Activist funds target bloated AI budgets instead of the usual buyback fight

NEW YORK — Activists have a seasonal calendar: find a company with a messy conglomerate, demand a split, demand a buyback. This season they have a new exhibit. It is the AI line item.

Letters seen by TradeFlock USA ask for cohort-level returns on copilots, reserved GPU spend, and the headcount that was hired to babysit models. Boards that cannot answer will be accused of fashion.

Some of those programs will survive the scrutiny because they print. The ones that were a panic response to a competitor's demo will not.