Topline:
From backyard BBQs to car shows to just cruisin' around town, you know good times are on tap when Brenton Wood's hits like The Oogum Boogum Song, Gimmie Little Sign, or I Like The Way You Love Me are on the playlist.
Why it matters: Wood has enjoyed the kind of career and timelessness most musicians only dream of achieving. What motivated him to reach such heights? Hunger, according to the man himself.
Why now: Wood turns 82 today.
If Southern California had a soundtrack, Brenton Wood's music would be all over it.
From backyard BBQs to car shows to just cruisin' around town, you know good times are on tap when his hits like The Oogum Boogum Song, Gimme Little Sign, or I Like The Way You Love Me are on the playlist.
Now 82 years young on Wednesday, Wood has enjoyed the kind of career and timelessness most musicians only dream of achieving. What motivated him to reach such heights? Hunger, according to the man himself.
"I just needed a hit,” Wood told LAist recently. “I needed some money."
Wood grew up in San Pedro, one of 11 kids. Food was scarce. "My father would bring home rabbits sometimes with the buckshot still in them," he said.
Wood closely studied music trends. When his earliest recordings, a collection of doo-wop-style tunes didn’t take off, Wood went back to the drawing board, studying the hits and weaving the best parts into his own writing.
He also found inspiration in his own love life. "Whatever changes I went through, it [was] me learning that I could express my feelings to the person standing in front of me," he said.
A decade later, in 1967, when he released The Oogum Boogum Song, it was clear all that note-taking had paid off. It went on to peak at #34 on the Billboard Top 100.
Wood told us: "It was [Abracadabra] because they were casting a spell on me."
He didn’t even like the song when the label first presented it to him. Then, he spent six weeks reworking it. As he recorded that reworked version, he said he knew it was something special.
"I was laughing all the way through,” he recalled. “I thought, boy, this is gonna be catchy."
His hunch proved true. Shortly after the record debuted, he brought the new 45 to the historic Dolphins of Hollywood and had the in-house DJ play it.
"Before I got out of the record shop, people lined up ready to buy it. I thought, 'Maybe I'm onto something.'"
He sure was. His subsequent album, Baby You Got It, gave us faves like Gimme Little Sign and the low-rider deep cut Catch You On The Rebound.
The songs not only made him a mainstay on radio stations at the time but also continued to resonate in the subsequent decades on oldies radio, including The Art Laboe Connection Show.
Wood’s songs became particularly beloved in Latino communities — where they were immensely popular.
“Mr. Wood's music is part of the fabric of Chicano & Lowriding culture,” explains Julie Vasquez, president of Joyas Musicales, who’s been listening to Wood “since birth.” “His music connected with the culture and for decades has been handed down from generation to generation.”
Vasquez and her colleague, Edward "E-Dub" Rios, produce music that captures the oldies sound.
“It would be bigger than hitting the lotto to have an eternal impact through music like Mr. Wood has done,” Rios said.
There is a special place in Wood's heart for his Latino fans and his embrace by the communities.
"It makes me feel like I'm being accepted," Wood said.
Brenton Wood, one of the last living legends of "Oldies but Goodies," still performs and will appear at the Greek on October 7.
@austincrosstalk Happy Birthday, Brenton Wood! Full interview on LAist.com. #soul #lowriders #music #blm #brentonwood #lasvegas
♬ original sound - Austin
Topline:
Many experts say recent immigration and health policies are only making it harder — and less appealing — for foreign-born talent to augment the short-staffed American health system.
Some background: Immigrants make up about a quarter of all the country's doctors, and the U.S. health care system depends heavily on them. There are roughly 325,000 physicians — not including nurses or other critical health care workers — living and working in the U.S., who were born and trained elsewhere.
Why it matters: Immigrant physicians have historically found jobs in U.S. communities with serious health care staff shortages to begin with, so those places also stand to see more impact from curtailed international hiring, says Michael Liu, the Boston medical resident.
Read on... to learn more about what this means to patients.
