2026.18: Long-term, Peripheral & Myopic Visions

Welcome back to This Week in Stratechery! As a reminder, each week, every Friday, we’re sending out this overview of content in the Stratechery bundle; highlighted links are free for everyone. Additionally, you have complete control over what we send to you. If you don’t want to receive This Week in Stratechery emails (there is no podcast), please uncheck the box in your delivery settings. On that note, here were a few of our favorites this week. - Amazon and AI. When it comes to AI, every quarter seems to bring a new winner and loser. For my part, the company that I find increasingly compelling is Amazon. Things didn’t look promising a couple of years ago, when training was the most important infrastructure use case, but Amazon — whether through vision or good fortune — was positioning itself well for a world defined by inference (given that their inference chip is called “Trainium”, I’m going with a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B). Now the company is adding OpenAI’s models to its offerings, and collaborating with the frontier lab on an entirely new kind of enterprise product: Bedrock Managed Agents, the subject of a Stratechery Interview with AWS CEO Matt Garman and OpenAI CEO Sam Altman. — Ben Thompson - The Future of AR Devices. Amidst a never-ending conversation about AI, software and infrastructure spending, it was refreshing this week to dream about the possibilities for the future of hardware. Ben’s Daily Update on Monday traced his experience with the Meta Display glasses and culminated with an epiphany on what the future of AR should look like. We dove deeper on Sharp Tech with an extended conversation about why the Display glasses are superior to Meta’s Orion prototype, notes on what future VR headsets should emphasize, and whether phones (or books?) should be characterized as AR devices. — Andrew Sharp - Beijing’s Myopia in AI and Elsewhere. On Sharp China this week Bill and I unpacked the implications of a terrific mess in Singapore, as China’s National Development and Reform Commission has moved to block Meta’s $2 billion acquisition of Manus, a formerly Chinese AI company that had reincorporated in Singapore and had already received payment and integrated its products and employees into Meta’s operations. Then, on Sharp Text this morning, I wrote about Beijing’s geopolitical behavior in 2026, what Western media tends to get wrong, and — with the Manus decision being a good example — why the CCP’s geopolitical and domestic strategies are generally reactive, not proactive, and often counterproductive.— AS - AI Hardware, Meta Display, Redefining VR and AR — I finally tried the Meta Ray-Ban Display, and it completely changed how I think about AR and VR. - An Interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AWS CEO Matt Garman About Bedrock Managed Agents — An interview with OpenAI CEO Sam Altman and AWS CEO Matt Garman about their new partnership, plus my thoughts on OpenAI and Microsoft’s new deal. - Intel Earnings, Intel’s Differentiation?, Whither Terafab — Intel’s earnings were very impressive, but the chief driver was a structural shift in demand for CPUs for AI. Plus, what is going on with Terafab? - Amazon Earnings, Trainium and Commodity Markets, Additional Amazon Notes — Amazon’s earnings suggest that the shift away from training towards inference and agents means their bet on Trainium is paying off. Plus, additional notes on ads, agents, and sports rights. - Beijing Is Not Playing the Long Game — Every single week, someone in the Western media will tell you that China is playing “the long game.” Don’t believe them. - NAW and CJ and CA CAWWWWW, DEFCON 2 for Jokic and the Nuggets, Notes on OKC, Toronto, and VJ Edgecombe - Playoff Stock Watch: Scottie Barnes Awareness, Pistons Repricing, Jokic Market Corrections, and Lots More This week’s Stratechery video is on Tim Cook’s Impeccable Timing.