Good morning.
While most headlines are focused on earnings, interest rates, or Musk’s latest move, the real signals are happening at the intersection of technology, policy, and capital flows. This week, we got three major stories — and each of them hints at the type of world we’re about to be building into.
Let’s break them down.
🧠 Trump’s AI Arms Race: Breaking Up Nvidia? Not So Easy
Donald Trump isn’t just campaigning — he’s gearing up for a full-blown tech power play. This week he signed executive orders aimed at supercharging U.S. dominance in artificial intelligence. His team even floated the idea of breaking up Nvidia — until realizing how tightly integrated and defensible its position is in the global chip supply chain.
For context, Nvidia is now worth over $4 trillion. It’s powering nearly every AI rollout from hyperscalers to startups, and CEO Jensen Huang, a man who’s always tried to stay apolitical, is now finding himself the unlikely diplomat between Washington and Beijing.
As a real estate developer, I’m watching this closely — not just for the tech implications, but because AI deployment affects energy demand, data center growth, and infrastructure development. If AI is the next industrial revolution, then the dirt under those servers is going to become increasingly valuable.
📈 Tariffs Are Back — And They’re Blurring the Line Between Policy and Posturing
Trump isn’t just talking AI. He’s also doubling down on tariffs, proposing a 15% floor across the board. He’s already working deals like the new U.S.–Japan trade pact and using them as templates for more to come.
But let’s be clear: this isn’t just a trade strategy — it’s a revenue model for a government trying to fund aggressive tax-and-spend policies while reshaping the supply chain map. And it’s already generating wins for fixed income traders at Deutsche Bank as volatility spikes.
From a capital markets standpoint, this matters. If tariffs rise, materials, appliances, and even modular components for housing could see price surges. For developers already walking tight underwriting lines, this could further erode margins.
This also tells me that local sourcing, regional logistics, and value engineering will only grow in importance. If you’re still underwriting with a “pre-COVID global supply chain” mindset, you’re not playing the game on the same board anymore.
🧬 Elon Musk, Neuralink, and the $9 Billion Bet on Your Brain
Elon Musk wants to put Neuralink chips in 20,000 people per year by 2031, generating over $1 billion in revenue. So far, fewer than 10 people have received implants, and none have them for restoring vision or treating Parkinson’s — yet the ambition is staggering.
He’s not alone. China’s racing toward its own brain-computer breakthroughs. LinkedIn’s Reid Hoffman and Coinbase’s Fred Ehrsam are building parallel tracks with ex-Neuralink engineers.
The takeaway? Venture capital is turning its gaze toward the interface between human cognition and computing. While speculative, these moves signal where long-term investors are allocating risk capital: not just AI tools, but the hardware that connects biology and machine.
If that seems far from real estate — think again. Technology doesn’t just change how we live, it changes what we build, where we build it, and who we build it for.
The future tenant isn’t just carrying a phone — they might be interfacing with the internet neurologically. That will impact accessibility, healthcare infrastructure, and the broader real estate ecosystem.
🇺🇸 The $20 Billion Tourism Leak
Let’s shift to something more grounded: tourism dollars.
Historically, tourists didn’t just come for Broadway shows or the Grand Canyon — they came to spend. Shopping is the #1 activity for international visitors. But Trump’s border crackdowns and trade war positioning are now threatening nearly $20 billion in tourism revenue.
That matters for developers with exposure to retail, hospitality, and mixed-use urban cores.
If fewer international tourists are coming — or spending less when they do — expect retail tenants to pull back, vacancy to rise, and foot traffic to drop in key corridors. It’s a small signal that could echo out across core markets, especially in places like New York, Miami, and Los Angeles.
Final Thought
If you’re a developer or investor, this week wasn’t just about AI, tariffs, or Elon’s latest moonshot — it was about how policy, tech, and sentiment are colliding to reshape the macro backdrop.
None of these stories exist in a vacuum. They’re shaping cap rates, construction costs, buyer behavior, and the regulatory landscape we all operate in.
The next cycle won’t be about who scales the fastest — it’ll be about who interprets the signals first and adapts accordingly.
Until next time,
Daniel