Gavin Baker - AI, Semiconductors, and the Robotic Frontier - [Invest Like the Best, EP.385]

Invest Like the Best with Patrick O'Shaughnessy

Colossus

Investing, Business, Technology

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 27 August 2024

⏱️ 93 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

My guest this week is Gavin Baker. Gavin is the managing partner and CIO of Atreides Management, and he has been on the show many times before. He is one of my favorite investors to talk to and this may be my favorite conversation with him. Gavin first started covering Nvidia as an investor at the turn of the millennium, making him the perfect guest to discuss all things AI and investing. There is so much detail in this discussion and I’m incredibly grateful to Gavin for sharing his wisdom with us again. Please enjoy this fantastic conversation with Gavin Baker. For the full show notes, transcript, and links to mentioned content, check out the episode page here. ----- This episode is brought to you by Ramp. 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. Ramp is the fastest-growing FinTech company in history and it’s backed by more of my favorite past guests (at least 16 of them!) than probably any other company I’m aware of. It’s also notable that many best-in-class businesses use Ramp—companies like Airbnb, Anduril, and Shopify, as well as investors like Sequoia Capital and Vista Equity. They use Ramp to manage their spending, automate tedious financial processes, and reinvest saved dollars and hours into growth. At Colossus and Positive Sum, we use Ramp for exactly the same reason. Go to Ramp.com/invest to sign up for free and get a $250 welcome bonus. ----- This episode is brought to you by Tegus, where we're changing the game in investment research. Step away from outdated, inefficient methods and into the future with our platform, proudly hosting over 100,000 transcripts – with over 25,000 transcripts added just this year alone. Our platform grows eight times faster and adds twice as much monthly content as our competitors, putting us at the forefront of the industry. Plus, with 75% of private market transcripts available exclusively on Tegus, we offer insights you simply can't find elsewhere. See the difference a vast, quality-driven transcript library makes. Unlock your free trial at tegus.com/patrick. ----- Invest Like the Best is a property of Colossus, LLC. For more episodes of Invest Like the Best, visit joincolossus.com/episodes. Past guests include Tobi Lutke, Kevin Systrom, Mike Krieger, John Collison, Kat Cole, Marc Andreessen, Matthew Ball, Bill Gurley, Anu Hariharan, Ben Thompson, and many more. Stay up to date on all our podcasts by signing up to Colossus Weekly, our quick dive every Sunday highlighting the top business and investing concepts from our podcasts and the best of what we read that week. Sign up here. Follow us on Twitter: @patrick_oshag | @JoinColossus Editing and post-production work for this episode was provided by The Podcast Consultant (https://thepodcastconsultant.com). Show Notes: (00:00:00) Welcome to Invest Like the Best (00:04:42) The Magnificent Seven and Tech Competition (00:06:29) Generative AI and Scaling Laws (00:08:36) Challenges in AI Infrastructure (00:15:02) The Future of AI and Data Centers (00:17:51) Efficiency in AI Models (00:35:14) Synthetic Data and AI Training (00:42:37) Inference and the Role of Smartphones (00:48:35) Investment Implications in AI (00:49:09) Opportunities for New Companies (00:51:20) Challenges at the Application Layer (00:52:25) AI's Impact on Advertising (00:53:40) AI ROI Debate (00:54:39) SaaS Metrics and AI Disruption (00:55:59) AI-First Application Companies (01:00:50) The Future of Robotics (01:14:01) Leadership in Tech Giants (01:24:05) The Evolution of Investing

Transcript

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0:00.0	Two fun facts about our newest sponsorship partner, RAMP.
0:03.6	First, they are the fastest growing FinTech company in history,
0:06.6	reaching a level of revenue in five years that I can't quote exactly,
0:09.9	but his eyebrow raising.
0:11.5	Second, they are backed by more of my favorite past guests,
0:14.6	at least 16 of them when I counted,
0:16.8	than probably any other company that I'm aware of.
0:19.0	A list that includes Ravi Gupta at Sequoia, Josh Kushner,
0:21.6	at Thrive, Keith Raboy at Founders Fund and
0:23.4	Coastal Ventures, Patrick and John Collison, Michael Ovets, Brad Gersner, the list goes
0:27.2	on and on. These facts demand the question, why? Having been personally
0:31.3	obsessed with the great businesses through history, one clear lesson is that the best of them are run by disciplined operators.
0:37.0	These operators manage costs with incredible detail and they are constantly thinking about how they can reinvest every dollar and every hour back into their business.
0:44.8	This is RAM's mission to help companies manage their spend in a way that reduces expenses and
0:49.1	frees up time for teams to work on more valuable projects.
0:53.0	First on Expenses, the average American business
0:55.3	has a profit margin of 7.7%.
0:58.2	This means saving 1% on costs
1:00.0	is the equivalent of making 13% more revenue.
1:02.8	The average ramp customer is able to save 5% on their expenses each year.
1:07.2	Of course, every entrepreneur is looking for ways to grow revenue by 50%,
1:10.5	they should just as seriously seek to save 5 percent on their expenses.
	...

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