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In this conversation from a16z’s Runtime, Gavin Baker, Managing Partner and CIO of Atreides Management, joins David George, General Partner at a16z, to unpack the macro view of AI: the trillion-dollar data center buildout, the new economics of GPUs, and what this boom means for investors, founders, and the global economy. Timestamps: 00:00 Intro 01:02 Are We in an AI Bubble? Setting the Stage with Data 02:41 Lessons from 2000: Dark Fiber vs. “No Dark GPUs” 05:07 ROI on AI: Why This Time Is Different 06:42 Nvidia, Google, and the Race to Win AI Infrastructure 08:36 Round-Tripping Deals and Competitive Pressure 10:58 Google’s TPU Advantage and the Four Leading Labs 12:22 The Application Layer: It’s Still Early 13:46 Big Tech’s “Right to Win” and the Execution Gap 15:24 Margins, Scaling Laws, and the Business Model Shift 17:18 Why Lower Gross Margins Mean Real AI Usage 19:44 SaaS, Software, and the Cloud Transition Analogy 21:12 Consumer AI, Browsers, and the Battle for Distribution 23:26 Reasoning Models and the Data Flywheel Effect 25:02 Chips, TPUs, and Broadcom’s Bet Against Nvidia 27:18 The Future of Business Models: Paying for Outcomes 29:41 Robotics, Humanoids, and Elon’s Optimus Vision Resources: Full Transcript on our Substack: https://a16z.substack.com/p/gavin-baker-and-david-george-on-positional Follow Gavin on X: https://x.com/GavinSBaker Follow Atreides Management on X: https://x.com/atreidesmgmt Follow David on X: https://x.com/DavidGeorge83 Stay Updated: If you enjoyed this episode, be sure to like, subscribe, and share with your friends! Resources: Find a16z on X: https://x.com/a16z Find a16z on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/a16z Listen to the a16z Podcast on Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5bC65RDvs3oxnLyqqvkUYX Listen to the a16z Podcast on Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/a16z-podcast/id842818711 Follow our host: https://x.com/eriktorenberg Please note that the content here is for informational purposes only; should NOT be taken as legal, business, tax, or investment advice or be used to evaluate any investment or security; and is not directed at any investors or potential investors in any a16z fund. a16z and its affiliates may maintain investments in the companies discussed. For more details please see a16z.com/disclosures.
"Are we in an AI bubble? >> Uh, I do not believe we're in an AI bubble today. I was, depending on how you look at it, the privilege and the misfortune of being a tech investor during the year 2000 bubb..."
"Battlestar Galactica, the original 1977 one. in case we have to all fight Sylons in a few years. >> It's it's uh yeah, good good segue into the topic, I guess. Um so, thank you for being here. I alway..."
"Open AAI alone I think has more than a trillion dollars of deals set up that they've committed to and we can talk about that. Um but at the same time, so those are all like big numbers on infrastructu..."
"that thus far the ROI on AI has been really positive and valuation wise. We're just not in a bubble. I couldn't agree more. The other thing that I would say is you can contrast the actual adoption and..."
">> Yeah. So, you know, there's kind of like an $800 billion buffer growing $300 billion every year. >> Yeah. I mean, um, free cash flow at some of them has begun to maybe uh, you know, >> well, this t..."
"today. I think they've taken 15 or 20 points of traffic share in the last two or three months and that does not that's just traffic to Gemini. It does not include search overviews. I suspect on a actu..."
"humble um about making high confidence predictions at the application layer. It's one reason I think the the infrastructure layer is often maybe a safe place to be at the beginning of one of these new..."
">> they have every right to win. Yeah, they have every right to win. And it seems now more than before, they're taking it quite seriously. >> Yeah, maybe Google in particular, but obviously Meta Meta ..."
"lower um and you know maybe that's how you square it but just the gross margins are fundamentally different and until scaling laws change and the importance of test time compute and things like that c..."
"mistake that I think a lot of retailers made um in dealing with Amazon is they looked at Amazon's margins and they said we don't want to be in that business. And that was obviously a terrible mistake...."
"you're if you're one of these public companies, would you rather have like 10 bucks of revenue with 90% gross margins or 50 bucks of revenue with 60% gross margins? >> Not hard. >> Like it's not that ..."
"or do you think it's something else? Um so one humility hard to say. to I would just say I think um the AI companies that have launched these AI browsers may come to regret it because there's somethin..."
"think it's tough to bet against the companies with large existing user bases today. Um, and I also think reasoning has fundamentally changed the economics of these frontier models. you know, pre-reaso..."
"Broadcom and AMD are effectively going to market together. Nvidia is no longer just a a semiconductor company as I'm sure you'll hear from Jensen tomorrow. you know not it was a semiconductor company ..."
"tens of billions of TPUs if you're anthropic maybe you don't want Google seeing your secret sauce but there's ways around on that. So I think this is really a battle between Google and its TPU enabled..."
"actually go do that? It's going to be pretty hard. So do you have any prediction on how that plays out? >> Well I think what you're seeing in customer service which is kind of like an easy first examp..."
"that doesn't sound wildly implausible to me for how powerful this technology is. And I was just struck Karpathy, you know, whatever two days ago, you know, is being painted as like a skeptic for sayin..."