Michael Liu grew up in Toronto, Canada, then moved to the U.S. for college and medical school because, to him, America was the premiere destination for fulfilling his aspirations to become a physician and researcher.
"You know, in chase of the American Dream, and understanding all the opportunities — that was such a draw for me," says Liu, who attended Harvard University. He is now 28 and has deep personal and professional roots in Boston, where he's an internal medicine resident at Mass General Brigham.
But this spring, he was shaken by the Trump administration's cuts to scientific research at the National Institutes of Health and staff at the Department of Health and Human Services. "That was a really striking moment for me," Liu says. "It made me question where, professionally, it made most sense for me. I still have strong connections to Toronto and mentors."
Then, in September, Liu was doing rounds with two doctors from Mexico and Costa Rica, when the administration hiked fees nearly 30 fold for H1B visas, which are for highly trained professionals, to $100,000. He watched his colleagues' tearful reactions to the sudden uncertainty that thrust on their careers, knowing that employers like hospital systems are unlikely to be able to afford to pay for such dramatic increases.
"It was terrible to see," Liu says. He has a green card, having married an American citizen earlier this year. But, he says, the Trump administration's actions affect him.
"It feels like my contribution is — just because I was not born in this country — less valued," Liu says. "I really hadn't thought so deeply about going back home before, but definitely it's been much more top of mind."
Immigrants make up about a quarter of all the country's doctors, and the U.S. health care system depends heavily on them. There are roughly 325,000 physicians — not including nurses or other critical health care workers — living and working in the U.S., who were born and trained elsewhere.
In rural communities, and in some subspecialties of medicine, the reliance on immigrant physicians runs much higher. In primary care and specialties like oncology, for example, foreign-born doctors account for about half of the workforce.
Meanwhile, health care is already burdened by retirements and burnout. Many experts say recent immigration and health policies are only making it harder — and less appealing — for foreign-born talent to augment the short-staffed American health system.
"This is a real pivotal moment right now where decades of progress could be at risk," says Dr. Julie Gralow, chief medical officer at the American Society of Clinical Oncology.
She says policies defunding everything from scientific research to public health have damaged the U.S.'s reputation to the point where she hears from hospitals and universities that top international talent are no longer interested in coming to America. "Up until this year, it was a dream — a wish! — that you could get a job and you could come to the U.S. And now nobody wants to come."
Gralow says, meanwhile, other countries like China, Denmark, Germany and Australia are taking advantage by recruiting international talent away from the U.S. — including American-born doctors and medical researchers — by promising stable grant funding and state-of-the-art facilities abroad.
American patients will feel the rippling impact from that, Gralow says, for generations.
Immigrant physicians have historically found jobs in U.S. communities with serious health care staff shortages to begin with, so those places also stand to see more impact from curtailed international hiring, says Michael Liu, the Boston medical resident.
He points to his own recent co-authored research in JAMA estimating that 11,000 doctors, or roughly 1% of the country's physicians, currently have H1B visas. "That might seem like a small number, but this percentage varied widely across geographies," he said, and they tend to congregate in the least-resourced areas, reaching up to 40% of physicians in some communities.
"High poverty counties had a four times higher prevalence of H1B physicians; we also saw that same pattern in rural communities," he says. (Many physicians and physician residents may have different kinds of visas, such as J1Bs, and others.)
Groups like the American Medical Association have asked the administration to exempt physicians from the new H1B fees. HHS did not respond to requests seeking comment about recent visa policies and health care workers, though some opposition has seemingly softened the president's position.
For the past six decades, immigrants have contributed heavily to the U.S.'s reputation as the undisputed world leader in health research and practice. In pay and prestige, the U.S. has been unparalleled, helping attract the world's best talent — at the expense of their home countries.
That began in 1965, during a period of expanding federal investment in public health and scientific research, spurred by international competition and fueled by Cold War rivalries over events like the Soviet launch of Sputnik. That year, Medicare and Medicaid were created, and with them, sudden demand for doctors, says Eram Alam, a professor of science history at Harvard.
