Gavin Baker谈Anthropic的S-1文件、GPU价格与SpaceX
- Baker认为,Anthropic的S-1文件带来明显惊喜,企业市场仍有巨大增长空间。他提到公司已烧掉100亿美元,同时盈利能力、现金创造能力和单位经济效益都令人鼓舞。财富500强中约一半已采用Anthropic,但相关支出仅占这些公司的0.1%,这说明市场渗透“可能比我原先想的还要早期”。
- Anthropic披露的客户支出分布,挑战了支出高度集中的看空论据。Baker提到,年支出超过1,000万美元的账户只有250个;主持人则指出,支出超过10万美元的账户有11,000至12,000个。Baker认为客户支出“非常分散”,但也承认Ramp的集中度数据可能仍适用于整体AI支出。
- Baker称,开放权重基础设施公司增长快于OpenAI和Anthropic。Fireworks、Baseten、Together、Modal和Cognition支撑了他的判断:需求正扩展到头部实验室之外。Atreides领投Fireworks最近一轮融资,增长快到“估值倍数实际上每天都在下降”。SpaceX将Cursor的算力转为自建后,Cursor以外的增长尤其值得关注。
- 尽管供应管线已公布,GPU价格仍显示市场紧张可能延续至2027年。Baker称,10月GPU租赁价格几乎每天上涨,远期算力也很贵。投资组合公司已为2026年5月至6月的集群配置了4,000台Blackwell GPU,如今希望在2027年9月再增加4,000台,却发现报价大幅走高。“我们已经不再处于期货贴水状态。”
- 算力投资回报越来越取决于执行能力,以及能否留住价格上涨带来的收益。Baker肯定CoreWeave的运营能力,但指出其大量算力早已按远低于当前市场的价格签约。主持人认为,增加现货敞口并要求预付款,回本周期可以“远低于1年”。运营集群就像“经营一支一级方程式车队”;Baker说,Jensen推出的预组装机架新产品或能缩短部署时间,减少闲置GPU占用的营运资金。
- 在Baker看多的框架中,训练需求也带来了推理算力供给过剩的潜在风险。他认为一项有说服力的看空论据是:Anthropic将74%的算力用于训练。这意味着推理收入还有增长空间,但如果训练需求下降,相关算力可能转入推理市场。
- IPO和云合同提价,可能降低基础设施扩张对外部融资的依赖。SpaceX和Anthropic上市并解除持股限制后,共同基金或可恢复投资非上市资产的空间。云服务价格上涨也可能推高经营现金流,令公司能够以内生资金承担更多2027年基建支出。Baker不确定外部融资是否已经见顶,但表示:“我觉得我们快到了。”
1. Anthropic的S-1文件显示规模巨大,企业渗透率仍低
- Baker称这份S-1文件“显然是个上行惊喜”:公司已烧掉100亿美元,盈利能力、现金创造能力和单位经济效益也令人鼓舞。财富500强中约一半已采用Anthropic,但相关支出仅占这些公司的0.1%。企业市场的渗透可能“比我原先想的还要早期”。Baker还提到,若将披露的第三季度数据年化,年化规模约为670亿美元。
- 一位主持人认为,AI支出集中于少数公司很正常,因为早期采用者往往是狂热用户;他援引Ramp数据称,1%的公司占了90%的支出。Baker不同意这能说明Anthropic的客户支出集中:年支出超过1,000万美元的账户只有250个,而主持人称,支出超过10万美元的账户有11,000至12,000个。Baker认为S-1文件更具权威性,显示“支出基础非常分散”,但也承认Ramp的数据可能仍能描述整体AI支出。
- Baker认为,更广泛的需求信号来自开放权重基础设施公司:Fireworks、Baseten、Together、Modal和Cognition的增长速度都超过OpenAI和Anthropic。他说,OpenAI夏季加速增长期间如此,Anthropic在10月重新加速增长之际仍是如此。Baker称,Anthropic夏季丢失了市场份额,如今正在夺回份额。他不认为Anthropic会在S-1文件中留空10月ARR,除非预期数字会很强;同时希望市场能逐渐不再盯着月度ARR数字。
- 一位主持人表示,西海岸的非上市市场投资者早已知道这些公司规模可观、增长迅速,东海岸对此则不那么熟悉。Atreides领投了Fireworks最近一轮融资;Baker说,增长快到难以定价:“估值倍数实际上每天都在下降。”他尤其关注Cursor以外的推理云增长,因为SpaceX一直在将Cursor的算力转为自建。他认为,整个生态的增长已经提速,参与者也更加多元。
2. Grokbot凭借易用性和信息分发打动Baker
- 一位主持人问,尽管xAI的模型在某项基准测试中表现并不惊艳,Cursor的产品和分发能力能否帮助Grokbot。Baker从用户角度回答:Grokbot是“对我和我的公司影响最大的AI产品”,他自己就有大约17个Grokbot。他曾用Claude Code拼凑过一套方案,并说那可能是用户操作的问题。
- Baker把投资概括为“确保正确的信息在正确的时间送到正确的人手中”,并称Grokbot很擅长这件事。一位主持人补充了周日晚上做研究的例子:智能体可以耗用100万token调查市场规模问题,不必让员工花6个小时工作。
- 个人智能体还没有取代他的助理Susan。“我想我这是享受高管助理特权了,”Baker说。他下载了Instinct,也试用过Muse,但表示Grokbot已经改变了他在工作场景中的使用方式。
3. 算力短缺延续至2027年,运营商的收益各不相同
- Baker称,10月几乎所有类型GPU的租赁价格都在每天上涨。Atreides持有Silicon Data的股份;Baker称其为最权威的数据来源。Silicon Data显示,算力市场如今已进入期货升水阶段:远期算力也很贵。投资组合公司已为2026年5月或6月配置了4,000台Blackwell GPU,如今想在2027年9月再增加4,000台,却被价格惊到。尽管新供应不断上线,Baker称这些公司直到2027年都很难找到算力:“我们已经不再处于期货贴水状态。”
