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Curing cancer. Reducing carbon emissions. Maximizing business efficiency. To achieve all this and develop untold social goods, artificial intelligence accelerationsts at companies like Google, Meta, and OpenAI believe their industry has a duty to speed ahead towards superintelligence, or AI thats far superior to humans at most tasks. Key to that revolution will be the build-out of data centers. Meanwhile, a technical transformation of the workplace already appears to be underway. The nations largest employer, Walmart, said that because of its AI implementation, hiring will remain flat over the next three years even if revenues rise. Every businessnot just the big oneswill eventually reckon with some version of that transformation. Whoever wields the technology best will get an edge. Regulators, in turn, must find forward-looking ways of controlling the excesses of the winners while mitigating the hardship of the losersand fast. Sen. Mark Kelly fears that the biggest losers could be working-class people. The Arizona Democrats AI for America plan, arguably the most comprehensive Democratic answer to the Trump administrations pro-industry AI Action Plan, would create an industry-financed AI Horizon Fund to pay for energy-grid upgrades and workforce reskilling. But while Kellys plan is admirable … it dodges the policy specifics necessary for real legislation. He also fails to grasp certain economic and political realities of the AI industry and its players. And the federal government, as it heads for a shutdown, seems far from capable of passing any thoughtful AI legislation. Here, we attempt to fill in these gaps. Data centers everywhere The AI models poised to reshape business practices reside on servers humming away in the dark within massive single-story buildings called data centers. New data centers represent the most tangible sign of the so-called AI boom. Most estimates say that there are more than 500 hyperscale data centers, housing tens or hundreds of thousands of servers, in operation in the U.S. today. Between 50 and 100 more are either licensed or under construction in 2025. Kellys home state of Arizona is regarded as one of the most attractive places for data center projects because of the low cost, reliable power, affordable land, easy permitting, and tax incentives. (Apple, Google, Microsoft, and Amazon Web Services (AWS) already have data centers there.) States compete to attract data center projects. They come at a cost. Over the past five years, 10 states have already lost more than $100 million per year to data center tax abatements, with Texas and Virginia each giving away roughly $1 billion, according to a study by Good Jobs First, an economic development policy advocacy group. According to the study, a total of 32 states offer such exemptions to Big Tech companies and their partners; 12 states dont disclose the exemption amounts, which makes calculating a national total difficult. But its in the billions, and climbing. Whether all this investment truly delivers in the long run remains unclear. The infrastructure gap All this is causing Arizona citizens to ask more about these projects. In August, Tucson rejected Project Blue, a proposal to build a 290-acre AWS data center near the city. They cited concerns over water use, the potential burden on the local power grid, and the possibility of spiking electricity rates to fund additional power infrastructure. Deloitte estimates that the power demand from AI data centers in the U.S. could grow to about 123 gigawatts by 2035, up from roughly 4 gigawatts required in 2024. The problem is that the existing power grid was built to serve households and businesses, not legions of sprawling data centers. When a new one goes up, the local or regional energy supplier typically must augment the capacity of the grid to meet the demand. And those infrastructure costs are often passed on to residents through rate hikes or tax increases. Those same tax increases and electricity rate hikes could hit businesses in the area, including small businesses. Who should pay? Kelly believes that AI companies should pay for energy infrastructure upgrades necessitated by data center power demand. But his proposal offers no mechanism for metering the AI companies financial obligation or amount they should pay into the fund for infrastructure augmentation. Making this workable would require working with utilities and state and local energy regulators to determine a fair fee. To pay for infrastructure upgrades, Kelly could require a small but significant percentage of every megawatt of power purchased by the data center operator to go into a hypothetical fund. Congress could also require data center developers to buy or lease enough land to contain both their facilities and the renewable energy infrastructure to power and cool them. The data center operators could also be required to pay to connect the renewable sources to the local grid, should the power they generate go unutilized. Elon Musks xAI, for example, brought its own power to its massive Colossus data center in Memphis. Unfortunately, it was dirty powermethane-powered turbines, and the facility quickly became one of the areas biggest pollutersa cautionary tale. For a city and its utility, the biggest fear is that an AI data center could pick up and leave, in pursuit of more permissive environmental laws or cheaper power rates, leaving behind an empty hulk and suddenly unemployed local workers. Establishing federal-level environmental guidelines and power-grid responsibilities could remove some of the incentives to leave, forcing data-center operators to consider that at least some of those costs would be the same no matter where they went. Reskilling, but make it AI Tech companies often say that in their ideal world, humans will work in tandem with AI tools, and that new jobs will emerge that require some skill with these technologies as old ones are eliminated. Arriving at the right balance will likely take years. Because of the ongoing, rapid advances in AI, the process may never truly end. In the near term, the biggest beneficiaries are likely to be the companies selling the tools. Kelly argues, reasonably, that the AI companies should help pay for the costs of job displacement and reskilling workers. He suggests that the AI Horizon Fund be used to pay for AI education programs at community colleges, trade schools, and universities. Kelly also believes that the government should pass laws to make sure that workers themselves benefit from AI efficiencies. This could mean reimagining what the workweek looks like, as well as policies to strengthen worker bargaining power through stronger union representation.
