April 28 2023
- Chamath likes lab-grown meat
- Big tech
- Google stock is up
- Announced $70B stock buy back plan
- Cloud unit is profitable first time in its history
- DeepMind and Google Brain merger
- Sundar feeling the strain
- Search revenue up YoY, down vs quarter
- Net Income $15B
- 2 things not presented were striking - Operating Costs and Model, competition vs OpenAI
- Seems there’s a lot of internal confidence in Google that they will AI
- Shareholders might lose faith if they don’t see proper technical direction from Google - might lose to Microsoft, Apple and Meta
- Google has huge advantage over Microsoft which is completely dependent on OpenAI
- They made a blunder by making transformers open and letting OpenAI get it - but they can recover
- Demis Hassabis went around Sundar to Larry apparently
- Don’t need CEO change to do 15-20% force reduction to get company humming on all cylinders
- We are now well past peak big tech - these are ex-growth large cash flow businesses - the way they grow is not through innovation - when was the last breakthrough stuff any of these companies did - even in the 2010s - (Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft) - core organic innovation hasn’t been there for a long while
- Foundational platform shift has shown these guys aren’t really innovating
- These companies have transitioned to being cash cows - thats why they are doing layoffs, etc to get bottom line better, use cash flows to borrow money cheaply - can kind of manipulate all kinds of financial metrics
- Growth of all these is down single digits - Google 3%, Microsoft 7%, Facebook 3-4%
- Still they all beat expectations
- Google was the only one who didn’t give upbeat forecast - others said things were going to get better
- Powell interview (hoax call from Zelenskyy pretenders apparently?) - he said there is likely recession
- Said its necessary to cool off labor market and wages to combat inflation - the only way we know how - this is his view
- He said he thinks the only way to combat inflation is to kill the economy
- Alternatives could be to cut spending and not print so much money
- Or address supply side - could address cost of energy to keep costs low
- Fundamentally they flooded the economy with money by printing and quantitative easing - and now destroying the economy
- Unemployment hacking has become a high art
- Labor force participation rate is much lower than it could be - much more positive way to address the problem - people could help jobs
- Tech companies seem to be a little immune - seems like they have some bloat, so can keep cutting
- Companies seem to have better data than the Fed
- We are now in ex-China world order - no one can do things cheaper than China - when we near-shore or on-shore stuff that used to be in China, costs will go up, things will be naturally more inefficient - terminal inflation is going to be roughly higher
- So more power goes to Labor
- Labor vs Capital
- But AI is a counterbalance
- Harvey AI raises $21M in Series A led by Sequoia
- Knowledge workers will charge less and less
- AI update
- JCal got plugin access to OpenAI from Greg Brockman directly
- Doing email sending tasks using code, etc and had lot of success
- ~30% of knowledge workers’ work can be automated by the end of this year
- If you’re not using this right now you will be out of a job in 2 years
- Like people who didn’t know how to use computers 30 years ago - they were out of the workforce soon
- Other way of looking at this is that workers get 30% more productive instead of losing 30% of employees - so now they can charge more
- The game is people connecting all these things
- Debate vs whether its easy to do or not
- PWC put in $1B into AI
- These are the first people who will use this
- Friedberg shout out to Mckay Wrigley - who didn’t know how to code in 2019 - he put together an AR system using ChatGPT to figure out nutrition for some object he puts in front of the camera
- What’s more exciting is all the new amazing stuff that we can do now
- SF real estate fire sale
- 80% discount on price - who will buy this?
- Land banking
- 30% vacancy in SF - and going up
- Will take years of growth to absorb
- You can slash rent but will struggle to fill it - there is no demand
- This is similar to growth companies with slashed valuations - they have value, just not as much
- Seems these assets are all related
- Cellphone traffic is down 70% in downtown SF
- 31% of pre-pandemic levels
- Wider bay area is vibrant
- JCal announcement from last week of looking for San Mateo office space got great response - people just giving it to him for free
- SF crime update
- DA dropped charges against the guy who assaulted Don Carmigniani
- There is video showing him being chased after - photo of him released showed he got hit really bad
- Video also released of someone who matched his description bear spraying people sleeping on the sidewalk
- Crazy SF chaos and lawlessness - its like Gotham City
- Lab meat
- 3 alternatives to traditional animal protein
- Use soy protein (impossible) or pea protein (beyond)
- This was hot for a while
- Biggest return ever maybe for Kleiner Perkins (beyond ipo)?
- Use recombinant DNA techniques
- 100M liters of chemical biomanufacturing capacity on the earth
- Eggs is $200B a year - methane from cows contributes to global warming
- Cellular meat
- Wagyu meat, shrimp, etc - trying to make cells/meat
- very expensive
- Use soy protein (impossible) or pea protein (beyond)
- 3 alternatives to traditional animal protein
- Amazon earnings
- Stock went up after good earnings
- Robert F Kennedy Jr
- His dad ran for Democratic nomination - his brother JFK was assassinated
- Lyndon Johnson was popular but was brought down by Vietnam War
- His dad was close to winning nomination - but was assassinated too
- Same situation with Biden who is not doing well and having trouble in Ukraine war
- Has rejected multiple attempts at a peace deal - China might be in driving seat and putting together some kind of settlement
- RFKJr is already polling at 19% right out of the gate
- Good initial remarks
- Role of CIA during his uncle’s administration - purpose to funnel resources to Military Industrial Complex
- Apparent former CIA operatives role in Hunter Biden laptop story
- Poverty and recession at home is accompanied by war abroad
- Covid Lockdown critic
- So now he’s being labeled as an Anti-Vaxxer
- Role of CIA during his uncle’s administration - purpose to funnel resources to Military Industrial Complex
- Environmental activist - helped clean up the Hudson river
- Shoutout to Rae for Ep 125 meetups!
Comments