- Baker认为应该按字面理解Sarah Friar的说法:2026年5月前签下的长期算力承诺“赚得盆满钵满”。如果以每瓦约10美元或15美元的价格买入算力,转售时就能获得大幅溢价;Friar形容这种溢价为“3、4、5倍”。
- Baker称CoreWeave运营GPU的能力很强,但通过长期合同锁定了大量算力,如今合同价远低于市场。一位主持人解释,CoreWeave按固定价格出售算力,并认为提高现货敞口、减少长期包销协议能改善收益。主持人称,把算力卖入现货市场,回本周期可能远低于1年,还能获得大额预付款。
- 一位主持人把运营GPU集群比作经营一级方程式车队,需要经验丰富的运营人员和协同执行能力。Baker认同,关键在于接入GPU、为其供电并做好运营。他列举了CoreWeave、Crusoe、Nebius、SpaceX和大型超大规模云厂商,称这些公司都有执行记录,但未来仍不确定。
- Baker提到Jensen推出的一款新产品:7个预先组装好的机架,“真的只要插上电就能运行”。他说,有些运营商需要3个月或6个月才能给GPU供电并启动;在这种规模下,6个月的延误可能意味着数千亿美元资产无法产生收入。缩短部署时间可以减少被占用的营运资金。
4. 审慎乐观也要看到训练需求带来的供给风险
- Baker称,他把X当作练习“培养平和心态”的地方,从批评中寻找有价值的看空论据。他觉得一项论据很有说服力:Anthropic将74%的算力用于训练。这可能意味着推理收入还有增长空间;但如果训练需求下降,大量算力可能涌入推理市场。“我上X不是为了证明自己正确,”他说,自己是在努力学习、找到正确答案。
- 一位主持人提出生物科技领域的时间错配问题:基础设施成本现在就要承担,药品收入却可能要等很多年。Baker说“得看需要多久”,并提到蒙大拿州的新药项目,以及把现有化合物用于治疗新疾病的可能性。他说,AI帮助找到一种已有50或60年的药物,这种药物实际上可以治愈一种罕见病;该病每年会严重损害10,000名儿童的健康。一位朋友完成了相关工作,但Baker说,故事应该由朋友自己讲。
- Baker称AI行业的公关工作“满分100分只能得-5分”,需要讲出更多真实故事。他公开支持AI的理由包括挽救生命、让蓝领美国人和小城镇受益、推动再工业化,以及增加发电量:“没有电力,就无法再工业化。”他讲述了一位怀疑者要求数据中心建在美国最富裕县的故事;Baker随后指出,Loudoun County是他所说的最富裕县,人均数据中心数量也最高。
5. 大宗商品研究范围宽于Atreides的组合敞口
- 被问到自己对能源基础设施和大宗商品关注到什么程度时,Baker说自己密切跟踪这些领域。他曾运营一只多元化基金9年,此前也投资过能源和自然资源。他没有把这些领域作为组合的重要部分,但认为投资者需要广泛研究,再把资金投向公司具有竞争优势的领域。
- Baker称,黄金长期以来一直是组合配置的一部分。他觉得一些黄金多头对小行星采矿反应过度颇为有趣,认为这挑战了他们的世界观;一位主持人将其与实验室培育钻石可能带来的技术冲击相提并论。
- 他在非上市市场的具体敞口,是一家通过化学工艺提炼稀土的公司,而不是收购矿山。“稀土的问题不在于稀有”,而在于提炼过程污染严重。Baker还肯定了DARPA所做的工作,并表示投资者永远不知道一个微弱但重要的信号会从哪里出现。
6. IPO和云业务现金流有望缓解资本约束
- Baker认为,SpaceX和Anthropic上市后,另一批私人资本有望释放出来。美国共同基金持有非流动性资产受到限制;这些公司上市并解除持股限制后,基金就有了更多空间购买非上市资产。Baker提到,Capital Research、T. Rowe Price、MSAM、GSAM和Franklin Templeton目前已参与其中。
- 主权资本的投入已经相当可观,尤其来自GCC和阿联酋。Baker特别提到MGX和Mubadala,称阿联酋在AI领域“行动极其积极”;Atreides和Valor曾与Mubadala共同领投Crusoe。
- Baker预计,随着定价偏低的合同到期重签、更多算力转向现货,超大规模云厂商和新云厂商的合计营收增速将继续加快。收入以高毛利率转化为利润,从而推高经营现金流,也可能让公司内部融资承担比外界预期更多的2027年基建支出。他的保留意见很明确:“我不知道外部融资是否已经见顶”,但“我觉得我们快到了。”
- 一位主持人提出,随着直接持股者从大约50,000人增加到数百万人,公众持股可能缓和AI引发的两极化情绪。Baker更支持直接持股,而非由基金会董事会或官僚来分配资金。他说,美国的每个孩子都会拥有一股SpaceX股份,并鼓励更多公司和富裕人士,包括Michael Dell和Brad Kirshner,推动更广泛的参与:“让每个人都拥有资本主义的一份。”
完整逐字稿
Our guest is Gavin Baker from Atreides Management, the managing partner—
You may have heard of him before—
Oh, he’s been on the show before.
…the Baconator.
We’re going to bring him into the TBPN Ultradome and catch up with him. How are you doing, Gavin? Good to see you.
I’m awesome, man. Happiness is a choice. I’m only ever fantastic, awesome, superb, phenomenal.
I completely agree.
Why be anything else?
