LATEST ESSAY / 2 OCTOBER 2026
There is no
memory cycle.
AI work can pause while useful state remains. What follows for the machines that make intelligence possible?
A new essay connects model memory, agent state and physical infrastructure. The argument challenges a familiar commodity-cycle template; prices and margins still need evidence.
Execution draws on different kinds of state.
Weights, context, workspace and lasting records are not interchangeable. Their placement shapes capacity, bandwidth and latency.
A conceptual explanation, not measured utilisation or a demand forecast. Retention and placement vary by architecture.
Look closely. Trace the relationship. Challenge the explanation.
Join the discussion01 / SELECTED RESEARCH
The interesting part
is the missing link.
Public issuer evidence, source reconstruction and research methods. Specific studies that make a wider discipline tangible.
Cash arrived.
The work is still owed.
Reconcile Oracle’s cash-flow statement with its customer-financing note. Explore which conclusion the arithmetic supports.
The answer wasn’t
in the excerpt.
Reconstruct the full Dell earnings call before interpreting it. A missing source segment can look like a missing answer.
Built to carry
the correction forward.
Source discovery, technical understanding and evaluation connect through a repeatable research discipline. Explore the capabilities and their limits.
02 / THINK WITH THE WORK
Inspect the reasoning
Follow the cash.
Test the inference.
Does cash received establish surplus for shareholders?
Oracle · Q1 FY27 · USD billionsThree months ended 31 August 2026The cash is real. Its source matters.
- Observed
- Oracle reported $23.103bn of operating cash flow. This already includes the $11.363bn specified increase in deferred revenue from customer prepayments with a significant financing component.
- Inference
- The advance provides genuine operating funding. Receiving it does not, by itself, establish earned surplus.
- Unknown
- How much of the associated work has been delivered and accepted, and at what remaining cost?
Cash flows, p. 5 · Customer prepayments, p. 7
One assumption, held apart
What changes if that inflow is excluded?
Remove only the specified prepayment inflow. Hold every other reported number fixed.
- Reported OCF
- 23.103
- Excluded inflow
- 0.000
- Reported capex
- 28.499
Equals issuer-defined free cash flow at zero exclusion.
Not normalized or counterfactual cash flow, a valuation, or a forecast. This does not remove all advances or other working-capital movements. Equity financing is excluded from both calculations.
03 / A WORKING DISCIPLINE
Useful insight.
Then the machinery.
Research becomes useful when a relationship becomes clearer. A source, a diagram and an experiment can reveal different parts of the same question. Each should make its assumptions inspectable.
Read the method & its limits- 01
Start with the evidence.
Find the primary source, its date and its scope. An announcement, a deployment and a measured result are different facts.
- 02
Follow the mechanism.
Connect capability to constraints and consequences. Show which relationships are observed and which remain hypotheses.
- 03
Try to break the inference.
Test timing, comparison groups, magnitude and rival explanations. Keep the unsupported step open to challenge.
- 04
Make the reasoning visible.
Share sources, calculations and useful visual models. Label the assumptions and the limits of each example.
- 05
Leave room for correction.
Date the work, preserve its context and acknowledge what new evidence changes.
04 / RESEARCH IN THE OPEN
Share the evidence.
Keep the question open.
Deep Vertical Alpha is the public research notebook. Studies are selected for what they explain; they are dated so readers can distinguish the evidence then from what may be known now.
Examples draw on public sources. An issuer study does not imply an investment holding. A conceptual diagram explains a relationship; a calculation tests stated assumptions. Neither is a forecast.
How to read the workORACLE STUDY / EDITION 2026.39 · Evidence cutoff 15 Sep 2026, 17:35 SGT · Public presentation updated 2 Oct 2026
JOHN COLLINS / SINGAPORE05 / THE RESEARCHER
John Collins.
A researcher’s curiosity.
A builder’s attention to how things work.
I investigate artificial intelligence and superintelligence: what new systems can do, what constrains them, and how their effects travel through technology and the wider economy.
I share selected findings here as Deep Vertical Alpha. Deep Vertical AI is the Singapore company through which I develop this research.
Earlier work spans investment-bank quantitative research, HSBC’s Artificial Intelligence and Data Analytics laboratory, FTI Consulting’s Asia AI practice, and doctoral research. The current work is here to inspect.