The Brief

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."

White House AI adviser David Sacks speaks onstage during The Bitcoin Conference at The Venetian Las Vegas in January.

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"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 huge infusion of cash

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.

Paving the AI future with debt and other risky financing

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."

An aerial view of a 33 megawatt data center with closed-loop cooling system in Vernon, California.

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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."

Enormous spending hinging on returns that could be a fantasy

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.

Circular deals raise even more concern

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.

Open AI CEO Sam Altman speaks during Snowflake Summit 2025 at Moscone Center in June.

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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 high profile investors see bubble-popping on the horizon

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

The World Cup and the Hollywood Fringe theater festival may not have a huge Venn diagram of overlapping fans, but perhaps the closest is the theatrics of England fans singing "It’s Coming Home" loudly at Ye Olde King's Head in Santa Monica (get there early if you want a seat for the England match on Tuesday). Then head to the theater to check out sporty Fringe shows Ball Boy, where comedian Ben Fisher recounts his experiences as the gay son of a baseball umpire, or go catch Kickball: The Musical (self-explanatory!).

If music is more your thing, Licorice Pizza’s picks for the week include supermodel and eyebrows icon Cara Delevingne’s two special showcases at Hollywood Forever Cemetery on Monday and Tuesday; also on Monday, shoegaze legends Heavenly make their own comeback at the Regent.

Tuesday, rapper and singer Isaiah Rashad is at the Grammy Museum, and singer-songwriter Audrey Hobert plays her first of two nights at the Wiltern. Also on Wednesday, Khalid plays the Greek, Madison Beer and Thủy play the Forum, Britrockers Bôa play the Bellwether, and rising U.K. electropop star Girli is at the Lodge Room.

On Thursday, Summer Walker is at the Crypto.com Arena, and Killswitch Engage with Machine Head are at the Hollywood Palladium.

Elsewhere on LAist, you can find out who to blame for the lack of public bathrooms in L.A., make a plan to see the top 25 documentaries of this century and get our full guide to World Cup festivities around town.

Events

16th Annual Zócalo Book Prize Event: America, Can We Take Down the Walls Between Us?

Thursday, June 25, 7 p.m. 
ASU California Center Broadway 
1111 S. Broadway, Downtown L.A.
COST: FREE; MORE INFO

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Anand Pandian, the winner of the 2026 Zócalo Book Prize, will join political strategist and Lincoln Project co-founder Mike Madrid for a conversation about Pandian’s winning book, Something Between Us: The Everyday Walls of American Life, and How to Take Them Down. From fences around our houses to the "walled gardens" of the internet, our real and imagined borders are the focus of Pandian’s work. Plus, Deborah Ager, winner of the Zócalo Poetry Prize, will read her winning poem, “Letter from Indialantic.”

Rod Lightning & the Thunderbolts of Love

Thursday, June 25, 6 p.m.
Concerts on Cañon
Beverly Cañon Gardens
241 N. Canon Drive, Beverly Hills
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

Celebrate Pride with a free early evening concert in Beverly Hills, featuring classic hits from Rod Lightning & the Thunderbolts of Love.

29th Annual Dances With Films LA Festival

Wednesday, June 24, 4 p.m.
The Art of Sharing film screening
Chinese Theatre
6925 Hollywood Blvd., Hollywood
COST: $26.90; MORE INFO 

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The annual indie film fest Dances With Films continues through June 28, but this Wednesday is a great chance to see the block of documentary short films in the lineup. The docs include The Art of Sharing, which follows Michelin-starred chef and artist Minh H. Phan during her artist residency with Food Forward, a California nonprofit dedicated to rescuing fresh surplus produce that we’ve featured in Best Things to Do for their annual Zest Fest and volunteer opportunities.