I love that happiness is a choice, but it also feels like this is a week to be extra happy. The Anthropic S-1 went out, and it seemed like a beat. If you were worried the economics weren’t secretly working behind the scenes and there was going to be some bombshell in there, the haters have been kind of quiet. Ed Zitron hasn’t posted. It seems like things are on track. What’s been your interpretation of this week?
1. Anthropic’s S-1 Beats Expectations
I do think the Anthropic S-1 was pretty clearly an upside surprise.
Yeah.
The fact that they’ve only burned $10 billion, the profitability, the cash generation, the unit economics—they’re all very encouraging. I put it on X, but I just cannot believe that half of the Fortune 500 has adopted Anthropic and it’s 0.1% of their expenses. It’s just a wild stat.
Yeah. The funny thing is that—
Did the internet just go out?
I read that as—
Yeah, we can still hear you.
No, yeah, we can hear you. I read that 50%—
No.
What?
Yeah, yeah.
Oh, just like, okay, that’s incredibly impressive for a company in just a few years to get to half the Fortune 500 or the S&P 500 as customers. But I was kind of thinking, what are the other half of the S&P 500 doing? I felt like every Fortune 500 or S&P 500 company would be using everything across multiple products. But there are a lot of companies that just haven’t gotten through the adoption hiccups of rolling out AI broadly. Maybe some are all in on Google or OpenAI, but by and large, I think some are still figuring out how AI can be deployed in their organizations. Is that your read on it—that we’re still early on the diffusion story in enterprise?
Yeah, very early. If anything, maybe earlier than I thought we were. It’s just astonishing. Whatever the number is—$67 billion annualized, if you annualize the reported third quarter, wherever the ARR is right now—to be that big with such low penetration into the Fortune 500 is pretty extraordinary.
Yeah, totally.
How have you processed some of the criticism of the AI trade right now—that a very small number of companies are driving the majority of the spend? Historically, that same dynamic probably played out with social media ads, where a very small number of companies were driving a massive amount of the spend. You’re going to see power laws in a lot of places.
My read is that there are companies based in San Francisco that are 1,000 times more obsessed with AI than the long tail of public company employees. Of course they’re going to spend dramatically more. It’s possible that long tail never actually cares enough, and they fade to relative obscurity.
