In partnership with
Welcome to yet another insightful edition of Market Mosaic.
This week, we explore a $690 billion AI infrastructure spending spree that is outpacing AI-native revenue 20-to-1, and how net interest payments overtook defense spending for the first time, hitting $1.1 trillion in 2026.
We also look at how freight rates are running $2,000 higher on the East Coast than on the West Coast, and why 57% of shoppers refuse to buy anything with zero reviews.
Insights Team, Rwazi
Cloud giants plan to outspend AI-native revenue by 20 to 1 this year
The top 5 US cloud and AI infrastructure providers plan to spend $660 billion to $690 billion on capital expenditure in 2026, nearly double the roughly $380 billion they spent in 2025. Amazon alone plans $200 billion, mostly on data centers, and Alphabet's cloud backlog jumped 55% in a single quarter to more than $240 billion.
Microsoft plans $120 billion or more, yet Azure is sitting on an $80 billion backlog of orders it can't fulfill because of power constraints, not chip shortages. OpenAI's revenue run rate sits near $20 billion and Anthropic's near $9 billion, up 9 times in a year, meaning the entire AI-native industry still earns less than any single cloud giant plans to spend.
Key Insights
Spending is now outpacing AI-native revenue by roughly 20 to 1, and power availability, not chip supply, caps how fast new capacity comes online. See how your own AI infrastructure bets stack up against that bottleneck.
Chart: Net interest and defense spending, 1980-2026. Data visualization by Market Mosaic.
Washington now pays more to service its debt than to defend the country
Net interest payments hit $1,102 billion in 2026, up 218% from $345.5 billion in 2020. That figure first exceeded defense spending in 2024, when interest costs reached $882 billion, compared with $874 billion in defense outlays.
Defense spending kept climbing too, reaching $950 billion in 2026, but interest costs are growing faster, and the gap has only widened since the 2024 crossover. The Fed funds rate has eased to 4% from a 2024 peak of 5.33%, yet the interest bill keeps climbing because of the sheer amount of debt now on the books.
Key Insights
The federal government now spends more servicing debt already on the books than funding the military, and that gap is set to widen as maturing debt rolls over at rates still far above the near-zero era of 2010 to 2021. See how your own carrying costs compare as rates stay elevated.
57% of shoppers won't buy anything with zero reviews, while 74% think retailers collect too much data
96% of shoppers say ratings and reviews shape their purchase decisions, and 95% read them regularly before checking out. Just 72% put the same weight on a recommendation from family or friends, and only 11% trust a TV commercial at all.
That reliance cuts both ways. 74% of consumers believe retailers collect more personal data than necessary, and retailers rank as the second-most-distrusted category for handling that data at 30.8%, trailing only tech companies at 56.4%.
Key Insights
Shoppers trust reviews more than word of mouth or advertising, but the tracking behind personalized recommendations makes them uneasy, and retailers now rank second only to tech companies as the least trusted stewards of that data. See how your own review and data-collection setup handles that tension.
East Coast freight rates are now running $2,000 above the West Coast as peak season arrives early
Container rates from China to the US East Coast are holding between $8,000 and $9,000, roughly $2,000 above the $7,000 average on the West Coast. Even the cheapest available East Coast rate, around $7,800, is hard to book because open capacity on that lane is scarce.
This year's peak shipping season started roughly a month earlier than the traditional late-summer pattern, and elevated rates are expected to hold through the rest of September. Typhoon-related vessel disruptions in China are adding further delay on top of the seasonal squeeze.
Key Insights
An early peak season and tight East Coast capacity mean rates won't ease by fall, and which coast a shipment lands on now shifts cost by roughly $2,000 a container. See how your own routing decisions hold up against that gap.
Some teams never seem to stop moving. They're on Attio, the agentic CRM.
Every customer signal is captured in one shared context layer, always current and compounding. Agents and workflows build pipeline, chase every buying signal, and move deals forward, an always-on revenue engine running alongside your team.
With Attio, you’ll get:
Leads automatically prioritised and routed to the right rep
Expansion and risk signals caught the moment they land
Follow-ups written in your voice, already there when you arrive
Teams like Parallel, Turbopuffer, and Wordsmith build on Attio. Are you one of them?
You're Invited: Tax-Smart Investing webinar on September 17. Learn the portfolio moves that can help you maximize your after-tax returns — join Range live, and bring your questions for Q&A.
Stop making AI decisions in the dark.
Leadership is asking: where is AI delivering value for us and where is it creating risk? Right now, most teams have no idea.
With Harmonic Security’s Usage Explorer, you get a complete picture of how your organization actually uses AI, automatically categorized into custom use cases with complete tool-level granularity.
We've been building, and it's all live for you today.
Ask the Desk - Premium members can now ask any market question and get the desk's answer, drawn from all 203+ issues we've published. Sign in at newsletter.rwazi.com/the-desk.
Two free decision tools - The Cost of Being Wrong prices the call you're about to make. What It Takes works backward from your revenue goal. Both take about a minute: newsletter.rwazi.com/cost-of-being-wrong · newsletter.rwazi.com/what-it-takes.
The Circle. Our reader community is open: debate each week's data with founders, executives, and investors, and ask our analysts anything. Join for free at newsletter.rwazi.com/community.