"Overnight, you have 25 million — approximately — people who can now access health care services," Alam says. Passage that year of the Hart-Celler Immigration and Nationality Act opened U.S. borders to doctors and other people with in-demand skills, says Alam, who recently published a book, The Care of Foreigners, about the history of immigrant physicians in the US.
Over the following decade, the U.S. granted visas to 75,000 physicians, and by 1975, roughly 45% of all U.S. doctors were immigrants, Alam says. The U.S.'s first-rate reputation allowed it to attract more physician talent than America could educate and train: "There were more immigrant physicians that were entering the labor force per year than there were U.S. trained physicians that were joining," she says.
Now, Alam says, the U.S. is undoing a lot of that, as it dismantles its global leadership role in medicine and science, and narrows its borders.
Copyright 2025 NPR
In this edition:
Meet a turkey, eat a turkey, trot like a turkey, and more Thanksgiving events for your holiday week.
Highlights:
We here at LAist wish all our listeners, readers and members a Happy Thanksgiving! If you’re still looking for a great place to eat this weekend and don’t want to go the turkey route, Gab Chabrán has a list of unique ways to celebrate with cuisine, from Caribbean to Korean.
It’s also a big week for sports locally ahead of the holiday, with Tuesday’s Clippers vs. Lakers game at Crypto.com arena — and the 2026 World Cup isn’t that far away, as more teams move toward qualifying, so keep a lookout for which games will be played in L.A. this summer. Music-wise, Licorice Pizza recommends singer-songwriter and former Moldy Peaches member Kimya Dawson (of Juno soundtrack fame) at the Troubadour, indie-rock comic Fred Armisen is at Largo and psychedelic trio Khruangbin is playing two nights at the Fonda. Tuesday, Damiano David of Italian rockers Maneskin goes solo at the Wiltern, and Icelandic indie-rockers Of Monsters And Men play the Palladium. Thanksgiving eve has alternative rapper Danny Brown at the Bellwether, and the reunited Mars Volta are at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium.
Explore more on LAist.com, where you can find listeners’ suggestions for where to find serenity in L.A., head to Orange County for some best bagel picks and get tips for hosting a plant-based Thanksgiving.
Through Sunday, December 7
Ahmanson Theatre
135 N. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.
COST: FROM $40.25; MORE INFO
Is scaring the living daylights out of your extended relatives a good game plan for your holiday weekend? If so, Paranormal Activity, inspired by the movie franchise, is now a stage show that’s been a success in London and just opened in the U.S. in Chicago and now is here at the Ahmanson. CTG took its first foray into the horror theater category with 2:22 in 2023 and I was pleasantly surprised (well, ok, totally scared but in a good way) that one could translate a movie jump scare to the stage. The L.A. Times said the new production of Paranormal Activity is "brilliantly pulled off” — you’ve been warned!
Monday, November 24, 7:30 p.m.
Soka Performing Arts Center
1 University Drive, Aliso Viejo
COST: FROM $60; MORE INFO
On the more traditional end of the holiday entertainment spectrum is the utterly wholesome and ethereal music of the Vienna Boys Choir. Talk about a lasting impact – for six centuries, their music has defined the Christmas season. Kick your holidays off by catching their angelic voices performing Beethoven, Britten, and more as they come to Orange County at the Soka Performing Arts Center in Aliso Viejo.
Through Saturday, November 30
Los Angeles Convention Center
1201 S. Figueroa Street, Downtown L.A.
COST: FROM $45; MORE INFO
An L.A. tradition for car enthusiasts, the annual L.A. Auto Show is in town for 10 days, taking over the Convention Center with new models from all the big carmakers, concept cars that will define the future of the roads, demonstrations and much more.
Thursday, November 27, timed entry from 10 a.m.
Gentle Barn
15825 Sierra Hwy., Santa Clarita, CA
COST: $75; MORE INFO
Benjamin Franklin wanted to make the turkey our national bird, and with good reason — they are intelligent, courageous and native to America. You can honor the turkey by visiting the Gentle Barn for their annual Thanksgiving meet and greet with turkeys, where you can feed them treats and spend some time with these special birds.