You have the disruptors saying, “Yeah, this technology is real. It works. It’s not perfect yet. It’s not a drop-in coworker that you immediately give $1 and it gives you $10 back.” But it’s very capable, and if you obsess over it… That’s been my overall read. I don’t think it’s necessarily a problem. Of course, you’d want a more diversified revenue base if you could, but it feels very natural that all the spend is coming from a very small group of people who realize something fundamental has changed and are trying to take every advantage of it while the rest of the world is asleep.
Mm.
I might respectfully disagree a little. In the S-1, there are only 250 accounts spending more than $10 million. Somebody in The New York Times said maybe 10 days ago that 80% of their revenue came from eight customers. I was actually shocked by how diversified their customer base was.
Hmm.
And if you are a—
The number to me was something like 11,000 or 12,000 spending over $100,000.
Yeah.
That feels diversified.
Oh, yeah.
But I’m talking about the Ramp data that says 1% of companies are spending 90% of the dollars.
The Ramp data is what it is, but we have much more authoritative data now—
Yeah.
Yeah, the S-1.
—from the Anthropic S-1.
Yeah.
Yeah.
And it shows a very diversified spending base for Anthropic.
Yeah.
Maybe the Ramp data is correct for AI overall. But relative to the idea that Meta was spending $10 billion and there were multiple billion-dollar-plus accounts driving it all, the Anthropic S-1 shows a much more diversified customer base.
For AI broadly, I do think something has happened since June. First, we saw OpenAI really accelerate in the summer. As OpenAI accelerated, so did open-weight models. There are so many companies—Fireworks, Baseten, Together, Modal, Cognition—that are at scale and really open-weight first, and they’re all growing faster than either OpenAI or Anthropic. That was true when OpenAI was really accelerating in the summer, and it’s still true in October, when Anthropic has had a pretty big reacceleration.
I’m skeptical they would have put a blank space for the October ARR in the S-1 if they didn’t know it was going to be pretty good. I do think it’ll be great for the market to get away from these monthly ARR figures. But to me, the story—
Yeah, it’s interesting. Seeing the Modals, Basetens, Fireworks, and Togethers all out in the market—you can probably… I feel like this is common knowledge. They’ve all been out in the market, so private market investors have been getting these updates. A lot of these companies have been starting fundraises and growing dramatically from when they got their first term sheet to when they’re actually pulling in capital.
That data is broadly known on the West Coast, I’d say, but the East Coast just isn’t aware of it at all. Some are picking it up, but it’s not common knowledge. Over here, people are like, “Yeah, these companies were already at scale,” and then they’re growing double digits just from first term sheet to close, or first close.
My firm, Atreides, led the last Fireworks round, and it was actually hard to price because they were growing so fast.
We had a handshake, I thought.
Yeah.
You’re like, “Well, we’ve increased revenue by 20%.”
Yesterday’s price is not today’s price.
Yeah, you’re like—
Yeah.
“Please, let’s just get the deal done.”
Yeah.
Lock it in.
Literally, it was like the valuation was going—the multiple was effectively going down every day.
Every day. Yeah, that’s crazy.
If anything, it feels like that ecosystem has accelerated and diversified, because earlier this year Cursor was a real big driver for all those inference clouds. The ex-Cursor growth, I think, is what’s really extraordinary, just because SpaceX has been insourcing the Cursor compute.
Yes. On Cursor and SpaceX, with the post-merger integration, it feels like Grokbot has stepped forward in terms of capability. Is that the key to growth there? We haven’t seen the models from xAI stun on a particular benchmark, but the Cursor team has always been fantastic on product and distribution. In the prior era, Grok was putting up pretty remarkable results on the benchmarks, but then there were all the political considerations, and the product was banned in some companies. It feels like Grokbot might be in a particularly different slot because they have that go-to-market motion through Cursor, with the Cursor design team behind it.
Is that what’s driving growth there? What are you seeing on the Grokbot side that’s showing acceleration in that product category?
2. Grokbot Changes How He Works
As a user, Grokbot is the most impactful AI product for me and our firm that we’ve had yet. I kludged together all this stuff with Claude Code, and it really… I’m sure it was user error on my part.
Yeah.
I’m 50 years old.
Yeah.
I’m doing my best. But Grokbot makes it so easy. I think I’m up to 17 Grokbots.
Whoa.
And every day I think of a new one to add.
That’s great.
Yeah.
Yeah, you’re getting a layer of somebody—the senior manager, the senior Grokbot. How are you personally dividing AI agents across your personal and professional life? A lot of people have a family office with a personal assistant who manages things like getting gifts for family members or planning birthday parties. Separately, they’ll have an executive assistant who plans business travel and their work calendar. It feels like we might be entering a world where those two merge and you have one agent that does everything. But we might also end up in a world where people use Grokbot or Claude Code at work, and Instinct or Muse for personal use, while OpenAI has products in both. There’s a whole array, and it’s a decision for everyone. How have you been grappling with it?