Dataland 

Ongoing
100 S. Grand Ave., Downtown L.A.
COST: FROM $49; MORE INFO

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Refik Anadol Studio

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I had the chance to spend several hours at Dataland, the world’s first AI art museum, ahead of its opening, and to speak with its founders, the artists (and married couple) Refik Anadol and Efsun Erkiliç. The pair have brought to life something truly unique, and we’re lucky to be in L.A. to experience it. You enter into a deeply immersive (I know, overused word, but it’s true) world that takes you to the rainforests of the Amazon and into the connected networks that exist across nature. It’s a totally new way of going to a museum, and I think there’s a lot that other institutions that could take notes on how to make art and technology feel visceral and relevant. It just opened last week and is a permanent installation that takes more than two hours to really see, so plan accordingly.

Stud Country beginner night 

Monday, June 22, 8 p.m.
Los Globos 
3040 W. Sunset Blvd., Silver Lake
COST: $20; MORE INFO

Cross learning to country line dance off your bucket list at Stud Country’s weekly queer line-dancing party at Los Globos. Mondays are for beginners; Thursdays, you’d better know what you’re doing or fear the trample! Howdy, pardner.

Chris Fleming

Tuesday, June 23, 8 p.m.
Largo at the Coronet
366 N. La Cienega Blvd., Melrose 
COST: $50; MORE INFO 

Chris Fleming performs at the Largo this week.

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I saw Chris Fleming at a Netflix Is a Joke Festival event, and now I’m kind of obsessed with their quirky, offbeat humor. They’re doing a standup set at the Largo — which will definitely be longer than their fleeting but excellent Widow’s Bay turn as the shaman who gets sucked up into a tornado (IYKYK).

Live reading: Mrs. Alving & The Captain, Los Feliz

Wednesday, June 24, 7:30 p.m.
Echo Theater Company
Atwater Village Theatre
3269 Casitas Ave., Atwater Village
COST: FREE; MORE INFO 

Hamish Linklater's new play will get a free reading this week.

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Oh look, another Widow’s Bay reference from me. Y’all really need to watch this show. But I digress. This time, the featured actor from the Apple TV hit is Hamish Linklater, who wrote a new play — Mrs. Alving & The Captain, Los Feliz — and is also in the cast. Get in early and check out this free reading of the new comedy with Echo Theater Company.

It all began with a business contract signed inside a pickup truck in the desert — with little more than a dream and a song — and became something far bigger than anyone could have imagined.

That's the story of La Copine, the cult-favorite restaurant that helped redefine what dining in the Mojave Desert could be.

"I would not advise anyone to do what we did," says Claire Wadsworth, who, along with her wife and partner Nikki Hill, bought the restaurant with a $5,000 check from their honeymoon fund — no lawyers, no inspection, and seven days to come up with the rest of the money.

At the time, Wadsworth and Hill were ready to sign a lease on an L.A. restaurant space. Hill was working as a sous chef under Antonia Lofaso at Scopa in Venice, a chef she still counts among her closest mentors and friends. Wadsworth was in the music industry: a musician herself, trained at Berklee College of Music, who also ran the front desk at the Village recording studio in West L.A. There, she mastered the craft of hospitality, learning the food and drink orders of the high-profile clients who came through — Elton John's non-alcoholic Heineken, Weezer's penchant for vegan fare.

A cult favorite in the desert

Eleven years later, La Copine has become the kind of place people plan whole trips around — a remote desert restaurant that draws road-trippers, locals and a steady stream of famous fans alike. Set near Joshua Tree, it pulls in music from every direction: over the years it has fed and hosted the likes of Big Thief, Jenny Lewis, Courtney Barnett and Patti Smith, with neighbors like Pappy & Harriet's and Rancho de la Luna feeding the same creative current.

La Copine's hand-lettered sign stands roadside in Flamingo Heights, near Joshua Tree.

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What keeps people making the drive is a globe-hopping but unfussy menu — dishes pulled from France, the Mediterranean, Southeast Asia and beyond, built on fresh ingredients and a come-as-you-are spirit that treats a curious first-timer and a longtime regular exactly the same. It's food that's adventurous without being precious, the kind that has earned the restaurant a cult following and a reputation as one of California's most singular places to eat.

Inside the cookbook, each chapter opens with its own illustration.

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That sensibility is now a cookbook. La Copine: New California Cooking from an Oasis in the Desert , written with James Beard Award–nominated author Ben Mims, translates the restaurant's dishes — and its philosophy — for the home kitchen.