Thursday, November 27, 8 a.m.
L.A. City Hall
200 N. Spring Street, Downtown L.A.
COST: FROM $45; MORE INFO
Whether you have one mile, 5K or 10K in you before Thanksgiving dinner, there’s a trot for you through downtown L.A. Put on your sneaks and head to City Hall for an early start before you dig in to all that apple pie later in the afternoon. There’s an after-party near the finish line in Grand Park so you can hang with your fellow runners, and the money raised goes towards local organizations like the Midnight Mission.
Ongoing
Various locations
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Have a few days off this week? Staying in town? Consider volunteering for one of the many local organizations that need your help to reduce food insecurity during the holiday season. LA Works has a huge list of options, including this one working the annual Thanksgiving Feast at the L.A. Boys & Girls Club.
Thursday, November 27, 9 a.m.
Online
COST: DROP-IN $39; MORE INFO
We all need a moment of zen before dealing with holiday stress. Take 45 minutes out of your morning for this online meditation session with Unplug Santa Monica teacher Heather Hayward.
Through Sunday, January 11
Beyond the Streets
434 N. La Brea Ave., Hollywood
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Shepard Fairey’s prints are synonymous with activism and social change, from his original OBEY posters to the iconic Obama HOPE image (which was just an answer on Jeopardy! last week). This new exhibit at Beyond the Streets showcases over 400 of Fairey’s prints and works inspired by print, commenting on the power of mass communication.
Monday and Tuesday, November 24 and 25, 1:30, 4:20, 7:10 p.m.
Laemmle NoHo
5240 Lankershim Blvd., North Hollywood
COST: $14.50; MORE INFO
Built off the deep environmental reporting of LA Times investigative journalist Rosanna Xia, the new documentary Out of Plain Sight follows Xia’s reporting on a toxic waste dump off the coast of L.A. Her reports found that as many as half a million barrels of toxic waste had been quietly dumped into the ocean decades ago. The film follows Xia as she searches for answers at sea, in the lab and up and down the California coast. The evening screenings are followed by a Q&A with the filmmakers and special guests.
Thursday, November 27, 12 p.m.
Weary Livers
2819 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica
COST: FREE; MORE INFO
Games, karaoke and drinks (of course) are all on tap at Weary Livers for this untraditional (but sure to be fun) Thanksgiving potluck. Meet some new friends and sing your heart out if you’re staying in town this weekend.
Through Sunday, November 30
Various locations
COST: CALL TO CONFIRM; MORE INFO
The Portland-based donut chain developed four holiday-themed creations to include in a special Thanksgiving Pie Box. Call 661-786-6366 to pre-order your Thanksgiving Pie Box to pick up between November 24 and 30. Partial proceeds from the limited-edition box will go to support local food banks and food pantries.
Topline:
L.A. County is proposing cuts to homeless services next year, at a time when families have already been struggling to find shelter.
A family’s struggle: Since October, L.A. resident Wayne has had to stay in his car with his partner and young child after being told by service providers there’s no housing assistance available. “A lot of the days is trying to make sure we can get a meal or two in limited funds, is trying to think outside the box and see if there's any other organizations to connect to,” he said.
The backstory: Homelessness among families with children has been on the rise. At the same time, recent funding cuts have strained services for families experiencing homelessness.
Wayne hands over a toy car to his son, A, at a park in Mid-City. The 4-year-old rolls it across a bench near the playground and watches it fall onto the pavement below.
“He'll find fun in most things,” Wayne said. “He’s pretty happy all the time. Nothing really bothers him very much — just going to bed.”
Bedtime, recently, has been a lot harder for A, who’s on the autism spectrum. Since mid-October, Wayne, alongside his partner and their son, have been staying in their car. (We’re using A’s first initial and Wayne’s first name only to protect their family’s privacy.)
“He does not like it, he hates it,” Wayne said. “The only way he'll sleep in the car is if he's literally on, usually my lap.”
They’re one of the many Los Angeles families who have struggled to find housing over the past several months as options dry up. And now it’s likely to get even harder for families like theirs, in the face of more funding cuts.