I guess you’d say I have executive assistant privilege, because my assistant Susan is exceptional.
Okay.
And she, yeah—
Not going anywhere.
I’ve not felt the need to… I’ve downloaded Instinct and played around with Muse.
Sure.
I could see they’d be super amazing if I didn’t have someone like Susan in my professional life, but I do. For the more professional use cases, Grokbot has just been transformative for me.
Yeah.
So much of investing is making sure the right information gets to the right person at the right time. Grokbot is so good at that.
Yep. There’s also something satisfying about AI agents: it can be 10:00 p.m. on a Sunday, and you can kick off a real research effort. Yes, you could probably call someone on your team and say, “I need you to…” But that would cross a professional line. You’d be a bit of a hassle as a boss, and people might not want to work there because they’d think, “He calls me every time he takes a shower. He has a shower thought, and then I have to work for six hours.” Instead, the AI is like, “Yeah, boss, I’m right here. I’d love to look that up for you and spend a million tokens figuring out the market size of something or other.” But, yeah.
My policy is that anybody at Atreides is always welcome to call me anytime on the weekend. I try not to call people on the weekends.
So—
Rewinding this week, it’s Anthropic S1 week, so there’s a lot of focus there. Last week, the general attention was on how much supply is coming online next year, and how many gigawatts SpaceX is going to bring online. You’ve generally maintained a sort of bullishness that some other people on the timeline have lost here and there. How are you processing how the industry can absorb all of that supply if we hit the higher end of some of the ranges being discussed? Is it just Jevons paradox again and again, until everyone finally internalizes it? People like to say it, but it’s hard to fully internalize.
I think that’s right. It’s easy to say; it’s hard to internalize and believe. October has been a strange month because the price to rent essentially any kind of GPU has gone up every day. The spot market for compute is getting tighter, and it’s not just the spot market. I love reading these primers on X from commodity and macro investors about these super-complicated concepts called backwardation and contango, and what they might mean for the forward curve and future price of compute.
Yeah.
Contango, backwardation. Silicon Data—which my firm is an investor in, and which I do think is the most authoritative data source—has a founder, Carmen Li, who stood up at GTC and said the compute market is now in contango. The forward market is not just tight in the spot market. If you want a cluster a year from now, you have to pay a lot of money.
Yeah.
This is maybe another discontinuity between public and private markets. The number of companies in our portfolio saying, “Okay, we got a cluster of 4,000 Blackwells in May or June of ’26, and we want to bring on another cluster of 4,000 in September of 2027,” is striking. They’re shocked by how much more they have to pay in the future. Everybody is aware of the supply that’s coming on, but even with all of that supply, it’s hard for the companies in our portfolio to find compute well into ’27. So, for all the commodity experts focused on backwardation and what that implied, I’ve got news for you: we’re not in backwardation anymore.
Mm-hmm.
As far as how much capacity is going to come online, I think one healthy thing about what’s happened in these financing markets is that I hope it concentrates capacity and supply among competent operators who can finance it through prepayments.
Hmm.
You can finance these GPU purchases two ways. By the way, CoreWeave is great. CoreWeave runs GPUs well. They bring them on; they’re very, very good. They just sadly locked in a vast amount of compute in long-term contracts that are now way under market.
Oh, interesting.
They’re doing 100%—
So they sold their compute for fixed prices, and that’s why they’re getting hammered right now. It’s not that they don’t have compute or aren’t bringing it on. They have the SemiAnalysis Diamond tier. Everyone knows the clusters work. They’re good and reliable. They just sold for too cheap, and they should have held on or had variable pricing.
Do you think Elon studied that and said, “We’re not going to make that same mistake,” and that’s why they’re adopting this more short-term contract model?
I don’t think Elon was probably studying CoreWeave or Nebius, or really anyone else. He’s a first-principles thinker. He was probably reasoning from first principles. But the conclusion he came to is that prices are going up. If we’re willing to sell into the spot market, we can have paybacks well under a year and get big prepayments. I think that’s a better financing model for the market we’re in. What I also like about it—and CoreWeave is very aware of this—is that they’re trying to get more spot exposure and do fewer of these big, long-term offtake agreements.
Standing up a big GPU cluster—not just bringing on the power and standing up the cluster—is like running a Formula 1 team. A bunch of people with no relevant experience acquire some land and power, then get a zero-down-payment offtake agreement from someone. A lot of that is being cleaned up. I think supply is being allocated through this forcing function to people who can actually bring on a cluster, energize the GPUs, and run it well. Running a Formula 1 team is really hard. You have to pack everything up, put it on a plane, go to a new city, unpack it, set it up, and set the car up. You need all the people to change the tires, change the rear wing if you get in a collision, do whatever needs to be done during the race, work out the strategy, and communicate with the driver.
