{"slug": "suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars", "title": "Suddenly, routers are worth infinite dollars", "summary": "Intel reported second-quarter revenue growth of 25%, its largest gain since 2011, after the federal government pushed favorable long-term contracts on the chipmaker. Monday.com announced it will cut ~20% of its staff at a cost of $45 million to $55 million to align its organizational structure with its strategic focus on the AI Work Platform.", "body_md": "# Suddenly, routers are worth infinite dollars\n\n**Friday!** With [oil prices rising](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/oil-price-trump-hormuz-red-sea-iran-war.html) and [gas prices trending higher](https://www.gasbuddy.com/charts), we may be heading for a [re-(re?)-re-commencement of hostilities with Iran](https://www.axios.com/2026/07/23/trump-axios-iran-interview). That’ll fix it. Ready to close out the week? Good. Let’s chat about Intel’s earnings, recent technology layoffs, Microsoft’s self-defense, and why model routers are so hot right now. To work! — Alex\n\n## 📈 Trending Up\n\n[AI labs going horizontal](https://techcrunch.com/2026/07/23/openai-makes-chatgpt-health-available-to-all-u-s-users/)…[AI tanking American borrowing](https://www.axios.com/2026/07/23/rates-treasury-yields-borrowing)…[trade barriers](https://www.wsj.com/economy/trade/trump-unveils-new-tariffs-designed-to-withstand-legal-scrutiny-21ef4093?mod=breakingnews)…[European AI](https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2026/07/23/3332364/0/en/Black-Forest-Labs-Unveils-FLUX-3-A-New-Multimodal-Frontier-Model-For-Visual-Intelligence.html)…[taking ball, going home](https://www.theinformation.com/briefings/amazon-shuts-ai-agent-research-lab-agi-layoffs)…[startup-startup acquisitions](https://www.theinformation.com/articles/sierra-acquires-agent-startup-takeoff-diversify-business)…[robotic investments](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2026-07-23/robotics-startup-genesis-in-talks-to-raise-about-500-million)…\n\n**Intel, after earnings:** Want to grow your chip business? Simple! Just allow the federal government to [renege on contracts](https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/intel-chips-act), [extort you for 10% of your shares](https://newsroom.intel.com/corporate/intel-and-trump-administration-reach-historic-agreement), and then [distort the market economy in your favor](https://www.wsj.com/tech/the-white-house-intel-trump-apple-84fe833e). Voilà! Second quarter revenue growth of 25% at Intel, its largest gain since *2011.*\n\n- The American chip ~giant\n[crushed](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/23/intel-intc-earnings-report-q2-2026.html)earnings expectations in the second quarter, sending its shares higher in early trading. There’s a lot of strength in Intel —[see our notes from 2024](https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/intel-isnt-going-to-dry-up-and-blow-away/)— even if its foundry business[remains a massive profit dog](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/INTC/earnings/INTC-Q2-2026-earnings_call-653928.html). Whatever the case, with the USG pushing it on other American tech companies, Intel shareholders can sink their teeth into favorable long-term contracts galore. State capitalism, baby!\n\n**Cutting staff, Monday.com and Patreon edition:** Monday.com, a public technology company which listed in mid-2021, announced sweeping staff cuts this week. Per a [filing](https://d18rn0p25nwr6d.cloudfront.net/CIK-0001845338/8caa6f84-8fce-4956-b817-dd7ae68b450d.pdf), the company will axe ~20% of its staff at a cost between $45 million and $55 million. Why the RIF? Monday.com is making the cuts (and following hires) “to align the Company’s organizational structure with its strategic focus on the AI Work Platform.”\n\nThe what? Let me help. Back in May, Monday.com — famous for its no-code tool that allowed companies to build their own software like Legos — announced that it is “now an AI Work Platform,” after making progress in that direction for several quarters. What does that mean? Platform-native agents to do work for customers. Which is a reasonable product shift, as no-code software has less bite in the agentic-coding era — why bother with no-code when coding is easy? Monday.com also added [consumption-based pricing recently](https://support.monday.com/hc/en-us/articles/36207944364434-AI-Models-and-Credits-understanding-and-optimizing-consumption), a normal move for a company offering more AI tooling to customers.\n\nHow is the evolution treating Monday.com? Well know more in early August when it drops earnings, but even in the first quarter (when its AI strategy was more nascent), it [reported ](https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/MNDY/earnings/MNDY-Q1-2026-earnings_call-554007.html)that the “market is [responding] to our AI product,” with “10% of [its] net new ARR in Q1 was driven by AI, a figure [it] expect[s] to grow as [its] AI offering expand and mature.”