Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Ejaaz:
This week, every famous investor in America published their investment portfolios for the world to see. (00:00):
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Ejaaz:
We're talking about over $200 billion worth of investments across the entire (00:05):
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Ejaaz:
AI stack from the likes of Warren Buffett, Ray Dalio, and even our good friend Leopold Ashenbrenner. (00:10):
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Ejaaz:
And at surface value, it might look like it's quite bearish. (00:15):
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Ejaaz:
They sold a lot of major stocks, including Nvidia and some memory stocks as well. (00:18):
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Ejaaz:
But if you look carefully, there's two specific layers within the AI theme that (00:22):
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Ejaaz:
they've not only doubled down on, but have increased the pie. (00:26):
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Ejaaz:
There's never been more money in the AI sphere before. And we're going to unpack (00:29):
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Ejaaz:
all of these and more on today's episode. (00:33):
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Josh:
There was an episode that we recorded on July 31st in reference to Leopold's (00:35):
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Josh:
13F, where we said his next 13F filing is going to be one of the most exciting (00:38):
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Josh:
episodes of all time. And listen, we are here. (00:43):
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Ejaaz:
It's exciting. (00:46):
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Josh:
It's exciting, guaranteed. I will say it's not exactly how we imagined this (00:48):
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Josh:
forecast going, because what we're looking at here is basically a memoritum, (00:51):
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Josh:
how do you say it when someone died? (00:58):
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Ejaaz:
Like Leopold's dead. Moratorium. Yeah. Yes. (00:59):
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Josh:
That's what we're looking at. We're looking at a sheet of paper from a company (01:02):
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Josh:
that no longer exists because as we know, Leopold was liquidated tragically. (01:06):
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Josh:
Now, 13 Fs, we might want to start there just so you kind of have an idea of (01:09):
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Josh:
what's going on here. Basically, any company that trades (01:13):
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Josh:
equities over $100 million must disclose their positions quarterly within 45 (01:16):
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Josh:
days of the quarter end. So what we're looking at here and throughout this episode (01:21):
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Josh:
is what those snapshots look like across all the top investment firms in the (01:24):
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Josh:
country and in the world. (01:27):
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Josh:
And we're going to try to derive some conclusions from that. (01:29):
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Josh:
But to start, we have to go to Leopold's portfolio because everyone's going (01:31):
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Josh:
to want to know what were the stocks that he was in that blew him up? (01:35):
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Josh:
Because as we know from the previous episode, which if you haven't watched, (01:38):
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Josh:
I highly suggest the Wall Street darling no longer owns public positions. (01:40):
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Josh:
And it's because we have some numbers and it looks like the largest holding (01:45):
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Josh:
by far was Sandisk and Micron. (01:49):
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Josh:
He was very much memory pilled. I think the tough thing about this is like directionally, (01:51):
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Josh:
I think he was correct. He just got totally liquidated, but Sandisk's position (01:56):
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Josh:
was 28.5% of the book. He had Micron at 28% of the book. (01:59):
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Josh:
And then, I mean, together, that's over half of the book is in Micron. (02:03):
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Josh:
And then there's Bloom Energy at nine and a half percent. We know how much he was up on that. (02:06):
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Josh:
We have TSMC, Nebius, Core, we have a couple of the neoclouds, (02:10):
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Josh:
and then everything else combines for about 18% of the portfolio. (02:12):
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Josh:
So he was heavily, heavily, heavily involved in these memory stocks. (02:15):
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Josh:
We know he was using some leverage, and it appears as if that's what blew him up. (02:19):
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Ejaaz:
Yeah. So the saddest part about this is probably all of these positions have been decimated. (02:23):
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Ejaaz:
I saw rumors, I think it was reported from Bloomberg about a week ago that he (02:28):
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Ejaaz:
now has a casual, you know, 500 to a billion dollar open equity position, (02:32):
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Ejaaz:
but the majority still lies in his anthropic stake for now. (02:37):
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Ejaaz:
But I think if we look at the Leopold thesis in general, which was doubling (02:40):
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Ejaaz:
down on AI infrastructure, particularly in memory and neoclouds, (02:45):
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Ejaaz:
That thesis is still very alive and well. (02:49):
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Ejaaz:
And let's like pause on the memory position. It's had a pretty rocky month. (02:51):
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Ejaaz:
If you remember, I think two weeks ago, we were reporting on SK Hynex reporting (02:57):
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Ejaaz:
their best quarterly earnings ever. (03:02):
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Ejaaz:
They made more money in a single quarter than they did in the entire year last year. (03:04):
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Ejaaz:
But their stock tanked about 20% the preceding week. (03:09):
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Ejaaz:
And so the thesis behind that was people thought that memory investors were (03:13):
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Ejaaz:
too overleveraged and that we were reaching a top where GPU infrastructure, (03:18):
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Ejaaz:
NVIDIA, and all the people that were buying memory could not want to buy more memory. (03:23):
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Ejaaz:
Recent news has been revealed from SanDisk over their investing day that not (03:27):
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Ejaaz:
only is that not true, but all these major investors that we're going to be (03:31):
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Ejaaz:
