2026.44: At Long Last…

(Photo by Carmen Mandato/Getty Images) Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery! As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings. On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week. Finally, Some Anthropic Numbers. Monday morning brought us Anthropic’s S-1, and not a moment too soon. After four years of arguments about the economics at frontier labs, we now have some real numbers to sink our teeth into, and Ben did just that with his Update on Tuesday. Come for that analysis, and then head over to this week’s Sharp Tech where we talked in depth about what Anthropic is telling investors, questions that remain unanswered, plus why the SEC forced Anthropic to help us understand Meta’s Muse bet.— Andrew Sharp The End of the Internet as We Know It (and I Feel Fine). Arriving on the heels of a handful of ominous cybersecurity incidents and with continued upheaval guaranteed, Monday’s Article made two distinct predictions. First, the pressure applied by AI will eventually (or imminently?) rupture the global internet that we’ve come to know for the past 25 years. But second, as society moves to more localized solutions and products, that may in fact be a welcome development for all of us who have come to accept degraded experiences throughout our technological lives. As an avid group chatter who’s more or less abandoned public social media, I can certainly get behind the second take! — AS Autocracies Then and Now. On Sharp China this week, we began with an extended look at the climate of fear across the Chinese bureaucracy as Xi Jinping continues an anti-corruption crackdown that was absolutely necessary but may be going further than Xi’s earlier proponents ever expected. Then, we turn to a glorious mess surrounding Mao Zedong and international soccer star Kylian Mbappé. On both that episode and in this week’s Sharp Text, I make the point that connipitions like this one, anchored in a bizarre debate over Mao’s governing history, are evidence that rumors of a Chinese century have been greatly exaggerated. — AS Presented by When I write about tech companies, I am often writing about businesses that depend on Stripe, because Stripe provides the foundation for Internet-native companies — including Stratechery. Consider Substack: building Stratechery was complicated and involved gluing together disparate pieces; Substack made it easy by delivering an integrated offering. One piece that was the same, however, was Stripe: Substack creators are also Stripe customers, as are creators on many other platforms. Zoom out and the pattern repeats. Fintechs can build entire business models around card programs without ever having to build the issuing and processing infrastructure underneath it.AI companies can charge for what customers actually use, which is particularly important when usage also drives costs, without having to build the systems to track and bill for it themselves. No business succeeds because of Stripe. Stripe doesn’t answer the hard questions about what to build or whether anyone will actually use it. But it does make more things practical to try. Stratechery Articles and Updates The End of the Internet — The old Internet, where anyone could host a server is over, but it’s just the final blow in an ending that has been coming for years. The future, though, is brighter than it appears. Anthropic S-1, The Cost of Compute, Who Is Paying? — Anthropic’s IPO is finally here; the core business is very profitable, but competition may eat all of the profits, even as investors are set up for endless dilution. Meta Earnings, Muse and the Frontier, Musebook — Meta’s earnings come in the context of Zuckerberg delivering on his promise; if investors believe in Muse they must support Meta’s spending on compute. An Interview with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar About the AI Religious War — An interview with Palantir CTO Shyam Sankar about AI diffusion and safety, forward-deployed engineer, and what the battle in tech is actually about. Sharp Text by Andrew Sharp Kylian Mbappés Little Red Card — Surveying the biggest scandal in China this week, and another reminder that the CCP cannot get out its own way. Dithering with Ben Thompson and Daring Fireball’s John Gruber The End of the Internet Touchscreen MacBook Pros Asianometry with Jon Yu How Linux (and Windows) Ate UNIX Silicon Valley Walks the Jagged Edge Sharp China with Andrew Sharp and Sinocism’s Bill Bishop Five Questions on the Fifth Plenum; Mbappé Hysteria and a Chinese Own Goal; The STAR 50 AI Bubble Has Burst Greatest of All Talk The Opening Week in Review, Nuggets Darkness and Eastern Conference Angst, A True Catastrophe for OKC Sharp Tech with Andrew Sharp and Ben Thompson Anthropic Opens the Kimono, Bubble Questions and Frontier Costs, Q&A on Meta, Starlink, Brewers This week’s Stratechery video is on Do You Trust Apple?.