Alex Sacerdote - How to Invest Through Technology Cycles - [Invest Like the Best, EP.477]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Colossus

Investing, Technology, Business

4.7 • 2.5K Ratings

🗓️ 9 June 2026

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | Apple Podcasts | RSS

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Summary

My guest today is Alex Sacerdote, founder of Whale Rock Capital Management. Whale Rock is a technology focused investment firm that manages more than $17 billion across hedge fund, long only, and hybrid strategies. Over the past three years it has been one of the best performing hedge funds, compounding at roughly 44 percent a year. Alex invests through a single lens that he has refined over twenty years. He looks for technology S-curves, durable competitive advantages, and underappreciated earnings power. This conversation is a tour through how he applies that framework right now. We start with his highest conviction position, which is Anthropic, and use it to work through the entire AI stack from chips to models to applications. Please enjoy my conversation with Alex Sacerdote. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. ----- Become a Colossus member to get our quarterly print magazine and private audio experience, including exclusive profiles and early access to select episodes. Subscribe at ⁠colossus.com/subscribe⁠. ----- ⁠Ramp’s⁠ mission is to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects. Go to⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ ⁠ramp.com/invest⁠⁠ to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- Trusted by thousands of businesses, ⁠Vanta⁠ continuously monitors your security posture and streamlines audits so you can win enterprise deals and build customer trust without the traditional overhead. Invest Like the Best listeners get a special offer of $1,000 off Vanta when you go to ⁠vanta.com/invest⁠. ----- WorkOS⁠ is the infrastructure B2B and AI-native companies use to sell to enterprise. It covers everything enterprise security requires: SSO, SCIM, RBAC, Audit Logs, AI governance, and more. Trusted by 2,000+ fast-growing companies, including OpenAI, Anthropic, Cursor, and Vercel. ----- Rogo is the AI platform for finance. They're building agents for Wall Street that are trained to understand how bankers and investors actually do work: from diligence and modeling, to turning analysis into deliverables. To learn more, visit rogo.ai/invest. ----- ⁠Ridgeline⁠ has built a complete, real-time, modern operating system for investment managers. It handles trading, portfolio management, compliance, customer reporting, and much more through an all-in-one real-time cloud platform. Visit⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ridgelineapps.com⁠. ----- Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://thepodcastconsultant.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠). Timestamps: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like The Best (00:02:29) Alex Sacerdote (00:03:08) Anthropic: Highest Conviction Position (00:13:23) Investing in Private Markets at Scale (00:19:08) S-Curves: The Full Framework (00:25:08) When to Buy Tech Companies (00:30:20) Identifying the Leader from the Pack (00:34:04) Anthropic & OpenAI's Competitive Moats (00:37:31) AI's Threat to Enterprise Software (00:43:18) Network Effects in the Agent Era (00:44:22) The Hardware Renaissance: Chips & Infrastructure (00:53:56) Why So Few Investors Get This Right (00:55:36) Key Risks to the AI Bull Case (00:57:47) The Application Layer (00:59:40) How AI Is Changing Research at WhaleRock (01:02:53) The Role of Investor Networks & Idea Sharing (01:03:40) Building a Multi-Product Firm (01:07:58) WhaleRock as a Learning Machine (01:09:15) The Kindest Thing

Transcript

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0:00.0	I know firsthand how complex the tech stack is for asset managers, and seemingly every new tool
0:04.7	and data source makes the problem even worse, adding more complexity, more headcount, and more
0:09.1	risk. Ridgeline offers a better way forward, one unified platform that automates away all that
0:13.9	complexity across portfolio accounting, reconciliation, reporting, trading, compliance, and more.
0:18.9	All at scale. Ridgeline is revolutionizing investment management, helping ambitious firms scale faster, operate smarter, and stay ahead of the curve. See what Ridgeline can unlock for your firm. Schedule a demo at Ridgeline apps.com. Opening eye, cursor, anthropic, perplexity, and Versel all have something in common. They all use WorkOS. And here's why. To achieve enterprise
0:38.5	adoption at scale, you have to deliver on core capabilities like SSO, Skim, Rback, and Audit Logs.
0:45.0	That's where WorkOS comes in. Instead of spending months building these mission critical
0:48.4	capabilities yourself, you can just use WorkOS APIs to gain all of them on Day Zero.
0:53.7	That's why so many of the top AI teams you hear about already run on WorkOS APIs to gain all of them on day zero. That's why so many of the top
0:54.9	AI teams you hear about already run on WorkOS. WorkOS is the fastest way to become enterprise
1:00.1	ready and stay focused on what matters most, your product. Visit Workos.com to get started.
1:05.6	Felix by Rogo is a personal finance agent that turns a single prompt into finished
1:09.8	client-ready work using your
1:11.2	firm's own templates, context, and standards. Send Felix an email like, take these comments and turn
1:16.3	them for me, or update my tracker with the context of these emails, or run the ability to pay math
1:21.5	on this buyer, and Felix sends back finished PowerPoint decks, Excel models, and sourced research.
1:27.0	Felix works the way your team
1:28.1	already does, delivering work quickly and accurately around the clock. Learn more at rogo.a.i
1:33.4	slash Felix. Hello and welcome, everyone. I'm Patrick O'Shaughnessy, and this is Invest Like the Best.
1:40.1	This show is an open-ended exploration of markets, ideas, stories, and strategies that will help you
1:44.8	better invest both your time and your money. If you enjoy these conversations and want to go deeper,
1:49.5	check out Colossus, our quarterly publication with in-depth profiles of the people-shaping
	...

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