Yeah.
You need all of that.
It’s really, really hard. Some of these people don’t have the relevant experience. CoreWeave, Crusoe, Nebius, SpaceX, the big hyperscalers—
These are companies that can bring on GPUs, energize them, and run them.
I’m sure.
Seven racks, preassembled. You just literally plug it in and it works.
Yeah.
Right now, when you get the GPUs, maybe if you’re SpaceX and you’re really exceptional at execution in the physical world, you can get them energized quickly.
Yeah.
But for a lot of people, it takes 3 or 6 months to get them energized and really working. If we can get that time down through this new product from Jensen, I think that’s healthy, because it effectively takes a lot of working capital out of the market.
Mm-hmm.
As these numbers get bigger, if it takes 6 months to energize them, that could be hundreds of billions of dollars of assets that aren’t generating revenue. I think that’s another product innovation that will help with this. We’ll see who energizes GPUs in ’27. I’m confident the companies I named—
Yeah.
—I think they’re going to. The future is always uncertain, but these are companies with a proven track record of execution.
Yeah.
We’ll see about others.
I have a follow-up on that. One click higher from the neo-clouds or the neo-labs: there’s been speculation that neo-labs might pivot into neo-clouds. Is that dynamic going to look like they sign a multiyear offtake agreement with a neo-cloud, and then they want to sell into the spot market? Is that what’s going to happen?
Yes. What Sarah Friar said—and Sarah Friar is an exceptional CFO—was, “Everybody made fun of us for signing all these compute commitments, and we could sell them all at a 3, 4, 5X premium.”
Today, yeah.
She was being literal. If you signed a long-term compute contract at any point before May 2026, you are way in the money. You’re buying compute for maybe $10 or $15 a watt, and you could sell it at a massive premium to that today.
Yep. Sure.
The point Carmen made about the forward curve being in contango is really important. It’s not just that the spot market is tight today. Even with all this capacity coming online, you have to pay a truly vast amount to bring on a cluster in mid-to-late ’27. I think public markets may not be appreciating that, even though all of this is public. Sarah Friar said that.
Yeah.
All these inference clouds have put out press releases. You hear a bunch of people on X talk about how hard it is to find compute into ’27. Carmen Li stands up and says the market in ’27 is crazy strong. It’s all out there, but for whatever reason, it’s not legible to the public markets.
Sure. Jordan?
What’s your outlook on biology as an area the labs are investing in? It feels very exciting, with tremendous potential, but the overall concern is around timelines. There are very real infrastructure costs coming online, and the opportunities in biology seem very real, but it may take years to get drugs to market and generate revenue that would then finance them.
We’ll see how long it takes. Montana has an interesting new program for new drugs, which I think is helpful. A really big unlock is that we have a lot of compounds, and people have used AI to figure out that you can use a drug we’ve had for 50 or 60 years for a very rare disease that devastates 10,000 kids a year, and effectively cure that disease.
Yeah.
A friend of mine did this. It’s his story to tell, so I’m not going to tell it, but AI has already saved a lot of lives. I do think the AI industry is at -5 out of 100 from a PR perspective.
100%.
They need—
We’ve got to be more like pharma.
Yeah.
The popular kids.
Yeah, exactly.
They need to start telling these stories.
Yeah.
I think we have a really high-quality group. I picked most of them. You don’t have to be bullish. I love skeptics and bears.
Yeah.
You just have to be polite, nice, and constructive. You can be bearish while being polite, nice, and constructive. We have loads of skeptics and optimists. I think it’s going to be great. I hope every CEO does a hit on your show after they’re on stage, or before.
Yeah.
I’m pretty excited about it.
Yeah. It might be the longest—
—it might be the longest TBPN episode ever.
I think so.
We’ll see.
Yeah.
3. Handling Attention and Criticism
How do you deal with all the attention, positive and negative? Does that bring—
You mean for me?
Yeah, for you. I just feel like you talked about your mindset right at the beginning of the show: it’s a choice to be happy. But when the spotlight shines directly on you once every week, there’s a lot of love, with a little bit of hate sprinkled in there.
No, there are a lot of detractors, let’s say. We can call it what it is. Antonio, who I’m doing the conference with, says being on X is an exercise in cultivated equanimity.
Hmm.
I don’t take any of it personally.
Hmm.