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E-Commerce
In the early days of the internet, collectors traded rare whiskey and wine on eBay alongside Beanie Babies and vintage sneakers. But then, in 1999, six months after closing down firearm sales, eBay announced they would ban the sale of alcohol and tobacco products as well. “As a general rule, these laws are just so complex and contradictory, that we just decided that in the best interest of our users to prevent that situation from ever occurring,” then-spokesman Kevin Pursglove said. More than 25 years later and almost a century after the end of Prohibition, the regulatory environment is no less forgiving, and the resale of spirits online has been scattered across niche forums, gray-market Facebook groups, and high-end houses like Christies, Sothebys and Bonhams. The patchwork of U.S. liquor laws Domestic laws are complex. Six states still ban retail spirits sales on Sundays, to start. Seventeen operate as control states with a government monopoly on liquor sales. And while 47 states allow wineries to ship directly to consumers, only 11 extend that same privilege to distillers, according to the Distilled Spirits Council of the United States. Industry groups have shepherded a bill into Congress that would give the USPS authority to mail alcoholic beverages, but a final vote could take years. Few competitors have cracked this market. BAXUS uses blockchain for tokenized bottle trading, while U.K.-based Whisky.auction, Whisky Auctioneer, and Whisky Hammer focus outside the U.S. Good Bottle Auctions, based in Connecticut, sticks to the Northeast with in-person delivery. But since launching in 2020, a company called Unicorn has expanded to serve the continental U.S., logging over six million bids across half a million lots, totaling $125 million in sales. Its Chicago vault holds more than $100 million in inventory, with weekly and monthly auctions that ship purchases to pickup locations nationwide. Sothebys vs. Unicorn CEO Phil Mikhaylov, who previously worked at UberEats and delivery startup GoPuff, frames Unicorns speed and scale as a direct extension of that background. He says that most legacy auction houses top out at a few hundred lots per week, while Unicorn regularly clears thousands. I think what you see at other auction housessay, a Sothebysis they might have roughly 300 lots in an auction every single week. We’re doing, on a bad week, 3000 lots. On average, we’re doing 4000 to 5000 a week, Mikhaylov says. Unicorn CEO Phil Mikhaylov [Photo: Unicorn] Sothebys, for the record, did $114 million in spirits and wine sales in 2024a slump from their record of $159 million the year before. At this point, we sell $12 million of whiskey per week, Mikhaylov said in an interview earlier this year with their newly acquired (and renamed) in-house magazine, the Unicorn Review. Whats happened is that weve become effectively a redistribution platform. A bottle thats selling for $50 in Chicago might have $200 of value to someone in New Mexico. Unicorn has spent yearsand millions of dollarsbuilding the framework to do so. As of 2025, they have 12 dropoff points across the country, which then link out to a handful of vans that drive across the region, all eventually relaying bottles back to their Chicago processing facility. Sellers can hand off their bottles, and buyers can drive out to any of the facilities, or go through Unicorn for delivery. For legal reasons, Unicorn (a licensed retailer) must take possession of every bottle and bring it to its central Chicago location. There, an authentication and appraisal team runs each one through what may be the most robust spirits-resale database in the industry, producing estimates that cover everything from a 1982 Chateau Lafite Rothschild Bordeaux to a jug of Jose Cuervo. I tested the system by submitting four bottles for appraisal online. The sheet broke down batch numbers, year, and proof, and offered estimates within a few dollars of their eventual sale price. After handing the bottles off the next week in-person, they were on auction by Sunday: one sold $5 below estimate, another $5 above, and the other two squarely within range. Mikhaylov credits the accuracy to their in-house tracking software and the size of their data set. A data-driven bar cart Digitizing that many bottles was slow at first, but after five years (and some AI integration), the system has basically been perfected. Bottles are scanned, authenticated, photographed in 360 degrees, and logged into the vault. Customers using Unicorn for storage pay 25 cents per bottle per month and can check their inventory online at any time. [Photo: Unicorn] Storage complements sales: Mikhaylov says that many collectors were looking for a solution to manage their treasure troves, often resorting to home-brewed spreadsheets and lists. Now, whales might have their entire collection picked up, palletized, digitized, and tracked onlineready for observation, admiration, or sale at auction. If they do decide to