Wayne and his family lost their apartment in June after falling behind on their rent. They stayed in motels across L.A. county with about 40 days worth of vouchers — 32 days from the CalWorks program and 8 days through 211.
But they haven’t been able to get any more since, and the family shelters they turned to have been full. They pawned off some items, like a guitar, to help stay indoors, but that only helped in the short-term. He says it’s been a struggle to find a safe place to sleep with a young child.
“The first time we slept in the car it was really, really hot, and he ended up with heat rashes all over his back,” he said.
In April of last year, Wayne was laid off from his job in A/V tech support. His partner has a chronic illness so he’s the sole earner. Up until then, he had saved up for a rainy day situation. He’d invested in retirement, and even had some stock.
“I’m a dad now — obviously it’s such a different way of thinking about the short term, future term, long term,” he said.
He had $30,000 saved up, enough to stay afloat for about six months to eight months… but then, he couldn’t find a job. By November of last year, they had run out of money.
“It's been awful. Most of the jobs now are like part-time or temporary positions,” Wayne said. The jobs didn’t offer enough to sustain a one-bedroom apartment in L.A.
In order to reasonably afford a one-bedroom in the L.A. area, workers need to earn at least $40.02 per hour, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.
Aside from the job searching process, Wayne has spent most of his days trying to find a meal or two for his family — and on the phone trying to find any other resources. He’ll also take his son to the park or the library.
“The most important thing is trying to make sure he basically is comfortable as much as possible, that he's [having] fun, that he's not really understanding what's going on — which I think we're doing a good job [at] so far,” Wayne said.
Recently, they went to a family solutions center at PATH, a homeless services provider in LA. There was no housing assistance available, so they gave Wayne a list of other places to try. He and his family had already tried those resources.
Wayne’s car has a stack of papers like these ones, pointing to laundry services and food banks and Medi-Cal resources.
Sasha Morozov, regional director of services at PATH, says that’s what her agency has had to do in recent months, as they’ve been unable to take on new families due to recent funding cuts. She said they’ve had to change their strategy from trying to get people housed imminently to connecting them to other resources — such as childcare or school-based help.
“ That really has shifted, not because people don't want to help, but the resources aren't there. It’s heartbreaking.”
Recent funding cuts include a 71% reduction in state dollars that have helped families experiencing homelessness. Morozov said she’s worried the situation will get even worse with new federal cuts as well as a proposed cut of $300 million to county funding for homeless services next fiscal year. LAist reported in August that homelessness among families with children has been rising.
Data from 211 LA show that calls for emergency shelter from January this year to early September were up by more than 20,000 calls, compared to the same time period last year.
For Wayne and his family, they’re now looking to move out of state. After a year and a half of job searching, he recently got a job offer from a company out in the Midwest. Though he’s grown up in California, he says he has to leave.
He said he was disheartened to see the mayor and other officials tout recent homelessness count numbers.
“It felt like a slap in the face,” he said. “Most people can't afford a one-bedroom on a full-time job here. There's nothing to celebrate. Everyone is closer to homelessness than they are to stability. Most people who are working class, especially young people, probably 40 and under, cannot afford a one bedroom by themselves.”
His new job is supposed to start in January. He said as soon as he can save up enough money for a security deposit and rent a new place out of the state, they’ll be driving out there.
Wayne says his son doesn't understand what's going to happen next, but says he'll adjust quickly.
“As long as he has, like, ice cream and the snacks that he wants, he's happy to go anywhere,” he said. “He loves when we drive around. I already know on the road he would absolutely love to see all the change in the scenery and he's gonna be excited.”
Topline:
Tech companies are pouring billions into AI chips and data centers.
Why it matters: Increasingly, they are relying on debt and risky tactics.
Why now: Financial analysts are worried there's a bubble that will soon pop.
Perhaps nobody embodies artificial intelligence mania quite like Jensen Huang, the chief executive of chip behemoth Nvidia, which has seen its value spike 300% in the last two years.