On June 25, Wadsworth and Hill bring it to Pasadena for Cookbook Live, an onstage conversation and live cooking demo presented by LAist in partnership with the James Beard Foundation. Wadsworth will also be giving a short performance under her alias St. Claire.

The food

The menu at La Copine refuses to sit still. Take the bánh mì, which started as a special, born from a craving for Southeast Asian flavors and an unwillingness to drive two hours to the San Gabriel Valley for the real thing. Their version leans indulgent: pork belly with a house five-spice-and-brown-sugar rub and yuzu kosho — a spicy Japanese citrus-chile paste — folded into house mayo. The galette complète, inspired by Gabrielle Hamilton's writing on the savory buckwheat crêpes of Brittany, is naturally gluten-free and built with ham, gruyère, a fried egg, and a tangy apricot gastrique. And the Sichuan noodles, a loose riff on dan dan, swap fermented black garlic for pickled mustard greens, tahini for Chinese sesame paste, and mushrooms for pork — vegan-friendly by design.

Staying affordable for their community

Beyond the food itself, Wadsworth and Hill consider affordability part of their mission at La Copine. In a town where, by their estimate, the median income is around $25,000, they aim to appeal to both diners accustomed to high-end prices and locals living on a fixed income.

The pair share the story of one of their favorite regulars, Patty, who lives on Social Security and comes in once or twice a month. She's open about what she budgets — about $50 a visit for the salad Copine, a glass of wine, a panna cotta, and a cup of gazpacho. "Patty needs to be able to come in here and afford the meal," they say.

Their goal, they say, is to make food so good that people forget what they spent, without making it so expensive that they're afraid to walk in.

Dessert lined up on the pass — proof the sweet end of the menu gets the same care as everything else.

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Music + food

When speaking with the La Copine couple, one thing becomes very clear: music is almost as central to the restaurant's concept as the food itself. Recalling the night they met, Hill says she was working a catering gig when Wadsworth put on a song by the band Devotchka — a group they both loved — a moment that signaled to each of them that they'd found their type. It now opens their cookbook.

To them, music is "woven into the fabric of our restaurant."

When it came to laying out the dining room, Wadsworth gave up a table to make space for a piano, so that she and visiting musicians could perform. She plays under the name St. Claire and hosts cabaret nights; a nomadic piano tuner now shows up to tune the instrument for free, won over by the fact that they sacrificed a table for it.

Ultimately, what Wadsworth and Hill hope visitors take away has less to do with any single dish than with a state of mind. Slow down, they say. Take in the view. Do nothing for a while.

"La Copine is a happy place in the universe," Wadsworth says.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho has resigned as leader of the Los Angeles Unified School District, four months after the FBI searched his home and office.

A district spokesperson confirmed a letter of resignation from Carvalho on Sunday night. The reason for the timing wasn’t immediately clear.

"The Board remains steadfast in its commitment to ensuring stability, continuity, and continued progress through strong leadership," the district said in an overnight statement. "Our focus remains unchanged: providing every student with a high-quality education, supporting our dedicated workforce, and maintaining the trust of the communities we serve."

FBI agents searched Carvalho’s home and office on Feb. 25. A U.S. Department of Justice spokesperson said the agency had a court-authorized warrant, but declined to provide additional details.

Within days of the search, LAUSD’s board voted unanimously to place Carvalho on paid administrative leave “pending investigation” and appoint longtime district administrator Andres Chait as acting superintendent.

The district did not respond to LAist’s questions about whether the “investigation” referenced is federal or internal. The L.A. searches are linked to a search of a Florida home associated with the company LAUSD contracted with to create a short-lived AI tool. Carvalho declared his innocence in a March statement and expressed a desire to return to his job.

What's next?

LAUSD’s superintendent is responsible for crafting a strategy for the education of nearly 400,000 students. The country’s second largest school district is confronting declining enrollment, the likelihood of further job cuts and fewer resources for high-needs schools.

Chait remains acting superintendent, but the board is expected to take up a discussion of the district’s leadership at a meeting this Wednesday. The status of the federal investigation into Carvalho is unclear.