sell, payouts are delivered in 10 days or less, minus $5 per bottle and 5% commission (buyers pay a 15% premium). Compared to traditional auction houses, which often require weeks or even over a month to process consignments and payout sellers, thats fast. The idea began during the pandemic. Mikhaylovs cofounder, Cody Modeer, found himself unable to auction bottles from his shuttered bar; traditional houses dismised his inventory as too low-value. Meanwhile, Mikhaylov was searching for a way to digitize and manage spirits collections, allowing collectors to drop off bottles anywhere in the country and track them remotely. There wasnt a modern platform that was meeting the demands of today’s consumer: something that made it easy to drop off, to sell, or to manage a collection, Mikhaylov says. This is meeting the demands of that consumer. 70% of our clientele that signed up this year have been Gen Z and millennial. For the younger demographic, its all about transparency and speed . . . Think of us like Kelly Blue Book, but for your bar cart.
Category:
E-Commerce
U.S. stocks are coasting toward the finish of Wall Streets latest winning month on Tuesday. The S&P 500 fell 0.2% in afternoon trading but remains on track for a fifth straight winning month after setting a record last week. The Dow Jones Industrial Average was down 145 points, or 0.3%, as of 1:43 p.m. Eastern time, and the Nasdaq composite was 0.3% lower. Oil-related companies weighed on the market after the price of crude fell again as traders see too much oil washing around the world. Schlumberger fell 3.8%, and Halliburton dropped 3%. They helped offset a 12.7% jump for CoreWeave, which said Meta Platforms will pay up to $14.2 billion for a new order for cloud computing power made under its existing service agreement, with the potential for more. Treasury yields eased in the bond market following a couple mixed reports on the U.S. economy. One said consumers are feeling less confident than economists expected, with many respondents in the Conference Board’s survey pointing to the slowing job market and inflation that has remained higher than anyone would like. A second report suggested the job market may be remaining in its low-hire, low-fire state. U.S. employers were advertising roughly the same number of job openings at the end of August as the month before. The hope on Wall Street had been for a number that’s neither too high nor too low, one balanced enough to keep the Federal Reserve on track to continue cutting interest rates. The Fed just delivered its first cut of the year, and officials have penciled in more through the end of next year to give the job market a boost. If data on jobs come in too strong, it could make the Fed less willing to cut rates. If the numbers are too weak, meanwhile, they could mean a recession is coming. Either extreme would hurt the stock market, which has run to records from a low in April in large part on expectations that the Fed will cut rates several times. The stock market is already facing heavy criticism for being too expensive after prices ran so high. Another potential wild card is hanging over the market, meanwhile. The U.S. government seems to be heading toward a shutdown at the end of the day following another political impasse in Washington. The economy and stock market have made it through past shutdowns without much wear, and many economists and professional investors feel relatively OK about another one. The S&P 500 has climbed an average of 4.4% during past shutdowns and is positive over the last five, according to Monica Guerra, head of U.S. policy at Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. The timing of this potential shutdown, though, would likely cause delays for several important economic reports. That includes a release due on Friday about how many jobs U.S. employers created and destroyed in September. That could make Wall Street twitchier when investors are already nervous about the state of the economy and what that means for the potential for cuts to rates. The Department of Labor has already said that the Bureau of Labor Statistics will completely cease operations if theres a lapse. On Wall Street, Spotify Technology sank 6.4% after the Stockholm-based streaming giant said its founder, Daniel Ek, is stepping down as CEO to become the executive chairman. Two of his lieutenants will replace him as co-CEOs: Chief Product and Technology Officer Gustav Söderström and Chief Business Officer Alex Norström. Lamb Weston jumped 4.1% after the supplier of frozen French fries and other potato products reported a stronger profit for the latest quarter than analysts expected. In stock markets abroad, indexes ticked higher in Europe following a mixed finish in Asia. In the bond market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury eased to 4.14% from 4.15% late Monday. Stan Choe, AP business writer AP Business Writers Yuri Kageyama and Matt Ott contributed.
Category:
E-Commerce
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