"The Pulse" #62 / AI & Capex--BIG FT Jobs Update

SA 2026 interview szn is fast approaching! Don’t fall behind your competition by wasting time tracking applications.

Instead, use our Premium Database to gain access to 200+ banks/consulting/buyside firms. Venmo @ThePulsePrep $50 or pay with credit card (ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com) and shoot us an e-mail @[email protected]. Additional details of the database can be found below. Gain an edge over everyone by accessing a wealth of recruiting resources and detailed explanations of the interview processes of each firm.

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Looking for interview prep or a coach to help you navigate the process? Check the “Going Forward” section below for more details.

Last year, 85% of students coached received offers.

Recruiting Timeline:

Banking:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2025: Stephens and PNC opened their applications bringing the total bank number up to 118 for the SA 2025 season. Jefferies, Deutsche Bank, and a few others reopened apps. As previously mentioned, we will stop tracking this process within a month as we gear up for the SA 2026 season!

• FT 2025: PJT, PWP, Citi, and Wells Fargo opened their FT apps this week. There are now 29 firms actively recruiting for FT 2025. Please reach out if you are looking for coaching!

SA 2025 Applications:

• Stephens: Middle market (SA 2025)

• PNC: Large bank hiring for corporate banking (SA 2025)

• Jefferies: Private funds group (SA 2025)

• Deutsche Bank: Bulge bracket—origination & advisory (SA 2025)

• Nomura: S&T (SA 2025)

• Morgan Stanley: Bulge bracket, fixed income (SA 2025)

New FT 2025 Applications:

• Stephens: Middle market (FT 2025)

• PNC: Large bank hiring for corporate banking (FT 2025)

• Cabrera Capital Markets: Small boutique (FT 2025)

• Citi: FSG group (FT 2025)

• Wells Fargo: Large, full-service bank (FT 2025)

• Perella Weinberg Partners: Elite boutique, sweaty (FT 2025)

• PJT Partners: Elite boutique (FT 2025)

• Deutsche Bank: Bulge bracket—origination & advisory (FT 2025)

See below to gain access to our premium database, updated weekly, which houses the application processes for over 200+ banks/consulting/buyside firms! Gain an edge over everyone else by not having to spend countless hours tracking applications and deadlines.

Consulting:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2025: 19 SA 2025 applications have been released so far and 11 FT 2025 applications have been released. Expect top firms to conclude hiring by October.

SA 2025 released apps:

• KPMG: Advisory Intern, Deal Advisory - Financial Due Diligence (SA 2025 - Closed)

• PWC: Business Processes Intern (SA 2025 - Closed).

• Curtis & Co: Boutique firm (SA 2025 - Closed)

• Protiviti: Tech Consulting (SA 2025 - Closed)

• RSM: Tech, Risk, and Business Improvement Intern (SA 2025 - Closed)

• Deloitte: Business Technology Solutions Summer Scholar (SA 2025 - Closed)

• Berkeley Research Group: Associate Consultant Intern (SA 2025)

• Oliver Wyman: Summer 2025 Intern (SA 2025 - Closed)

• Bain: Associate Consultant Intern (SA 2025)

• Cavi Consulting: Consulting Associate Internship (SA 2025)

• McKinsey: Summer Business Analyst (SA 2025)

• BCG: Associate Consultant Intern (SA 2025)

• Redstone Strategy Group: Consulting Intern (SA 2025 - Closed)

• KPMG: All Practices including management consulting (SA 2025)

• Alpha FMC: Consulting Intern (SA 2025)

• DSP Strategy: Consulting Analyst Intern (SA 2025)

• FMI Corporation: Strategy Analyst Intern (SA 2025)

• Cornerstone Research: Summer Analyst (SA 2025)

• FTI Consulting: Business Analyst Intern (SA 2025)

FT 2025 released apps:

• LEK: Associate Consultant (FT 2025)

• Charles River Associates: Associate (FT 2025)

• New Market Advisors: Associate Consultant (FT 2025)

• McKinsey: Business Analyst (FT 2025)

• OC&C: Associate Consultant (FT 2025)

• Qral: Management Consultant (FT 2025)

• FTI Consulting: Entry-Level Consultant (FT 2025)

• Lake Partners Strategy Consultants: Strategy Consulting Analyst (FT 2025)

• Kearney: Business Analyst (FT 2025)

• Cornerstone Research: Analyst (FT 2025)

• Renaissance Strategic Advisors: Strategy Consulting Analyst (FT 2025)

Apply ASAP if you’re interested!

Buyside:

Where We’re At:

• SA 2025: Kingfish Group, Vanguard, and Barings opened their SA 2025 apps this week alongside a few other reopenings. So far ~114 buyside shops have opened applications.

SA 2025 released apps:

• Kingfish Group: Small PE shop (SA 2025)

• Vanguard: Large asset manager, investments team (SA 2025)

• Citadel: Large hedge fund—-trading & research postings (SA 2025)

• Susquehanna Investment Group: Large HF—equities (SA 2025)

• Barings: Investment management (SA 2025)

• Bison Point Capital: RE acquisitions team (SA 2025)

The database is updated weekly and contains 200+ Investment Banking and Consulting internships/full-time positions along with:

• Interview tips for specific companies

• Interview prep material

• Applications and deadlines linked so that you can apply with one click

• Insider information about the application process

• Professionals to network with

• Buyside deadlines, interview prep, and people to network with for the sweatiest of students

We send the updated dataset every week with the latest banking and consulting job postings. We released our 62nd update today.

Students we have been helping have already landed roles at Blackstone, Goldman, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Citi, and Solomon.

