Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

My guest today is Ben Thompson, the founder and author of Stratechery. Ben is one of my favorite business thinkers and I love talking to him about everything happening in markets and technology.

We go through every important company, including OpenAI, Nvidia, Intel, Apple, Microsoft, Google, and Amazon. We also discuss why he thinks it would be dangerous for the United States to win the AI race outright, what container shipping and the railroads of the 1870s tell us about the buildout, and why the binding constraint on all of this may be capital rather than compute.

Please enjoy my conversation with Ben Thompson.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠.

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⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

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Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.

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WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.

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Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest.

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⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best

(00:02:16) Winning the AI Race With China

(00:08:28) Timing, Capital, and the Railroads

(00:11:34) Berkshire, Google, and Absolute Profits

(00:14:23) Verifiable and Unverifiable Domains

(00:20:20) Aggregation Theory in the AI Era

(00:22:06) The Real Cost of Inference

(00:25:40) Why Consumer AI Needs Advertising

(00:30:08) Compute Shortages and Commodity Markets

(00:35:46) Memory Cycles and Boom Bust Dynamics

(00:42:08) TSMC, Intel, and Where Risk Goes

(00:44:51) The Best Setups in Big Tech

(00:52:14) The Frontier Model Contenders

(00:54:27) Microsoft's IBM Playbook

(01:00:45) Meta, Attention, and Advertising

(01:07:29) NVIDIA, Commodities, and Power

My guest today is Eric Vishria, a General Partner at Benchmark.

Eric has spent his career in software and cloud, and few people know the history of these markets as well as he does. What makes him special is his ability to use that history to make sense of today.

We discuss what the rise of AWS teaches us about AI, what he has learned from investing in Fireworks, Sierra, and Cerebras, and how the criteria for winning have changed for founders and investors.

Please enjoy my conversation with Eric Vishria.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠.

-----

⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

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Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.

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WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.

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Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest.

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⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠.

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Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best

(00:02:20) Learning the World Through Fireworks

(00:05:42) AWS Was Going to Eat Everything

(00:07:40) The Zero-Sum Thinking Trap

(00:09:01) Comparing Cloud and AI Adoption

(00:11:03) Becoming Enterprise's AI Sherpa

(00:13:05) Building Sandcastles

(00:14:55) The Return to Being Technical

(00:17:13) The Shifting Competitive Frontier

(00:22:10) Why the Old Playbook Fails

(00:27:53) Energy as the Binding Constraint

(00:29:38) The Cerebras Story

(00:37:57) The Virtue of Productive Naivete

(00:39:19) What Robotics Still Needs

(00:45:58) What Makes a Great Board Partner

(00:51:13) Raising A Growth Fund

(00:55:39) What the Big Winners Taught Him

(00:57:37) Hard Work Versus the Hole-in-One

(00:58:38) The Best Reasons to Go Public

(01:01:09) Debates Inside Benchmark

(01:02:16) What If It All Works

(01:03:35) What Geoff Hinton Got Wrong

My guest today is Gavin Baker, founding partner and CIO of Atreides Management. This is our seventh conversation, and just two months after Gavin's last appearance.

It's about the gap between what the market is doing and what companies are seeing. It's been a tough month or so for public AI names, but there's no sign of a slowdown on the ground in Silicon Valley.

We discuss the latest moves, contracted vs. spot GPU prices, the game theory of memory supply agreements, and why Claude has become the Walter Cronkite of the stock market. We close on SpaceX, orbital compute, and what Gavin sees as the single biggest risk to all of it.

Please enjoy this conversation, from the famous table at Benchmark, with my friend Gavin Baker.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here.

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Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at colossus.com/subscribe.

-----

Ramp's mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

-----

Trusted by thousands of businesses, Vanta continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to vanta.com/invest.

-----

WorkOS is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.

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Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest.

-----

Ridgeline has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit ridgeline.ai.

-----

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best

(00:02:35) First Question: July Was 2022 in a Month

(00:04:08) The Private Companies Public Markets Can't See

(00:05:06) Old GPUs Repricing Higher

(00:06:53) Walking Through the Month

(00:08:22) Kimi, GLM 5.2 & the Open Source Freak-Out

(00:10:51) Real Yields, Spreads & CDS

(00:11:54) Does the Build-Out Need Credit?