covering in this episode today have doubled down and bought more, (03:35):
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Ejaaz:
especially at the lows recently. (03:38):
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Ejaaz:
And also SanDisk in particular has developed this new type of memory. (03:40):
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Ejaaz:
It's called high bandwidth flash. And I just want to take like 20 seconds to describe what this is. (03:45):
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Ejaaz:
There's a couple different types of memory. There's DRAM, which is like your standard memory type. (03:49):
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Ejaaz:
There's HBM, which is your high bandwidth memory, which is specialized for AI GPU specifically. (03:53):
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Ejaaz:
And then there's this thing called high bandwidth flash, which is this new thing, (03:58):
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Ejaaz:
which was created by SanDisk and honestly dominated by them. (04:01):
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Ejaaz:
And it's used for like inference mainly. and inference recently has become like (04:04):
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Ejaaz:
the major trend in AI. It's actually consuming so much CapEx spend for the hyperscalers (04:08):
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Ejaaz:
from Google, Amazon, and the likes. (04:14):
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Ejaaz:
And so SanDisk in particular stands to benefit the most from this. (04:15):
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Ejaaz:
And they have this new memory type, which is being ordered or backlogged already into the end of 2027. (04:19):
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Ejaaz:
So this is a new revenue opportunity for them. And we haven't seen exceeding (04:24):
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Ejaaz:
demand like this ever before. So the point is memory, the memory argument is (04:28):
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Ejaaz:
still very strong. And Leopold was right. He just, he was too over-leathered, man. (04:31):
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Josh:
That's the tragic part. is like the thesis is coherent and it still stands. (04:34):
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Josh:
And there was nothing wrong about his positions or his like directional ideas (04:39):
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Josh:
of where the market was going. (04:44):
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Josh:
He just did it all wrong because he was using improper position sizing and most (04:45):
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Josh:
importantly, leverage. I mean, this is what happens when you use leverage. (04:49):
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Josh:
Everybody knows this. So I think it's an interesting peek into what could have (04:52):
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Josh:
been like directionally, the stock names look strong. It's just the way he positioned (04:56):
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Josh:
didn't look nearly as strong. (05:00):
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Josh:
There is another company who reported their 13F this week that I think it's (05:02):
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Josh:
worth highlighting who is. (05:06):
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Josh:
When you think of the strongest, they're about as strong as it gets. (05:08):
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Josh:
These people have been around forever. This is Warren Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway. (05:10):
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Josh:
They are always really interesting because they move in a way similar to the (05:14):
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Josh:
way Apple does. They move very slow. (05:19):
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Josh:
They're normally the last mover. When they do so, they do so with a tremendous (05:21):
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Josh:
amount of size and conviction. (05:24):
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Josh:
Now, as we know, Berkshire Hathaway is no longer run by Warren Buffett. (05:26):
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Josh:
Unfortunately, no longer run by Charlie Munger either. And Greg Abel is now (05:30):
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Josh:
at the helm of this. So Greg Abel is the new guy in charge. And he has joined (05:34):
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Josh:
Berkshire and has begun deploying capital at pretty high rates. (05:38):
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Josh:
The biggest ad of the quarter, which was 17 billion added, was for Google or (05:42):
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Josh:
Alphabet, which was really surprising to see because why would they be buying (05:47):
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Josh:
Google instead of buying the memory companies? And I think we have like a thesis. (05:51):
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Josh:
I'll cover the rest first before we get into why. (05:56):
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Josh:
But it looks like they've added 44% of Delta, of Macy's, of Lenar. (05:57):
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Josh:
So they're very much moving towards a (06:03):
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Josh:
This is kind of like the Joshua Kushner thing where they're like, (06:06):
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Josh:
okay, who's been around forever? And then who's going to win on the frontier? (06:08):
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Josh:
And that feels like kind of how Warren Buffett and Berkshire are placing themselves (06:12):
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Josh:
here. But the Google thing, I want to talk about the Google thing, (06:16):
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Josh:
EJS. Why are they buying so much Google? (06:18):
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Ejaaz:
So I think it's a thesis that you and I have been very fond of for over many years now. (06:19):
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Ejaaz:
Google is the only company on earth that owns the entire stack for AI. (06:26):
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Ejaaz:
Now, I just want to emphasize how important this is. Like, they're not only (06:31):
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Ejaaz:
creators of AI models, but they're also creators of custom GPUs that run and train those AI models. (06:35):
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Ejaaz:
They're also creators of the distribution platforms. The number one in the world, (06:41):
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Ejaaz:
by the way, you've got Google search. Obviously, you've got Gmail, (06:45):
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Ejaaz:
you've got G Suite, you've got Android, you've got so many different Google (06:47):
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Ejaaz:
products that distribute to hundreds and hundreds of millions of people every single day. (06:51):
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Ejaaz:
So they have the ultimate distribution platform, but they also own all the infrastructure, (06:55):
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Ejaaz:
the power that is required to fund all of this. (06:59):
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Ejaaz:
And they have amazing amounts of capbacks. I think Google actually this year (07:01):
