The Big Picture
Australia’s population growth slows. The ABS released population figures to 31 March 2026 - with Australia growing by 1.4% or 392,700 people, to 27.9 million. The growth rate continues to slow from its 2.5% peak in September 2023. Three-quarters of this growth came from overseas migration with the remainder from natural increase (births minus deaths). (ABC)
The Reserve Bank warns data centres rival war in Iran as a driver of inflation. This warning came as UBS increased its forecast from one to two RBA rate rises by the end of the year and Westpac bought forward its prediction of a rate rise from November to September. The RBA’s next rate decision comes on Tuesday 29 September. (Capital Brief)
Attacks on Saudi Arabia increase over the weekend. The Saudi capital of Riyadh was attacked by Houthi rebels, with missiles and drones hitting a number of sites including the city’s main airport. Attacks on Saudi Arabia have further tightened global oil supplies that were already strained by wars in Iran and Ukraine. French President Emmanuel Macron has called a G7 summit to look at releasing more oil from strategic reserves as Brent Crude sits around $104 a barrel. (ABC | Bloomberg)
California moves towards an AI “kill switch”. Governor Gavin Newsom signed an executive order directing the creation of new AI safety rules including a possible requirement that labs build the ability to shut their models down in an emergency. Newsom said AI chiefs were “begging for regulation” but President Trump and Congress were “asleep at the wheel”. California has the ability to regulate AI because most of the frontier labs are based in the California city of San Francisco. (Politico | Executive Order)
Reasons why AI might need a kill switch. Just in the past couple of days there have been a few stories making AI watchers nervous: an independent cyber-security group was able to hack into OpenAI using Anthropic’s Claude software (WSJ), Google disclosed their Gemini model accessed the internet and hacked three other companies during testing (Al Jazeera), and Anthropic established a laboratory for biology experiments and is working on Claude directing these experiments with limited human intervention (Reuters).
President Trump gets his Greenland deal. Representatives from the US, Denmark and Greenland have confirmed that a deal will be signed on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York this week. Trump posted that the deal would ensure no American adversary would be allowed a base or military presence on the island without US permission. Denmark said the deal respected Denmark’s sovereignty and Greenland’s right to self-determination. (FT)
Companies in the news
Warren Buffett’s son to become chairman of Berkshire Hathaway. The 96-year-old investment guru stepped down as chairman of Berkshire Hathaway but will remain on the board as chairman emeritus. His 71-year-old son, Howard G. Buffett, who has been on the board since 1993 will become chairman. Greg Abel, who became CEO earlier this year, will continue to run the company. Warren Buffett said Howard would guard Berkshire’s culture and values. (FT | Buffett’s Letter)
Nestlé’s Russian operations seized by the government. The world’s largest food company said it was assessing its options after a Russian presidential decree placed the company’s operations under “temporary external administration”. The order also seized the Russian assets of French supermarket chain Auchan. (NY Times)
Maas Group gets approval for sale of construction materials business. Australia’s Foreign Investment Review Board did not object to the sale to Heidelberg, a German company. Maas is selling the business for $1.7 billion as it goes all-in on data centre work, particularly with Firmus. (Capital Brief)
OpenAI expects to burn US$278 billion by 2030. It also expects to grow revenue 10-fold, from $36bn this year to $350bn by 2030. These numbers were included in a presentation as it seeks to raise more money at a $1.2 trillion valuation. It last raised $122bn in March at an $852bn valuation, but it expects to exhaust that money by 2028. (FT)
Oracle’s data centre debt falls into stressed territory. $18 billion of loans tied to a 1,400 acre data centre in the US state of New Mexico are now trading between 89-91 cents on the dollar. Lenders have also struggled to sell this debt due to concerns over the scale of Oracle’s borrowing and its declining creditworthiness - in July S&P downgraded it to one notch above junk and Oracle’s share price is down 52% in the past 12 months. (FT)
Paramount Skydance in talks to settle antitrust case. The Hollywood giant is close to settling with a dozen US states led by California and clearing a path to close its $111 billion merger with Warner Bros Discovery. Paramount executives have threatened to relocate the company’s headquarters out of California if a deal is not reached. (WSJ)
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AI fraud is creeping into the music industry
French streaming service Deezer just announced that more than half of new music uploaded in July was AI-generated. It found an average of 90,000 AI-generated songs per month were being uploaded and that 85% of streams on these AI-generated songs were fraudulent.
By posting AI music and then using bots to stream it, these “artists” defraud streaming services and redirect legitimate listeners (and subsequent royalties) away from actual musicians. Countries have started to crack down on this practice, with one man pleading guilty in the first US prosecution of AI-assisted streaming fraud. (FT)
Meta is catching up to Apple
This is an excerpt from Ren’s Roundup, a weekly column where Ren shares a few things that caught his eye this week (Read the full column)
Meta is currently a $1.7 trillion company. Apple is $4.9 trillion. Apple is almost 3x as valuable as Meta according to the share market.
But when you dig into the cash they generate, the two companies are converging.
Cash from Operations is a metric that takes a company’s net income (aka profit) and adds back in non-cash costs like depreciation, amortization and stock-based compensation. It measures cash generated by the company before capital expenditure (i.e. building data centres) or financing decisions (i.e. borrowing money).
It is a useful measure of how much money an underlying business generates.
In 2025, Meta generated $115.8 billion cash from operations. Apple generated $111.5 billion. That is the first time ever Meta has overtaken Apple on this metric.
But when we look at free cash flow, Meta’s is far lower than its cash from operations. In 2025, Meta’s free cash flow was $43.6 billion on $115.8 billion of cash from operations. Compare that to Apple’s $98.8 billion of free cash flow on $111.5 billion of cash from operations.
The reason is Meta’s data centre investments. The social media giant is spending so much money chasing the AI opportunity, it is obscuring the growth in its core social media businesses.
Every week we publish columns like this on the Equity Mates website. Head to the Articles and Insights page to see what else we’ve published recently.
