The Government Is Now AI's Only Counterparty

SpaceX pulled off the largest IPO in financial history this June, raising roughly $85.7 billion, and the shares fell almost as soon as they began trading ^[1]. OpenAI, next in line, slid its own listing to 2027, and the stated reason was safety.

no amount of American competitive pressure should justify recklessness — Sam Altman

Months earlier, though, the chief financial officer had named the harder floor.

We have not decided on timing yet; it may be a while because there are things we want to do that are likely easier as a private company. But it’s a complicated set of tradeoffs and this gives us the option to go public sooner if that ends up being best. — OpenAI

And the two infrastructure firms that had filed to list alongside, Nscale and SB Energy, postponed theirs outright, citing rising interest rates and regulatory scrutiny ^[2]. Those were the exits everyone was watching — the doors through which the buildout was supposed to pay itself back. None of that means demand is cracking: neoclouds still report compute demand outstripping supply ^[3]. What is wobbling is the money behind it, and that changes who is left transacting at the other walls. Start with power, the wall made of copper and concrete. Goldman Sachs has been warning that AI's appetite is outrunning a grid that develops on decade-long cycles no private balance sheet can compress ^[4]. The gap is stark: China carries 80 to 100 percent reserve margin — spare generating capacity a grid keeps in reserve — from decades of state-directed overbuilding, while the American grid runs at 15 percent or less ^[4]. A year on, the warning has only hardened.

AI’s insatiable power demand is outpacing the grid’s decade-long development cycles, creating a critical bottleneck. — Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management

Politics then gates whatever the private builders could do. AEP plans to nearly double its generation by 2030, with 90 percent of the new demand coming from data centers, and the cost is already landing on household bills ^[5]. An organizer in Ohio put the stakes plainly.

Of the 63 gigawatts, 53 gigawatts are in Texas and Ohio, requiring large-scale transmission projects, which we believe we excel at constructing and operating. The remaining 10 gigawatts requires new generation, for which AEP has secured the necessary long lead time equipment. — Bill Fehrman

The one check that actually moved was the government's. Southern Company closed a $26.5 billion Department of Energy loan to build or upgrade 16 gigawatts — new gas, nuclear uprates, hydropower, storage, and more than 1,300 miles of transmission ^[6]. It is the kind of capital only a sovereign can write.

This includes 5 GW of new gas generation, 6 GW in nuclear improved through uprates and license renewals, hydropower modernization, battery energy storage systems and over 1,300 miles of transmission and grid enhancement projects. — United States Department of Energy

Other states are bidding for the overflow: India is offering foreign cloud companies a tax holiday until 2047 to serve overseas customers from Indian data centers ^[7]. The second wall is the customer. GenAI.mil — the Pentagon's platform for military AI tools, built with Google Cloud, OpenAI, and xAI — now serves more than three million personnel ^[8]. The defense secretary has announced an Autonomous Warfare Command, to stand as a four-star combatant command by October 2027.

This tool marks the beginning of a new era, where every member of our workforce can be more efficient and impactful. — Pete Hegseth

The third wall is the floor. Schneier and Sanders have proposed that if the labs fail financially, the government should convert OpenAI and Anthropic into public agencies or national labs, with compute run as a public utility ^[9]. Dario Amodei arrived near the same place on his own in September, proposing frontier AI be handed to a combination of governments.

my view here is it has always been very strange that this technology is being built by a private company. — Dario Amodei

Nine months earlier he had said he was uncomfortable with AI decisions resting with a few companies and a few people ^[10].

I'm deeply uncomfortable with these decisions [about AI] being made by a few companies, by a few people. — Dario Amodei

Then he filed an IPO structured so seven founders keep permanent 50.1 percent of the voting power ^[11]. The wall where the price is actually named is the one where the state buys the models themselves. When Amodei refused a Pentagon ultimatum to remove the guardrails barring mass domestic surveillance and fully autonomous weapons, the government designated Anthropic a national-security supply-chain risk — a formal finding that a company is too risky to buy from — and moved the work to OpenAI and xAI, which accepted terms allowing all lawful military use ^[12]. The terms were not subtle.

Seeking judicial review does not change our longstanding commitment to harnessing AI to protect our national security, but this is a necessary step to protect our business, our customers, and our partners. — Anthropic

Disagreeing with the government is the most American thing in the world. — Dario Amodei

Anthropic called the designation "unprecedented and unlawful" and sued ^[12]. Then, weeks before filing a record IPO, Amodei was at the White House courting the administration that had banned him.

if we work with the president, we can win safely — Dario Amodei

The guardrails question is not resolved.

How we address those risks is still under discussion — Dario Amodei

The state has named its price. The only open question is whether the lab that refused it pays.