In one podcast interview, Mandel described his approach to AI investing as identifying the “picks and shovels” for data center projects. “We know that running all these data centers… requires a huge amount of energy,” he explained. “So we’ve basically invested in everything from energy itself to producers of energy to all the way up to… the hyperscalers and basically the whole value chain.”
The Lever’s review of Lone Pine’s SEC disclosures shows that companies supplying the data center build-out make up roughly a third of Lone Pine’s overall stock portfolio. The Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company, a dominant chipmaker, was Lone Pine Capital’s single largest investment in 2025. Now the firm’s biggest investment is in the energy company Vistra, whose stock became a hot commodity after it signed power purchasing agreements with tech giants Meta and Amazon to supply their data centers’ massive energy demands.
The fund’s earnings from the AI sector have only added to Mandel’s soaring net worth, now an estimated $5 billion. The billionaire in turn pumps the money into political causes, as he’s done for decades.
...
The Bronin campaign’s issues page on AI, titled “Getting the Balance Right with Artificial Intelligence,” takes a moderate path on data centers, acknowledging concerns while emphasizing that “it’s important that the United States continue leading the world in AI development.”
Such language is common across the ecosystem bankrolled by Mandel.
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Searchlight Institute, a policy think tank known to be funded by Mandel, released a white paper proposing to green-light and regulate data centers, rather than the moratoriums supported by the Democratic Party’s populist left. This policy proposal soon appeared on the campaign platforms of several high-profile Senate candidates supported by Mandel....
#AIInvestors #HedgeFundAI #StephenMandel #AISalami
/HT
@Pete Tucker
bsmall2
in reply to Brian Small • • •#VenalPoets #SellingFreeEnterprise
@bsmall2@nerdica.net
bsmall2
in reply to bsmall2 • • •Paul Goodman said thoughtful approaches were "swamped"...
> For every one person reached by...authors, advertisers and publicity men and economic propagandists with goods or ideas to sell reached tens of thousands. The distrust of words does not come from reading writers who honestly state their feelings and convictions, even if those feelings and convictions are extremely gloomy. The distrust arises from long experience with an unending stream of venal poetry, venal speech, venal writing..
#VenalWriting
@bsmall2@nerdica.net
bsmall2
in reply to bsmall2 • • •> ... ... restoration of poetry[words, the internet!??...] to its traditional state as one of the most important of the communicators and creators of the values a civilization lives by awaits, therefore, a time when something less than 98 percent of radio time and 85 percent of space in mass-circulation magazines is devoted to selling something...
@bsmall2@nerdica.net
Brian Small
in reply to Brian Small • •🧵
#AdvertisingCorrupts .. #SymbolDrain #RisingTideOfInsignificancy
I. A. Richards put a similar writing in _Speculative Instruments_.. and he praised Irving Babbit for good work in a similar vein.. I haven't found anytthing on advertising and tacky word use in general from Babbit though..