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Ejaaz:
takes the crown for spending the most. I think they're on track to spend around (07:05):
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Ejaaz:
$250 billion by the end of the year. (07:08):
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Ejaaz:
If Google is the only company that owns or dominates across the entire stack (07:11):
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Ejaaz:
in AI, that is an amazing company to own because they can fine tune each of (07:15):
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Ejaaz:
the different layers for their particular product. (07:20):
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Ejaaz:
So why that's important is let's say you look at Google search data and you (07:23):
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Ejaaz:
notice that customers really like buying houses in a specific area at this time (07:26):
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Ejaaz:
of the year, they can orient their own AI model to (07:32):
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Ejaaz:
Produce and serve up adverts or suggestions to people to shop in a particular type of way. (07:36):
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Ejaaz:
And that kind of uniformity or like hyper-specificity is really hard to nail (07:42):
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Ejaaz:
down if you are just a model lab creator or if you're just a GPU producer. (07:47):
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Ejaaz:
So that's really powerful for the thesis in general for Google. (07:51):
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Ejaaz:
Now, my question to you, Josh, is do you think... (07:54):
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Ejaaz:
This happened before the fallout within Google. When Dan Sosibis stepped aside, (07:57):
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Ejaaz:
Jeff Dean left, I have a feeling it is. So I wonder if they've cut down their (08:02):
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Ejaaz:
position since, but I still think Google's a good bet. (08:06):
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Josh:
Yeah, I would bet this happened beforehand. And I would bet that it's also not (08:09):
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Josh:
really going to change their mind because I don't think it materially affects (08:12):
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Josh:
the business. In fact, it may be a positive. (08:15):
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Josh:
It's like, I remember seeing this post from a long time ago that was basically (08:18):
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Josh:
like, Google isn't taking themselves seriously until they start firing the leadership (08:22):
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Josh:
that put them in this position. (08:25):
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Josh:
And I mean, in a way, that's kind of what's happening here. (08:26):
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Josh:
The leadership who put them in this position where they had all the technology (08:29):
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Josh:
did not capitalize is starting to rotate and cycle out. There is Fresh Blood, (08:32):
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Josh:
who I'm sure is very hungry. (08:37):
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Josh:
Sergey Brin is back. He is kind of in wartime mode. (08:38):
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Josh:
And I mean, Google is this remarkably incredible business. And what we're going (08:41):
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Josh:
to find as we go through the remaining 13 filings here is that, (08:44):
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Josh:
I mean, spoiler alert, the two biggest winners this quarter are Amazon and Google. (08:47):
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Josh:
Everyone loves the hyperscalers. Everyone loves the people who are spending (08:51):
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Josh:
huge amounts of CapEx because it's easy for them to project revenues. (08:54):
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Josh:
For these newer companies, when they spend a lot of money, it's high risk. (08:58):
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Josh:
They haven't proven their revenue over time. (09:00):
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Josh:
But in the case of Google, they're projecting unbelievable margins on their Google Cloud services. (09:02):
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Josh:
They have the increasing capability of building their own hardware chips, (09:07):
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Josh:
like their TPUs and their Ironwoods that they have. (09:10):
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Josh:
And they have this entire ecosystem that they've built with a very strong moat. (09:12):
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Josh:
And it seems like that's not going anywhere anytime soon. So Google is just (09:17):
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Josh:
this unbelievable business. (09:20):
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Josh:
Same thing with Amazon. They're companies with huge amounts of capital on their (09:21):
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Josh:
balance sheets. They're companies that are spending it. (09:25):
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Ejaaz:
These things are pretty underpriced, man. They're pretty underpriced. (09:27):
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Josh:
On a relative basis, they're not trading at a very high multiple, (09:30):
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Josh:
even though they're the only companies with proven track records that are showing quarter over quarter. (09:32):
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Josh:
We're spending all this capex, but look at the returns that we've had on this capex. (09:37):
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Josh:
There's this amazing stat about Google and I have no idea what the specifics (09:41):
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Josh:
are, but I remember reading it and being like, oh my God, this is so right. (09:45):
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Josh:
Where every dollar Google invested yielded say like $2.8 in return or something (09:48):
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Josh:
like that, where since, since the inception of the company. (09:53):
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Josh:
So when you hear a company like Google, who is one of the best capital allocators (09:56):
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Josh:
in the world over the course of the last three decades saying, (09:59):
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Josh:
not only are we going to spend a lot of money, because we are so high conviction (10:02):
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Josh:
that these investments will pay off in the long run, I think you gotta get pretty (10:08):
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Josh:
excited about that because as a capital allocator, there's not many people better than Google. (10:11):
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Josh:
So that is why I presume Berkshire, we see taking a pretty large position in this. (10:15):
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Josh:
But now we have to move over to what feels like a home for us. (10:19):
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Josh:
I think this is the Brad Gershner, the Gavin Baker, the NVIDIA portfolio. (10:23):
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Josh:
