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E180May 24, 2024

Scarlett Johansson vs OpenAI, Nvidia's trillion-dollar problem, the "vibecession," plastic in our balls

Takes
4
Companies
2
Playing out
1
Going against
0
Who weighed in
ChamathSacksFriedberg
1 bullish2 mixed1 neutral
DiscussedNvidiaOpenAI

A call is only graded once it's had time to play out and the stock has moved beyond its normal range — long-term views get a full quarter before we'll say they're tracking against.

NvidiaNVDA+98.1% over 2yr 1mo
FriedbergFriedbergCommentary

Friedberg argues Nvidia faces deep customer concentration risk — roughly one-third of quarterly revenue from the top 4 hyperscalers — and has less business maneuvering capability than Cisco had, making it structurally more vulnerable to a demand cliff or customer defection.

I think that they're going to have less maneuvering capability than Cisco had. In the future. And obviously there's this deep concentration risk, which is going to be deeply challenging.
SacksSacksCommentarytracking with the call

Sacks argues Nvidia has a stronger moat than Cisco because its GPU hardware is far more complex to replicate and Nvidia stays ahead via continuous R&D cycles, though he acknowledges it remains an open question.

I think you can make the case that NVIDIA has a much better moat than Cisco. And just by the way, on this Cisco comparison, just to finish the thought, people were making this comparison 6 months ago. And what's happened since then? NVIDIA'
ChamathChamathCommentary

Chamath sees Nvidia's extraordinary growth as real but argues that the laws of capitalism will eventually attract competitors to attack its margins, and that Nvidia will be forced to compete directly with hyperscalers to defend its market cap — a dynamic that could eventually redirect value up the stack just as happened with Intel after the PC boom.

At some point, the spread trade will be that NVIDIA loses share even though revenues keep compounding to these upstarts.
ChamathChamathCommentary

Chamath views OpenAI as technically ahead and deserving credit for creating an entire industry, but notes it will also be remembered for repeated drama and for transferring enormous value to employees through secondaries before a fully functional business exists — a rational but culturally conflicted organization.

They're technically ahead of everybody else. A lot of people want to put in money at, you know, crazy prices. A bunch of that value is transferred immediately to the employees. Who circle the wagons and do what's necessary to keep the taps