(00:15:22) A Sell-Off With No Clear Villain

(00:17:35) Open Source as Dark Matter

(00:18:39) Nvidia's Lowest Forward PE in 10 Years

(00:21:35) Claude as Walter Cronkite for the Stock Market

(00:23:55) Continual Learning & Sample Efficiency

(00:25:19) What Would Actually Scare Him

(00:26:38) Routers & the Multi-Model Future

(00:30:51) Tokens as a Percent of Comp Spend

(00:33:37) The Game Theory of Breaking an LTA

(00:36:41) Nvidia's Credit Wrapper & Revenue Share

(00:37:45) What He'd Do If He Ran Hynix

(00:41:46) Who's More Bullish than Him

(00:43:28) China's DUV Machine

(00:46:10) Bull Case for Software

(00:48:16) The RSI Maximalist View

(00:49:31) Inference Clouds Growing Without Burning Cash

(00:50:35) The Biggest Risk Is Regulation

(00:53:44) Telling the Story Better

(00:57:15) Dark Horses

(00:58:02) SpaceX in the Public Markets

My guest today is Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI.

It's a conversation spanning the history, present, and future of OpenAI, from the origin of ChatGPT through Codex, hardware, and their new Jalapeno chip.

We discuss the early decision to buy compute at a scale nobody thought was rational, and the plan to build a gigawatt of new capacity every week.

We talk about Kimi and distillation, the Hugging Face incident and what it means for the pace of AI development, and what it's like to raise kids who will grow up never knowing a world without abundant intelligence.

Please enjoy my conversation with Sam Altman.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

-----

Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠.

-----

⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

-----

Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.

-----

WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.

-----

Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest.

-----

⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠.

-----

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best

(00:02:02) Intro: Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI

(00:02:35) Refocusing

(00:05:43) OpenAI’s Compute Bets

(00:09:07) Data Centers

(00:11:14) Jalapeno Chip

(00:11:52) Kimi, Distillation & Open Source

(00:14:39) The Hugging Face Incident

(00:17:46) OpenAI's Mission & Vision

(00:22:14) All the Returns Are at the Frontier

(00:22:27) Bottlenecks: Compute, Research, Data

(00:23:49) Sam's View on AI & Jobs

(00:26:56) Unpopular Bets That Turned Out Right

(00:27:45) Model Cycles

(00:29:45) How Sam Uses AI

(00:32:44) Having Kids

(00:34:56) Why Sam Has No Equity in OpenAI

(00:35:33) Robotics

(00:36:48) The Origin Story of ChatGPT

(00:39:22) How to Get AI into More Hands

(00:42:20) How Sam Recruited Great AI Researchers

(00:43:57) What Sam Learned From Being an Investor

(00:45:22) What the Next 6–36 Months Look Like

(00:46:31) Codex

(00:49:36) Could We Be Oversupplied in Compute in Two Years?

(00:50:09) Sam's View on Scaling Laws

(00:50:20) Alec Radford

(00:51:12) Formative Moments

(00:53:50) Kindest Thing

My guest today is Matthew Smith. Matthew is the founder and CIO of Chronometer Partners, which invests in energy, industrials, materials, power and utilities, and related infrastructure.

For the last 18 months he and his team have modeled nearly every natural gas well, pipeline, and processing asset in the United States. He's reached a conclusion most of the market doesn't share.

Starting in 2028, AI data centers and LNG exports will need more gas than the country can produce and deliver. By his math, the US could exhaust its working natural gas storage by 2030. In his words, the upside risk to prices becomes unbounded and convex.

We talk about why this was set in motion long before AI arrived, why the US can't just turn off exports, who wins and loses among producers, nuclear, solar, and the hyperscalers, and what he sees as the only long-term solution.

Please enjoy my conversation with Matthew Smith.

For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠.

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In June, Matthew wrote a letter to a small group of confidants laying out the full case behind his natural gas forecast. He has allowed us to publish it. You can read the full letter here.

-----

Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠.

-----

⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus.

-----

Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠.

-----

WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel.

-----

Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest.

-----

⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgeline.ai⁠.

-----

Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant.

Timestamps:

(00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best

(00:02:02) Episode Intro: Matt Smith

(00:03:33) The Conclusion After 18 Months

(00:04:56) The Die Was Cast Before AI

(00:07:24) Sizing AI's Gas Demand

(00:09:33) Why Not Just Stop Exporting?

(00:11:38) Is the Gas Even There?

(00:13:53) The Timing Problem, Not Supply

(00:15:15) Flow Versus Stock

(00:19:10) What Slows Gas to Market

(00:22:21) If Nothing Changes by 2030

(00:26:11) Could Prices Hit Twenty Dollars?

(00:27:00) Gas Producers Poised to Win

(00:28:54) Utility-Scale Solar's Windfall

(00:30:08) What About Nuclear?

(00:32:40) SMRs

(00:34:29) The US Consumer Pays

(00:36:37) Turbine Makers Building Too Late

(00:37:57) Are Hyperscalers Exposed Too?

(00:44:25) Kickstarting the Nuclear Build

(00:46:20) Put Solar on Every Roof

(00:46:52) Implications for the World

(00:49:26) No One's Securing Supply

(00:52:57) The Challenge for Energy CEOs