A frothy time for Huang, to be sure, which makes it all the more understandable why his first statement to investors on a recent earnings call was an attempt to deflate bubble fears.
"There's been a lot of talk about an AI bubble," he told shareholders. "From our vantage point, we see something very different."
Take in the AI bubble discourse and something becomes clear: Those who have the most to gain from artificial intelligence spending never slowing are proclaiming that critics who fret about an over-hyped investment frenzy have it all wrong.
"I don't think this is the beginning of a bust cycle," White House AI czar and venture capitalist David Sacks said on his podcast All-In. "I think that we're in a boom. We're in an investment super-cycle."
"The idea that we're going to have a demand problem five years from now, to me, seems quite absurd," said prominent Silicon Valley investor Ben Horowitz, adding: "if you look at demand and supply and what's going on and multiples against growth, it doesn't look like a bubble at all to me."
Appearing on CNBC, JPMorgan Chase executive Mary Callahan Erdoes said calling the amount of money rushing into AI right now a bubble is "a crazy concept," declaring that "we are on the precipice of a major, major revolution in a way that companies operate."
Yet a look under the hood of what's really going on right now in the AI industry is enough to deliver serious doubt, said Paul Kedrosky, a venture capitalist who is now a research fellow at MIT's Institute for the Digital Economy.
He said there is a startling amount of capital pouring into a "revolution" that remains mostly speculative.
"The technology is very useful, but the pace at which it is improving has more or less ground to a halt," Kedrosky said. "So the notion that the revolution continues with the same drum beat playing for the next five years is sadly mistaken."
The gusher of money is rushing in at a rate that is stunning to financial experts.
Take OpenAI, the ChatGPT maker that set off the AI race in late 2022. Its CEO Sam Altman has said the company is making $20 billion in revenue a year, and it plans to spend $1.4 trillion on data centers over the next eight years. That growth, of course, would rely on ever-ballooning sales from more and more people and businesses purchasing its AI services.
There is reason to be skeptical. A growing body of research indicates most firms are not seeing chatbots affect their bottom lines, and just 3% of people pay for AI, according to one analysis.
"These models are being hyped up, and we're investing more than we should," said Daron Acemoglu, an economist at MIT, who was awarded the 2024 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences.
"I have no doubt that there will be AI technologies that will come out in the next ten years that will add real value and add to productivity, but much of what we hear from the industry now is exaggeration," he said.
Nonetheless, Amazon, Google, Meta and Microsoft are set to collectively sink around $400 billion on AI this year, mostly for funding data centers. Some of the companies are set to devote about 50% of their current cash flow to data center construction.
Or to put it another way: every iPhone user on earth would have to pay more than $250 to pay for that amount of spending. "That's not going to happen," Kedrosky said.
To avoid burning up too much of its cash on hand, big Silicon Valley companies, like Meta and Oracle, are tapping private equity and debt to finance the industry's data center building spree.
One assessment, from Goldman Sachs analysts, found that hyperscaler companies — tech firms that have massive cloud and computing capacities — have taken on $121 billion in debt over the past year, a more than 300% uptick from the industry's typical debt load.
Analyst Gil Luria of the D.A. Davidson investment firm, who has been tracking Big Tech's data center boom, said some of the financial maneuvers Silicon Valley is making are structured to keep the appearance of debt off of balance sheets, using what's known as "special purpose vehicles."
The tech firm makes an investment in the data center, outside investors put up most of the cash, then the special purpose vehicle borrows money to buy the chips that are inside the data centers. The tech company gets the benefit of the increased computing capacity but it doesn't weigh down the company's balance sheet with debt.
For example, a special purpose vehicle was recently funded by Wall Street firm Blue Owl Capital and Meta for a data center in Louisiana.
The design of the deal is complicated but it goes something like this: Blue Owl took out a loan for $27 billion for the data center. That debt is backed up by Meta's payments for leasing the facility. Meta essentially has a mortgage on the data center. Meta owns 20% of the entity but gets all of the computing power the data center generates. Because of the financial structure of the deal, the $27 billion loan never shows up on Meta's balance sheet. If the AI bubble bursts and the data center goes dark, Meta will be on the hook to make a multi-billion-dollar payment to Blue Owl for the value of the data center.