\n\nNaturally, it’s time for cuts. In Monday.com’s defense, retooling your business will necessarily maroon some internal folks. But I doubt that staff will find solace in that fact, after being cut just months after their employer claimed that “AI has driven a 32% increase in [its] output per developer and a 38% reduction in product time to market.”\n\nThen there’s Patreon. It’s also [cutting 20% of its staff](https://www.patreon.com/jackconte/posts/painful-update-164628951), the creator subscription company announced this week. Why? Per Patreon, its creator (core) business is “strong and consistent,” but as it works on its “transformation to becoming a media and community network,” it needs to shake up its internal operations. Patreon cites a need to “adjust” its cost structure amidst its evolution from creator subscriptions to a media-community network, while also changing how it works.\n\nGuess what? That means fewer people doing more:\n\nWe’re making a number of changes to our organizational structure and how we work. Specifically, we’re flattening the organization, refocusing teams on our top priorities, and evolving key aspects of our operations to make us faster at adapting to change. We’re making those changes because with a smaller team, we need a new organizational structure to continue executing effectively on our strategy and priorities, which are not changing.\n\nThe company’s CEO goes on to declare that AI models are not “substitutes for the creativity, judgment, detail orientation, or craftsmanship that our teammates have in spades,” while allowing that “AI *has *fundamentally transformed the tech industry, though, including how we work, how we build products, how we communicate, and more.”\n\nAI is not taking all the jobs. No. Instead, AI is eating away at team size as each human can accomplish more. That’s not precisely the same thing, but to the laid-off staffer, I doubt the distinction tastes of much difference.\n\n*It’s incredible how even while writing with my hands, I consciously shun anything approaching an ‘it’s not x, it’s y’ framing, simply to avoid tripping your internal AI writing allergy. New habits!*\n\n**Journalist-on-journalist violence:** The debate about what to do ([if anything](https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/open-source-eats-the-frontier/)) about increasingly performant open-weight models from China in the White House is pitting Commerce ([Lutnick](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9q28dlyxrzo)) and Treasury ([Bessent](https://www.businessinsider.com/treasury-secretary-chinese-ai-open-source-sanctions-kimi-k3-2026-7)) against one another. Congress is also making moves on AI regulation, [though not in a manner that most technologists will appreciate](https://lieu.house.gov/sites/evo-subsites/lieu-evo.house.gov/files/evo-media-document/ai-kill-switch-act.pdf?). *Anyway. *While covering the administration back-forth, [Politico dropped this gem](https://www.politico.com/news/2026/07/23/inside-the-white-house-debate-over-what-to-do-about-chinese-ai-01010997):\n\n[Axios reporting]that the administration was considering banning Chinese open-weight AI models caused widespread panic in Silicon Valley, but no such sweeping proposal was seriously on the table at that point, according to two people familiar with the discussions, granted anonymity to discuss private conversations.\n\nThat’s *lethal* shade in the journalism world.\n\nSo which way are the policy debates blowing in the White House? Per a spokesperson, the “President’s team is working closely together to balance innovation and security in AI policymaking.” Sounds like the Biden years!\n\n[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html) Trending Down\n\n[📉](https://finance.yahoo.com/news/servicenow-pledges-1-5bn-investment-110000403.html)\n\n[The Vance online machine](https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2026/07/24/knives-are-out-vance-gop-his-allies-say-its-coordinated-op/)…[lithium prices](https://oilprice.com/Metals/Commodities/Lithium-Prices-Sink-To-Five-Month-Lows-Amid-Oversupply-Jitters.html)…[open straits](https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/Saudi-Crude-Tanker-Goes-Dark-to-Slip-Through-Bab-el-Mandeb.html)…[crypto mining](https://www.theblock.co/post/409587/former-bitcoin-miner-poolin-files-chapter-11-sets-52-million-floor-bid-for-texas-operations)…[making good decisions](https://www.theverge.com/games/969969/xbox-testing-ad-supported-streaming)…[trading partner relations](https://www.cnbc.com/2026/07/24/trump-global-tariffs-trade-imbalance-forced-labor.html)…\n\n**Free speech in India:** ** CO **has not covered recent student protests in India past a few mentions