Half of the S&P 500's Earnings Jump This Quarter Came From Two Companies That Lose Money
About This Episode
Reuters Breakingviews reported August 3 that SpaceX and Anthropic — neither profitable — account for half the $280 billion rise in S&P 500 earnings this quarter, because Alphabet and Amazon book unrealized mark-ups on their stakes as income. Amazon's quarterly net income tripled on a $53.4 billion non-operating gain from Anthropic; Alphabet's EPS rose about 300%, or roughly 23% once the AI stakes are stripped out. Index-wide earnings growth falls from 47.4% to 28.8% without those two companies.
Our Take
The AI buildout's profits are increasingly an accounting entry — Alphabet and Amazon marking up stakes in two money-losing startups — so the question is not whether abundance is coming but whether the ledger financing it can survive the first quarter someone marks it back down.
Continue Reading on Unscarcity
When AI Goes Public: Shareholders vs. Abundance
It is a direct match — the article is built around the 2026 SpaceX, Anthropic and OpenAI listings and what public-shareholder pressure does to companies whose products are supposed to end scarcity.
The Bootstrap Paradox: How Do You Fund the Death of Money Using Money?
It supplies the framework for why the abundance buildout has to be financed with scarcity-era capital, which is exactly what a circular mark-up loop between investors and investees is doing.