I’m not on X to be right. I’m a responsible optimist, but I’m trying to be open-minded to new negative facts and constantly search them out. I’m really on X to learn. With all of the hate, I try to sift through it for, “Oh, wow, that is actually a very good, compelling bearish argument.”
There was an interesting post from, I forget, a PE analyst or LBO analyst. It said, “Hey, the fact that Anthropic is dedicating 74% of their compute to training”—you could read it one way. On the one hand, it’s bullish because they could be generating a lot more revenue. On the other hand, if all this compute is being dedicated toward training, and for any reason somebody decides you need less compute for training, that’s a lot of supply that could hit the inference market. That’s a really interesting bearish perspective.
I’m human, but I’m here to learn. I want to get to the right answer. I’m sharing my views. If somebody shares a helpful negative perspective, I try to thank them. I need to go thank that person, the LBO analyst, I think it was. I didn’t have time. It’s an exercise in cultivated equanimity. You can’t take it personally.
Yeah.
I am trying to do what little I can. As Gavin Baker, I don’t have millions or tens of millions of followers. But I am trying to help paint a more optimistic vision for AI, doing what I can to help the American public understand that you actually want a data center in your town.
One of my favorite exchanges was somebody saying, “Well, I’ll wait until they start building data centers in the wealthiest county in America.” Loudoun County is the wealthiest county in America. They have the highest per-capita number of data centers.
Yep.
So just understanding that—
Virginia.
—so just—
US East.
Yeah, just under—
We know it on Amazon.
Yeah, US East availability.
We love it. Yep.
So I understand why some people are worried. There’s been a lot of fear. We’ve all seen scary movies. But a lot of awesome things are happening today because of AI for ordinary Americans, for blue-collar Americans, and for these small towns. We’re reindustrializing America. We’re massively increasing our electrical generation capacity, which—you cannot reindustrialize without power. That’s job number one.
A lot of good things are happening, and I’m trying to do what little I can to tell that side of the story and be pretty balanced. Anthropic, I called it like I saw it in the summer. They were losing market share. I’m calling it like I see it in October: they are reaccelerating and gaining share.
The S-1 was an upside surprise to me. I’m trying to call balls and strikes because my job is to just get it right.
Yeah. Jordy mentioned—
Yeah, and it’s funny because people will get so flustered by seeing different posts on X. But imagine how boring X would be if no one ever took a stance. It would just be like, “Well, it might be this. It might be that. And it might be this. But have you considered that?”
Oh, yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
No, no, no.
Every post has to be, “It’s over,” or, “We’re back.” “This is the best thing ever,” or the worst. Then we can have a debate. At least you took a stance.
Yes.
Yeah, it’s great.
Yes.
Jordy mentioned getting sharp on bio and starting to think about opportunities there. How deep have you gone in the AI stack? I saw a funny post that was like, you could spend all your time thinking about OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google, and then meet all the neoclouds and meet Lynn and Tuan and figure out what’s going on in the private markets. Or you could just buy copper and sit there and hold it, because it’s almost a perfect proxy or something like that.
How far have you gone down into energy infrastructure and commodities? How sharp are you on those? How relevant or interesting are those markets to you in this world, since they do seem adjacent?
I pay close attention to all of those.
Yeah.
I ran a diversified fund in a prior life for nine years.
Yeah.
I was an energy investor.
Yeah.
Natural resources, too.
Yeah.
For many years, I would do marketing meetings with the gold analyst at my prior employer, Fidelity. I always knew about the merits of gold from a portfolio construction perspective and would always have it in the fund.
By the way, just because it triggers people, I want to say it: I find it so amusing how upset gold bulls get at the idea of asteroid mining. No one has ever been—I’ve never gotten more hate than from the gold crowd about the idea of asteroid mining and the asteroid cycle.
Increasing supply.
I mean, it—
That’s so funny.
I mean, talk about a challenge to your worldview.
Wait, are they mad about that new Alchemy startup?
Yeah, but it’s one of those things you have to imagine: you need to imagine technological disruption. Look at the diamond industry.
Yeah.
Right?
Totally.
Yes, absolutely.
If you understood that technological disruption was possible, you probably built labs 20 years ago.
You—
Right? Ten years ago.
Maybe you would’ve done something different with the diamonds in your family. But as far as energy, industrial infrastructure, and natural resources, we have spent a lot of time on those. We have not made them a big part of the portfolio. We’ve done some things in private markets to try to help with rare earths.
Mm-hmm.
This is not through acquiring mines.
Yeah.
It’s more that the problem with rare earths isn’t that they’re rare. It’s that refining them is a very dirty process. We’ve invested in a company that has a chemical process for refining rare earths. I actually think DARPA has done some pretty smart stuff.