To get access to the database and the weekly updates, you pay a one-time fee of $50 (Venmo: ThePulsePrep / Credit Card: (ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com)) that grants you annual access to the updated database (You can enable purchase protection if concerned). If you don’t find our services helpful, we simply ask for feedback on an area we can improve upon and will refund your $50.

This is a small investment for a huge payout when you secure your dream offer!

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Market Update:

AI & Capex

What do Meta, Google, and Y-Combinator have in common?

1. Armies of tech nerds

2. Commitment to investing in AI

Everyone is obsessed with AI, but people aren’t yet obsessed with the capex spend needed to develop and implement AI.

Today, we discuss why you need to be obsessed with capex spend; particularly amongst tech companies. Our ‘Learning Point’ will walk through the effects of greater capex on a company’s financial profile and the implications of greater capex spend to investors.

Everyone is investing in AI because it’s popular and because it’s practical for nearly all businesses—unlike other fads (the metaverse, crypto, see "The Pulse"--#54 / Feels Like 2021 (beehiiv.com)). In fact, some of the largest tech companies are expecting to increase capex spend by nearly 35% in 2024! That equates to nearly $200bn of cash outflows (important detail for later).

Take a look below at the drivers of this tremendous capex spend:

Thank you for the applause on the beautiful graphic. The bottom line is that there are multiple forces at play to support AI-related capex spend. The only meaningful headwind to proposed capex budgets would be the high rates making it difficult to finance any given project.

For greater detail, see below for explanations of the drivers behind AI-related capex spend.

The fuel for the growth of capex:

• Government Spending: The Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) and the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act (IIJA) are bills passed by Congress to boost infrastructure investment and help reshore outsourced manufacturing. Ultimately, these bills lighten the spending costs for companies

• Large Historical Cash Balances: This primarily applies to the big tech companies. These guys sit on mountains of cash and are deploying this cash into strategic growth initiatives like AI-related capex spend to stay ahead of competition

The garden of capex growth:

• Mining of Rare Metals (the seeds): Mining for rare metals like copper, lithium, and gold are all needed to support AI infrastructure and affiliated technology like semiconductors. As companies demand greater AI capabilities, there will be greater spend plowed into mining the underlying rare metals

• Roads, Grids, Trucks, etc (the sprout): Doesn’t take a genius to know that we need better roads in this country. It’s incredibly difficult to drive anywhere these days without breaking your fucking back by cruising over a pothole. In order to move the raw materials and other goods to the manufacturers, better infrastructure will need to be put in place (more spending!)

• Onshoring of Manufacturing (the flower): We spoke about this in "The Pulse" --#38 (beehiiv.com). The trend here is that many U.S. companies are re-shoring manufacturing to help mitigate global supply chain inefficiencies and avoid expensive policy-related costs of offshore manufacturing. This supports domestic capex spend

• AI Development (the garden): The cherry on top for heightened capex growth is internal AI development. Instead of everyone solely leveraging ChatGPT, companies seem to be insistent on building internal AI tools to stay ahead of the pack. Banks like JPM, MS, and GS are starting to demo their internal tools while companies like Google, Meta, and Tesla have been hard at work poaching OpenAI talent to develop internal LLMs. Everyone is dropping some serious coin on AI development 

I like to take a view, but I try to avoid saying anything with certainty. However, it seems highly unlikely that AI-related capex spend will dry up anytime soon.

Naturally, the next question is: what does heightened capex spend mean for investors and company financials?

Disclosure: Nothing written here is financial advice or should be used for investment decisions.

Capitalizing Capex

Is greater capex good or bad for investors? Answer: it depends

First, we need to understand how capex is portrayed on the financial statements. Capex is a cash outflow and recorded in Cash for Investing Activities on a company’s cash flow statement.

But wait, why doesn’t it appear on the Income Statement? After all, the company is paying for goods, isn’t that an expense?

Capex is capitalized which means the company doesn’t need to recognize the expense all at once on the income statement and instead can expense the cost over its useful life aka depreciation. Capitalizing capex also helps smooth earnings to better reflect BAU performance because a huge one-time expense every couple of years for capex would really screw up the reporting.

Now, as mentioned above, capex is a cash outflow and therefore reduces a company’s free cash flow. If you’re new to the game, the pinnacle of valuation is discounting a company’s free cash flow to see what it is worth today. Therefore, less free cash flow = less value.

However, a savvy investor looks deeper into the story besides free cash flow generation. Heightened capex spend could be a signal that the Company is investing in growth initiatives (AI) to improve or expand operations on a go-forward basis—-which would actually boost free cash flow via margin expansion. An investor must also decide whether the return on the capex investment will yield a greater return than the Company’s WACC: "The Pulse" -- #25 (beehiiv.com)

With anything in finance, there are multiple levers to consider when evaluating a given change and the most favorable scenario is often one that isn’t too extreme.

For another story, can someone please opine why R&D is still expensed in 2024? Would love to hear some solid rationale here, feel free to email us @[email protected]

Going Forward:

We need a few interns to help us out this upcoming school year. Please shoot over your resume via email if interested!

Coaching Details:

• 1 hour session = $50. (Venmo @ThePulsePrep or Credit Card: ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com

• 30-minute session = $30. Venmo @ThePulsePrep or Credit Card: ThePulsePrep—Stripe.com

• Email us with your availability and we will be happy to schedule a session @[email protected] 

Students we coached for SA 2025 have received offers at Goldman, JP Morgan, Evercore, and many other firms. Roughly 85% of those coached received offers last year!

Please reach out to us with any questions about recruiting or if you’re interested in meeting the team! ([email protected])

We are happy to chat, review resumes, or help set up a coaching session

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“The Pulse” #62