this very unequal, very gilded era, it seems like to me ..." [31:27]

Timestamps for Major Segments

• Circular AI Finance & Nvidia Discussion: 02:44 – 13:42
• H1B Immigration Policy Chaos: 14:52 – 32:32
• Enron as Meme & Satire Failure: 35:34 – 46:53
• Numbers Round (fun stats & Peter Thiel's Antichrist lectures): 47:55 – 56:20

Tone and Style

Conversational, witty, slightly irreverent—balancing deep economic/policy insight with a willingness to poke fun at industry absurdities. Panelists riff off each other and link today’s news to broader historical and social analogies, often using evocative (and funny) metaphors to drive home their points.

Summary

This episode of Slate Money provides a sharp, skeptical look at the frenetic, circular world of AI financing, the chaos of US immigration and labor policy, and the memetic, parody-laden culture of modern business. The hosts pull no punches dissecting the hype, the confusion, and the sometimes grim realities underlying 2025’s biggest business stories—with bonus detours into sodas, the French Revolution, and the true meaning of the Antichrist.

If you want to understand why AI finance seems so strange, why US immigration policy is so contentious (and chaotic), and how memes keep blurring the lines between satire and scam, this episode is the perfect window in.