They kind of have a lot of different efforts around this. I try to pay as close attention to all of it as I can because, as an investor, you never know where a weak but important signal is going to come from. You want to cast as wide a net as possible, but then also focus a portfolio on the areas where I feel like we have the biggest competitive advantage as a firm.
4. Who Finances the AI Buildout
How are you thinking about the evolution of the marginal capital decider potentially changing in 2027? If you go back a couple of years, you have seed-stage VCs making bets on these AI labs, and then eventually more scaled-up venture firms becoming important capital partners. Some have taken board seats, but they are not deciding the race now. It’s big hedge funds and pre-IPO rounds. We’re coming up to a world where the Fidelities of the world, insurance agencies and funds, and sovereign wealth funds are going to be increasingly involved in financing the build-out. What does the next year look like in terms of how we get the big dollars into the AI build-out?
I think you named all the big dollar sources. Something that I think is pretty underappreciated is American mutual funds. You’re limited in the percentage you can hold in a liquid asset, so SpaceX and Anthropic going public is actually going to free up a huge amount of buying power in private markets once those are fully unlocked, because they have to be public and unlocked.
I think you will see mutual funds. They’ve always been involved. My former colleagues at Capital Research, T. Rowe Price, MSAM, GSAM, and Franklin Templeton—I’m sorry if I forgot anyone. I love you all. They’ve been pretty involved. The sovereigns have been very involved, particularly the ones in the GCC and the UAE.
Yeah.
Like MGX—
Mubadala.
Mubadala, all the sovereigns there. Atreides and Valor co-led Crusoe with Mubadala. I think the UAE in particular has been extremely front-footed, with all their sovereigns, with respect to AI.
And now Apollo’s taking a stake in Mubadala, which sort of completes the cycle.
Yes. Yeah. But that’s going to have to evolve. I do think we’re probably getting to a point where these clouds’ underpriced contracts—signed well below market values—reprice higher as they bring on more compute with more spot, like we discussed with CoreWeave. I think you’re going to see that there was a pretty big acceleration in the clouds last quarter.
Forget relative to expectations or this or that, but I think you’re going to see a pretty continuous acceleration in the combined cloud revenue growth of the big hyperscalers and the neoclouds. That number is just going to continue to accelerate. It’s dropping down at very high margins, so operating cash flow is following. I think you’re going to be able to finance more of the 2027 build-out out of cash flow than people think.
Hmm.
I don’t know if we’ve seen the peak of external financing, but I think we’re getting close.
Hmm. Yeah. That’s—
And that’ll be really helpful.
Totally. Yeah. No one can complain about that. That’s investing in the future.
AI skeptics will be—
In a bad place.
—in a horrible place.
So I need to check on them.
We’re going to have to check on them.
Sure. Sure.
You’re going to have to go around.
And look, maybe I’m wrong, but I will change my mind when the facts change. I’m just going to try and keep calling balls and strikes, and then try to be an advocate to help ordinary Americans understand that this technology can and should be awesome for them.
Yeah. Yeah.
I’m very interested to see how Anthropic and OpenAI becoming public companies impacts overall sentiment, specifically on X, because right now such a small number of people actually hold shares in these companies.
Oh, sure.
Maybe there are 50,000 people who have some incentive to be relatively optimistic. You should be able to see both the bull case and the bear case for any company. But when that changes and millions of people globally can suddenly have exposure, how does sentiment change? I think people are going to be much less extreme once the middle-of-the-road investor has some exposure.
Oh, sure.
It’s not totally binary, where a very small number of people have exposure. And it’s direct exposure, because if you happen to own shares—
Yeah, Google.
—through some retirement fund or through a hyperscaler, it’s not the same.
Maybe some of them will do what Elon did. Every child in America is going to have a share of SpaceX.
Sure.
That’s awesome. I think that’s way better for America than setting up some foundation where a board or a bunch of bureaucrats decide how to allocate the money. Just give people the money.
Yeah.
Just let people make individual decisions. I would encourage more companies and more wealthy people in America to do what Elon and Michael Dell and, of course, my friend Brad Kirshner have done. That’s awesome for America and great for capitalism.
Yeah. It feels so important that the infrastructure got built before the big liquidity wave, before SpaceX goes public, so that it’s there, it’s been tested, and it’s been implemented and rolled out. Anyone who wants to participate can take advantage of it without needing to say, “It’d be nice if the government had a program that would let me give shares directly to the American populace.” It’s there. It works. It’s up to date. It’s in the App Store. You can go download it. I love it.
Just give people the money.
Yeah. Simple.
Give everybody a stake in capitalism.
Yeah. I completely agree. That’s great. Thank you so much, guys.
Thank you.