These are what the companies that I think like, when we think of the companies (10:27):
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Josh:
we wanna invest in, this feels most true to me at least. (10:30):
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Josh:
The number one holding of all of them, NVIDIA. (10:34):
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Josh:
Like $2 billion is just crazy. It's like $1.9 billion they have. (10:36):
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Josh:
Second for Brad Gerstner is Cerebrus at $1.6 billion. Then there's Meta, TSM, CoreWeave, ARM. (10:40):
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Josh:
Gavin Baker, on the other hand, $4.7 billion position in SpaceX, (10:46):
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Josh:
then Micron, Cerebrus, Astero Labs, Siena, and Credo. (10:51):
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Josh:
Those bottom ones I don't even recognize, but that's kind of how we could think (10:55):
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Josh:
of the top two, perhaps like Twitter traders, the top traders on X. (10:58):
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Josh:
Here's kind of the position that they find themselves in. (11:02):
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Ejaaz:
Yeah, I mean, if I were to bucket these investors in a particular group, (11:04):
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Ejaaz:
it's like the forward looking group, right? They're like the higher risk takers, (11:07):
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Ejaaz:
but they're playing with like much bigger capital allocations. (11:11):
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Ejaaz:
It's funny you mentioned the SpaceX 4.6 billion position from Gavin Baker. (11:14):
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Ejaaz:
This was his biggest win. I was listening to a podcast of him on the All In show just yesterday. (11:19):
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Ejaaz:
And he was basically like, yeah, this is like one of my biggest winnings. (11:25):
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Ejaaz:
But like what I'm most excited about right now is the power and optics trade, (11:27):
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Ejaaz:
which seemingly is a big theme amongst these particular investors in particular. (11:33):
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Ejaaz:
So just to give you a kind of like lay of the land, when you invest in AI, (11:37):
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Ejaaz:
the typical names that people look at are things like NVIDIA, (11:42):
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Ejaaz:
they look at some of the hyperscalers that were mentioned already, (11:45):
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Ejaaz:
which is like Google and Amazon. (11:47):
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Ejaaz:
And then if you kind of dig a layer deeper, they're like, oh no, (11:49):
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Ejaaz:
all these guys are going to need a lot of memory. (11:51):
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Ejaaz:
So you invest in the likes of SanDisk, Micron, SK Hynix, these are names that (11:54):
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Ejaaz:
we've already mentioned on the show multiple times before. (11:58):
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Ejaaz:
But something that we haven't really opined on is this idea of power. (12:01):
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Ejaaz:
So if you have all these expensive GPUs that NVIDIA is making, (12:05):
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Ejaaz:
if you have all this memory to make these GPUs, (12:08):
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Ejaaz:
you still need power to turn these things on. But also, there is tons of data (12:10):
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Ejaaz:
that these GPUs are generating that they need to kind of like transfer between these GPUs. (12:16):
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Ejaaz:
And that's something that Gavin Baker specifically has identified really early on. (12:21):
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Ejaaz:
And he's winning quite a lot through the likes of companies like Coherent Corp. (12:25):
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Ejaaz:
So let me explain sort of very quickly why this is important. (12:29):
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Ejaaz:
So if you look at the sector of photonics, which basically means light. (12:33):
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Ejaaz:
When you have a ton of GPUs in your data centers, it gets really arduous to (12:38):
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Ejaaz:
transfer data between these GPUs, especially if you rack up hundreds of thousands (12:43):
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Ejaaz:
of millions of GPUs, which is what Elon Musk is basically doing. (12:48):
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Ejaaz:
Right now, the way to transfer data between GPUs is using copper wires, (12:51):
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Ejaaz:
and it uses electricity. (12:55):
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Ejaaz:
It's pretty good. It's been used for decades now at this point, (12:56):
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Ejaaz:
But we've reached a point where there's so many GPUs that it becomes incredibly (12:59):
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Ejaaz:
inefficient and cost inefficient as well. So you waste power and you waste a lot of money. (13:03):
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Ejaaz:
The solution to this is basically using light. And you heard me correctly, (13:07):
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Ejaaz:
like literal light to transfer data. And this solves a problem where it's much, (13:11):
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Ejaaz:
much cheaper and you can transfer data at rapid speeds over very great lengths. (13:16):
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Ejaaz:
And the only way to do this is through companies like Coherent, (13:20):
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Ejaaz:
through companies like GE Vanova, who basically create the materials and the (13:24):
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Ejaaz:
kind of tiny infrastructure tools that kind of like latch onto your GPUs that'll (13:29):
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Ejaaz:
allow yourself to do this. (13:33):
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Ejaaz:
And we've seen this trade become quite consensus over the years so far. (13:34):
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Ejaaz:
You look at Coherent Group is kind of like one of the major manufacturers here, (13:39):
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Ejaaz:
which Gavin Baker has taken a pretty big position in. And year to date, they're up 85%. (13:42):
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Ejaaz:
If you look at this position actually here on our artifact that we have here, (13:47):
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Ejaaz:
he's taken a major position in Astero Labs, which helps with the interconnects (13:51):
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Ejaaz:
between GPUs. So basically like the plumbing, (13:55):
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Ejaaz:
The wiring, the ability to transfer tons of data and information across the (13:57):
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Ejaaz:
GPUs is where all the money has been flowing. And it's not just a Gavin Baker thing. (14:02):
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Ejaaz:
It is a Brad Gerstner thing. And it is pretty similar across traditional investors (14:06):
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Ejaaz:
as well, including like Ray Dalio. So it's cool to see. And I think it's something (14:10):
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Ejaaz:
that I'm keeping my eye on quite astutely, actually. (14:13):
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Josh:
You can kind of see these companies based on their size and their risk exposure (14:16):
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Josh:
going out the curve. Like we have Berkshire, who's right at the core. (14:19):
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Josh:
You're buying Amazon, you're buying Google. (14:23):
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Josh:
Those types of companies are going to be slower more steady growth much more (14:24):
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Josh:
stable then there's people like gavin people like brad gerstner they're going (14:28):
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Josh:
the next concentric circle out of the sloop they're going to the infrastructure layer (14:32):
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Josh:
what is required in order to generate tokens it's optics it's memory it's like (14:36):
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Josh:
going further and further out the stack that's kind of what we're seeing with (14:40):
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Josh:
them and it has been playing out really well another thing i wanted to mention (14:43):
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Josh:
in Gavin's portfolio is that (14:46):
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Josh:
he has a huge $2.3 billion. (14:48):
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Josh:
Position on QQQ puts. (14:52):
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Josh:
And for those that aren't familiar, that basically means he's buying the right (14:54):
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Josh:
to own shares of the QQQ, which is representative of the index at the current (14:57):
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Josh:
price, meaning it's insurance in the case that it goes down. (15:01):
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Josh:
So I find this interesting too. And we saw this with Leopold's portfolio as well, where everyone (15:04):
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Josh:
has this or not everyone, but there are a few people that have this hedge baked (15:09):
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Josh:
into their portfolios currently where if the market goes down they can still (15:12):
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Josh:
survive they're really just making a very specific hyper concentrated bet in this case on ai hardware (15:16):
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Josh:
the infrastructure layer so even if they're wrong even if the market does go down (15:22):
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Josh:
but ai hardware still continues to do well they can win and i find it interesting (15:27):
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Josh:
that they do have this hedge put in place which is kind of cool there's also (15:31):
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Josh:
nvidia which i found interesting (15:34):
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Josh:
and apparently they they also filed a 13f because they i mean as a company they (15:36):
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Josh:
own quite a bit of things the first one being intel they own 30 billion dollars (15:40):
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Josh:
of intel which is great a pretty large position yeah i mean good good place (15:45):
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Josh:
to be it's funny you think of intel and nvidia as like. (15:48):
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Josh:
Total competitors but nvidia owns like quite a big chunk of change in that company (15:51):
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Josh:
nvidia also has a second biggest holding being spacex which we all know i mean (15:55):
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Josh:
this clearly makes sense spacex is going to (16:00):
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Josh:
be exclusively buying nvidia gpus to power all the new data centers then also (16:03):
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Josh:
there's core weave there's coherent there's nokia there's synopsis (16:07):
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Josh:
there's this interesting thing where there is kind of like the circular economy (16:10):
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Josh:
type questions going on we're like okay nvidia invests core we have a nebius (16:15):
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Josh:
then they take that capital to buy nvidia gpus which shows up as nvidia revenue (16:20):
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Josh:
they have these companies on their cap table that they are investing in and (16:23):
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Josh:
therefore collecting revenue from. (16:26):
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Josh:
I mean, at the end of the day, this is kind of the general play from the people (16:28):
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Josh:
who are in the trenches in the world of AI. (16:31):
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Josh:
A lot of infrastructure, a lot of those like higher level purchases into Intel, (16:33):
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Josh:
into SpaceX, into the neoclouds. That's what they're thinking about. (16:38):
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Ejaaz:
If you are considering investing in this space, the number one North Star you (16:41):
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Ejaaz:
should always ask yourself is, (16:47):
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Ejaaz:
will the demand for AI products, AI tools, AI models be greater 10 years from now than it is today? (16:49):
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Ejaaz:
If your belief is yes, then all of these things, infrastructurally, (16:57):
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Ejaaz:
especially involved in physical atoms like GPUs, like energy, (17:02):
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Ejaaz:
like power, is all going to be required and going up. (17:05):
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Ejaaz:
Now, of course, you need to make sure that you are backing the types of companies (17:08):
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Ejaaz:
and builders that are actually going to execute on this. (17:13):
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Ejaaz:
And when I think of like the dummies guide to what to kind of like support, (17:15):
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Ejaaz:
I look at NVIDIA's portfolio, essentially, because there's no one better than (17:20):
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Ejaaz:
Jensen Huang, who has a much deeper insight as to what is actually being built (17:24):
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Ejaaz:
and where the demand actually is. (17:28):
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Ejaaz:
He said on a recent, I think it was like an interview panel, (17:30):
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Ejaaz:
or maybe it was like at one of these conferences that he spoke at, (17:33):
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Ejaaz:
that people are questioning (17:35):
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Ejaaz:
Whether some of these AI labs or some of these hyperscalers are actually seeing (17:37):
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Ejaaz:
demand for the AI models and products that they're offering, (17:41):
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Ejaaz:
like Microsoft and Google, for example, prior to their quarterly earnings, (17:44):
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Ejaaz:
everyone was doubting them. (17:47):
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Ejaaz:
Then they released their quarterly earnings. And not only has their revenue (17:48):
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Ejaaz:
gone up like 5x over the last quarter, but they've also seen revenue margins specifically go up. (17:51):
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Ejaaz:
And it's the same trend that you see across neoclouds, hyperscalers, (17:58):
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Ejaaz:
as well as some of these CPU companies. (18:02):
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Ejaaz:
So you see his biggest position is a $30 billion stake in Intel. (18:04):
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Ejaaz:
Now, I want to remind everyone that I think it was midway last year that he (18:08):
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Ejaaz:
put a $5 billion investment into Intel to own, I think it was like, (18:12):
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Ejaaz:
what was it, like a 5% stake in them? (18:16):
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Ejaaz:
He invested alongside the US government. (18:18):
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Ejaaz:
And the main reason for that was unclear at the time, but today is very clear. (18:21):
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Ejaaz:
Intel creates bleeding-edge CPUs. In order to orchestrate all these hundreds (18:25):
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Ejaaz:
of thousands of GPUs, you need (18:30):
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Ejaaz:
things like CPUs to make sure that your AI agents make the right tool calls (18:32):
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Ejaaz:
and to make sure that they operate efficiently and fast enough for you to get (18:37):
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Ejaaz:
your answer to your prompt. (18:40):
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Ejaaz:
And this is what all of these companies are that NVIDIA is investing in. (18:41):
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Ejaaz:
And you see this collectively across so many of the different funds. (18:45):
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Ejaaz:
They're betting on AI demand just being higher. (18:48):
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Ejaaz:
And if that's the case, then you're going to need more neoclouds. (18:51):
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Ejaaz:
You're going to need more hyperscalers you are going to need way more ai models (18:53):
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Ejaaz:
and you're going to need a way to route across all of them you need the power (18:57):
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Ejaaz:
to like power all of them so this just makes a lot of sense to (19:00):
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Josh:
Me yeah no it's pretty interesting i guess now we could kind of move down to (19:03):
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Josh:
the like the rapid fire versions of just like who who is left here one of the (19:05):
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Josh:
noteworthy investors bill ackman (19:09):
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Josh:
we have uh he is positioning himself mostly in payments which i find interesting (19:11):
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Josh:
his new positions are visa mastercard, (19:16):
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Josh:
s&p global and netflix which is a little bizarre and when you think about that (19:19):
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Josh:
one you're like huh why payments and then you think well who did stripe just (19:23):
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Josh:
acquire um it's just acquired open router it's like it turns out payment infrastructure (19:26):
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Josh:
is due for an entire overhaul (19:31):
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Josh:
and it seems like if (19:33):
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Josh:
you are betting on that you are almost shorting visa and mastercard uh not buying (19:35):
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Josh:
visa mastercard so i'd love to talk about, (19:40):
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Josh:
why i'd love to ask him like why are you going along these companies when everybody's (19:42):
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Josh:
actively working to sabotage and destroy them. (19:46):
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Josh:
Like the credit card providers, for those who don't know, they normally take (19:49):
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Josh:
an X amount of pennies and like 2.9%, 2.7% of every transaction, fairly large. (19:52):
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Josh:
And a lot of people are kind of sick of paying that. And it seems like AA agents (19:57):
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Josh:
are needing their own infrastructure lay in order to make these payments. (20:01):
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Josh:
So I find the Visa and MasterCard pretty interesting. (20:03):
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Josh:
There's a few other noteworthy ones. There's... (20:07):
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Josh:
This guy, Sam Klarna, who runs apparently $5.4 billion worth of money. (20:09):
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Josh:
His number one is Amazon. I mean, (20:14):
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Josh:
it seems like there's a lot of people in Amazon being the number one. (20:17):
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Josh:
Tiger Global, I think they had theirs as number one. Also, David Tepper, (20:20):
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Josh:
his number one was Amazon. A lot of people are really excited about Amazon. (20:24):
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Ejaaz:
I'm just looking at this and I'm seeing like a lot of confusion. (20:27):
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Ejaaz:
Like you've got Bill Ackman buying all the finance rail companies, (20:30):
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Ejaaz:
but he's trimming Amazon down 25%. Then you got Seth Klarman buying Amazon. (20:33):
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Ejaaz:
On. Then you got Terry Smith dumping Visa, dumping Alphabet. (20:37):
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Ejaaz:
And so I'm like, okay, some of these funds kind of agree with each other. Some of them don't. (20:41):
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Ejaaz:
I think on your point around why Ackman might be buying the financial rails (20:46):
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Ejaaz:
and why Stripe just acquired Open Router, I'm realizing that (20:50):
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Ejaaz:
the whole thesis of plumbing AI, I want to buy tokens and I want to convert (20:54):
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Ejaaz:
those tokens into intelligence that makes my business earn more money. (21:00):
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Ejaaz:
