Palantir, Microsoft’s biggest warning gets real for AI stocks

In July, Microsoft (MSFT) CEO Satya Nadella surprised AI stock investors with an uncomfortable way to think about what they were buying into. As I wrote for TheStreet in "Microsoft CEO adds fuel to Palantir CEO's AI warning," Nadella argued that companies weren't merely paying for tokens. Moreover, they were feeding outside models the prompts, corrections, and institutional knowledge that eventually make those systems useful for their users. "You essentially pay for intelligence twice, once with money, and again with something even more valuable," Nadella wrote in his July essay. Days later, that warning became a central part of Palantir's bull case.