In Carvalho's absence, Chait has been responsible for negotiations with the district's labor unions — ultimately avoiding a massive strike by teachers, principals and staff — as well as a significant reduction-in-force plan. Still, in the past several decades, LAUSD has not chosen an interim superintendent to keep the role permanently.

This is a developing story. Senior editor Ross Brenneman contributed to this story.

Heavy Manners Library, a beloved multipurpose event space on Alvarado Street, is hitting a big milestone. The organization, which hosts classes, music gigs and art exhibits, has outgrown its current location.

Defying the fate that has befallen many small operations in rapidly changing neighborhoods, Heavy Manners is staying in Echo Park.

Yulia Cymbura, head librarian at Heavy Manners Library.

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Book by book

Co-founder Matthew James-Wilson came up with the idea for the space while doing research for a book he wanted to write about the evolution of art in the internet age. During the process, he had an epiphany.

Why write just one book when you can provide access to hundreds of them? Why not start a library that doubles as an art space too?

“ You could imagine a gallery show happening in a library, or you could imagine a poetry reading happening in a library,” said James-Wilson.

An illustration by artist Patrick Kyle.

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Mixed media collages from artist Patrick Kyle's "How To Be Mean" exhibit.

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The name “Heavy Manners,” James-Wilson said, pays homage to a concept in reggae music that goes back to '70s deejay Prince Far I’s album Under Heavy Manners.

“ Sort of in reference to British colonial culture imposing this etiquette, or heavy manners, on Jamaican culture,” said James-Wilson.

Heavy Manners was just a couple of shelves when it opened in 2021, but through donations by artists and community members, its stacks grew.

The library has hosted more than 1,000 events, from drawing and sewing lessons to live music shows.

A room in Heavy Manners Library where events and workshops are held.

Interior of Heavy Manners.

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A small stage where events are held.

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“The space has taught me, as long as you can keep the calendar full and you can get things that people are excited about, people will share it with more people,” James-Wilson said.

Keep the calendar full

Carly Jean Andrews has been teaching nude figure drawing at Heavy Manners since 2023.

“Yeah, you have all the knowledge in the world on the internet, but it's so much more useful to just come here and have it be really literal,” Andrews said.

Carly Jean Andrews and Bijou Karman, instructors at Heavy Manners, posing in front of one of an art show.

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Bijou Karman teaches clothed figure drawing classes and has published zines and books of her fashion drawings through Heavy Manners.

“Today, I was here hand-assembling one of the books, and Carly was very kindly helping me assemble. It's a very community-oriented space where you actually meet people and learn new things,” said Karman.

Bijou Karman's recent art book "Images De Mode" is displayed near the entrance of the library.

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Changes on the block

Heavy Manners has been looking for more room to grow its library and event offerings.

The dream was to stay in the area and keep its relationship to Echo Park, despite the changes to the neighborhood, starting with the very block where Heavy Manners sits.

A book nook with a bench and a view of the outside street.

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The nearly century-old restaurant Taix is being demolished, while Silverlake Flea, which ran out of the French Bistro’s parking lot, has moved to Atwater Village.

“ It's a construction site that may be ongoing for a long time. You can sort of feel the sense of change happening, just on our block in general,” said James-Wilson.

Luckily, James-Wilson saw a nearby building on Sunset within Heavy Manners' budget and went for it. Their new home, about 400 feet away from the current location, is bigger and more wheelchair accessible. It also has an outdoor area that employees want to convert into a garden, or use for nature-oriented workshops.

Its current space won’t sit vacant though; Whammy Analog Media, a VHS video store expanding from a small backroom to a full-fledged shop, will be taking over.

A shelve with analog media available for check out.

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It takes a village

Recently, Heavy Manners put out a call for volunteers to help move its many books and zines in time for a planned mid-July reopening.

A "Free Zine Library" inside the space.

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“Because it's really close by, I'm kinda hoping to have just sort of a parade of people each carrying a box across the street,” said James-Wilson. “It takes a village to foster something like this, that is not lost on me.”

Various "Heavy Manners Library" prints.

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