Such financial arrangements, according to Luria, have something of a checkered past.
"The term special purpose vehicle came to consciousness about 25 years ago with a little company called Enron," said Luria, referring to the energy company that collapsed in 2001. "What's different now is companies are not hiding it. But having said that, it's not something we should be leaning on to build our future."
Silicon Valley is taking on all this new debt with the assumption that massive new revenues from AI will cover the tab. But again, there is reason for doubt.
Morgan Stanley analysts estimate that Big Tech companies will dish out about $3 trillion on AI infrastructure through 2028, with their own cash flows covering only half of that.
"If the market for artificial intelligence were even to steady in its growth, pretty quickly we will have over-built capacity, and the debt will be worthless, and the financial institutions will lose money," Luria said.
Twenty-five years ago, the original dot-com bubble burst after, among other factors, debt financing built out fiber-optic cables for a future that had not yet arrived, said Luria, a lesson, it appears, tech companies are not worried about repeating.
"If we get to the point after spending hundreds of billions of dollars on data centers that we don't need a few years from now, then we're talking about another financial crisis," he said.
Another aspect of the over-heated AI landscape that is raising eyebrows is the circular nature of investments.
Take a recent $100 billion deal between Nvidia and OpenAI.
Nvidia will pump that amount into OpenAI to bankroll data centers. OpenAI will then fill those facilities with Nvidia's chips. Some analysts say this structure, where Nvidia is essentially subsidizing one of its biggest customers, artificially inflates actual demand for AI.
"The idea is I'm Nvidia and I want OpenAI to buy more of my chips, so I give them money to do it," Kedrosky said. "It's fairly common at a small scale, but it's unusual to see it in the tens and hundreds of billions of dollars," noting that the last time it was prevalent was during the dot-com bubble.
Lesser-known companies are getting in on the action, too.
CoreWeave, once a crypto mining startup, pivoted to data center building to ride the AI boom. Major AI companies are turning to CoreWeave to train and run their AI models.
OpenAI has entered deals with CoreWeave worth tens of billions of dollars in which CoreWeave's chip capacity in data centers is rented out to OpenAI in exchange for stock in CoreWeave, and OpenAI, in turn, could use that stock to pay its CoreWeave renting fees.
Nvidia, meanwhile, which also owns part of CoreWeave, has a deal guaranteeing that Nvidia will gobble up any unused data center capacity through 2032.
"The danger," said the MIT economist Acemoglu,"is that these kinds of deals eventually reveal a house of cards."
Some influential investors are showing signs of bubble jitters.
Tech billionaire Peter Thiel sold off his entire stake in Nvidia worth around $100 million earlier this month. That came after SoftBank sold a nearly $6 billion stake in Nvidia.
And in recent weeks, AI bubble pessimists have rallied around Michael Burry, the hedge-fund investor who made hundreds of millions of dollars betting against the housing market in 2008. He was the subject of the 2015 film The Big Short. Since then, though, he's had a mixed reputation for market predictions, having warned about imminent collapses that never came to pass.
For what it's worth, Burry is now betting against Nvidia, accusing the AI industry of hiding behind a bunch of fancy accounting tricks. He's homed in the circular deals between companies.
"True end demand is ridiculously small. Almost all customers are funded by their dealers," Burry wrote on X. He later wrote: "OpenAI is the linchpin here. Can anyone name their auditor?"
As tech companies sink billions into data centers, some executives themselves are freely admitting there looks to be some over exuberance.
OpenAI CEO Sam Altman told reporters in August: "Are we in a phase where investors as a whole are overexcited about AI? My opinion is yes. Is AI the most important thing to happen in a very long time? My opinion is also yes."
And Google chief executive Sundar Pichai told the BBC recently that "there are elements of irrationality" in the AI market right now.
Asked how Google would fare if the bubble burst, Pichai responded: "I think no company is going to be immune, including us."
Copyright 2025 NPR