in our Trending Up/Trending Down link sections. That’s on us. Youth are\n\n[incensed over security lapses and corruption in the nation’s life-altering college-testing regime](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c07rgpxe51no); a\n\n[satirical meme aimed at the ruling BJP party went viral](https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz72y11jjq1o)and became a movement; after taking to the streets to\n\n[demand reform and the removal of the country’s education head](https://www.economist.com/asia/2026/07/22/indias-gen-z-protesters-demand-a-proper-education)(Dharmendra Pradhan), protesters were\n\n[attacked and brutalized by the state](https://www.hrw.org/news/2026/07/23/india-excessive-force-used-against-student-protesters).\n\nNow, India’s “top cybercrime watchdog has ordered GitHub to take down Bitchat, the offline messaging app,” [CoinDesk reports](https://www.coindesk.com/tech/2026/07/24/india-orders-takedown-of-jack-dorsey-s-bitcoin-linked-messaging-app-bitchat), “as anti-government protesters in Delhi adopt mesh-networking tools to communicate through repeated internet shutdowns.” Nothing says democracy like Internet shutdowns (ala Iran), and using the power of the state to crush youth reform demands (ala China).\n\n- The United States is not covering itself in democratic glory at present; we can hold our friends to the same standards that we hold ourselves. And we’re both failing at present.\n\n**Stealing Microsoft’s customers:** AI is changing the technology game so quickly that Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella [can’t stop long-posting on Twitter](https://x.com/satyanadella/status/2080329851127669104). I read his regular missives as an indication that he’s spending some late nights at his desk, shittalking with the boys on Discord while pondering the future. Kidding, but figuring out where the technology market is going, and how to win, is no small task. Anyhoo, a few days back we discussed [Microsoft’s improving AI prowess](https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/the-new-enterprise-mantra-if-i-pay-your-margin-i-keep-my-data/), and how the company was beginning to use its homegrown AI models inside its own products.\n\nThis week, [Redmond detailed progress thereof](https://microsoft.ai/news/hill-climbing-mai-models-for-github-copilot-and-excel/). Two things matter: First, an internally built AI model “deployed in Excel is on par with GPT-5.6 for the most common tasks while being more cost-efficient,” the company states. I doubt it’s on par with GPT-5.6 *Sol*, but Microsoft probably doesn’t need to present *pure *frontier intelligence to the normies; they aren’t reading leaderboards anyway. And the cost point is critical; Microsoft wants to serve lots of AI to its customers without shipping all that revenue to its two portfolio companies, customers, vendors, and competitors, OpenAI and Anthropic.\n\nSecond, Microsoft’s MAI-Code-1-Flash model, which was “post-trained within the GitHub Copilot harness,” is being used by “millions of developers” since launch for “their day-to-day work, where it’s outperforming other similarly sized models while using fewer tokens.” Apart from the cost point, how does it perform? Microsoft claims that it has an “approximately 10% higher code accept rate than GPT 5.4 Mini and Claude Haiku 4.5 in VS Code,” and slightly better user retention metrics compared to the same.\n\nIs Microsoft suddenly flipping the AI tables? No. But it is proving that it can build AI models itself that work for its customers in production settings. Microsoft is also *learning *from a massive trove of enterprise coding and work data — you can’t leak to an AI lab when you *are* the AI lab. In theory, Microsoft should be able to quickly improve its model/harness/workflow combination thanks to that advantage, what it calls its ‘hill-climbing machine.’\n\n## Suddenly, routers are worth infinite dollars\n\n### Subscribe to Cautious Optimism to unlock the rest.\n\nBecome a paying subscriber of Cautious Optimism to get access to this post and other subscriber-only content.\n\n[Subscribe](https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/subscribe/?utm_source=Cautious+Optimism&utm_medium=website&utm_campaign=article-paywall)", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars", "canonical_source": "https://www.cautiousoptimism.news/suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars/", "published_at": "2026-07-24 14:27:49+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-07-24 14:39:37.079377+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["artificial-intelligence", "ai-products", "ai-infrastructure", "ai-chips", "ai-policy"], "entities": ["Intel", "Monday.com", "Patreon", "Trump administration", "USG"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/suddenly-routers-are-worth-infinite-dollars.jsonld"}}