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|  |  | Wednesday, November 26, 2025 | |  | | Jonathan Raa/NurPhoto via Getty Images | Good morning, Quartz readers! It’s Shannon Carroll with the Daily Brief. Today, big-name investors are stepping back from the AI frenzy, Google is stepping up to the brink of a $4 trillion valuation, Jensen Huang is stepping in to calm AI job fears, and the president’s sons are stepping around a phone reveal that still hasn’t arrived.
I’ll be off for Thanksgiving, so there will be no newsletter on Thursday. You can visit qz.com for coverage, and I’ll be back in your inbox on Friday morning. Happy holidays! | | HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW | Consumer sentiment at its weakest level since April. Concerns about tariffs, income expectations, stubborn costs, and job growth have
analysts comparing the mood to the inflation-heavy summer of 2022. | The top Fed job may change hands by Christmas. Bessent said the shortlist is down to five candidates as Trump continues pressuring the central bank to move faster on rate cuts ahead of its final meeting of the year. | Huang, after hearing about AI-shy managers: “Are you insane?” At a post-earnings internal meeting, he pressed Nvidia employees to use the
tech and stressed that automation isn’t coming for their jobs, just changing the work. | “Big Short” Burry sees Nvidia as the heart of a bubble. He points to supply gluts, accounting quirks, and trillion-dollar capex cycles as evidence that the market is betting on an AI future that the math can’t yet support. | | | Sponsored |  | Finally, Better Hearing for Under $100 | Why pay thousands for hearing aids when Oricle gives you the same life-changing benefits for under $100? With crystal-clear sound, wireless charging, and all-day comfort, Oricle Hearing Aids make hearing simple again. They’re virtually invisible, easy to wear, and HSA eligible with no doctor’s appointment, audiologist visit, or prescription required.
More than 217,734 people have already switched to Oricle and are enjoying conversations, TV, and the sounds of life without breaking the bank. Don’t settle for overpriced hearing aids when Oricle delivers real results at an unbeatable price. | | |
| | BEARLY BOOMING | The AI boom keeps playing to a standing ovation, but some big-name investors are already edging toward the exits. Michael
Burry has stacked more than a billion dollars in bearish bets against Nvidia and Palantir. Peter Thiel walked away from his Nvidia stake entirely. SoftBank sold off nearly $6 billion in Nvidia shares to refuel its OpenAI push. Even the quants — Bridgewater, Tiger Global, the whole Tiger Cub ecosystem — have been slipping out the side doors while the rest of the market is still clapping.
What’s rattling them is less the technology than the tab behind it. Hyperscalers blasted through
two years of cash to build out the chip race, and now the borrowing binge has arrived. October alone brought $70 billion in fresh debt for Meta and Oracle, plus almost $40 billion tucked into off-balance-sheet structures from Meta and xAI. Analysts warn that the whole boom is leaning hard on OpenAI’s $1.4 trillion commitment — an ambition that depends on years of funding before profitability shows up.
Then, there’s the drag from “AI slop” — the knockoffs, wrappers, and noise — and
investors are getting tired of all the clutter. Still, some experts say the long-term arc still bends toward the builders who can prove they’re creating something that matters. Everyone else can take the cue and stay diversified, steady, and allergic to the hype cycle. Perhaps the smartest money isn’t betting against the future — just against the froth fogging it up. Quartz’s Brian O’Connell has more on the debt-fueled chip binge making high-rollers twitchy. | | | RECOMMENDED READING | The
future of tech, decoded.
Semafor Technology unpacks the ideas, innovations, and power shifts redefining the global tech landscape. From AI and machine learning to the startups and policies shaping
the industry, each briefing delivers clarity and depth on the tech transforming our world
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| | | SEARCH AND RESCUE | Google isn’t just climbing this week — it’s practically levitating. Its parent company, Alphabet, has tacked on about $1 trillion in market value in six weeks, pushing the stock within reach of the $4 trillion club
and turning a steady rally into a full-on reappraisal of the company’s future. The spark is coming from its AI work; Gemini, Google’s new model, has been drawing unusually warm early reviews, and the company’s in-house chips finally feel like part of the main act. Berkshire Hathaway’s quietly built stake didn’t hurt, either, turning a cautious Wall Street crowd into something closer to an audience leaning forward.
Nvidia, meanwhile, has hit a pocket of turbulence. As part of AI-boom
worries, the company’s shares have been ricocheting, and they’ve been drifting lower after talk surfaced that Meta may be weighing using Google’s accelerators for future workloads. Meta’s AI budget can sway entire supply chains, and even a whisper about diversification can reshuffle expectations. Alphabet’s hardware ambitions once read like footnotes. Now, they’re being discussed as a real contender in the territory Nvidia has dominated.
The market math is now close enough to feel
like it’s a sport. Alphabet was roughly $300 billion shy of Nvidia on Tuesday morning, close enough for investors to start rewriting their mental leaderboards. Alphabet’s stock is up nearly 70% this year, and the long view is even louder than the week’s rally: Anyone who bought Alphabet in 2004 has watched each dollar swell into roughly $150 today. The story that once centered on search is now working to rewrite the leaderboard for the entire AI era. Quartz’s Catherine Baab has more on how Alphabet turned a cautious market into a full-throttle fan club. | | | Sponsored | | Finally, Better Hearing for Under
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