The Capital Cycle Podcast - Churn Chat

Episode Date: December 23, 2025

A satire imagining a heated boardroom discussion of AI funding challenges. Edward Chancellor introduces Stanley Churn’s latest business venture. Disclaimer: All characters, names and organisations portrayed are entirely fictional and are not intended to represent or be modelled on any real persons or companies.For more information, or to access select articles from Marathon’s Global Investment Review publications which accompany this podcast series, please visit www.thecapitalcycle.co.uk Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to a special episode of the Capital Cycle Podcast. Every year, Marathon introduces a character into its global investment review called Stanley Churn. Stanley Churn is an opportunistic financier who always finds himself in the part of the investment world where a lot of money is being made and corners are cut. This year, comes as no surprise that he's entered into the world of artificial. intelligence. And we have for you a virtual board meeting of Stanley Churn, played by Charles Carter, who's calling in from his office in the Cayman Islands. In the headquarters of Pons AI is Samantha Stretch, played by Laura Fife. At the data center is the chief technology officer, Ben Brightsparc, played by Titus Zaraski.

And listening in, in addition, is a board member, Ernest Glum, played by Robert Anstey. We can congratulate ourselves on phase one of the AI infrastructure buildout. I'm amazed that we've been able to sign up all these deals with our partners over the last six months. Samantha, can you remind me on the scale of our commitment? Certainly, Stanley. All told, we are in for 1.4.4. $4 trillion, give or take, over the next eight years for around 26 gigawatts of capacity, equivalent to 20 new nuclear reactors or the GDP of Spain. That really underlines the confidence of our partners in the potential of our new AI offering.

Mr. Brightspark, can you remind us where we are with churn GPT6? Since you issued the code red, it's been all hands to the wheel. We're really hoping for a breakthrough. We're scaling so fast, I'm worried the lights are going to go out. Plus, the model is getting more human every day. It hallucinates, blames the data, and keeps asking for more budget resource. You wouldn't believe how much it costs just to answer a simple question. Excuse me.

I'm just wondering, what if churn GPT6 doesn't work out? What exactly is our plan B? That question, if I may say so, shows you really do not understand the Ponzi-I model. We are selling a dream here. If churn GPT6 is a dud, we just talk about the next iteration and the one after that. As long as we can maintain belief until something shows up, we can continue to draw the flow of funds to our business and sell our founder shares. Samantha, please tell Mr. Glum about our funding strategy. Mr. Glum, there are several strands to this. I'll start with the first our flywheel model or the circulate strategy.

By buying more chips, we push up the shares of our publicly traded partners like Game Chip. Our friends over at Softhead get the appreciation in the shares of the chip companies, which they can sell and buy shares in Pons A.I. We then use the money to buy more chips, which really gets the wheel spinning. We can also slip out a few founder shares to Softhead and Scone Capital. We've also got vendor financing plans, which we call Vendify, so the chip companies pay us to buy their chips. And then there's our levitate strategy of getting warrants in chip companies whose chips we buy. Finally, we've taken a meaningful stake in scone holdings in exchange giving their investee companies access to churn GPT6. Yeah, look, I'm sorry to be a Grinch, but I'm just puzzled as to who is actually going to pay the bills for all this kit.

What I'm hearing is mostly deals that are based on shares. Where's the cash? In simple terms, Mr. Glum, the future will pay. Gen AI is such a huge prize. There'll be more than enough to pay the bills. AI could give us a cure for cancer. It can eliminate poverty. It can write an entire new Shakespeare Irvra, a new era for humanity. Ultimately, the constraint is not capital. It's our imagination. If we're wrong, I'm sure we'll find a new, new thing and make money from that. In the meantime, we have to be even more creative on the funding side. Samantha, will you go through the contingency funding solutions plan? Certainly, Stanley, we are looking carefully at more options in the credit market. There's some interesting stuff right now in private credit, and we've been talking to some of the new virtual rating agencies, which use AI to, to evaluate AI credit. We can get AI certified bonds, wags are calling them Dumboes, and look to satisfy retail demand for a piece of Pons AI action. Then there is the $1 trillion IPO window. We are working at projections of 3 billion users and 50% global workforce productivity

gains by 2035. We model a 40% abidot margin. But aren't we a non-profit? That saintly non-profit thing was very useful PR. Let's not worry about profits right now. I'm all in for the IPO, a mix of new shares and insider shares. And then we get to kill the shorts. Exactly. And beyond that, there's always the government is a backstop, giving a chance for the taxpayer to invest in vital national infrastructure. Let's not call it a backstop. It's really a public-private partnership investing in enabling infrastructure.

Look, putting all this on Uncle Sam carries big risks if the future doesn't deliver. I remember what they did to the bankers back in 2009. I'm not comfortable with that. I remember it well, Mr. Glum. A timing is key. It's about knowing when to get out. At Bright Spark, can you do something about your flickering lights? I'm sorry, this all sounds to me like fake it till you make it and make off before the trough. Can someone pass me the blue pill or a ticket to Mars? Well, actually, if you like, we can arrange a site visit to our data. center on the moon in a couple of years.

I read about that. I assumed it was an April full. A bright spark. Can you get your lights back on? Mr. Glum, in the end, we can always blame the market for not understanding the scale of the opportunity or mismanagement of our successes. I really think you're being too negative, Mr. Glum. Sorry, I have to take that.

It's Jensen on the line. Tudel Pipp. I have to leave too. There seems to be a problem. Thank you for your time today. I hope you will listen to the next edition of the capital cycle. This communication is provided for information purposes only. Please refer to Marathon's website and the Global Investment Reviews for further information, including important disclosures.