OpenAI's GPT-5 Flop, AI's Unlimited Market, China's Big Advantage, Rise in Socialism, Housing Crisis

FriedbergBullish✓ right so far

Friedberg pushes back against Apple bear theses, arguing the company has a uniquely durable system built unlike any other in corporate history and that predictions of Apple's demise have been wrong for 30 years.

“Rumors of Apple's demise are 30 years old, okay? This is every year the same story. Lack of innovation, copycatting... I would not count Apple out. There's a system there that's built unlike any other in corporate history.”▶ Listen · 1:36:10 ⚑

Gavin Baker is bearish on Apple's competitive position, arguing the company has been shockingly inept at AI, has wasted hundreds of billions on buybacks that could have funded data centers and AI, and the products including Siri are getting worse rather than better.

“I'm just shocked at their inaction and ineptitude in AI, how bad the products are from a user perspective. I mean, they're, they're terrible... maybe they should have spent $200 billion less and spent that on data centers and been like a”▶ Listen · 1:33:48 ⚑

Gavin Baker notes that even Microsoft, despite Copilot not being the best product, is seeing measurable Copilot uptake, suggesting AI economic returns are beginning to materialize even for less competitive AI offerings.

“even Microsoft. I mean, for me, Copilot is not the best product, but even Microsoft on their call talked, they shared some pretty astonishing stats about Copilot uptake.”▶ Listen · 20:33 ⚑

Gavin Baker points to Meta's recent quarter with revenue significantly ahead of expectations as evidence that AI investments are generating real economic returns through longer engagement and improved ad targeting ROAS.

“Meta just reported a quarter with revenue significantly ahead, and I think a lot of that was due to AI, AI making people spend longer and AI improving the quality of their ad targeting systems such that advertisers get a better ROAS and”▶ Listen · 20:12 ⚑

Gavin Baker implies continued strong demand for NVIDIA GPUs, noting that AI data centers are being used so intensively GPUs 'melt,' demand remains ahead of supply, and even black-market smuggling at a 50% premium underscores the scarcity and value.

“one of the biggest problems with GPUs and AI data centers is the GPUs are used so intensively that they melt. So all of the dollars that are going into the ground are being used. We're not building ahead of demand. In fact, we're clearly”▶ Listen · 21:25 ⚑

Gavin Baker, a disclosed shareholder, is bullish on xAI given Grok 4's exceptional benchmark performance over GPT-5, the largest Blackwell cluster enabling Grok 5, and the view that xAI has taken the lead in frontier AI model quality.

“I should note my firm is a shareholder of xAI... they have the largest Blackwell cluster, so I'm optimistic for GROK5. The progress for Grok 4 was exceptional.”▶ Listen · 12:52 ⚑

Gavin Baker argues OpenAI is still a highly valuable company due to product excellence and distribution, but for the first time failed to release a model decisively better than competitors, suggesting talent loss may be weighing on model performance.

“this is the first time that OpenAI has not been able to clearly beat a competitor on all metrics... the loss of talent may be beginning to weigh. But they are very good at product, just really, really good.”▶ Listen · 10:45 ⚑