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MACHINE AGE CARTOON

THE AI LANDLORD

By Zimbo · October 29, 2026

AI cartoon by Zimbo: Novogratz strip: Princeton '87, Army helicopter pilot; 2013 the Bitcoin whitepaper; 2018 Galaxy; Dec 2022 the $77M Helios mine; 2025-26 a 15-year CoreWeave lease makes it an AI landlord; finale, Novogratz and Issue the cat at a lookout over data centers under a RENT DUE sign.
Mike Novogratz went from Princeton and Army helicopters to Wall Street, fell down the Bitcoin rabbit hole, built Galaxy, bought a West Texas bitcoin mine for $77 million — and turned it into an AI data center collecting rent from CoreWeave. In six panels.Zimbo for AI News Page

The story behind the cartoon

Mike Novogratz graduated from Princeton in 1987 with an economics degree and served as a helicopter pilot in the U.S. Army before a long career on Wall Street. It is the least crypto biography imaginable, which is exactly why the rest of the story lands: the establishment guy became the establishment's crypto bridge.

In 2013 a friend pushed him to read the Bitcoin whitepaper, and the rabbit hole pulled him out of conventional finance. In 2018 he built Galaxy to connect institutional finance with the emerging digital-asset economy, betting that Wall Street would eventually want in on crypto rather than watch from the sidelines.

Near the bottom of the cycle, in December 2022, Galaxy bought the Helios bitcoin mining facility in Dickens County, Texas, for roughly $77 million, gaining a large power site with room to expand. In March 2025 Galaxy signed a 15-year lease delivering 133 megawatts at Helios to CoreWeave for AI computing, and in July 2026 it completed Phase I, with the campus generating revenue as AI infrastructure and 1.63 gigawatts of approved power capacity.

The joke in Zimbo's strip is the landlord punchline: the man who bought a bitcoin mine at the bottom now sits back while the rent rolls in, and in the final panel he and Issue the cat survey his new kingdom from an Army helicopter lookout, under a sign that reads RENT DUE, while the old bitcoin rigs gather dust in the corner.

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