Stripe is perfectly positioned for that. Visa and MasterCard perfectly positioned (21:03):
undefined
Ejaaz:
for that because they already have the distribution to all of these different (21:07):
undefined
Ejaaz:
companies' financial books, right? They're already getting paid. (21:09):
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Ejaaz:
So for them to flip on a switch and say, hey, we can also provide you and serve (21:12):
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Ejaaz:
you the inference for all these different models might actually be really attractive. (21:16):
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Ejaaz:
Maybe that's my tinfoil hat guess, but. (21:19):
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Josh:
Yeah, well, all of these things also require agents. And we're going to have (21:21):
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Josh:
to talk about agents again because of our friend and sponsor Ledger, (21:24):
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Josh:
who is building an infrastructure for agents in which there's a three part solution. (21:28):
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Josh:
If the agents propose, the humans (21:32):
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Josh:
approve, the Ledger signer enforces the transactions that are being made. (21:34):
undefined
Josh:
They built this really neat Ledger agent stack that allows you to use their (21:38):
undefined
Josh:
open source tools to work with agents because chances are, I mean, (21:41):
undefined
Josh:
if you're building with agents, you're pretty worried about security. (21:44):
undefined
Josh:
There's been a lot of breakouts from companies like open ai and anthropic recently (21:47):
undefined
Josh:
you want to lock that down you do so with this hardware (21:51):
undefined
Josh:
process that ledger has they work with cloud code they work with codex it works (21:54):
undefined
Josh:
with cursor it's all totally open source for you to try out today and you can find more in (21:59):
undefined
Josh:
the link in the description below thank you to ledger for sponsoring this video (22:02):
undefined
Josh:
and as we get to the final segment of the show we have to make the you have (22:06):
undefined
Josh:
to answer the question like okay what is the smart money actually buying in (22:10):
undefined
Josh:
consensus after going through all these portfolios after seeing all these companies (22:13):
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Josh:
what are the largest winners and losers and we have this really nice chart on (22:17):
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Josh:
screen for those who are watching on spotify youtube wherever you get your videos (22:21):
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Josh:
it shows kind of where everyone's been adding and i see this line down the board (22:24):
undefined
Josh:
of tepper who seems to have added like pretty much everything they're going across the board. (22:28):
undefined
Ejaaz:
He's the new leopold dude (22:31):
undefined
Josh:
Uh it seems like tepper's like really making a strong play into amazon alphabet (22:33):
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Josh:
tsmc power energy neoclouds spacex but what we do see is the most amount of (22:37):
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Josh:
dots out of all of these funds across Alphabet. (22:41):
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Josh:
Everyone's really bullish on Google. People want to own the company that's spending (22:44):
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Josh:
how many hundreds of billions of CapEx this year with how large profit margins (22:49):
undefined
Josh:
in their cloud infrastructure with like a new leadership team that's coming (22:53):
undefined
Josh:
in probably a little more hunger than the old. It seems like this new... (22:56):
undefined
Josh:
Beginning for Google almost. And the hope is that a lot of people can capitalize on that. (23:00):
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Josh:
The next most popular, I guess there's three of them here. It's Amazon, TSMC, and SpaceX. (23:04):
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Josh:
Those all seem like pretty amazing opportunities. Amazon, we know, (23:09):
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Josh:
is pretty much one of the largest mag seven companies for AI exposure. (23:12):
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Josh:
You get AWS, you get the sneaky anthropic stake for the company, (23:17):
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Josh:
and then you get terranium chips, (23:22):
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Josh:
which are all three huge verticals that can play a large role in the earnings (23:23):
undefined
Josh:
of amazon i think people are pretty excited about these large cap companies (23:27):
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Josh:
spacex again goes without saying we have 25 episodes on why they're going to (23:30):
undefined
Josh:
be one of the most valuable companies in the world (23:34):
undefined
Josh:
people are excited about ai data centers in space they're excited about grok (23:35):
undefined
Josh:
getting on the frontier they're excited about the data center build out there's (23:38):
undefined
Josh:
a lot of things to be excited about there and then tsmc (23:41):
undefined
Josh:
It's just buying the picks and shovels, man. Someone's got to make the chips. (23:43):
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Josh:
TSMC is pretty damn good at it. (23:47):
undefined
Ejaaz:
I think when we look at this, it gives you a clear idea of where the consensus (23:48):
undefined
Ejaaz:
of investments are in AI right now. (23:53):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Like you look at Amazon Alphabet, that's not new news from like a couple of (23:55):
undefined
Ejaaz:
years back when these companies were making very heavy capex investments in AI in general. (23:59):
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Ejaaz:
I still think that they have a long way to go. (24:04):
undefined
Ejaaz:
And I don't quite believe people think that AI is going to be as big as they (24:07):
undefined
Ejaaz:
could potentially conceive. (24:12):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Like when I look at Andy Jassy, CEO of Amazon's reports on AWS, (24:13):
undefined
Ejaaz:
I can't help but think that, I can't help but get like incredibly bullish about it because (24:18):
undefined
Ejaaz:
it's not only him making, what (24:23):
undefined
Ejaaz:
is it, like a $200 billion investment this year in AI CapEx, but it's him (24:25):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Showing us publicly, by the way, this is all reported on, the revenue and margins (24:30):
undefined
Ejaaz:
that are expanding for the company itself. (24:34):
undefined
Ejaaz:
So when you look at that and look at the investment, it kind of makes a lot (24:36):
undefined
Ejaaz:
of sense. Bear in mind, Andy Jassy has been running AWS well before he was CEO (24:39):
undefined
Ejaaz:
of Amazon. So he knows the infrastructure in and out the best, (24:44):
undefined
Ejaaz:
better than anyone, right? (24:49):
undefined
Ejaaz:
So when he says things like this, it's very important, I think, to pay attention. (24:50):
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Ejaaz:
Now, if you lower your gaze to the bottom of this stack, it tells you where (24:54):
undefined
Ejaaz:
the money is effectively going to go. (24:58):
undefined
Ejaaz:
It's going to be in things like power and energy. It's going to be in things (24:59):
undefined
Ejaaz:
like payments and memory. Now, memory is already quite a consensus trade. (25:02):
undefined
Ejaaz:
But as you can see, a lot of people got scared after the Leopold blowout. (25:05):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Now, is it just a blot that was based off of leverage? (25:09):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Or have we reached some kind of top that maybe makes no sense? (25:12):
