Subsea Cables & Internet Infrastructure

Without an investment grade rating, Anthropic will be unable to tap the funds of most mutual and bond funds despite a trillion dollars in compute commitments over the next three years. This dramatically increases the likelihood of a liquidity crisis and possible bankruptcy. "The FT says the investment giant Blackstone, the anchor investor in a recent $63 billion deal to finance Anthropic’s chips, told investors in the deal that it expects the AI lab to receive a “high” junk rating after its IPO. Previously, the FT notes, Blackstone had said the opposite: that the Claude maker would receive an investment-grade rating (indicating low risk for lenders) before 2027 rolls around." Click here for more details: https://techcrunch.com/2026/10/30/anthropic-expected-to-receive-high-junk-rating-from-credit-agencies-following-ipo-report-says/. 

Free cash flow equals operating cash flow minus capital expenditures. If capex exceeds economic or real depreciation, then that cash could be returned to the owners via dividend or stock buybacks without sacrificing or reducing the company's ability to generate future profits and cash flow. It is a sustainable payout to the owners. Negative free cash flow increases wealth if marginal capex returns are high enough relative to the risk hurdle. Amazon is still quite profitable today, but investors are concerned future returns are inadequate to justify current negative free cash flow. After all, current wealth is being sacrificed in pursuit of future wealth that may be an illusion. The crux of investor angst is that end user AI revenues are tiny relative to investments. Goldman Sachs forecasts global AI capex to reach $1 trillion in 2026 and $3 trillion in 2030. Gartner, the consulting firm estimates $64 billion in 2026 AI end user revenues. The gap between return as measured by end us...

Musk confuses cooling a hot object in space with a cold object in space. An object in orbit cools more slowly than on Earth because a vacuum eliminates cooling via convection or conduction. Heat only escapes via thermal radiation. Hence the ISS has thermal radiators and controlling heat is a major priority in space vehicle engineering. Musk is right that an object without internal heating will settle down to 3 Centigrade degrees above absolute zero (-273.15). But an orbital data center generates heat continuously and will overheat if the radiators are not sufficiently large. What is scary is that Musk has the title of SpaceX CTO, yet he is clearly unqualified given his physics illiteracy. Click to enjoy the video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1umCJfbJ0w. 

WACS cumulative outage time totals 4% of operating life and ACE 2%. In contrast, Equiano has had zero wet segment faults and under 48 hours of total down time. Equiano's minor outages have been due to power failures at Lisbon Equinix (LS1) and OADC Lagos (power feed equipment failure) plus backhaul fibre cuts between CLS and CT1 (Capetown Teraco 1). WACS and ACE defenders will argue that any reliability comparison is unfair due to the older cable's longer outage history. But their outages are concentrated in subsea caverns that Equiano avoids. So Equiano's reliability edge is probably real.

1. Facility currently consumes only 720kw. Current power capacity is three megawatts. To me this suggests the facility is only 25% full. This is consistent with the opinions of other members of my tour group (Nigerian Peering & Interconnection Forum). 2. Facility design is standard. The Equiano subsea cable uses the sea facing fibre entrance. There are fibre entrances on the building's other three side. So good fibre entrance diversity. 3. Four diesel generators for power back up. Only one is needed to cover current consumption. So good backup power redundancy. 4. The Google CLS is a room in the data center. It was the anchor tenant that justified the project. 5. I suspect that Starlink will be installing its satellite dishes next to the building on the seaside. It has been a nightmare for Starlink to get its Equinix landlord earth stations up and running due to the cost of long haul fibre. OADC has affordable fibre optic connectivity and the sea and absence of tall buildings m...