The All-Index
E213Jan 31, 2025

DeepSeek Panic, US vs China, OpenAI $40B?, and Doge Delivers with Travis Kalanick and David Sacks

Takes
8
Companies
6
Right so far
2
Wrong so far
2

Directional takes judged by each stock's move since this episode aired.

JasonJasonBearish

Jason argues OpenAI's closed-source, data-stealing approach has backfired as DeepSeek open-sourced a comparable model, and that large language models are depreciating assets being commoditized, making OpenAI's core product structurally less defensible.

the fastest deprecating asset in the world was a large language model. He's been proven right. They're not worth anything. They're all going to be open source. They're all going to be commoditized, and that's for the best of humanity.
SacksSacksMixed

Sacks argues it is premature to conclude frontier model companies like OpenAI have no competitive advantage, noting OpenAI is already on O3 with its frontier ahead of R1, and that companies will take countermeasures against distillation to protect their lead.

OpenAI is on O3 now. Its frontier is ahead of where R1 is...those frontier model companies now having seen what might've happened with distillation, have a pretty strong incentive to make sure that doesn't happen again.
ChamathChamathMixed

Chamath sees OpenAI's potential $40B raise at $340B valuation as a bet that ChatGPT becomes the next consumer killer app with 1B+ MAUs, putting it on a direct collision course with Meta, but questions whether overcapitalization in an open-source world is a strategic liability.

if OpenAI raises $40 billion at $340 billion, that just hit the wire. The underwriting logic at $340 billion...it is the wrapper, meaning ChatGPT is the next killer app. It's getting to a billion-plus MAU, hundreds of millions of DAO.
MicrosoftMSFT-5.3% since this episode
FriedbergFriedbergBearish✓ right so far

Friedberg notes Microsoft showed weakness in cloud earnings and is down 6%, suggesting its investment thesis is under pressure as it simultaneously undermines partner OpenAI by hosting R1.

Microsoft showed weakness in their cloud. And then Microsoft's down 6% today. And, you know, I think it's a window for OpenAI to say, we're going to go up against Meta.
MetaMETA-20.2% since this episode
ChamathChamathBullish✗ wrong so far

Chamath argues Meta is under significant pressure to release the next LLaMA iteration surpassing Gemini and R1, and that Meta must embrace DeepSeek's innovations like PTX to build a developer platform, positioning it as the key Western counterweight to Chinese AI.

all the pressure right now I think is on Meta because I think Meta has to show up with the next iteration of LLaMA that beats and exceeds Gemini, that exceeds R1. And I think that that is going to be crucial for us to have a counterweight
NVIDIANVDA+70.6% since this episode
ChamathChamathBearish✗ wrong so far

Chamath argues DeepSeek's use of PTX to bypass CUDA and its efficient training approaches signal an 'emperor has no clothes' moment for NVIDIA's moat, pointing toward a more heterogeneous chip environment that undermines NVIDIA's dominance.

apologies to the NVIDIA bulls, but it's going to create a more heterogeneous environment. And the reason is because there's too much money and risk on the line to go through a single point of failure. A chip, a high-level framework to get
TeslaTSLA+10.4% since this episode
GGuestBullish✓ right so far

Travis Kalanick highlights that cheap AI is dramatically accelerating Tesla's FSD performance—a 10x improvement in miles per human intervention over three months—and that Tesla's manufacturing scale gives it a key structural advantage in the autonomous vehicle race.

I think in a 3-month period, he, they went up like 10x in terms of performance, meaning in number of miles per, per human intervention. Like they're seeing, you know, that's the thing that Elon's seeing right now because cheap AI, cheap,
GGuestBullish

Travis Kalanick views Waymo as having a proven, normalized technology that genuinely works today, while flagging that its long-term competitive position depends on solving manufacturing scale and the electric grid constraint.

You get in a Waymo today and it's like, you're not even thinking twice. You're just like, it's all good. You just get in, you get out...The technology works.