undefined
Ejaaz:
We're going to have to see over the next couple of months. (25:14):
undefined
Ejaaz:
It's my belief that like, memory is constrained by physical atoms. (25:17):
undefined
Ejaaz:
We do not have enough plumbing and chip fabs out there to meet demand going (25:21):
undefined
Ejaaz:
into 2028. I just want to emphasize that (25:26):
undefined
Ejaaz:
All the supply that is available for memory for next year is completely sold out. (25:29):
undefined
Ejaaz:
You've got SanDisk literally inventing brand new forms of memory to be able (25:33):
undefined
Ejaaz:
to serve up demand just to kind of get memory into the hands of AI providers. (25:38):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Now, when you look at payments, this is kind of like a brand new thing, (25:43):
undefined
Ejaaz:
you know? Maybe we'll have a few more episodes in the future about this, (25:45):
undefined
Ejaaz:
but you've got Stripe just acquiring Open Router. You've got Ramp creating their (25:48):
undefined
Ejaaz:
own router. There's a lot of movement in the AI router side of things, (25:51):
undefined
Ejaaz:
and that's a thesis to unpack on a separate episode. (25:55):
undefined
Ejaaz:
And then you have neoclouds and power and energy, which has been the case for (25:58):
undefined
Ejaaz:
so many years at this point, where we have all these GPUs, we're going to have (26:01):
undefined
Ejaaz:
way more GPUs in the future, and we don't have enough power to serve for this. (26:05):
undefined
Ejaaz:
So we're looking into nuclear, we're looking into solar, we're looking into (26:09):
undefined
Ejaaz:
ripping jet engines off planes and trying to like spit it up at the back of (26:12):
undefined
Ejaaz:
a data center, which is what Elon Musk is literally doing. (26:15):
undefined
Ejaaz:
He bought a company to help him do that. And so I think we're going to see a (26:18):
undefined
Ejaaz:
bunch more of these investments, whether it pays out or whether it plays out (26:21):
undefined
Ejaaz:
is something we're going to see over the next couple of months. (26:25):
undefined
Ejaaz:
It's my strong belief that we will but again this could all be a house of cards (26:27):
undefined
Ejaaz:
and a lot of people think so and so i don't want to negate that fact (26:31):
undefined
Josh:
It's also worth noting that these aren't uh specific ai filings for 13f companies (26:34):
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Josh:
like these are just the standard 13fs it just so happens that it seems like (26:39):
undefined
Josh:
a lot of the large funds are investing in ai which is interesting is like if (26:43):
undefined
Josh:
if everyone's focused here is there an edge elsewhere is there some place that (26:47):
undefined
Josh:
other people aren't looking because everyone is seemingly interested in figuring (26:51):
undefined
Josh:
out how this ai trade plays out possibly (26:55):
undefined
Josh:
probably i don't see my voice tesla anywhere come on where's the love over there, (26:57):
undefined
Josh:
but it's interesting it's interesting to think like okay well if everyone's (27:01):
undefined
Josh:
focused on these things is there an edge is there alpha elsewhere that we may (27:04):
undefined
Josh:
be able to extract from the market like it's interesting. (27:08):
undefined
Ejaaz:
No one's holding nvidia josh like some of the like the major company that's making these these gpus (27:10):
undefined
Josh:
Yeah, that was a, yeah, actually Nvidia was missing from most of these, huh? (27:16):
undefined
Josh:
Except for, I believe, Gavin Baker, maybe, has it as his largest holding. (27:20):
undefined
Josh:
I think he's Jensen's biggest bull. He probably owns quite a bit. (27:25):
undefined
Josh:
Warren Buffett's still, Berkshire Hathaway's biggest holding is Apple. (27:27):
undefined
Josh:
And I find it ironic that it's been the biggest holding forever because everyone's (27:30):
undefined
Josh:
just kind of forgot about it. (27:33):
undefined
Josh:
They've moved past it. And yet Apple is currently sitting here, (27:35):
undefined
Josh:
the most valuable company in the world, even more so than Nvidia. (27:37):
undefined
Josh:
So it's pretty interesting to see kind of how these companies structure themselves, (27:40):
undefined
Josh:
see which ones are more nimble, like Leopold, and getting blown out of their (27:44):
undefined
Josh:
portfolios, which ones have been around since the beginning of time, like Berkshire. (27:47):
undefined
Josh:
And they're actually just long, some of these fantastic companies that is now (27:51):
undefined
Josh:
the most valuable company in the world. (27:56):
undefined
Josh:
And perhaps you can use that to kind of gauge your risk tolerance and see where (27:57):
undefined
Josh:
your personal portfolio fits into this. (28:01):
undefined
Josh:
But that is the entirety of the episode today. I want to just thank everyone (28:04):
undefined
Josh:
so much for watching, for being here with us, for hearing about the aftermath (28:08):
undefined
Josh:
of the Leopold blow up i thought this would be exciting for different reasons, (28:12):
undefined
Josh:
but um unfortunately it is exciting because we get to see the final holdings (28:17):
undefined
Josh:
before everything exploded and now what you're looking at is probably the citadel (28:21):
undefined
Josh:
portfolio because they bought the entire thing in a single block of trades so. (28:25):
undefined
Ejaaz:
Which there are about two and a half x just fyi from that (28:29):
undefined
Josh:
Purchase imagine oh my. (28:32):
undefined
Ejaaz:
God two weeks also didn't leopold make like a 500 million dollar private investment (28:33):
undefined
Ejaaz:
I saw his report on like Bloomberg or Reuters or somewhere. (28:39):
undefined
Josh:
Yeah, man, he's down, but far from out. (28:42):
undefined
Ejaaz:
He'll be back. Dude, he's already back. He's back. Where did he get that cash? (28:44):
undefined
Josh:
It's going to, you know, it's going to be really fun. You know what you really (28:47):
undefined
Josh:
need to stick around for is the next Leopold 13F. Because then we'll see what (28:49):
undefined
Josh:
rises from the ashes. It's like, okay, like what is left? Is it going to be zero? (28:55):
undefined
Josh:
Is he even going to have enough money on the balance sheet to be required to file a 13F? (28:59):
undefined
Josh:
We will see. I suspect the answer will be yes. I suspect it is a Phoenix rising (29:03):
undefined
Josh:
from the ashes, a strong comeback. (29:07):
undefined
Josh:
But that's the update if you enjoyed this episode as always uh first thank you (29:09):
undefined
Josh:
so much for watching we really appreciate you sticking around till the end (29:13):
undefined
Josh:
second uh don't forget to share with a friend who might also enjoy don't forget (29:15):
undefined
Josh:
to give us a thumbs up on youtube or wherever you view your podcast eejus any (29:18):
undefined
Josh:
final parting thoughts before we head out of here today. (29:22):
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Ejaaz:
No i uh i'm curious for the folks who are listening who i i get are very investor (29:25):
undefined
Ejaaz:
oriented are there any layers of the stack or if there are any companies that (29:30):
undefined
Ejaaz:
were missed like we would love to to hear about it like leave us in the comments (29:34):
undefined
Ejaaz:
a note, DM us, whatever. (29:38):
undefined
Ejaaz:
We're always looking for like where the edge might potentially be. (29:40):
undefined
Ejaaz:
And, you know, Josh and I have got our rose-tinted glasses on, right? We love memory. (29:43):
undefined
Ejaaz:
We love power. We love NVIDIA. We love Google. So if you have any ideas, (29:46):
undefined
Ejaaz:
let us know. But that I think is it. (29:50):
undefined
Ejaaz:
And yeah, we will see you guys on the next one. (29:52):
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